Today, I woke up wishing I had mood organ. I mean, yeah. As Iran says in Androids, it would probabaly be “unhealthy... sensing... life... and not reacting” (Dick, 5). But oh my goodness, I could have used a Penfield this morning. My alarm didn't ring, I ran out of shampoo, I stepped on my glasses and now they're all crooked, and I noticed that my desk is mysteriously sticky and I'm not sure why. To top it off, because my alarm failed to wake me I was almost late to class and had to run like a maniac across campus, trying desperately to ignore the fact that everyone was staring at me like I was Leslie, out from the hospital and back to my fashionable ways.
Unhappy. That's how I felt this morning. Ridiculously, irreversibly unhappy. I wish that I could say I kept this unhappiness to myself, that I had “self control” and “[found] ways to manage [my[ disturbing emotions and impulses”(Anthology, 336) . Instead of “channelling [my emotions] in useful ways” (Anthology 336), however, I decided to be a Debbie Downer rain on the parade of every person I talked to. One girl expressed anxiety over a test: I responded not with words of encouragement but with a particularly gruesome tale of a test in my past that I failed miserably. Another boy told me a humorous tale about a childhood experience involving long hair and gum: I didn't even crack a smile. Finally, my sister called me with some news on her crush. Instead of being supportive I told her she was too young to have a boyfriend. What a joke. The girl is almost 16. I don't think she's too young to have a boyfriend. I just didn't feel like being nice and decided to emotionally vomit all over her.
Debbie Downer as portrayed by SNL. Basically she just makes you feel terrible, just like I was doing to everyone I met this morning.
As I watched myself spread my rain clouds of unhappiness over everyone else's day, I found myself imagining a world where I could press a button and all of the unfortunate occurrences that had happened to me would have no effect on my mood at all, a world where I could feel what I wanted when I wanted, a world where unhappiness could be scheduled for a more convenient time. Basically, I fantasized living in Rick Deckards world.
Let's face it: society does not encourage strong, uncontrolled emotions like the unhappiness that was emanating from me this morning. In Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Lumieure, Cogsworth, and Mrs. Pot all tell the Beast that the most important thing to remember when addressing Belle is to control his temper, something Belle repeats to him later. In Ella Enchanted, Ella's father tries to muffle her sobs at her mother's funeral, finally telling her to “get away” (Levine, 11) and “come back when [she] can be quiet” (Levine, 11). Fergie made a katrillion dollars a few years ago by singing about how “big girls don't cry”. Obviously there are some advantages to controlling your emotions. In The Secret Life of Bees, May is unable to control her emotions and they end up destroying her. And I'm pretty sure no one I talked to this morning appreciated my uncontrolled unhappiness, least of all my sister, who promptly hung up on me. I'll have to fix that later...
Anyhow, the point is that uncontrollable emotions can be a real downer. And yet... a mood organ is not the answer. I feel like emotions make us who we are. Like... the way we react to thing emotionally is our own essence. It says a lot about what we're like as people. Dick goes so far in Androids as to suggest that emotional intelligence is the defining element of our humanity, making an EQ test the primary device used to differentiate between a human and an android, who "[bounce] helplessly when confronted by an empathy-measuring test".
But here's what I don't understand. If emotional intelligence I the defining characteristic of humanity, what happens with those few people who honest to god don't have emotions? Take Gary for example. He's “emotionally flat, completely unresponsive to any and all shows of feeling,” (Anthology 275A) and yet we KNOW he's not an android. He, a human being, would fail the EQ test. And in Androids, Rachael, an android, very nearly passes.
In Androids EQ tests are used to find androids among humans.
http://www.ihhp.com/images/quiz_01.jpg
So, this reading kind of confused me because it presents an idea and then immediately provides evidence to the contrary. Is it emotional intelligence that makes us human? And if this is so, are alexithymics like Gary not human? Except... he is human. Technically.
I dunno... I do feel that what makes us human is inside. And I know that it's more then just the structure of our bodies and the order of our genes, more then our ability to talk, and walk upright. But I think it's wrong to say that alexithymics are not human, or even less human then people who are able to empathize. Maybe being human doesn't have to do as much with your ability to empathize, or your emotional intelligence, as it does with making an effort to empathize and understand those around you. I mean, it's not your fault if you seriously just cannot empathize. It's not like you can do anything about it: they don't sell over the counter empathy pills just yet. But if you fail to even make an effort to empathize... that, to me, points to a lesser degree of human-ess.
