I have much to do as always but am procrastinating to write this blog. I already began one about Brian's visit but was too tired to finish it last night. I'll be sure to complete and post it soon. In the meantime you can look at the pictures on my google pictures website.
At the moment a few thoughts are swirling in my head. Research shows that everyone's favorite word is their own name. Interesting. You never notice how infrequently your name is said until someone says it. Usually, people just great each other with "Hey, how are you doing?", or initiate questions and conversation by making eye contact rather than saying the person's name. But when your name is said, especially by someone you're close to or intersted in, notice your visceral pleasure at the sound.
Names are an interesting phenomenon. I love hearing Julie and Rick call me "Kris" because they have for my whole life and it implies a unique closeness between us. However, if anyone else calls me that (besides my parents maybe) it's weird. Receiving nicknames from friends or bestowing them upon friends establishes some new identity and bond between you. By the same token, I associate some nicknames (Kray) with a specific group of people and a specific time in my life. It's sometimes disconcerting when I'm referred to like that now.
Hearing someone call to herself or others call someone by a nickname you gave is strangely satisfying.
As CB pointed out, I introduced him to my friends as "Crazy Brian", which was almost a self-fulfilling prophesy. I hope I didn't put too much pressure on him to live up to his name.
That's all for now. Back to work.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
satisfyingly mundane
I need to stay busier than this. I need to close it off. Token indie instrumental music, cash register drawer, change jingles, people talk, receipts print, giant blue mug sits on yellow saucer, lilac folder crowds table, i'm reading, aesthetics sights sounds can't think feel too much he's not coming. that's all.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
La Vita รจ bella
Sometimes life is too beautiful to comprehend. Maybe it always is, but only on occasion does the gravity of everything, the weight of existence, the overwhelming barrage of sights and sounds to be perceived break through...Sometimes it makes me so happy that I hurt. Or so sorry that I can't possibly deserve to live. Sometimes I fear I wouldn't trade earth for heaven.
The combination of sunshine and city permeates my self-protecting tunnel vision and I can't help but be hit by everything around me. I love the sound of the cars outside my window, the wind whipping through the row houses, the bite of cold as I run from home to ballet and back. Yesterday the sky was palest blue with chalk dust sprinkled on top and I swear I've never seen sunlight so white. It made the city look clean. It made me want to be clean.
I bought sandwich supplies for a homeless guy the other day. In my quest to find God or religion or faith I figured I could start with what I know: Jesus was cool and he loved everyone. It's pretty simple. Love is never hard to give. Or it shouldn't be. I was walking home and he asked me for food. So we went to Wawa and he picked liverwurst and rolls and american cheese. He told me about getting kicked out and how he was supposed to go to a shelter...none of it made much sense but sandwiches make sense. Afterward he wanted money for tokens. He smelled like alcohol. I gave him some change and told him God loved him. He said he knew. His name was Mark. I wish him well.
I guess Jesus would probably have brought Mark home with him until he got back on his feet. I'm not quite there yet. Actually, who knows what Jesus would've done? I'm kind of frustrated with the people who presume they know what God wants, so I guess I shouldn't do the same.
This weekend was the calm before the storm. I relaxed and had fun and cooked and cleaned and made some art. I thought a bit about life and love, but not too much. My dilemma at the moment is this: which is worse, the action of doing something wrong, or the fact that you can justify it to yourself afterward?
The combination of sunshine and city permeates my self-protecting tunnel vision and I can't help but be hit by everything around me. I love the sound of the cars outside my window, the wind whipping through the row houses, the bite of cold as I run from home to ballet and back. Yesterday the sky was palest blue with chalk dust sprinkled on top and I swear I've never seen sunlight so white. It made the city look clean. It made me want to be clean.
I bought sandwich supplies for a homeless guy the other day. In my quest to find God or religion or faith I figured I could start with what I know: Jesus was cool and he loved everyone. It's pretty simple. Love is never hard to give. Or it shouldn't be. I was walking home and he asked me for food. So we went to Wawa and he picked liverwurst and rolls and american cheese. He told me about getting kicked out and how he was supposed to go to a shelter...none of it made much sense but sandwiches make sense. Afterward he wanted money for tokens. He smelled like alcohol. I gave him some change and told him God loved him. He said he knew. His name was Mark. I wish him well.
