In Remembrance

Sleep will not come, and so this night is for words - words of anger, confusion and profound sadness.  I regret not writing anything after 4/16/07 because these feelings have had a hold on my heart since that cursed day.  I know these words will do nothing to ease the anguish of a widow as she explains to her five children that their father was murdered.  I also know that they won't bring back anyone from any act of senseless violence or prevent such acts from happening in the future.  If anything I am about to say offends or annoys anyone, please remember that I am not asking you to validate my opinion.

I did not have the best college experience.  Virginia Tech is a large, crowded campus, full of noise and activity; the latter is not always of the honorable sort.  Although I made a few good friends, volunteered regularly and succeeded academically, I often felt lonely and out of place.  I was battling anorexia the semester before and in medias res the turmoil of the April 16th shooting.  Something strange happened inside me after the massacre.  Beneath my shock and sadness over the lives lost, I felt a kind of pity for the gunman.  He was an extreme outsider who it seems had no friends.  I realized, maybe for the first time, that I had friends (maybe not as many as I wanted), people who cared about me.  Did anyone care about Cho?  This feeling haunted and continues to haunt me; I am repulsed by my own consideration for someone who could commit such a heinous crime.  A new friend recently asked me if I had forgiven the shooter, and I told him that my forgiveness was predicated on God's forgiveness; since I believe that God forgives all, I choose to side with Him.  But if I am really honest with myself, I cannot forgive him.  I can only pity him.

The numbness of the days after April 16th soon gave way to righteous anger.  In addition to being angry on behalf of the families of those killed, I was angry at President Steger, Virginia Tech officials, Cho's parents and myself.  I was distinctly angry about the jeopardizing of higher (indeed, all) education.  I wrote a very short journal entry on one of those days, and in it I expressed an odd emotion; I told Cho that he not only stole the futures of 32 people, but also my (and presumably others') willingness to express passion.  It is clear that he relished this experience, that this was a crime of passion.  He felt so strongly that he was justified that he made it no longer acceptable to be passionate about anything.  I didn't write and post anything because it struck me somehow as a conspiratorial act.  Eating, talking and laughing also seemed treacherous and unfair.  Needless to say, my faith also suffered a substantial blow during this time.

I am in a much better place now than I was when I was at VT, both before and after the shooting, but I will always love and be grateful for my alma mater.  It houses a superb English department with superb faculty, and I grew in ways I wouldn't have if I had attended a smaller college.  It is hard for me to reconcile my feelings when events such as today's shooting and the beheading at ABP create a media frenzy.  All at once, I am resentful that VT is perceived as a crime-ridden institution, glad that people are paying attention and sad that other senseless acts and tragic deaths are placed on the back burner.  I hate that I feel entitled to express more sorrow than people who did not go to Tech and that I relish the sense of community that I never felt while attending school there.  I hate that I am worried about what to buy for Christmas when some people just want their loved ones back.  My stomach and heart ache for the family of Officer Crouse, for Lauren McCain's family, for Jamie Bishop's sweet wife (both of them excellent German professors), and for the families and friends of the other victims.  I hate that anyone has to lose anyone.

The hate is out now.  There is just no place for it in my heart or life anymore.  I will hold on to the anger and the sadness because those are the things that keep me from forgetting, but they will not rule me.  Every day I think about April 16th, and now I will think about December 8th as well.  You may remember other days, and they may be worse or far better than the ones I remember.  That is OK.  The important thing is that we remember something and modify our actions for the better to reflect the power of that remembrance.  We are responsible for shaping the future denied the slain.  As Dumbledore said, we should pray for the living rather than for the dead.  May they rest in peace.

Thankslisting

I'm keeping this short and sweet. Here's my top 10:

1. Jesus
2. My beautiful family
3. My beautiful friends, old and new
4. The resilience of the human spirit as exhibited by three of the most special people in my life
5. A growing awareness that happiness is always is a choice and that I am always able to choose it
6. A job that allows me to live pretty independently, provides savings and benefits and has introduced me to some lifelong friends
7. A nice, spacious apartment shared with my soul sistah
8. My church's praise band - amazing fellowship, lots of laughs and incredible talent
9. Music in general
10. The fact that we are all imperfect but still wake up every day and decide to give it a go; fumbling and faltering, we make small talk because we are small, help each other because we need help and forgive each other because we have been forgiven.

Please comment with your top 10! Happy Thanksgiving, all.

The Good Fight

Until perhaps this very moment, I had always been confused by the expression "fighting the good fight."  It seemed either like an untenable paradox (how can a fight be good?) or an empty cliche for doing your best or trying hard.  As an English major, I am pretty comfortable with paradoxes, but as a human being, I find that living them is a lot harder than writing about them.  How is it possible to love yourself and be your own worst critic?  How is it possible to have pride in who you are and know that, at some level, you will always be a failure?  How can you strive to be independent without pushing away those you care about most?  How can you care about what people think of you and not obsess about it?  These are my questions.  You may have different ones, but we all have them, and we are all searching for the answers.  Here's another paradox for you: when we search for the answers, we both are and are not fighting the good fight.

By seeking answers, we do fight the good fight in that we attempt to grapple with the fundamental issues of our existence.  To borrow from Max Lucado, we are "facing our giants," an image which clearly implies conflict.  Here's where it gets tricky, though: when we face our giants, most of us discover that they are too huge to collapse; we are not David, felling Goliath with a slingshot.  I say "most of us" because there may be some Davids out there.  I don't know any, but I would be remiss to assume that they don't exist.  Anyway, when we discover that our giants are too big to defeat, we can either turn our backs on them or keep loading our slingshots even though we know we will never win.  This is where the paradox occurs: after that first defeat, we think we have fought the good fight, that it is behind us.  Yes, we have fought the good fight, but it is not finished.  It is never finished.  We do not fight the good fight unless we never stop fighting.

The Good Fight (its universality lends itself to capitalization, methinks) can be brutal and is never comfortable or easy.  I have waved my white flag countless times.  Ironically, I have surrendered not only by ceasing to care about the questions but also by forcing myself to answer them.  When I felt a lack of control, I imposed strict control upon myself; in so doing, I made myself the giant and defeated myself.  We must accept that we are not in control and that we will never know the answers, but we must never stop asking the questions and believing that the answers exist.  It is futility in its purest form, and we must immerse ourselves in it.  But we musn't do it alone.  If we do, we will sink.

