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.
Thursday, 10 April 2014
Thursday, 3 April 2014
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:
- 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.
- I like the way that poetry sounds and the way it makes me feel, but don't like discussing poetry in an academic setting.
- Other people are even more interesting than I am, so I should listen as much if not more than I talk.
- 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.
- One of the main reasons I like literature is because I like the way books make me feel.
- My loud voice can sometimes be very useful.
- I am an auditory learner. I learn best through conversations and if I don't write notes I learn more and remember more.
- I am not one of those people who can operate on little to no sleep, I need my sleep.
- Both modern and post modern Canadian literature are passions of mine.
- I also interested in the search for a Canadian identity and in how that search relates to the geographical concept of place.
- I am also just really interested in the over all concept of home.
- I also love talking about the medium of story telling and how best to communicate meaning.
- I am comfortable in uncertainty, perhaps too comfortable.
- I can't do procrastination, it's not my style.
- I love working with kids.
- I actually am a good leader.
- I have a really engaging speaking style when I chose to use it.
- I need more confidence.
- I need to get over my guilt.
- It is possible for me to maintain friendships much longer than I ever thought, although it is hard for me.
- I am not a natural initiator.
- I may have a way with words.
- Although I suck at keeping material possessions organized I have a gift for time management.
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
Sunday, 23 March 2014
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.
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.
- What do I enjoy doing and why?
- What makes me happy and why?
- What makes me stressed/ anxious/ nervous/ afraid and why?
- What makes me sad and why?
- What makes me angry and why?
- What do I think I'm good at?
- What do other people think I'm good at?
- What do I find very difficult to do well?
- What sorts of thing confuse me? How? Why?
- What energizes me?
- What time of day do I feel at my best?
- 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?
- In what circumstances do I learn easiest? Is it different with different things?
- Do I learn slowly or quick? Is it different with different things?
Monday, 17 March 2014
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.
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.
Friday, 14 March 2014
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.
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.
Monday, 10 March 2014
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.
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