So now...the exciting part. Where do I go from here? What do all these changes mean to me, and how will they affect me?
Well, my desire to travel has opened up new avenues for me, but because I'm still a little cautious about, in my fervor for adventure, getting in over my head, I'm starting small. I've wanted to visit Asia for years now, and now that I've been to England, which I thought was my first love, I feel like Asia is next. I found a company that works with college students, recent graduates, and other like-minded people to install them as English teachers in China and Mongolia for a one- to two-year periods. They also happen to do a summer camp program in the same countries for a shorter amount of time. I checked my summer school schedule and my other engagements for next summer, and I found out that it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to take part in that sort of experience. So...that's on my short-term dream list.
As I've been through the teachers' education program at Calvin, I've learned that I, like many upper-middle class white kids from the suburbs, struggle with stereotypes and prejudices, and I've seen how important it will be for me to break those down if I want to be an effective teacher. So part of my goal in traveling to China is to immerse myself in another culture, to feel stereotyped, to need to defer to other people and lose myself in the attempt to assimilate. I had a taste of that in England, and it was eye opening. I don't think it's healthy to do that, to try to dis-identify with the parts of your life that made you who you are, but I do think it's what many classrooms ask students to do (even students of the racial and ethnic majorities) and I want to better understand the challenges in resisting that so that I can aid my students later on in life.
But I don't want to stop with China. I want to start there because I'm fascinated by Eastern philosophy and cultures, so the actual transitions and logistics of living there may be more enjoyable for me. But I want to then move to places I'm both less comfortable and less experienced. There are other international teaching opportunities in Central America and Africa, and I would love the opportunity to get involved there. I haven't found any available in the Middle East, but there may be other short-term options that I can look into.
Realistically, the timing is not great. I don't actually have all the time in the world; I have a life in the US I'm excited about living, people I don't want to leave behind for so long, and a teaching certificate that will probably not get shinier the longer I'm away from the US school system. So I'm definitely still working out the kinks in my plan. But these are the things I'm excited about.
On a similar note, I don't believe that I can teach to American children without knowing more American children than I already do. I want to get involved in US cultures and societies vastly different from the ones I grew up learning. My school has what they call "living-learning residences" on and off campus. In my freshman and sophomore years, I lived on the Honors floor, which was one of those communities. There are other dorm floors like my old one--the creation care floor which is involved in environmentalism and the grass roots floor which is involved in social justice and racial and ethnic equality--and there are off-campus houses called Project Neighborhood houses, which are rooted in the community around Grand Rapids, especially the urban communities of downtown. Many of the houses pair with churches or schools and the residents are required to get involved in those pairings through volunteer opportunities. They are also "intentional" (a sort of Calvin buzzword) about creating community within each house, with house dinners and communal food...stuff like that. More than simply six college students living in a house together and sometimes going out for pizza. It can be really meaningful if the students want it to be, and that's something I think would benefit from. (If only because I'm a kind of hopeless nerd and I need more social interaction if I ever want to function well in groups of people.)
I love where I'm living now and the people there, but I've been silently frustrated for a while now that my whole community will be changing after this year as so many of my friends graduate and get jobs and maybe even move away, while I'm left here, still in classes. Not all of my friends are going to leave, certainly, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of my close friends, including my boyfriend, went off to grad school and I was left to fend for myself. Project neighborhood would keep me involved with people whether I liked it or not, which would be really helpful and maybe even necessary. I don't know yet; I'm still thinking.
Basically, I just wanted to share that I have some new goals for my life, that my newfound desire to travel and my re-found desire for divinity has given me an excitement for worldly adventuring, from teaching overseas, to living in diverse and different communities, to branching out to people I don't know, to being a generally more open and inviting human being. None of these things interested me (practically) in the slightest eight months ago. Some of them haven't interested me for more than a couple days, some for more than a couple hours. I wanted to share this with you because it's all thrilling to me, and I want to explore it. As most of the people who read this blog are people I care about and who care about me, I really want to explore it with you most. Even if you think I'm crazy, even if you're worried that I'm becoming someone you don't want to care about anymore, I want to hear from you if you have something to say.
