boarding school

I was thinking that maybe the best thing for me would be to try to find work as a college/university professor and then run for a school board position or get involved in the politics of education in some other way, since, as important as theory and practice are, I think changes are made primarily through politics (changes which are influenced, hopefully, by theory, and implemented through practice).

But I realized I didn't know how exactly people get on school boards. So I looked up the C-U school boards. People are elected; but no biographies were posted, so I couldn't tell who these people were or how they got elected. (Some more research would help me turn up this information, though.)

Then I looked up the Chicago school board, for K-12 education. They're appointed by the mayor, and they were almost entirely from the world of business. CEOs, bank presidents, etc. Basically no education experience, at any level. This wasn't a surprise, really, but I wouldn't say that I knew it before.

Then I looked up the Illinois Board of Higher Education--I think, in some states, K-12 and higher education are controlled by the same board. It's separate in Illinois. This board is appointed by the governor, and consisted of a mix of business leaders and retired professors and college presidents.

So am I qualified to sit on any of these boards? Well, I could perhaps get elected to the C-U board, or a board like it. However, it seems my best chance at getting appointed to a board like CPS or Illinois Higher Ed would be to become a business leader (which, let's be honest, is unlikely to happen) or to work my way up as a university administrator.

I guess the thing is that I'm actually quite interested in an administrative position that I could combine with teaching. Getting involved in K-12 administration, however, would require (I think) another degree or two, and I don't think I'm ready for that right now. Getting involved in higher education administration would just mean securing a position as a professor and then probably expressing a clear interest in administration--it might help to take some classes in higher education policy and administration in the next year or two. The Ed. Org. and Leadership department even offers a Higher Ed track, so I could shoot for an M.Ed. in Higher Ed in the next couple of years, though I wonder if it'd be smarter to just pick up that stuff on my own while a professor.

I haven't learned anything about policy in my program, in part because I chose not to take these classes, but mostly because these classes weren't part of the program, and I feel like we're not encouraged to take these classes (they mostly fall outside of our department). I might be qualified, at this point, to be a department head, but I don't think I'd be qualified to be, say, a college dean or university president, since I just don't actually know what's going on with higher education. I can learn more about this, of course--it would be many years before I could get into either of those positions (and I'd have to get a job as a professor first, of course, which isn't a certainty)--but I'm sort of wondering whether I should just try to learn it on my own, as I need it, or whether I should take some classes now to prepare myself.

It's odd, I think my program prepares us fairly well to think of education in the abstract, but we get very little acquaintance with how education actually happens. So we learn how to formulate educational ideas and critique educational theories, but I worry that this is usually de-contextualized, so that we don't actually learn how to put ideas into practice or how to use our critiques to influence change.

I could continue to whine about this, as I have for at least a couple of years now, or I could just re-orient my work towards policy. It seems clear now that my dissertation is going to deal with the aims of education, and I think this has obvious policy implications, but I need to learn how to write in such a way as to draw out those implications (perhaps publishing op-ed pieces in newspapers and magazines) and I need to learn how to have an influence on school boards and other groups involved in policy-making. I do think a class or two oriented towards educational politics, policy, economics, finance, etc. (at the K-12 and higher ed levels) would be useful, and I also think it'd be useful to do a better job of keeping up with education news and commentary--find some professors who have some measure of influence on policy and figure out how exactly they do it.

This is all going to have to be self-initiated, I think, since there aren't natural outlets for this in my department. But why not do some reading in educational politics and economics? Why not try to write an op-ed? Even if it's not published, it'd be good practice.

-----

Dissertation:
I. Current American public aims of education--what are they and how were they determined?
II. The History of American Public Aims of Education (and the role of philosophy in this history) (What have they been and how have they been determined?)
III. Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives on Aims
III. Contemporary Alternative Perspective on Aims 1: Bergmann on aims of education
IV. Contemporary Alternative Perspective on Aims 2: Nussbaum/Sen on aims of education
VI. How the contemporary work can help in determining contemporary aims. (In a democracy, who decides aims--how do they decide? What role should various perspectives on aims have on the conversation? What role should educational theorists play? What will aims be and how will they be determined?)

need to do

I know I want to be a professor after I get my PhD, because I love teaching. However, I also know that I need my research/work to involve some kind of application where I get to work directly with people, or else I won't feel like I'm doing anything. So, sometime soon, I think I need to figure out exactly how I want to apply myself and exactly how I can start getting some experience in that area. Based on this, I can try to determine whether it's worth it to continue taking Arabic, or whether my time would be better spent on other pursuits.

time for reflection

It has been over six months since I've written here. Maybe this is long enough where nobody's checking the blog anymore, and nobody will ever read this, but that's fine. I think I've always used this space (and similar spaces) more as a place to think through things for my own sake than as a place to broadcast my thoughts. That's not to say that I'm not interested in what my friends have to say about what I write here--otherwise I'd just write things out in a journal, or type them out in a text file. I wouldn't use a blog that I've told a number of people about.

Why am I writing now, then, after six months? I think I've been inspired by the fact that it's the end of the year, and this has always been a time when I (and others, I'm sure) have reflected on where things stand in my life. To be honest with you--to be honest with myself--I haven't had much cause to reflect over these past six months, probably because things have been going so well. Typically, I'm inspired to write when something is wrong, when there's some life issue I'm trying to work through. And I haven't had too many of these issues lately. Since the end of May, I've been in a relationship that is still going strong, so I haven't had the relationship concerns that used to plague me. From around mid-June to early August, I took a seven-week intensive Arabic course that covered the first year of college Arabic. I was in class 4-5 hours a day during the week, and then in the afternoon, for about 3-4 hours a day during the week, I'd have homework. Some nights, I'd have TA work for an online class. In mid-August, I came home for a week, and then the semester started up. By this time, I was set on a totally different schedule than I'd had before the end of May. Basically, during the week, I'd work during the day, have a few free hours to myself in the early evening (during which I'd sometimes workout, sometimes just sit around and relax, and always make dinner), and then I'd see my girlfriend at night. Saturdays, I'd spend with my girlfriend. And Sundays, I'd run errands, do laundry, and get some work done. With minor variation, this was my schedule for the fall semester. I almost never went out to the bars (which was almost all I did pre-June), I almost never stayed up really late, I almost never drank--and I loved it. I realized that, while the bars were fun in the moment, they weren't satisfying for me, and I think they ultimately made me feel worse, because I wouldn't sleep well and I'd wake up late, still tired, and I wouldn't feel with it all day. I'm far more satisfied with how things are set up now--I get work done during the day, I have time to myself, and I have time with my girlfriend--I seem to have all the elements in place that I need to be satisfied. It probably wouldn't satisfy everybody, but it works for me.

This has all come with some cost, of course, and at this time of reflection, I recognize that there are things I might change, largely dealing with the way I structure/prioritize my time. One cost: I really only hang out with my roommate and my girlfriend. I love my roommate and my girlfriend, and I enjoy spending time with them, of course. The cost is that I've drifted from some friends in Urbana and I rarely get on the phone with friends in other places. My schedule doesn't seem to allow for it--when would I call? This is something I need to work on.

I have come to understand that there are a limited number of hours every day, every week, every month, and I want to spend those hours balancing the elements of life that bring me (and not necessarily others) fulfillment. My balance seems to involve: keeping up with the news, teaching, conversation, time with friends, reading for fun, reading for work, writing for fun, writing for work, language work, exercise, movies, and time with my girlfriend. Is there time for all of these things, every day? No, I don't think so. I think there's time for most of it, however, but only if I compartmentalize my time well. If I'm going to work during the day, then I need to actually work during the day, leaving the evenings free for exercise/phone calls/etc.

At this point, I know what I need to do, though. I don't question my basic priorities and I don't question the things that bring me fulfillment. I have learned to avoid the inessential things that actively drag me down. I am quite content--as content as I could expect to be right now, I think. And my academic work is going well--last semester, I defended my general field exam, and finished my special field exam. This coming semester, I should be able to defend my dissertation proposal, meaning that I should be writing my dissertation sometime this coming semester, meaning that I should be able to finish a draft by the end of the summer or early in the fall. I'm on track, I think, to finish the PhD by May 09.

There are two questions that require reflection right now, though. First: What kind of job do I want? Second: What causes do I want to embrace? I have realized that part of what brings me contentment is participating in something that I feel is actively helping people. Some kind of project. Teaching brings me this feeling of helpfulness, to an extent, but I also think I need to figure out what issues are important to me, where I can start working for change. I am past the point where I feel I need to change the world, but I know that I need to feel that I am changing something--helping someone--to feel content. As for the first question, about the job, I do want to be a professor, because I want teaching to be part of my life, but I have recently been considering whether it would be beneficial to get some actual public school teaching experience first (many jobs prefer this, some require it) or to try to get a policy degree so that I'd be better suited to influence educational policy (technically, I'm in an educational policy studies department, but I haven't had to take a single policy class, and it strikes me that most of the policy-related work probably happens in educational organization and leadership--for administrators--or public policy programs).

I do think I'm on the right track, but I think I can make some decisions right now, about my dissertation, and about how I spend my non-dissertation time in the next couple of years, that could greatly affect what kind of positions I seem most qualified for.

