check it at the door December 14, 2008

In an attempt to avoid studying for finals, I decided to catch up on an episode of a TV show that I actually don’t usually watch. I have seen maybe two or three episodes recently, and they have each been quite good.

The show is NBC’s Lipstick Jungle. The show follows the lives of three women each in different circumstances. Currently, there is Brooke Shields as a woman in a difficult marriage with a musician, Kim Raver as a widow trying to find her way, and Lindsay Price as a never-married but hopeful designer.

The last episode contained an interaction between Wendy (Brooke Shields) and her husband Shane. Shane was offered to go on a concert tour as a keyboardist. This opportunity would take him away from their family for four months. When Shane told his wife about the offer, she immediately shot it down. She looked at the negative of him being away immediately and didn’t give an ounce of energy to congratulating his accomplishment. His young daughter, however, didn’t think twice and told him he MUST go.

This is a classic case of optimism. It is also a classic case of someone reigning in an optimistic view by immediately jumping to practicality. That is something I have never had much tolerance for. I detest when people limit my dreams and happiness. The character of Shane said it best when he said that his wife had “poisoned” the idea from the beginning.

His daughter, a child, had the wisdom to see the opportunity as it was. That is another thing I wish us all to be able to hold on to. The optimism of childhood allows us to be excited. And why shouldn’t we be? There are a lot of good things to happen and a lot of good experiences to be had.

Too often I think we are trained or fall into the habit of quenching fires before they can illuminate.

I liked the language used in the show – that seeing the negative side of the opportunity was poisoning the experience. So true.

Check negativity at the door, I say.

I will, but I can’t December 8, 2008

Much like the Superbowl, I watch the Hallmark movies on CBS entirely for the commercials. I am genuinely disappointed by fleeting commercial breaks that are few and far between. But when they do come around, they are the most gut-wrenching, beautifully sentimental, tear-invoking moments that only the perfect greeting card can redeem.

Last night was different because the movie itself was just as good as the commercials. It followed a teacher, Brad Cohen, who has Tourette’s syndrome but once finally accepted to teach at a school, made an incredible impact on his students. It was particularly inspiring  to me because my sister is a teacher and I see the incredible effect she has on students and it really is a job with a lot of power to change the world.

The reason that Cohen became a teacher was because when he was a young boy in school, the principal taught him to embrace his disease. This principal explained that the other kids in school thought he was weird only because they were ignorant. So he educated the children, and they accepted him. Cohen took that same approach and applied it to his teaching philosophy. He educated his students about everything, encouraged them to ask questions,and would not allow them to be ignorant.

One line from the movie struck me in particular. It was something to the effect that the difference between children and adults is that children say “I will” when adults say “I can’t”. I thought that was so interesting and true, unfortunately. When we are children, we think we can take on the world. If someone challenges our ability to do something, we respond with a “Why not?”. We feel like we have all the time in the world to accomplish whatever we want. When we grow up, though, reality sets in and we realize how short life is and how limited we are. But what if we didn’t think that way? What if we proceeded as if we could achieve anything? Just proceeding in that way, it would not matter a whole heck of a lot if we actually did achieve everything. The fact that we believe we could some time in the future gives us hope, and that hope can carry us to do even better (though different) things.

Vieni qua! December 7, 2008

I spent last semester studying in Milan, Italy and it was quite possibly the most inspiring four months I have yet to live in this life. I cannot quite explain what it was, but being constantly surrounded by newness and doing something completely uncharacteristic of me (risking my comfort zone) was quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever done. And it changed me in a lot of ways (in a good way).

I lived about a ten minute walk from where I went to school, so every morning I made my way through the bustling, cigarette smoke-filled, Italian-lined, gorgeous streets of Milan. One morning I remember in particular. I was walking along behind a mother and her two children, a brother and sister. They were both about the same age and they ran down the street hand in hand. Their mother trailed behind them wheeling her vintage bicycle, complete with designer purse in its basket. The two children would run ahead from their mother, giggling all the way. The mother yelled,
“Alberto! Vieni qua!” (Alberto! You come here!). And like every breath of the Italian language it rang in my ears and my heart, delighting the part of me that longs for it to inhabit my own mind and tongue.

