Slow Down

Dictionary.com gives this definition of compassion, based on the 2010 Random House Dictionary: "a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering." The neo-confucian manifesto in our anthology seems to define compassion differently, from both a Western perspective and an Eastern perspective. It says the "the West can learn from the East a feeling of mildness and compassion" and goes on to say that the wests definition of compassion emphasizes a man's "social services.. and warmth and love for others" but cautions that this definition, so focused on "zeal or love... if often mingled [with] the will to power" (anthology, 253). In contrast, it says that in the East "man is without qualifications considered as an end in himself," promoting "genuine respect" and a love that expresses itself through "etiquitte [which] thereby [becomes] courteous and mild... [transforming love] into compassion" (anthology, 253). The excerpt says that as compassion is "the sympathetic cosonance between he life-spirit of one's own and another's sympathetic being," (anthology 253) the Eastern ideals of compassion are nearer to this definition.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/love/Swanee88/Love/love2.jpg

The anthology further defines Eastern compassion ideals, namely through it's exploration of ahimsa, as defined both in Hindu religion, by Gahndi, in Jainism, and in a more general sense. It hints, much like the afore mentioned manifesto, that ahimsa, and by default many Eastern religions and the Eastern ideals themselves, goes farther then Western ideals and Christianity's ten commandments in its view of compassion and its stipulations for fulfilling it's requirements. For example, it begins by saying that while the commandment of though shalt not kill "is interpreted to mean only don't kill other humans," ahimsa extends this to mean "entire abstinence from causing any pain or harm whatsoever to any living creature" (anthology, 235). It also stresses the impossibility of fully reaching ahmisa, and the amazing, non-celestially oriented occurances that would transpire as a result of this. The bible stipulates the sinful nature of man as well, saying that "man is born spiritually dead" (Ephesians 2:3) and acknowledging the impossibility of living a sinless life, stressing that heaven and eternal life can only be reached through Jesus. However, the goal of ahimsa, which is just as impossible to reach as a sinless life is in christianity because "you have to destroy life in order to live" (anthology, 238) is not really eternal life. It has more to do with life on Earth. The anthology talks, for example, about how in the presence of one who has reached ahimsa, "all enmity ceases" and that "the practice of ahimsa will eventually culminate in the highest peace, bliss and immortality" (anthology, 238). Though ahimsa's practice will lead to immortality, this immortality seems focused more on living here, on Earth, then on making it to some sort of after-life in a different place.

Symbol of ahimsa.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Ahimsa.svg/320px-Ahimsa.svg.png

This focus on the here and now, on the Earth and all of its living beings, is also furthered by Jainism and its concentration on ecology. The anthology mentions the "thousands of pinjrapoles (animals refuges) organized and financed by Jains" in India, as well as "the Bombay Humanitarian League [which] has worked tirelessly to stop animals slaughter at religious functions" (anthology, 244). Even Gandhi, "the most famous proponent of nonviolence in the twentieth century" was "deeply influenced by Jainism," and connected it with ahimsa, "[combining] love and nonviolence" (anthology, 244).

But apart from this, and more important to me, is what I can learn from both the west, the east, their cultures, and, more specifically, their views on compassion. One thing that really stuck out to me was when the anthology said that "motive is the chief factor that underlies everything" (anthology, 238). This is EXACTLY what I was talking about in my last DB when I mentioned the Christmas spirit being the spirit of Jesus, not the dutiful giving of alms, and how compassion is to be driven by PASSION.

Gandhi.

http://sujeetkumaar.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/mahatma-gandhi1.jpg

But perhaps what spoke to me the most, maybe because I've often considered this myself, is the West's "chief concern with speed and efficiency" (anthology, 254). I feel like this focus on progress makes it very difficult to be both "succesful" in the Western sense of being highly efficient, and find your passion, something that you will be motivated to do by love. In High School Musical, Sharpay sings a song called "I Want It All". Well, yeah. We all do. We want to make everyone else happy and yet be happy ourselves as well. But with the Western culture of efficiency, I feel like that's made extremely difficult. I think that, after awhile, after slaving away at school or work, after conforming to every social standard every invented, you have to step back, and disappoint a few people, and do what you really care about. That's when I think great things happen.

And yes, these great things might not all be about compassion. For example, I'm pretty sure I heard something about Bill Gates dropping out of college and pursuing his passion and becoming super-rich. But if Ram Dass is right, and we really are highly compassion creatures, many of us will have passions focused on and motivated by compassion, on helping other living things.

I know that meditation is about alot of different things. Finding oneness, connection, and unity, for one. But for me, meditation is also about slowing down, something in this day and age we never seem to do. And yes, you are supposed to sort of empty your mind. But when you empty your mind of all the material, and the problems that plague you, what are you left with? Yourself. Scary, I guess, being trapped in your mind with only yourself for company. I think that through meditation, through slowing down, you can get to know yourself, and if you find yourself to be compassionate, as I hope you will, you can act on this knowledge to better the world.