I hope to write more in the next week or two.

rejuvenation

Home has been rejuvenating. It is bittersweet, to be sure--I get to see my friends once, twice if I'm lucky, and I'm reminded of how wonderful it would be if I could see them more often, see them regularly, feel like we have all the time in the world to hang out, because nobody's going anywhere. But it is also inspiring. I have had conversations with people that have enlarged my perspective on relationships (as I may be entering into one myself) and have given me a renewed sense of purpose and a renewed sense of hope that we might be able to shift the primary aim of human culture to one of fulfillment, if we work together and come to embrace the realization of this shift as our calling--as a necessity. It will take some effort, I think, to be sure that the rejuvenation sustains when I return to C-U, but I can do it, with help from my friends here, my friends there, my friends around the country, and friends yet to be met.

I am ready to stand for something.

punctuation

Things have taken a wonderfully unexpected turn over the past few days. I often marvel at how seemingly small turns of events--meeting a new person, for instance, or a few days rest from your normal routine--can make your life seem quite different. I don't think everyone sees their lives this way, but I tend to see mine as stretches of time (sometimes days, sometimes weeks, etc.) punctuated by events that send me on different courses. I can tell these punctuating events from everyday events because it's hard to imagine what my life was like before a punctuating event. For instance, it's hard to imagine what life was like before my father passed away. I can't connect well to the Jeff before that time. It's also hard to imagine what life was like before I came to U of I. I live differently now than I did then.

At any rate, it was a great weekend, from Friday to today, and I'm looking forward to the week. I've got a decent amount of work to do, but nothing major--just things to check off the list. Then Friday a concert in Madison and Saturday I head to Tampa for nearly a week. Then I come back here and head to St. Louis to visit a dear friend and then I come back here and another dear friend will be passing through town. My roommate said tonight that, just based on the events of the past few days, he can say he had a good summer. If summer ended right now, he'd be satisfied. I agree, but I'm glad there are still almost 3 months left.

projects

Does the way a person looks give any indication of his or her personality? Some people just look kind, or grouchy, or bitter...but does this mean anything?

It's an odd balance, between living each day to the fullest and setting yourself up for the future. Why don't I spend the day outside, exploring, drinking wine, swimming, etc.? Because I have projects that mean something to me. Living life to the fullest isn't just having as much fun as possible--I think sometimes it means fulfilling some grand project. Does everyone want a project, though? And what if your project is to have as much fun as possible?

for sure

I wish I could write about other people, about the world, as readily as I can write about myself. Maybe if I tried...? Part of what keeps me from doing it, I think, is the fear that I don't know enough to speak intelligently about world events, about works of art, about society. Of course, you might say that not knowing enough doesn't stop other people from speaking about these things. I sometimes think part of being an academic is acting as if you know everything, even when you know you don't. I do wonder, though--not just in academia, but among pundits, in conversations and debates people have with one another--how often people just don't actually know what they're talking about. Yet they act like they do, so you're inclined to believe them, because you don't know enough yourself to challenge what they have to say.

Anyway, what all of this means for me is that I rarely participate in 'debates' among my friends, because I often feel that none of us really know enough to have a debate of any relevance. In these situations, if I do speak up, it's usually when I'm able to cut through the arguments and get to the core point of disagreement. I have this idea (which may or may not be right) that most debates, most controversies, stem from fundamentally different assumptions. You can argue as much as you want, but the arguments don't actually matter, because the real disagreement is rooted in a different way of seeing things that no amount of argument is going to change. I think of this with the argument about abortion, for instance, where I think the fundamental disagreement is about when the zygote/embryo/fetus becomes a human being. Because, obviously, once the thing is human, it shouldn't be aborted, since that's killing a defenseless human being, which is murder, which most people would maintain is wrong. The thing is, some people think life starts at conception, while some think life starts after the first trimester, while some think...you get the idea. Religious arguments against abortion (at any stage) are not irrational--they're just rooted in a view that human life begins at a certain point. Under this view, the argument makes total sense. So you can argue pro-life, pro-choice, all you want, but I think the key is the assumption about when human life begins, which is something we are likely to disagree about 'forever.'

I think a number of ethical/political/religious conflicts boil down to differing fundamental worldview assumptions, but this is often lost under a mass of propaganda and bluster. I think, therefore, that if you want to change someone's mind about a conflict, you have to somehow change their assumptions, which is more often a matter of rhetoric than rational argument. People tend to 'feel' a side in a conflict, rather than rationally embrace a side. So persuasion is key, especially when there are few things we can universally know 'for sure.'

wouldn't it be nice

Now, I don't think I'm ugly, but I often wish I was more attractive, so people would be more interested in me, and so I'd feel more confident about talking to strangers. (Or maybe it'd be more realistic to wish that I was more self-assured about myself as a person, regardless of how I looked.)

I have a fear of good-looking people, because I can never really imagine that they'd want to talk to me. This likely stems from teasing when I was younger--nerd, dork, some humiliating incidents that I haven't told many people about but affected me deeply--that sort of crippled my self-esteem. When it comes right down to it, I have never seen myself as that great of a person on my own, which is probably why I depend so much on loving, supportive friends, and why it's incredibly difficult for me to feel confident in friendships with people who are not (outwardly) very loving and/or supportive. I draw strength and confidence (and sometimes my personality) from others, because I am weak, lack confidence, and fundamentally don't like who I am. I have been like this for so long that it's hard for me to imagine that I could change. How do you work on liking yourself more? How do you work on confidence? How do you work on constantly comparing yourself (often unfavorably) to the people around you? How do you work on these things, when you've been like this for 15 years? How do you fight the urge to make yourself an island, to isolate yourself, to feel like you're always going to be alone?

These feelings aren't there all the time, but they tend to arise if I feel even the least bit lonely. Maybe the answer is just to keep myself busy, surround myself with people, so that I don't give the feelings a chance to emerge; but wouldn't it be nice if I could just love myself, value myself, and not constantly be questioning who I am and what I'm doing?

infusion

This is my 90th post. 100 is right around the corner. We'll have to celebrate.

I'm in a wistful mood right now. It's partially the music I'm listening to (Wilco), the setting (I'm sitting in Kopi, a downtown coffeeshop, by the big front windows, watching the people of C-U head out for the night), and my thoughts (I'm missing my friends, as I watch these people who are out in groups of four or five, conversing over a beer, seeming to enjoy one another's company). As I'm sure I've written before, I've found individual people here with whom I feel that sort of comfort, that ease, but I have not found a group like that. This makes me wistful, though, rather than sad, probably because I've accepted it, just as I've come to accept much of who I am.

As I laid in bed last night, waiting for sleep to drift over me, I was thinking about what I'd written, and thought that perhaps it sounded a little bitter. Maybe it was. What's important for me, though, as I move into the summer, as I move into the rest of my life, is the realization that I need to be loved. I have no doubt about that. I'm not an independent person, in many ways. I thrive when I have supportive, loving friends around me. The few people I know here who I can call real friends ("tier one" friends, the deepest, closest, likely to be lifelong friends) have come to mean so much to me and have been (I think sometimes) the only positive aspect of being here. This environment just hasn't been good for me, but at least I've met a few wonderful people.

That's one realization: I need a loving, supportive community of friends to thrive. The other is that I already know plenty of loving, supportive people; but the majority of them are not here. They are in Tampa, Gainesville, Ft. Lauderdale, Tucson, New York, California, DC, Chicago, Madison, Texas, Arkansas, Australia...I have more than enough tier one friends in my life. Maybe too many--I can't keep up with everyone as well as I'd like. But, rather than get overwhelmed and give up, I need to try to keep up with everyone. An hour on the phone with friends every day or two will probably make the other hours of my day that much better. A letter sent, an email written--these kinds of things keep connections alive, help me remember that I've got the loving, supportive community of friends I want--I've had it all along--it's just spread out. This is not ideal. Not for me. I wish I had it here. But. I don't. I haven't put myself in situations to meet the kind of people that could form that community for me. But I suppose the one advantage is that it leaves me more time to maintain my connections with the friends that are spread out everywhere.

For the first time in many years, I'm questioning whether to become a professor when I leave here. I think if I wasn't so far into graduate school, I'd probably leave. As a whole, it's unsatisfying, though I've found pockets of satisfaction to keep me going. I'll finish, though...but then what? I want to teach, but I don't want to be a scholar in the standard sense. I want to work with people--I don't want most of my work to be solitary. I want to effect change--I want to contribute to something--I want to be able to stand back, look at my work, and see that I've produced (or helped to produce) something lasting. Perhaps just focusing on teaching would be best for me--try to get a job at a liberal arts college, maybe. Perhaps I should aim to found a charter school. Perhaps I should find a NGO that deals with interreligious dialogue, religious education, or peacemaking--perhaps I should start my own, try to get my friends involved. Perhaps I can do all of that. But I know that we have limited time. I have limited time. And the best I can do is try to live my life in fulfilling a way as possible, which (for me) means doing what I can to help others live their lives in fulfilling a way as possible. So I just need to find a way to feel that I am actively contributing to that goal, in any way, small or large. The specifics can sort of work themselves out, I think--it'll depend partially on opportunities that arise, people I meet. But I want a general destination.

I think it comes down to this:

I want a life that is infused with what I find lovely, that is infused with what I find beautiful.
Beautiful friendships.
Beautiful relationships.
Beautiful music, beautiful art, beautiful movies.
Beautiful ideas.
Beautiful emotions--hope, joy, bliss, love.

