2014

       2014 had a lot of hard parts for me and not near as much fun, adventurous, traveling as the last three years. In 2011 I went to Ottawa for a week and then spent six weeks in a small Cree village in Northern Quebec. In 2012 I went on a really long bus adventure to visit a friend of mine who was living in a small town North of Lake Superior. I lived in Quebec for five weeks in the Spring of 2013 while going to school to learn French, and then I went on two road trips for weddings during the summer. I did go to three weddings this year, but two of them were  right in my current city. One wedding was an hour or two away from my Mom's house. No buses went there so she had to rent a car to take me. That was kind of a fun adventure, but then my friend drove me back to the city where I live which is three hours away from my Mom's city and it was snowing really bad and I thought we were going to die, but we didn't so that's good.

       Another reason why 2013 was a lot more exciting than 2014 was that my nephew was born, but - to be honest - he just gets more and more exciting as he gets older. I am excited to hopefully move to his city so I can see him more often.

       One super exciting thing did happen this year: I graduated. This made me happy for a couple reasons. It is kind of nice not to have to do homework anymore, and to know that I was capable of that success. However, it is kind of sad not to have any more school. I really enjoyed it. It is also stressful, because although I am passionate about the subject of my degree and enjoyed the process, it isn't very useful so I had to go through this big long period of not knowing what to do next. Things are OK now. I have a job that I like and a plan to go back to school for a couple of years to get a better job that I will also like, perhaps even more than the one I have now. I am nervous to enact this plan, but excited too. Anyways, finding the job, and developing the plan was stressful, and graduating was bitter sweet but I loved my actual graduation day. Most people say the ceremony is superficial and boring. But I really enjoy ceremony. I think we need to take time to acknowledge that important things have happened. Anyways, my ceremony was the highlight of my year. I've been to other ceremonies with really boring speeches, but mine was pretty interesting and relatable . The best part, though, was that I had friends and family there. I didn't think anyone was going to come, but people did and that meant a BUNCH to me. Plus my mom, sister, and nephew came down for a couple days and it was kind of like a family vacation.

      I'm nervous about 2015, because so much is going to be changing. Oh well, I'll figure it out.

I am Weak

I have been getting better at dealing with my fear, despair, and self hatred. I lecture myself. All the time. I remind myself of everything and everyone that I have to be thankful for. I tell myself that the things I worry about probably won't happen. I tell myself that if they do happen it won't be the end and I'll figure out how to deal with it. I often brain storm solutions to worse case scenarios to show myself there is nothing to worry about. I remind myself that I am forgiven. I've actually gotten pretty good at that one. This is a very big deal for me. Sometimes, I still get mad at myself. Like this week I forgot that I had volunteered to help cook Christmas dinner for the kids at the youth centre where I volunteer. So I was late to the place that is sort of kind of not really my church now to help cook and I hit myself in the head pretty hard and swore out loud when I realised I'd forgotten and would be late, but such is life. There are a lot of things every day to remind myself that I am forgiven for. It makes sense that sometimes I will forget and still feel the old twinges of guilt and self hatred, but this is definitely one area where I feel like I am getting better. Even the last couple days I've been really worried and sad about something semi stupid and none of my friends or family see it as something worthy of this much upset, and out of love for me they want me to see reality the way they see it so that I can be free from pain, which makes sense. I keep telling people that I want them to just let me be sad, and just tell me it is too bad that I feel that way rather than trying to get me to be ok. This is really hard for people, no one really seems to know how to do this and it is the source of many fights for me which sucks because these people I am so mad at having nothing but love for me. Thankfully, though, this time around I've managed not to be too mad at myself for not fighting myself all the time. Fighting fear and despair is a super exhausting process that I engage in a lot, but am not always capable of. Sometimes when I give into fear and despair and allow myself to be carried away on their powerful waves I worry that everyone will be mad at me and perhaps lose their patience and abandon me. I wonder if they have good reason to do so. I wonder if, maybe, I am just letting myself fall into darkness from time to time to get attention and be reminded that I'm loved. Which I don't think is true because most people who love me do not just remind me at these times that they love me for they are almost much more focused on reminding me that I need to fight which just puts a lot of pressure on me and increases my fear and despair. Anyways, even if it were about that I don't think that is something worth hating myself over, the desire for love is a legit one. As someone who works a lot with children and youth I've learned that kids who act out or invent tragedies to get attention need you to give them attention for positive things and in positive situations to help them build better habits, rather than simply being lectured for their unhealthy patterns. I am sorry, I have been rambling, but there is something I'm trying to get at: maybe sometimes we need to be allowed to be weak. The thing is that I am not always capable of fighting my fear and despair. I am not going to stop trying and I appreciate that you want to encourage me not to stop, I know that means you love me. But I sometimes need to be allowed to be weak. Like a little kid who is overwhelmed by how big and scary the universe is, but finds comfort in knowing their parent is in control so they are allowed to not have to solve everything and have the privilege of just being scared while their parent fights off all the invisible boogiemen under the bed. If I can get all religious for a second, what I love about Christianity is it says that we are not superhuman and cannot wake up and just be ok, but we can find peace in knowing we are weak but God is strong, so please stop heaping expectation upon my head. I am trying to trust God and not give into fear and despair, but I want to be allowed, if not to be scared and sad than to be weak, because I am weak. If you are feeling upset because you are powerless to help me, know that I have as little power as you do. Thank you.

Metaphorical Crutches: Not Being Ashamed of my Mental/ Emotional Health Strategies

I have been thinking about the metaphor of the crutch. People talk about crutches as if they are something bad. If something is someone's crutch it's a thing that they cling to in order to avoid the responsibility of independence, but the thing is that we aren't independent. We are interdependent. We are all messed up and need help, but we have different problems and different gifts and we can lean on each other and help each other out. Crutches don't keep an injured man injured forever, they help him be able to keep waking even while his injury is still healing!

I have been thinking about the comparison between depression and cancer. This is a useful comparison to show people that things that eat away at us on a mental and emotional level are just as real and serious as physical illnesses. We cannot wake up and overpower the darkness inside of us armed only with positive thinking and sheer will power any more than a cancer patient could.

However, many of us do not struggle with mental and emotional problems resembling cancer, but more like something resembling diabetes or some other illness that probably won't kill me (if I deal with it properly), but may never go away. Just as people with long term injuries, illnesses, and people born with different abilities (like blindness or deafness) require different tools and different life strategies, many people are not in danger of suicide or completely giving up but every day they have to figure out how to live with self hatred, anxiety, and sadness.

I was thinking about this today because one thing I have to live with is that I get overwhelmed really easily. If I have too much on my plate (too many thoughts in my head) it can lead to an intense anxiety. One tool I have used forever is talking to my mom. To get all my thoughts out of my head and not just on paper but actually given to someone else who can help me work through them helps me let go of each little thing which relieves the big ball of anxiety that is created when all the little things add up. Because of this, I literally talk to my mom for hours everyday about every little thing. Sometimes I worry that this means I'm not a good adult and anyways, what am I going to do when my mom dies? My mom (practical as ever) said I'll just have to find someone else to talk to when she dies because that is a strategy that works for me, and I realised that I don't have to be ashamed of this crutch because I need it to be able to walk through my everyday life, so as long as I haven't fallen into a heap on the floor its all good. So figure out what works for you and don't be ashamed if you don't do things the way others do!

Why I Hate Essentially Everything Ever Written to Single Christians

There are so many things that I see on a daily basis that are directed towards single Christians that just make me groan. The interesting thing is that they make me groan for quite a variety of different reasons. Sometimes I will see two posts that almost contradict each other and yet both of them make me mad. I am trying to respect my single friends who have views that differ from mine. We are all stumbling along through life trying to figure it out and that’s cool, but I do want to share my perspective while admitting that I could be wrong. First I would like to talk about the phrase “Date when you are ready, not when you are lonely.” Being lonely is a legitimate problem! God created Eve because “It is not good that the man should be alone.” Christians always say that God loves us and we should value Him more than some other human, which is true, and yet Adam had God and God still gave him a partner. Yes, I hope that all my single friends will be able to find joy and peace though they are alone, but I don’t want them to feel like they are a horrible person for feeling lonely. That is a legitimate feeling. Also what the heck does it mean to be ready for a relationship? I hate this idea that we have to sit around and become perfect for our future spouse for two reasons. The first is that no one is perfect, even married people; I know this for a fact, because I have married relatives and friends. Yes, there are some tools we need to start a lifelong relationship and sometimes I am glad I am not in a relationship because I don’t have certain tools like trust and communication, but people in relationships are going to be growing and learning their whole lives just like the rest of us. The other reason that I hate this idea of waiting around perfecting myself for some dude is that it makes it seem like my life has no value until I am married and everything I am doing now is only valuable if it is preparation for the future. That’s dumb. I have value as an individual and I am doing things for others or myself that have nothing to do with some random dude I may or may not marry some day, but these things still matter. Even my growth has purpose outside of a future marriage. Will a future husband benefit from any maturing I do now? Yes, but myself and my friends and strangers on the street will also benefit from it and the difference is that we are benefiting from it now not in some magical tomorrow land. That is why I hate the tradition of talking about and writing to a future spouse. For one thing you don’t even know if they exist. You might be writing to a fictional character, and I mean there is nothing wrong with that, in fact maybe I’ll go write Anne of Green Gables a letter, but I don’t want to spend my entire life obsessing over someone who doesn’t exist. I do love that people who do this kind of stuff are acknowledging that it is not wrong to admit you are lonely and want a future spouse, but I want you to know the joys of right now! Good food and drink, friends and family, pets, nature, working hard, a child holding your hand! There are so many things that bring joy other than just romance. This is something I hate about the culture even outside of the church. I want more movies, songs, and books about something other than romance. Ok that’s it. My rant is over.

