Balance: Cosmo or Businessweek

Today I discovered one of my favorite CDs from last summer. As I was cruising down the road with the windows down, sunglasses on, and sun warming my left arm, Colbie Caillat's "Dream Life, Life" came on:

Dear someoneHave you ever wanted outOf all the stressfulnessAll the businessYou could do withoutTake all of your worriesThrow them awayEveryday should be a fun dayThats what I say

All I want is a dream life lifeWith the ones I lovePlaying all day longLaying back by the water sideWith nowhere to goAnd the music onAll I want is my dream lifeTo be my real lifeHow could that be wrongAll we have is this lifeSo make it be what you wantAll I want is a dream life, lifeAll I want is a dream life, life

Dear summerWill you find your way back homeI miss your golden kissHow you warm my skinWhere did you go?Take all of my worriesAnd burn them upEveryday will be a fun dayUnlock my handcuffs

All I want is a dream life lifeWith the ones I lovePlaying all day longLaying back by the water sideWith no where to goAnd the music onAll I want is my dream lifeTo be my real lifeHow could that be wrongAll we have is this lifeSo make it be what we wantAll I want is a dream life, lifeAll I want is a dream life, life

No, I did not call in sick to work todayNo, I'm not out hanging with my friendsThere's no more wasting time on what I think I'm supposed to doMy clock is standing still so

I can have my dream life lifeWith the ones I lovePlaying all day longLaying back by the water sideWith nowhere to goAnd the music onI'm working hard for my dream lifeTo be my real lifeAnd that can't be wrongAll I have is this lifeSo I'm making it what I want
This song is genius. I'm on my last break in my undergraduate career. Easter's here, and everyone is excited to be done. We all want free time, summer--a dream-life life, as Colbie says. Yet, I'm struggling with that feeling of freedom other seniors are craving, because I am going to law school. I am continuing my education, and I am excited about that too.
Maybe it's just a mindset, it's a culture that says we are supposed to complain about work or school. We are supposed to "live for the weekend," right? The problem with that is that we never enjoy life. Life is all about the journey. It is the journey. It is a series of challenges, changes, of moments. Life is a series of accepting things we never thought we'd be old enough to face. That's my motto, but it doesn't have to be a negative thing.
What if we, as a society, balanced one extreme to "live life in the moment and not lose your life to work" with the other that says "your work determines your life, because it pays for the dreams you want"? I'm figuring out how to do that, I just wish there was a magazine that reflected my phase of life--it's not either Cosmo or Businessweek.

Stars & RomComs

I grade for an astronomy class this semester, so I get to relearn a lot of things from when I took the course. Stars are believed to have formed out of clouds of hydrogen, helium, and random dust in space. The bigger the cloud, the bigger the star that forms from it, because there is more stuff to be pulled into the star and more gravitational energy to do the pulling. Bigger stars pull together with more gravitational energy, and they have hotter cores (gravitational energy becomes thermal energy). The stars also create new elements in their cores. Remember how elements are made of different numbers of protons, neutrons, and electrons? When hydrogen and helium heat up, they fly around and smash together into bigger groups. That makes new elements. The greater heat essentially makes the star "burn up" faster than smaller stars, but it can create bigger elements before it dies. Thus, bigger stars have shorter lives, and smaller stars have longer lives. It seems backwards, because more wood for a fire means it'll burn longer, right? Not if it's in one gigantic pile. Smaller stars don't burn as hotly, but they don't cool as quickly.

RomComs generally have two story lines:

1. Boy & Girl meet. Instantly fall in love. Someone does something stupid, and they break up. Everyone is sad, but eventually the stupid person does some sort of huge romantic gesture to show just how sorry s/he is (like chasing to an airport, building a white house with blue shutters...). The first person ultimately forgets the offense, and they live happily ever after.

2. Boy and Girl are either friends or hate each other. Either way, they are constantly in each others' lives as one or both of them do stupid things with other people. In a moment of weakness (a bar, recovering from a break-up...), they get together. Sometimes there's an "oh-no-we-didn't" moment that's eventually overpowered, but they're just magnets that stick together. They forget why they didn't date or hated each other. They live happily ever after.

