The benefit of the doubt.....or something like that

I know, I know....it's been a long time.

I had an interesting experience last night that taught me about forgetting. I went out with a good friend from high school. While we were talking and catching up, she mentioned that she had seen an old boyfriend of hers and recounted a humorous exchange they had. The third member of our party didn't go to high school with us and didn't know who he was or why the story was relevant. My friend quickly helped her out.

"Mark doesn't like him at all," she whispered conspiratorially. The friend looked at me for confirmation.

At this moment, I did a mental double-take. It was true that in our high school days, I had vehement feelings against this particular person. My friend was in relationship with him and he hurt her very, very much (even for high school). Feeling the protector, I was quick to demonize him as a no-good, manipulating blowhard. However, at this point--five years later--time had healed my once-fervent dislike of this person. I of course hadn't forgotten what he had done to my friend, but she herself had healed and moved on, as had I. I was even a little surprised to remember that I did have such strong feelings.

I was a little bit troubled by this experience. I am someone who tends not to forget things. I'm good at remembering names and (unfortunately) people who have done things to hurt those I love. In this case, everyone involved had moved on, and I wish I had made it clear that I was included in "everyone." While this was an innocent reminiscing experience, it made me think of how I remember people and what they've done--even those who haven't been the perpetrator of a heinous offense (like me in this story). I certainly don't want to be remembered as "the one who hated your old boyfriend," and it made me want to give people the benefit of the doubt more often. Just because someone said or did something that may have been hurtful, I'm not in charge of remembering it just in case the need ever arises to pull it out of my arsenal of past experiences to use against them. It made me want to be optimistic about the possibility of change.

Subtleties in the Weather (or Everyday Thing #2)

Weather is an odd thing: not only does it have its varying degrees of hots and colds, its different kinds of rains and winds, it also has a feel and a smell to it. One of the best examples is how it can smell like Halloween once October hits. There's something in the crisp air that mixes with falling leaves, the chilly breezes, and the hoodies that haven't been worn since March that mixes all together and makes a scent that is unique to Halloween. This happens in summer too. It can smell and feel like summer. In my hometown particularly, when the wind blows right, air rolls off the Salt Lake and there's a hint of salt in the wind that mixes with the smell of freshly cut grass and other inexplicable elements to combine to make the scent of summer.

Yesterday I noticed a different kind of nuance in the weather. It's been really nice outside for days and even a few weeks now. The temperature has been perfect: right in that area where you forget to check how hot it actually is because you don't notice the temperature at all. It's even gotten up to the upper 70s without it getting out of control hot. Yesterday, however, as I emerged from one of the buildings on campus, I immediately felt different. It wasn't incredibly hot, but it just felt different. The sun on my neck felt different, somehow. I said to my friend that it felt like a different kind of heat. She remarked that the spring heat is gone and the summer heat is here. "That's it!!" I said. It sounded crazy to both of us, but it makes sense. There's some little factor that's been changed so that it now feels like summer outside and no longer spring. It could be that the temperature just increased, but I think it's more than that. It feels like it's more than that. I could strangely smell something in the air that confirmed what we had just said and consequently basked in it for the rest of my walk back to work.

This is another instance where I ask myself, Am I crazy?

Why I Will Never Like Poetry - or - Should I Be Studying English?