Stay cool. You're 2Good2Be4Gotten. Don't ever change. And all that stuff.
But really, just live your life. In the best way you can think of. If I were someone who tried to literally bless people, like a CRC minister, that's what I would leave you with.
Tune in next time when I'll talk about...maybe cheese.
<3 spadeALLcross
25.9.11
Why am I different? [Me: Part IV]
After all of these changes that have happened to me, where I was more or less a passive attender, at least to most of them, I knew that I had to start taking an active role in my own life. So the next important step along my new path was reflected a little in my post from August, where I talked about addictions. I didn't have a set agenda of "here are the things that I don't like about myself that I think I need to change otherwise my soul is doomed to eternal damnation," but at the same time, I knew that the way I was living my life was not compatible with what God wanted for me, and I wanted to change.
Why? For people who aren't religious or are anti-religious, that's probably a pretty serious question. I know that, for me, the question has cropped up more than once, "If God exists, loves me unconditionally, and made no mistakes when he made me, why would he want me to change who I was for him?" And, similarly, I have been asked the question, "Why would you want to let God control your life with a list of dos and don'ts?" I think I can answer in a way that we can mutually understand, even if we don't agree on the existence or importance of God. Let me know if I'm wrong about that.
I think the answer to the first question is rather simple, but I say that as a Christian, so I may be wrong. Humans essentially are animals with a more complex societal structure. We have physical bodies that have physical and emotional needs, like food, water, sex, relationships, etc, like most animals do, but we also have dynamic cultural groups that help us determine the best and right ways to fill those needs. Our parents, friends, teachers, random crickets and other societal buddies develop our conscience: they teach us, directly and indirectly, what foods are suitable to eat, how much water to use for what tasks, what kind of sex to have and when, what healthy or effective relationships look like, and so on. Sometimes our animal instincts fight against our social structures: my mom tells me to eat my peas because she knows they're good for me, but I don't like peas, so it makes sense that I wouldn't eat them. The USPS is socialized in order to reach more people, but I really just want to send my package quickly so I can go take care of other things. My hormones wouldn't mind me having sex when I'm 13, but my body doesn't realize the harm that could befall it if I made that choice.
Christians believe that it is our complex societal structure was created as "the image of God"; it's the divinity in us, and literally what separates us from the animals. Christians believe that, when functioning at top form, our societal structure should reflect God's perfect design for humanity. So, in those moments when our physical and emotional needs fight against of social upbringing, it's kind of like a battle between our divinity and humanity. What non-Christians call a conscience, Christians call the Holy Spirit. God wanted us to be humans seeking divinity, which is why we were created with flaws that would force us to struggle against ourselves. Everyone has internal struggles, and Christians don't even necessarily have more than non-Christians. They're just sometimes of a different nature.
On to the second question. While we don't want to completely disown our humanity, because it was given to us for a reason, we believe that God has a more holy call for us, one that does not always allow us to indulge in our physical and emotional desires. Our faith tells us that God's plan is better than one we could make for ourselves, and that it will meet our physical and emotional needs, just not necessarily in manners or timeframes we expect. In order to partake in God's perfect plan for our lives, we need the Holy Spirit to be in control of our humanity, so that we'll be in the right place at the right time, so to speak. Christianity is not a list of rules you must follow in order to get into heaven, it's a description of the kind of person whose conscience controls their humanity in such a way that they are a perfect conduit of divinity traveling from God to earth.
Certainly, if you are not a Christian, you don't believe that God is something you want to deliver to the earth, but you have other things, agendas, goals you want to deliver to the world around you, and you probably believe that, in any situation, there are correct and incorrect ways of delivering those agendas. It's the same thing, it's just that my agenda is God's.
In my post from early August, I talked about addictions and how they're present in places other than just illicit substances. Overcoming addictions is one of the big parts of being a Christian: the first commandment is "God is the only God. Worship no other idols." Anything that I could put before God, hold higher on my priorities than following God's plan for me, is a sort of idol. I need to eschew all other idols, because they distract me from my real goal. So, over the summer, that's what I started to do.