Con Passion

I was eight, I remember. We were late, as usual. It's the Puerto Rican way, to be late. Our concept of time is a bit fluid.My uncle married a woman from Colorado who is very, very American. My mom says that when their son was baptized, they had a party at their house, and my grandmother was supposed to cook for them. So my American aunt asks her to get to the house at 2:30, so she could cook for the party which started at 3:00. My grandmother showed up on time - Puerto Rican style. By the time she got there, at around 3:30, all of the people my aunt had invited had already arrived. You know in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when Ian Miller's family shows up at the Porticullis house with a bundt cake? The culture shock for my aunt, when she married into the Acosta family, was probably about the same.

So my family was late, even though it was

midnight mass on

Christmas Eve and we'd had hours of nothingness and relaxation before arriving to slip on our Christmas best. And everybody was sort of pissed off at each other, too, because we'd lived in Texas long enough to understand that being late to church is just a little bit unacceptable. It was smashing the Puerto Rican right out of us, this place was.

My dad was driving. It's his job to drive when we're late, because he isn't afraid to speed and honk at

people who get in his way. It's my mom's job to sit next to him and backseat drive and nag about how he's being dangerous. My little sister and I help her out, nowadays, now that we both know how to drive and actually understand how ridiculous his stressed out chauffeuring really is. But back then, we just sat in the back and occasionally yelped when a sharp turn was made or we had a near miss with another car, accents to the shrill exclamations my mother would make, often followed by an angry "CAN YOU GUYS JUST LET ME DRIVE" from the only male in the family. Poor guy. As if making him watch Legally Blonde 15 times wasn't enough, we had to further insult him by criticizing his driving. Sometimes I wonder how he survived...

We walked into the church frazzled, cold, and, courtesy of some almost-accidents in the parking lot, full of adrenaline. There were no seats left, so we stood in the back, alternately warm and cold with the opening and closing door behind us as the few people later than us straggled in. But I remember, for some reason, SO CLEARLY what it felt like to walk into church that Christmas. The woosh of sucked in air as we stepped into the warm doorway, and the soft, glowing light, that seemd to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, and the beauty of the altar, wreathed in light, and the way that at first, all I could hear was a soft humming, and the way that humming turned into strong, passionate voices of ordinary people, together a little after midnight on Christmas Eve, celebrating the birth of Mary's "firstborn son... wrapped... in swaddling clothes... [lying]... in a manger" (anthology, 27).

I think that I remember this Christmas most clearly of all because it was the first Christmas that I listened, REALLY listened, to the story. I knew the story, of course. Years of Sunday School had seen to that. Whenever we would go see the nativity scene acted out, I vaguely recall looking at whatever baby was playing Jesus and being

1. scared that "Mary", usually a 12 year old, quivery voiced girl, was going to drop him, and

2. surprised at the amount of responsibility they were putting on such a little boy at such a young age. I mean, this kid probably didn't even know it, but he was being asked to act as Jesus. Not just any baby boy. JESUS! The guy who, in Luke, touched a dead man who promptly "sat up and began to speak" (anthology, 130). The guy who himself proclaimed he "is the light of the world" (John 8:12), who God gave to us so that "everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16). Kind of alot of pressure, right?

So the story was familiar. But this Christmas, huddled next to my sister. squashed between her and the cold, stone wall of the church, peering through my curtain of hair at the altar and the crucifix above it, the story seemed different. It was beautiful. It was a miracle! When the petite, snowy-haired woman reading that night said "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men" (anthology, 128), I swear my heart hurt, and my little eight year old hands tingled, and I wanted...

I wanted to fix the world.

~*~~*~~*~~*~

I feel like nowadays, especially the US, everything is very fast paced. Think about my family's drive up to the church. Today, we're so concerned about the proper, about the on-time, about the social norms. No one has to time to think. And at Christmas, when the Christmas spirit is supposed to fill you so that compassion pours out of you, I see people giving more out of duty than out of compassion, absentmindedly dumping coins into collection buckets so that they can get on their way already.

But Christmas comes from Christianity, right? It's Jesus' birthday. So the Christmas spirit really refers to the spirit of Jesus, which the bible hints is the spirit of love, the spirit of compassion, the spirit of charity. NOT the spirit of duty.

The spirit of Christmas is the spirit of Jesus.

The bible defines charity very strictly. In recent times, we've obviously widened the definition of charity. If I go to dictionary.com and look it up, it's defined as "generous actions to aid the poor, ill, or helpless." That's not what Christianity says it is. It actually says that "though I bestow all my good to feed the poor... and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing" (anthology, 133). The bible, with this line, basically rebukes outright the modern concept of charity. It goes on to define charity, mostly by what is ISN'T.

So once I take all of this into account, what am I left with?

I think that charity is compassion. It's a bit confusing, to define one by the other, but here's how I see it:

Lets take a do a fake analysis for the word compassion. In spanish, con can mean with. So compassion, in spanish, would mean something like "with passion." Therefore, in my book, and hopefully I'm hoping in Christianity's book too, charity means something like "COMPASSIONATE, generous actions to aid the poor, ill, or helpless."

I'm a little bit obsessed with being passionate about what you're involved with, almost to an unhealthy point. It was the subject of all of my college essays, is the reason I still volunteer with the kids at El Buen Samaritano, and is probably one of the main reasons I got a C in geometry, as studying for something I didn't care about when I could be reading my history book instead. which I LOVED, seemed almost unbearable. You'll hear me say it sometimes, blundtly.

