Here's to the Search for the Great 'Something': #3

For my something this week, I want to share this opinion piece about the value and power of daydreaming. I self-identify as an avid daydreamer and today during our reflective activity, I loved being able to float away to myriad of worlds.

Enjoy!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/how-to-daydream.html

Silence

In addition to my journal entry, I wanted to connect a few other important things in my life to my reflection on the green. First, is another one of my favorite songs that reminds me of the process of reflection. 

'Silent Way' by Milo Greene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDeWUYxZVHA

In this song, Milo Greene repeats the chorus: when I'm older/ can I still come over?

Now, this of course acts as a romantic sentiment, but I also see a connection between this lyric and what I reflected to be a reason for our fear of silence. I think we are fundamentally afraid of change- especially change that is not obvious or predicted for us. I have had many key transitional moments in my life exposed in periods of silence- whether those be conclusions I have reached through self-reflection or those moments of silence after something immense has been said between two people. I think at the end of the day, we avoid silence and thus the unexpected potential for great change, because at our simplest bases, we just want to know that after everything pieces of ourselves will thrive through the change. We simply want to know that when we are older- after much silence has been heard or felt or thought or shared- that we will still be whole enough to 'come over'. 

I'd also like to connect this reflection to another blog post I wrote while abroad (I know I've been sharing a lot from my other writing, but I have loved being able to read and then reconnect pieces of my old self and my old reflections to this new coursework). This is a piece I wrote on empathy, and I think some of the fears I expressed about silence are also present in my worry over the existence of empathy. 

http://de-pompingthecircumstance.blogspot.com/2015/01/tea.html

Thank you!

Kiss

Before I had my first kiss, I had daydreamed about it an infinite amount of times. Thinking back to these daydreams, I remember many flecks of glitter- the lit-up edges of these daydreams caressed my innate romanticism as I dreamt my first kiss with a boy, glitter-flecked eyes and some heart-shaped grin.

It slowly became an obsession of mine. And so, the obsession, as all obsessions do, grew into an overwhelming fear, cruxing itself on two fundamental thoughts:

1) how often can I practice kissing on my knee before I solidify my status as ‘lonely freakish girl’

and/or

2) can someone please inform me what the appropriate level of ‘puckering’ is?

I met a boy at age 16. I met him, and it took me five weeks to smile at him in public. He had these lovely thick eyelashes that left dancing shadows along his laugh lines. I would often stare longest at these eyelashes, studying the upward slope, always thinking back to my courses in physics as I wondered how much friction ensued when he laughed and happiness spilled out of his warm brown eyes onto the upward slope at amazing rates.

~

I have a bad habit of trying to pinpoint the happiest moment of my life. It is this rigid tendency, so futile that is closely resembles trying to hold the infinity of the Universe in the palm of my hand. I know that happiness has never fully expressed itself in a singular moment- it has ebbed and flowed as a murky cloak over my eyes. But alas, I try to pinpoint the happiest moment in my life so that I can have a point of origin. A North Star.

The moment I often think of exists as a single moment in my mind, but I really think it is a mosaic of many small fragments. I’m always sitting on a hill. I have walked a long way and have left my ‘comfort zone’ (drawn below as Figure 1).  

Figure 1

The light is always really soft, usually highlighting something in the distance. I sit on the verge of tears- the edge of a paradox as I release my happiness in the form of perceived sadness. Because I have left my comfort zone, I am always a little scared too. I usually think of something so big, so infinite that I must let out everything in one long laugh.

This is my happiest moment. I don’t know if it exists beyond the wheeling confines of my mind, but it does exist as a converging point. From here, I take in the view from my hill. Tears always meet laughter.

~

When my first kiss finally happened, friction ended up working against me.

I was on the golf course behind my house, wearing a hot pink bathing suit. I had a middle part (my hair always dries in a middle part, which inspired my mother’s now infamous statement that I just “don’t look good wet”). Ten of our closest friends were there, and they stood only a few feet away.

I remember him leaning in. Those eyelashes that I had loved so much became overpowering, so I squinted my eyes shut at the friction and puckered my lips as hard as I could.

