Moving On

One of the odd things about college is the sense of impermanence.  Every three to four months you pack up your life and move into new temporary quarters.  Early on, the psychological effects of said impermanence were the most painful part of the deal.  The transience of my residence coincided with my undetermined place in life in a particularly unsettling way.  That’s the deal with college, in my opinion–childhood is stripped away, and until you find your way into young adulthood you’re left naked.  Once you figure out the young adulthood gig, the constant residential shuffle shifts from emotionally traumatic to merely annoying and a shit-ton of work (what is a shit-ton?  more than a normal ton?).

Obnoxious, sweaty, and inconvenient as moving undoubtedly is, I and my peers seem to have reached a consensus that being out of the house has become necessary.  I love my family more than anything, and of course it’s great to have the chance to spend so much time with them.  However, I’ve noticed that living at home under the active parenting of mom and dad brings out the child in me in horrible, embarrassing ways.  I’m sarcastic, snappish, moody, and occasionally downright unkind, and I watch myself react that way with horror because of course that’s not how I want to treat my family.  My parents are just doing what they’ve always done–making suggestions, issuing reminders, offering opinions–but I can’t accept it anymore because I’m used to functioning in a world where I’m boss.  I don’t think parents can help parenting when their children are present, but no adult wants to parented and thus arises the conflict.  When I talk to my parents on the phone and spend time with them without living together, I get to enjoy the interesting, fun, intelligent people they are and they (hopefully) get to enjoy a less hostile, more loving and pleasant daughter.

So I’m looking forward to moving tomorrow, despite the inevitable disorder, exhaustion, and back-ache.  I’m looking forward to being in charge of myself and my actions, but more than that I’m looking forward to putting myself in a place where I can be a better person.  I know I’ve not been at my best these past few months, and I hate how I’ve been behaving toward my most-loved ones.  After this year, my residence will hopefully be somewhat more permanent–and I’m hoping my lapses into childishness will become proportionally less frequent and intense.

Ease over torment, any day

“For once put some effort into something that doesn’t come easy.”  It’s a phrase that plays in my head daily; a slap in the face that keeps stinging and stinging because it hit the hidden bruise of my self-doubt.  When I look critically at myself–far too often for any sort of peace or complacency–I often can’t help being disgusted with what I see.  Where is my self-discipline?  Where is the woman who, regardless, plows onward toward her goals no matter how unpleasant the process?  In the absence of this driven, admirable woman, there’s only a stupid, scared, struggling, pathetically fallible girl–painfully ordinary, destined to live and die without touching anything meaningful.  In those moments I see in my own preference for the pleasant over the unpleasant, the easy over the difficult, the atom-bombing of my self-worth.

However.  In The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie writes, “Lives there who loves his pain? / Who would not, finding way, break loose from hell, / Though thither doomed?  Thou wouldst thyself, no doubt, / And boldly venture to whatever place / Farthest from pain, where though mightst hope to change / Torment with ease…”  (335).  These lines suggest that a preference for pleasure over pain is natural, universal, and ok–hardly my own personal, shameful, ugly failure.  If I can’t stop seeing my lack of self-discipline as a serious flaw (and I can’t) then at least I can, perhaps, fall back on the helpful mantra, “I am human, beautiful and flawed.”

To keep trying to change, though, is the real battle.  The day I give up on that–on setting idealistic goals, on maintaining high expectations, on recognizing myself as an unfinished work –is the day that I truly fail.  The constant repetition of “I’ll try harder, I’ll try harder, I’ll try harder,” useless as it may seem, is the thing separating potential from stagnation.

Unbearable burdens

Imagine a person in the middle of his adult life, who has worked hard, raised a family, and built a stable world for the people he loves, sometimes at the expense of long cherished hopes and dreams.   Now imagine a person at the cusp of her adult life, with hopes and dreams newly minted, and suppose that man has been the means of creating that young woman, and of carrying her to the path where she can begin to walk on her own.  He is in pain over his vanishing dreams, and and has lost his own hope and optimism in the bleakness he perceives as his future.  He loves that young woman, and has never been able to stand her sadness.  Imagine that his unhappiness focuses itself into a fear that her potential will be left unfulfilled–that instead of  leaping off the cliff and soaring to the sun, she will fall, fall, fall into the gray abyss.  He sees her imperfections, her weaknesses, her burdens, as barriers that will hold her down, like boulders chained to her ankles.  He is terrified because she’s so close to success and happiness, but, like every other human being ever created, she could piss it all away in an instant with a few poor decisions.  And he’s spent his last twenty years as writer, director, and producer of her life–he can’t believe that she can act the scene without him.

The young woman loves him, has no other gods before him.  His opinion is her everything.  In that, she is still a child–she lives her life for him before she lives it for herself.  Can you see the impossibility of it?  Anything less than perfection may bar her from achieving her potential, and will cause for her one day the same pain he’s feeling now.  Trying isn’t good enough…if results aren’t achieved, then clearly she was not trying hard enough and nothing has been gained.  “He won’t be happy again,” she thinks, “until I’m a talented athlete.  Until I smile all the time.  Until I lose the weight.  Until I fill every minute with productive activity.  He won’t be at peace unless I elevate my life from ‘pretty damn good except for the few rough patches’ to ‘divine perfection’.”  To please her god, she has to transcend her humanity.

What unbearable pressure we place on one another!  How can any human being fulfill the expectations of being another human’s god, without faltering, showing weakness, or committing error?  How can anyone take on the burden of fulfilling another person’s dreams and living their hopes without stifling her own plans in the process?  When you love someone too deeply, they become to you something that they cannot ever be.  They mean more to you than they mean to themselves–and when the illusion fails and they can’t keep up the pretense of being that thing anymore, the world feels like its shaking to pieces beneath your feet.

Justifying an Academic Career

Every once in awhile I have to step back and remind myself that what I am doing is right. When I could have become a scientist and developed a cure for AIDS, or become a nun and cared for the orphans of India, am I being incredibly selfish and wasteful of my able-bodied potential? Being an English professor will, perhaps, help foster a love of English in future generations, but that may be nothing more than perpetuating intellectual luxury that does no material good to anyone. If I were a novelist or a poet maybe I could make a social impact on the minds of the population at large, but my interests and goals seem to be pulling me down a different path. As a result of these doubts and fears, I’ve come up with a set of “truths” with which I feel comfortable and which validate my choices and my dreams. It may be nothing but a lame attempt to reconcile who I actually am with who I feel I ought to be, but it works for now.

Justification for a Self-Indulgent Career Path

-The goal of life is to be happy (what else can it be?)
-A good person tries to increase other people’s happiness, therefore helping them accomplish the goal of life.
-Disease-curing scientists, nuns, etc. have careers that are good because they are helping other people to be happy (disease free, adequately fed, loved, etc.)
-As an English professor, I too can help people be happy. Literature makes me happy…thus there are probably other people who would also be made happy by its study.
–But more importantly: one’s career isn’t one’s only chance to be a good person. A career is a way of making money to keep yourself alive and happy. If you can find a career that makes you happy as well as making you money, that’s another victory for the happiness objective in life. In your life outside your career, there are numerous opportunities for improving the happiness of others.

There. I’m satisfied. Now I can start researching my senior thesis in peace and good conscience.