pretty awesome.

here's another commentary-less link for y'all! Just some ideas to think on.

crazy concept of the day ...

It's not even that I'm too lazy to add anything to this article ... it's just that it says everything that needs to be said. Except for the fact that you could swap the genders and replace the term "husband" with the word "wife," and the article would still be entirely true.

Thanks to Keaton for posting it on the Book of Faces.

wanting, wishing, and peaches

This filibuster of a post is something of a response/continued discussion of (or at the very least, inspired by) the article/presentation "Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive" by Phuc Tran at a TEDx conference. Thanks to Jasmine for sharing it with me on The Facebook (...a long time ago. whoops).

wanting

I love that this guy's dad just straight up told him, "don’t study something you don’t like. What do you like? Study that." Because ... yes. Just freakin yes. Life is too short to get caught up in "but what if" or "should I." We have purpose here, and we crave meaning and fulfillment for our lives. Too often we do things (or don't do things) because we feel that we must, or that we are stuck in the a holding pattern and it's too risky to break out of it. And in doing this, we aren't living meaningful lives. We're just accepting the circumstances we fell into, and giving in to the pressures that got us there, and (essentially) we aren't living the life that we were meant to live. [1]

The key is figuring out what it is you want and pursuing that thing. There's no equation to calculate which decisions will add up to a perfect life, plus, you have zero control over the future. Over your actions and your reactions, yes. But there is no way to know what the future will bring, or who you will meet, or what you might have to go through. There is an infinite amount of possibilities in the unknown, and if you spend all of your time trying to only make the "right" choices (or not making any choices, for fear of the wrong ones), you never really get anywhere, or pursue your own goals. Decision-making, for all its stress and drama (and believe me, I would know), really IS as simple as "what do you want?" Because if you aren't pursuing your goals or your dreams, what are you living for?

Don't get me wrong. It isn't wrong to have a somewhat subjunctive view of the world. It's always wise to consider the possibilities, to weigh the options, to be forward-thinking and responsible. And you can't just live your life by making rash, spur-of-the-moment decisions because you feel like you want something at that moment. Because most of the time I want to sit on my butt and watch tv and eat ice cream. And I never, ever, want to get out of bed to go to work in the morning. But that's not the kind of want I mean. I'm talking about the goals you have at your core, the things that come from your faith and your dreams and your imagination. I want to live in a heated apartment, eat decent food, and drive a safe car. I have neither an inheritance nor a rich husband, therefore, the logical conclusion is that I go to work to help pay for that stuff. I want to go to grad school and become a professor, so I took the damn GRE even thought I hated every second of it. We make sacrifices and compromises in order to meet an end goal, an ultimate desire.

Of course, if the focus is only on getting what we want, then we become self-involved and obnoxious. Enter stage left SIN, and the danger of choosing to live in a way that makes us ~~happy. This entire argument does not exist without the caveat of "sin does tend to make us 'happy' but that doesn't make it okay, or good for us." And when we're dealing with such a precarious concept as "wants," it's extra easy to let our sinful nature rule our actions. For example--I want to not lose face or dignity when I fight with Aaron. Regardless of what the fight is about, I want to be Right, and I want to Win. And if I give in to that desire, and fight for my pride (rather than try to actually resolve a disagreement), then I am, in fact, being self-involved and obnoxious. The argument is also twice as long and three times as awful. If, however, at the core of my desires, I want to maintain a loving, understanding relationship with Aaron, I have to forego my pride and maybe (gasp!) admit defeat. It's the difference between momentary, physical pleasure, and long-term overall happiness. "Usually, the right thing to desire is what makes you the happiest in the long run." [2]

wishing

Of course (if you're me) you then have crises about what is going to make you happiest, and whether you're wanting the Right Things, or if pursuing your desires is making you selfish because you aren't aware of the people around you. And here's where the "subjunctive" (as Phuc Tran would use it) gets in the way. We have a tendency to look back and think "man, if only I had ____" or "I wish I could be more like ____." This thinking is, in short, both pointless and harmful. The fact is that you didn't do that one thing, and you are not like said person. It accomplishes nothing to spend your whole life looking over your shoulder and wishing things had gone differently. I will be the first to admit that I struggle every day with doing this. I worry all the time about whether I screwed up and what people are thinking about me. For the most part I am pursuing my goals (with, at present, an agonizingly lengthy waiting period), and living the way that I feel I am called to be living. As mentioned in footnote [1], I also believe this is exactly where I am supposed to be right now. But that doesn't stop me from feeling guilty that I could not do more, or from being afraid that I have made or will make the wrong decisions.

