Lopsided Bubbles, Convoluted Metaphors

My more disgruntled high school friends and I would often talk about what we thought was the pitiful shortsightedness and intellectual isolation of our hometown. To our young minds, our mostly white, mostly rich, mostly conservative community was the pinnacle of a suburbubble: a boring, plebian, un-enlightened, narrow-minded outpost of a non-city that was much too small and much too unsophisticated for we aspiring young urbanites. (It is only a testament to our own shortsightedness that this hometown was a part of a metro area of nearly 2 million people.) So imagine my surprise when I get a bit of experience with places that by this maxim should be much more wise, enlightened, ethnic, and evolved, and find out these places area just as ordinary and disappointingly real as the suburbubble I hoped to escape from. My experience with these urbubbles (urban places that were still boring and narrow-minded, though in different ways) made me question my assumption that any kind of mindedness is dictated by place and collective characteristics. I wasn’t living in a limited sphere of experience and scope because of where I lived, or where I went to school, at least not entirely. It was a light bulb moment for me: I wasn’t living in a suburbubble, I was living in an ego-bubble. My bubble was shaped by my own limitations, opinions, personality traits, and perspective in life much more than it was shaped by any physical address I could ever have. (Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite a light bulb moment. Maybe a lucky striking of the flint, so obvious and caveman-like does this epiphany seem now.)

In another concept that escaped my youthful understanding, real bubbles are always exact spheres because the air inside them exerts force equally in all directions. My personal bubble, however, is not nearly so perfect. I generally only exert force in the directions that I care about. I spend much more time trying to understand and change, for example, my relationship situation than I do trying to understand and change, for example, the situation in Darfur. This lopsided nature of my sphere of care is not at all a good thing: I should try constantly to exert force equally in all directions, to change to size and scope of my bubble, to overcome my baser compulsions. In my pursuit to be a well-rounded person, I must learn that people I don’t physically know can be really real, that sorrow I don’t personally feel can be really sad, and that I can never blame the convoluted shape of my own tiny soap-sphere on any limitations but my own.

It is not in our daily conscience that what matters to us could so easily be so very different. While it is true that intimacy leads to empathy, it is also true that where our intimacy leads our empathy could be a very misguided place. With the advent of the common complaint “FML,” we have only reinforced such unworthy empathy. As much as I hated to hear my mother tell me to get some when I was young and disproportionately tortured, perspective is important. Just because someone close to me dies does not make that death sadder than the death of someone I didn’t even know existed. A tragedy is not made more or less by how it affects me an individual. For example, I recently spilled on my computer and had to buy a new one. Five million people were recently (in the last ten years) killed in the Congo. There is no question as to which event is more objectively sad. There is also no question, awful as this fact may be, which event affected me more personally. We shouldn’t feel every tragedy so deeply that it cripples us, but we should feel them. I must try, as an evolved, intelligent, and empathic human being, to exert more force in the direction of events that are objectively and not just personally sad.

In relation to all the objectively sad things in the world, nothing in my exceptionally blessed life would be worthy of sympathy (and really? It’s not). I have absolutely no reason to say FML, even though sometimes I may feel like I do. And in terms of feeling, in regards to anything as uncontrollable and irrational as human emotion, whatever one feels has value. If a tragedy is more relative to you, of course you will feel more sad about it than you would about one that is not. But rationally, thoughtfully, one must strive to consider events without the limitations of one’s bubble, physical or otherwise. Though our feeling may not be, our action, our force, and our decision (who to support, who to help, who to attack) must be dictated by objective consideration more than personal intimacy and feeling. I don’t need to pop my bubble, but I do need to try to push its rainbow-changing surface into a more spherical shape and its position into a place of greater perspective.

It's Really Something, To Know Nothing About Everything

When I was very young, people told me that when I was eighteen I would think I knew everything about everything, but I would really not know anything about anything. As a young child in league with adults against those crazy teenagers, I always thought, “I’m not like other people. I won’t be like that.” I think this experience is pretty universal. Now that I am that hallowed or horrible age, people still tell me suspiciously frequently that I don’t know anything about anything.