Though packets of empathy like these are not available to alexithymics, I think they can still assert their humanity by making an effort to empathize, even if they are unsuccessful.
This was kind of hard for me for a couple of reason. First of all, when I thought about the animals in Alice, I didn't see them as animals. I mean, think about it. The White Rabbit has a waistcoat pocket, OK? And he's worried about being late. Idon't even worry about being late, and I'm actually a human. He's out-humaning me, I tell you! It's utterly preposterous. And the Lion and Unicorn in Looking Glass, fighting over the kings all-powerful crown? Seems like a pretty human desire. Not to mention the Cheshire Cat. What kind of cat sits around grinning and exclaiming to small human girls that “[everyone] is mad” (Carroll, 66)?
Doesn't this rabbit look ridiculously human to you?
Anyway, so I sat around confused for about a half an hour, trying desperately to reverse the humanization that Carroll, through Alice, had so liberally bestowed upon the animals in Wonderland before realizing that THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT! Through this humanizing, Carroll was showing:
how we dehumanize animals just because they don't communicate and act the same way as us and therefore allow ourselves to treat them unethically, although lack of understanding for animals is not a “good and sufficient cause” (Anthology, 329) for this unethical treatment.
the astounding difference in Alice's treatment of animals that arises when they DO communicate and act like humans. I think that animals possess a lot of the same traits as us, but we fail to recognize these similarities because we are blinded by what separates us, such as the ability to talk. Take my dog, for example. Last weekend he had a little happy heart attack when I let him walk with me to the mailbox. In fact, it was astonishingly similar to the the happy heart attack my sister had when I took her with me to the movie store. The only difference between their happy heart attacks was that my sister jumped up and down shrieking “MOVIEMOVIEMOVIEMOVIEMOVIE”, while my dog jumped up and down yelping “YAPYAPYAPYAPYAP”. In Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Alice find it time and time again easier to act ethically towards those animals which Carroll has given the power to act and communicate in familiar and human ways.
This is about what my sister looked like when she found out we were getting a movie.
One of the major ways in which Carroll proves these two points is by contrasting the way in which Alice treats those animals he has humanized to the way she interacts with those who are in their more natural state, namely the pig, the dog and the cooked animals at her feast in Looking Glass when she becomes a queen. I thought the pig was probably the most interesting of all, because it started out as a child. Alice, when the pig is a baby, tries to save it from the abuse it is experiencing with the duchess, exclaiming that “if [she doesn't] take this child away with [her]... they're sure to kill it” (Carroll, 63). However, Alice is annoyed with the “child” as soon as it begins acting in unhuman ways. She tells it not to grunt because grunting is “not at all a proper way of expressing [oneself]”. After awhile, Alice tells the pig-child that “if [it is] going to turn into a pig... [she'll] have nothing more to do with [it]” (Carroll, 63). Once it becomes a pig she simply sets it down. But here's the thing: isn't the pig still potentially in danger? Tenniel drew. So how is it supposed to protect itself in the dark forest of Wonderland? Honestly, I think it was ethically unsound of Alice to let the pig go off on its own, when it was really only slightly better prepared to deal with the dangers of the world than the baby was. As for the dog, I didn't necessarily think that Alice behaved unethically towards it, but she didn't make much of an effort to be civil to it, just throwing a stick at it and then scurrying away. This could be partially explained by her fear of the dog because it was much larger than her, but Alice felt a certain fear of the duchess as well and left her in a somewhat more civil manner, taking her “baby” to play “nurse” with it at the duchesses request. When Alice is confronted by the mutton at the feast, she “[takes] up the knife and fork” and makes an effort to cut it. Though the mutton is not a living animal, it represents an animal that was once living, and Alice has no knowledge as to whether it died a “painless death” (Carroll, 329) which makes her effort to eat it border on the unethical.
Pig? Or baby? Don't worry, Alice was confused too.