"I really just don't care that much."

This doesn't mean I'm not thankful that society has moved forward to the point that charity, if not compassion, is something that's expected rather than simply encouraged. I know that this has been a huge help to many. But it feels fake. It's not christian charity. It's not compassion. It's just societal norms. It's not me, eight years old, late for Jesus' birthday party and wanting to save the world. It's more my family, driving like maniacs to midnight mass on Christmas Eve, afraid we'll offend someone with our Puerto Rican concept of time.

Images (in order)

http://www.toxel.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/uclocks8.jpg

http://www.sspx.org/Chapels_Pages/chapel_pages_images/kansas_city_xmas_midnight_mass_550x372.jpg

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/dpa0269l.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/B/Backseat_drivers.asp&usg=__iOoFtOrbuS3SDmRpUixhhNj0F78=&h=400&w=303&sz=38&hl=en&start=1&sig2=TjH3YVicMQJOoL1dTwofTg&itbs=1&tbnid=mwhiOHXZ32FSiM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=94&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbackseat%2Bdriving%26hl%3Den%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=CW-AS8qqMYaVtgfhpLH4BA

http://www.healthtalktoday.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/christmas-nativity-scene.jpg

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=3&q=donation+buckets+at+christmas&btnG=Search+images

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1SQojUtSqQyvGY5QHNV_u1-6orZ6LzXqsnwlfoPHFcE3mU4_qsSUlQm3F1gzibGcI1HQq6mg3FhPp9sU47Tt61MgScSl-71zIx5DYd5UqircnLj7rddUQNwSq0sVPfdxC9ffLFhsG0_E/s400/jesus.jpg

Give the Guy some Credit

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/do_history/decisions/images/johnson.jpg

I remember the unit we did on Johnson in US history. The final words on him were something like "yeah, he did some great stuff but Vietnam was the worst thing ever the end". I feel like people overlook him all of the time because his compassionate successes as a President were overshadowed by his failure in Vietnam.

Look at this guy. His presidency stared off with an assassination. An ASSASSINATION, ok? The country was sitting there, heartbroken and probably ridiculously uncertain about their future, and Johnson knows that everybody is expecting him to fix it. Meanwhile, he himself is shaken not only by Kennedy's death but also by the fact that he was definitely one of the targets in Dallas. One of the exhibits at LBJ showed this beautifully written letter from Jackie Kennedy to Johnson, where she talks about how he walked behind the casket even though his advisors told him it was dangerous, and how much this sign of respect meant to her family. THAT is compassion.

And what did he do with this tradgedy that had befallen the Presidency? He reassured. He comforted. And he UTILIZED. When I was studying US history, that for me was the most impressive thing about him: the way he channelled the grief that followed Kennedy's assassination to better society.

And what EXACTLY did he accomplish? What did he do?

A lot. His War on Poverty forced people to look past the facade of decadence and organization that America was emitting and realize that 1/5 of US citizens were in want. Not only that, but he helped them not just with money but with job training, health care, and expanded educational opportunities, giving them the tools they needed to get out of poverty and STAY OUT. Staying out of poverty was a stretch goal, but by giving people the tools necessary to do so, he made it a reality. For me, however, the most impressive of this legislation was the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because it was these two pieces of legislation that he seriously PUSHED through congress after Kennedy's assassination, saying that it was, in essence, Kennedy's dying wish. Considering the racism and smoldering tempers that existed in America on this subject, I think this was definitely a stretch goal, and he treated this goal bravely, compassionately, and made it a reality in a genius way. An obvious comparison for these two acts is with Nelson Mandela, who helped bring SOuth Africa back together after the Apartheid.

But more important then what he did, in my book, is what he was TRYING to do. Look at his goals. Look at the name he gave them. GREAT SOCIETY.

In US history, the always start of the books talking about WHY this country was founded. As John Winthrop so eloquently put it, this place we're living was meant to be a "City upon a hill," a place of the utmost grace and goodness, of the strictest moral integrity. I feel like Johnson, with his efforts to put America back on track, to make us a Great Society, compassionate towards all of our citizens, really embodies this idea.

As for Vietnam... I feel like LBJ was pressured from all angles concerning this. He had good intentions; In fact, this whole country had good intentions. We wanted to spread democracy, to be that "city upon a hill" for the Vietnamese people. But this was one stretch goal that Johnson just did not have the tools to accomplish. I remember my history teacher saying that this was the first televised war, the first war where the Amercacn people really saw the Hell that war is and were constantly aware of our progress at the front. There were so many protests... I feel like maybe Johnson, in this arena, was partially beat out by the compassion of the American people towards those in Vietnam as they realized what a terrible thing war really is.

People wanted peace during Vietnam.

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/603B10/images/classLBJpeacecloseup.jpg

All in all, I really feel like Johnson, despite his failed foreign exploits, was a successful, compassionate, amazing president.

Sacred

I had never looked at the bible that closely, I guess. I don't know. It's funny, because this reading started off with an excerpt that stressed how there is an "emphasis in Judiasm and Christianity on the transcendence of God above nature and the domion of humans over nature" (anthology, 28). I had never seen nature like that. And I never thought that Christianity saw nature like that, either. I always thought that God created nature, and that everything that God had created was sacred. That's why you pray before you eat; you're eating something sacred, and your thankful for its existence and the sacrifice of something so sacred to help keep you alive.