Lately I have been having a lot of self-conscious anxiety, primarily because I have a tendency to stick my nose into other people's (relationship-related) business. With good intent, mind you, and because I love and worry about my friends, but still in a proactive, confrontational kind of way. [3] And because I care deeply about my friends and their wellbeing, I have a tendency to get vocal about the things that concern me. I have definitely learned that all relationships are different, and that they must be carried out in their own way, and I have also learned that all people need to learn in their own way, and that means usually you have to let them figure it out for themselves. But I have also heard too many times "why didn't anybody say anything," and there have been a couple of times that I could have said something and chose not to, and therefore I am determined to... well, say something. The only problem is that this kind of thing only occurs at those times when the friend in question doesn't really want to hear it, and then I begin to second-guess myself, because who am I to make any sort of comment on another person's choices.

When I expressed some of this self-conscious angst to Caitlin, she responded with resounding encouragement. She commented that we get extremely focused on not messing up, which, in her opinion, is backwards. "We should be focused on proactively doing the right thing," she told me, and it's better to go overboard with good intent than to not say what you felt. She added that because I am "the only one who feels [my] particular feelings," it is up to me to be the one to share them. "There's only one of you, and you were made that way on purpose. Just be it to the full. Care about people exactly the way you care about them, not in a more 'acceptable' way." [4]

This conversation effectively ties together both the indicative wanting and subjunctive wishing. I want to be there for my friends, because I want them to be happy in the overall sense. This means that I choose to do something that I don't really enjoy (such as telling them what they don't want to hear, and probably upsetting them, and possibly even ruining our friendship), in order to accomplish an ultimate goal. Because even if I'm wrong, saying what I said gives them cause to prove me wrong, which then in turn helps to solidify their feelings and opinions. So there is no point in wishing that I had done it differently, because it's already done, and now all I can do is trust that God will use their choices and my actions to help them find meaning and fulfillment in their lives. (see [1] in regards to "meant to be")

another catchy header

Believe it or not, this post was originally in relation to Phuc Tran's article/presentation. And I have one more speculation to make in regards to his discussion of grammar and identity; naturally it is in regards to his use of Star Wars to emphasize his point.

In the Star Wars saga, the Sith Lords speak in opaque subjunctives. Darth Vader says to Luke, "If you only knew the power of the Dark Side." Vader obviously knows how enticing the use of a present contrafactual optative sounded. And Yoda? He speaks with the bare bludgeon of the imperative and indicative. "Do or do not. There is no try." Yoda knows how hard and uncompromising the indicative is. It takes courage to embrace the indicative--it takes real courage. And even though what Yoda says is true, Luke doesn't stay with Yoda in the swamp because he has his own path to weave in between Yoda's indicative truth and Vader's seductive subjunctive. [5]

I'm going to top that nerdiness and add some good old Lutheran theology to the mix, just to see what happens. Obviously, the Sith are the badguys (or, you know, sin); the subjunctive is about guilt and shame and making up for the past or the missed opportunities. The indicative, as portrayed by Yoda, represents the Right Way To Do Things (in other words, the Law, which is of course good, but also impossible). And Luke, human dude that he is, can't stay in the Swamp of Righteousness because, requote, "he has his own path to weave."

And so do we, thanks to our sinful human natures. We are commanded to follow the indicative path of what is right, and yet we are completely unable to do so. We are tempted by the subjunctive of guilt and possibilities, and this causes us to pursue our physical desires, while feeling ashamed of the things we know we've done wrong or that we think we could have done differently. So while we try to live like the Jedi, we will never be as awesome as Yoda, and this failure makes the Dark Side seem more and more inviting, and the truth seem more and more unattainable.