Six Things Smart People Could Learn from Stupid People

First off let me ask you to PLEASE not be offended by the titles smart and stupid. This post has serious content in it, but to a certain degree I am attempting humour.

Let me explain how this list came to be. I firmly believe that I am stupid, but none of my friends agree so I was initially going to write a joke post titled "How to Trick People into Thinking You are Smart." It was mostly tips for how to survive university, though, and as I was thinking about it I realised that "stupid people" actually get way more out of university than "smart people." So I wrote this instead.

1. Time management. Smart people have the privilege of being mentally capable of procrastination. A stupid person cannot punch out an award winning essay in one night no matter how many energy drinks they down. This may seem like a loss for stupid people, but they are learning how to manage their time and really, this is a lesson that everyone is going to need eventually.

2. Work ethic. This one is very similar to time management. A smart person can try only a little bit and spend most of their life flying by the seat of their pants. This makes things easier for them, at first, but employers and the such are really going to appreciate the work ethic that stupid people develop out of necessity.

3. Interdependence. Smart people have the ability to be independent. They can get through life relying on themselves in a way that stupid people just can't. In university, for example, a stupid person is going to need more than alcohol and caffeine. A stupid person will probably depend on their smarter friends, use the academic skill centre, even (GASP) actually attend their professor's office hours. Plus stupid people are going to need to learn how to reach out for emotional support because their inability to depend upon their own brain may lead to a lot of stress and anxiety.

4. Humility. Theoretically speaking, if you spend your life as the smartest in the room needing no one's help, it is probably going to be hard not to become arrogant. Whereas, if you spend your  life staring your flaws in the face and admitting you need the help of other, smarter, people you are probably going to develop some super useful humility.

5. The importance of knowledge. Smart people can get by on intellect alone without needing to gain access to important knowledge. This one may apply to places other than university but it makes most sense in an academic context. The smart people look at the syllabus and think "Oh hey the essay and the exam are worth the most. I can ace the exam without studying and write a stellar essay in one night, so now all I have to do is come to a couple classes here and there to keep the prof off my case and I don't even have to do any readings I'll just throw in a couple comments based off the lecture to get participation marks." A stupid person, on the other hand, knows that no matter how hard they study or how much effort they put into the essay they are not guaranteed a good mark, so they have to do their best and try really hard in everything, which includes actually doing their readings. At first it may seem that the smart person has won because they do less work and get better grades, but the stupid person is actually gaining knowledge because of all the hard work they have to put into getting a passing grade.

6. The ability to learn and grow. A smart person can easily fall into the belief that there is nothing more for them to learn while a stupid person always knows that there is more.

Laurissa writes a femminist blog post!? (No, more like humanist)

This is for the skinny women who are tired of being told that "real women have curves" and constantly being reprimanded for not eating enough simply because their metabolism is rather fast. I know you can struggle with looking in the mirror and accepting what you see just as much as the next person. I know you have fallen pray to the bitter anger of jealousy. I feel for you. I imagine too that perhaps you are tired of the compliments on your looks and wish to be appreciated for what you carry in your mind, heart, and soul because I myself have felt that way and I don't even get that many compliments on my appearance.

HOWEVER, this is also for all the fuller bodied women because I want to show you that love for one person or group of people does not have to come at the expense of another. I know what the self hatred is like and the endless useless effort to change it all. I know that it can be harder to fall in love or get a job. Just the other day I heard my boss say that he needs cashiers but they have to be hot. I am not a cashier and the other girl who works in the same department as me has a similar body shape to minw while the cashier is much more thin. Were we all given our positions based on some ridiculous whim of my boss?  So it is truly possible that you are missing out on things because of your body type not to mention the name calling and persecution. It makes me sad.

We all need to learn how to accept ourselves and each other.

This is even for the man who is made fun of for being scrawny or fat, but it is also for the muscular man who is only appreciate for his body and expected to be a certain way.

This is for all people.

This is for the man who cries and is thought to be a sissy and the man who never cries and is thought to be too tough.

This is for the man ridiculed because he would rather cook, clean, and take care of his kids than fight with the numbers in their budget book and the woman ridiculed because cooking, cleaning, and childcare seem to her the most painful of monotonies.

It is for the woman who cannot walk home alone at night simply because of the gender she was born with and for the woman with a black belt in karate who walks without fear but gets criticized for trying to do things that are typically male.

This is for the woman who is persecuted in a job full of men and perhaps paid less too, but also for the woman who is looked down upon as someone not fighting for the cause simply because she WANTS to work in a more traditionally female role.

This is for the mother who wants to be respected for staying at home and the one who wants to be respected for having a career.

This is for all of us.

Fight for your cause, but not at the expense of someone else's struggle. We will only win if we work together.

Sympathy for the Hipster (What Hipsters Show About Humanity)

I saw a funny video one time that said that the one thing that we can all agree with whether we are gay, straight, black, white, religious, atheist, or none of the above is that we all hate hipsters. Even the hipsters are supposed to hate hipsters because no true hipster admits to being a hipster. I get it guys, I really do. I don't like their attitude like they are so much better than us just because I am not familiar with the band they like. I do not understand their ability to like things ironically. There is a Nerdfighter movement on the interwebs that says hey, let's unashamedly like what we like. That sounds a lot more authentic, real, and genuine than liking something to get status doesn't it? Here is the thing though, I was having a chat with a friend of mine who is basically a hipster and he was frustrated with how much people like certain books, movies, music, and TV shows because he felt that they didn't really like those things but were jumping on band wagons so that they could belong to a group or fan base. There is something wonderful about that sense of community when you all like the same thing. Hipsters may lack that sense of community but they have something else, authenticity. It may seem funny to say this when they are so known for liking things ironically, but I think a big part of why they don't want to admit to just straight up liking something popular is because they are afraid they don't like what it is for what it is, but for its popularity and to belong. They just want to like that weird band that no one has heard of because it makes them feel like they really like it for what it is and not for a community that it lets them be a part of, or a popularity it gives them, and also they seem to believe artists should create their art out of love for their art and not a desire to be popular or make money. Are those not beautiful ideas? The only problem is now liking something obscure gives you a weird sense of credit. Maybe not popularity, but it makes you seem like you are more knowledgeable about art/books/music/movies and that can motivate you more than just what you like. I think this just shows a lot of interesting stuff about what desires motivate humans. The desire for respect, belonging, and enjoyment and how these three things can sometimes conflict. It is just interesting.

Reading the Bible

I'm sitting on the front steps watching the wind dance through the trees. Listening to the leaves joining in. My  own hair tries to dance off my head. It is a beautiful afternoon. My one hand is wrapped around a mug of tea soaking in the warmth on this cold October day. My other hand holds tight to a pen. There is a book laying open on my lap. It is a well read book with wrinkled pages covered in colorful markings. I haven't read it in months. I feel my stomach tighten the way it always does when I read this book because this book reminds me that I am not what I would like to be someday. There is a light I can sometimes see, dim though it often shines in this dark world of mine, and I want to see more of that light in me, but the darkness of the world crowds its way into my heart and I'm growing weary of the endless days of monotonous pain for the way things are and the way they could be. I want to close the book and put it away because it hurts too much, but it stays open. Where is that neighbour's cat when I need a hug? My eyes are on the page although my mind is racing around in circles. Something causes me to pause. "Abide in my love." It sounds simple enough. Cut through the pain and the worry and take it back to what I think it was meant to be all along. But how do I do it? Can I drink it in the way I do the warmth and comfort of a mug of tea. Can I sit inside it like a windy day? Letting the beauty of it all change me. The way I enter the house more thankful and at peace after a long walk in the woods. I still do not understand. But I am not done with this book just yet.