That's a whole other post right there, and a bit of it is quite personal, so I'm not going to go into detail. Plus, this post is already dragging on, and I'm quite pleasantly surprised you've willingly come this far. All I really want to say on this point is that I am struggling daily with things I've never bothered to struggle with, simply because the struggle was too hard. The struggle is exciting, though, and I'm really enjoying myself in what I swear is a completely non-masochistic way. I just mean, at this stage in the game, I'm feeling immediate relief, and seeing that change is really energizing. At some point, the immediacy of results will taper off and the excitement will be harder to find, but as this stage strengthens my resolve and my faith, I feel confident that I will be able to stick it through. I'm not alone, after all: I believe in a God who will be with me through everything, who does not put me into situations and leave me there, and who doesn't let me get in over my head.
So this leads me up to this point. In my next post, the probable conclusion to the "About Mary" mini-series I've been constructing, I'll talk about my goals for the future...which are really the only reason I started this whole blog project in the first place...way back in Freshman year.
Goodnight and goodluck.
<3 spadeALLcross
Why? For people who aren't religious or are anti-religious, that's probably a pretty serious question. I know that, for me, the question has cropped up more than once, "If God exists, loves me unconditionally, and made no mistakes when he made me, why would he want me to change who I was for him?" And, similarly, I have been asked the question, "Why would you want to let God control your life with a list of dos and don'ts?" I think I can answer in a way that we can mutually understand, even if we don't agree on the existence or importance of God. Let me know if I'm wrong about that.
I think the answer to the first question is rather simple, but I say that as a Christian, so I may be wrong. Humans essentially are animals with a more complex societal structure. We have physical bodies that have physical and emotional needs, like food, water, sex, relationships, etc, like most animals do, but we also have dynamic cultural groups that help us determine the best and right ways to fill those needs. Our parents, friends, teachers, random crickets and other societal buddies develop our conscience: they teach us, directly and indirectly, what foods are suitable to eat, how much water to use for what tasks, what kind of sex to have and when, what healthy or effective relationships look like, and so on. Sometimes our animal instincts fight against our social structures: my mom tells me to eat my peas because she knows they're good for me, but I don't like peas, so it makes sense that I wouldn't eat them. The USPS is socialized in order to reach more people, but I really just want to send my package quickly so I can go take care of other things. My hormones wouldn't mind me having sex when I'm 13, but my body doesn't realize the harm that could befall it if I made that choice.
Christians believe that it is our complex societal structure was created as "the image of God"; it's the divinity in us, and literally what separates us from the animals. Christians believe that, when functioning at top form, our societal structure should reflect God's perfect design for humanity. So, in those moments when our physical and emotional needs fight against of social upbringing, it's kind of like a battle between our divinity and humanity. What non-Christians call a conscience, Christians call the Holy Spirit. God wanted us to be humans seeking divinity, which is why we were created with flaws that would force us to struggle against ourselves. Everyone has internal struggles, and Christians don't even necessarily have more than non-Christians. They're just sometimes of a different nature.
On to the second question. While we don't want to completely disown our humanity, because it was given to us for a reason, we believe that God has a more holy call for us, one that does not always allow us to indulge in our physical and emotional desires. Our faith tells us that God's plan is better than one we could make for ourselves, and that it will meet our physical and emotional needs, just not necessarily in manners or timeframes we expect. In order to partake in God's perfect plan for our lives, we need the Holy Spirit to be in control of our humanity, so that we'll be in the right place at the right time, so to speak. Christianity is not a list of rules you must follow in order to get into heaven, it's a description of the kind of person whose conscience controls their humanity in such a way that they are a perfect conduit of divinity traveling from God to earth.
Certainly, if you are not a Christian, you don't believe that God is something you want to deliver to the earth, but you have other things, agendas, goals you want to deliver to the world around you, and you probably believe that, in any situation, there are correct and incorrect ways of delivering those agendas. It's the same thing, it's just that my agenda is God's.
In my post from early August, I talked about addictions and how they're present in places other than just illicit substances. Overcoming addictions is one of the big parts of being a Christian: the first commandment is "God is the only God. Worship no other idols." Anything that I could put before God, hold higher on my priorities than following God's plan for me, is a sort of idol. I need to eschew all other idols, because they distract me from my real goal. So, over the summer, that's what I started to do.