The problem with these isn't just that they're unrealistic. It's not just that they oversimplify relationships; it's that when one out of two marriages end in divorce, that is all people know about relationships. This isn't just a post about intense relationships that fizzle or friendships that last forever. I'm wondering if it's even possible for intense relationships to last.

Can you have a big star that has a long life?

Technically all stars have long lives, like a bajillion years or something (I just made that up), but I have to wonder. RomComs would say that when you end up together, every moment will be intense. It'll be a giant star that burns hotter and brighter than others. But physics says the bigger, brighter, and hotter the star, the quicker it will die.

What if strong, healthy relationships are like smaller stars? They still create new elements in their cores, they still emit light, and their deaths are still noteworthy galactic events. But maybe, just maybe, healthy relationships aren't about being big and flawless. They just are. And instead of giving up on them, like RomComs tell us to do unless both people sweep their problems under the rug, maybe we need the other person to tell us we're acting like a crazy person. What if we could let that person create new things in us, make us better, teach us about ourselves, as long as that person is in our life?

Life: Textbooks, Labs, and Picasso

Last semester, I took my one lab science course, Astronomy, as a part of my core requirements. It was a great example of different types of learning, because in lab courses you learn and experience. The best labs were ones where we used a spectrometer to see the different properties of light or where we lined up lenses and saw how they flipped a poster at the end of the hall upside-down. The good labs weren't just worksheets with specific numbers; that's classroom, textbook stuff.

If your mind is as crazy as mine can be, you've already reached a moral: life is about living, not formulas, calculations, and textbooks. It's not about playing it safe and coloring inside the lines. But that's not the only thing I'm thinking about.

Go back to the learning analogy. Remember that there are different styles of learning. Some people learn best when they read off the page; they remember where the text was relative to other information and pictures, the re-read the words until they fall neatly into organized memories and can be recalled as needed. Other people have to speak or teach what they are trying to learn to etch it into the sands of their recollection. They need to look at the keyboard as they type so they can close their eyes and recall where the keys were. Still other people need to know why; they need to understand what works and what doesn't work about everything relating to that fact or theory. They need to experience it.

Now consider how people live their lives. Some people read historical, philosophical, or even religious texts and grasp a great deal from the text. They can apply the meaning to their lives, and they truly internalize the concepts. Others need to process their understandings by talking to other people. They have an "open mind" and are truly touched by the experiences of others. They change when they see something happening. And still other people learn what the painting of their life will look like as they simply color and find out what looks good. It's not that they do not understand that which motivates the first person. It's not that they do not wish they could be completely motivated and changed by the stories of others, after all it would be nice to learn from another person's mistakes. What if it was that this type of person simply learned differently?

What if, instead of condemning others who do not condemn themselves, we allowed them to go "Picasso" on their life's beautiful canvas until it became uniquely beautiful?

Career, Family, and Spotts

A wee little bit of background (and a plug):

A few weeks ago, a friend recommended a blog to me. Now, I've never really followed more than one thing at a time. And I set that main thing as my home page (which is CNN right now, so I'm trying to follow that before hitting the "Facebook"bookmark). But, this blog is different. Ally Spotts (allyspotts.com) is a twenty-something writer and teacher who blogs about life, relationships, singleness, running (yeah, I don't do that part), and her experience with the "Quarter-Life Crisis." There are so many things I love about her blog: how she writes (she has a bachelor's degree in writing), how she presents her information (she is honest and not "fluffy" or superficial), and the perspective she brings (she is old enough to have more experience than my circles, she just got engaged, and her applications are those of a Christian while not being overtly religious). I may not follow it regularly, but it was the first thing I added to my RSS feed, and I am sure to at least skim ALL of her posts. In late Semptember, Ally blogged about the "Career v. Relationship" dilemma society places on women. In fact, she had a guest blogger contribute "The Lies I Tell My Single Self" the next day. This guest laid bare her three excuses for not dating (simplified): "I don't have anything to offer," "I don't want to bring anyone into this mess," and "I want to figure myself out first." It made me think about my life, so here we are.