She kept yelling down the street, “Alberto! Alberto!” and he would continue to run ahead with his sister and come back to his mother again. What struck me most about her was that she was not getting upset, but rather with each chastisement she also expelled an exuberant laugh. It was as if she were recognizing herself in her children.

Is there really some point where we become completely unrecognizable from the self of our youngest years? I would say yes, but only in the most unfortunate cases. That is not to say that change is a bad thing, I actually have more to say on that later. But there is something that is essentially “us” and should never be lost. This something is that which has been with us since we’ve been on this earth. And that is why I think it is so important to remember that we should always be able to recognize ourselves.

That Italian woman taught me quite a lot in my short walk that morning.

Playground Romance December 4, 2008

I can think of three specific romances that blossomed on the playground. The second and third grades were my luckiest years for love, and I managed to squeeze it all into the 20 minutes allotted for recess. How magical.

It is interesting to think about, how we were so young and trying to be so grownup by falling in love. What is this inherent need that we have? We could enter a huge discussion about the nature of love and all its intricacies, but then again, maybe it is as simple as a recess. It is something that takes us from the ordinary, a recess from other comparatively ho-hum moments.

As a girl of 21, I am keenly aware of the searching and hoping for love that people my age (and all ages, really) engage in. It is interesting because at my time, love seems so complicated to me and to my friends. Romances have come and gone, been good and flubbed, and then just plainly disappeared. It becomes this thing we have to analyze because we just cannot understand. But maybe if we remember how simple it is, think back to how easily our playground romances flowed, we could be better equipped to see love as it hits us square between the eyes (whenever that may be) and to wait patiently until then.

I stumbled upon this feature from NBC’s Today Show where a young boy publicize’s the book he wrote to help boys of all ages to do the right things in order to get the right girls. Besides being exceptionally well-spoken for a boy of 9, his advice is exceptionally insightful yet simple.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/28050331#28050331

Grocery shopping with Grandma November 16, 2008

A couple of days ago I took my grandmother to the grocery store. I learn something new every time I spend time with this woman and I doubt she has any idea that she is teaching me.

She has the heart and soul of a true child. Hers is the kind of soul tarnished only by the wisdom of her 83 years. Otherwise, it is completely new and full of life. The night before, she had just been released from the hospital after about a week of tests and she could not have been more thrilled to get out. She has been admitted several times in the past few years due to her heart, but I swear it beats stronger and lighter each time she comes home. Each time she threatens to escape her eighth floor hospital room and start walking home, and that is funny because she is actually serious.

Everytime I visit her or speak to her I watch her in amazement and hope that I can grow up to have half the wisdom she has. Her past is interesting, because she grew up on a farm in rural Nebraska where she had little time to be a child because she was too busy working and taking care of all her siblings. She did not get the chance to go to high school because of the work she had to do. The woman I see now is one who has not allowed herself to be hardened by this loss of a childhood. Instead, she has embraced the opportunity to regain it now in her later years.

And maybe that’s better. She has done a lot of living and seen a lot of things, and now she is more ready than ever to embrace the little things in this life. What strikes me most is her faith. She is a strong Catholic and always has been, and her almost blind, unceasing faith in the Lord is like that of a child. It is innocent and completely without obstacle, and it is not that she is gullible. She has faced many trials in this life and had many more chances than any of us to give up on the Lord.

I am definitely not one to encourage blind acceptance of beliefs, I absolutely advocate questioning everything so that you know what you really think and make your beliefs your own. That being said, once we get over the questioning, we have to adopt something. We have to stand for something. And that cannot be done by just proclaiming your identity as a believer, it has to be pursued and backed by the enthusiasm and fervor that we all showed as children towards something. Likely, much of the enthusiasm of our pasts was directed towards our future. Our project now must be to direct it toward our present.