I think it only lasted a second. I had puckered so hard my jaw was left sore. I jerked back after that second, and in my burst of rashness, screamed: I’M SORRY, I DON’T KNOW HOW TO KISS, I JUST UH AH. Then I made a weird shrieking noise before running as fast as I could down the golf course back home.

I share this story because it shows that life is always awkward and messy. In my daydreams, I can live in comfort and in magic. I can picture perfect first kisses, and of course, I always have that hill where my tears and laughter converge together. These moments in my head are always so beautiful- devoid of the friction my real life struggles to overcome with a smooth velocity. 

So, between the messy manifestation of my life and the beautiful moments I can always hold in my sacred imagination, I live on the edge of paradox, in which imperfection and perfection thrive as kindred forces.

It is here that I hope for the best all while getting bruised along the way.

The Paradox: Visits London in pursuit of wonderful adventure. But, it is rainy and windy and I make this face in photos. 

Here's To the Search of the Great 'Something': #2

For my something this week, I have attached a link to the song 'Maps' by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Now, this song is not only appropriate because of the title's literal connection to our in-class activity from this week. It is also appropriate because it is a song that brings about great nostalgia for me- this song was my guiding force through a high school break-up (oh yes, it was on my first ever 'F*** You' playlist) and it also has just been my song in many spirited memories. Therefore, I decided to manifest my own nostalgia as my 'something' for the week. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIIxlgcuQRU

Mapping: Take 1

My Upside Down World View Map (<-- link)

Father

A Practice Activity in Critical Reflective Thought:

Statement: “A savage finds his way skillfully through a wilderness by reading certain obscure indications; the civilized build a highway which shows the road to all” (Dewey 5).

Critical Reflection: Who is really the ‘savage’? Could it actually be he who bends nature to fit his own needs- he who does not reflect carefully enough to “cultivate deep- seated and effective habits of discriminating tested [the] beliefs” that call for the permanent altercation of nature? (Dewey 8).

~

The second man I ever deemed to be my father was Christopher Columbus. I was in second grade, and I remember him being called father, and so I called him father as well- the first time I used this sacred term to describe someone other than my loving dad back home.

In the story I heard, Columbus was the father of America, an America powerless to be known previous to his decided ‘discovery’ of her. His fatherhood was bolstered by many facts, one fact seemed more important than others: he was the first man in America who looked like me. All other persons in America were categorized as ‘savage’.

Throughout the majority of my time in the academic world which shaped my ability to think, I lived under the unknown fatherhood of violence, genocide, colonial theft and the drive to alter nature to fit imperial needs. For me, Columbus was always just ‘dad’. It took me a very long time to develop the critical reflective capacity necessary to de-father Columbus and to reject classifications of who embodies ‘savagery’. I had be conditioned to think, but under “social conditions [which tended] to instigate and confirm wrong habits of thinking by authority, by conscious instruction, and by the even more insidious half-conscious influences of language, imitation, sympathy, and suggestion” (Dewey 8).

Thus, the ability to reflectively think is not only the way in which we become better writers or communicators, it also is an act of promoting social change and social responsibility. As I gained the information and capacity to reject Columbus as my father-figure, I also expanded my thinking from “unconscious competence, the application of a process or the retrieval of information that doesn’t require conscious attention”, to a transformative act (Anson 7). Reflective thinking is primarily transformative- turning fleetingness into something sustained. It is a different way of living and participating in the social community; one cannot be passive if one reflects to invoke a “willingness to endure a condition of mental unrest and disturbance… [reserving that] judgment [should be] suspended during further inquiry; and [that] suspense is likely to be somewhat painful” (Dewey 4).

Therefore, the process of reflective thought is a way to live with discomfort and imperfection. This is necessary not only for academic growth, but also for our society’s pursuit to be better people and end horrors around us. To act for change, we must first take the time to reject dangerous truths we may have absorbed when were thinking without reflection. This rejection takes time and an intense commitment to self-critical listening. Above all, reflective thought is necessarily a vulnerable process- a process in which you pause in a moment of infinity to understand first before fidgeting to defend, justify or blindly pursue your context.