That's a whole other post right there, and a bit of it is quite personal, so I'm not going to go into detail. Plus, this post is already dragging on, and I'm quite pleasantly surprised you've willingly come this far. All I really want to say on this point is that I am struggling daily with things I've never bothered to struggle with, simply because the struggle was too hard. The struggle is exciting, though, and I'm really enjoying myself in what I swear is a completely non-masochistic way. I just mean, at this stage in the game, I'm feeling immediate relief, and seeing that change is really energizing. At some point, the immediacy of results will taper off and the excitement will be harder to find, but as this stage strengthens my resolve and my faith, I feel confident that I will be able to stick it through. I'm not alone, after all: I believe in a God who will be with me through everything, who does not put me into situations and leave me there, and who doesn't let me get in over my head.
So this leads me up to this point. In my next post, the probable conclusion to the "About Mary" mini-series I've been constructing, I'll talk about my goals for the future...which are really the only reason I started this whole blog project in the first place...way back in Freshman year.
Goodnight and goodluck.
<3 spadeALLcross
20.9.11
You got a friend in me...
I'll continue with my rant about myself later. Right now I just want to thank you.
If you're reading this blog, you're probably a friend of mine, and, if I am remembering correctly, the majority of you are rather close friends. I have recently come to re-realize that I would be nowhere and miserable without all of you. Thank you for being with me and for me.
<3 spadeALLcross
If you're reading this blog, you're probably a friend of mine, and, if I am remembering correctly, the majority of you are rather close friends. I have recently come to re-realize that I would be nowhere and miserable without all of you. Thank you for being with me and for me.
<3 spadeALLcross
15.9.11
Who do I want to become? [Me: Part III]
Hey again. See, I'm good at this keeping up now. Don't get used to it.
Last post, I talked about how same in myself and lots of dark, depressing feelings forced me to change the way I look at my future. I decided to take "the high road," if you want to be cliché about it. I like to think of it more as the road personally mapped out for me specifically by God, a road that no one else can take.
The first step of that road was to get beyond the shameful experience that had brought me there. Shame, guilt, fear...they're all very useful emotions and shouldn't be discounted or avoided simply because they're unpleasant, but they can cripple us if we let them. So I had to let them go for now. In order to do that, I had to begin again with my timeless mantra of "you're special, you're wonderful, you're perfect," but that wasn't going to work now. I knew that I wasn't perfect, I knew that I had failed. How could I be loved when I was a failure? That's the opposite of what I've believed my whole life.
Almost immediately, I realized that love doesn't work that way. Maybe I knew that before, but it had never meant to me then what it does now. My mother and my brother especially, but others as well, showed me that I was special and perfect and important because I was loved, not the other way around. It was their love that made me who I was.
But that's...not ideal. My mother is an amazing woman and I wouldn't trade my brother for any other brother in the world, but they are just as flawed as I am. There is a chance--slimmest of the slim, and I only believe this as a philosophical theory of general human nature, not of the love of these people--that something could cause them to stop loving me, and then where would I be? Back exactly where I was. I had to find a source of love that was beyond fault, beyond beginnings and endings, that was big enough to cushion me when I failed again, as I would, and strong enough to hold me when no one else would.
And there it was. My new faith.
I've always believed in God's love, and I've always known in my head that I needed it. But kind of like you can't describe to someone what it feels like to attempt to balance yourself on a bicycle, when that someone has never ridden one, I did know know what it felt like to believe I needed God's love. Like I said, up until my realization of my own brokenness, I thought that I was good enough to be loved by God, not that God's love was constantly overcoming my not-good-enoughness.
Again, the transformation sounds like I went from point A to point A, when really it's just...really complicated. I'm sure there's a lot of psychology or religious jargon that I could toss in here to help my explanation make sense, but I don't know the jargon, and I'm just hoping that there are enough people out there who have been where I was that they will just innately understand. If you don't understand, please contact me and I can try again. It's as important to me to learn how to articulate myself in this matter (I am training to be an English Teacher...so...) as it could possibly be for you to understand what I'm saying, so if you're interested enough, please let me know.
