seemingly depressing things, franklys, and tattery endings

Is the best good you can do, ultimately, resignation to mediocrity?

^That seemingly depressing opening sentence was supposed to be the depressing opening to a thoroughly depressing post, and as it was being mentally laid out in the cloudy loops of my brain during the conversation that inspired it, had all the intention of being so. Exactly so.

I'm quietly proud of my parents - humbled, thankful, and awed, often, by my good relationship with them together and him and her as individuals. Though certainly not with everything, my dad is remarkably patient with us. It's admirable and impressive, how determinedly he holds onto his mind and cool as we play the appropriately immature parts of the stubborn little babies we are. Stubborn little babies who got progressively worse and worse at math as the classes changed from Algebra to Trig to Calculus, too, and math was really the least of his troubles with us. It's a terrible thing to abuse, this patience, but no matter how many times we turn our gaping mouths in that unsightly "...huh?" toward him, my dad can erase all the previously explained and start over. And over. And over.

My mom is a little less adept with the stuff regarding repetition - strict no-more-than-three-reps policy here, or you'll pay the price by listening to a(n ironically) repetitive lecture about how You Never Listen for anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 weeks - but her virtues shine through her actions. She's the most compassionate, and untiringly-, uncomplainingly-hardworking person I know. Sometimes when she shares tidbits of her life philosophy with me, it's in the form of offhand slips of verbal gems she just casually and spontaneously tosses about, like dustbunnies that get unearthed in search of something else in the attic-resident trunk. Makes them seem a lot less monumental than they are truly worth, so I sort of have to rub my eyes and stay alert when she does this, and pick up those pieces and tuck them away for further study later, quietly in my room or something.

The two plump paragraphs above deserve [much more than] a whole post of their own, really, but for today, they're just gonna serve as disproportionately-lengthy prefaces to the sentence that shall follow:

I can't really and completely share with them about my vision for the future. 

"Vision" being that mystical, vague haze also known as Postgrad Life Plans, and future being that equally unclear patch of mystery time that begins After May. My soon-to-come first-ever institutional void, all of which, thanks to the combination of ~40% my own lack of direction and ~60% lack of desire to communicate with my parents about it, isn't really a subject we have much to discuss about anyways. And which, I know, is a validly-timed and validly-directed sort of discussion for us to be having right about now... But the trouble is that I feel so fundamentally different about what I think I want for my future than they think they do that it's just defeating and deflating to even begin the conversation. A former nurse and current engineer - practical and sensible and realistic as their jobs - talking to an English major - and general Poster Child-result of the blessings and woes of a liberal arts education - who says she doesn't want to teach or go into academia. Yeah cue those womps. Three of them.

Today's, in particular, was disheartening to the point of embarrassed tears. To the point of one whole sigh-filled afternoon, leaving behind its funk long after the actual conversation was over. To the point of that seemingly depressing opening sentence up^ there.

And today's, anyways, was different, too - advice against "all these documentaries I've been watching recently" and inappropriate allusions to the French Resistance movement during WWII all tossed in there like a bowl of discordant fruit salad. Like, with cabbage and mangoes trying to make it jive. All confusion about history and fruits aside, in essence, this is what they told me.

They told me to go with the flow. To just be a regularhumdrum person, with a regularhumdrum job. That things don't change. That I am such a small part of the equation, that power is so corrupting, that these social problems are inevitable. And pervasive. And so there. Just live your own life, resign yourself to mediocrity, and try not to get crushed by the forces out there, little one, cause going against the grain of society is a hard, hard thing. And please just get a stable job in a big corporation.

Yup, I am often bitter when I think of hypothetical Other Parents who support their children unconditionally, in anything and everything they are passionate about - especially when object of those passions seem so socially responsible and selflessly beneficial to the world and hopeful and good and objectively easy to root for. [Aside: Parenting, of all styles, must be so hard. It's terrifying. I think well-considered decisions to have children are some of the greatest acts of faith and hope we humans commit.]