I guess Jesus would probably have brought Mark home with him until he got back on his feet. I'm not quite there yet. Actually, who knows what Jesus would've done? I'm kind of frustrated with the people who presume they know what God wants, so I guess I shouldn't do the same.
This weekend was the calm before the storm. I relaxed and had fun and cooked and cleaned and made some art. I thought a bit about life and love, but not too much. My dilemma at the moment is this: which is worse, the action of doing something wrong, or the fact that you can justify it to yourself afterward?
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Democracillin - the cure to what ails you
On my cold, wet, wintry-mix walk home today I listened to NPR, as is my custom. Terry Gross was interviewing a variety of people about Iraq, asking the question "When and how should we get out?" I hate to admit it but I often ignore such conversations as I find them pointless and frustrating. However, my hands were too cold to get my mp3 player out of my pocket to change the station, so I listened. The first guy she talked to was one of the ones who "planned" the initial invasion and he of course supported the effort, saying things have only improved since we "changed strategies" last year and we just need to "stay the course", whatever the fuck any of that means. (While he was talking I stopped in a second-hand shop to find a hat and stopped paying attention.)
When I went back out (after failing to find a hat) I resumed listening but now the guest was an Iraqi woman speaking on the status of women in Iraq since the invasion. According to the guest, violence against women, such as murder for not wearing burkas, etc. is at unprecedented rates in almost every major city in the country. Essentially, since the US invaded, such extreme, fundamentalist sanctions have only escalated.
Duh. This was not at all surprising to me, not because I'm really smart or I can tell the future. I would have expected that because I took an introductory level anthropology class. In the class we talked about female circumcision and how it becomes more prevalent in the presence of outsiders. A simple fact of anthropology is that when colonizing nations show up in a place, the indigenous citizens often become more fervent in their traditions, religion, and customs. The presence of outsiders creates the need to solidify group identity and combat the new customs and ideas which threaten the indigenous culture.
Anyway, the point of this whole blog is, if I knew this basic fact after taking one freaking college class, who the hell decided our strategies in Iraq and what the hell were they based on? Like, did anyone do any research before we invaded? I mean, you can't even write a college paper without cracking a few books and citing some sources. Shouldn't the invasion of a country, during the process of which many many people can and will die, demand a sufficient amount of research to develop strategies? Like, shouldn't the government consult some anthropologists and economists and political scientists before just showing up? What on earth would lead one to believe they could go into an incredibly complex, vastly different society and culture and expect to change a bunch of shit around? I cannot comprehend the ignorance and ego someone would have to have to think they could.
It's like a drug company CEO (who majored in business instead of chemistry) mixing some chemicals together (Democracillin) and then selling it to the public as "the cure to all social ills", without any trials or lab tests or PROOF that it would work. And so of course the public thinks it's bogus and doesn't buy into it, and the people who do buy it die. Yes, that's exactly what Iraq is.
The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. The World Bank, the IMF, the UN, all of these organizations are running around the world telling other countries what to do and fucking things up. (Only recently with micro loans did "development initiatives" actually start helping those countries instead of hurting them.) Essentially they mess with nation's natural economies, crops, and cultures, and apply some formula which just makes the countries prisoners to shitty, unfair global markets. The story goes like this:
UN/IMF/World Bank: You must produce and export corn and soybeans!
Developing Country: But those crops don't grow well in our climate...
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Developing Country: But then we won't have time to produce the things we normally do...
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Developing Country: But if we export all the corn and soybeans, and don't have our normal crops what will the people here eat?
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Developing Country: If our production is based on a global market how will we ever make enough money to get out of this rut?
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Etcetera. Now some might say "well, we've got to do something to help the Third World countries. God knows they're so poor and AIDS-ridden and their economies and governments are unstable." Those people are idiots. Do you want to know why there's so much political instability in the global south? Colonialism. For hundreds of years, whitey (my ancestors too...) sailed round the world fucking shit up, systematizing racism, etc. India for example had a very functional, prosperous economy before the British showed up. Yeah, they might've been agrarian systems, but people worked and ate and there wasn't this outrageously polarized, fantastically terrible poverty.
Then the idiots might say "well colonization ended like a while ago, why haven't they gotten their acts together?" Because "development" picked up where colonialism left off. Development agencies export western notions of effective economy and society, which are all normative and biased. All of these freaking "development" agencies try to "help" these countries and "end global poverty." Do you think Bono and Jeffrey Sachs are revolutionary? They're not. The UN's current initiatives are hardly different than the ones from they had in 1950's. Western agencies talk big lofty goals, and try to achieve them by applying our western knowledge to entirely different cultures while the natives look around and are like "what the fuck are you doing? We already know what crops grow here, we know our culture, but the big system is so broken, and you guys just keep making it worse."