*Beware - Rant ahead*

As I've said before, science and I have never seen eye to eye. Similarly, poetry and I have never been the best of friends. However, contrary to science, it wasn't until just recently that I finally admitted to myself that I severely disliked poetry in almost all forms, be it rhythmic or free verse, sonnet or elegy. Although I must say that free verse frustrates me just a little bit more. The lack of structure stresses me out when I read it and can't fall into a rhythm, especially when a line ends but the sentence continues on the next which makes me start the whole phrase over.
Additionally, in my various forays into different kinds of literature and literature forms, I have found that poetry is the form which makes me ask most often "What is this supposed to mean?!" No matter how much time I spent poring over "Tintern Abbey," I just couldn't get the sense of what Wordsworth was trying to tell me in some passages, and that was using the language of "real men" that was so prominent in his time period. If you ask me, he felt nostalgic when he revisited this hill above Tintern Abbey and tried to express his nostalgia in words and lines. But my English professor wasn't satisfied with that. There had to be something more, something more meaningful, more deep, something more.....what? Why can't we be satisfied that Wordsworth was just being nostalgic? This is my core issue with studying literature so far.
Along a similar vein, in another class about writing our own criticism, we get scolded if our paper topics are too close to the "standard interpretation" of the text (thankfully short stories, not poems). But we still have to come up with something that lines up with the author's views and opinions, so in this case, anything really happy is out of the question. One of my paper topics was shot down because it was too "Pollyannaish" and too positive for the given author. This is a different argument, but how am I supposed to know what every scholar has been saying about these stories since 1923 or whenever it was published??? Anyway, back to finding deeper meaning behind short poems.
I get frustrated when we read a very short poem for British Literature and then have to write a journal entry about it explaining the key ideas that tie it into Victorian Literature, provide a critical response (whatever that means), and then pick several key quotes. I find this problematic because I firmly believe that some of the poems we have read were written because the author felt like it. They just had these words in mind that went well together and decided to write them down. In other words, not every piece of poetry written by a poet (even the most famous) can be applied to Victorian ideals, or Romantic ideals, or whatever. What's wrong with saying that they wrote the poem simply to entertain? Christina Rossetti said that her poem "Goblin Market" was written as a children's story. However, after having read a biographical sketch of her and other interpretations of the poem, one would be led to believe that many critics are discounting what she herself has said about her own works and then are putting words in her mouth about what the poem really means. I mean, I love literature, but this is too much.
But! I ate my own words (a lot of them) this past week while reading, ironically, Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market." In the biography preceding her poetry in my monstrous Norton collection of British Literature, it said that the poem is clearly not a symbolic retelling of the Fall of Adam and Eve. After reading through the poem (which was about 5 pages long, so this isn't really the same argument), I thought to myself, whoever wrote that biography is crazy! This is a blatant retelling of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the idea of redemption! I did exactly what I just shot down, I put words in Christina's mouth and told Norton off for misrepresenting her poetry.
So what do you do? It's also important to remember that my rant is unreliable because I've only been doing this for 2 semesters now. As far as finding new topics and the ethics of interpreting an author's intention...I'll probably either get over it or find out how it's justifiable. But finding a deeper meaning behind poems shorter than a page long? Forget it. I'm not sure I'll ever buy into it. No matter what anybody tells me, I'll always hold fast to the idea that a lot of poets wrote poetry simply because they wanted to. Or at least I'll take the poem at face value.

Now, academia, go crazy and deconstruct this post and find out what I REALLY meant to say!

Writing and Progression

And speaking of academic
written criticism.....

Last week in my English class about writing criticism, we were discussing the editorial and revising process. Among other things, our teacher noted that, as a work, our papers will never be "finished." To quote her exactly, a paper is not a product, it is a process. She used an example from her own life when she sent a so-called finished and ready article to a journal only to reread it, horrified at what she had submitted. The paper was no longer done and more changes were in order to improve the quality and style.

I think our own lives are much the same way, especially in our spiritual progression. We can never say we are "done." After working on something in a specific area of our life (or paper), when we step back and look at the big picture again, we'll surely find something that could use a little tweaking, some rewriting, or maybe the removal of a major paragraph or habit. The finished product we're working toward won't really be finished and thoroughly refined until after this life. But we can get as much of a head start as possible right now through another process called repentance. This is really comforting for me when I get weighed down by all the things I'm doing wrong, or worse, doing wrong over and over again.

The encouraging thing is that our "papers" don't have to be perfect to be acceptable. God isn't going to send us back a piece of paper with all things that are wrong in our current "draft" and tell us to come back when we've fixed them all. God knows we aren't perfect and all we have to do is try our best to keep improving. A friend pointed out to me that in the oft-quoted scripture in Moroni which says to "Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him," perfection is mentioned after coming to Christ. It doesn't say to become perfect and then we can come unto Christ, because we will never become perfect without Him. That means that I can reword and revise my draft as much as I need to for as long as it takes me until I can get it perfect. When will that be? I have no idea. But I am so happy and grateful that it's possible.

