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.