OH THE MYSTERY! (Laurissa Discusses Books #2 - The Hound of The Baskervilles)

I just finished reading The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which is the first Sherlock Holmes novel I have ever read. I haven't actually read very many mystery books of any sort at all. In fact I think the only mystery novels I have read (not including the children's mystery books that I read growing up) are a couple of the ones by Canadian author Louise Penny which are set in a small Quebec town and future detective Armand Gamache. The mystery for me is why is this such a compelling genre for so many readers and, similarly, why are crime shows like Sherlock, CSI, Bones, and Castle so popular on T.V.? I don't like this genre very much because I read, and watch T.V., for two things. First I read for characters. I want books, T.V., and movies with characters that I can fall in love with and think of as friends. Second, I read for observations about humanity. I want books to remind me that I am not alone in experiencing what I am experiencing and to put the experiences I cannot express into words I can understand. I do not simply read to be entertained and I don't like books, like mysteries, that push me to read faster and faster keeping me from the enjoyable experience of rolling intriguing phrases around in my mind by forcing me to race to the end for answers to the mystery.  So if mystery isn't my thing, why does it appeal to so many other people?

Perhaps one reason is because of the challenge it provides. At the end of The Hound of The Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes says that he had already basically figured out the case before he even left London and that he only left because he needed proof for the courts. Well, the readers were given almost all of the same information as Sherlock, and yet I definitely did not know what was happening until the very end. For some, more ambitious, readers though this possibility of being able to figure things out before they are revealed to you may present itself as an exciting challenge.

I think there must also be a certain attraction to the detectives. I have been told that the character of Sherlock has inspired the creation of T.V. characters like The Mentalist, Dr. Gregory House, and of course tons of adaptations of Sherlock Holmes himself including the currently popular BBC mini series version. What is so appealing to us about a not always nice, but really smart and perceptive man?

I was a little disappointed that the characters in the book were not quite as vibrant as those in the BBC mini series. I find that often, in books that are very plot orientated, the characters can become a little bland. This book definitely did a better job than some, though. It painted a confident, self assured Sherlock Holmes who didn't have much time to consider the needs and wants of those around him and a Watson who was somewhat anxious to gain Sherlock's approval. The duo kind of reminded my of the similar relationship between Iggy and Victoria on the web series spinoff of Frankenstein: Frankenstein M.D. I was also really intrigued by Lord Henry's character with his tendency towards hasty action, but I would have liked to see these and other characters flushed out a little bit more.

But back to why we would be attracted to someone like Sherlock Holmes and mystery detectives in general. Maybe it is as simple as the fact that in a world where so much does not make sense we find very appealing the idea of a man whose comprehension of the world around him is much more fine tuned than ours. In this way it is possible that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel says quite a lot about human nature even without the fancy existential commentary of some less plot driven and more philosophical novels.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO NEXT!

To be honest, I am struggling. I thought things would get better if I got a job. Then I would be able to be proud of myself for being a hard working human being and I would have less fear of the future because I would be able to not only pay all my monthly bills, but also add to my savings so I could push the possibility of homelessness even farther into the future. However, since I got two part time jobs cooking and cleaning my life has settled into a rather drab monotony underlined by the ever present panic that comes with not knowing what to do next. I know I want to move back home, because I desperately want to spend more time with my family, but the job market is really bad there - even worse than it is where I am now. I know that, logically, I should get myself a steady career so I can alleviate some of my future financial woes. However, there are no careers readily available in today's economy which follow naturally from my current degree even allowing for the possibility of post graduate education. If I did choose to take a post grad degree in, say, teaching I would probably have to move far away to get a job and one of the few things I know for certain right now is that I love and miss my family, so I'm not down with that. I could go to college, or something, but I would be a little ashamed. It would feel like admitting that I wasted a lot of money on the wrong undergrad and I just don't think I did. It may not have lead to a career, but it was extremely formative, entertaining, interesting, informational, educational, challenging, enjoyable, and helpful. I don't regret it for a second. It also opened up a lot of amazing opportunities for me that have greatly impacted my life, but I can't help but wonder if it was a selfish use of my money even though I spent a lot of time volunteering during my B.A. in an effort to give back to the universe. Even if I were to get over the shame of going to college I wouldn't know what to take. This time around I want to be confident in my choice of career to make sure I waste no more money. I just am not confident in any career enough to go back to school just yet. The worst part is knowing that I am not alone in this. It is nice in that it alleviates some of the shame, but it makes me worry that - if so many people are still struggling to find direction, I may never find any. Sorry this was an obvious, sad, and useless post, but I needed to get it off my chest.

A Review of "A Complicated Kindness."

I have been trying to get back into reading again. It is hard because I have been rather sad and unmotivated lately without school. School stressed me out, but it kept me moving and it brought me alive because it meant that I always had something to think about.  I thought it might help if, instead of merely reading, I let myself write about what I read. This time, however, I will not be striving to sound academic. I will be honest. I will say what I really want to say about books. They may not be intelligent observations, but they will be from the heart.

It seems obvious to start with my favourite book, A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. If you know me well, then you have probably heard me mention this book quite a few times. I don't bring it up early as much as I would like to because I don't want to accidently encourage people to read it. I DESPISE suggesting things because I'm always afraid that people will end up hating whatever I suggested and will then get mad at me for a bad suggestion. In this post then, I will show both what I love about the book and what one could possibly dislike so that I can't get blamed for an overly rosy review.

I love this book, though, it means a lot to me and has spoken to me in different ways at different times, although I have actually only read it twice. I'm not a big fan of re-reading books. I read it for the first time when I was 14 and re-read it this year for a class. In this post I will be explaining how my relationship to the story changed the second time I read it.

Quick Summary Sans Spoilers: It is the story of a teenager in a Mennonite community who struggles with romance, family, and her relationship with the local church.

 The first time I read it I was 14 years old. I was in the second semester of grade nine. It was my first year in public school after being homeschooled my whole life. I was struggling to make friends and people made fun of me because I was such an ignorant good girl. I found this book on the coffee table in my living room. I picked it up because it had won Canada Reads (which is a literary contest I loved listening to on the radio). I loved it because it had references to sex and drugs, two things that I had been seriously sheltered from, up until then and I thought that reading it meant that I was a more street wise person who would be harder to make fun of. I brought it to school and read it in front of my classmates, hoping they would realise they had been mistaken in their judgment of me. Unfortunately, it made no impact because  none of them had heard of it. Reading it now I laugh at my 14 year old self because it is a lot more tame then some of the stuff I had to read for university. I also love how it is realistic in its portrayal of these things. It doesn't make them seem shiny and exciting but, to a degree, pulls the curtain off their cultural hype.

Another reason why I related to this story, back in the day, is because when I was 14 I was already struggling with the question of "what do I believe about God?" and  already had accumulated a lot of anger towards church. I could relate to Naomi's frustration with her Mennonite community and her rejection of religion the way it was portrayed in her community. What I didn't catch until the second time I read it was Naomi's love for her community and empathy for even the worst of characters. Now that I am older I am starting to understand that  anger is extremely complicated. Often, the people who hurt you are also the people you love and who love you and are also the people you have hurt because often the ones who hurt are also hurting. Reading it the first time I felt like a rebel for reading something that so openly expressed my own frustrations with the church. The second time, I loved it for its beautiful recognition of the complexity of life.

The third reason I love this book is for its poignant portrayal of Naomi's relationship with her dad. When I was four years old I told my mom I wasn't sure if I loved her because I didn't understand what love was, and I have been obsessed with the topic ever since. I loved that this book portrayed a love other than romance and I loved how awkward it was because this shows a sincerity you don't seen much of these days. This is something that means even more to me now that my father has died shattering my picture perfect family and forcing me to learn what it means to love broken people and acknowledge my own brokenness. I was so hung up on this aspect of the book, when I was 14, that I was convinced that this is what the title was about. I ignored the final paragraph and I clung to the better story that Naomi talks about because I wanted her family to be together again as much as she did and I resisted an interpretation of the text that involved forgiving and loving the town. What I would like to say to anyone who feels that the story is hopeless is that it is all up to a) how you interpret the end and b) your definition of hope. Also, I just love that it is realistic. To anyone who complains because nothing happens, I think plenty happens but not in a shiny, shiny, bam, bam kind of way. Think of it as a portrait of humanity. If that's not your thing, then maybe don't bother. This year I was walking down the street with a classmate who had also read this book and knew that I loved it. He didn't like the book because nothing happened in it. He told me that he understood that I loved it, though, because he figured I could relate to the characters better than he could. "I've never really known pain." He told me. That makes sense, I read not to be entertained, but to know that I am not alone struggling through this crazy thing called life and that is why I love this book so much.