Thanks for sticking with me this far. I hope you're getting something out of reading this as much as I am by writing it and processing it. But really, if you have questions, concerns, etc., talk to me about them.
<3 spadeALLcross
Last post, I talked about how same in myself and lots of dark, depressing feelings forced me to change the way I look at my future. I decided to take "the high road," if you want to be cliché about it. I like to think of it more as the road personally mapped out for me specifically by God, a road that no one else can take.
The first step of that road was to get beyond the shameful experience that had brought me there. Shame, guilt, fear...they're all very useful emotions and shouldn't be discounted or avoided simply because they're unpleasant, but they can cripple us if we let them. So I had to let them go for now. In order to do that, I had to begin again with my timeless mantra of "you're special, you're wonderful, you're perfect," but that wasn't going to work now. I knew that I wasn't perfect, I knew that I had failed. How could I be loved when I was a failure? That's the opposite of what I've believed my whole life.
Almost immediately, I realized that love doesn't work that way. Maybe I knew that before, but it had never meant to me then what it does now. My mother and my brother especially, but others as well, showed me that I was special and perfect and important because I was loved, not the other way around. It was their love that made me who I was.
But that's...not ideal. My mother is an amazing woman and I wouldn't trade my brother for any other brother in the world, but they are just as flawed as I am. There is a chance--slimmest of the slim, and I only believe this as a philosophical theory of general human nature, not of the love of these people--that something could cause them to stop loving me, and then where would I be? Back exactly where I was. I had to find a source of love that was beyond fault, beyond beginnings and endings, that was big enough to cushion me when I failed again, as I would, and strong enough to hold me when no one else would.
And there it was. My new faith.
I've always believed in God's love, and I've always known in my head that I needed it. But kind of like you can't describe to someone what it feels like to attempt to balance yourself on a bicycle, when that someone has never ridden one, I did know know what it felt like to believe I needed God's love. Like I said, up until my realization of my own brokenness, I thought that I was good enough to be loved by God, not that God's love was constantly overcoming my not-good-enoughness.
Again, the transformation sounds like I went from point A to point A, when really it's just...really complicated. I'm sure there's a lot of psychology or religious jargon that I could toss in here to help my explanation make sense, but I don't know the jargon, and I'm just hoping that there are enough people out there who have been where I was that they will just innately understand. If you don't understand, please contact me and I can try again. It's as important to me to learn how to articulate myself in this matter (I am training to be an English Teacher...so...) as it could possibly be for you to understand what I'm saying, so if you're interested enough, please let me know.
Thanks for sticking with me this far. I hope you're getting something out of reading this as much as I am by writing it and processing it. But really, if you have questions, concerns, etc., talk to me about them.
<3 spadeALLcross
13.9.11
Who am I? [Me: Part II]
So, last poast, I talked about January through June. This week, I'm going to talk about July through...well...July. It was a very complex month for me, even outside of Harry Potter. And it started out with a bang.
At the end of June, events transpired that threw all of this over-time development, all of my personal growth and goals into sharp relief, and I got my first real dose of self-induced shame. And this is where both disaster struck and the light at the end of the tunnel appeared. Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
All my life, I've been told that I was special, that I was great, that the world could tell me that I was flawed, tell me that I had no merit, but that none of that mattered because I was loved in a way that I should never forget. My mother instilled this belief in me for years, and it was reaffirmed by my Church and my brand of Christianity (which primarily revolved around "God loves me, he's gone to great lengths to show me that, and his love for me is all that matters."). The only thing wrong with this belief was that I thought (completely subconsciously, in unchangeable ways) that I was loved because I was special, because I was great, and that when the world told me I was flawed and had no merit, the world was unquestionably wrong on all counts. That is a very dangerous worldview, and at the end of June, I realized how dangerous it had made me as a person.