I've got this already, to a great extent. I have been able to surround myself with beautiful people, things, ideas. I am learning to cast away the not-so-beautiful. But my life--what I am doing with myself--has not yet fallen in line. I do not feel like I am DOING beautiful things, everyone. My actions are not yet beautiful. Grad school has not been beautiful for me...but maybe it will lead me to something beautiful, and I can finally lead a life that harmonizes with the beauty and love I see around me.

respite

I am exhausted. The past 24 hours or so were wonderful, but active; unproductive, but relaxing. I kept on having to remind myself that today was a Tuesday. My roommate said it well, I thought: "I feel like I've been through a long weekend." I will get back on track tomorrow, but perhaps I needed these past 24 hours (and, in fact, the 72 before them) to help me deal with some recent events.

I won't get into the whole story of why I didn't go to DC here, but the end of the story is that I changed my plane ticket so that I could go home for a week in early June (June 2-8 now, actually, not 2-9 like I said before), which is something I'd been hoping to do anyway. I didn't even lose any money on the flight, because Southwest doesn't make you pay a change fee--just the difference in price.

I spent much of the day today roaming around campus and U with my roommate. We had destinations, but weren't in a hurry, so we enjoyed the day, stopping to play catch, stopping to talk, sometimes just stopping to enjoy the view. This was all a follow-up to a house party I went to last night, which is sort of like going to the bars, but you're drinking in a house and a yard rather than in a bar.

Over these past five days or so, as I've been processing the recent events I mentioned above, I have realized that I have a tendency, in certain situations, to see people for who I want them to be, and not necessarily for who they are. I had thought that my intuitions about people were pretty reliable--in other words, that the initial intuitions I have about someone usually match up with who they turn out to be, after I've known them for a while--but this isn't true. My intuition is sometimes clouded by what I want to see and it's sometimes clouded because people don't always act genuinely. Of course, sometimes my intuition is correct, but the point, I think, is that you don't fully know someone until you've spent quite a bit of time with him/her; until you've seen that person in different situations, dealing with a variety of issues; until you get to know that person's story.

I have also taken a firmer stand on the fact that I don't need people in my life who make me feel small, judged, patronized, stupid, and so forth, for being who I am. The fact is that I have a number of dear friends, from the various stages of my life, who have shown me what real friendship is. I hope that, occasionally, I have been able to show it back to them. These are people who clearly love me--even if they never say it, their actions reveal it. I don't think I can expend energy on people who make me feel unloved when I have plenty of people who make me feel loved. This is not to say, of course, that I'm looking for adoration or that I only consider people my friends who think that everything I do is beyond criticism--on the contrary, a friend is a great critic, because s/he sometimes sees things about you that you can't see about yourself. However, the friend can critique because the critique is always rooted in love--the friend wants the best for you, because the friend loves you.

In the past weeks, months, I have disappointed some people, and some people have disappointed me. I have become acutely aware of how relationships can change, and I have learned to be more honest with myself, both about other people and about my own values. Because of this honesty, my life has gained a direction, a focus, that it didn't have before. I'm still not entirely sure how the focus will be realized, in terms of a job once I get done with my PhD, but I have my passions in sight, I have a dissertation topic in mind, and I have a much stronger sense of who I am now than I did in January.

The summer stretches ahead.

change of plans

Didn't go to DC this week, but will be in Tampa from June 2 to 9. In Milwaukee tonight, will blog more later.

anti-isolation

Trying to keep up with the blog a little better.

Doing well, overall. I need to get myself absorbed in something, though. I have a tendency to get absorbed in relationships, but I think I need to get absorbed in something more 'independent.' Something like a project. Or a community of friends. I'm always looking looking looking for things to get involved in, but I never actually dive into anything, because I never find the perfect thing. But I will likely never find the absolutely perfect thing (just like I might never find the absolutely perfect person), so I need to find something that I can throw myself into for now, or I need to make something happen. Create my own project. I suppose this is what my dissertation is, although I feel very isolated when it comes to this project. But it doesn't have to be that way, does it? I need to be sure I'm sharing my ideas with others who are just as passionate about the topic as I am--I've probably tended not to like conferences because I just haven't cared enough about the topic/field (and I have enjoyed the sessions at conferences that align more with my interests...I think the truth is that I'm just not that interested in philosophy of education as the field currently stands...which perhaps is fitting, since I didn't come here to do phil of ed anyway, I came here to do religion and education, then found that there really wasn't a program in it)--and there is a certain community, I think, that would be interested in my topic (and I'd be interested in theirs).

Whatever projects I do need to involve other people who I like, with whom I share passions. So I need to make this happen.

come and go

A rainy day in C-U.

I would like to be on top of things. I have this plan: spend the mornings keeping up with religion, education, and world news; spend lunchtime emailing people; spend the afternoons working on my dissertation proposal; exercise; dinner; then spend the evenings emailing, reading, watching movies; bed by midnight. Up at 8. That sounds nice, doesn't it?

If I told you the number of times I've made up a schedule for myself and then proceeded not to follow it, your head would explode.

Time to stop planning, time to start doing. I am so good at figuring out what I should be doing, but so bad at actually making those things happen. Maybe this is because doing what I know I should be doing means breaking some old habits, and this can be a rather difficult thing to do.

I am on the Religion and Peacemaking email list of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and yesterday I received an email advertising a job opening, dealing with (guess what) religion and peacemaking. And you know what? It sounded like just the kind of thing I'd like to do--and they were actually looking for somebody with a PhD! So I'm thinking that I should spend these next couple of years preparing myself for these kind of positions, which means bringing myself more in touch with what's going on in the world, and trying to gain some experience with interfaith groups locally. There are these dialogue institutes, too, like one at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and I think I'd enjoy working for one of those.

The main thing here is this: I am not cut out to be a scholar. This is in part because I'm not particularly good at it, and in part because I'm just not that into it. I have thrived when I've been working with others, on projects that matter to us...I think of Student Life at CMU, I think of the Religious Studies Club at USF, I think of teaching...these are the things that make me feel most alive. I do not feel most alive when I am sitting by myself, trying to write a paper that hardly anyone will read. I like writing, but I don't really enjoy writing academically. I don't enjoy being a scholar for its own sake--I can only do it, I think, if it's directly in service of something 'practical.' I'm not knocking scholarship here--some of it is important--but it's not for me. I am surrounded by people here who actually should be scholars--fellow students, faculty--people who are good at it, and I can just see that it's not me.

And you know what? My mentor at USF knew this, 3 years ago. I remember him telling me that I shouldn't get a PhD--that I should go into something like politics, because my talent is working with people. He knew it. He knew I wasn't a scholar. He knew me better than I knew myself.

I think much of this past semester--maybe even this past year--has involved me coming to terms with who I am, in a number of ways. And part of this has been coming to terms with the fact that I've been on a path for the past 6 years that isn't exactly the best for me. I have always seen myself as a professor, a scholar, but why? I don't think I ever really stopped and considered whether it was really really what I wanted to do. I finally did this year, threw myself horribly off-balance, got awfully depressed more than a few times, but every time I felt hopeless, I think I brought myself closer and closer to the kind of life that would fulfill me. It's like I've been chipping away at the life I'd expected but didn't necessarily want, and building the life that I actually do want. It's a process, but I think I'm on the right track.

shattered

I have not posted a blog in over a month--that's probably the longest I've gone since I started this. I'm not sure if it's because I haven't had much to say lately, or if I've just been feeling too busy to actually sit down and reflect for a few minutes. Perhaps it's just because I've been fairly content lately, and when I'm content, I tend to flow along with the stream of life without occasionally stepping onto the shore to see where the current is taking me.

But lately, these past couple of days, contentment has fled, and I've been left feeling a little shattered. (How does one feel a 'little' shattered? I don't know, but 'shattered' seemed so harsh.) Everything had seemed to be going so well, but these last few days, I feel like things have been falling apart.

And so yesterday and today I've been depressed. That old familiar feeling that I've blogged about before, where I can't get excited about anything, where my life seems hopeless, where I feel like I've made some wrong decisions but now it's too late to change them, where all I really want to do is sleep because it shuts out the world, where I feel like I'm constantly on the edge of tears...that feeling. Perhaps you'd think I should call someone, but I just feel so negative, filled with resentment and bitterness, that I can't imagine a conversation with anyone would go very well. Even after talking to my mom, I feel like a jerk, because all I can do is listen half-heartedly and then talk about how miserable I am.

I've been through this enough times now where I have some perspective on it, I think. I realize it's just a two or three day thing that I go through every so often (not so often now, it seems, thanks to the pills), and there's really nothing I can do about it, besides ride it out. Just wait for it to pass, the way you'd wait for a cold to pass.

An effect of the depression is an incredibly strong feeling of being alone.