The thread that ties it all together: cultures are like nature. You know when some ecosystem has a problem and some idiots are like "ooo we should bring in this plant and it'll fix it!", and then that just creates a problem about a hundred times worse than the previous one? Governments are the same way. Countries and cultures are incredibly delicate. There's a balance between religion and ethnicity and economy far too complex and intricate for an insider to entirely comprehend, let alone an outsider. This isn't to say one country should never attempt to help another, but rather, these problems must be approached delicately. First, as with any problem in any subject, the scope of the problem has to be defined. You can't just say "They need democracy" or "Let's end poverty." Anyone who's ever taken any sort of science class knows that you have to operationalize the variable. What measureable thing is wrong? How are you going to measure those goals? We're never going to get out of Iraq because no one ever claimed clear goals about what we wanted to achieve in the first place. We can't ever succeed. "Democracy" can't be measured.
Why the fuck do we learn this shit in school if our leaders just do whatever the hell their enormous egos tell them to? From what I can see, our invasion of Iraq followed zero principles of international relations or effective political science. From talking to my friend Stacy, (who was a neighborhood planner in Baghdad), our government-sanctioned tactics break all of the rules which anthropology has shown to be effective. In the development field none of the lofty goals about "eradicating poverty" have ever been achieved - because they're not measurable. And no one is held accountable for them. So the UN and all the world governments who sign on to these agreements (like the Millenium Development Goals) which promise to fix shit don't have to answer to anyone if they fail. And they have failed for about 50 years.
I guess I just think whoever is running the world sucks at it. If you want to improve a place maybe you should go ask the people who live their what they think the problem is. If you want to know what works you should probably observe before you solve. I obviously don't think Bush intended to solve anything. But whatever his goal was, I think he failed. Even idiots should know the scientific method. Even if his goal was evil I wish he had operationalized it, because then we wouldn't be stuck in a war we can't win. You cannot accomplish a vague, subjective notion by virtue of the fact it's subjective. That's why we can't win the war on terror or the war on poverty.
End.
When I went back out (after failing to find a hat) I resumed listening but now the guest was an Iraqi woman speaking on the status of women in Iraq since the invasion. According to the guest, violence against women, such as murder for not wearing burkas, etc. is at unprecedented rates in almost every major city in the country. Essentially, since the US invaded, such extreme, fundamentalist sanctions have only escalated.
Duh. This was not at all surprising to me, not because I'm really smart or I can tell the future. I would have expected that because I took an introductory level anthropology class. In the class we talked about female circumcision and how it becomes more prevalent in the presence of outsiders. A simple fact of anthropology is that when colonizing nations show up in a place, the indigenous citizens often become more fervent in their traditions, religion, and customs. The presence of outsiders creates the need to solidify group identity and combat the new customs and ideas which threaten the indigenous culture.
Anyway, the point of this whole blog is, if I knew this basic fact after taking one freaking college class, who the hell decided our strategies in Iraq and what the hell were they based on? Like, did anyone do any research before we invaded? I mean, you can't even write a college paper without cracking a few books and citing some sources. Shouldn't the invasion of a country, during the process of which many many people can and will die, demand a sufficient amount of research to develop strategies? Like, shouldn't the government consult some anthropologists and economists and political scientists before just showing up? What on earth would lead one to believe they could go into an incredibly complex, vastly different society and culture and expect to change a bunch of shit around? I cannot comprehend the ignorance and ego someone would have to have to think they could.
It's like a drug company CEO (who majored in business instead of chemistry) mixing some chemicals together (Democracillin) and then selling it to the public as "the cure to all social ills", without any trials or lab tests or PROOF that it would work. And so of course the public thinks it's bogus and doesn't buy into it, and the people who do buy it die. Yes, that's exactly what Iraq is.
The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. The World Bank, the IMF, the UN, all of these organizations are running around the world telling other countries what to do and fucking things up. (Only recently with micro loans did "development initiatives" actually start helping those countries instead of hurting them.) Essentially they mess with nation's natural economies, crops, and cultures, and apply some formula which just makes the countries prisoners to shitty, unfair global markets. The story goes like this:
UN/IMF/World Bank: You must produce and export corn and soybeans!