I'm not going to tell you, Internet, what happened in June, because it's not important to this conversation. But essentially, I finally did something that, in my mind, was "bad" enough to make me feel ashamed. Really ashamed. Not the shame that I've felt before because someone is telling me I should, like when, in junior high and high school, I felt like I was fat and was ashamed that I wasn't able to lose weight and wear clothes like other girls did. Not the shame I feel when my standards are too high, like when I wanted to take AP physics even though I had no designs for a scientific career or any need to sweat through an entire year of a killer class, and when doing so would hurt me in the other subjects I actually excelled at and wanted to better understand. Not shame that is in anyway connected with an outside source or something beyond my control. Shame that I had done something seriously wrong, and now I had to live with the consequences. Shame that no one I told about my situation would have any reason to feel pity for me; I had brought this upon myself.
Whether what I did was actually as bad as I thought it was at the time, I can't say. Whether the worst punishment I could have reasonably deserved for it was anything life shattering or shame-worthy, I don't know. What's important is what I felt in that moment, because that's what changed everything.
The "you're special, you're great, don't ever change" mantra that had been playing on repeat for my whole life sort of skipped for a moment. Suddenly, I looked at my life, my faith, my relationships, and everything I did and thought and said in a completely new way. And it was not refreshing. What I saw was brokenness, complacency, and a dangerous habit of doing what I want because I want to, and then expecting things to work out in my favor regardless. Most of my life had been shame-free, and it was only this one instance that made me see things this way, but I saw laid out ahead of me two paths branching out from one decision: either I could take my situation seriously and really reflect on what it meant to me and how I wanted to proceed, which would probably involve pain and loneliness and challenges I felt unprepared for, or I could pay the minimum penalty and revert back to comfort and safety where things were exactly where I expected them to be and I could count on my instincts to see me through.
The first path didn't lead out very far. I couldn't see the whole way down. But kind of like a real road on a really foggy night, when you can see the glow of the street lights even though you can't see what they're falling on, I could see the satisfaction in that road. I could see spots of darkness, but I saw a comfort that went beyond the shallowness of my previous comforts. More than just making myself happy and trying to get to oases of pleasure, walking down that first road would create oases where there were none, would find comfort in places I didn't think it existed, and would end with the happiest, most satisfying destination I could have, though I don't yet know what that is.
I could see farther down the second path, but then it too turned foggy, even foggier than the first path. It looked easy and familiar, not much different than the path I was walking down already. But the streetlights were not welcoming. If I had screwed up already, (and such a small screw up had affected me this much), I was bound to do it again, and there was a huge chance that it would be worse in the subsequent times. There was no guaranteed warmth down this road and no assumption of a happy ending. That didn't mean there wasn't one, but just that I wasn't as sure of it.
It sounds cheesy with all the analogies. But I guess describing my self-reflection during this time is like trying to describe a dream. Since dream worlds are not the same as the real world, you have to change some details to make the dream explicable. Since my mind works differently than yours, I have to make analogies to help you understand. It wasn't cheesy at all when I went through it. It was very real and actually very scary. But my decision was easy. Of course I took the first road.
So that where I was in July. Tune in next time for the continuation of my journey, which concludes summer.
<3 spadeALLcross
At the end of June, events transpired that threw all of this over-time development, all of my personal growth and goals into sharp relief, and I got my first real dose of self-induced shame. And this is where both disaster struck and the light at the end of the tunnel appeared. Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
All my life, I've been told that I was special, that I was great, that the world could tell me that I was flawed, tell me that I had no merit, but that none of that mattered because I was loved in a way that I should never forget. My mother instilled this belief in me for years, and it was reaffirmed by my Church and my brand of Christianity (which primarily revolved around "God loves me, he's gone to great lengths to show me that, and his love for me is all that matters."). The only thing wrong with this belief was that I thought (completely subconsciously, in unchangeable ways) that I was loved because I was special, because I was great, and that when the world told me I was flawed and had no merit, the world was unquestionably wrong on all counts. That is a very dangerous worldview, and at the end of June, I realized how dangerous it had made me as a person.