I do not think I made the right decision by coming to C-U. Aside from a few wonderful people I've met, I feel like my time here has been a wash. I mean, three years now, and I still don't really have a group of friends here. I still don't feel any sense of community. I just can't believe that. Is something wrong with me? Have I become such a resentful person that I can't make friends anymore? In Pittsburgh, in Tampa, I felt loved. There were groups of people who loved me, whom I loved. Here, there are a few individuals, but nothing like a group. This is probably because I haven't become involved with a group of people 'like me.' I've hardly connected with anyone in my academic department here--I don't think I get on well with many people who are absorbed in academia, at least in the humanities--and the social groups I've flirted with just haven't felt right to me. I know there are people out there that I can connect with--I've felt it when I've gone to visit friends in various places--but for some reason I can't find these people here (except, as I've said, for a few individuals). Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough--maybe I need to join a group, or start a group--but it's always been relatively easy to find these people. Not so much anymore.

I know that this is a large problem, a cause of my occasional discontent. I'm not enamored with the program here (it clearly wasn't right for me), and since I don't have a group of friends, I often can't figure out why I'm actually here. I've heard it said that you come to C-U for the university, for the academics; but if I don't get much satisfaction out of the academics, then...there's not much of a reason to be here, you see? And it might be getting worse--a friend is leaving, a friendship seems to be fading--the future here is not bright, to be honest. These past couple of days, I have been wishing I could just pick up and go, but where to?

I wrote a Mother's Day card to my mom recently, and as I was writing it, I had this insight that I hadn't owned up to before: I wrote that she has been the one constant in my life, the one constant source of love, and that she has been a major source of support, especially over the past six years, since my father died. I knew this, but the insight was that, as I wrote in the card, I've really been drifting ever since Dad died. I was driven at CMU, and felt I had a clear path ahead of me, but after Dad passed away, I lost some of that focus. What might have happened is that Dad's death caused me to give up on Ultimate Meaning. I couldn't really believe in religion, and without religion, you've got no ultimate meaning. But once you give up on ultimate meaning, you have to accept (I think) that we all have to make meaning for ourselves, since most of us (if not all of us) need to feel that our lives are about something in order to feel content. However, since I realize this--that any meaning is essentially manufactured, a sort of psychological trick--then all meaning becomes tentative to me, and this makes it meaningless. I don't know if I can live in a world without ultimate meaning.

So, since Dad's death, there's been this underlying sense of pointlessness to things. I can rise above it from time to time, when I can feel some meaning--when I'm with dear friends, when I see a beautiful movie, when I'm at a great concert, when I'm absorbed in a book, when I can get excited about my work--but it seems to take such a force of will to feel this meaning, and sometimes I just can't keep it up. I get tired. And the meaning explodes, and I'm flung back to earth, to the realization of meaninglessness.

I suppose I have centered my 'work' on meaning in education because I don't want other people to go through what I have been through. I want students to learn how to handle questions of meaning in such a way that they can find contentment. But maybe this means that my work is just a form of therapy for me. And if this is the case, then I'm not going to make it in academia.

I guess the bottom line is that, tonight, I feel like my life is a mess, and I don't know what to do about it. The fact that I go through this every so often is a sign, I think, that I can't just let myself get caught up in the stream of life again, since that stream is not actually taking me where I should be. I need to live differently if I have any chance of being content. I can't keep on making these sorts of bold pronouncements, however, without actually doing anything about it. This is my fatal flaw, I think--translating lofty thoughts, words, values into action.

There's more to say, but I should get to sleep.

honesty

I don't necessarily expect you to read all of this (it's long), but if you're interested...

How often are we honest with ourselves about who we are? I've started reading this book called Care of the Soul, by Thomas Moore (not the saint, who I think was Thomas More--this guy's a psychotherapist), and one of his main points is that we need to embrace all elements of our personality. We often think that there are things that are 'wrong' with us, things that we need to 'fix,' but this attitude doesn't get us anywhere, because the things that are 'wrong' are things that are fixed into our personality. We are trying to eliminate who we are when we try to fix ourselves. Maybe we need to look at how we can grow by acknowledging the things that we're trying to fix. What are the bad things trying to tell us about who we are?

So let me be honest. A good place to start. "I" statements.

I am not always a good friend, not because I don't care about my friends, not because I don't love them, but because I don't always give them the time and attention they deserve.

I do not like when people are better than me at things that I see myself as being good at. There are certain things that are "my things," and I want to be the best at those things.

I desperately want someone who I think is amazing to fall in love with me. And yet, when it happens, the satisfaction I derive from it is often short-lived. The perfect relationship I have in mind can probably never happen.

I want to feel like every second of my life is well-lived. I want to live life to the hilt. When I am in a good mood, I feel like I am doing this. When I am in a bad mood, I feel like I am wasting my life away.

I like that I can make people laugh. One of my favorite things to do is to laugh with people, though there aren't many people that I actually think are funny.

I am disdainful of people who are pretentious.

I am disdainful of things that don't seem geared towards making actual change in the world (though I recognize at the same time that I've done little to make actual change, aside from the various leadership and teaching roles I've had in my life).

Remember when I said I want someone who is amazing to fall in love with me? Well I don't think I'm the best at picking out the people who are amazing. I've gotten a lucky break, in that most (all, really) of my friends are amazing, really wonderful people, who love me, and whom I love. But when I scan a room, or a coffee shop, and I observe who jumps out at me, who seems interesting--I'm not sure if it's always the people who actually are interesting. People are interesting, I think, for their personalities, not for their looks, and when you're scanning a room, it's hard to pick up on anything beyond looks (though you can perhaps get a hint of their personality through their comportment, and I think there's something to this).

I need a tight community of friends to be as happy as I can be. I'm past the point where I regret leaving Tampa, where I had this, but I do wonder if what I've got out of being in C-U was worth it, and I do wonder if in fact I would've been better off getting the PhD in Communication from USF, focusing on interreligious dialogue, and staying with my loving community.

I don't actually think many people are that interesting. I think a lot of people are attractive, but I don't think many people are interesting. I do think I have a compassion for people, but this doesn't translate into genuine interest. (If this makes sense.)

I want to be an expert in something--religion and education, spirituality and education, world religions, interreligious dialogue, philosophy of the good life--but I've not yet been willing to invest the time it would take to actually become an expert at these things. I think right now I have the foundation to become an expert in a number of areas--I can understand advanced readings in a decent number of fields--but I've got to start doing that reading. if I want to be an expert, I have to immerse myself in something. Live in a field. Absorb it into my life. Become absorbed in it. This is what I should start doing in May, after my qualifying exam.

Recently, I've met a couple of women and had conversations with them, and after the conversations, I've thought to myself, that's exactly the kind of person I want to 'be with.' These women weren't a lot alike, really, but they were dynamic, lively, spirited. That's what I like. And I like that in my friends, too. People who have a sense of passion about something, anything--people who seem passionate about some aspect of the world, and because of that passion, they're passionate about life. I like myself best when I have this passion--my friend SD has helped me to realize that there are times when I am clearly on fire about something, times when I am driven by something beyond me--and there are times when the spark is dampened, when I am not actually alive.

Because I like myself (and therefore life) best when I am filled with passion, it would make sense (wouldn't it?) to figure out how to cultivate that passion. This is essentially what I've been doing since September or October. I think I've cleared away most of the influences in my life that were holding me back, and now it's a matter of fertilizing the influences that can push me forward. The question now is, how can I redirect the parts of my life that I have control over to cultivate that passion?

And I think I know. I think I've got it pretty much figured out.

But now I actually have to DO it. And this is the trick. I think my introspective bent is finally paying off for me, because I know myself pretty well (though not fully), and I know what makes me content. But my introspective bent also keeps me from actually doing anything--I've never been a person of action. Or this has always been the hangup for me. I have tons of great ideas, but I don't always pull them off.

(I'm listening to Yo La Tengo right now, and you know, I really think everybody should hear some of their songs. I want to make a CD's worth of what I think are their Greatest Hits. In fact, I'm going to do this. And I might send it out to people.)

So why don't I pull things off? Because I have this inherent laziness. No, no, that's not it, entirely. It's that I have a hard time self-motivating. That's really the problem, I think. I was talking to my mom yesterday, about my problems with motivation, my depression, etc., and she said, what happened to you? In high school, you used to be such a hard worker and you never had any problems! And you know what happened? My life got more and more structureless over the years. In high school, things were regimented--go to class from 7:30 to 3, do band stuff, go home, do your homework, repeat for 4 years. Then, college, which is semi-regimented. You learn to cut some corners, but there's still fairly regular work and fairly regular classes. So I didn't have much of a problem, because I still didn't have to be self-motivated, though in the areas of my life that were more self-motivated, I didn't accomplish everything I wanted to. So in my role as an RA and a CA, in Student Life, I had lots of ideas that never came to fruition because self-motivaton was required. The ideas weren't "due." I wasn't really held accountable. And everybody still thought I was doing a great job--and maybe I was, though I knew I could be doing an even better job. A wonderful job, an extraordinary job, rather than just a great job.

Then grad school, which (at least in the humanities, I think, and maybe the social sciences, too) has far less structure than undergrad. Fewer classes, virtually no homework (just final papers), and an incredibly flexible schedule. So I ended up being at USF for 3 years (I could've done it in 2), I didn't finish my thesis till I got here--I drifted, because I had to be more self-motivated. And it didn't get any better here.

And now I'm entering the least structured part of my academic career--my dissertation. I will have virtually no structure over the next 2 years. I'll be teaching and sitting in on some classes, which'll provide some structure, but my only real 'assignments' will be teaching, grading, and writing a dissertation. And nobody will be breathing down my neck to get this stuff done. So I'd better figure out my issues with self-motivation now, hadn't I?