Developing Country: But those crops don't grow well in our climate...
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Developing Country: But then we won't have time to produce the things we normally do...
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Developing Country: But if we export all the corn and soybeans, and don't have our normal crops what will the people here eat?
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Developing Country: If our production is based on a global market how will we ever make enough money to get out of this rut?
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Etcetera. Now some might say "well, we've got to do something to help the Third World countries. God knows they're so poor and AIDS-ridden and their economies and governments are unstable." Those people are idiots. Do you want to know why there's so much political instability in the global south? Colonialism. For hundreds of years, whitey (my ancestors too...) sailed round the world fucking shit up, systematizing racism, etc. India for example had a very functional, prosperous economy before the British showed up. Yeah, they might've been agrarian systems, but people worked and ate and there wasn't this outrageously polarized, fantastically terrible poverty.
Then the idiots might say "well colonization ended like a while ago, why haven't they gotten their acts together?" Because "development" picked up where colonialism left off. Development agencies export western notions of effective economy and society, which are all normative and biased. All of these freaking "development" agencies try to "help" these countries and "end global poverty." Do you think Bono and Jeffrey Sachs are revolutionary? They're not. The UN's current initiatives are hardly different than the ones from they had in 1950's. Western agencies talk big lofty goals, and try to achieve them by applying our western knowledge to entirely different cultures while the natives look around and are like "what the fuck are you doing? We already know what crops grow here, we know our culture, but the big system is so broken, and you guys just keep making it worse."
The thread that ties it all together: cultures are like nature. You know when some ecosystem has a problem and some idiots are like "ooo we should bring in this plant and it'll fix it!", and then that just creates a problem about a hundred times worse than the previous one? Governments are the same way. Countries and cultures are incredibly delicate. There's a balance between religion and ethnicity and economy far too complex and intricate for an insider to entirely comprehend, let alone an outsider. This isn't to say one country should never attempt to help another, but rather, these problems must be approached delicately. First, as with any problem in any subject, the scope of the problem has to be defined. You can't just say "They need democracy" or "Let's end poverty." Anyone who's ever taken any sort of science class knows that you have to operationalize the variable. What measureable thing is wrong? How are you going to measure those goals? We're never going to get out of Iraq because no one ever claimed clear goals about what we wanted to achieve in the first place. We can't ever succeed. "Democracy" can't be measured.
Why the fuck do we learn this shit in school if our leaders just do whatever the hell their enormous egos tell them to? From what I can see, our invasion of Iraq followed zero principles of international relations or effective political science. From talking to my friend Stacy, (who was a neighborhood planner in Baghdad), our government-sanctioned tactics break all of the rules which anthropology has shown to be effective. In the development field none of the lofty goals about "eradicating poverty" have ever been achieved - because they're not measurable. And no one is held accountable for them. So the UN and all the world governments who sign on to these agreements (like the Millenium Development Goals) which promise to fix shit don't have to answer to anyone if they fail. And they have failed for about 50 years.
I guess I just think whoever is running the world sucks at it. If you want to improve a place maybe you should go ask the people who live their what they think the problem is. If you want to know what works you should probably observe before you solve. I obviously don't think Bush intended to solve anything. But whatever his goal was, I think he failed. Even idiots should know the scientific method. Even if his goal was evil I wish he had operationalized it, because then we wouldn't be stuck in a war we can't win. You cannot accomplish a vague, subjective notion by virtue of the fact it's subjective. That's why we can't win the war on terror or the war on poverty.
End.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
For auld lang syne
The events of the past month were far too varied, extensive, and influential for me to adequately summarize here. Suffice it to say it was a good month. I freaked out for a week in the beginning, lived in an alternate universe for a while, stopped trying to figure things out, saw a lot of movies, slept in, played cards with the parents, traveled to five different states, and somehow ended up in a peaceful, rejuvenated state of mind. Most importantly, I spent time with pretty much all of the people closest to me, and became even closer to most of them. I think I realized which people are the friends I've kept for a long time and will keep forever. Ultimately I feel lucky to have such amazing people in my life. I can't express how refreshing and comforting it was to connect with people who I get and who get me, especially after feeling significantly disconnected over the past semester.