Alice's treatment of these animals can be contrasted to her treatment of the humanized animals in Carroll's classic tale. When the White Rabbit asks Alice to fetch his fan and white gloves, she immediately goes to do so. Though the Caterpillar is short with Alice, she stays and talks with him for quite awhile. This animals interaction in particular is important because Alice gains the ability to choose her own growth from it, showing that if we take the time to listen to and understand animals we can learn valuable lessons. In Looking Glass, Alice rows the queen-turned-sheep in the little boat, something she probably would not have been so ready to do had the sheep not been able to talk.
The caterpillar was kind of a jerk, but Alice still stayed and talked to him.
It seems like Alice doesn't have the same respect for all animals that Jude, in the excerpt from Jude the Obscure, shows. Jude lets the birds eat from the farmers field he's supposed to be scaring them away from, telling them to “make a good meal” (Anthology, 320) even though he knows that he could be fired. I thought this was brave, but I also thought it was possibly an unnecessary sacrifice, because the birds could probably have gotten food elsewhere. I thought it was interesting how Jude was “struck with... [his] own rattle,” the very instrument he used to drive away the birds. I feel like Alice got a taste of her own medicine in Wonderland as well. When she is small, Alice is forced to see things from the perspective of smaller animals, like the mouse. The mouse expresses fear of dogs, something that Alice is unable to understand until she is confronted by a dog in her new mouse-ish size. Though Carroll never explicitly says so, I think this experience helped Alice better understand the mouses aversion to dogs. Once she was back in the real world, she probably never looked at dogs in the same way.
Alice is significantly smaller then the dog, which may have helped her understand the mouses fear of dogs better.
http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/csl2982l.jpg
So how does this all relate to me? I'm not sure, actually. I think, though, that what I most appreciated about the animals in Alice was that, though in some cases their human-qualities were exaggerated to the point where they no longer seemed like animals, there were times when I felt like they were simply animals with the ability to speak. I kind of felt like this brought to life the bond that humans share with animals. I'm always telling people that we're the same person whenever we have anything in common. We both like chocolate? SAME PERSON. Both have brown hair? SAME PERSON. If I apply this foolproof logic to humans and animals, I'd say they're the same as well.
Humans and animals both have deep emotions? SAME PERSON.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Alice As a Leader
I remember very distinctly writing my college resume in my high school english class. We'd been given and example that was basically this lovely, looooooooong list of awesome things some random student had done. The teacher was prattling on about how this fantastical student had gone on to some ridiculously expensive and elite school and was currently researching some obscure and painfully difficult subject, but I wasn't listening. Instead, I was rifling through the pages of the essay in panic because there was NO WAY I had as many things to put on my resume as this student had.
Suddenly, my heart stopped. There, in the middle of the essay, was a section labeled “Leadership Titles”. Oh, my goodness, that section went on for PAGES. You know in Aladdin when Jafar brings out the royal rule book to prove to the king he is required under law to marry Jasmine if she doesn't find a husband before she comes of age? I swear, this kids resume section on leadership was longer then that royal handbook, and if you remember anything about that part in the movie, you'll know that the royal handbook, when unrolled, flows across the room and gently smacks the sultan in the face. It's scary long, I'm telling you.
This is about how long the list of leadership titles was. VERY LONG.
And the leadership list wasn't just humorously long: it was long and INTIMIDATING, mostly because I had no idea what the heck I was going to put on my list. In the end, I think I just sort of scribbled down a few positions I'd held in various activities. But it made me mad, you know? A leadership title isn't leadership.
I feel like Carroll, using Alice, affirms this idea that the title doesn't make the leader. He describes Alice as “loving as a dog... gentle as a fawn... courteous to all willing to accept the wildest impossibilities with all that utter trust that dreamers know... and... curious” (Carroll, 12). Alice shows these attributes throughout both the books. However, more importantly, these central characteristics help make her an effective and ethical leader. Her official title of queen isn't achieved until the end of Looking Glass, and yet Alice acts as a leader from the beginning of the first story, and only hones these characteristics throughout both books, making her a leader by example. In contrast, the various kings and queens we meet in these stories are in many ways decisively NOT leaders, despite their titles.
Carroll proves in the Alice books that as far as leadership is concerned, this crown means nothing.