The importance of self reflection and questions about forgiveness.

Socrates famously said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." I can't tell you why this makes sense to me, but it has always resonated with me. When I get busy just living and don't have time to examine my life I feel disconnected from myself and lost within my own skin, whatever that even means. It feels like for so long I have been super focused on concrete things like graduate, work for the summer, find a job, and figure out what  I want to do next year. It has bee a long time since I've had a chance to, oh  I don't know, get in touch with myself. I think that sometimes we believe things that are supposed to have a major impact on our lives but we get so busy living just to survive (work, cook, eat, sleep, buy groceries, do laundry, repeat) that we can forget even the most important things. Sometimes I need to remind myself about what I believe. One of my core beliefs is that forgiveness is an essential part of life. See I believe that humans in general are less than stellar and that if we want to be forgiven, loved, and accepted as we are, then we need to forgive. Now I also believe that all people should strive to be a little more stellar. As Jack Layton said "My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world." I have always thought that this was a little too much to ask of myself so I ask for God to help me be loving, hopeful and optimistic and that, for me, is an up hill battle, but what happens when someone else isn't loving? We want to fight all the bad in the world, but if we get mad at someone for not being loving we ourselves are not being loving. How do we love and forgive someone who isn't being loving without condoning their actions and while encouraging them to change? How do we forgive someone when we are still hurting and angry? I don't have the answers just as I don't know how to wake up and be hopeful and optimistic when I'm struggling with fear and despair. All I know is how I want to be and sometimes I lose sight of that because I get so caught up in trying to stay alive. I don't know how to achieve my goals, I only know that a teeny tiny part of me needs to hold onto the hope that there is an answer to these questions or I'll give into despair and anger and all hope will be lost. I do believe we should be allowed to safely and lovingly express some sadness and anger to stay healthy and not bottle things up, but I don't want to give into these things completely and I don't know how to strike that balance.

My life is the beginning of a movie, but my joy matches the end

I am almost 23 years old. I am single, I work in a fairly dead end job (in the sense that there is no room for ladder climbing, and I get paid just over minimum wage), I have a nearly useless degree, and I still live in student housing. There are movies and TV shows about girls like me and they almost always end up with the girl getting a fancy pants job and moving into a nice little place with some nice dude and presumably living happily ever after.

News flash: I am already happier than I have ever been.

I love my house and my house mates. I loved learning and do not regret getting my degree even a little bit. I am extremely excited about my job. I am genuinely excited for this year. It is going to be rad.

Do I wish I had a boyfriend, better job, nicer house, and a culturally acceptable way to justify my degree? YES. Of course, but not because I really want those things for them. I want them so I won't have to be ashamed of who I am and where I'm at.
Part of me likes the cultural prevalence of stories about women in their twenties and thirties who don't have their lives together because it makes me feel less alone. However, I can't stand their endings. It would be ok if SOME of the girls ended up happily ever after in the traditional sense and some of them didn't. That would be like real life, but in real life every messed up twenty something does not always figure things out and when they do figure things out their conclusions don't always match.
I will admit that I have watched friend after friend live through this narrative. They graduate jobless and confused. They move far away to get work. They fall in love. They buy a house. They have kids. I am happy for them.

HOWEVER, that is not the only narrative that my friends have lived through. I know people who still live happily with their parents working in the same town they were born into. I know people who have travelled around the globe. I know people with such a wonderful variety of interesting lives. Why is only one narrative being portrayed in the media?

Will I be upset if my life ends traditionally? NOPE. I would love to own a little house and have kids and as much as I realise that love is hard work if it were to happen in my life I would step up to the challenge.

However, that is not my current reality. I am currently at the beginning of the story where the girl has no idea what she is doing and this time it is not Hollywood so the ending is unpredictable. Here is the thing, why does the beginning of this story have to be sad? Now we all know I am against positivity. If you are sad be sad. I will give you a hug. Sometimes, though, I am happy even when things in my life do not emulate the end of a Hollywood movie. I am not talking about forcing yourself to be happy with something you aren't. I am talking about allowing yourself to be happy with something that might be culturally unacceptable to be happy with.

I have burnt myself out in work and school to impress people with my hard work and good grades trying really hard to push my socially awkward self into friend groups to impress people when all I really want out of life is nature, deep talks, and a chance to hang out with kids, oh and a mug of tea and something yummy to eat. These are the things that bring me happiness.  I have these things in my life. I am happy. Dear Hollywood endings, the only reason I've ever wanted you is so that others will respect me. That is so silly. Peace out.

Thoughts on community, beauty, forgiveness, and saddness.

I haven't written on here in a long time because I started feeling guilty about sharing my thoughts. Partly I felt like I was getting repetitive. I was also worried that people would think I was just venting to get attention.

 Please know that is not my intention. I write to make sense of the thoughts in my own mind. I share my words with the hope that it will spark conversation because I love few things as much as I love dialogue.

Also I share my thoughts because I love reading other people's thoughts on the internet. I like it because it gives me something to think about and it is always so encouraging when I come across someone who thinks the same as I do, and so I shall continue to write. I apologize if it upsets you.

Anyways I have something to talk about.

Community.

I have been struggling with this concept.

When I am away from community I get seriously lonely.

However, only twice have I found a community that actually worked for me and both of those were years ago and have been over for a long time.
My problem with most communities is something I have attempted to express many times before but feel that I have failed to communicate properly and so I will attempt to explain it one more time.

At some point people always end up criticizing me and encouraging me to try harder to do better and then they turn around and say they are doing this out of love. In theory that actually makes sense. If you think a specific way of life is better then you will probably encourage the ones you love towards that life style.

Unfortunately it does not work in my experiential reality.

Constantly having my weaknesses pointed out makes me feel guilty. Guilt has discouraged me from change rather than working as a motivator. I have worked hard to forgive myself and encourage growth within myself, but participating in guilt ridden communities have destroyed a lot of the growth I have experienced.

Warning I'm about to get realish: I struggle with sadness. I've decided it is probably NOT depression because the only days I've ever been unable to get out of bed were ones when I didn't really have to get out of bed. It has never gotten too much in the way of work or school and although I sometimes have issues with seriously bad dark thoughts my family is such a support that I know I am not in risk of any self harm or anything that serious. However, I have a lot of fairly dark days. They may not be as dark as someone else's dark days, but they are dark and they are fairly frequent.

I have found that what helps most is noticing, appreciating, enjoying, encouraging, and creating beauty and then forgiving myself for being sad and a hug from someone else. What hurts is feeling required to be happy. A lot of people have harmed when they meant to help by encouraging happiness in a way that makes me feel guilty for my sadness and it has made community almost impossible for me.
I am doing pretty well using beauty and forgiveness to overcome my darkness but I'm struggling with choosing between loneliness or painful community. So that's where I'm at. Sorry if my thoughts bothered you.

where I explore belonging, community, rootedness and stuff

I wary of saying that things are no longer what they were. One of my professors said that this kind of talk is usually misplaced. Yes, some things have changed, but a lot has stayed the same. However, I cannot help but feel that this generation is as another one of my professors used to say a people of scattered hearts. There was a time when people would have lived in the same place as where their great grandparents were born, but now it is slowly getting to almost be rare to even live where you were born.

Like many things there is a good side and a bad side to this phenomenon. Leaving behind the place where we were born can allow us to leave behind the perspectives we were born into and explore new ones.

However, as Marcel Proust said, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

 

What we lose as travellers and seekers is a feeling of rootedness and belonging. We also lose the lesson of learning to love the people who have been placed in our lives rather than searching for loveable people.

 

Once again I need to posit a however. Learning to live with others is something we need to be very careful about. I don't think we should go out looking for like minded people. If that is what you believe, then good luck with that, but I think it is important for us to surround ourselves with varying perspectives. I think this because I believe that it will help everyone to really question what they believe and why and assist each other in a journey towards truth.

 

However, the type of a life that I am suggesting - the one where we dig roots down in a community of people we don't even agree with - brings with it a whole complex set of difficulties. Disagreements will happen and they will be confusing and even hurtful.

 

Something that has helped me is that once my friend said "if we expect people to see the truth in what we say and change their mind we are asking them to be open to the idea that they might be wrong. If that is what we expect from them, then we too must be open to the idea that we might be wrong." If we are open to this fact it helps us really listen to why the other person believes what they believe because we are wondering if they could be right and this brings us to wonder if we have good reason for believing what we believe.

 

What happens when two people have a conversation and say "I've listened to the other person's reasons but they don't seem like good reasons to me. They have listened to my reasons but don't understand them. We still disagree. We are at a stale mate but it is not about something little, it is about something huge. It is a belief that we both hold to be very important to us."