The best people in my life are the ones who want what is best for me.  Period.  They do not want to placate or please me.  They are honest and straightforward and sometimes harsh.  Sometimes I want to run from these people or make them feel sorry for me (tough to admit) to avoid conflict.  Sometimes I mistake them for my giants and try to fight back.  But they are not my giants; they are my equals.  They are facing their own giants and have decided, for some beautiful and unknowable reason, to help me face mine.  If that doesn't make the good fight worth fighting, nothing does.  I want to be like these people and also be myself.  For the first time, that doesn't seem like a paradox.

On Autumn

The end of summer is always a quantum shift of sorts.  No other change in season is quite so pronounced or quite so disheartening; in addition to the new chill in the air, autumn ushers in the responsibilities of school for some and the nostalgia for those days in others.  W.B. Yeats conveys this unsettling dichotomy beautifully in his poem "The Wild Swans at Coole."  For Yeats, autumn marked the frenzied flight of swans from a cold pond to some warm unknown shore.  In their clamorous wings he saw both his own desire to flee the coming season and the pain of having to adapt, to leave things behind.  He felt and understood that our desire for escape inevitably coexists with our fear of it.  I have felt a bit nostalgic watching my cousins and some friends return to school, but my increasing awareness of the passage of time, of missed opportunities and regrets, is somehow making me fearless rather than crippling me with fear of continued failure.  I have adapted before and I am ready to adapt again - more ready than ever, in fact, because I am investing in people and activities that affirm rather than challenge and undermine my identity.  I have no doubt that I am embarking on warmer shores than those I laid on so carelessly during the hot months of summer.  Are you?

Old Souls

My grandfather was a simple man.  Born in 1910, he came of age during the Great Depression.  He was thin, quiet and good-natured.  His friends called him "Red" for his reddish-brown hair - hair I never saw because the pictures are black and white and because he had only sparse white hair by the time I came around.  He met a stubborn, creative and whip-smart woman with a Mona Lisa smile - a knowing little smirk - and knew he couldn't live without her.  He wrote her letters, poetic in their straightforwardness, and she decided she didn't want to live without him either.  They married, had four sons and lived modestly but comfortably in New Albany, Indiana.  He was a self-employed contractor and landlord notorious among his clients for his impressive work ethic and among his tenants for his unsolicited generosity.  He and my grandmother smoked because they didn't know better and traveled in their later years because they knew they would not live forever.  When they visited my family, I was content to sit on my grandfather's lap, facing him and exploring his face with chubby fingers.  I found his bifocals and his wrinkles and his smiling lips, and I was delighted to have caused that smile.  I can't remember these things without the aid of home videos, but I feel them at my core.  Sometimes these feelings are the only things that I truly grasp.

Next year my sister and her husband will become parents and my parents, grandparents.  I wish my grandfather could witness these beautiful graduations, could see what an amazing gift he has helped create.  At the risk of sounding selfish, I also wish he was here to help me remember that I am the same girl who made people smile with my insatiable curiosity and quirkiness.  He is the reason I am an old soul, the reason I tend to relate better to my elders than I do to people my own age.  Does anyone else feel this way?  Maybe it is too simplistic to say that one person causes another person to be an old soul; it is more likely the feelings inspired by that person.  Perhaps we old souls feel that our elders will be less judgmental than our peers.  Perhaps - and this may be a long shot - those of us who are highly sensitive feel we have lived longer than our years because we experience things without filters.  There are many theories, all of which are probably partially correct, but one thing about old souls is certain: we understand and appreciate time and its ability to both give and take.

I do not remember how or when my parents told me about my grandfather's death.  I do not even know when I started missing him.  Since his death and that of his wife, I have not lost anyone as close to me, but I am fully aware that it could happen at any time.  It could happen to me; September 11th and April 16th should have taught all of us that.  And yet, despite that knowledge, I will not pretend to assert that I am living life to the fullest.  In fact, my life sometimes feels very empty, and that is my own fault.  I struggle to understand whether this emptiness is caused by actual lack or by my own distorted perception.  It is probably a bit of both.  I know I am not alone in this struggle, but if you can relate at all, I would love to hear from you.  In the meantime, take care of yourselves and each other.  And hug your grandfathers, as greedily as children might.

What I'm Learning

I am not really in a writing mood right now, but I am in a list-making mood.  And an honesty mood.  Since I doubt you are interested in reading my grocery and errand lists, I am going to share a (slightly) more interesting list.  Here are some things I'm learning about myself, others and life in general:

1. I am indeed learning without being in graduate school.  I am still struggling with feelings of regret and insecurity about not having a master's degree (and the career to whitch it hypothetically leads), but I am still reading, seeking knowledge and interacting with people who enrich and increase my understanding of and appreciation for life.

2. Holding grudges holds you back.  Forgive yourself and others so you can move on with your life.

3. You get out what you put in.  Don't expect others to include you in things if you never include them in things.  Relationships are built on mutual initiative and inclusion.

4. Try to keep the seriousness/silliness ratio around 40/60.  Smiling and laughing is always more attractive than scowling.  More importantly, it makes you feel better.

5. We all feel alone sometimes.  Thinking you are always the only one who is alone is extremely self-centered.  If you need help to get rid of this feeling, get it.  And then join the rest of us crazy loners as we fumble around, shaking hands and making small talk because the awkwardness always outweighs the loneliness.

6. The harder you fight for control, the more it will elude you.  That said, some things are worth fighting for.

7. The best antidote for worrying about yourself is helping other people.  In fact, it is probably the best antidote for any emotional ailment.

8. Be generous with your time and money, but only to the point where it feels comfortable.  Do not give grudgingly; if you do, the gift has no value.

9. If you are worried about what others think of you, recognize that they rarely, if ever, do.  I do not say this cynically; it's just the truth.

10. To end with the most cliche of all cliches, life is short and uncertain.  We are fragile and at the mercy of forces beyond our control.  What we can control is how we treat ourselves, each other and our planet.  I'm learning to treat these things with a little more love.  Thank you to those of you who are doing the same.

Everything is Music

I recently discovered that all of my favorite activities derive from the root word "muse": musing, amusing others, being amused, making music and listening to music.  Most of us know that within the framework of Greek mythology, the Muses were goddesses who presided over the arts; there were nine, and each specialized in a different art form.  We also know that a muse is an entity that inspires us to accomplish creative tasks.  Some of you may be scoffing at these mythological definitions, and I am right there with you.  I firmly believe that "muse" is more a verb than a noun and more internal than external.  To muse is to contemplate, to silently and intentionally reflect and speculate.  This process is the harbinger of art.  So what does any of this have to do with amusement?  Implicit in the notion of amusement are those of diversion and escape; we are amused because we are distracted from that which is not amusing, namely life itself.  Think about it, though - what amuses you the most: highly abstract humor or humor that derives from, perhaps pokes fun at, the banality of our daily existence?  I'm a slapstick, awkward situation and bodily function-loving girl myself.  In other words, I am most entertained (and entertaining) when I observe (or joke about) the hilarity of human existence.  I am amused and amusing when I understand that I am in on the joke and that the joke is on me.  My theory is that we cannot produce or understand true amusement until we are able to laugh at ourselves.  And in order to laugh at ourselves, we must muse on our shortcomings, our quirks, our bodily functions.  We must fully embrace being human.