Alice is insanely proactive. This stems not just from a desire to elevate herself but also from an ethical desire to be “courteous to all” (Carroll, 12). I think the first place that this meshing of ethics and proactivity hit me was in Alice's interactions with the Mouse and other animals in the caucus race. When the Mouse exclaims that he wants Alice to never “let [him] hear the name [cat] again,” (Carroll, 27) Alice doesn't just stop talking about cats: she also changes the subject in an effort to make the mouse feel more comfortable, starting off the next segment of their conversation with the question “are you- are you fond- of- of dogs?” (Carroll, 27). Alice's supreme efforts to make the Mouse feel comfortable lead the to the forming of the Caucus party, where the Mouse tells his 'long and sad tale” (Carroll 33) to all the guests. This tale helps to bond the guests, another aspect of a true leader that Alice possesses: the ability to bring people together. Of course, the Mouse is soon offended by Alice's perceived lack of attentiveness , but even after he leaves, the bond forged between the members of the party is evident in the Lory's statement that it was “a pity [the Mouse] wouldn't stay” (Carroll, 35). However, Alice is only able to accomplish this bringing together of different types of animals through her provocativeness that comes from an ethnical concern for all members of society.
In addition, Alice leads by example through her inclusion of everyone in her decisions, which makes those that encounter her feel that they are working together towards a common cause.
One of the central problems with the queen in Wonderland is her tendency to make decisions such as demanding the execution of her subjects, without consulting anyone. Though this elicits fear and obedience from her underlings, it does not lead to all of them working together towards a common goal. Carroll, I think, tried to symbolize this with the insane croquet game, where the disorganized nature of the game was caused partially by the queens constant exclamation of “off with their heads,” (Carroll, 83), her “one way of settling all difficulties, great or small”(Carroll, 87), which kept the players from working together towards
the common goal of finishing the game. This contrasts greatly to Alice, who in Looking Glass shows how effective herinclusion of others in her decisions can be. Alice does not go about her quest to become a queen by herself: first she asks the Red Queen for advice, which allows her to become a white pawn, one step closer to being a queen. Then she walks out of the forest where things have no name not by herself but with the fawn, and gains the valuable information that she is “a human child” (Carroll, 178). Later, she works together with the knight to cross the last brook and become a queen, allowing him to “see [her] safe to the end of the wood”. Alice goes through Looking Glass with a specific goal in mind, but she allows others to participate in the manifestation of this goal, and it is her willingness to give every creature she meets a role in her road to queendom that finally gets her across the last brook.
Alice and the knight she allows to help her.
http://gemma.ujf.cas.cz/~david/images/p151.gif
The last chapter of Looking Glass was for me the most obvious places where Alice's superiority to Carroll's titled leaders is shown. In “Queen Alice”, the White and Red Queens are testing Alice's preparedness for her title. However, the questions they ask her have nothing to do with leadership. They are in fact nonsense questions, ranging from “divide a loaf by a knife?” (Carroll, 253) to “where do you pick a flower?” (Carroll, 254). Alice is frustrated by these questions, showing the reader that she has higher concerns then the nonsense these titled leaders seem to be focusing on. Later, when Alice is being introduced to various foods, she is more concerned with feeding the people in the room then with the idle task of meeting these pointless foods, making the mistake of cutting the pudding. Alice's concern for the hunger of the others at the table shows her noble commitment to her subjects as opposed to being focused on the politics of her title, which are symbolized by the foods the Red Queen is so committed to introducing to Alice. The contrasts depicted in this chapter between Alice and the other Queens was for me the clearest indicator of both Alice's supreme ethical leadership skills, as well as the most obvious depiction of how a title does not necessarily indicate a good leader.
Alice being interrogated by the queens.
http://www.ebbemunk.dk/alice/86queens.jpg
Remember those random leadership titles I scribbled on my resume? When it finally came time to write a college essay on leadership, I didn't write about any of those. Instead, I wrote about helping one of the girls I babysit learn to share. It was a little bit cheesy, I know. But to me, teaching that girl a life skill was a bigger leadership position then all of my titles put together. Leadership is not an obscure title buried in a resume. Leadership is the bringing together of people towards a greater purpose.