Of course I sound very young in saying this, but: I know I don’t know anything about anything. I know I am young and stupid and foolish and ignorant and arrogant and every other awful-yet-true adjective that can be used to describe young people. I feel that, every day. Why else would I make such poor decisions, do such silly things, and care so much about things that even I can see do not really matter? I use my youth as a crutch; what else can I lean on to prove that my dramatic nature, my critical tendencies, or my difficulty with authority are not deep character flaws but things I will grow out of, like baby teeth or loving Seventeen? If my parents, my relatives, and my teachers had not indoctrinated me with the notion, I would still be aware of just how little I really understand. I don’t claim to know or understand everything, or even much about anything. The only thing I ever claim to come close to understanding is the depth of my own ignorance: I understand that it is infinite, and then some.

I don’t know the capital-T truth about everything, and I may not know it about anything. No one knows everything about everything, the be-all-end-all Truth that quiets all dissenters and squashes all inquisitive young people. Each of us is limited by who we are, as people, as individuals, as Americans, as teenagers, as adults. Our influences, our society, and, yes, our youth all separate us from the capital-T Truth about life and love and existence, and, really, anything. I agree that a truth about any subject as I understand it may be less well-informed, less experienced, or less sophisticated than an older person’s take on the same subject. Mine may be farther from the Truth as it is without human limitations. But as no one can ever consider Truth completely without being held back by his or her own humanness, my truth is still a truth, valid and worthy of consideration like any other. Not the Truth, yes, but a truth nonetheless.

It is my default setting as a person, especially as a young person, to consider the world as it relates to me. I am very tempted to make witty-yet-shallow, true-yet-hurtful comments about anything and everything. As John Green said of a poor review a teen gave of his new book after reading ten pages, “When you are young, you want to make critical judgments on things, and you want to do it quickly.” I do this often, of course. I am very tempted to group things – books, people, concepts, age groups – into Good and Bad, or Smart and Stupid, or True and Not. But, as John Green went on to say, “Reading is not about deciding what is good and what is bad. That’s not even the job of the reader.” I, in my infinite youth, understand this, and I try very hard not to comment until I have thought about a subject at length, devoted much time to it, or read the whole book. Even then, I must remind myself that I can never claim to know what is True or Not. That is not my job as a person. My job as a person is to extend and adjust my view of the world so that it is close to the capital-T Truth as possible, to shake off the limitations of my youth and my humanness, to not need any crutch to lean on. I also need to know that I can never fully accomplish this, and know that others’ truths are just as deep and important and legitimate, if not more so, than my own.

Just like anything with growing up, it is a process, a long and hard journey that never really ends. A journey that includes at least one self-serving rant, at least one snarky/annoying anonymous comment, at least a million Good and Bad good and bad judgments. As much as I would love to be the strong, sure woman people seem to think I am in informing me I know nothing about anything, the closest Truth I have is that I am absolutely, infinitely, still a little girl.

Whatever, Forever After: An Early Review of Megan McCafferty's "Perfect Fifths"

We interrupt our "regularly" scheduled blogging to post a review of Megan McCafferty's new book "Perfect Fifths", in bookstores everywhere April 14.

The central relationship in Megan McCafferty’s New York Times-bestselling Jess Darling series has always been a bit like a crash. The forces that draw our snarky heroine Jess Darling and her former “poet-addict-manwhore” turned quasi-Buddhist turned Ivy leaguer love Marcus Flutie are strong at worst and jet-propelled at best. In the tantalizing final volume of the smart and savvy series that boast wide age appeal, the two literally crash into each other in the middle of an airport three years after Jess has turned down Marcus’ proposal of marriage.

If readers are wondering whether it’s over for Jessica and Marcus, here is a little of what Marcus has to say about their love in Perfect Fifths: “It is an alchemical attraction that transcends all reason, rationality, and – in three years since she spurned him – reality.”

Finally hearing from the inimitable Marcus Flutie is just one of the new tricks McCafferty has pulled out for readers, though it may be the most important. Reading from his perspective, all the questions I had about the pair from reading the diary-style entries written almost exclusively by Jess in the previous novels are answered. Is Marcus really as deep and important as Jess thinks he is? Does he love her as much as she loves him? Marcus finally gets more than a letter and some poetry to give us a feel for who he is without Jess as an incurably rose-colored lens.