On Feeling Pensive and Opening Up

Tonight I went to a volleyball game with an old friend from my freshman year. We were supposed to meet up there with a few of her friends, watch the game, and then head to her apartment and watch a movie. We've done this before and she is one of my favorite friends to spend time with and especially to watch movies with because she reacts in the right spots and always makes just the right amount of comments. Last time we watched a sappy Nicholas Sparks novel-turned-movie and we made snarky comments every few minutes. It's rather enjoyable.

Tonight our plans shifted a little bit. A new friend from one of her classes came to the game with us, but I wasn't too worried. The original plan still held, as far as I knew. After the game, he said we were both invited to his apartment to hang out with some other people and we'd decide from there what would happen. I wasn't thrilled with the idea, but I've known for a while that I need to try to break my bubble, put myself out there and meet some new people. Here was a perfect opportunity. Still a bit unwilling, I agreed to go. He offered to drive us both there so we wouldn't get a boot in his parking lot. This was very nice, but it made me uncomfortable since I wouldn't necessarily be able to leave early if I wanted to. But in the name of friendliness (or a lack of it on my part) I just went along.

Now, the funny thing is.....nothing really went wrong. Nothing happened that made me want to run screaming from the room. There ended up being about 9 people there, which is not exactly what people would call a large party. It wasn't even a party. Nobody was rude to me at all, nobody said anything offensive, I was making nice conversation with a few people, they were asking me questions, everything was relatively normal. But the whole time, I just felt really uncomfortable. I wished and wished that my friend and I had been able to watch a movie at her apartment like we had originally planned. We started playing a board game that really required getting out of one's comfort zone. My discomfort skyrocketed. I knew one out of nine other people and the tasks of the game were really embarrassing. The thought finally formed in my head in words what I had been feeling for about 20 minutes. "I want to get out of here. I want to be at home. Alone."

My freshman year of college, I would have loved this sort of thing. I was all about meeting new people and making as many friends as I could. I liked to run around and do stupid things like spray mustard on random people's windows with a large loud group (I was only 18). Friends of friends became my friends. My Facebook friend count escalated. I liked to play crazy games that would let me show off a bit.

So tonight, I'm feeling pensive. To make sure this is what I was really feeling, I looked up the adjective in the dictionary. This was the second entry:

expressing or revealing thoughtfulness, usually marked by some sadness.

I'm feeling pensive. I feel very philosophical which is laced around the edges with a slight bit of sadness. Two and a half years later, I feel no need to meet anybody new. There are even people in my life that I knew before that I have no desire to see again. When I first came home from my mission, I thought this was a normal thing and that it would pass. Now, however, I know that although it is normal, it is not going to pass. I've discovered that I'm an introvert and while many people who know me wouldn't label me as 'shy,' I don't need a lot of people around me to be content.  I 'gear up' for life by being alone. Being alone is what 'recharges' me. And if I'm not alone, being with some or all of my small group of 10 or less close friends is all I need. In addition, when I'm with those friends, I'm perfectly content just sitting around and talking or playing a board game (one of the suggestions for tonight was a scavenger hunt with a pre-written list of things to do. Get 3 strangers to serenade you? I almost died).

Meeting new people and being the first one to be friendly and say hi, for me, feels very vulnerable. I usually end up replaying the scene in my head, hashing out all the dumb things I said and then wonder what that person thinks of me. It's hard for me to really 'be myself' around people and let them see what I really think and act like. And, in my brain, I don't see any reason to open myself up to vulnerable situations when I already have enough people who I know care about me and like to spend time with me. The rest of the time I enjoy being alone.

So in my uncomfortable situation tonight, when I really started to yearn for my dingy apartment, I announced before rolling the die that this would be my last one. It was. I got up and awkwardly left after my turn. Nobody else left. My friend stayed there. I declined a ride from the kid who had brought us there and said I would walk. It really wasn't far. While walking to my car, all the thoughts I just wrote out went through my head again. Those people were very nice but I have no desire to see any of them again (except for my friend I originally went to the game with). I don't need to. For some reason, this makes me feel a sweet kind of loneliness. Upon arriving home and being in my room - alone - I felt comfortable and happy again. Will I eventually reach out and make a few new and, hopefully, close friends? I hope so. But for now, I'll probably just eat a sandwich, watch an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore show, read a little bit and then head to bed. Let the real charging up begin. Alone.