Now I don't think I'm the only one with this problem, and I'm not beating myself up about it (at least, not right now), but here's the bottom line (finally): if I'm going to do the kinds of things with my life that I want to do, then I am going to have to become more self-motivated, which largely means I'm going to have to devote more time to my 'work.' Which largely means I need to reorganize my daily life. Which largely means I have to get an earlier start and regular sleep.

The story of the past 10 years for me has been this: I've done a good job at most of what I've tried. But I want to do a wonderful job. And I know I can. But I've got to make some changes to make this happen. I've been saying this since September or October, and I think, since then, I've been focusing in on how to make it happen, on what I need to do. The course is laid. Now I need to engage.

And I don't want you to think that I just want to do a great job with my work--I want to do a great job with my friends, too, which I haven't been doing. It's all a matter, I think, of reorganizing my days so that I spend less time doing the things that don't make me content and more time doing the things that do. If I know that I am more content when i am getting work done every day, then I should be sure I'm getting work done every day. If I know that I am more content when I am having a good conversation with someone every day, then I need to be sure to try to have a good conversation (or email exchange, or interaction) every day. If certain kinds of music inspire me more than others, then listen to that music. If certain kinds of reading inspires me, then do that kind of reading. And if certain people, certain songs, certain books, certain activities drag me down, then I should try to avoid those things, if I can. i don't think we can do what we really want to do every second of every day, but I think we can maximize it to the point where we can spend a great deal of our days doing what we really want to do. This isn't always easy, but we can do it.

I want to love 99% of my life.
I want life to grab me.
I want to feel engaged with the world.
I want to be surrounded by love by inspiration by passion not by negativity by cynicism by deadness.

So would all my friends please move here? Let's start a charter school and teach during the day and talk all night. Let's feel so alive together.

pendulum resting

This past week I've been bouncing back and forth between depression and contentment. There have been incredibly good moments and then stretches of time where that old hopeless/pointless feeling has returned.

But I don't have that much to say about it tonight, because I know exactly what's causing it. Or I think I know, anyway: the same thing that's been causing it for years. The problem is that I'm not living my life the way I deeply want to live it, and I know how to re-organize my life to bring it more in line with my 'vision,' but for some reason I cannot bring myself to do it. In other words, the problem is that I know what needs to be done but then don't actually do it. And I've known for quite some time.

So.
Do it, then.

And remember that the things that I think will make me happy (and maybe do, in the very short-term) are not the same things that really will make me happy (in the long-term). And that being happy means going against my instincts a bit, because look where certain of my instincts have gotten me.

anti-climax

I think I just finished my incompletes. I've sent everything to the professors, at least. There's a chance that they'll ask me to do more or they'll say that what I did was unacceptable, and they'll send it back, but let's hope that doesn't happen.

So now what? I've been in this situation before--finishing work anywhere from a year to two years after it should have been completed (hell, I didn't finish my Master's thesis until the semester I started my doctoral program)--and it is nearly always anticlimactic when I actually get the work done. There's not a huge sense of accomplishment. I think this is partially because I know that I should've done the work earlier--it's my own fault that I'm doing it so late, so why should I be excited about screwing up? I think it's also partially because the completion of the work doesn't coincide with the semester being over, so there's always more work to do. Oh, I just finished four incompletes in the span of a couple of weeks...now it's time to read 100 pages by Tuesday and grade 90 papers in 2 weeks and take my general qualifying exam in less than a month and...it's not as if I'm really done. Finally, I think the lack of a sense of accomplishment is due to the fact that I'm not as proud as I could be of the work I've turned in. I don't think what I turned in was bad, necessarily, but it wasn't my best, because my goal here was to get these incomplete grades changed as quickly as possible. So I wanted to do what I had to do to make that happen, and nothing more. So it's not awful work, but I could do better.

I just heard a minute-long rumble of thunder. It's been raining here for a few hours, at least, and it's been so comforting. It was a great night to stay in and listen to the rain fall (a sound I absolutely love), though I'll admit that I would've rather done it with a bottle of wine and a movie or a good book or my journal or a good friend than with my laptop and surrounded by 15 books I was putting into an annotated bibliography. But. The work's done. That's what counts.

I'm off to Chicagoland tomorrow, should return Sunday for Spring Cleaning day at the dwelling. And then break's over, school's on, and some of the pressure that's been pushing at me these past months will finally be relieved.

Part of the reason I'm up this late (1 am) is that I took an hour and a half break from the work today at Borders to talk to a dear friend of mine. She called, I picked up, walked outside the store, strolled around, and talked to her for 90 minutes. We hadn't talked in a few months, and it was a wonderful conversation. Sometimes I wish I talked to certain friends of mine more often, but the conversation today made me realize the benefit of not talking to somebody for a while: it gives you the chance to recap the past few months (or more!) of your life in one shot. I updated her (and she updated me) on our past...2 1/2 months, I guess...in 90 minutes. When you compress the time like that, it tightens up the story and the contours are a bit more noticeable. You start to see how different things seem now as compared to then because you're really putting them directly side by side. You realize what the major events were, because they're the things you include in the story. You cut to the chase, so only the quite meaningful stuff gets told.

Talking to her reaffirmed my contentment. I know I'm not quite as happy as I could be socially, but I am pretty damn happy, overall. Deeply happy. Even when I'm a little bored or irritated, I'm happy. And I think part of the key to my social problems...

...here's what I've realized. I hope I haven't said this before here. I've realized that I need two aspects to my social life to be happiest. (1) I need an entity who I can hang out with all the time. We don't, necessarily, but we could. This has sometimes been a girlfriend for me and it's sometimes been a small group of a few people. The members of the entity are ultra-close, ultra-comfortable with one another. (2) A rather extensive web of good friends. People who I love, but only see every week or two. When I do see them, we have great conversations, good times, lots of laughs--they all 'serve different purposes,' I guess--but we won't see each other more than once every couple of weeks. This is just how things work out. So I think I need (1) because I like to have that strong support, that thing that you can always count on. But I think I need (2) because I like to have people fill many different roles in my life and I like to know lots of different Types of people. Combine (1) and (2), I have my ideal social life. I wouldn't even need a girlfriend, I don't think, if I had a small group fill (1) and a web for (2).

So what do I have here? I don't have (1) (a small group or a girlfriend) and, while I have (2), my (2) is scattered all over the country, the world, and so it's hard to see them every week or two. I can't. And that situation is the one thing I might tweak right now. Things might change, but I know what I need to do to handle this one thorn in my side: I know enough people here where I think I could hang out any given night if I wanted to, so that sort of makes up for (1); I fulfill (2) by going on small road trips every other weekend or so to visit my friends who are within driving distance...or I could even fly. I think that's key for me, socially. So that's the one thing getting to me a bit, but I know what to do about it.

Things are good right now.

And congratulations, Ryan.

style and process

Hello again.

I have made my way to Chicago and I'm now sitting in Filter. I pick up my roommate in around 3 hours. I'll hang here for a bit, and then I think I might meet up with a friend of mine who lives in the city--it occurred to me as I was driving here that I might be able to see her, that this was just the kind of situation that would be perfect for seeing her, so I called her up. I also talked to another friend of mine on the drive for a little while--I hadn't spoken to her for longer than usual--and that conversation was great. If Ryan's reading this, he's wondering why I haven't called him yet, and he should know that I will. Probably tomorrow. While I've been talking about trying to make more of an effort to keep in touch with people, the effort really hasn't extended past email yet. But I'm working on it. The phone is the next move.

Here's something I like about certain neighborhoods in Chicago: there seems to be more individuality. More originality. People don't all look the same, as I feel they do on campus. I think there are a few basic looks among the students: blonde sorority girl, brunette sorority girl, frat guy, hipster, hippie, hip-hop, 'nerd'--I'm sure there's a few more, at least--and almost everyone revolves pretty closely around one of these categories. Chicago (at least in certain places) seems a little more diverse, in terms of look. I know those categories are stereotypes, but I think it's hard to deny that there are certain style-clusters that you can pick out. I think most people fit into one of these, and those who don't are either 'plain' (they don't have a discernible style) or truly original (they really don't look like anyone else--this is rare, I think).
I'm not going to say which cluster I gravitate towards, but those who know me can probably figure it out.

I'm not slamming people, of course. I think most people look like other people. This is just how it goes. But there seems to be more variety in Chicago. And more cases of originality. I say 'seems,' though, because I'm not sure if it's true. Because...well...looking around Filter, I think most of the people here are just variations on the hipster look, where you try hard to look different. Calculated cool. So maybe I just like it here because there's more people who look the way I like people to look--people whose style resonates with me somehow.

I certainly think there are more people I'm attracted to here, but that would make sense, wouldn't it, if I'm resonating with the style?

I was telling my friend, on the drive here, on the phone, about how I want a small group like the one we had. She knew what I meant, I think.

(I just talked to my friend--she is coming to meet me here! Why I don't see some of these people more often, I don't know.)