The most delightful parts of the new book are the various “shticks” McCafferty employs to make this one different. It’s told in third person this time, and though I had feared it would dilute Jessica’s delightful wit and observation, the new point of view actually makes me more forgiving of Jess and keeps her from being too whiny, as her diaries seemed at times. The two much-discussed sections of the book that are very different from any books are the 80-plus pages of pure dialogue and the chapter of conversation written in haiku. When Ms. McCafferty was talking about the dialogue portion at the Tucson Festival of Books, my creative writing professor was in the audience, slowly shaking her head. She didn’t need to worry: this section is a pithy delight, giving the often tongue-tied Marcus and the sometimes babbling Jessica a balance we haven’t seen in the other books. The awkwardness of the conversation feels so authentic, I felt myself cringing even as I was smiling at the chemistry the two characters have even on the page. As McCafferty said in her talk at the Festival of Books, it is the things that are not said between the two, the things they almost say, that is most tantalizing and most telling.

Long-time readers will already know the importance of haiku in the series, and its importance in the final serial of this love is sweet and fitting. It’s often hard to write authentic flirting, and here the author does it within syllabic confines. The section has received much attention and anticipation, and rightly so: it is fun and funny, whip-smart and Smarties-sweet, a lovely device in a story and a love propelled in the most uncommon ways. Some of the other fun new introductions are Jess’ protégé Sunny Dae, her “Korean reincarnation and alter-ego”; an older version of the always charming Marin (Jessica’s niece); and an effective and not all overbearing summary of what everyone’s been up to since we last saw them. A “Hey There Delilah”-like hit song written about Marcus and Jessica by high-school friend, Cornell grad, and now emo-rocker Len Levy is a another treat for readers, as is the Internet backlash about the song lead by frenemy Manda Powers, whose hilarious and apropos screen name is “couchsurfeminist.” Perfect Fifths is filled with delightful morsels of foreshadowed future for readers of McCafferty’s previous novels, but even the Notso Darling Newbie can find much to enjoy.

My only criticism is that there’s not much new going on here – all of the pivotal, important moments rely heavily on what has happened in previous books. For example: if you knew Jess when she was in high school, you know why it’s so important that it’s not just karaoke but Barryoke (Barry Manilow karaoke) featured in the climactic scene. As a devotee, I loved how well everything fit together, but these books have been so unfailingly realistic, it’s a bit odd to ask readers to rely on so many coincidences now. Readers have also criticized Jess for turning into a brat in her old age, but it’s hardly a fair criticism to fault someone for getting older. I believe and like Jess as she is here at 26, and what is new about the book more than makes up for how little there is of it.

A friend told me she threw Fourth Comings across the room when she finished it, but I don’t think that will be her reaction this time: McCafferty has crafted a kinetic, frenetic, and heartfeltly hopeful ending for the series so many have loved. Jessica Darling has grown up and changed, just like a real person, and like a real friend, I’ll miss her. This is a satisfying and fitting final chapter in Jessica’s youth, a classically witty and refreshingly honest portrayal of youth and life that is both savvy and sappy in the best possible ways. It’s a high Five for McCafferty: this ending is pitch-perfect for Jessica and Marcus, even when it’s slightly off key.

http://www.meganmccafferty.com/

A Blabbermouth's Defense

I like to talk. About everything. About current events, past events, books, movies, anything. But I especially like to talk about people. I like to talk to people about themselves, about me, and even about other people. Though I would hardly say that I spread destructive slander (or in this case libel), I like to gossip. And I’m not going to apologize for it. In fact, I have a well-rounded case for talking about people who aren’t in the conversation in which I will prove that talking about people who are not present is not victimization, but an act of mercy.

Firstly, it is a foolish man who thinks it is possible that no one will talk about him ‘behind his back’, and an even more foolish man to want that. I love finding out that people have talked about me when I’m not around, because it means I exist to people other than myself, that I have made an influence on those around me, and that they remembered something I said or did well enough to talk about it later. I used to love finding out that the teachers in the English department had talked about an essay I’d written; I was flattered and delighted that I had made enough of an impression that they would discuss me among colleagues (this happened like, uh, twice). If I am lucky enough to hear what people say about me when I’m not around, I get a rare glance at how people view me. Sure, I know how I want to project myself, but I hardly ever get the chance to see if the signals I send out (so to speak) are the same signals that people pick up. Even if they say less than flattering things about me, if someone is brave enough to tell me about it, I can alter how I act or treat other people so that the next time people talk about me when I’m not around, it will be something I would be glad to hear.