 

This is a very interesting question. One I haven't answered yet. Maybe you need to continue to be that person's friend while continuing to disagree. Maybe your friendship needs to end. Maybe your friendship simply changes a little. Maybe what happens will depend on all the details of each situation.

 

What I do believe is that you should not fight to become part of a friendship or community where you have to give up your beliefs to be part of the community. It is important that communities be open to discussion in order to come to a closer understanding of the truth, but if you straight up disagree you either learn how to continue to be part of the community while disagreeing with the others, or you get out of there.

What breaks my heart and what I think may be the cause of the restlessness and rootlessness in our society is communities that demand that people give up who they are in order to join.

 

I desperately want to belong somewhere, but I am a questioner and although there are things I am willing to give up and although I want to seek out people I disagree with, I want to belong somewhere that allows questions and allows me to be who I am and believe what I believe and struggle with what I struggle with.

 

 

Where I grapple with the possible selfishness of my degree and what I want to do with my life

I woke up this morning feeling (as I often feel) like I have no freaking clue as to what I think about anything. And also angry. Then I spent my day reading and watching videos of people talking about books and I calmed down and even felt happy.

I don't really know what it is about books that makes me so happy. I've tried to turn it into a list of reasons before (http://aragtaghooligan.blogspot.ca/2014/02/why-should-you-read-fiction.html) and also to meditate on it more poetically (http://aragtaghooligan.blogspot.ca/2014/05/how-books-help-me-see-beauty.html), but I feel it defies explanation.

I love literature the way some people seem to love each other: beyond reason.

This revelation makes me very aware of something: one way or another I need a career in literature. I don't know what that will look like and it is something that I have been at war with myself over ever since graduation started to loom.

I still feel a lot of guilt for having studied literature because it feels like I wasted my money selfishly. I went to school because I wanted to, that was my only reason. I did not go to get a helpful job or to gain skills that can aid me in making the world a better place. Although, in my defense, I also did not go to school to get rich, gain power, or because that is what was expected of me.

However, I do believe two things:

1. That it might makes sense to do what we are passionate about because the world may need more passionate people (although, despite not being a fan of apathy, I cannot prove this belief in an argument, I've tried.)
2. That books have power. NOT the power of inspiration. I have ALWAYS been wary of people who seek to inspire others. Why inspire others to do what you could just do? Plus I don't think that movies and books really inspire people to action all that much. It took me THREE YEARS after having watched Food Inc. to actually become a vegetarian. So what is their power? I have basically answered this in my other posts about books where I explain that they help us see beauty, improve imagination, empathy, and critical thinking. However, perhaps even more important is something I have never really touched on before which is that I think books are capable of assisting with healing. Books help us work through the shit in our lives. We try to understand why things are the way they are and what we make of the world. We can do this through both writing and reading. And it is a beautiful thing. Reading forces me to say "Do I agree with this character's life choices? What theoretical ideas come out of this story and what do I think about them? What would I do if I were in this character's shoes?"

This is why I am at a loss for where to take my passion. Although I think it is helpful to learn the tools of reading and interpreting literature, I am not that interested in those tools. I want to go beyond a study of how words work to create meaning to a study of how readers use books in their daily life to contemplate the universe and to figure out how to exist. And after all is not the whole business of life the figuring out of how to be alive? As far as I am aware there is no place where I can do this, yet, because most schools study the text alone and not its relation to the readers.

How Books Help Me See Beauty

         Today, I watched the movie Julie & Julia. I don't know if you have ever watched that and whether or not you liked it, but it got me thinking. I'm not really sure how this particular movie evoked the following thoughts, but somehow it did. Why do I spend so much more time thinking about all of the things that make me mad than thinking about all of the things that make me happy? Don't get me wrong, I still think it is important to be true to both your sadness and your anger, but I also think I don't spend enough time focusing on the things I love.

Books. I love books more than most other things in all the world.

Of course, there are logical reasons to love books: http://aragtaghooligan.blogspot.ca/2014/02/why-should-you-read-fiction.html

But there is something more. One of the reasons I love books is because they show me the poetry of our world.

Now, first let me explain what I mean by poetry.

Some things (including poetry) make me feel something that I cannot put into words or comprehend with my mind. I love this feeling. There is something nice about having something that I don't need to comprehend.

Books make me feel this way. They give me a beauty I don't have to question or understand and they help me see it in the rest of the world.

Books make sad stories beautiful.

Books make me believe that bad things can get better and good things can be enjoyed.

Books make things that seem boring to me (like math or science) seem beautiful to me because they are told by other people who love these things and can share this love with me.

They ignite a passion within me that allows me to resist apathy. When I say I wish all the world could learn to love reading, what I really mean is I wish they could become passionate about the world because that is what reading does for me.

An angry letter to christians about pain

       To all my fellow Christians, there is something I wish you would stop doing. Please stop being "preachy" to sad people. I heard a story today that BROKE my heart. I don't want to get into the specifics but there was this woman who was going through some intensely bad times and she said something to someone about deserving a break to which they responded by saying she wouldn't want to get what she deserves because that is Hell and the whole point of Christianity is getting what you don't deserve. TECHNICALLY if you are a Christian then I guess you believe that is true, but there is NO WAY that it is an appropriate response.

      What makes me extremely angry about Christianity is that so often Christians try to tie everything up way too neatly. If university taught me anything, it taught me that the world is complicated. Things are not simple and complicated questions need complicated answers. Some aspects of Christianity make some aspects of reality way too simple. In a way, it is what I like about it. I like that it provides some meaning and logic to the way things are. There is something comforting about being able to say that things suck because evil exists, but that good is stronger and will one day win out over bad.

     What makes me mad is when people refuse to acknowledge the messed up in between time. IF we say, for arguments sake, that Christianity is true, THEN Christians are ok in an eternal sort of way, but they are not necessarily ok for NOW because for now we are all stuck on a messed up earth full of messed up people and natural disasters where we ourselves are still not perfect. Life sucks. You don't need to tell me that. I have friends who are straight up orphans, who battle addictions of all sorts, who live with anxiety, depression, mental illness, anorexia, or cancer. I know that life is not always wonderful. I also believe that there is big picture hope, but - though my big picture hope gives me strength to persevere THROUGH shitty reality - this hope does not make me happy.

     I cannot STAND people who do not acknowledge the shitty reality. I have either experienced or heard of way too many instances of Christians saying things like "this is what we deserve" or "it could be worse" or "everything happens for a reason" or "don't be self centered, other people have it worse" of  "count your blessings" of "you don't have a real reason to be sad" or  "God works in mysterious ways"

     You have no idea how badly I want to scream "FUCK OFF" I restrain myself because soooo often these people mean well. They cling to a belief system to make sense of a messed up universe. I do that too, but I acknowledge that my belief system can only explain so much, and that just because something makes sense does not mean it is beautiful. There is evil. You can explain it by saying we brought it upon ourselves and deserve more evil and do not deserve the beautiful ending we could get where evil is vanquished and good reigns, but even all this does not make the evil that is here and now go away.

    Another thing I hate is when people say "You're not God and you can't or don't deserve to understand all he does." That may be true but I don't know anyone who has been through real shit who is just going to sit back and not be sad or mad when bad crap happens. Did you know that the bible also says that you should mourn with those who mourn? So the next time you try to cheer someone up by saying something that basically amounts to "you should shut up because you don't have a right to be sad" remember that no matter how much you can explain the way things are all your theoretical ideas do not take away the reality of their pain. Pain does not need reason. Pain needs kindness.

Why I think Christianity is a Beautiful Story

       I realised yesterday when I was talking about how Christianity is the better story that I never really talk about why I love Jesus. There was this one time that I wrote about how Christianity gives me hope.(http://aragtaghooligan.blogspot.ca/2012/11/i-shall-hope.html) Hope is definitely a huge reason why I love Jesus. However, other than that, I mostly only write about why I dislike church, the questions I have, and the new ways of thinking about it all that I experiment with. This is not because I don't love Jesus. I spend so much time grappling with my confusions surrounding my faith BECAUSE I am so emotionally invested in it, if I didn't love something about it I would have given up on it all a long time ago. I decided to talk today about what I love about my beliefs. I should note, though, that since this is coming from me it is not a theologically correct statement of what Christians believe and why, its just the awkward ranting of one messed up believer who wants to remember all the reasons that she loves what she believes.

      One of the things that I have come to absolutely love about my faith is the complexity of it. I used to hate that. I wanted something super simple and easy to understand, but that was way back in the day before I came to university. I have since learned that reality is super complicated. Sometimes I wonder if Christianity was just constructed by humans so we would have answers to the tough questions. If it was, I applaud the humans who invented it because it is complicated and I love that because I feel we need complicated answers to respond to complicated questions and realities. I mean, Christianity can be simplified, and there are aspects to it that are beautiful in their simplicity, but I love that it is also something you can keep contemplating and (hopefully) constantly be coming to a better understanding of it on into forever.