I consider music to be the ultimate expression of humanity, the highest product of our musings on our own existence.  As with amusement, there is the implied notion of escape.  It's not an unfounded association: the image of a troubled youth drowning out his parents' fighting, nagging, etc. with headphones is very real.  But if you put yourself in that youth's shoes (in the unlikely event that you haven't already worn them to their soles as I have), you know that this isn't really an effort to escape.  It is actually an effort to reconnect, to remind yourself that you are part of something bigger than your immediate family or whichever situation is weighing on you.  That's why music is called the universal language - it is by, for and about all of us.  It is a club to which we all belong.  Of course, we all have unique musical preferences, but most of us can at least appreciate others' appreciation of different genres (I'm really trying to give country music a chance).  The only thing better than listening to music is making it, and the only thing better than making music is making music with a group of other musicians.  I have had the pleasure of jamming and performing with some extremely talented musicians; unsurprisingly, these sessions have proved quite amusing and have caused me to muse on what is important in life more than any other activity.

So what is important in life?  Being happy?  Being a good person?  Being successful (whatever that means)?  Traveling all around the world?  Getting married and having kids?  I think it's all important, and here is why: in order for us to keep making music, we need to cover everything.  There are a lot of songs out there already, and there are infinitely more that need to be written, sung and listened to.  The key distinction is that knowing what is important doesn't always mean doing what is important.  None of us can do everything, even things we think we should do in order to lead important lives.  That does not mean that we can't think about these things and express our feelings about them in a meaningful way; in fact, some of the best art derives from our failure to achieve the things we desire most.  I do not recommend pursuing impossible dreams for art's sake, but I do recommend reflecting on possibilities which could prove impossible.  Incidentally, I also recommend listening to Iron & Wine, Nick Drake, Fleet Foxes and Arcade Fire, creating as many inside jokes as possible, laughing with great gusto and picking up that neglected instrument (perhaps your voice) again.  If you do the latter, I am confident that everything will become brighter for you as it has for me.  To quote the ever-wise words of Jack Black, "For those about to rock, I salute you."

Incubation

I hope this post finds everyone doing well and enjoying the dog days of summer.  Question for you all: have you ever felt like you are waiting for all aspects of your life to come together at the same time? Like nothing is really settled or decided?  I have a feeling you are all thinking "yes."  Here's the thing, though: have you ever, in this state of being, been happy to be there? Perhaps even happier than you were when everything seemed set in stone?  You're not sure of your footing, but you are acutely aware that you have feet and that they can take you anywhere... anywhere!  The path isn't clear, but you see paths everywhere.  You try one, find a dead end, return to the point of origin and try another.  Nothing is clear, but you realize this with complete clarity; you are aware that you are unaware of what will happen next.  I have experienced this ephiphany several times in my life, but for the first time it does not frighten me.  For the first time, I am able to experience this feeling while also knowing who I am.  As you may know from previous entries, I like to explain things in terms of context and content; the context is that which frames and defines the content, and the content affects but cannot overtake the context.  Here's my theory: when you know who you are, uncertainty ceases to be the context of your life.  You become the context, and uncertainty is just part of the content you contain.

Psychologist and theorist Erik Erikson identified and defined four identity statuses: identity achievement, moratorium, foreclosure and identity diffusion.  Identity achievement occurs after an individual has explored different identities and committed to one; moratorium is exploration without commitment; foreclosure is commitment without exploration; and identity diffusion is lack of exploration and commitment.  Which stage are you in currently?  Erikson may not have endorsed my response: I have committed to an identity after exploration but I am also in a moratorium of sorts.  In other words, I think I have cemented the most essential parts of my identity - the things that will never change - but I am still exploring other areas.  Hmm, this calls for some new terminology.  How about incubation (because I am such a scientific thinker)?  Yes, I am a resident of an incubator.  Freedictionary.com defines "incubator" as "a place or situation that permits or encourages formation and development, as of new ideas."  Implicit in this definition is the fact that something already exists within the incubator.  For instance, incubators are used to maintain at-risk infants, not create them.  A baby may weigh four pounds and be fighting for every tiny breath, but he or she is very much alive.  The incubator does not house his or her identity but does affect the unfolding of that identity.  It's not a perfect example, but the basic idea is there: it is possible to be sure of your identity and still grow and change.  In fact, it is not only possible - it is necessary if we are to live truly meaningful lives.

This past month has been one of the most turbulent times of my life, but it has also been one of the most rewarding times of my life.  I have relied on other people more than ever before - something I have always had trouble with - and instead of missing my pride, I am aware of who my good friends are and of how good they are.  I am aware of the necessity of participating in musical endeavors in my identity - playing it, singing it and listening to it.  Career changes (of a yet unclear nature) are on the horizon.  I will admit that I have experienced some karma that I deserved to experience (without even being sure I believe in karma).  At the bookstore the other day I saw a man walking with two prosthetic legs and helped a lady find a book for her new grandchild after being yelled at by an old man and a middle-aged woman for trivial reasons.  Life isn't like this sometimes... it's like this all the time.  When you know who you are, these paradoxes and uncertainties don't shatter or redefine you.  They're just mechanisms in the incubator, reminding you with each whir, twang and click that there's always room to grow.

Humility

For starters, I want to apologize for my last post (and for the blank post which followed, which was my failed attempt to erase the original post).  The feelings I expressed were genuine at the moment I expressed them, but I had no right to post them publicly.  And now, given a recent personal change for me, I am afraid that those of you who know me may misunderstand my meaning and intention in creating and erasing that post.  Most significantly, however, posts like that undermine the foundation of this blog: an individual perspective which exists meaningfully within a larger discourse.  When I write, I want to write about things that speak to other people and to which they may also speak; with that post, I was merely recording an inner dialogue, feeding a personal fire.  I am aware that I have lit and stamped out many personal fires in life and in this blog and that I will probably continue to do so, but maybe the more I fess up, the less frequent this habit will become.