On the plane(s) from Chicago back to Philly I attempted to sleep but I think my subconscious mind was trying to sort out the comprehensive range of emotions I've experienced from the last week in Detroit through this weekend in Chicago. Fatefully I woke up toward the last 20 minutes of the flight and ended up talking to the guy next to me. He was going to Pittsburgh to meet up with some people with whom he works on Harley's. He was one of those outgoing, simple-speaking people who, with little prompting, explained to me his philosophies on life. "You see, the thing about it is...," he said: "...the glass is half full", "...you can't control what happens but you can control your attitude," "...stress doesn't help anything," "...if you've got a lot to do just assess the situation, prioritize what you have to do and do it," and "if you're doing something that you'd be ashamed to tell other people about then you know it's wrong and you shouldn't do it. You should never do anything you're ashamed of." All these tidbits seem like cliches but sometimes the simplest lessons are the ones of which you need to be reminded the most. Twas a lovely, serendipitous, dare-I-say God-influenced encounter.
So now I'm back. I got home late-ish last night after they lost one of my suitcases. Oh well. Upon walking in the door, I was surprised at how good it felt to be back. Even though I'm sometimes lonely here, the converse benefit is that this life feels very much my own -- my apartment and my food and my schedule and my time. I don't have to wait for anyone else to call or make sure I spend adequate time with everyone or let anyone know where and when I'm going. I woke up late today and ate oatmeal before walking around the city, with certain goals in mind but ultimately accomplishing none of them. I had coffee with Clint and Christy and decided to take ballet twice a week. I'll probably go to the gym before I make dinner and go to bed. I didn't do my homework.
It's a new year. It feels like a new year. I feel more certain of who I love and comforted by who loves me. I finally stopped trying to find myself and my beliefs and my God and it seems like they're now finding me -- thanks to some good friends. Life is so much to deal with, too much to really process everything. The moral: I'm privileged to share life with the people I do.
On the plane(s) from Chicago back to Philly I attempted to sleep but I think my subconscious mind was trying to sort out the comprehensive range of emotions I've experienced from the last week in Detroit through this weekend in Chicago. Fatefully I woke up toward the last 20 minutes of the flight and ended up talking to the guy next to me. He was going to Pittsburgh to meet up with some people with whom he works on Harley's. He was one of those outgoing, simple-speaking people who, with little prompting, explained to me his philosophies on life. "You see, the thing about it is...," he said: "...the glass is half full", "...you can't control what happens but you can control your attitude," "...stress doesn't help anything," "...if you've got a lot to do just assess the situation, prioritize what you have to do and do it," and "if you're doing something that you'd be ashamed to tell other people about then you know it's wrong and you shouldn't do it. You should never do anything you're ashamed of." All these tidbits seem like cliches but sometimes the simplest lessons are the ones of which you need to be reminded the most. Twas a lovely, serendipitous, dare-I-say God-influenced encounter.
So now I'm back. I got home late-ish last night after they lost one of my suitcases. Oh well. Upon walking in the door, I was surprised at how good it felt to be back. Even though I'm sometimes lonely here, the converse benefit is that this life feels very much my own -- my apartment and my food and my schedule and my time. I don't have to wait for anyone else to call or make sure I spend adequate time with everyone or let anyone know where and when I'm going. I woke up late today and ate oatmeal before walking around the city, with certain goals in mind but ultimately accomplishing none of them. I had coffee with Clint and Christy and decided to take ballet twice a week. I'll probably go to the gym before I make dinner and go to bed. I didn't do my homework.
It's a new year. It feels like a new year. I feel more certain of who I love and comforted by who loves me. I finally stopped trying to find myself and my beliefs and my God and it seems like they're now finding me -- thanks to some good friends. Life is so much to deal with, too much to really process everything. The moral: I'm privileged to share life with the people I do.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
so this is the new year
I suppose a new year calls for reflection. For perhaps the first time, this year feels like a marked departure from the previous one. School, friends, family, relationships between myself and those people, have all changed considerably from last year. I think the biggest change is faith. I believe in God definitely and Jesus also, and I'm into the Bible, but...I just don't buy anything else. I'm not sure what I believe and consequently I'm not sure how to translate that belief into guidelines for my life. Beyond the obvious things like treating others as I'd like to be treated, I don't know how to apply faith to general life, like propriety in relationships for example. I don't know what my faith is, but even if i did, i think i'd reject all the traditions.