I'm not going to tell you, Internet, what happened in June, because it's not important to this conversation. But essentially, I finally did something that, in my mind, was "bad" enough to make me feel ashamed. Really ashamed. Not the shame that I've felt before because someone is telling me I should, like when, in junior high and high school, I felt like I was fat and was ashamed that I wasn't able to lose weight and wear clothes like other girls did. Not the shame I feel when my standards are too high, like when I wanted to take AP physics even though I had no designs for a scientific career or any need to sweat through an entire year of a killer class, and when doing so would hurt me in the other subjects I actually excelled at and wanted to better understand. Not shame that is in anyway connected with an outside source or something beyond my control. Shame that I had done something seriously wrong, and now I had to live with the consequences. Shame that no one I told about my situation would have any reason to feel pity for me; I had brought this upon myself.
Whether what I did was actually as bad as I thought it was at the time, I can't say. Whether the worst punishment I could have reasonably deserved for it was anything life shattering or shame-worthy, I don't know. What's important is what I felt in that moment, because that's what changed everything.
The "you're special, you're great, don't ever change" mantra that had been playing on repeat for my whole life sort of skipped for a moment. Suddenly, I looked at my life, my faith, my relationships, and everything I did and thought and said in a completely new way. And it was not refreshing. What I saw was brokenness, complacency, and a dangerous habit of doing what I want because I want to, and then expecting things to work out in my favor regardless. Most of my life had been shame-free, and it was only this one instance that made me see things this way, but I saw laid out ahead of me two paths branching out from one decision: either I could take my situation seriously and really reflect on what it meant to me and how I wanted to proceed, which would probably involve pain and loneliness and challenges I felt unprepared for, or I could pay the minimum penalty and revert back to comfort and safety where things were exactly where I expected them to be and I could count on my instincts to see me through.
The first path didn't lead out very far. I couldn't see the whole way down. But kind of like a real road on a really foggy night, when you can see the glow of the street lights even though you can't see what they're falling on, I could see the satisfaction in that road. I could see spots of darkness, but I saw a comfort that went beyond the shallowness of my previous comforts. More than just making myself happy and trying to get to oases of pleasure, walking down that first road would create oases where there were none, would find comfort in places I didn't think it existed, and would end with the happiest, most satisfying destination I could have, though I don't yet know what that is.
I could see farther down the second path, but then it too turned foggy, even foggier than the first path. It looked easy and familiar, not much different than the path I was walking down already. But the streetlights were not welcoming. If I had screwed up already, (and such a small screw up had affected me this much), I was bound to do it again, and there was a huge chance that it would be worse in the subsequent times. There was no guaranteed warmth down this road and no assumption of a happy ending. That didn't mean there wasn't one, but just that I wasn't as sure of it.
It sounds cheesy with all the analogies. But I guess describing my self-reflection during this time is like trying to describe a dream. Since dream worlds are not the same as the real world, you have to change some details to make the dream explicable. Since my mind works differently than yours, I have to make analogies to help you understand. It wasn't cheesy at all when I went through it. It was very real and actually very scary. But my decision was easy. Of course I took the first road.
So that where I was in July. Tune in next time for the continuation of my journey, which concludes summer.
<3 spadeALLcross
8.9.11
Where do I think I'm going? [Me: Part 1]
Yup. As per usual, as most of you expected, it has been a while since I last updated here. That's not for lack of trying, believe me. It's just that, between my list of goals I wanted to complete over the summer, my time spent unavoidably (if not welcomely) separated from my computer, the revision of my personal priorities, and the onset of school this week, every time I had something to blog about, I was convinced that there was some better use of my time elsewhere, and I was not often wrong.
The unfortunate consequence to this is that I now have a lot of stuff to say, while you have not developed some über stamina that would allow you to read it all in one sitting. So consider this the first installment in a long line of get-to-know-Mary posts. Because that's what they'll all have in common: "About Mary."
We'll start with the beginning. These past eight months have been the most renewing months of my life. They have been the most unstable, the most disappointing, the scariest, and the most wonderful time I have ever spent doing anything. Throughout the four months I was in England, I became much more like the person I've always wanted to be; I became more confident in myself, less reliant on the affirmation of others, and more open and willing to try new things and take real risks. I struggled, especially against myself, while I was there--I was homesick very often, out of my element with almost every step I took, and fully aware 98% of the time that I was less than perfect in many significant ways. My semester abroad was not different or special in comparison to anyone else's semester abroad. It changed me, certainly, like any new experience would, and it showed me who I really was, and sometimes that reflection made me cringe. But I think that's what those sorts of programs are designed to do. And if not, they still manage to more often than not, in my experience.