But I can see, after reading the excerpt from Genesis, how it can the bible can be interpreted that way, with humans being the center of everything. It does explicitly say that "ecery moving thing that liveth shall be meat [for humans]," that everything is "handed over to [us]" (117B). However, the whole bible sort of reinforces the little-ness of humans; the way that we have so little control over what happens to us, the way that we have so little understanding of God and everything he created. So I really think that the bible talks a lot more about how humans are subordinate then the way everything on this Earth exists to serve them.

I don't really know what to say about this reading because I feel like what a lot of the reading was implying was this notion that many religions view nature as something just there to serve, which is SO FAR from the way I've always seen it. I feel like there is a way that we can use nature without being callous about it, without viewing it as something that is there just for us. Stupid Avatar reference: When Jakesully is stuck out alone on Pandora at night in his Avatar body, and Zoe Saldana's character has to protect him from those weird hunting dogs, she get mad at him for thanking her. She says that their death was sad; She appreciates the sanctity of that life. And when native americans used to kill animals. They would use EVERY INCH of what they killed. Nothing was wasted:it's value, both in death and in life, was appreciated.

I don't want the Earth to live in "never ceasing fear" (anthology, 123). I feel like people forget, sometimes, how much we need nature, how much we depend on it. We're always stuck in boxes. Like right now, i'm sitting in a white-walled box (my dorm). The temperature outside is frigid, but in here I'm toasty warm, thanks to the heater. I'm drinking water out of a plastic bottle, and unless I really think about it, I forget that it wasn't always in that bottle, that once upon a time it was in a lake, or a stream, that once upon a time it was the home of a fish. I'm flipping the pages of my anthology, and I forget how a tree sacrificed it's life to give me that paper. I much on pinneapple and forget how, just like me, it was nurtured and grown.

Where my water comes from..

http://www.tiskita-lodge.co.cr/activities/images/stream_pools.jpg

Where my paper comes from.

http://7art-screensavers.com/screens/glorious-trees/glorious-tree-01.jpg

In the Big Friendly Giant, by Roald Dahl, the giant talks about how because of his large ears, "if [he twists] the stem of a flower till it breaks, then [he can hear the plant] screaming" (Dahl, 45). I think it's very important to view all of nature like that, as LIFE, as something sacred, as something to be thankful for.

Picked flower (probably screamed).

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/6156282/2/istockphoto_6156282-picked-flower.jpg

The BFG.

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/BFG.jpg

All the Same

What do I think about this? I thought to myself as I softly closed Life of Pi. (You can think softly, you know. Softly.)

What does this mean? I contemplated slowly, almost lazily but more carefully, rolling the thoughts around in my head like soft, sticky dough through my hands, smoothing out the edges of my thoughts.

BAM

I smashed the dough.

http://www.woodstone-corp.com/images/food/naples/nap_dough_finished_lg.jpg

I don't know what I think. I feel like something very important just happened and I missed it, sort of, the importance of it. What I feel is...

Anger. I feel angry at Mr. Chiba and Mr. Okamoto because they missed it, somehow. Like me, but worse. I missed it because it's behind a veil, and hopefully, soon, by the end of tonight or by the end of this week, I'll get it. (I will get it, won't I?). They missed it because they pushed it away, and as Pi patiently told them his story, as the truth of the story seeped through the cracks of reality, they worried about cookies and lunch and long drives.

OK. What am I trying to say here? Enough with the confusing cryptic crap. My writing is starting to sound ridiculous. Say what you mean, mean what you say (I heard that somewhere, once.)

This is what I say:

I say that it doesn't matter whether Richard Parker was there. I say it doesn't matter whether it was a hyena or a "mean and muscular" (389) cook, a young sailor who "broke his leg jumping from the ship" (382) or a zebra, a mother or Orange Juice. It doesn't matter.

This is what I mean:

I mean that it doesn't matter because IT'S ALL THE SAME. Look. LOOK. This is what I mean. I mean that, as Pi told the two idiots who interviewed him, "in both stories the ship sinks, [his] entire family dies, and [he] suffers." Both stories are horrible. In both cases, Pi learns about love, and sacrifice, and danger. In both cases, Pi ends up an orphan. I'm looking here for the fundamental difference between the stories, aren't I?

Lets try to make what I say and what I mean false. The stories are not the same. OK. They're different. How are they different?

Well. One is about animals, right? Genius, Lauren. Please continue. We're rivetted, really we are.

Why would one story being about animals matter? We talked in class about how survival, and the will to survive, is overwhelming. We talked about hearts beating after all hope has been lost, about men cutting off their arms or drinking water from elephant dung. We talked about how when you're fighting for survival, there's no telling what you would do. And what I noticed in Life of Pi is that as things got worse, Pi resembled an animal, something wild and untamed, more and more. "Nature '[staged] a comeback'" (anthology, 26)

What makes us human? We talked about empathy, right? But I feel like we have all these social conventions and human things that ensure that empathy will be at its utmost level of possibleness. Like we eat at a table, and we buy food in perfectly packaged containers from the super market. We go swimming but only when there are lifeguards present. We turn on the air conditioning in the summer. Empathy is so easy when you're comfortable and safe and unafraid.

supermarkets vs...

http://en.showchina.org/Features/30years/200812/W020081216486927613535.jpg

hunting for survival

http://papercastlepress.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/african_lion_hunting1.jpg

Animals don't always have that. Or they haven't figure it out yet, havent' been able to reach the same level of safeness as us. So it's easier for them, I think, to forget their empathy, which I am certain they posses. Look what happened when Pi (and if you're believing the second story, the french cook as well) has to fight for survival. In the animals story he kills fish. He sucks turtles dry of blood. In the second he kills a man, a man who first killed both a woman and a man.