so first. i'm over religion (not faith). this shakes my worldview. i'm lost. this isn't new. but the point is...what's the point? the point is we're defined not by our beliefs but by our actions. it doesn't matter what one thinks is true if she doesn't act accordingly. I need to define myself this year. find myself. i think it starts with being decisive. by that i mean i need to own my actions. i need to be proactive in determining my own fate. letting others decide for me or being too afraid to assert my feelings had caused me nothing but strife in the past. whatever befalls me should do so because i chose it. and i'm going to be alright with what i choose. i'll try to choose rightly according to my newfound lack of guiding morals. yes. the year of decision.
second. i feel old. twenty-two sounds kind of young but i feel like an adult. a grownup. i feel like the weight of my future is constantly upon me. like every decision i make is going to be a permanent one. career, city, love, faith. that's scary. i know i can't decide uncertainty away. i know i can't make all the right decisions. i know my decisions don't have be permanent, but they feel it. eww life feels so serious.
third. death. i lost my Grandma Vi around this time last year and now Grandma Betty's in the hospital. This sucks. I don't want them to die. ever. my life is not complete without them. death is permanent and i'm not into that.
i'm tired.
so first. i'm over religion (not faith). this shakes my worldview. i'm lost. this isn't new. but the point is...what's the point? the point is we're defined not by our beliefs but by our actions. it doesn't matter what one thinks is true if she doesn't act accordingly. I need to define myself this year. find myself. i think it starts with being decisive. by that i mean i need to own my actions. i need to be proactive in determining my own fate. letting others decide for me or being too afraid to assert my feelings had caused me nothing but strife in the past. whatever befalls me should do so because i chose it. and i'm going to be alright with what i choose. i'll try to choose rightly according to my newfound lack of guiding morals. yes. the year of decision.
second. i feel old. twenty-two sounds kind of young but i feel like an adult. a grownup. i feel like the weight of my future is constantly upon me. like every decision i make is going to be a permanent one. career, city, love, faith. that's scary. i know i can't decide uncertainty away. i know i can't make all the right decisions. i know my decisions don't have be permanent, but they feel it. eww life feels so serious.
third. death. i lost my Grandma Vi around this time last year and now Grandma Betty's in the hospital. This sucks. I don't want them to die. ever. my life is not complete without them. death is permanent and i'm not into that.
i'm tired.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Regarding uncertainty
Dearest friends,
It's been a while, especially since I've posted anything of substance
rather than just rants about school. (Sorry about that, it's kind of
consuming). You'll be glad to know the worst is over. I turned in two
twenty-plus page reports yesterday, and I'm feeling appropriately
euphoric. I may have forgone sleep in order to do it, but it is done,
and I am glad. Just a few things left on the list.
Last night I went with a few friends to the bar and let me tell you,
after working for 27 hours straight on projects (literally) one beer
plus the company of a few friends is the best thing in the entire
world. (I still don't like beer but i figured anything else would make
me die.) It was lovely to converse about the semester and life in
general.
I'm nervous/anxious about going home. A week ago I couldn't wait to get there and now I'm afraid. It might be because I've changed a lot this semester -- not as far as my actions, or who I am, but definitely regarding what I believe. As the title implies, this post is about uncertainty. And as most other posts have implied, I'm pretty uncertain these days.
I guess the biggest thing is faith. I'm not really sure what I think about God anymore. I don't mean this to be some big dramatic statement and I really don't want you all to worry. I'm not saying I don't believe in God...I'm just not sure what that means. Or what Christianity means. I'm full of questions that I've never had before -- not about doctrine or the philosophy behind it all, but about how this religion actually plays out in practice.
My first concern is that I'm just not convinced of Christian traditions or cultural practices at the moment. I've been going to church and meeting all the other people at my church that are my age. They're quite nice people, but the majority of them are those really good kids who've never done anything wrong and grew up in Christian homes. That's fine, and I don't mean to discount them as people or as friends. They're not judgmental or condescending. At other times in my life I would really want to be friends with them and feel guilty that I wasn't as good as they are. At this point in life, I'm over that. I've done what I've done and I'm cool with it. I guess the issue is...here we are, a bunch of Christian kids raised in Christian homes...and what have we ever done about it? Who have we ever helped? Who have I ever told about Jesus? I mean, I've had conversations with plenty of people about my faith but I don't know anyone I've actually I dunno, converted? That sounds weird. Anyway, it's like...what's the point? We live by these rules cuz we think they're what God wants us to do, and we practice these traditions... I'm just starting to see it all in an anthropological/sociological light rather than a faith that I believe in and act out.
