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.