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.