The second issue is about guilt. I feel like all I ever feel about faith is guilty. I look back at my life and see all the things I've done wrong and how I'm always falling short and how I keep making the same mistakes and how I'm not really progressing at all. I don't think this religion is about failure, but I think I make it about failure. At the end of every day I count up all the ways I was wrong and I apologize to God and hope he forgives me. And then I go and sin in all the same ways the next day. That sucks. Can I ever actually get better? Isn't believing this stuff supposed to make me better? If God wants me to stop doing the wrong things why doesn't he help more? (I can't believe how heretical this sounds, stream-of-consciousness is dangerous, please forgive me)
The third thing is about certainty. I'm getting skeptical about "God's plan" and "God's will." If God has a plan then there's always a right answer. With job/school/love/life choices there's a right answer. I look back at the times when I've said "this is what God wanted" and I want to think I'm right, but simultaneously doublethink says "I'm saying it's God's will cuz I'm trying to justify the way it played out." You can call anything God's will. Accepting the bad things that happen is a lot easier if it's God's will. What if it's not? If there is a right answer then why the hell do I never feel certain? If God so wants me to follow his plan then why doesn't he make it easier to figure it out?
This planning program is revealing more and more that there's no right answer. Planners deal with "wicked problems" as one article calls them - problems so complex that there's no real solution (like poverty for example). You can try to limit the scope on it and zoom in on one aspect, but no matter what you can't fix the whole thing. It's way too complex to understand its scope, let alone implement some way to solve it. You can't even be certain about little things. There will always be winners and losers. You can't see the future so you can't know the long-term effects. You just have to do the best with the info you have.
I almost had a revelation the other day. I realized that no one is certain, or any more certain than I am. You can't be certain. There is no certainty. All you can do is be satisfied with your choices...You can't change it, so why not just be satisfied?
But that's not good enough for me. I want to know! I want there to be a right answer.
I was telling my friend James last night that I think I'm anxious about going home b/c I don't really know what I think about things anymore. His response was "well you just have to decide what you're passionate about and think about that, because nothing else really matters."
I found this to be wise, however I don't know what I'm passionate about. I think it all comes down to not knowing myself anymore. And not knowing myself keeps reinforcing this ridiculous cycle of doubting what I believe, and doubting what I believe just makes me not know myself more.
Ironically/coincidentially/not so coincidentially, Natalie called me last week. And she's doubting all the same things I am. I thought that was funny/relieving/disconcerting. I was expecting to come home over break and tell her all my crazy doubts and she'd tell me how great God was and I'd remember and everything would be ok. Instead she called me with the same doubts and rather than reassuring each other about faith we reaffirmed each other about doubting. Kind of funny no? Yikes...
In a lot of ways words have stopped meaning a lot to me. Sermons don't really inspire me nor do conversations about God. The only time I really feel him anymore is when I'm listening to the music at church. They've got an amazing organ and usually have people from Philadelphia's symphony playing during the service. Last week a brass ensemble played some amazing arrangement of I don't even remember what and I almost cried. Music is revelatory. As is the city - what I see and hear speak to me of something greater. I know it's there. I'll find it again...
(oh my goodness, seriously, my bad about the drama, I don't mean it, just sorting things out, don't worry)
It's been a while, especially since I've posted anything of substance
rather than just rants about school. (Sorry about that, it's kind of
consuming). You'll be glad to know the worst is over. I turned in two
twenty-plus page reports yesterday, and I'm feeling appropriately
euphoric. I may have forgone sleep in order to do it, but it is done,
and I am glad. Just a few things left on the list.
Last night I went with a few friends to the bar and let me tell you,
after working for 27 hours straight on projects (literally) one beer
plus the company of a few friends is the best thing in the entire
world. (I still don't like beer but i figured anything else would make
me die.) It was lovely to converse about the semester and life in
general.
I'm nervous/anxious about going home. A week ago I couldn't wait to get there and now I'm afraid. It might be because I've changed a lot this semester -- not as far as my actions, or who I am, but definitely regarding what I believe. As the title implies, this post is about uncertainty. And as most other posts have implied, I'm pretty uncertain these days.