The point:

Life does not go as planned. We know this. Most plans to marry by 25, start a family a few years later, and make partner at the firm by 30 don't pan out just the way you thought they would. Goals are important, but planning life's every detail doesn't make the adventure of life very adventuresome. In fact, it makes the changes in life earth-shattering. When you don't get into the college you've dreamed of attending for a decade. When you don't get the dream job right out of college.

When you suddenly realize something new might be better than you could ever have planned, a new major, career path, relationship, or singlessness, it can be freeing. And experiencing a little bit of this freedom can tempt carelessness. A lack of planning. A lack of vision. No drive. "Freedom from" can be over-applied.

If (when?) I get married, life's decisions will be different than they are now. Financial obligations will change. Visions of where to live will be different. The decision to accept a job offer will be more complicated. All of these will involve a whole separate person's opinions. And this is not something my million-option mind can process in advance. So this part of life's plans have to stay loose. I don't even have a choice in that one. While I can hope, I cannot bank on being married by 25, 27, 29. I cannot stop making plans now on the assumption that I will someday have to change that plan, because I just don't know. And yet, I need some sort of a plan so I don't have a lack of vision. So I am not considered a rambler with no drive.

So I plan: law school after my undergrad, during which time I will spoil my niece as she goes through the infant-toddler stage. Kick butt in law school. Graduate with a job offer. Kick butt as a lawyer. Eventually work with mainly or solely discrimination cases. Kick some major hateful-butt at that. Maybe argue a case in front of the Supreme Court someday, but that's just a crazy dream. Throw in marriage and kids somewhere, maybe.

The fact that I'm planning has caused some friends to say I'm "career-oriented" instead of "family-oriented," but I say I have a plan that I like. I have a map, a drive, a destination in mind. Yet life is a road trip, and I'm open to taking a day here and there in new cities. Enjoying the sights. Meeting the locals. And until I have to decide which sight to see in which city or which local (read: "stranger") to talk to, this all sounds great. But it's scary. If I'm not petrified when I actually have to make these choices, I just might get addicted to the freedom.

And I wonder: what if I get so caught up in the distractions that I never make it to my destination? Will I look back and say "I wish I could have loved Person X, worked at Firm X, fought for Cause X"? What if I really am rationalizing "I don't have anything to offer," "I'm a mess," and "I need to figure me out"? How can we ever know if we're on a lazy, crazy, or perfect path?

Anxious Concern

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." I'm not really sure where that quote originated, but I'm sure most ladies know it's from the Princess Diaries. That's really not the point.

Merriam-Webster defines fear (the noun) first as "an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger" and last as "a reason for alarm." That makes sense. It's something that gets our hearts racing in a not-so-pleasant way, and we don't know what will happen. The moment you're sitting at work when you can't remember if you left the stove burner going or not. That second right before you drop on a rollercoaster when you're hanging there waiting for the rest of the train to come over the hump. Your first job interview, pregnancy, or seminar class. Your first love.

But fear is not necessarily bad in itself, in fact, fear is something internal that can be caused by "exposure or liability to injury, pain, harm or loss" (the M-W definition of danger). Isn't that just life? Doesn't gettting out of bed create a liability for injury? I think this is where the other definitions of fear come in: "anxious concern" and "profound reverence and awe, especially toward God." So when we are excited yet anxious about apologizing to a friend, the first few weeks in a new job or trying something new, we are technically experiencing fear. What a strange concept.

Fear, that thing which we always say cripples us, causes us to panic or to act irrationally, need not be a bad part of life. But what does that even mean; isn't that just arguing semantics over an emotion that really could be so strong it prevents action and clear thought? Isn't the natural reaction to someone breaking into your house with a knife to be terrorized? Maybe, but that emotion does not need to be crippling.

I'm not going to say we should just be bold, yet wise, in our responses and decisions. I'm not going to go back to the beginning and say "decide something is more important than fear." You would have seen that one coming a mile away. I'm going to say fear as a good part of life looks like fear. Yes, fear looks like fear. Because how else can I say that an emotion to which we credit our own lack of action or apathy could really be "anxious concern"?