But it must be a small sign of growing up that I didn't just shut down at that point in the conversation, cause I dunno - some short amount of time ago, I wouldn't have even stayed at the table for that to get finished. I mean what travesty, right? How could you be so unsupportive and doubtful of what I change I can effect in the world?! You two are the worst stomp stomp stomp etc. I am young and un-trodden upon by society, YOU JERKS, stop trying to nip my potential in the BUD stomp. Let me burn dat ephemeral flame of YOUTH, DANG IT. And why am I so afraid to mention the God aspect of all this to them? 

Thank goodness I didn't stomp on out of there like that. Cause the rest of this talk was indeed a healthy reminder of the fact that I am so undeniably a Romantic-Realist, and of my need for equal doses of both sides of that hyphen. That yeah - at least evidenced by the second half of that indecisive self-given identity-label, I am such a child of my parents.

They told me that it's important to be wary of the depressing, deflating effects of those social problems I feel so righteously angered and upset by. That anger - no matter how justified or righteous - is often counterproductive and always energy-inefficient. To remember the beautiful things. To be recharged by beauty and good, to maintain that balance within myself, cause frankly, the world is unbearable without that. It was a gentle, a revolutionary, reminder that I'm allowed to be personally happy in the midst of all this depressing stuff. That it actually helps, in a lot of subtle ways.

And though ultimately, we're still in clear disagreement about what we believe needs to be done - and possibly can be hoped to be done - about the sorry state of this world, and specifically, what I can do about it all (and more specifically...after that graduating business), they. are. right. Absolutely. My specific anger, at least at this particularly powerless point in my life and from this particularly influence-less place in society, burns furiously only against myself. If I don't keep this vague bitterness-against-all-the-ugly-stuff checked and specific and well-informed and most importantly, balanced with generous doses of Good and Beauty in the world, it will probably accomplish very little other than destroy my tiny life. Which, ultimately, is just accomplishing very little. I'm nothing to make a martyr out of. Not yet, anyways. I mean society's just getting finished educating me - and I still have a whole year to go. My time to give back is juuust peeping around the corner. Shy or something.

In more ways than this, so many, it is good to listen to my parents' [basically opposite-from-mine-] opinions and advice. If the fact that they've experienced me (in addition to their own lives, own societal problems, own political frustrations) through my terrible two's and awkward teenage years and all the jazz in between and really, to their fullest human knowledge and ability, want what they believe is the best for me isn't enough, then for the cool and reasoned answer that opposition is healthy in appropriate amounts. It critiques and challenges and sharpens and fosters a better-rounded growth.

Cause everything seemingly depressing, including mediocrity, is sort of a two-sided beast with its very own upside - just as anything seemingly good isn't ever completely, unconditionally Good. Simply put, the world is complicated, and the only control you have over its confusion is your reaction to it all. So I'm thinking, maybe I should alternate these documentary consumptions with Disney movies or something. Not that Disney movies necessarily deserve the label of capital-g Good, but frankly, neither do documentaries. And because, frankly, that's just the first thing that popped into my head and because, frankly, it's fine to not end on a warm, fuzzy note of enlightenment and conclusiveness. Sometimes it's just marking the progress of things, and that's that.

Today

is gorgeous in a way that makes me want to dress up, just for the pleasure of being outside in pretty clothes that match the pretty weather. And walk the cat. If only the cat would like that.

Break my own rules of "What Constitutes a Blogpost-Worthy Thing"; makes me want to write a whole, corny love warble of a blogpost dedicated to the complicated, perfect conditions that must have constructed this beauty of a day. And then erase it all cause it's not enough. Maybe even negative-enough.

Today! This apple of a day! This day worthy of a hundred thousand picnics!

un-hiatus!

