Tattoos & Self Expression

The Maoris of New Zealand have an interesting tradition and legend. Typical of Polynesian peoples, the Maori have a traditional style of tattooing that is considered an essential part of one's life work to complete. There is a hag that guards the gates to the afterlife. If someone tries to enter without the tattoo, she knows that this lifetime of learning opportunity has been wasted by a lazy soul trying to take the easy path. She plucks out their eyes so they enter the afterworld blind. If they have it, she eats their scars and heals all their wounds so they can start their next life with everything they've learned plus being relieved of the tiredness from learning it.

The old saying that the only difference between people who have tattoos and those who don't is that the ones who have them, don't care whether you do or not is really true. Few methods of body adornment stir greater controversy. Anyone who has a tattoo understands perfectly the personal nature of the decision and level of commitment required to get one. One of the artists whose work I have, put it in a very interesting way. The pain and the permanence leave a mark on your soul which corresponds to the tat and its meaning.

There is no more intensely personal form of self expression than a tatoo. Unlike clothes, hairstyles, or even hair color; a tatoo is forever unchanging. So many people ask "What if you change your mind?" The answer to this that there are many things in life you simply cannot "change your mind" about: your family, children, disabilities, diseases: things over which you have little or no control, no matter how much you would like to. There are some things to which the contents or wishes of our minds make no difference. Taking on a tatoo involves knowing that you cannot change your mind, and forces one to look into one's mind enough to know what is there.

As the old saying goes "Every picture tells a story." Often pictures can tell a story far more eloquently than words ever can. Ask anyone who has a tatoo about the story behind the tat and if they trust you they will tell you about it. If they say "I just got drunk and got it", they do not trust you. In a world full of "standard model" human beings and incredible pressures to conform, tatoos are one means people are using to express how they are unique: different from anyone else.

That is usually worth knowing about a person.

Please send me tat pics and links: only original pics of your own or a friend's tats. Stories about the tats would be super cool.

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