Post-Christmas Blues and Something to Be Grateful For

It's that time of the year again. The presents have been opened, the family has come to visit, the food has been eaten, the clock reads about four thirty in the afternoon and that sinking feeling hits: Christmas is over. The day that you've been waiting for for days, weeks, and months, depending on your age, has come and gone. The "Christmas feel" that has been mounting all month, reaching its climax on Christmas Eve is no longer there. Now is the time when thoughts of returning to work and school creep in. The realization that rent is due, books need to be purchased, schedules need to be finalized; the Christmas rush may be through, but a different kind of rush is about to take off.

However, Christmas is not the sole occasion that this sort of glumness accompanies. Personally, I get these "Post-Holiday Blues" at the end of Thanksgiving Day as well as after my birthday in January, although the Christmas Day experience is by far the most depressing. Why does this happen?

Christmas is the most magical time of year. There is a special feeling that comes from listening to Christmas music, snow falling (sometimes), special Christmas events and parties, helping other people in any sort of capacity, and being with family. But that's the problem. Christmas is the most magical time of year. Magical. And, well....magic isn't real. And while the good experiences and feelings we have around Christmastime are more than authentic and real, what isn't real (or at least enduring) is the vacationing, the perpetual sweets, the lavish decorations, the irresponsibility, the napping, the presents, the whimsical days spent reading a fun book or staying up until all hours playing games. When I realize that I have to face reality again in a few days, that I'll have to start going back to classes and do unpleasant things like homework again, my perfect little Christmas world is shattered.


Hence the post-holiday depression. Quite a first-world problem, isn't it?

However, it is something that can really get me down if I don't do something about it. But what can be done?? I know I'm not the only person in the world who gets the post-holiday blues, and as a result, there are infinite methods through which it can be overcome. My own personal method is to find things that I'm excited for or grateful for in my old humdrum life at school. Whenever I get feeling particularly down, I try to specifically think about my life in Provo, since, especially during Winter semester, that is where I spend most of my time. Even though there will be rent to pay, textbooks to read, papers to write, and tests to take, there are a lot of good things that go with it and things that I will only be able to experience and do at this point in my life.

I'm not really sure how this applies, but
it made me laugh, so there.

Rabbi Harold Kushner said, "If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul." Sometimes I am a lot better at being grateful for the good things in my life right now than at other times. But I have seen that when I do find the good things in my life and am grateful for them that it becomes much easier to be grateful, I feel much, much happier and the Christmas blues don't seem to have as powerful of an impact on me.

Perhaps the thing I should be most grateful for in response to the post-holiday blues is the very fact that I was able to have such a great Christmas. I got to go home and be with the people I really love and enjoy spending time with. I was able to vacation, eat perpetual sweets, enjoy lavish decorations, be irresponsible, take naps as I pleased, and spend whimsical days reading fun books and staying up until all hours playing games.

So, while I'm not ready to go to class tomorrow and start all the inevitable reading assignments, I'm considerably more ready than I was on the 25th at 4:30 PM. The post-Christmas blues are all but gone.

"I know your face..." "I know your life."

One thing about me is that I remember people's faces and names quite well and, for the most part, many of my interactions with them and/or things I learned about them from them. Sometimes I look up random people from my kindergarten class that moved away on Facebook just to see what they have become, even though they probably have no memory of me (kindergarten was a while ago, after all). This also happened on my mission when we would try to talk to people in the streets. Of course, those who would brush us off like dead flies were certainly ejected from my memory, unless their refusal was particularly rude, which made them almost easier to remember. But whenever we actually did have a meaningful conversation or at least one that lasted longer than 30 seconds, their face was etched in my brain and sometimes we would see them again and it was a bit awkward. Do I acknowledge that we know each other even though I never found out your name or do we acknowledge each other even though we had a ten minute debate on the existence of prophets today? Or the most common question: Do you remember me? And even though it is probably hard to forget two young Americans stopping you on your way to work, it still almost inevitably became an awkward game of alternating eye contact until the moment comes when you must make a decision, which usually turns out as a head nod.