Fourish months removed from that time, I think I can safely say I've finally gotten around to processing it, and I think the most noticeable development it started in me was my newfound desire to travel. I've always wanted to be a "world explorer," meeting new people and traveling to exciting places, just so I could see the world. But now that I've had the smallest taste of that, and I know at least some of the downsides to that kind of an adventure, I feel like when I say, "I want to travel the world," I mean it now. I know what's at stake, where I didn't before, but I also know what glorious things can happen as a result, and that prospect is exciting more to me than the fears are scary.
Then the summer started. There was undeniable culture shock as I moved back to the US, even just from England (which is not all that different), and that experience further opened my eyes, showing me what I felt I needed to change about my lifestyle, that, in some cases, it just wasn't a choice anymore. It's one thing to say something is important to you, it's another thing to realize that you simply cannot live your life without it. My transition back to the states, back to things, relationships, and interests that once felt comfortable to me made me see more clearly which pieces of myself I needed to put the effort into preserving, and which pieces I needed to weed out. The process is ongoing and challenging, but as I said, I simply can't stop. I believe there are certain foundational pieces of my personality and my life that, if I neglected them simply because they were hard, I would be lying to myself about who I was, which would make my life hard to live anyway. It's a lose-lose, in a [pessimistic] sense, but I think the intentional, challenging way is the more sustainable and rewarding way.
So that's where I was around the middle of June. Tune in next time to hear about July.
<3 spadeALLcross
The unfortunate consequence to this is that I now have a lot of stuff to say, while you have not developed some über stamina that would allow you to read it all in one sitting. So consider this the first installment in a long line of get-to-know-Mary posts. Because that's what they'll all have in common: "About Mary."
We'll start with the beginning. These past eight months have been the most renewing months of my life. They have been the most unstable, the most disappointing, the scariest, and the most wonderful time I have ever spent doing anything. Throughout the four months I was in England, I became much more like the person I've always wanted to be; I became more confident in myself, less reliant on the affirmation of others, and more open and willing to try new things and take real risks. I struggled, especially against myself, while I was there--I was homesick very often, out of my element with almost every step I took, and fully aware 98% of the time that I was less than perfect in many significant ways. My semester abroad was not different or special in comparison to anyone else's semester abroad. It changed me, certainly, like any new experience would, and it showed me who I really was, and sometimes that reflection made me cringe. But I think that's what those sorts of programs are designed to do. And if not, they still manage to more often than not, in my experience.
Fourish months removed from that time, I think I can safely say I've finally gotten around to processing it, and I think the most noticeable development it started in me was my newfound desire to travel. I've always wanted to be a "world explorer," meeting new people and traveling to exciting places, just so I could see the world. But now that I've had the smallest taste of that, and I know at least some of the downsides to that kind of an adventure, I feel like when I say, "I want to travel the world," I mean it now. I know what's at stake, where I didn't before, but I also know what glorious things can happen as a result, and that prospect is exciting more to me than the fears are scary.
Then the summer started. There was undeniable culture shock as I moved back to the US, even just from England (which is not all that different), and that experience further opened my eyes, showing me what I felt I needed to change about my lifestyle, that, in some cases, it just wasn't a choice anymore. It's one thing to say something is important to you, it's another thing to realize that you simply cannot live your life without it. My transition back to the states, back to things, relationships, and interests that once felt comfortable to me made me see more clearly which pieces of myself I needed to put the effort into preserving, and which pieces I needed to weed out. The process is ongoing and challenging, but as I said, I simply can't stop. I believe there are certain foundational pieces of my personality and my life that, if I neglected them simply because they were hard, I would be lying to myself about who I was, which would make my life hard to live anyway. It's a lose-lose, in a [pessimistic] sense, but I think the intentional, challenging way is the more sustainable and rewarding way.
So that's where I was around the middle of June. Tune in next time to hear about July.
<3 spadeALLcross
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