I guess the biggest thing is faith. I'm not really sure what I think about God anymore. I don't mean this to be some big dramatic statement and I really don't want you all to worry. I'm not saying I don't believe in God...I'm just not sure what that means. Or what Christianity means. I'm full of questions that I've never had before -- not about doctrine or the philosophy behind it all, but about how this religion actually plays out in practice.
My first concern is that I'm just not convinced of Christian traditions or cultural practices at the moment. I've been going to church and meeting all the other people at my church that are my age. They're quite nice people, but the majority of them are those really good kids who've never done anything wrong and grew up in Christian homes. That's fine, and I don't mean to discount them as people or as friends. They're not judgmental or condescending. At other times in my life I would really want to be friends with them and feel guilty that I wasn't as good as they are. At this point in life, I'm over that. I've done what I've done and I'm cool with it. I guess the issue is...here we are, a bunch of Christian kids raised in Christian homes...and what have we ever done about it? Who have we ever helped? Who have I ever told about Jesus? I mean, I've had conversations with plenty of people about my faith but I don't know anyone I've actually I dunno, converted? That sounds weird. Anyway, it's like...what's the point? We live by these rules cuz we think they're what God wants us to do, and we practice these traditions... I'm just starting to see it all in an anthropological/sociological light rather than a faith that I believe in and act out.
The second issue is about guilt. I feel like all I ever feel about faith is guilty. I look back at my life and see all the things I've done wrong and how I'm always falling short and how I keep making the same mistakes and how I'm not really progressing at all. I don't think this religion is about failure, but I think I make it about failure. At the end of every day I count up all the ways I was wrong and I apologize to God and hope he forgives me. And then I go and sin in all the same ways the next day. That sucks. Can I ever actually get better? Isn't believing this stuff supposed to make me better? If God wants me to stop doing the wrong things why doesn't he help more? (I can't believe how heretical this sounds, stream-of-consciousness is dangerous, please forgive me)
The third thing is about certainty. I'm getting skeptical about "God's plan" and "God's will." If God has a plan then there's always a right answer. With job/school/love/life choices there's a right answer. I look back at the times when I've said "this is what God wanted" and I want to think I'm right, but simultaneously doublethink says "I'm saying it's God's will cuz I'm trying to justify the way it played out." You can call anything God's will. Accepting the bad things that happen is a lot easier if it's God's will. What if it's not? If there is a right answer then why the hell do I never feel certain? If God so wants me to follow his plan then why doesn't he make it easier to figure it out?
This planning program is revealing more and more that there's no right answer. Planners deal with "wicked problems" as one article calls them - problems so complex that there's no real solution (like poverty for example). You can try to limit the scope on it and zoom in on one aspect, but no matter what you can't fix the whole thing. It's way too complex to understand its scope, let alone implement some way to solve it. You can't even be certain about little things. There will always be winners and losers. You can't see the future so you can't know the long-term effects. You just have to do the best with the info you have.
I almost had a revelation the other day. I realized that no one is certain, or any more certain than I am. You can't be certain. There is no certainty. All you can do is be satisfied with your choices...You can't change it, so why not just be satisfied?
But that's not good enough for me. I want to know! I want there to be a right answer.
I was telling my friend James last night that I think I'm anxious about going home b/c I don't really know what I think about things anymore. His response was "well you just have to decide what you're passionate about and think about that, because nothing else really matters."
I found this to be wise, however I don't know what I'm passionate about. I think it all comes down to not knowing myself anymore. And not knowing myself keeps reinforcing this ridiculous cycle of doubting what I believe, and doubting what I believe just makes me not know myself more.
Ironically/coincidentially/not so coincidentially, Natalie called me last week. And she's doubting all the same things I am. I thought that was funny/relieving/disconcerting. I was expecting to come home over break and tell her all my crazy doubts and she'd tell me how great God was and I'd remember and everything would be ok. Instead she called me with the same doubts and rather than reassuring each other about faith we reaffirmed each other about doubting. Kind of funny no? Yikes...
In a lot of ways words have stopped meaning a lot to me. Sermons don't really inspire me nor do conversations about God. The only time I really feel him anymore is when I'm listening to the music at church. They've got an amazing organ and usually have people from Philadelphia's symphony playing during the service. Last week a brass ensemble played some amazing arrangement of I don't even remember what and I almost cried. Music is revelatory. As is the city - what I see and hear speak to me of something greater. I know it's there. I'll find it again...
(oh my goodness, seriously, my bad about the drama, I don't mean it, just sorting things out, don't worry)
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