Is it obvious that l I overthink things?

The reason that I overthink this particular thing is due to the fact that often I remember people, but they don't remember me. At least it appears so. Therefore, when I meet a slight acquaintance from a few weeks ago or a friend of a friend that I met at a party, I usually remember them, but I'm never sure if they remember me. I saw a great example of this the other night. I was visiting Temple Square tonight with a good friend. We were entering a building and I opened the door for myself and my friend held it for some people after me. As I waited for my friend, the group of young people walked past me and I instantly recognized one of them. It was a missionary from my mission but quite a bit older than I was and kind of looks like a dinosaur. I sort of stared at him trying to see if he had recognized me, having already met on several occasions. Nothing. I wasn't offended but I did want to tell my friend who was with me (also from the mission) that I knew who it was. Then, before I had a chance, the older missionary turned back, looked at me strangely and our conversation went as follows. Italics are my unvocalized thoughts.

Him: Excuse me...do you speak _____?
Me: Yea, I do.
Him: Did you serve in the ________ mission?
Me: Yea! And so did you. Your name is _____ ______. You were my Zone Leader for a transfer. I've actually seen you several times on campus already.Him: Hey, me too! When did you get home?
Me: In June, so it hasn't been a super long time. You went home in December of 2010, right after my six month mark. I remember your last testimony at Christmas Conference. You mentioned that you really learned to talk with God on your mission.Him: Ok. Who was in your group?
Me: You trained my friend Elder ______ but to avoid any possible awkward situations which would arise from showing that I know more than I'm saying, I'll mention him third or fourth. Oh, Elder So-and-So, Elder What's-his-name, and Elder _______
Him: Ok, cool, I trained him!
Me: I know. In Brest. Really? That's awesome. Good to see you!
Him: You too!

Is this normal?!

Now, obviously that doesn't truly follow my true stream of thought during the conversation, but in the moments that followed it, I certainly did a mental run-through of all the things I remembered about him. One factor that may play into this one-sided memory lapse can be based on the fact that when you are older in the mission, you aren't really aware of younger missionaries, but when you are new, you learn to know everybody. So maybe I'm not crazy. At least not in this given instance.

This also happened in one of my first class periods this semester. A girl from a dance class I took when I was a freshman walked in and I remembered her instantly. After a few days she looked at me funny and said, "I think I know you from somewhere, but I can't think where." It's the dance class that we both took fall and winter semesters. You were also in my English class winter semester. When my turn came to present myself in front of the class, you asked me what my favorite dance step was that we had learned. You had long hair that you chopped off into a pixie cut that you are still sporting. Yea, it's so weird, I know you too.....Oh, I know! Dance class freshman year!

From her tone of voice, I suspected that she remembered too and was merely being socially correct. This leads to my big question: Does everyone remember faces and I am just ignorant of it? Is it so necessary to maintain social grace and avoid coming off as creepy that we feign temporary amnesia? I know I certainly do. How off-putting is it if you go around reciting every fact you know about a person that you haven't talked to more than a handful of times in very casual settings that took place over two years ago? I think a lot of people would want to forget me if I did something like that.

I guess this is what they call a social conundrum because I'm not sure what the solution is. As uncertain as I am of the solution, I'm equally certain that I cannot be the only one to whom this happens. But I'm not as certain that there needs to be a solution. It's not a problem, but just something that occurs once in a while in everyone's life. (But if there is a solution, please tell me.)

Conclusion? Usually I like to tidy things up in nice bows at the end of talks, papers, and now blog posts. In formal papers for school, if you look at how long my conclusions and body are in proportion to how much  time was spent on each, conclusions will leave the body far behind. Everything has to be summed up in just the right way. So I'm breaking  my own rules here and even going against my character in saying that I have absolutely no resolution or conclusion to offer.






That was really hard to type.