That's the thing about humility: it requires not only complete awareness of one's own fault/rejection, but also public acknowledgement.  I do not mean public on a large scale; I mean telling a close friend or family member that you've screwed up or that you've been rejected.  Both of these things hurt and are hard to admit, but something happens to us when we bring them to light.  In that moment, we exist completely in the exchange between ourselves and those in whom we confide.  We abandon pride, or ego, which houses our identity.  As the mediator between the id and super-ego, the ego is also responsible for defense mechanisms; the id reacts viscerally, the ego obeys the id and the super-ego punishes the ego with feelings of guilt or shame.  When we do wrong, we are aware at the level of our super-ego that we have done wrong (guilt), but our ego rationalizes.  Because the ego is the foundation of identity, we adhere to these rationalizations in order to maintain a sense of self.  On the other hand, when we are wronged, we are aware at the level of our super-ego that we have been wronged/rejected (shame), and our ego represses or denies the rejection.  When we are wronged, we don't try to maintain our identity - we try to abandon it because we cannot separate our identity from the rejection of our identity, and rejection is unacceptable.  As such, our identity becomes unacceptable.  In both instances, our egos prevent us from acknowledging the truth.  Here's my hypothesis: I believe it is impossible for us as individuals to remove ourselves from our own egos, recognize and disable our own defense mechanisms, and thus learn from our own mistakes/rejections.  We must expose our guilt and shame to someone or, better yet, someones, in order to grow in a positive direction.  Incidentally, I also believe that until we expose both guilt and shame, that growth is incomplete.

I am a different person than I was a week ago and than I have ever been because I have now admitted both guilt and shame to people I trust.  Some differences are routine and trivial: I am listening to albums I haven't listened to in a long time and avoiding others that had been in my car player for months.  Others are routine and significant: I no longer speak to a person I had spoken to daily for months.  But one is a veritable paradigm shift: I am aware, for maybe the first time in my life, of how damn lucky I am.  I reached out and found myself enclosed in arms, lifted until I felt I was flying but still grounded.  I reached out to several people I knew and trusted and was reached out to not only by them, but also by near and complete strangers who could not have possibly known that I needed their hands too.  I never understood before why people say they are "humbled" by their achievements, and maybe that is because all of my previous achievements have fed my pride.  I now realize that my greatest achievement is my humility.  It is a small and tarnished trophy that will shine more and more as I continue to trust myself and others to acknowledge and accept me as I am.  But no matter how brightly that trophy shines, it will remain small.  Like us, dear friends.  Like us.

The Collectors

Last night I watched one of my favorite films, Everything is Illuminated, with two of my favorite people.  The film is based on the novel of the same name by the very talented and unique Jonathan Safran Foer.  At its most basic level, the story is about a young man, presumably Foer himself, who collects things to memorialize deceased family members and who embarks on a journey to "collect" the memory of his grandfather, about whom he knows very little.  But this journey is not an archaeological dig, a hunt for objects which will fit neatly into Foer's plastic bags stowed away in his leather fanny pack.  Foer is instead searching for a person: the woman (Augustina) who saved his grandfather, who was Jewish, from Nazis in the 1940s.  When Foer and his traveling companions find Augustina's sister, she tells them the truth: Augustina died to protect Foer's grandfather.  Her death on his behalf allowed him to escape anti-Semite Ukraine and marry Foer's grandmother, and by extension allowed Foer to exist.  Forgive my shallow analysis of such a rich and complex work, but I now want to use what I have said to reflect on our motivations for "conducting rigid searches" and on how the trajectories and results of these searches shape and illuminate us.

What are you looking for right now, and how are you going about looking for it?  If you are looking for love, which seems to be our primary concern as human beings, what approach are you taking?  Maybe you are looking for certain qualities in a partner; you may even have a list of requirements by which you rate potential mates.  This approach doesn't seem to have a high success rate, but I don't think that is because having standards is a bad thing.  The issue is one of depth.  If you look for traits (or the absence of traits) in other people without considering why you value (or abhor) that particular trait, and without considering how that preference has shaped you, you will end up with myriad filled plastic bags that obscure rather than reveal the answer.  I realize that "answer" is overly simplistic because finding love propagates a journey filled with questions and littered sparsely with answers, but the questions seem more luminous, less threatening, when we aren't traveling alone.  Anyway, let's say you decide to do a little soul-searching in order to understand why you are looking for whom you are looking for: where should you start?  Foer writes that "everything is illuminated by the light of the past," and I agree.  What has worked and what hasn't in your past relationships?  Try not to dismiss or rationalize or reimagine.  I think you will find that telling yourself the truth and living in that truth will illuminate you in a way that attracts people - not just potential mates, but potential friends as well.  When you know yourself, you allow and invite others to know you.

If, while reading that last paragraph, you were thinking "but I'm not looking for love!", then I must admit that I am delighted that other species are now able to access and participate in the blogosphere, because you aren't human.  No matter what you are looking for, dear friends, you are looking for love in some form.  If you are looking for a career, you are looking for a place where you will feel accepted and valued by others in addition to a vocation that utilizes your particular skill set.  If you are, like Foer, looking for clues about a family member, you are motivated by love of that person.  If you are looking for fame and fortune, your heart is waiting patiently for you to return home, get your bearings and set out again.  That we will never travel without baggage should not discourage us from traveling.  We humans are the collectors, after all.  We accumulate, sort, compartmentalize and organize.  We count and recount, we let the dust gather and we brush it away.  I love us for doing these things because it means we are alive and we know we are going to die, but we don't want to die so we fill our walls and our closets with tangible memories that affirm our own tangibility.  These walls and these stacks are our fortresses, our defense against what lays on the other side of life.  We don't have to tear these fortresses down: we just have to let ourselves out and let other people in.  The light may very well blind us.

The Payoff

I am not surprised that my most-frequently-read post so far has been "Why We Need Each Other," and it is also not surprising that this post took the least amount of time to compose.  I have a tendency, as evinced by my previous post, to seek and engage with abstract material.  This tendency may make me seem stuffy, intelligent, detached, or any combination of the above.  My natural inclination toward detail, combined with a three-year love/hate affair with academic writing, accounts for this tendency.  With this post, I want to convey with absolute conviction that this admittedly affected style is not where my heart or my message really lies.  I told a friend recently that the trouble with blogs is akin to that of a photograph: it is a snapshot, a still of a kinetic something that cannot be restricted to a frame.  A writer always starts with an idea, and that idea shapes everything that follows it.  But the origin is not really the idea; it is the writer's frame of mind at the instant the idea is conceived.  Here's the problem with that: we artists (I think that includes all of us whether we realize it or not) create most when we experience negative emotions such as anger, fear, resentment, loneliness and sorrow.  We feel a need to escape or block these emotions, and art is a viable conduit.  Think about your old journals, for instance.  Were you more inclined to report positive or negative events and emotions?  When we are happy, we want to live in that happiness rather than write, sing, paint, etc. about it.  Let's reevaluate.

When I named this blog "The High Price & High Payoff of High Sensitivity" (was I high when I came up with this? kidding), I didn't even know what the payoff was.  I thought I knew, of course.  I thought it was a kind of detached wisdom, an advanced understanding beyond the grasp of those who simply *scoff* live their lives without worrying if they are doing it correctly.  How interesting that I believed the payoff of high sensitivity was in reality insensitivity, that I believed the payoff canceled out the price, leaving me with a clean blank slate upon which I could record "high art."  The truth is that the payoff of high sensitivity, of anything for that matter, is the same as the high price, and realizing this is realizing happiness.  Do not reduce your sensitivity to a detached awareness of , and by extension an ironic insensitivity to, those around you; instead, allow yourself to feel for others and express those feelings as you see fit.  I think you will find, as I am more and more every day, that the people you let in will also let you in.  And these relationships will bring you unbearable joy and unbearable pain, and yet you will bear them.  Your sensitivity is a burden and an asset all at once, and these two conflicting properties will not balance each other out.  Anyone who has ever loved knows that the good times are just as heavy as the bad.  Here's to hoping that, as the Beatles sweetly sang, we're gonna carry that weight for a long time.  As for my blog, I'll do my best to carry it with a little less weight and a lot more heart.  Thank you, as ever, for reading.

What We Can Change

"If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world.  It's impossible." Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye

The public bathroom is perhaps the most salient analogy for real life.  We would rather not go in, but we inevitably do - we have to go, our kid has to go, we need to wash our hands - and upon entering, we are often assailed by unusual smells and sounds.  As if all this isn't enough, there are also the inspirational quotes on the stalls, instructing us about the finer points of human anatomy and reminding us that we are idiots, skanks and all manner of other honorable things.  Sometimes the smells and sounds are less noxious and the writing on the wall reminds you to tell your mother you love her, but you still feel trapped, uncomfortable.  Life is this way, is it not?  The smells and sounds are metaphors for nature, that which happens to us; the words are what we do to ourselves and to each other.  We cannot escape either force, and thus we feel trapped.  No matter how tolerable life is, we still regard it as something to be tolerated.  And tolerate it we must.  For us highly sensitive folk, who have an especially low tolerance for situations in which we have no control, this task sometimes seems impossible.  Of course, even the most sensitive person in the world must acknowledge that nature is superior to and impervious to the desires of man, and thus it is not nature that we seek to change or erase; rather, we seek to change other people.  The truth is that changing other people, one person or all people, is just as futile as changing nature.

Holden, and by extension J.D. Salinger, was right: we can't erase all the graffiti that demeans, enrages and saddens us.  We can't protect our children from hurtful words, and we can't prevent our children from using them on us.  And when it comes down to it, that's what we're really afraid of: being hurt.  The beauty of bathroom stall slander, in its writer's eyes, is its ability to offend and instruct.  Because it is not directed at anyone in particular, it will mean different things to different people.  No matter how offended we are by what the words say to us, we are inevitably more offended by the possibility of what they say to other people.  We are afraid an impressionable youth will be expelled for using the offensive phrase on his teacher, or worse, that it will inspire in him an overarching attitude of hatred which will then endanger lives, possibly ours.  Perhaps I jump to extreme conclusions in my own analysis, but think about it: when we hear or see something that offends us, our anger extends beyond indignation at ethical misconduct.  Although we recognize the words as a pathetic attempt to get a reaction and thus do not take it personally, we are afraid that other people will.  Holden's desire to rub away the above-referenced phrase is closely tied to his desire to be the "catcher in the rye": he is not concerned with his own vulnerability to man-made evils, but rather with the vulnerability of the next generation, whose actions will also affect him.  His desire to catch the children is undoubtedly noble, but it is not entirely altruistic.  It took me a few readings of the novel to get that.

My point with all this analysis is this: we will never be able to control what other people do, and that includes slanderers and loved ones alike.  There will always be evil, and all of us are susceptible to and guilty of carrying its torch.  If you cannot quite convince yourself that changing people is futile (like me at times), remember that even if it was possible, it is not the right thing to do.  We have to trust that people will choose good over evil, because if we don't, trust ceases to signify anything at all.  We may feel trapped and lonely and uncomfortable, we may wish we could erase everything that offends or threatens us directly and indirectly, and we may wish we could catch those to come before they have a chance to fall.  In the end, we can spend a lifetime trying to do these things, or we can spend a lifetime living. What we can change is our choice between the two.

30 Before 30

Hello readers!  I'm doing something a little different for this post, but I think it still ties in with my overall goal for this blog: to help myself and (hopefully) others negotiate sensitivity with the pressures that accompany ambition.  We should not allow our sensitivity to prevent us from pursuing our goals.  Half of the battle is knowing what you want to accomplish; that's where the bucket list comes in.  My roommate Maggie and I decided to make lists of 30 things we want to accomplish by the time we're 30; that gives both of us about six years.  The key to making a list like this is to take it seriously but not too seriously.  I would recommend choosing some things you know you can accomplish and some things you would love to accomplish regardless of their feasibility.  I hope that you enjoy my list and Maggie's list (link is below), and I especially hope that you make one of your own!

Emily's 30 Before 30

1.      Work or intern for a publishing company

2.      Make and keep 10 new friends

3.      Find and keep a good man

4.      Write a nonfiction essay I’m proud of

5.      Get said essay published in a literary magazine

6.      Place in a writing contest

7.      Learn to play guitar tablature

8.      Learn to play bar chords

9.      Take the GRE

10.  Take a road trip with friends

11.  Volunteer again

12.  Go to India for at least a week

13.  Go to an Iron & Wine concert

14.  Go to a Fleet Foxes concert

15.  Read 100 books I've never read before

16.  See the Sistine Chapel in person

17.  Sing a complete solo in front of a group of at least 100 people

18.  Take a hip-hop dance class

19.  Watch all of Audrey Hepburn’s movies

20.  Relearn some piano

21.  Run a 5k

22.  Complete and successfully adhere to a budget

23.  Make an edible pie from scratch

24.  Visit someone/people in my dad’s family

25.  Visit my godmother in Dallas

26.  Buy something really nice for my parents

27.  Make 30 mixed CDs to give as gifts

28.  Correspond in some way with Rob Sheffield

29.  Ride on a plane by myself

30.  Feel infinite

Maggie's list: http://thespacebetweenwalls.blogspot.com/2011/04/30-before-30.html

The Pursuit

The Declaration of Independence tells us that we are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but I have never understood the correlation between independence and pursuit.  Perhaps I am going about the whole thing incorrectly, but the act of pursuing happiness (more specifically, all those things which I believe will make me happy) makes me feel utterly dependent rather than liberated.  Lately I have been feeling especially ruled by this impetus to chase, and the effects of obeying this impetus are a bit troubling to me.  It's akin to being a passenger in your own car in that you have clearly given someone else permission to drive but you are acutely aware that you are not truly in control.  The reality is that none of us are truly in control of our lives, a fact evinced by such events as the Virginia Tech massacre four years ago yesterday, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquakes in Japan, September 11, etc.  Barring forces of nature and senseless acts committed by fellow human beings, however, we essentially map the trajectories of our own lives.  I am interested in our reasons for mapping them in the countless various ways we do.  I am interested in pursuing the concept of pursuit.

I do not want to live in New York City, and even if I wanted to, I do not think my personality or bank account are suited for it.  Why, then, have I applied for publishing jobs smack dab in the core of the Big Apple?  I don't know.  Let me put you on hold so you can ask my boss, Pursuit.  Pursuit says that I will not be happy until I find a career in a field for which I have an aptitude and a passion (apparently Pursuit likes to use confusing sentence structures), and all the editing/publishing jobs are in NYC.  The truth is that I do not think I will get any of these jobs anyway, but now that I have gone and done the thing, I am inevitably invested in the possibility that I will.  No one does something to get null results; action is predicated on the expectation of reaction, be it positive or negative.  Something will change when I hear back from the companies I applied to: I will either prepare myself for interviews and reexamine the idea of moving or I will know that it wasn't meant to be after all.  The key is that I will have learned something.  If I had never applied in the first place, I would be left wondering if I was cheating myself out of a different, a happier, future.  Thomas Jefferson was no fool.  He knew that "happiness" needed a modifier, that even if we were entitled to it and were given it on a silver platter, we would not believe we had it anyway.  We report to Pursuit because we, each one of us, chose him as our boss.  We resist taking a chance on Chance because she works for, and against, everyone.  Pursuit is a paycheck and Chance is the lottery.  As Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes sings, "I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery."

The underlying assumption of this choice between Pursuit and Chance is that we want happiness.  If we didn't want to be happy, we wouldn't bother working or waiting for anything.  We wouldn't feel dependent or hopeful or in any way let down if our actions or inactivity resulted in a displeasing consequence.  I don't think any of us want to live this way, even in our darkest moments.  Unhappiness is closer to happiness than is apathy.  As with all things, moderation is key.  I know it's cliche, but it's true.  Maybe our best bet is to employ both Pursuit and Chance and, in so doing, realize that in choosing which to employ, we assert our independence.  In the midst of my pursuit of a career, a good man, a purpose, I will try to give Chance the wheel occasionally.  The next time someone asks you "Who's the boss?", you may answer "Tony Danza" (because you are so witty) or "the pursuit."  But it's you, dear friend.  It's you.

Strength out of Weakness

Yesterday was one of those days: a day seemingly designed to reveal all of my weaknesses, to water the weeds and leave the flowers dry.  It started when my aunt, who is also my boss at her law office, gave me a task I didn't know how to do.  Rather than immediately admit this and ask for help, I sat and stewed, growing increasingly frustrated and angry with her, the work and especially myself.  When I finally did ask her for help, I did so in a defensive way, as if she had given me the task to test my ability to figure it out on my own.  After she helped me and I apologized for my defensiveness, I was able to complete the task and even found it enjoyable.  Later, I went to handbell practice at my church.  I have been playing handbells for almost a decade, so I consider myself a fairly advanced player.  In one piece I have to quickly change bells with my left hand, and during a run-through last night I did not play the second bell exactly as it should be played.  My director corrected me in a nice way: "Be sure to make a good circle, Emily."  The next time we played that section, I played it properly and she said, "That's much better, Emily."  When we took a moment's break before resuming practice, I could not stop myself from saying with an edge, "The reason I did not play it properly is because I have to do a really fast bell change there.  It's a really hard part and I usually get it right.  Just thought you should know that."  My director acknowledged the difficulty of the part and we moved on.  In hindsight I realize that my statement was completely unnecessary; in our choir and everywhere, we all make mistakes and are corrected for them.  Sometimes we feel that we are justified in making these mistakes, sometimes we are angry that others' mistakes remain unnoticed when ours do not, and yet usually we have to bite our tongues, take the criticism and move on.  My defensiveness in this instance did nothing but draw attention to my mistake and to my defensiveness.  As these examples indicate, my greatest weakness is my pride.  I dislike asking for help and, to an even greater degree, I dislike receiving it without asking for it; in other words, the only thing worse than surrendering my own pride is having it taken from me.

Here is my question: are our greatest weaknesses inevitably millstones, things that weigh us down and prevent us from soaring?  If our greatest weakness is pride (and I think it is for most of us), this question is a hard one to answer.  A person with no pride is a person with no sense of self, or at least no allegiance to self.  If we do not take pride in anything we are or do, we have no identity, and without identity we are as good as dead.  In order to answer this question, then, I think we need to reexamine the concepts of weakness and strength.  We have all heard that our greatest weaknesses are also our greatest strengths, and we have also heard that strength is the opposite of weakness.  Is it possible for both of these statements to be true?  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "our strength grows out of our weaknesses", a statement which indicates that it is possible.  In fact, it suggests that it is not only possible; it is necessary.  Strength and weakness are not one and the same, but strength must arise from weakness.  Weakness is the only origin of strength just as fear is the only origin of courage.  If there is nothing to fear, one cannot be brave; similarly, if there is no opportunity for pride, one cannot be humble.  False humility is worse than pride because pride is at least authentic.  True humility is the acknowledgement and subsequent overcoming of pride rather than a denial of pride's existence.  The irony of false humility is that it is weakness borne of weakness.  If we do not acknowledge the original weakness, it will only breed more weakness.

The key, then, is to understand one's own trouble trait well enough to know when its application is justified and unjustified.  If you struggle as I do with pride, stand up for yourself when you feel you need to and swallow your pride when you don't.  Ironically, sometimes humility means shutting your mouth and sometimes it means opening it.  I learned yesterday (a lesson I have admittedly "learned" countless times) that asking for help does not eradicate pride; if anything, it enables it.  After asking my aunt for help, I was able to take pride in the work she assigned me.  Of course, we will always struggle with our weaknesses, and none of us will be able to overcome them every time they rear their heads.  We are only human, after all.  Let's act like humans, then.  Let's apologize and forgive, never forgetting that our ability to forgive grows out of our ability to apologize.

Risking Rejection

If we wrote memoirs, we could each write a moderately long chapter on the various ways we have been rejected.  It is a chapter we would rather edit out, but I am beginning to rethink its value in our stories.  Rejection comes in different forms and within different contexts; they can be impersonal or acutely personal; and they tend to cause stagnancy in the context in which they occurred.  Upon receiving a rejection letter for a job, for instance, most of us are not inspired to send out more resumes (but we do anyway if we really need a job).  Upon being dumped, we do not feel like checking out all those other fish in the sea because we know now that they are actually piranhas.  These feelings are normal and, in my opinion, healthy.  There is a kind of mourning process associated with rejection - a loss of hope, of the image of the person you thought you were going to be, of the time you spent in pursuit of the goal in question.  I have experienced rejection, both personal and professional, and I am very familiar with these feelings.  They are old friends; I know I can count on them whenever I call on them.  I'm going to stick with that metaphor.

You know that saying, "Make new friends, but keep the old"?  I'm trying to think about rejection that way.  Let me say up front that I strongly dislike it when people sugarcoat rejection, especially those who do so as they are rejecting you.  Phrases like "I hope we can still be friends" and "Your resume is impressive, but we have given the position to someone else" are sugar in the wound.  At least salt helps dry it out.  I prefer to be let down in a straightforward way which does not require me to feel pitied or conflicted about being upset because the rejecter was so nice.  I think most of us can admit that we have been the rejecter before and that we have done this kind of rejecting.  Anyway, back to the metaphor.  We all remember the first time we felt truly rejected, our first real heartbreak, and that heartbreak inevitably shapes who we are.  Each subsequent time we are rejected, we revert back to those feelings we had upon our first rejection.  Thus these feelings of inadequacy, anger, sadness, etc. are old friends, and we find a kind of comfort in greeting them again.  We need these friends, need to experience these emotions.  But we also need to make new friends (a metaphor for opportunities in general).  If we are wise, we will choose our new friends with great thought and care.  We will choose because we think this friend is worth the risk of being vulnerable and even being rejected.  If we take this risk enough, we will find that we have more friends and that the ones who rejected us do not cause us as much pain.  When a new friend does reject us, we may still call on our old friends, but at a certain point, we will call less on them and more on ourselves.  Make new friends, keep the old, and, above all, be a friend to yourself.

I chose to submit an essay to two literary magazines and to sing in front of a group of about 100 people, two things I have wanted to do for a long time, because for the first time I feel prepared to support myself if and when rejection occurs.  And you know what?  I did these things after being rejected in an unrelated context.  An added benefit of being rejected: you can create art with those emotions.  And that art might just be rejected.  Here's to being an artist.

The Commitment Conundrum

I've wanted to blog about romantic relationships for a while, but I have this pesky issue with commitment... oh good, now I have an angle.  To start, this business about certain people having a "fear of commitment" is like saying that certain people have opposable thumbs.  This fear may manifest itself in different ways and degrees, but the closest synonym for "commitment" is "obligation," which implies a loss or lack of freedom, and that scares everyone.  In fact, nothing scares us more than losing our freedom - hopefully this isn't the only thing keeping us out of jail, but it is a contributing factor.  There are two kinds of obligations: externally imposed and self-imposed.  Externally imposed obligations are generally not associated with commitment phobia.  We don't avoid going to work because it directly affects our livelihood, and we (most of us, anyway) don't avoid paying taxes because doing so results in an even greater obligation.  Avoidance occurs when we have a choice and the consequences of this choice are unclear.  I am an individual and there is no law stating that I must find a mate or I'll end up in the big house.  If I choose to commit to a relationship with someone, that relationship is a self-imposed obligation.  Cue the fear music, maestro.

Before I delve more into amorous relationships, let's consider commitment phobias in friendships as a building block. We all have at least one friend who never wants to be tied down by a plan and who therefore never has one and rarely adheres to one.  In the context of a friendship, this tendency, while annoying, does not necessarily cause the foundation to crumble for a few reasons: 1. we probably have other, more Type A friends to hang out with; 2. having Type A friends necessitates having at least one Type B friend; and 3. thanks largely to facebook, friendship as a construct just ain't what she used to be.  When friendship can exist between two people who may or may not have met or will ever meet, the notion of obligation seems a bit ambitious. Our understanding of friendship as a context implies an understanding that commitment within this context does not require us to sacrifice much freedom.  Our commitment-phobic friends do not become our enemies because they do not threaten our freedom and because they allow us to be commitment-phobic as well.  And even if you are committed to noncommittal pals, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you are the bigger person.  Being the bigger person means nothing in romantic relationships.

Pretty much everything else does mean something, though, and that's what makes commitment to love so damn scary.  Romantic love is too big and mysterious and important to be a context; it is two people, two worlds, thrown haphazardly into a single orbit, and commitment is the only force that keeps them on the same track (notice I didn't say it keeps them from colliding or from wanting to occasionally knock the other out of orbit).  Choosing to be in a committed relationship with someone means choosing commitment, not a relationship; otherwise, to quote Yeats, "the center will not hold."  If we do not obligate ourselves to our partners, we cannot trust that they have obligated themselves to us, and without that trust there can be no relationship.  My partner may be fully committed to me, but until I trust that he is, I cannot be committed to him.  I have only recently begun to grasp the reality that we cannot love others until and unless we love ourselves; similarly, we cannot trust others until and unless we trust ourselves.  Our conundrum, then, is not getting over our fear of commitment, but rather getting over our commitment to fear.  Freedom can become loneliness, which we do not think we fear until we experience it.  If we stop fearing loss of freedom, we will be set free.  I'm working on it.

Writing is Ruining My Life...

... by saving me from it.  The great irony of this blog is that the impetus for it, the feelings that inspire it, should be driving me to do rather than write.  I find myself wishing something would happen, something life-changing, so that I will have something to write about; the event itself is reduced to fodder for this ruthless hunger in me to analyze, recreate and retell.  The truth is that my writing voice speaks more confidently and more wisely than my real voice, but what if my writing voice is my real voice?  Think about what you love to do more than anything else and what doing this thing does to your voice.  Does it become a little stronger, a little louder, a little less afraid?  Is it less or more real than your "normal" voice?  When I write I feel powerful, but I am aware that this power derives largely from my ability to represent myself differently, to embellish and omit.  My answer to the popular question "If you could have any superpower, what would you want it to be?" has always been invisibility, as I imagine it would be for most writers (except perhaps sci-fi/fantasy types, who are a little more imaginative); the ability to hide but still be heard and influence one's surroundings (authoritatively, as one cannot be caught when invisible) is a writer's dream.

A writer's other (and arguably less realistic) dream is to be published.  Being published means that this voice exists somewhere other than in your head (or on a blog that other people kindly choose to read - thank you), and more importantly, that someone else thinks this voice should be heard.  Everyone I have spoken to about the publishing process has told me to prepare for a forest worth of rejection letters, and even after that, an acceptance letter may never come.  I don't know about you, but I do my best to avoid rejection, especially when it is unaccompanied by the promise of acceptance.  Allow me to put on my cape of wisdom and analyze that statement: rejection without the promise of acceptance is also known as life, and life is what's up.  So maybe writing isn't ruining my life after all, just as your calling, your greatest gift and burden, isn't ruining yours.  Maybe our perception of life is ruining our lives because we expect it to be a promise for something greater when really it is only what we make it.  Even if your calling is something that makes you feel removed from life in some way, the very fact that you feel called to do it indicates that you want to live, that you want to fill the blank page.  I am making a decision, here and now, to accept writing as a major part of my life rather than as an escape from it.  Could we make a deal?  I would love more than anything to know what your calling is and how you are trying to answer that call when giving up is far more palatable, or what is preventing you from pursuing it, or anything you want to say about your life.  If you will do that for me, I will write about us (without names), about how a group of people I know and don't know changed my life by giving me a small glimpse into their lives.  I would submit it proudly, and I would cherish every last rejection letter.  I hope to hear from you.

Why We Need Each Other

Ideally an epiphany occurs to me before I start a blog post, but sometimes nothing matters but the conviction that something must be said about a particular topic.  And that topic tonight is us: you and me and everyone we know and everyone we don't know.  We're funny creatures, we humans.  We make to-do lists and bucket lists and they never look the same.  We buy each other gifts in December and return them in January.  We work jobs that we don't like or that stress us out to pay for houses we don't have time to enjoy due to said jobs.  I'm not criticizing us; most of us are doing the best we can.  I'm also not suggesting that we all go sky-diving, skip Christmas and quit our jobs.  I'm just trying to convince myself, and maybe help you consider, that we are all we've got, and that we'd better make the best of us while we can. 

Yesterday I was an idealist and today I am not.  Today I am certain that we are all destined for heartbreak and trial and that the only way we can make it through either is with each other.  All my life I have tried to establish my own identity, to distinguish myself in some way, and I have resented the lack of "dare to be great" moments in my life.  I have been waiting impatiently for an obstacle to overcome while those I love most could have used my support in surmounting theirs.  Even worse, I have tried to create and overcome fictional obstacles to give myself a sense of contol and purpose.  It is this kind of thinking which isolates us and prevents us from living more meaningful, love-filled lives.  Anything could happen to any of us at any moment, but that moment is not what we should live for or fear.  We should live for each other and fear the loneliness of living for oneself alone rather than the uncertainty of living without a clear purpose or identity.

Please tell the people you love that you love them, and please try to love more people, including yourself.  When the time comes for you to face your obstacles, you will be glad you did.

Knowing & No-ing

Happy new year, everyone.  Now that day two is wrapping up, we are mostly recovered from our various maladies: hangovers, trashed residences and feelings of excitement and cheer. It's 2011 now, and we will be cursing it for weeks as we pay our bills, write our checks and turn in our homework.  The next holiday isn't here until February (I am not even going there in this post), so we have over a month to get acquainted with this awkward new year before we celebrate again.  The new year is like a blind date set up by your mom; no matter how much you want to, you just can't say no.  When you think about it though, who knows you better than your mom?  I think my mom knows me better than I know myself.  So I'm going to approach this new year with a new attitude: I'm going to say no to saying no.

When I think of the mistakes I've made, I realize that the majority of them stemmed from my saying no.  The reason we say "no" is closely linked to its homophone, "know."  When we don't know the outcome of a decision, we assess risk before deciding.  Sensitive people tend to be inherently risk-averse, which means that we often say no before fully weighing our options.  The paradox is that we can never fully know the outcome of a decision to begin with, and when we choose to say no, we prevent ourselves from ever knowing.  When I was in college, I focused so much on gaining knowledge that I forgot to gain experience; I now know that experience is the only knowledge that matters.  I apologize if that statement reads as cliche and obvious, but I am truly just beginning to embrace this idea.  Of course I am not advocating saying yes to everything (more power to Jim Carrey, though); I am advocating saying yes when your only fear is that of the unknown.

Perhaps you have another, closely related issue: perhaps you are ready to say yes, to embrace possibilities, but the possibilities are not readily presenting themselves.  I'm right there with you.  Just remember that patience is a virtue, but so is courage.  And courage is way more badass than patience, and you are an introverted badass capable of awesomeness.  If you have a hard time agreeing to participate in an outing or take some other risk, the thought of being the mastermind behind such an event may induce nausea.  If this applies to you, I advise starting small.  Of course, we sensitive folk are all over the spectrum when it comes to participation comfort levels.  For me, the threshold hovers right around the "dancing among a bunch of strangers in a crowded club on New Year's Eve" mark.  I did it, found it somehow both awkward and exhilarating, and now my threshold is a little higher.  I still prefer more low-key events, but I'm glad I did something outside my comfort zone because I know more about myself after having done it.  I find it ironic that sensitive people are the most self-aware people but also tend to know the least about ourselves - we know what we know, but there isn't much to know. 

I digress... back to the idea of creating rather than waiting on possibilities.  Fear of the unknown intensifies when fear of rejection is also in play.  It's easier to say no than to have someone say no to you.  The next time you are about to decline an offer, consider the risk the other person took in asking you to participate.  Think especially hard about those people who have asked you to participate numerous times despite your repeated negative responses.  I have done this more times than I care to admit, and I vow not to do it again.  Once you start accepting, you will feel more accepted.  Once you feel more accepted, you will feel more empowered and less afraid of rejection from others.  Just remember that even if you are rejected, you are one step closer to knowing yourself.  And you are still an introverted badass.