But we have what Star Wars does not: we have grace. Our path is woven out of the fact that we are redeemed, and our salvation comes from outside of ourselves, outside of the confusion of our desires and the regretfulness of wishing. [6] This grace gives us the freedom to live the way we were made, and to pursue our desires: "there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live." [7] We will spend the rest of our lives wishing we had acted differently, or that we ourselves are different, because as long as we are on this earth we will be plagued by our sinful nature. But even when we do look over our shoulders and wish it could have been different, we have the reassurance that "for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." [8]

"And this way of seeing the world? It has real force." [9]

the asides

[1] I will digress to comment (briefly, I hope) on the idea of "meant to be." Because I don't like to use this phrase lightly, and it could theoretically be argued that whatever situation we are in is the one that we are meant to be in. And by "theoretically" I mean that I can and do argue that point. I believe that simultaneously we are where we are meant to be, but also that we need to actively pursue the things that we are meant to do. Those things might change depending on the choices we have made, but then again we are designed in such a way that we are best suited for certain roles, which, if we are pursuing those roles, will place us in situations that allow us to use our talents and personalities to their highest potential. But even if we are not reaching our full potential, we are still exactly where we are meant to be, and in being there we are acquiring the necessary experience in order for us to carry on that pursuit. So it's all "meant to be" but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be ... trying to be what we are meant to be.
It's all sort of wibbly-wobbly.
[2] This is a quote from my favorite older brother, Keaton. Who may or may not remember saying it.
[3] I will abstain from a digression into my feelings and/or passionate opinions about relationships, but rest assured I have a lot of them.
[4] Dear Aussie, please excuse my paraphrase; it was for the good of the narrative. I hope I have done you justice and feel free to send me hate letters if I have not. Just do it in free verse poetry, please.
[5] Yeah yeah, I know I'm an English major and everything, but guess what, I am still too lazy to look up how to correctly cite a quote that some guy said and someone else wrote down so you could read instead of watching the video. I didn't make up that stuff in the quote block or that following phrase in quote marks (which look like this: " "), and you can hear/read it in the original text if you click the link at the top of this post. That Vietnamese guy is the one who thought it in those words first. I'm just using his argument to support my own. Happy? Good. That's all you're getting from me.
[6] "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8-9
[7] Ecclesiastes 3:12
[8] Romans 8:28
[9] Another direct quote from Mr Tran. See [5]. Please note that I intentionally used his quote to mean something else entirely, and that's probably wrong and stuff. All credit and respect to Mr Tran and his article and original intent. And stuff.
[10] I didn't know what to entitle this post, and I was all out of clever and witty things to say, and Minte told me to call it peaches. So I did.

roughhousing makes your kid awesome

yes. yes to all of this.

cred goes to Brett & Kate McKay and the Art of Manliness website (this includes the title, as that's a direct quote and I failed to put it in quote marks).

in case you were wondering

Sometimes I have these moments in which it occurs to me that I am a grown-up.

I mean... what?!

I was at the grocery store today and realized... here I am, choosing what food to buy with the money I have earned, and driving home in my leased car to my apartment, where I live with my husband and we sleep in the same bed and I don't have to hide this fact from my mother. We're paying bills and furnishing our home and planning for the future and working full time jobs and ... it's just kind of crazy, you know?

...that is all.

thanks, i like my glasses too

My one professor, who said he would be happy to recommend me for graduate school, hasn't turned in his letter. It was due on Saturday. The popular consensus is that I have to call him and speak to him directly about it. I mean, most likely he forgot (he's busy! and also a poet), and probably once I mention it he'll immediately feel terrible and send it in. But ... I don't want to call him. It feels so horribly confrontational. I don't want to make him feel bad, and I don't want to be in his face about a huge favor he is doing for me. I know, I know, he said he would, and it would just be being assertive--I get all of this. But it doesn't change the fact that presenting the problem to him (and in an actual conversation, not behind the safety of email) is terrifying.

Confrontation is one of those cliche things to be afraid of, and therefore, it really annoys me that I am so afraid of it. Especially because I also know exactly which childhood event made me hate it so much, and which other past events fueled that fear, and it's all so textbook that I feel like I really just need to get over it. And to make matters worse, the few times I do choose to be confrontational are usually influenced by adrenaline (or sometimes alcohol, but I never said that) and I go a little overboard and cause problems rather than actually being helpful. I have approximately one friend (you know who you are) with whom I am blatantly, confrontationally honest, but that's because our relationship started off that way. I was at a time in my life when I didn't have a lot to lose, and I was sick of not saying what I thought. That time, unfortunately, has passed.