I personally am not big on titles. I've never been that super-involved kid who is president of every club and its brother. I've never been president of anything, actually. But that doesn't mean that, in my own way, I'm not a leader. Yeah, I'm not queen or anything, But sometimes I catch glimpses of myself acting as a leader in my every day life, and I know that my lack of title doesn't make these acts of leadership any less important. When people think of Alice, they don't remember her as a queen: they remember her for her actions, all of which pointed to her decisive role as a leader.
Queen playing croquet source: http://i919.photobucket.com/albums/ad40/ Fini89/croquet-2.jpg
Monday, October 12, 2009
My Passion
A History of My Plans for the Future
Every mother wants their child to do something great. Become a doctor, found a company, save the world: you name it, and a mother (maybe even yours) has pictured her young one doing it. My loving mother was no different. She had a picture book called When I Grow Up, which included a number of toddlers declaring emphatically their intent to grow up and and work as lawyers, firemen, and nurses. She read that book to me, without fail, every single day, hoping I'd take a liking to one of the prestigious professions it described. This constant rereading may sound strange and obsessive, but my mother had good reason to worry about my professional future, because between the ages of 4 and 7, my dream occupation was slightly less than spectacular.
Well... not a maid, exactly. I was significantly more ambitious than that. I aspired, more specifically, to be Walt Disney's Cinderella. She was beautiful, helpful, had animal friends, and ended up marrying a prince. Let's be honest: when you're 3 years old, Cinderella's life sounds rather fabulous. This was especially true for me, since the best alternative my mother could come up with was becoming a dancer. Though this auxiliary profession included beautiful dresses, it failed to satisfy my desire for the other attractive attributes of Cinderella's life, including her mouse friends and eventual ascendence to the position of princess.
After some time, though, reality got the better of my childhood fancies, and I moved on to a more practical aspiration, deciding in 2nd grade that my true calling was that of a veterinarian. The idea came to me this time after I discovered a book series called Animal Ark, about a girl, Meg, whose parents were veterinarians somewhere in the UK. Her life sounded almost as much fun as Cinderella's. Obviously there was no prince involved, but Mandy had just as many animal friends as the classic Disney princess, and she was constantly saving the day by rescuing kittens stuck in trees, binding wounded puppy legs, and locating lost ferrets. I mean, who wouldn't want to be a vet with all the exciting things that seemed to constantly happen to them?
These books inspired my dream of being a veterinarian.
Reality, however, set in once more. In fifth grade, I went to have my allergies tested for the 50 bazillionth time in my life, and found out that, miraculously, I was now not only allergic to every nut, fruit, tree, and grass they tested for: I had also developed an allergy to animal fur, which, unfortunately, is a vital component of the veterinary field.
Allergy testing is as worse then this picture makes it look. They basically prick your arms and back with things you might be allergic to and measure how large the resulting hives are. It is possibly the least fun thing in existence today
Can you picture me? I'm 10 years old, my arm is covered with hives because they have spent the last 2 hours purposely injecting me with things I am allergic to, and my dreams have just been crushed by the prick of an allergen filled needle. It was, to put it simply, a bad day. But it was also the crucial turning point in my search for what the HECK I was going to do with the rest of my life. At this point, I was almost as bad as Alice. When she asks the Cheshire Cat where she ought to go, and he answers her that it “depends a good deal on where [she wants] to go” (Carroll, 65), Alice responds that she doesn't care at all... as “long as [she gets] somewhere” (Carroll, 65). Now, I cared a great deal where I ended up. “Somewhere” was not going to cut it. However, like Alice, I had no idea where exactly I wanted to go.
After that fateful allergy appointment, I started seriously assessing the history of my previous career choices. Why was it that I had been so excited, so passionate, about the prospect of being a maid, and yet had been equally enthused by the idea of the veterinary practice? What did these two seemingly unrelated professions have in common?
After stepping back and trying to answer these questions "[unattached] to a particular outcome"(Anthology, 268), I realized that the link between my two previous dream-jobs was a commitment to the happiness of people. When Cinderella was cleaning her stepfamily's house? She was helping them. She was trying to keep them happy by keeping their living quarters spotless, by selflessly cooking delicious food for them, and by allowing them to abuse her without complaint. Obviously she could have helped people in a less... degrading way, and perhaps she could have chosen a more deserving set of people to aid. However, the principle of the matter is that Cinderella was assisting people with the intent to keep content. And when Mandy, from Animal Ark, was saving animals? Sure, I was glad she was saving the animals. But what I loved almost as much as that, and maybe even more, was the joy of the animals owners when they were told that Meg had saved their pet's life.
I want to help people be as happy as the kid in this picture. Note that he can't even keep his eyes open he's smiling so hard.
I'd figured it out: whatever I specifically did with my future, I wanted to help people be happier.
It looks simplistic and childish, when I write it out like that. Maybe it's a naïve passion. Maybe I should have laughed it off in fifth grade and moved on to something deeper, more mature, something I could put on a college application and not inwardly cringe at. I mean, can you imagine my college interviews?
Interviewer: So, Lauren, what are you passionate about?
Me: Well... I like to make people happy.
It;s laughable, really. I didn't laugh it off though. I moved through middle school and half of high school, looking for a career that would let me build on my passion. In a way, I wish the final push hadn't come. It was good, of course... I guess. I mean, I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. But it was a series of harrowing experiences that led me to the conclusion of my career search, and I hope that nothing of the sort ever happens to anyone again.
Path to A Decision
In school, they don't ever really tell you what anorexia is.At least, I don't remember them ever explaining it to me. But it didn't take an APA approved definition of anorexia nervoisa to recognize that something was wrong with one of my childhood friends. At lunch, she would just sit, you know? Everyone else at the table would talk enthusiastically over the hum of the other students in the cafeteria. She, instead would spend lunch slowly, almost painfully, lifting her sandwich to her lips, taking the most miniscule of bites, and then dropping her hands, almost as if in exhaustion, letting them thump pitifully against the table before starting the process again. Lift, bite, drop, repeat. Lift, bite, drop, repeat. This process continued all through our half hour lunch, until finally the bell rang and she would jump up as if relieved and throw away the remainder of her sandwich, usually more then half.
This middle school was where my first experience with eating disorders occurred.
I sat there and watched it happen. Day after day, for weeks, and then months, until finally, close to Christmas of our 7th grade year, her parents sent her to a rehab facility in Utah.
What could I have done? How could I have fixed this? It tortured me, that she was unhappy and there was nothing I could do. I loathed that disease. I thought anorexia was REPULSIVE, the way it around and making other people feel like the were fat, or ugly, or inferior, when really what was ugly was the disease itself. Anorexia forced me to watch someone absolutely amazing wilt slowly. But what was more disturbing then anything else about the experience was that the disease caused my friend to inflict this phenomenon on her own body. She was the one depriving herself of food. I just... it was difficult for me, then, and is still a struggle for me now, to comprehend how someone so incredible could have been dissatisfied with herself. There were times, in those months of idle watching, that I wanted to shake her. How could she be so blind to the sensational human being that everyone else recognized when they looked at her?
A Decision
I wish that 7th grade had been the end of my experience with eating disorders, but one year later, in 8th grade, another close friend developed bulimia. In ninth two girls I had been friends with from preschool struggled with anorexia. Finally, my sophomore year of high school, my best friend was sent to a rehab center in Dallas in the hopes that she could subdue the bulimia beast.
And that was it. The final straw, the “tiny golden key” (Carroll, 15) to my future. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice doesn't get through the door to her future until she's shrunk and grown numerous times. I myself went through a variety of other possible futures, and a multitude of painful experiences, before I was finally able to open the little door and squeeze through the rat-hole into my garden of destiny. I'd been considering psychology as a possible career for a long time, just because the profession seemed to fit in with my passion of making people happy. However, like Alice, I'd only been peeping through the keyhole at a possible future. Now, though, I knew what I wanted to specialize in: eating disorders. I was sick of watching everyone I loved not love themselves, and I was ready, finally to do something about it.
In Alice in Wonderland, Alice needs a gold key to open the little door.
http://www.bygosh.com/AIW/C01/alice03a.gif
So, yes. I do recognize that my passion for helping people be happier is sadly simplistic. I realize that many of you are cringing at the artless way in which I have expressed it. Sometimes, though, it is the simplest way of explaining something that is the most profound. Hemingway told the Paris Review in an interview that he rewrote the end of A Farewell to Arms 39 times. In the end, this is what it said:
“But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying goodbye to a statue. After awhile I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.” (Anthology, 527)
Simple, I know. But also memorable. Besides, my passion isn't about impressing anyone. What is important about my passion is how I understand it, live it out, and make it my own. My life, however short it has been, has convinced me that the best way to do these three things is to become a psychologist, specializing in eating disorders.
I'm here at UT to become a psychologist. This university is “training good members of society” (Anthology, 170). I'm taking this training and channeling it towards a more complete fulfillment of my passion.
Here at UT I want to further work on my passion by studying psychology.
Here's what struck me about the Navratri Hindu Festival:
1. The COLOR
It was everywhere! I had been forewarned that people were “ dressing up” for the event but nothing could have prepared me for the utter force of the bright saris that floated across the field in front of the tower. You know those digitally altered pictures of flowers, where you know there is no possible way that the actual colors could be that bright? That's what the Navratri scene reminded me of. It was so ridiculously beautiful I didn't even know what to do. For awhile I just stood there in awe. I mean, it was basically nighttime. The lights were low and it should have been sort of gloomy, considering that half of UT was out partying it up at ACL and that the sky had been threatening to unleash a showers of wrathful rain all day long.
But the gloom was stillborn. The Navratri festival was like the tropical rainforest come to life.
The sari's bright colors made the evening unforgettable!
Was there music? YES. Was there dancing? YES. Did I participate?
A little :)
I could actually hear the music way back by the PCL when I was walking over. It was dance music, no doubt, with a fast, strong beat that gave me a rush of adrenaline as the sound slowly leaked through my ears into my bloodstream. The funny thing is that once I arrived at the field, what I heard was more than the music. It was even more than the laughter and cheerful conversations (of all different languages, mind you) of the festival attendants. I could actually HEAR the dancing. The saris swish swish swished as the circle of dancers glided past me. Their jewelry cling clang clacked with every step they took, adding to the rhythm of the already beat-heavy music. Everything sort of combined into... I don't know. The SOUND of Navratri.
I didn't join in while people were dancing Garba. My brain was working too hard to integrate all of the beautiful things I was seeing. I think if I'd tried to dance I would have either knocked everyone in the circle down with my exuberant movements or cause a massive traffic jam as my mind tried (and failed) to comprehend the steps. (Both would have resulted in everyone falling and my being expelled from the circle for my atrocious dancing attempt). By the time my brain had finished its' sluggish processing of the scene laid out before me a new dance had begun, involving sticks, called Dandiya. At first I thought that trying to do this was an even worse idea for someone as clumsy as me than Garba. I mean, people were holding long, weapon-like sticks (however beautifully they were painted) and trying to hit them with another person's sticks while also moving to the beat. Occasionally they would SPIN while also hitting the other person's stick. Eventually though, Sharad and Thuyen convinced my to try. For those of you who are not aware, let tell you: Sharad is a brave soul. Teaching me the steps to that dance was life-threatening, whether he knew so or not. He lived though, and actually managed to (sort of) teach me the dance!
Oh, my goodness. It smelled like deliciousness on that field. I held off for awhile, soaking in the rest of the festival, but after awhile I just HAD to know what was driving my nose so pleasantly crazy. A short line and $5 later I was happily engaged in a meal on the grass. I honestly have not idea what was in it (which is probably bad considering I have a mild food allergy to nuts) but it tasted like sunshine and rainbows and fireworks. It's scent had not lied: eating it was truly a delectable experience. I love dosa!
YUMMY!
http://static.ifood.tv/files/Dosa.jpg
I know that the festival is a commemoration to the contribution of women to society, and now that I reflect on the festival, I can see how this theme played out. It took both women and men to put on this festival, but once the dancing began, it was the women I noticed, graceful in their long colorful saris and cheerful with their clinking bracelets, and long gold earrings. The way the festival was set up made them the stars, which is as great a commemoration as any.
It's funny, because I see a lot of similarities between this festival and the parties my grandparents and cousins are always throwing in Puerto Rico. EVERYONE dances, from the newborns to the wheelchair toting grandmas. The music is overwhelming and loud and everyone talks with varying degrees of exuberance. The women in PR LOVE to dress up, so any party is a good excuse to do so. But probably the most striking similarity I saw was the friendliness and the acceptance that exhumes from the people who attend these events.
It's funny how culture DOESN'T clash, isn't it?
Monday, October 5, 2009
What do I want?
It's such a loaded question. Look at it, sitting up there all by itself. Just four words, isn't it? Simple enough meaning, when you think about it.
I bet you can't answer it. I bet you read that question and your stomach did a little flip because you have no idea what you want.
Welcome to the club, my friends. Neither do I.
If you've ever hung out with me for more then a few minutes, you'll have noticed: Indecisiveness is my middle name. I went to Kinsolving today and seriously stood there with a plate full of food in my hand for fifteen minutes trying to decide whether I was going to sit in a booth or at a table. I thought the person I was with was going to strangle me and stuff me in the rotating dish thing you put your plate in after eating.
However, tonight I received some very good news that you all may be pleased to hear as well. COVEY KNOWS HOW TO HELP YOU FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU WANT !
I was seriously excited after I finished reading. The answer was staring me right in the face all these years. All I need to do is achieve independence. I need to learn to “act instead of being acted upon” (Covey, 50). I need to stop basing my decisions on other people. Not going to lie: half the reason it took me so long to decide where to sit was because I was trying to figure out where the person I was with wanted to sit.
I'm a bit of a people pleaser: I like to make people happy. But what Covey is trying to get at with the first 3 of his 7 Habits is that you can't base your happiness off of other people. You have to figure out what YOU want, and what makes YOU happy, not how you can give other people what they want so that they can make you happy.
Sadly, the realization that I still have not achieved independence means that I have not progressed past the first 3 of Covey's habits, which is a little embarassing because... I am old. Quite old, in fact. Or at least too old to still be basing my decisions off of other people. That's not to say that I always base my decisions off of others. But it happens enough that when I read Covey's ideas about dependence, I thought sheepishly of myself.
However, there are other areas in Covey's philosophy where I'm a bit farther along. I love his ideas about using both sides of the brain, and I think that it's is something I've always been attune to. Probably too attune to, actually. In elementary school I like... couldn't separate them or something.
I remember there was this one time in... 2nd grade maybe? Anyway, we were working on word problems in math and I came to a problem about a dalmation. I think it was asking me to figure out how many feet he had traveled. I started to count on my fingers, and write tally marks, and then... it struck me. Where was the puppy going? Why was he going there? Was he cold? Was he lonely? He needed company, of course! By the end of math I had concocted this elaborate story for the puppy, complete with a drawing of him with his friends the duck, the cat, and the elephant.
OH...it was 2nd grade. I know because in 2nd grade we had these pins we would move across the board every time we did something wrong and I definitely had to move mine that day. I guess the point of that math assignment was not to integrate both sides of the brain...
The dreaded thumbtack I had to move when I failed to finish my math.
Covey also talks about different types of intelligences. I love his idea that a “whole person” is “four dimensional- [consisting of] body, mind, heart, and spirit”. I personally have different levels of intelligence for each of these. The ones I'm behind on hold me back though. Covey points out that these are al connected, that laboratory studies have shown a relationship “between body (physical), mind (thinking) and heart (feeling)” (Anthology 232) and that “spiritual intelligence is the most central and fundamental of all because is becomes the source of guidance of the other three” (Anthology, 233). Therefore, I'm only as intelligent as dimension of myself I'm least intelligent in, since they all affect each other.
Covey has really interesting ideas about time management as well. When we first read this section at the beginning of the semester, what struck me was that he wasn't necessarily talking about a planner full of dates and appointments and stressful things you needed to finish by a certain time. Covey wanted you to make time for the things that were truly important and he wanted you to use not what the world told you was important but what you, because of your values, placed importance on. He advocates “[managing] our lives effectively- from the center of sounds principles, from a knowledge of our personal mission, [and] with focus on the important as well as the urgent” (Covey, 160). I love this. I get so tired of spending time on things I'm not really that passionate about, and this idea that I also need to make time for the things that matter most, that these are just as important as the things that society says are urgent, is novel.
But in a way, the idea of managing time so that things that are truly important to us have a place in our schedule brings me back to the first question I posed.
What do I want?
I want:
To be happy
For other people to be happy
To stop thinking about doing things and go out and actually do them.