     The complexity is something I love about The Bible as well as the faith in general. I also love the literary diversity of The Bible. There are poems, letters, and stories. There is love, war, and adventure. It really is a great book. It is very literary with tons of foreshadowing and symbolism and passages that truly come alive if you read them closely. I love how all of these different stories, styles, books, and chapters come together to tell one great story. There was a God who made a people who He loved dearly. They left Him, and brought evil to all He had so lovingly created and they needed to be punished, but He never stopped loving them and in one great climactic ending the great God came down as a mere human and took their punishment upon Himself leaving them with a helper to aid them as they tried to figure out how to stumble along in His footsteps and tell others about this great mysterious one after He had left and while they await His return. From a purely emotional and/ or literary view point is that not a fantastic story?

       I love that Christianity helps things to make sense. Evil is here because of sin, but there is justice in punishment for those who follow the path of evil. That is pretty much every old medieval story. To make sense of the world we have good and evil and to keep up hope we have evil punished. What makes Christianity even more beautiful is that it goes beyond that by saying that we can also have evil RENEWED! That is probably my favourite thing about Christianity. I know that I have a bad side, most people I know do, after all, none of us are perfect. I love the idea that we can be both forgiven, and renewed. It is the most beautiful thing to me and that is why I think Christianity is the better story.

Wanting to Believe What is Beautiful

 NOTE: I start out talking about Life of Pi, but I am actually talking about God. If you are not that into literature please still read to the end because I'm going somewhere with this.

     Last night I wrote my can lit exam and part of it required us to write a 4 paragraph response on Life of Pi. I wrote about a conversation which took place near the end of the book between Pi and the two Japanese men. They wanted to know which of the two stories he told was true, but, instead of answering, he asked them which was the better story. They both agreed that the better story was the one with Richard Parker, the tiger, and he responded "and so it goes with God." This is really interesting because, at the very beginning, the story says that it will "make you believe in God," but it never once tries to prove that God exists just as it never tries to prove that one story or the other is true.

       In fact, Pi is not concerned with reason, logic, or truth at all. He is concerned with faith. He notices faith in his Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Atheist friends but criticizes Agnostics for their "dry yeastless factuality." Two things are shown in this book to encourage faith in both the story with Richard Parker and in God. The first is that their beauty is shown. The beauty of the story with Richard Parker in it can be seen in that the two men choose it as the better story. The beauty of God is show in the beginning section of the novel where Pi explains his reasons for choosing each of the three religions he supports and describes the aspects that he finds beautiful about each religion and each God. The second thing that Pi does to encourage faith is that he shows the usefulness of Richard Parker and of God. It is his fear of Richard Parker which motivates him to act towards survival and it is belief in good gods that gives him hope. Both the usefulness and the beauty of God and Richard Parker are highlighted in Pi's admission of love for them. In one of the other books that we studied this semester in my Canadian literature class (my favourite novel ever, A Complicated Kindness) it was suggested that it is ok to believe a beautiful lie if it helps you survive. By showing the usefulness and beauty of God and Richard Parker, but not proving their truth, I feel like Pi is suggesting close to the same thing. The difference is that he seems to think it doesn't even matter what is true and what is a lie, only what is beautiful.

     This brings me to God. I know a lot of people, including myself, who have (for the most part) come to understand what Christians believe, why, and how it is beautiful, but still struggle with believing it. This may sound strange. If you understand it, and it seems beautiful, than why not believe? For most of the people I know in this place there are still a few things we don't understand or a few things that don't seem beautiful, so that could be part of it. However, I feel like there is something else. I go to university, so most of the people I know are obsessed with finding out what is true. The problem is that the more and more you study the more and more you realise it is almost impossible to know anything for sure.
       Everything is way more complicated than we tend to initially think it is, that is what university has taught me. It is possible to see the other side of almost every argument if you think about things deeply enough and that doesn't even touch on the subject of epistemology.The only thing I know for sure is that I exist in some way shape or form. I think therefore I am, but I could be the dream of a brain in a jar. I can tell by my actions and my level of confidence in those actions what I believe, but believing something does not equate knowing it and there are things that I hesitantly think and things I am pretty darn sure about, so I can't help but wonder how confidant I have to be before it counts as a belief. Is it ok if I say this makes sense to me, seems beautiful to me, and I have committed to living my life this way unless I ever find out that I am wrong and I could definitely be wrong?  Does that count as confidence and is it a good enough reason to believe something? Does it even matter what is true, and if it does how can we ever confidently believe we have found truth if we never know for sure?

Letters to myself

What I wish I could have said to myself at a variety of different life stages:

To Laurissa before age 9: Don't tell the older Laurissas but you are my favourite. I love your imagination, your energy, your curiosity, your zest for life. Stop crying so much though, like seriously, also stop stomping and getting mad, use your words to figure things out and don't take things so seriously, none of this is the end of the world, your life is great, enjoy it. Also I can't remember at what age you learned that having fun losing makes life easier but its the best lesson you ever learned so learn it faster it will make your life a beautiful place. Also, stop asking your Dad questions, it would save so many fights if you just realised that your mom is the one with the patience for all of your questions. Don't be mad at your Dad either, it takes him 15 years but he finally comes around to realise why you ask so many questions. These are actually some of your best years with your dad: fishing, biking, going to yard sales, or out for a snack. I know you wish you had more friends, but you have something even more beautiful, please cherish it.

To Laurissa from about age 9 to about age 13: I get it, you're lonely and everyone thinks you're weird. Listen, years later you are going to be proud to say that when you were 12 you spent most of your time contemplating the meaning of life. You are weird, own it, it makes you rad. Friends will come in time.

To Grade 9 Laurissa: You are the sort of person that it takes a lot of people time to get used to and to realise that they love you. Right now it feels like everyone hates you and you are wondering if you should believe them. Don't waste your time, they'll get over it soon enough, just be patient, and spend you're time trying to grow because it might help people hate you less if you calm the heck down. This is one thing it seems like you aint ever gunna learn, but grades don't really mean that much, so relax, although, I am proud of your hard work, good job.

To Grade 10 Laurissa: In less than a year you are going to lose your dad, don't you think that's more important that wasting your time liking this boy or that boy and worrying about grades and stuff? I know you're having trouble with this growing up thing and you already feel like you're losing your dad because you are growing up and drifting apart and that is totally fine and normal and ok, but the only problem is that you are never going to have the chance to drift back together again as you age so please don't bother with that stupid "boy friend" just hang out with your dad some more ok?

To Grade 11 Laurissa: Right now is one of the lowest points in your life. I get it. I understand, I've been there. You feel like you are alone, like no one in the whole wide world gives a flying shit and that is a valid emotion, but the thing is that people do give a shit, they just give it in their own crazy way and they are all going through their own problems and there is a sort of beauty in this picture of messed up people trying to love each other. Right now you don't see the beauty you just see the pain, and that is ok, but the beauty is there and so is the love. Also, I know you feel guilty, really, really guilty. You hate to see your mom unhappy in a job she hates. You hate knowing that you are not the only one who was affected by this tragedy. You hate seeing the people you love hurt so much and not knowing how to help them.  Most of all, you hate that your pain hurts so much that you can't always force yourself to think first of your family. You feel selfish and you hate that. You hate that you hate coming home to an empty house because you think it means you aren't a supportive daughter. Please just forgive yourself. You are going to feel so many different things this year and it is all normal. Also I know you feel like your family fell apart, but it didn't, it is a lot stronger than you think it is and so are you. It is going to be ok.

To Grade 12 Laurissa: You are not over it, and no one expects you to be over it, so why don't you just get real with yourself? Also please be careful. This is around the time that your anger starts costing you friendships, it would be so much easier if you could just deal with your insides before they seeped outside, but then again most of learning comes from mistakes so c'est la vie, also you know how you don't know what to do with your life? Don't worry about it, the answer doesn't come through a well thought out pros and cons list but from the heat of a moment. Relax.

To Laurissa in that random year after highschool: This is a hard year, you feel useless, but you learn a lot of great lessons and you are going to be ok. Pro tip, get off the freaking internet bro! There is a whole world out there for you to explore. Also I'm really proud of you.