Anyway, I realize that it's not so much just a group I'm craving, but rather a loving community. I don't this actually requires a group--I think you can get it through a single person. And some of my relationships have been like this--there's been so much support, love, there for a time, that it's like having a loving community. I've also been thinking about how stable a loving community can be. I feel like, the times I've had these things, they haven't been able to persist for more than seven, eight months, for a number of reasons. But I'm wondering if these sorts of things tend to burn intensely and then out. There are stable loving communities, I think--families, in some cases?--but what keeps them stable? Maybe circumstances. Relationships tend to be unstable because of the exclusivity and possessiveness involved--you have to really like somebody to want them to be associated with you so closely--and friendships tend to be unstable because people's lives tend not to stay stable--people move, people's personalities change, etc.

I think there's another factor I need to take into consideration. I think that I may already have these loving communities around me, at least in individual form, and maybe it's just a matter of asking these people to do things that I want to do. If I really feel like going to the park, then I should just ask someone--and maybe they won't want to go, but then I can ask someone else--and if nobody wants to go, I go by myself. If I want to go to a Spring Training game, ask someone. If I want to take a walk around campus, ask someone. If I want to sit outside and have a beer. If I want to play catch, frisbee. If I want to go out dancing. If I want to watch a movie. If I want to go to Chicago for the day. If I want to go canoeing. You get the idea. And when people ask me to do things, I should decide whether I really want to do it.

This all sounds kind of obvious, doesn't it? But for some reason, it's not--I think that, for a long time, in many ways, I have focused my interests too much around the interests of others--or no, that's not even really true. I have always had my interests, but I've often let others' interests supersede them. I automatically do what others ask me to do just because I want to be around people. I don't ask people to do things that I want to do because I assume nobody will want to do them. Now, maybe they won't, but how would I know unless I asked? And if my friends don't want to do those things, then maybe I need to add on some friends who do.

This all ties into something bigger. A more fundamental project that I've been enacting recently. To drill down to the center of myself (all of this is metaphorical, and I need to come up with better ways to say what I mean and feel and experience) and be honest about what I really want. What I really want to work on, what I really want to do, what kind of people I really want to be around, what kind of friends I want to have, how I want to dress, how I want to teach, what kinds of groups I want to be involved with, and so forth. What kinds of things can I do that are who I am? I want my life to be less filled with self-consciousness--I simply want to act from my heart, my core, my soul, my spirit, my , to act in a way that expresses who I am, effortlessly. And I have felt this so much more recently. I'm not fully there--I'm not sure if every moment can be like this, and I don't think self-expression can totally drown out self-reflection--but I have felt much more myself lately. Like something is being expressed that hasn't been fully expressed in a while. I think this comes from, as I said, being honest with myself about what I want (or what I think I want), and then orienting my life in such a way to try the things I think I want, and then monitoring my experiences/emotions to see if those things I'm trying are in fact the things I want. And if they are, I continue to do them; if they're not, I reflect some more, try to get clearer about what I want. The corollary of this is becoming clear about what I do not want, and then orienting my life away from those things, and monitoring my experiences/emotions to see if I was right about not wanting those things.

Here's an example of what I mean. In some books I've been reading lately, opera is discussed, and I've thought to myself, maybe I'd like to go to an opera. Just yesterday, I got a catalog in the mail for the Lyric Opera's 07/08 season (in Chicago). Eight operas, most well known, lavish productions--a little expensive, but not out of the question. If you're going to check out an opera, this is probably as good a place to do it as any. So, I have something to try, I have a way to try it, so I think I'm going to. And maybe someone will want to go. Maybe not. Maybe I'd rather go by myself, since it's a test--but if somebody else wants to test it, they can come, too. AND then we'll see what I think. if I don't like it, then I know, well, maybe opera isn't my thing. But maybe I'll love it. And then I'll go again. And by "don't like it" and "love it," I really mean something like, "not find it fulfilling" and "find it fulfilling." This isn't just a matter of liking and disliking, but rather really wanting and really not wanting.

The most difficult part of all this, I think, is being honest with yourself. I had to work hard to disentangle what I wanted from what others wanted. And if you do this and realize that your life isn't set up for you to pursue what you think you want, then it can be difficult to re-orient your life around those things, because it means sacrificing certain things (some of which have become habitual) and trying other things that you haven't tried before. But I think if you have a guarantee that your basic needs will be met--if you know you have a place to live, things to eat and drink, and love (people who will support you through your honesty and possible re-orientation--or maybe you're strong enough for this love to come from within)--then you can do it. And I think life will be more fulfilling than you might've thought possible.

I need to try to write some articles about this, try to write some essays about this, that I can run by people for critique. This isn't just blogging for me--I'm really trying to develop something philosophical, psychological, sociological, spiritual here. If I ever write anything more formal, or more clearly argued, I'll let you know.

loving community

Although I have been happy lately, overall, I tend to lose a bit of it on the weekends. Also, I tend to wake up in the morning, every day, with a small sinking feeling in my stomach--I'm not sure if it's disappointment or worry or sadness or something else entirely. The sinking usually goes away as I get out of bed and get on with my day, but it's back the next morning.

I think the problem with the weekends is that there isn't any structure--the days are too wide open, and I'm left not really knowing what to do. What I need to do, I think, is make some plans for the weekend. Give them some structure. Saturday I'll go to the park, Sunday I'll drive to Springfield, next weekend I'll go to Madison, the weekend after I'll go to St. Louis. The point is to give myself something to do on the weekends that I really enjoy, instead of just letting myself drift through them.

As for the sinking feeling in the morning, I'm not sure where this comes from, so I'm not sure what to do about it. I think it might be tied in to a feeling of loneliness. But it's not loneliness in the sense that I don't have any friends, because I do. I have wonderful friends, both here and all over the country. It's probably a combination of two things: first, I wish I had a girlfriend. I wish I was in a relationship. Second, I wish I had a small group of friends that I could hang out with regularly and do things that I like to do. I've got individual friends like this, but not really a group. Socially, I've been happiest when I've had a group like that--and I think if I did have a group like that, the relationship issue wouldn't be a big deal. Because what it boils down to is this: I want to feel loved. When I feel loved, actively, consistently, then my whole life seems brighter.

Now this isn't to say that I don't have loving friends, because I do. But I want to be surrounded by love. And this is the thing about a small group--it makes you part of a loving community. But I think that kind of love is just as hard to find as relationship love, and you just have to hope it happens.

Anyway, I actually consider these to be fairly minor things, because for the most part I'm happy with my life and my friends and my work. And now I'm off to Chicago for the day.

aphorisms, sort of

03.05.07 12:15 pm

(I wrote this in the journal I'm keeping on my computer, but then I decided to post it. It's not entirely coherent and it might not all make sense, but maybe you'll find it interesting.)

I wish I could capture how college kids actually talk. It'd be interesting to write a short story, or an essay, or a one-act, just trying to convey to people how Midwestern college kids live. I think if you could present their lives to people (even to the kids themselves), make them see these lives from an outside perspective, they might see them more clearly. But, if you criticize someone's way of life without offering them an alternative--a higher alternative--then you haven't helped at all.

What are all these people really talking about? Are these people really going to grow up to be the adults in the next 10-20 years? What are these people going to do? How many of them will just slide into mediocrity, never having actually considered anything else? I would like everyone's lives to be extraordinary--but maybe some people already think their lives are, when I see them as horribly ordinary--so how do you resolve this? My view, really, is that I want people's lives to be extraordinary in a certain kind of way. Not a terribly specific way, but in a way oriented towards so-called higher values. I think this would lead to a better culture, and a more rewarding life for so many people. But you have to make people really believe in these higher possibilities--and I think that's the difficulty. Most people don't really think there are higher possibilities. There's no religion, there's no supernatural, and with these losses (which are probably accurate) came a loss of transcendence, a loss of meaning. People can still be part of something transcendent, but not in the way that religion would recommend (for many people, religion just isn't an option). But people don't think about this. And I think when people do consider the transcendent, it seems ridiculous. It seems hippie, new-age. Unrealistic. A joke. So how do we open up possibilities of higher fulfillment to people? What are the sources? How do we open people up to deep joy when they don't really know what deep joy is? (And how do I keep these sources open in myself?)

"So intelligent, so funny, so well-read, so nice--just a great guy. Talking about how we're going to go on vacation together." Overheard in Starbucks. People do and say the same shit all the damn time. We have these formulas for love, these formulas for attraction, and we just play them out, and we think they're so unique, so great, so deep, so meaningful; but it's a script. How do we take ourselves seriously? I'm not exempt from this--I've played out scripts. I'm great at it. I would love to be able to play out certain scripts in my life--I say I want to be in love, but what does that mean? It means I want to enact that script in my life. I want that ideal to play out. But that is not necessarily real love. It is keeping ourselves busy. Maybe we have to do this, maybe it adds richness to our lives. But I think it keeps us fixated on lower values, makes it even harder for us to realize higher values--to realize they exist, and to realize them in our lives. Real love, real friendship--or the best kinds, anyway--pull us higher. They move us.

I have been trying to listen to myself a little more closely lately. To monitor my actions. To see what exactly I'm doing, to hear what I'm saying. And I hear myself, see myself, being cliched. Even the things that seem original are often just cliched. I think very few people are truly original; I think many people who think they're original are actually playing out a script that signifies originality. But if there's a script for it, it's not original.

In watching myself more closely, I find myself saying things that don't mean anything. Talking just to be talking. Doing just to be doing. What the hell is the point of this? Maybe it brings me a kind of comfort, but I don't just want to be comfortable. I want to be engaged with life.

