What is your Tattoo Saying?

Several of my friends spent a semester abroad in Thailand during their junior year. Near the end of their journey, several of them decided to get tattoos. One particular friend of mine, Patty, shared her tattoo experience with me. Her tattoo, which is displayed across her left forearm, is written in Thai and is translated in English to “wild is the wind”. At first I assumed that ‘wild as the wind’ was just a traditional Thai phrase that Patty liked so she decided to get it tattooed on her arm. When I asked her about it, she told me it was actually something she always says. When she was younger and still to this day, “wild is the wind” is just a phrase she always enjoyed saying in regards to freedom and spontaneity.

“It just means, you know, be like the wind, be free, be spontaneous. It’s a phrase I always say so it really means something to me,” Patty said.

Most people I know with tattoos say they do not regret getting them or at least claim they do not regret getting them. Patty was one of these people. When I asked her if she had any regrets about getting her tattoo she said absolutely not. She told me that she only loves it more and more every day. “Wild is the wind” is a phrase that has made her who she is and will continue to shape her in the future so she thinks it is meaningful to have it inked onto her skin. Will she change her mind in the future? Who knows.

For Patty, getting this tattoo was a way for her to outwardly express something that is meaningful to her, which is an aspect of pop culture. Today, we are able to tweet about something we care about, or post a picture or video, many visual things. Getting tattoos falls somewhere in this category. We can change our mind a lot on the internet, but getting something as permanent as a tattoo shows a strong devotion to that topic. It is a way for Patty to express her identity and will forever remind her of the amazing journey she had while studying abroad. It relates one particular time in her life to something that defines her whole identity and whole life.

Another person close to me that has a tattoo is my sister, Katherine. For about 16 months after she graduated college, she traveled around Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea for a volunteer program called Oceans Watch. Near the end of her experience, sometime when she was in Australia, she received a tattoo on her ribs in a nice thin font saying: “mad to live”.  Similar to Patty’s reasoning for getting her tattoo, my sister has lived by the quote “mad to live” for a while. It comes for her favorite book On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The full quote reads: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh...” This is her favorite quote from the book as she feels it relates to her life. My sister loves to travel and meet interesting people along the way, and during her travels she was only reminded of her favorite quote and felt it was important to her to get it tattooed on her body. When she first got the tattoo, she told me that as her life goes on, she could eventually add more to the tattoo to go along with the quote. For example, under her original tattoo, she might eventually get the tattoo “mad to talk”.

She was extremely nervous to tell my parents about getting the tattoo and both of us had to keep the secret until one day we were on a family vacation in Florida and my sister had to wear a bathing suit. Fortunately, my parents were not angry at her, and actually had expected that she would get a tattoo. My parents, however, do not think that getting a tattoo is the best way of expressing something meaningful. My mom always says to me: “when I die, please do NOT get a tattoo of my name”. Although I will rightfully respect my moms request, what’s to stop me from getting a tattoo later in life when something meaningful rolls along. Is it more meaningful for me to express something with a tattoo, or with something simply social like a tweet or Facebook upload? Do people really get tattoos because it means something to them, or is it a way or showing the rest of the world something about his or her identity. Eventually people go from just having one or two tattoos to having 10 or 20. Each of these tattoos might say something about a person, whether it is extremely personal, or very simple, like a tattoo of a wave because that person likes to swim. It’s a different way of expressing identity.