What I hate most about this situation is the fact that it's not just about confrontation in the "let me tell you something you may or may not want to hear" sense. It's about how I live my life, and how I present myself to other people. It's about being afraid to be a person who makes a statement. It's about having people in my life who I really like, and want desperately to like me, but I spend so much time trying not to be a certain way that I forget to have a personality at all. And then when I let go and act like myself, I over-analyze other people's reactions and try to adapt my personality to fit what I think they want. Problem A: I'm really bad at reading people. Problem B: seriously, Piera? how old are you again? Apparently I never grew up past sophomore year. (actually, ironically, I was more outgoing in tenth grade than I am now. I try not to think about that.)

For example, I like the way I look without glasses. But aside from the fact that my eyes are totally messed up and it's hard for me to focus on things--it's scary not to wear them. I have big plastic colorful frames and I like them because they make a statement, and because people notice my glasses and not my face. It's not even that I don't like my face. I just feel exposed without something bold between me and the other person.

And then there's all this second-guessing before I even start a thing. I can't just let it be what it is, and deal with things as they come--I have to analyze it all and troubleshoot all the possible outcomes and then I end up not getting started in the first place. I downloaded the Couch-to-5K app on my phone, because I really do want to have some kind of workout routine. Partially it's to be healthy, partially it's to see if I'm less tired all the time, partially it's because I want to feel better about my body, partially (mostly?) it's because I want to still look good after I have babies, and I guess I should probably start that now. And I've heard good things about the Couch to 5K program, and it sounds kind of excellent because I have NO exercise in my life right now... but then there are all these factors to think about. Do I pay $1.99 for the actual app or just use the free knockoff version? Which three days of the week will I work out? Should I get a gym membership so I don't have to run in the icky cold snow? Should I go by distance or by time? Should I start doing yoga on my non-running days? Can I just get a yoga dvd and hope that I'm doing it right, or should I join a class? When will I have time for all of this?
...see problem B, above.
It's not like it's even that hard. The whole idea is you just ... start doing it, and see how it works out, and take it slow, and ease yourself into it. But apparently that's not good enough for me. I have to know what I'm doing and how it will work and I have to have a Plan before I can start doing anything. And then, you guessed it, nothing ever changes. Because I don't have the answers and I'm mostly just afraid to find out on my own.

It gets to me because I know better. I have a foundation that is stronger than my emotions, and more important than whether people like me. I am saved by grace through faith; I am living as a person who is free; God's grace toward me was not in vain. I know all of this. I think somewhere at my core I really do believe all of it--I just don't know how to make it relevant. There is a disconnect somewhere between eternal salvation and my everyday life. Because salvation matters on the grand, life-and-death-and-hope-and-a-future scale, and my personal interaction ... doesn't. Because I can't see how it matters whether I feel comfortable in my skin, whether people like me, whether I feel confident and useful and worthy. I believe so much in design and in the grand construction of time and the world, and I believe so strongly in καιρός (the Greek term for "the perfect moment" or "suitable/favorable occasion"), that I've taught myself not to worry about each individual moment. Time is fleeting, and what matters now won't matter in the end, so why bother worrying?

This belief is both a huge relief and a huge hindrance. On the one hand--if it doesn't matter, and if time is fleeting, why be anxious about asking my professor about his letter? The moment will pass. Be bold, be confident, live your life because you only have right now to do it. But it also makes it harder to get anything done, because if the moment will pass then why bother doing anything in the first place? My self-consciousness, my personality, my whole existence is just a moment in time in the grand scheme of things, so why should it be relevant? Does God's grace extend even to my feeling confident in everyday conversation, to my ability to speak clearly and boldly and without fear?

I know it does. I know it does, and that asking these questions is ridiculous. I was in Sunday school, I know all the stories about Jesus' love for his people. He turned water into wine at a wedding--how relevant was that on the grand scale, compared to feeding 5000 people or, you know, coming back to life? He hung out with the outcasts, and taught them, sure, but also probably just ... chilled, had conversation over dinner, that sort of thing. I know that God's love for the world doesn't just pertain to our salvation, but also to our lives--he knows how many hairs we have, he created our faces and our abilities and our preferences, he wants us to be happy. How many times have I said this to people or written about this or fallen back on it to shake off anxiety or depression? Like I said, I know better.

It's just ... hard. It's hard to remember that the little things matter. It's hard to remember that I matter, that people do like talking to me, that my professor will probably appreciate me calling him up to remind him about his letter because he really does want me to succeed. It's hard to look at the past and know where all these problems started, and then say "well, that sucked, but it's time to move on," but it's even harder to actually do it. It's hard to get off my ass and get stuff done, because it's so much easier and safer to stay here in my living room watching Bones than it is to take up new projects.

I'm going to call my professor, because it's more important for me to try to get into grad school than it is for me to be angsty about it. I'm (hopefully) going for a run (well, a walk) today because I want to start being healthier, but check back in a few weeks to see if I've made any progress. I went in and auditioned for a play because I miss acting, and it was kind of intimidating not to be around Concordia people who are supportive and fun, but I did it, and I feel pretty good about how it went down.

So there's all that. I need to hold on to my baptized, spiritual nature, and I need to remember that every moment, however temporary, counts for something. It doesn't count for everything, but that doesn't mean it isn't important.

And I need to remember that that same principle applies to me.

being a grown-up is hard (that's why they invented procrastination)

On the agenda for this week: applying for grad school (now that the stupid GRE is over with, thank goodness) and looking/applying for jobs (if you work with me now, you can keep that tidbit of information to yourself for the time being...).

Annnd surprise, I'm procrastiblogging! Why? Because like all homework, I like to do everything else before I hunker down to do the real thing I have to do (if you're considering me for a job, please erase that from the record) (it's different when it's for a job) (anyway I have almost never handed in anything late, even if I stayed up until 4am doing it. That's dedication).

The real point of this post, however, is my frustration with present circumstances. Let me explain. My car is leaking gas and generally falling apart, and we would like to get a new car in order to not be worrying about mine collapsing. But in order to do this, I need a second job. Second-job hunting has transformed into job hunting, because a new, better-paying full-time job would not be so awful (I'm very steadily losing the optimism I once had about humanity). So I head tra-la down Obnoxious Job Search Lane and wind up in the Neighborhood of Education-Related Job Opportunities, because I somehow always gravitate toward those. And, surprisingly enough, I have found a couple of leads and I am at present avoiding writing cover letters and so on for applications.

So, you're thinking, what is the problem here?

The problem is my brain. I want to go to grad school next fall (I'm happily assuming here that I will get into any/all of my options, just let me have my delusions thank you very much and yes I know this is a run-on sentence). And that school could be here in Madison, or maybe in Chicago, or heck maybe even in Iowa (?!). And if I step into a job that's more than just an $8/hr service industry gig, I'll only be able to do it for about a year if I move anywhere other than here, and even if I stay here, I don't know if I can juggle a full time job and full time grad school at the same time (no, now is not a good time to remind me that I'll probably have to do that). Plus, I won't know about school until probably December at the very earliest, but if I waited until then to look for new jobs (because one more year at the 'bux when the end is in sight... that's not SO bad...) means that I'd only be at the new job for less than a year if I move. SO naturally because I am me, I worry about whether I will be letting people down by quitting after how many months of learning a job and learning how to do it well--and then again, what if I don't do it well? What if I actually really suck at secretarial things even though I somehow always end up looking for those kinds of jobs? What if I just stay at my job now until I go to school (which will take a lot of patience and prayers because I am frustrated now after only a year) and then discover that I don't want to teach English Comp and/or I'm a bad English Comp teacher and I should have studied graphic design all along? What if I do all this work to apply to jobs and to school and at the end of it, I have no new job options and I don't get into the schools I applied to and... and...

...and this is about where my thought-train kind of sputters and dies, because... so, I'm thinking, what's the problem here?

I have a job right now--a full time, with benefits, steady job. I'm making money, even if it's not a lot, or not enough for the lifestyle I want. I have a bachelors degree, even if I don't go back to school, and I have a lot of various experience, and I already know it's not my calling to work at the 'bux for the rest of my life. I already know I want to do more, and I already know that God will guide me to where he wants me to be. If that's not the places I'm looking, then he'll put it directly in my face so I can't miss it. Goodness knows he's done that before.

Piera. Do you believe all that stuff you say about design, and about everything working out when and how it's supposed to? Then what is the problem here?

The problem is my brain. I think too much. And if I stopped thinking about it and just starting applying and whatnot, I probably would have avoided a lot of this drama.

But then, dear 4.7 readers, I would not have written this post about patience and design and the uselessness of angst. And if that isn't dramatic irony for you then I should have failed all of my theatre classes.