I think I'm sort of an elitist about experience. I think experience should be extraordinary, should be meaningful. At the same time, I recognize that it can't be all the time. If I have a few bursts of exuberance each day, I'm pretty satisfied. My worry is that some people rarely (or never) feel this exuberance, this infusion of spirit. And, yes, I think people should aim to feel this. They should want to live lives of exuberance and inspiration. Many people are in situations where they can't (because of lack of food, water, basic needs), and I understand that, and I think that's a huge problem. But lives of exuberance, cultures of exuberance, a WORLD of exuberance, should be our goal. We can do this, we can have this, if we work together, if we keep the goal in mind, if we continue to believe that it can actually happen, and we talk about how exactly we can make it happen. I think if we worked on this, many of the other things we worry about would be resolved--we would find ourselves in meaningful relationships with our "co-workers," we would find ourselves engaged in meaningful work (towards a more exuberant world), we would (in short) be happier.

I don't want to say that most people are pissing away their lives, and I don't think that most people are, but I do want to say that most people could be living more fulfilling lives. A cynic might say that everyone is pissing away his or her life--it's just a matter of choosing how you want to do it. But I think that's a horrible way to think, though it's hard to say it's invalid or incorrect. I just don't think it's conducive to a good life.

These are all ideas I need to develop more. I'm hoping spend more time in the next few months (and beyond) just writing in the hopes that I'll clarify my own thinking and that something worth reading might appear. My life, it seems, will be about exploring ways of human fulfillment, and it's time to start working on that question in earnest (just as soon as this grading is done, just as soon as my incompletes are done, just as soon as...).

heartbreak

I just had a fleeting encounter with beauty, just a few minutes ago. I was sitting on the futon in my apartment, responding to emails, trying to get caught up with correspondence, with my iPod playing the "Study Music" playlist I made a while ago. It's music that's either instrumental or soft--good background music for studying, I figure. I'd already been feeling a little bit nostalgic tonight, and then a song by Jose Gonzales started to play--I think it's called "Broken Arrow."

And instantly my heart broke.

I'm not sure if this happens to everyone, but certain songs have a way of just breaking me. The feeling is like one of nostalgia for love lost. A slight pain at remembering the good times, a deeper pain at knowing that things will never be the same, that you've lost something forever. It makes me want to be in love again, to find the right person, and go away with her to a place where nothing can drag us down and the days are filled with an exuberance that makes every moment feel truly lived. This sounds like fantasyland, I suppose, but I think it's possible, if you're willing to abandon society.

I described all of this as an encounter with beauty, which might seem odd, since I then said it felt as if I was heartbroken. But I think there's much beauty to be found in deep feeling. The kind of feeling that springs up from some source over which you have little control--it seems to come from somewhere deep inside of you. This, I think, is passion. It can express in many different forms, but passions launch from deep within and then take you over, moving you, driving you, calling you.

I sometimes feel as if I am on a bridge, with my beautiful youth on one side and my pragmatic adulthood on the other. I think I stepped on the bridge when I left Tampa and I wonder if the crossing will be complete when I leave Illinois. I hope not. I hope I can fold the bridge back in on itself--end up where I began, though changed somewhat from the crossing. I never want to lose the ability to feel passion--in fact, I want to cultivate it. I hope to have a beautiful, extraordinary life--at least I hope to have a life that seems beautiful and extraordinary to me. I want to feel truly alive.

I have had flashes of this feeling over the past couple of months, and it's getting more frequent. I've felt real exuberance, and though it doesn't persist--various things seem to cause it to fade--I think I'm expanding its presence in my life, with help from others. I want to be surrounded by people who also feel this way...I don't want to be too busy for the things that bring me joy...I don't want to waste too much time on the things that drag me down...

I'm not sure if this is delusional. If it sounds ridiculous. But I know it's the only way I can live.

value shift

Max Scheler argues that there's an objective hierarchy of values. This hierarchy has five levels: sense (pleasure/pain), use (means-end success), life (health, strength, vitality), cultural (joy), and spiritual (bliss). In parentheses I've put a guidepost for each of these levels that might help clarify what they mean.

I think the word 'objective' here raises some suspicions--he really thinks this value hierarchy is out there. It's real. This is a tricky thing to prove, in the absence of God, though he claims to have done it (in a book that I'll be reading over the next two months, so I'll let you know what I think of his argument). But, whether you buy the objective bit or not, if you really observe people (Scheler would've considered himself a phenomenologist, so this is what he did--observed human phenomena, especially emotional phenomena, in the hopes of trying to understand what emotions are really like, what they do)--if you really observe people, then you can see this value hierarchy play out. Scheler thought that each person has a 'moral tenor,' which is basically an ordering of these values. A prioritizing of these values. An arrangement of the hierarchy.

So some people would rank the values in what he saw as the proper order: spiritual-->cultural-->life-->use-->sensory. But some people have what he called "disorders of the heart," meaning that their value ranking is out of order. They value the sensory more than the spiritual, for instance. They think that lower values are in fact the highest. I don't think Scheler thought that disordered people were evil, or bad, but just that they didn't have it quite right--they weren't living out the highest way of being.

Now, I think if you look at people, you can see these different orderings of value. People tend to recognize most of the levels of value that I mentioned above, and people tend to value one of those levels above the others. I think many people, for instance, don't even think there's a spiritual level--it's entirely devalued. I think many people, for instance, seem to value sensory pleasure above all else--a true disorder for Scheler in that it takes the lowest of the value levels and makes it the highest. Some people value the life of the mind above all else--they've made the cultural level the highest. I could go on, but the point is that keeping this value hierarchy in mind when you speak with people can be instructive in terms of getting to know who they are--which is largely determined by what they value.

Okay, so you might not agree with all of this, but I do think it's hard to deny that people value different things, and that you can generalize these values to the levels that Scheler describes. In fact, just try to look at yourself, and I can think you can see where you fall on the hierarchy (though I think this is sometimes easier to do with other people than with yourself). I bring all of this up because I think that one way to describe this transitory feeling I have is as a sort of value shift. I think, for some years now, I have not felt at peace because I have been devaluing the spiritual and cultural value levels at the expense of the others (especially the sense and use levels). To translate this: I think I've been fighting my pull towards spirituality and the life of the mind because I have felt like I should be having more 'fun.' But a part of me has known all along that this wasn't right for me. That in fact I'd be more content if I could just order my values differently. And yet I fight this. I haven't had the guts, the courage, to realize this shift in my life, because it would mean making certain changes, which are not easy for me to make, because I still cling to 'lower' values.

So. There have been times when I have felt the need to hang out with anyone--just anyone--so I wouldn't be lonely. I'd hang out with others just for the sake of being around people, and not because the interaction would be somehow rewarding. I think this comes out most clearly for me when I think about the weekends, and going out. I enjoy going out sometimes, because it's nice to see certain people, and it really can be enjoyable; but if I overdo it--if I go out two nights in a weekend, for instance, I quickly get bored, because 'going out' tends to consist of the same thing: you meet up at a bar, you drink, people get drunker, you have ridiculous conversations, you go to another bar, you get even drunker, the conversations get even more ridiculous--are we even talking about anything at all?--and then the bars close and you either go home and pass out or go somewhere else, where things get even more ridiculous and drunker.

Now this is fun every once in a while. "Crazy nights" can be fun. And sometimes unexpected things happen--you meet new people, you have a heart-to-heart with somebody that's facilitated by the booze--but much of the time nothing really happens at all. You wake up the next day, and nothing's really different. You didn't learn anything, the experience is foggy because you were drunk, and you weren't really affected all that much. You did have fun, but--and here perhaps is the key--fun is not a lasting thing. We all know this, but I think many of us think that fun is actually all there is, and so even if it's fleeting, it's the best we've got.

But I do not believe that fun is all there is. Fun's good once in a while, maybe as a release, maybe as something else, but there are deeper levels to life. And I think we all know this, if we think about it.

I have come to terms with this fact this semester. I have come to terms with the fact that I am not a 'loser' if I'm not social all the time, and that in fact I'm often more content to stay in and watch a movie, or read a book, or write, or call a dear friend and have an intimate conversation that hits on our deepest values--I'm often more content doing any of these things than I would be if I went out. Not always, but much of the time. I'm not saying this is right for everyone (though I think it might be, and I have to think about this more), but it's right for me, it seems.

Scheler also talks about love on all of these different levels...spiritual love, cultural love, vital love, useful love, and sensual love...and I think he's got something here, too. Love for him does not necessarily mean what we normally mean we say "love"--love for him is a movement that pulls the loved one to higher values. We love someone for what they could be in their fulfillment--for what we see in them--for what we intuit in them. (I don't think this is as mystical as it sounds, but I'll have to get into this more later.) Spiritual love, obviously, is the highest for Scheler--but we love people in other ways, too--and we can love people at one value level but hate them at another--think of people who we're incredibly sexually attracted to but have no interest in their minds (or vice versa). I think the truest love would be love on all five of the levels--we love someone's spirit, we love someone's mind, we love someone's vitality, we love someone for practical/useful reasons, and we love someone sexually. This, I think, rarely happens, and so we are stuck with partial loves without realizing that that's what they are. I've thought about love for so many years now, and I have to say that much of what Scheler says resonates with me deeply, and has made me reconsider the way I have lived my life and the people that I have loved.