Not Just a Twig November 11, 2008

Thanks to a tip from a professor, I discovered that recently a new toy was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. I found this article from the Boston Globe covering the story of the stick’s rise to the top of the list of the most treasured toys.

The article cites its simplicity and cost-effective nature, but what really struck me was the idea that part of what was great about the stick was that there were no rules, no assembly required sort of thing. The same is true of a past inductee, the cardboard box. Oh the simplicity we have left behind.

I have always been a by-the-rules kind of girl. I always obeyed my teachers and parents, followed any directions given me, and colored inside the lines because I didn’t want to get in trouble and maybe because I felt this pressure to not disappoint. But sometimes I wish I weren’t so much like that. I think we all probably do to some degree. There are so many rules absolutely worth breaking (of course while still considering any moral implications) and that is another thing that incorporated into adutlhood would send us all to the heart of who we really are.

I feel there needs to be some point where we make our own rules. By doing this we can take what seems to be nothing (similar to the stick or the cardboard box) and make it our own, make it something that has the power to change our reality. As I am growing older and taking more responsibility for the course of my life, I find I am gaining more courage to break some rules, take some chances, and venture every part of me just so that I can gain something.

Interesting thought: a branch must break in order to make a stick.

Remaining and Regaining September 2, 2008

With a college graduation date looming and uncertainty constantly running through my head like my blood through my veins, I find myself forced to decide what I want. That certainly seems easy enough, a simple question. It is true, there are simple questions in this life – questions like, chocolate or vanilla? (for me, chocolate without a doubt), do you want to fall in love? (yes, and I am waiting – at times not so patiently), would you like fries with that? (of course), would you rather be hot or cold? (definitely, I would rather be –”) Hold up. No, that is not a simple question at all. It is much like the current question facing me upon my chartered wave of mustered confidence that I hope seamlessly delivers me to a more stable state of adulthood.

The intricacies of the hot/cold question have always fascinated me. People often respond something like, “Well, I’d rather be cold, because then at least I can cover up with layers and warm myself up.” However, that sort of response does not answer this particular question at all. The precise question is which state do you find more bearable? We must consider this regardless of possible ways of escaping said state or improving upon it. A state is something stable and unchanging in and of itself. Changing from one state to another is entirely possible due to the forces of the world surrounding us, but I am concerned now with choosing a state that is most adequately equipped to remain in light of changing landscapes. With this in mind, the hot/cold question really does not seem simple anymore. These states are unchanging – hot is always hot. It cannot become cold, because that is an entirely different state altogether.

The same analysis of the hot/cold question must be applied to my current situation. To answer the question of “What do I want out of life?”, I would have to provide some sort of roadmap filled with a list of accomplishments, all of which are subject to enablement or disablement by the everchanging possibilities that inevitably accompany any future. It is again not so simple. Instead I must answer a different, more precise question – What do I want to be? By answering this, I can strive towards a stable state of being that is able to roll with the possible punches of the future.

After much – well, actually – after not all that much consideration, I have discovered that I wish not to become anything, but to regain and remain something I have always had within me. I wish to retain the spirit of who I was at the beginning of this whole thing (the fantastic, maddening, and inspiring thing called life), and that is a child.

I do not want to grow up. Doing so is too often associated with a loss of childlike wonderment and insatiable curiousity about our surroudings. So in order to remain a child and also to regain some of that spirit I may have already began to lose, I am making a promise to the me of my youngest years that I will find her again, learn from her, and never try to improve upon her enlivened view of the world within her childlike state. I owe this to her, afterall, she made me who I am. In order to do this, over the next few months I will engage in childlike behavior with the enthusiasm of my earlier self. I will reflect upon the wisdom that can be gleaned from this state of being. I have already known these things that are available for me to learn through this, so I guess it will be a time of rediscovery. On the verge of growing up, I am packing up and taking everything that got me this far along with me.