All of this, all this killing, was about survival, something that animals grapple with daily and humans barely think about except when put in situations where survival is at risk.

So yes. The stories are different. But they are also THE SAME. I think that man, when fighting for survival, becomes animal. So whether you believe the first story or the second, you have to know that in both stories, Pi was stranded with a bunch of animals, including himself.

And as for this being a story that makes you believe in God... I don't know. I think that more in making me believe in God, it made me see the connection between humans and everything else. So if God is about unity, then yes. It made me believe.

I blame the fairy tales.

You would too, if you were me. I mean, it's SO OBVIOUSLY their fault. I even know which fairy tale (or fairy tale strain) to blame: Type 156, which, according to Aarne and Thompson, classic fairy tale classifiers of ages past, are "Tales...in which a man pulls a thorn from a lion's paw, thus gaining the beast's eternal gratitude and loyalty." (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html)

Basically, as I was reading Life of Pi I, proabably in a pathetic attempt to alleviate the stress that the suspense of Pi being thrown from a ship and landing in a boat with a bunch of carnivorous wild things in it had caused me, tried to turn Life of Pi into a fairy tale of type 156, where the tiger was SO GRATEFUL to the potentially edible child that he let him live and became more of a fluffy kitten then a hungry predator. It wasn't so farfetched, was it? I mean... I'm thinking that this book is fiction. So the author could do whatever the heck he wanted with this Indian kid. And I, personally, am totally into those kinds of stories where suspense is short-lived and happy endings are right around the corner. And Pi DID save Richard Parker from almost certain death by throwing him that life jacket, right? That's sort of like pulling a thorn out of a lions paw. And yes, Pi did so without realizing that this would almost surely make him "the next goat" (Martel, 124), and once he realized this he wasn't quite so keen to be with the tiger, but he helped regardless. It still counts. Anyhow, intentions don't seem to be very important in fairy tales... in "The Dog and the Corpse, " a Russian tale, a faithful dog holds off a corpse that tries to attack it's owner, but the owner, instead of staying to help, runs home, leaving the dog by itself with the corpse. The dog eventually comes home but is incredibly hostile to the owner, "disgusted at [him] for not helping" (Voices from the Past, pg 39). Then the owner kills the dog. See what I mean? The dog protected the owner with good intentions and ends up dead. RIDICULOUS. Therefore Pi not really having his heart in saving Richard Parker all the way through to the end shouldn't matter at all.

In "The Dog and the Corpse," the dog protected his owner from the corpse even though he was scared.

http://images8.cafepress.com/product/223010298v1_225x225_Front.jpg

And never mind about how hungry I knew the tiger was going to be. In "Adrocles and the Lion", the lion stays with Androcles for like 7 days without food. Richard Parker, in my mind, was no different.

Androcles pulling the thorn out.

http://jayaandtoshi.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/1915_3.jpg

Was I disappointed with how events actually turned out? Not really. Except for when Orange Juice, her "defence [lacking] precision and coherence" (martel, 164) was eaten by the hyena. That was almost unbearable. What I'm referring to, I guess, was the relationship that developed between Pi and the Tiger. It didn't disappoint. That's saying a lot, let me tell you. You know me: impossible happy endings are my calling. But this WAS an impossible ending, in a it's own way. I mean... it wasn't as fantastical as the Richard Parker becoming Pi's BFF's and acting as best man at his wedding, or whatever. But when I think about it... Martel found a way for both Pi and Richard Parker to survive together, side by side, in a very realistic (if fantastical) way. You know when someone tells you a scary story, and the plot itself isn't anything incredible but later, you can't get over the fact that, even if it was just a story, it COULD have really happened? That's what reading this book is like for me. I know it's fake. But over and over again, I find myself getting caught up in the detail in which Martel describes the various ways in which Pi works to stay alive.

The fairy tale thoughts didn't cme out of nowhere. You may have noticed I have branched out from the Disney strain of princess tales to a wider array of European folk tales. This thanks to a tremendous class I'm taking this semester called (you guessed it) European Folk Tales. Now, in accordance with this sort of... motif, shall I say? I'm going to look for the lesson Martel has to teach us, or at least the lesson I'm getting out of this story thus far. Obviously there's more then one, as there are in fairy tales. Even Perraults version fo Cinderella has two, explicitly named at the end:

Moral: Beauty in a woman is a rare treasure that will always be admired. Graciousness, however, is priceless and of even greater value. This is what Cinderella's godmother gave to her when she taught her to behave like a queen. Young women, in the winning of a heart, graciousness is more important than a beautiful hairdo. It is a true gift of the fairies. Without it nothing is possible; with it, one can do anything.

Another moral: Without doubt it is a great advantage to have intelligence, courage, good breeding, and common sense. These, and similar talents come only from heaven, and it is good to have them. However, even these may fail to bring you success, without the blessing of a godfather or a godmother.

The lesson I'm getting so far from Life of Pi has a lot to do with faith. Not just religious faith, but faith in tomorrow. And I'm not talking Annie, forever optimism, "The sun will come out tomorrow"."Be daunted, but do not be defeated" (Martel, 211) said the manual. Pi himself said he needed to "stop hoping so much that a shop would rescue him" (212), that his "suffering did not fit anywhere" (223). Yes, he was daunted. He had suffering. He was hungry and thirsty sometimes, he had burns from the sea, his family was probably dead, and so on. But he also had this will to survive, this glimmer that if he lived, something better was waiting. Not ridiculous optimism. Faith. Faith in life.

Wonder

We had a whole section at the beginning of this reading about mystery. Now, when I read in the schedule that one of the excerpts was actually called The Mystery, I couldn't help but going back to to the myriad of sleuth-related novels I had read over the years: Harriet the Spy, Sherlock Holmes, even (sadly) the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen detective series. I was thinking of the question-answer, crime-victim-witness-criminal, cops-and-robbers kind of mystery. So I was a little surprised by what the first reading selection actually consisted of.

Exhibit A of the kind of mystery book I thought of.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/series/adventures-of-mary-kate-and-ashley/case-of-dog-show-mystery.htm

"Nobody..." said the child "[knows] what a single thing is." (19)

Smart kid. And as I read deeper, as I slowly fell into "loving the mystery,"(19) and in the next excerpt, as I left behind everything and looked for "illumination which [left me] breatheless"(20), I realized that the mystery referred to in our anthology was the mystery of life: the wonder that IS life.

Anyhow, the poems I've decided to analyze are the ones I felt fit in best with this theme of the wonder and mystery life is full of, namely "The Lamb" by William Blake and "Hurrahing in Harvest" by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

I liked "The Lamb" because it was all about the miracle that is the mundane. At least, that's how I saw it. I know Blake best for his poem "The Tiger". In fact, I don't think I'd ever heard anything else by him... which is probably mostly due to my avoidance of poetry at all cost. I'm a story girl. I think poems have always scare me with how slow and focused they can be. Anyhow, Blake begins "The Lamb" with a question: "Little lamb, who made thee?" (140). The question is sort of an opening to a more... I don't know. Conventional mystery? More like the mysteries of sleuths then the mystery of wonder. But as the poem continues, Blake crafts a sense of wonder at the existence of the lamb by continuing the question in a list of all the different features that the lamb and it's environment possesses. First he generally mentions "life", "feed" and "the stream" (140). Then Blake moves on the characteristics of the lamb itself: "softest clothing, woolly, bright" and the lambs "tender voice" (referring to the lulling baa-ing sounds lambs are so well known for) both make an appearance in the poem (140). At the end of the first stanza, Blake repeats the first question.

http://aznliu.googlepages.com/lamb2.jpg

Throughout the first stanza, Blake is not only creating a sense of wonder at that which is the lamb, he is also building suspense. This is accomplished through repeated questioning, as well as through the number of syllables in each line, which for the first and last two is six and for the middle is seven. The increase and then decrease in syllables (and therefore how hard the mouth has to work to pronounce the lines) gives the reader hope at the end of the stanza (since less work is necessary to pronounce the words) that an answer is approaching. In addition, by rhyming lines in sets of (AA,BB,CC, etc.), Blake is helping the poem flow, which contrasts nicely with the suspense he builds in the first stanza: though the poem is suspenseful, it moves quickly towards, hopefully, and answer.

In the second part of the poem, Blake continues building suspense by beginning the section saying twice "little lamb, I'll tell thee"(140) without answering the question. In fact, Blake never answers the question, leaving the reader to figure the answer out for himself with the clues he leaves in this stanza: "He calls Himself a lamb. He is meek...He is mild,"(140) and so on. He ends in what I consider to be a sort of teasing and yet jubilant way, wishing for the Lamb blessings from God. I consider it to be teasing because the answer to the question first posed is God, but the exclamation points used as punctuation for this repeated line gives the reader a sense of the happiness Blake is attempting to convey with these lines.

Hopkins' "Hurrahing in Harvest" is all about the wonder of life. It talks begins by describing nature, speaking of "the barbarous beauty" of summer and the lovely way the wind "walks"(160). Calling summer barbarous gives you a sense of how untamed Hopkins sees his environment as, and yet this contrasts with the way he describes the wind, which simply "walks" in a calm manner, bringing to mind the soft breezes that start up as "summer ends" (160) and fall approaches. After describing the beauty and wonder he beholds when he looks at nature, Hopkins goes back to the creator of this all, talking of how he "glean our savior" (160) in nature itself. The "azurous hills" are his shoulder, and this would be clearer to all but the beholder is "wanting," blind to the wonder which reflects its creator". I really responded to the first few lines of the last stanza because of how Hopkins manages to really convey his wonder at Earth. The word "azurous" is sort of long, drawn out, tumbling off your tongue in a distinctly foreign but familiar way because of the combination of "z" with a myriad of rounded vowels. Hopkins then breaks up the second line of this stanza, as though he couldn't help but exclaim that not only is this "majestic" but also "very-violet-sweet!"(70).

God's shoulders.

http://www.destination360.com/north-america/us/wyoming/images/s/wyoming-rocky-mountains.jpg

Besides having a sense of wonder and mystery in common, both of these poems also attribute this wonder and mystery to God. To generalize these poems in an effort to make them more universal, I'd say both poets are trying to convey to their audiences how incredible it is that once upon a time, this, referring to nature, had to be created, had to be thought up. They're so... impressed, I guess you'd say, or better yet, in awe, at what they are able to look out their windows and see.

I feel that, sometimes. The other day, I was in friends dorm room and she gave me and apple to eat, because I was basically dying from meal after meal of my only fruit source being those awful honeydew and cantaloupe chunks they have at Kinsolving. The apple, needless to say, was DELICIOUS, but as I was devouring it, feeling a bit like Snow White, I had this sort of moment where I realized that no human had made this apple. No one took out a cook book, or turned on their oven, or even added water to the mix. The apple had come purely from nature.

Apples come from trees!

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j280/gardenplansireland/apple-tree-ireland-image-picture-ph.jpg

I don't know. I realize that it was just an apple. It was just being an apple, much like Miguel was "just being a tiger" when the "gruesome and unhappy incident" (155) that was Rucardo Tovar's death occured. But think about the power that "just being a tiger" gave Miguel: he killed. All on his own, just using the tools nature had endowed him with.

Yeah, it was just an apple. But it was so PURELY an apple, and it was able, just be being an apple, to feed me.

For me, that was an epiphany.

A Host of Compassionate Angels[1]

"The Fall of the Rebel Angels," a painting by Pieter Bruegel inspired by the same poem which inspired the title to this essay.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Fall_of_the_Rebel_Angels.JPG

I’m a compassionate person, right? I hope I am, anyway. I recycle. I gave a dollar to that homeless guy on 6^th street. Granted, it was partially because he was drumming on an upside down plastic tub and it reminded me of Angel from the musical Rent, but still. A dollar is a dollar. Just yesterday, I spent two hours on Skype with my sister, her frustration with fractions awakening in me “a desire to help” (Dass, 56). In addition, when I realized that, due to a sad lack of math skills, helping, in the literal, let-me-teach-you-about-fractions sense, was out of the question, I did a superb job of offering “[my] own empathy, [my] own experience, [and my] own understanding of how if feels” to be utterly baffled by mathematics.

In Jonathan Larson's musical "Rent," Angel is a cross-dressing street-drummer whom the street-drummer on 6th street reminded me of.

http://dctheatrescene.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/rentfeature.jpg

So if I am SO compassionate, why is it that I sat here for two hours unable to think of a suitable story to illustrate the role compassion has played in my life? Really, it was the saddest thing ever. And quite a blow to my self esteem. The way I saw it, my sad shortage of ideas meant one of two things:

1. The well of creativity that inhabits my mind had finally run dry, and I would soon be forced to search for inspiration outside of myself, possibly through a muse. I wasn’t enthusiastic about my chances of finding a muse either. The introduction to Alice in Wonderland makes it sound as though Carroll found his muse, Alice Liddell, quite easily. Now, maybe they don’t make ‘em like they used to back in 1862, but I myself haven’t seen a wealth of girls running around who are “loving as [dogs]… gentle as [fawns]… and courteous to all” (Carroll, 12).

Alice Liddell, Carroll's inspiration for Alice in Wonderland.

http://www.sodabob.com/Photos/Photographers/Carroll/Alice_Liddell_Age7.jpg

2. I was just one of those sad, unnatural people who think they possess an average degree of compassion (as my first paragraph implies) but is actually just an android, like Phil Resch, sure that they’re human but actually just robots “imitating… a superior life-form” (Dick, 134).

Obviously neither of these ideas was remarkably appealing to me, so I spent a good deal of those two hours unhappily writing page after page of angry complaints against writers block. Anyhow, towards the end of my two hours of agony, miracles of compassion began to occur. A host of compassionate angels invaded the Andrews lobby, offering me comfort, distraction, and (best of all) inspiration.

Angel number 1 was Waytao. He was strolling through the Andrews Dormitory lobby, all short and smiley and Chinese, obviously headed for the sweet-smelling laundry room in the basement, when he spotted me looking distressed, curled up in a painful ball on one of the sturdy black leather couches that line the Andrews lobby like small furniture armies. He dropped his laundry basket with a loud thud and threw himself onto the couch- soldier across from me.

“What”, he asked “Are you doing?”

Well. In seventh grade, my mother bought me a book called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens by Richard Carlson. Like most of the other self-help books she threw at me over the years, I didn’t read it. However, to humor her, I look briefly at the first chapter, which advised me “not to throw up on [my] friends,” (Carlson, 1) referring to that lovely form of extraneous information known as emotional vomit.

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sweat-Small-Stuff-Teens/dp/0786885971

So, I debated whether or not to burden Waytao with my emotional vomit. I guess you could say I attempted to be compassionate by keeping my troubles to myself. But, like the word vomit of Mean Girls, there was no holding it in.

“OH. MY. GOD. WAYTAO. I DO NOT EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO,” I began (not so calmly). Word vomit, emotional vomit, you name it and Waytao, my first compassionate angel, experienced it in a breaking tidal wave formed of wasted time and imminent frustration. And, like the compassionate person that he is, he listened to it all.

“Lauren. That is very sad.” He sat there for a bit, thinking, as I typed a few more irate paragraphs about the perils of writers block.

Suddenly his face lit up. “AHA!” he exclaimed. “I know EXACTLY what you can write about.”

“What?!?!” I inquired desperately, dying to put something on paper that I wouldn’t immediately have to delete.

“You can write about my 21^st birthday,” he said triumphantly.

He then proceeded to tell me a long, drawn out, detailed story of the events that had occurred on this momentous night. I relaxed. I laughed. And then, finally, when the story was over, I asked him what part of that story illustrated compassion.

Waytao looked at me in a perplexed manner. “Oh, yeah!” he said. “At the end of the night, one of my friends carried me all the way back to my dorm. If that’s not compassion, I don’t know what is.” And with that closing remark, he wished my luck and left to start what he had originally intended to do: wash clothes.

Now, obviously there was no way I was using his tale of drunkeness to illustrate compassion, though writing the story from his perspective would have been… interesting? In any case, the point was that Waytao had been compassionate enough to my plight that he sat with me for a full twenty minutes, a span of time in which he might have been able to an plethora of laundry, just to cheer me up. Compassionate? I think so.

Not two minutes after Waytao had gone did Angels number two and three appear, in the form of Philip and Reuben. When they asked what I was doing, I gave them a weak smile and just said “Homework”. They took in the scene: Me, curled up on a soldier-couch, surrounded by books, nursing a bag of pretzels, my computer sitting stupidly on my lap with a single paragraph adorning the screen, written in all caps so that it couldn’t possibly be mistaken as progress of any kind.

“You need a break,” they said. Then, the stole my computer and looked up some ridiculous Korean pop song, called up a friend (angel number 4), and performed for me a choreographed dance, explaining to me that they were starting a boy band.

The song they performed to.

So… that was an exciting interruption. And by the time they left, returning my computer with strict instructions to finish my work, I was feeling much better, their compassion for my stress and subsequent attempt to alleviate it cheering me greatly. Of course, I still hadn’t even started my essay, but I wasn’t quite as worried anymore. I could always become a groupie for their boy band if this whole college thing didn’t work out, right?

I nestled into my chair, idly tapping at the keys, alternately reading stories on mylifeisaverage.com and listening to “Tik Tok” by Kesha in an attempt to find my inner P. Diddy, since I still seemed unable to muster up creativity of my own and was starting to worry that I’d have to… errr… borrow (coughstealcough) from someone, P. Diddy appearing to me in my semi-wretched state a good choice.

The Kesha song I was listening to.

Enter my last 4 angels: Tara, Harold, Samyu, and Sunayna. These lovely creatures comforted me greatly with their outstanding empathy, each of them lamenting in turn that I was unable to fully enjoy my evening because my unfinished essay, none of them commenting on the fact that I obviously should have started on it last week, and all of them offering me encouragement.

“You can do it!” said Tara.

“We believe in you!” agreed Harold.
“You are my sunshine!” reminded Samyu

“ We love you!” finished Sunayna.

After a bit they too left to enjoy what was left of their Sunday nights. But the block was broken. I remembered incident after incident where I had shown compassion towards another being. Some of these incidents are cited in my first paragraph. But as I prepared to launch into a story of my awesome, human capability to be compassionate, my insane “[impulse] to care” (Dass, 11), I thought about the events of the night, about the compassion that my friends had shown me, about the comfort that they had offered, despite the fact that they all probably had better things to do with their time.

I wrote about them instead (obviously). They inspired me. No need for P. Diddy, or Alice, or whatever other muse I had considered over the last couple of hours. Nope, all I needed was some good old-fashioned compassion and the best friends anyone could ever ask for.

So how am I going to spread the compassion? Well. Look at what my friends accomplished with just twenty minutes each. They managed to cheer me up AND inspire an entire paper. What if I spent twenty minutes every day devoted to acts of compassion? What if we ALL spent twenty minutes every day devoted to acts of compassion? Dass says that we often “find ourselves wondering if [people could be compassionate]… more or even most of the time”. I know I think about it a lot… compassion, that often wasted talent that all humans posses. So my plan of action in the compassion sphere, inspired by one crazy night of stress and angels, is to start out conscientiously devoting twenty minutes a day to acts of compassion, slowly incorporating these acts into my life so that after awhile, my “mind [will stop] wrestling with the impulses of [my] heart” and compassion will not only be my natural instinct but my actual response to situations of need. Hopefully, I can lead by example. Hopefully, people will pay it forward. Hopefully, I can inspire a few more angels.

With any luck, my action plan can help me learn to always listen to and follow my heart as opposed to my head, and become more compassionate, as well as inspire others to do the same.

http://ny-image3.etsy.com/il_430xN.27498083.jpg

Word count without quotes: 1551

Word count with quotes: 1623

---

[1] Title inspired by John Milston’s “Paradise Lost”.