When I get these damn incompletes out of the way--when I get caught up--I hope to read and write more about the above themes, and plenty more. I want to know how people can live lives that they feel are deeply fulfilling, lives they deeply value, lives full of inspiring love. I want to know what people from many cultures and many times have thought about this and I want to know what wisdom lies in these thoughts for us today. And I want to figure this all out with the help of others. If we really think about this, I think we can not only help individuals live more fulfilling lives but I think we can work towards a more fulfilling culture. This will not happen overnight. It will not happen overyear. But it can happen, eventually. The world is going to change--that's inevitable--and I think our goal should be to direct, to shape, that change with quality of life, with flourishing, with fulfillment, as the primary ideal.

in-spired

Saw my therapist for the third time today, week #3. We ended after maybe 30 minutes with her telling me I should save my five remaining sessions for my back pocket. That's what she said: back pocket. I agreed. And we parted amicably. I realized that I was just telling her about how things used to be bad and now things are good. I was telling her about these problems I used to have, which I seem to have dealt with for now, so it wasn't clear what exactly she was supposed to do.

The one concern I still have, really--the one thing that doesn't seem to have fallen on track--is that I have bad relationship patterns that I will perpetuate. The thing is, I won't know if I'm still having issues with relationships until one actually comes along. So we'll see. I'm hoping that, because most everything else has fallen into place, maybe my attitude towards relationships (which now seems to be that I'd like a relationship but I'm entirely content without one, with just my friends) will fall into place as well.

J and I were talking tonight, and I was saying that we have it so incredibly good here--we were agreeing on this--and that the only two things that could really enhance things right now would be a perfect relationship and a gang of friends who go out regularly where everybody likes each other quite a bit and it's just fun. The perfect relationship may not exist--what most of us have idealized as the perfect relationship probably doesn't exist for anyone--and while I know some great people here, I don't think a 'gang' has formed, really, like what I have in Tampa, what I had in Pittsburgh. And those are fairly big things--but they're not everything. And as long as I have people I love and meaningful work, I can be quite content.

Unofficial comes creeping, and it's got the marks of a drunken disaster.

I heard F. Bergmann speak tonight (and last night)--he wrote a book called On Being Free, which I read last semester for a course and was inspired by--and I'll see him over the next few days/nights as well a few times. I spoke with him briefly afterwards, and I told him I'd really like to be involved with his work--he works primarily now with the New Work movement, an example of an applied philosophy that is actually changing human conditions, and part of this movement includes a revamped educational system. He said he'd try to get a group together before he left here, where all of us who wanted to be involved could exchange email addresses and maybe we could get something going in C-U. This may also be a way to work with him in Detroit (where he's consulting with the Highland Park schools), if I was able to go there for a while...maybe live in Michigan for a while, working with him, learning firsthand how school reform can happen in a way that meshes with my dissertation ideas? I'd be learning, thinking, working, applying? That might be a wonderful idea.

remember december

Do you remember what December was like?

I don't. Unless I apply some effort, and I think back, and I think hard. But then it's like remembering someone else's life, or remembering the details of a movie you saw a few months ago. We are now almost six weeks into the semester--in fact, maybe we are six weeks into the semester--and my life feels entirely different than it did even a month ago.

I am continuing to feel content, and this has been surprisingly steady. There are moments when I'm not in the best mood, but I never really feel depressed, or despairing. I just coolly think, "Things aren't so great right now, but they're not so awful either, and things will improve." And I'm right, I've found. The pills are undoubtedly (in my mind, anyway) part of the difference, but there's more to it than that--I've made biological changes, but I've made some psychological, sociological changes, too.

The #1 thing has been that I think I've found my calling. I've found a life project that motivates and inspires me and that I think I can dedicate my life to, given my talents, weaknesses, constitution--given who I am and who I am becoming. This project is to explore the question: "How can human beings live the best possible lives?" This question has guided me implicitly for so many years, taking me through psychology, religious studies, philosophy, education, and it's time for it to become explicit.

This question is not easily answered, of course, but it's something that people have thought about more or less continuously for a long time. Clearly there are subquestions one has to answer on the way to answering the big one, like "What are some conceptions of the good life that people have produced and lived by?" "How do people actually go about living those conceptions of the good life?" "Is there a way we can educate people to pursue a good life for themselves above all else?" "Should we endorse certain views of the good life over others?" "Should pursuit of the good life even be a primary goal of human life at all?" There are probably even more...and I think it's these questions that will sustain my life. These are the questions I get excited about. I actually want to read about these things. I want to dive into continental philosophy--phenomenology, existentialism, postmodernism--I want to read more religious texts, I want to read about psychotherapies that have been developed to lead people to the good life...I want to read anything I can that deals with the question of the good life.

And I want to start writing, too. I want to start writing out my ideas, my thinking--I want to start developing my own philosophy of the good life, or at least my own philosophy of the process one might take to discover the good life for him/herself. I've put down the idea of being a scholar lately, but the idea is appealing to me again, I think because I've found an area in which I would love to be an 'expert.' And to teach about these sorts of questions? I can hardly contain the thrill I feel at the possibility of a life spent teaching, reading, and writing about the good life. This, I think, is essential for me to live a good life of my own.

My values are shifting. I don't feel like the same person I was last semester. I of course am not the same person--we change from moment to moment--but I feel like I'm approaching the world differently now. It's an odd feeling, and one I can't fully explain just yet. It's very transitory, as if I'm right now in the process of shifting--I'm between ports.

More to say, later.

Merry Lent

Grading, grading, grading these next couple of weeks, probably for 2-3 hours a day. Not my favorite thing to do, but I've learned just to accept it. And I am supposed to be working 20 hours a week as a teaching assistant, after all, so I really can't complain. I think us 'scholars' sometimes have the idea that we should be paid while in graduate school to do as little work (that isn't our own) as possible. We need time to learn, to read, to write!! I admit, it'd be nice if we could be paid just to do these things--paid to go to school, essentially--but this isn't quite the way things are set up. Still, during the weeks that I'm not grading, I only put in maybe 5-10 hours towards teaching (especially since I've done world religions so many times now)--so it's not a bad deal.

Things are good, otherwise. Going to Madison this weekend, which should be fun, and I've been making steady progress on my work, getting something 'productive' done every day while being sure to have a little fun every day. Balance, balance.

I'm also trying to quit smoking. This is day 3. It's not so bad. I get cravings every so often, but I just try to think about something else or do something else until the craving passes. I figure it'll be easier by next week, and then I just have to resist the temptation to bum a smoke when I'm out, drinking, talking. Wish me luck.

There are quite a few people on this campus to whom I'm attracted. They're everywhere. I think I need someone to make out with. I'm not propositioning anybody--I'm just saying.

Oh, what else is going on? I've continued to feel pretty content. I should have my incompletes done in the next few weeks, and then it's spring break, and then i'll be taking my qualifying exam in April, and then, and then...the rest of my time here will essentially be spent doing exactly what I want. I can pursue my own interests, fairly exclusively. I absolutely cannot wait for that. I'm so excited. And it's keeping me going, through the grading, through the incompletes (the work for which I'm not so interested in anymore), through the things that I'm not as excited about. I'm trying to live in the moment while being directed towards the future.

Looks like I'm going to Mass tonight. It's Ash Wednesday, welcome to Lent. I don't think I've been to church since December 05, but luckily, in the Catholic Mass, things tend not to change much.

I've been thinking a lot lately, about various things, and I'll try to write more later.

davies says ii

"I think the world of you, Maria. So let's stop this foolishness and talk to the point. Will you marry me?"
"Why should I marry you?"
"That would take a long time to answer, but I'll give you the best reason: because I think we have become very good friends, and could go on to be splendid friends, and would be very likely to be wonderful friends forever."
"Friends?"
"What's wrong with being friends?"
"When people talk about marriage, they generally use stronger words than that."
"Do they? I don't know. I've never asked anyone to marry me before."
"You mean you've never been in love?"
"Certainly I've been in love. More times than I can count. I've had two or three affairs with girls I loved. But I knew very well that they weren't friends."
"You put friendship above love?"
"Doesn't everybody? No, that's a foolish question; of course they don't. They talk about love to people with whom they are infatuated, and sometimes involved to the point of devotion. I've nothing against love. Most enjoyable. But I'm talking to you about marriage."
"Marriage. But you don't love me?"
"Of course I love you, fathead, but I'm serious about marriage, and marriage with anyone whom I do not think the most splendid friend I've ever had doesn't interest me. Love and sex are very fine but they won't last. Friendship--the kind of friendship I am talking about--is charity and loving-kindness more than it's sex and it lasts as long as life. What's more, it grows, and sex dwindles: has to. So--will you marry me and be friends? We'll have love and we'll have sex, but we won't build on those alone. You don't have to answer now. But I wish you'd think very seriously about it, because if you say no--"
"You'll go to Africa and shoot lions."
"No; I'll think you've made a terrible mistake."
"You think well of yourself, don't you?"
"Yes, and I think well of you--better of you than of anybody. These are liberated days, Maria; I don't have to crawl and whine and pretend I can't live without you. I can, and if I must, I'll do it. But I can live so much better with you, and you can live so much better with me, that it's stupid to play games about it."
--Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels