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.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, May 9, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
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
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
Sunday, April 17, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, April 1, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, March 14, 2011
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.
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.
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