Maybe that concern is for our very lives or maybe it's not, but when we think about how some people are able to be bold and confident, or even selflessly heroic, I have to wonder if what we think about fear will actually define how we react to high-stakes situations.

I wonder if fear would be more of an overly-alerted state where our senses are all heightened and our adrenaline is flowing. Maybe having this new "fear" about taking a test will actually help you recall information; maybe "fearing" admitting something will help you say it correctly. Maybe fear, simply because we know it alerts every part of us, will make us more courageous and able to act on our "anxious concerns." What if fear is necessary for courage to even exist?

The Curious Self & Birthing

Well, that's an interesting title for a blog post, you say.

This morning in church, the pastor mentioned the birthing metaphor in Christianity. He talked about being "born again" and what that means. So, naturally, I went on a random thought tangent about birthing-- right there in the middle of the service.

Most Christians understand the phrase "born again" as something either synonymous with or closely related to "accepting Christ" and "being saved." It's the moment when you give your life to Christ, and He forgives you of your sin. But I have to wonder. See, the moment when you actually admit that you've failed is actually a joyous one--yes, it might be difficult to come to that point, but when we actually accept that we have failed, we realize that there is an alternative. There is hope; it's only up from there. Acceptance is the first stage. So the actual moment is joyous, and I have to wonder if that's what being "born again" is. It's a freeing moment when you realize Love conquers all; it's not a moment when you're thinking about your pain. You're experiencing life with out it for, maybe, the first time.

I say all this not to espouse religious doctrine but to point out the contrast between that joyous occasion and the actual birthing process. Because it's not a pretty, simple, pain-free experience. Women often do things like yell at family, blame their spouses, hurt doctors... these are not the most appealing or genteel moments of a woman's life. Yes, something beautiful exists as a result of this work, but the actual moment where the birthing takes place is not easy.

I have to wonder if being "born again" has more to do with the daily life of someone who wants to be like Christ. Ripping band-aids off wounds that we've just let fester. Getting over our pride and apologizing to friends for friendships we let die over fights that never settled. Accepting something into your life, like a new understanding of politics or society, that just might contradict what you thought you knew was right. Admitting that you have a problem. I think being "reborn" might be something that throws our closets open and exposes the skeletons for what they are--pieces of ourselves that we'd rather hide than face.

So I wonder if a person who is thinking, re-inventing, and wondering, is on a closer path to Love, Truth, and Peace than the one who only allows Love to expose selected parts of the heart. Could constant curiosity, through its existence as a conduit to the unknown, actually bring one closer to God?

Knowing Deep-Down

Back in January I blogged about socialization. I was thinking about the concept of liking change but being uncomfortable with changing. Lately I've been thinking about extending that train of thought a little further. Go with me on this one.

Let's say you're a coffee drinker, a real coffee drinker. You know what I mean; the type who buys whole beans from Caribou and has to grind them immediately before brewing. You could never set up the coffee pot the night before you wanted to brew it, unless the pot had a grinder built in, because of what the air would do to the grounds during those 8 precious hours. You can drink coffee with dinner without it keeping you up, and you loathe those who drink decaf. Decaf simply isn't real coffee, is it? It tastes different, and everyone just knows deep down that a "real" coffee-drinker drinks regular.

Deep down, we know certain things are right while others are wrong. It's our conscience, our gut, right? It's a part of every human that whispers a greater moral code that all of humanity should obey. It's something in the gut, or maybe the soul, that is only at peace with a certain arrangement of events. But what if that gut, that peace of the soul, that conscience, could not be differentiated from the us that is an accumulation of the events of our lives? We are all shaped by our upbringings. What if, deep down where it matters, we don't know the difference between the confrontation of something different and a situation that truly merits a "deep in your gut," "right and wrong" line?

I was in Caribou the other day, and I saw an advertisement for their decaf coffee. It played off the belief that decaf coffee is inferior, but it explained how their decaf beans are held to the same high standards as the regulars. It attempted to shift the frame through which the die-hards viewed their niche as to admit others to join in.

What if we didn't just assume the situation in which we are the most comfortable is the right kind of situation?