When you're in need of a scream but not of attention or pity, a good place to get it is in your car - windows down, sunshiny summer morning, driving not-too-fast down a slight downhill curve of a not-too-busy road that you know really well. All the stuff after the hyphen is just additional and personal-choice kind of toppings, so take this advice with those toppingsy grains of salt. The windows down make you feel like you're in the midst of a greater nature than just the surroundings of your car interior, and the sunshiny summer morning will help to diffuse that scream into a smile conclusion. But I have to tell you; the sheepish-grin-because-you-feel-stupid-for-having-to-conduct-alone-screaming-time will feel better than the forced, teeth-baring, cheek-scrunching full-on kind you put on to try that reverse psychology (physiology?) thing on yourself. Probably because the first is more honest.

I have learned a lot of things - have grown a lot - through the time period of this blog's existence. It's been over a year, on three different continents (counting this North American one right now...four! if you count that silly Morocco stint), countless definitions of home, and even more precious, life-changing encounters with people and places than that countlessness.

I have learned - in the end, through practice - what this blog means to me; as opposed to my journal, as opposed to my [now-defunct; RIP] facebook photo albums, as opposed to other people's expectations and other people's travel blogs, too. Hello, place for the recording of daily strawberrys and unabashed unloadings of pictures and ah-hah moment compilations for the glad and the sad days. And the whooshing away of my own designs and careful plans.

I have lived a day-to-day intensity of huge joys and huge wonders and huge, bratty tragedies through a summerful of people from all over the world, in a place which my feeble descriptive skills only render flatly technicolor and uniformly unicorny. Corny. 

I have found, time and time again and actually, pretty much from the very beginning, that home is seriously freaking where the heart is. And I know that's seriously freaking cliched, but when you're trapped between a rock and a hard place looking for the right expression at the right moment, a lot of times, cliches will do just the trick to quench your language thirst; scratch that expression itch, whatever floats your boat. Like a cool bottle of Coca-Cola or Diet Mountain Dew or bananaooyoo, whatever your vice.

I have felt indignant and possessive in perhaps the most productive way I have ever been indignant and possessive - on my way to figuring out this whole hyphenated identity thing (bleh) but still raaather far from fixing the whole indignant-and-possessive character flaw thing going on here.

I have taken serious steps toward remedying things like this (and like this), cause I don't want to be a noob anymore. It's about a whole year late, this summer, finally learning to cook things from my momma, but the noob stage of my life is officially over. At least in the kitchen, anyways, and at least in my attitude about it. I won't take any of that damsel-in-distress crap ANY LONGER, SELF, and that's final. Cooking is not as big of an opponent as I used to make it seem with the size of my cowering and whimpering. Harrrrrrumph!

I have finally understood a bit of the love in my grandma's frugality, and held her hands - they tremble now, as in a continuous aftershock of her lifetime of labor, of love - in a way that felt differently warm from the expo hand-holding.

I have learned the beauty of the here and of the now, and the overriding importance of realizing that these here-and-now moments continue and expand. They consume the whole world and your whole life, if you'll just let them. I'm not insisting that I feel good all the time, in every great or cruddy place. Just that there is always beauty in your situation. No matter how bleak. Promise. (Escaping it! for example.)

I have thought a lot about spatial allocations of people in crowded places resulting in all kinds of awkward physical and emotional contact. Or lack thereof.

I have sewn things and grown things and moaned about Friday night things and thought it made me sound grown up. Pffffffffffffffff to the t. But then had other days, too, when I could feel a little better about the moan:grown-up-ness ratio.

I have celebrated a quarter-birthday, then a whole-birthday, then the birthday of this tiny baby of a thing compared to my twenty-two years. [Insert old-man laugh here.]

And I am learning to throw out the repetitive self-consciousness that masks deserving recognition (for...like, growing up, for example!) and have apparently grown up enough to be pretty embarrassed about some of these posts on this here blawg, too. Hurhurhur. And to recognize that the screaming-while-sitting-alone-in-my-car opening probably isn't the best introduction to a post all about how I Learned Life Stuff and am now Grown-up and Mature, Etc. over the course of a year abroad.

But is actually a pretty perfect one if the post is, rather, about the progress of growing up, with all its doubling backs and continued deficiencies and in-spite-of-all-that hopefulness.

Yeah. Closing the full-circle loop.