To  University Laurissa: Gird your metaphorical loins, this is going to be a strange four years. I know you think that you are going to fail. Unfortunately you never do stop thinking that, but fortunately you never do fail, so I wish you could learn to relax. You don't even realise it, not really, but you are waiting for a good moment that will last forever so you can get comfortable and really start enjoying your life. It's not coming. You need to stop being so worried about the future. You are wasting your time trying to solve all the problems before they happen. Planning isn't really that useful. You just need to relax because it is not the beginnings or the middles or then ends that are lovely and it is no one year or set of years, it is the moments. And in these four years you will have billions of beautiful moments. I wish you could learn to cherish them without being afraid of what comes next. I wish that you could learn to trust people. I know you aren't that big on people since your dad died and you've had such trouble with friendships. It never really gets easy, but it does get beautiful, there are amazing people out there and they want to be your friend, please relax long enough to let them. Also don't worry too much about what you know or believe, you are never going to answer all the questions. This is not a race to see who can figure everything out first. You will never have it all under control. Relax. Slow down. Enjoy yourself as you go.

To present Laurissa: this is for you, all of it, all of these are lessons you still need to learn and re learn, and there is no shame in that. You will be learning and unlearning and relearning until the day you die.

An encouraging conversation

I had thee most encouraging conversation today and I want to share it with you. It started as all good talks do, I was minding my own business until I started chatting about Descartes with someone. (Oh how I love Descartes) From there we started talking about how we are all different. (They're not connected at all, I just wanted to mention Descartes because I love him) So say I'm a fork and you're a pop can and that guy over there is a bowl (we were eating dinner, we made metaphors with what was around us). The goal for me is not to be a pop can, but to be a fork the way a fork was really made to be. To be a fork to the fullest. Problems come when a pop can tries to be everything at once separate from everything else, or when it tries to force everyone else to be a pop can, or when you're struggling to be a fork and instead of helping you by admitting that it sometimes struggles to be a pop can it just makes a big show of being a great pop can. What my friend said to me today that really resonated with me was that we as forks have to try to make sure that we aren't trying to make the pop can be a fork. We have to try to forgive the pop can for its mistakes and to love it for what it is and see the good in it so that we are not being hypocrites by hating the hypocrites. The thing is, though, that we can still encourage the pop can to be a good pop can and forgiving doesn't mean we ignore the mistakes, we just have to try to balance that in love. My friend then ended by saying that sometimes you are angry and you just need to go throw stones in the river, and that's ok, because admitting your anger is part of staying true to who you are as a fork and being honest. That was the most beautiful thing I've be told in a while. I don't know if this makes sense or helps you with whatever is going on in your life, or if you just think I'm crazy, but I've been struggling with anger a lot and it really spoke to me so I wanted to share it.

23 things I learned about myself in university

University can teach you about the world but it can also teach you about yourself. These are things I learned about myself over my last four years as a university student:

1. I never want to be one of those annoying academic people who know so much and sound so smart but don't actually make sense. You know the ones I mean, the ones who just learned how to talk the talk but, when you really look at what they are saying, the truth is they aren't saying anything at all.
2. I like the way that poetry sounds and the way it makes me feel, but don't like discussing poetry in an academic setting.
3. Other people are even more interesting than I am, so I should listen as much if not more than I talk.
4. I'm not as weird as I thought I was. There are people out there who are as hyper as me, as studious as me, as unorganized as me, as interesting as me, as sincere as me, and as curious as me. 
5. One of the main reasons I like literature is because I like the way books make me feel.
6. My loud voice can sometimes be very useful.
7. I am an auditory learner. I learn best through conversations and if I don't write notes I learn more and remember more.
8. I am not one of those people who can operate on little to no sleep, I need my sleep.
9. Both modern and post modern Canadian literature are passions of mine.
10. I also interested in the search for a Canadian identity and in how that search relates to the geographical concept of place.
11. I am also just really interested in the over all concept of home.
12. I also love talking about the medium of story telling and how best to communicate meaning.
13. I am comfortable in uncertainty, perhaps too comfortable.
14. I can't do procrastination, it's not my style.
15. I love working with kids.
16. I actually am a good leader.
17. I have a really engaging speaking style when I chose to use it.
18. I need more confidence.
19. I need to get over my guilt.
20. It is possible for me to maintain friendships much longer than I ever thought, although it is hard for me.
21. I am not a natural initiator.
22. I may have a way with words.
23. Although I suck at keeping material possessions organized I have a gift for time management.   

Conversations (A Slice of Poetic/ Fictional Dialogue)

 

Personalities

I don't like personality tests.

John Green said "Imagine others complexly." I love that. We defy stereotype and categories. We ooze over lines. We are complicated creatures difficult to define.

Unfortunately, we love to understand and to do that we often simplify and categorize.

It is true that there are similarities between people, but I do not ever want to minimize a person to a title.

However, Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living." And I agree with that. Seek to understand yourself, and all that surrounds you, but seek to understand it in all of its complex beauty.

I suggest, that rather than answering questions to receive a title, we answer questions to discover the answers. So here are some questions I suggest you ask yourself if you want to understand yourself better. These are just a start to give you the idea, come up with your own questions.

1. What do I enjoy doing and why?
2. What makes me happy and why?
3. What makes me stressed/ anxious/ nervous/ afraid and why?
4. What makes me sad and why?
5. What makes me angry and why?
6. What do I think I'm good at?
7. What do other people think I'm good at?
8. What do I find very difficult to do well?
9. What sorts of thing confuse me? How? Why?
10. What energizes me?
11. What time of day do I feel at my best?
12. Do I enjoy being with a lot of people more, or by myself, or with just a few people? Why? Which one gives me energy? Is the answer different in different situations?
13. In what circumstances do I learn easiest? Is it different with different things?
14. Do I learn slowly or quick? Is it different with different things?

Thank You

It is a story I like to tell a lot, so you have probably heard it before:
An 18 year old girl sat in the back of her uncle's car panicking a few months before her 19th birthday. All of her life's possessions were crammed into the little trailer at the back of her uncle's car. "I can't do this!" She declared over and over and over again. "Maybe we should just turn around. I'm going to fail. I'm never going to make friends. You know, I bet I never even got accepted, it has all been a mistake and I'm going to get there and they aren't even going to have my name listed." Finally her uncle invented a complicated car game for them all to play to distract her, or to shut her up.

4 years later and here I am still as scared as ever but with four years worth of beautiful moments.

I loved university.
I loved meeting people who care about books as much as me.
I loved learning how to really read a text closely and understand it.
I loved learning how language works to create meaning.
I loved exploring ideas.
I loved learning the history of my country.
I loved hearing different opinions and reading the stories of a variety of people.
I loved learning how to communicate more clearly.

But more than all of this it was the people I met that changed my life.

Four years ago I left behind the only home I had ever known, but it didn't even feel like a home.
My father had passed away three years before that and I truly felt like my family had crumbled.
In the years since then I have learned to appreciate my family for who they are but at the time I felt very alone.
I had been out of high school for a year before I came to university. High school had been hard for me. I was an easily stressed, overly inquisitive, kid with bad fashion sense who had never heard the music of my peers or seen the movies of my generation. I was awkward and scared of social interaction yet still unbelievably bold. It took people a long time to get used to me. The first thing they noticed was that I wasn't like them. It took time for them to realise that I wasn't like anyone. When they figured that out I started to get some respect, but it took time. I learned patience. Even though I found a lot of solace in the drama club I never truly felt like I belonged. I made friends but we never really hung out. I spent most of my time with my family and half way through high school all of that shattered when my dad died and my older sister moved out for university. I still had my youth group but it didn't take long for them to get tired of my questions and by the time I came to university I was left with very little community to hold onto. I was afraid and cautious. I had low expectations for the next four years. I didn't believe that I could ever belong anywhere. I was convinced that everyone would leave me eventually.

I don't really know how it happened.
It is funny how many people can be loved by someone who doesn't even believe that humans are capable of selflessness.
Don't get me wrong, there has been anger and grief. There have been people who entered only to leave. (It wasn't always there fault sometimes it was just due to temporary circumstances.)There have been people who didn't understand or didn't care. There has definitely been hurt, but there has also been something else: belonging for the first time.

From bible studies, to camp, to classes, to French immersion, to friendships that grew outside the bounds of categories.

My new friendships have taken me to poetic coffee shops, on crazy long bus rides, on hikes out in the woods, and into people's homes.

I don't even have the words to express how much all the people I have met over the last four years have meant to me or how special the moments have been. All I can say is that I know when I have forgotten what a false dichotomy is and how to conduct a close reading I will still remember the summer of blueberries, planking on the bus, barefoot pasta potlucks, afternoon campouts in the forest, river walking adventures, 4 hour coffee time, poetic non verbal communication, sunsets over the St. Lawrence river, long dinner conversations, and ever single person who entered my heart.
Thank you.

Stars, Dr. Seuss, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Why Mediocrity is Perfectly Acceptable

Ok big confession here: I'm really panicking...about a couple of little stars.

I am about to graduate, and a couple of years ago I went to a friends graduation where I got this booklet that held all the names of all the graduates. Some had stars beside their names, and some didn't. The stars represented good grades and as much as this makes me sound like a Sneetch form a Dr. Seuss book, ever since that day I have been working my butt off to get a star beside my name.

Now this might sound ridiculous, but I think that at a deeper level this crazy obsession over a star is actually something that we all do all the time.

We all want to be special.

I remember a really long time ago I was a part of this youth group where one day the youth leader got this idea to try to use symbolism to make a point so she took us all into the nursery of the church and she gave us cookies and read us "The Sneetches" by Dr. Seuss. We all reminisced about the good old days of being kids. Then we talked about the symbolism behind the book and behind the cookies.

She offered us a choice, we could have a store bought chocolate chip cookie, or a home made chocolate chip cookie. Everyone chose the homemade cookies. Then the youth leader delivered her big metaphor: We are all like the homemade cookies and that is actually better. We are different and unique (you know, like snowflakes), and wouldn't it be boring if we were all the same? We need to be brave and be ourselves and don't try to fit in like all the Sneetches in the story. Just accept everyone for who they are. BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!

We have all heard this kind of thing SO MANY TIMES BEFORE. At the time I was too impressed by the idea of using a cookie as a metaphor (this was a long time ago, metaphors were still new to me, leave me alone) I wasn't paying enough attention to realise the ridiculousness of it all. But here it is, what if the problem isn't that we want to fit in at all?

Take the Sneetches story, it wasn't really about fitting in, but about standing out. Yes, the Sneetches who had "no stars upon thars" didn't like being left out and wanted stars so they could fit in, but that wasn't what kept the story moving forward. What kept the plot going and what let stupid whatshisface make all that money was the Sneetches who were like "shit dawg they're just like us now, we gots to think of some other way to be special" (Ok those are not words from the story, but you know what I mean). So they paid mrwhatshisface (actually this could also be a book about consumerism, but that is not what I'm talking about so shelve that thought in a different brain drawer for later contemplation) and GOT RID of their stars so they could be special.

All our lives we have been told we are special like snowflakes so we have been trying crazy hard to be special to stand out. All my life I have wondered "What is my gift, what can I give to the world? Can I inspire others with words, music, or athletic ability? Can I explain things better than anyone else or discover new knowledge faster? Can I solve unsolvable problems with my brain? Can I create useful tools?" The question gets disguised as a seemingly useful one "what can I do for the world" but at the heart of it is the selfish desire to be special in one way or another.

What if we are not? What if I have no amazing abilities? What if I am just...mediocre?

Now don't get me wrong. We all have skills of some kind, you might not be the best at anything but you are probably ok at lots of thinks and it is good to know what these are and how to use them. For example, I am convinced that one of my biggest things to offer is that I actually give a shit (pardon my language but I feel like this is the best way to word it) and  I am willing. When I look back, all of the things I did with my life are not characterized by me being so great at something, but by me seeing a need, caring that it existed, and doing my best to fill it. Then of course I ruin everything by freaking out because I don't think I'm good enough. I've been trying this whole time to find my calling, so to speak. Every time I step up I think "oh maybe this is what I'm meant to do" and then I panic if I make a mistake because I see my reason for existing shattering and I get like frozen by fear of failure.

 I am finding peace in realising that it is perfectly ok to be mediocre, you don't have to be special. My skills aren't anything that make me shine, my skill is simply that I'm willing to try, and now I can calm down when I'm trying to help knowing that I don't have to look for my role in life anymore, because I've been playing it the whole time.

Confessions of Eccentric Survival

Streetlights fascinated my child brain

As did the line in the middle of the street

Crossing at the lights was great fun

But better still would have been to balance

On that middle line, as the city slept

 

My nightmare was that I had run away

Though I always intended to return

I just wanted to see what freedom felt like

I’d wake up feeling guilty

For abandoning my mother in my dreams

 

 I used to go into the library just to touch the books

I didn’t always even take anything out

 I simply liked the smell and how they felt in my hands

Books kept me securely couched somewhere between

The lands of imaginative feelings and physical realities

 

Today, I often mutter to myself

“I don’t know what I am doing with my life”

When I have merely forgotten what I am doing with a moment

 Sometimes I try to say “What is this, my life” in French

But it comes out badly muddled and no one understands

 

Sometimes, when I am overwhelmed with the burden of existence

I find myself standing in the middle of the kitchen

 The sudden feeling that I have lost my purpose may cause me to sit down

Kitchens can do wonders for your perspective on life

 

Sometimes I even try to fly, although I always know it won’t work.

Thoughts on homeschooling

I am just now realizing how proud I am to be homeschooled and how foundational this experience was for my life. When I first started public school (in grade nine) I was really proud of being homeschooled. I soon learned not to be and, although I still talk about it fairly openly (I'm a very open person), it is no longer one of the first things you will find out about me when you meet me, but yes, I was homeschooled.

The way I see it (and I could be wrong) just from what I have experienced myself and what I have heard from other friends who were homeschooled, there seem to be three basic types which I then generalize further into two categories.

Category one: internet/ curriculum based
This category is pretty much JUST doing school at home.
If you are fully curriculum based your parent or guardian will probably act as your teacher but he or she will be led all the way by a curriculum which will tell them what to teach you and when.

If you are internet based it seems that this is pretty much just like taking an online course for a public school. In that case someone you may not even know in the real world will be teaching you, guiding what you do when, and grading your work.

Both of these options seem to include a lot of individual book work although there can also be group projects/ experiments/ and activities with siblings or with a homeschool group.

The second category is what I like to think of as learning by interest.

I have heard of people who will literally not teach until their kid asks a question. That may sound crazy at first because the system is so focused on making sure kids learn certain things by a certain time, but think how many questions kids ask that we are too busy to take the time to answer. What if those were learning opportunities missed?

My mom chose a bit of mix and match. Now the first half or more of my homeschooling days occurred before we had a computer with access to the internet, so we never used that option. My mom never taught based on one complete curriculum but she would mix and match books from different curriculums. Sometimes we did book work, and sometimes we'd do an experiment or project together, the idea of which she might have gotten from one of the books. However, she didn't JUST mix the different curriculums, for she also mixed them with her own ideas and with learning by interest. We only had curriculum books ordered specifically for certain subjects. A huge portion of our learning was thanks to the local library. We made numerous trips to the library and mom would ask us to pick an interest, something we were curious about, and we would get books out about that subject. Sometimes when we were done reading it we would create some sort of project to illustrate our knowledge.

In the two years after my sister went to high school, before I did, my learning became even more experiential. I got to pretty much choose everything I wanted to read about and because I really enjoyed hands on projects I made a ton of them to illustrate the knowledge I gained from my readings. I also got to do a lot of things like bake with my mom for "cooking class" or practice drawing flowers in the garden for "art class."

Another major part of my learning was literature. Technically literature was never on our list of things to learn. We worked on grammar and spelling work-books and had creative assignments to write poems or stories, but after being taught how to read I don't remember ever being given reading as an assignment. Instead, mum would start every day by reading aloud to us from a novel she had picked. These books would usually be above my reading level, they might have won awards, and they were often about other countries or other time periods so I was learning about stuff, but I thought we were just reading. When school was done usually I would end up dropping a book about butterflies or space or whatever, just to pick up a novel I had picked out myself. I thought reading was fun, but all the while I was growing my vocabulary, my knowledge of how meaning is made, what a good sentence sounds like, empathy, and my knowledge of the world around me. All of this was happening without me even realizing it.

So that is my experience with homeschooling. What were the benefits and was there a downside?

Benefits:

1. Learning at my own pace (I was always a slow learner because I wanted to completely grasp a concept before I moved on)
2. Having someone to talk to. There was just my mom, my sister and I. My teacher's attention was not divided between 30 kids so I could ask all my questions and discuss out loud all my confusions which is how my mind has always worked best.
3. Passions were developed. A lot of my learning was based off of what I was interested in, so I never lost my love of learning. It seemed fairly fun to me rather than something that was forced upon me, because it was something I still wanted to do.
4. I learned critical thinking because we took a short course in it when I was around 10, but the whole style of my learning lent itself to critical thinking because I was always more focused on understanding and grappling with confusion than on deadlines.
5. It developed my creativity because I was encouraged and enabled to think outside of the box.

Downside:

1. My particular homeschool experience left me without ever having gained the social skills I so desperately needed because we didn't have a car, so we could not be part of a homeschool group.
2. I never learned how to handle the stress of a deadline because I had all the time I wanted to grapple with my confusions.
3. I was used to having someone to talk out my questions with and did not learn much independent problem solving which made it overwhelming when suddenly my teachers didn't care about me because I was only one of thirty kids.

NOTE: All of these problems are based on things I ended up learning (or began to learn) in high school, so it's all good man.