When I talk about someone who is not in the immediate vicinity, I am consciously and absolutely paying him or her a compliment: something you did or said made me think enough to bring it up in conversation. It is much better that people talk about you than NOT talk about you, because that means you’re not making anyone think or laugh or remember. No mature person could possibly think they exist for others only when in direct encounters, or even think to hope for that kind of existence. We are always in existence for everyone we meet, whether close or far away, for each of us has our own unique imagining of every person we meet. If my imagining of a person is vivid enough that it demands attention even when the real person is gone, it is credit to the real person. All I ever hope to gain in talking to others about my imagining of someone is that I will be able to understand them better, to get the image I receive become that much closer to what they as a person really are, or at least what they project to the world.
If someone tries to hide the truth or keep a secret, it says she is conceited and pretentious. It is an act of subtle arrogance to think that you know what is best for a person, to think that you know that it will be better that they not see the truth of whatever silly secret you’re trying to hide. In other words, who are you to decide who hears the truth and who doesn’t? Who are you to decide what is best for others? If you do something you’re ashamed for other people to know, you probably shouldn’t have done it. If you are in some relationship that you don’t want other people to know about, you might need to evaluate just how good that relationship is. Secrets are exercises in absurdity and futility because they are always a pathetic means of drawing attention to an event or situation that deserves no notice, and would have gotten none if it has not been made into an all-important ‘secret’.

Secrets and gossip are ways that people try to elevate themselves over the people around them, and such lofty ambitions should be deflated accordingly. If I talk about something enough, it ceases to be so interesting. If I freely acknowledge and discuss a truth, rather than keeping it a secret, it does not hold such false importance. To hide or obscure the truth is worse than a lie, because it serves only to make the secret-keeper feel more important and garner ill-deserved attention. So when I talk about you when you’re not around, it’s a gift. When I tell others about something you did, it’s a favor. And when I invite you to do the same for me, it’s a challenge.


As always, readers, I invite your feedback and I would love to be proven wrong.

One Man's Dungeon is Another Man's Dragon

Apologies for the extended hiatus. I flatter myself to think you missed reading my musings, lovely readers, and that you will start reading again.

At a common area here on campus there is a group that meets every day, and they are there for several hours at a time. They seem to have a strong sense of friendship and community, they welcome new members into their group, they eat together, they study together. From what I’ve gleaned while observing them as a sociological phenomenon, they look like a group of guys and girls that anyone would like to be a part of. That is, of course, excepting what it is that they do for those several hours: this subject field group in my study of people-who-don’t-know-I’m-watching-them is none other than the Fantasy Card-Game and Role-Play Club.
I’m sure that’s not their official name, and I’m sure that they all stopped caring if I watched them around the seventh grade. But as another part of my human behavioral study, I have also watched people watch this group, and I am fascinated by their reactions. Most people just smile and chuckle when they realize that there is indeed still a market for Pokémon card binders, or remark without viciousness, “I remember when those were, like, the coolest thing.” This is a perfectly natural and unjudgemental reaction; it’s about what I did the first time I noticed that the Dungeon and Dragons faction of society had relocated their fanastical battles from someone’s basement to the actual real world.
Then there is another group entirely – the group that would never deign to play an imaginative card game, or dress up as a wizard even once, or indulge the fantasy of a world where magic exists. When these people see the tables of knights battling orcs or supernatural beasts with special powers simulated on two-by-three cardboard, it’s not a smile and a chuckle that come to their faces. It’s a condemning snicker, a scoff, an “Omigawd, what a bunch of freaks” that leaves their lips. These reactions are thankfully infrequent, and while I realize I am overly harsh in my condemnation of these magicless nay-sayers, I also get overly upset with anyone who condemns a passion on a glance. Maybe these haters’ lives are so magical that they don’t understand the need for alternate realities. But I doubt it.
My real objection to those who laugh at a group of obviously intelligent people who display a sense of community and care is this: Why is uncool to have passions? Sure, I’m not so skilled at Dungeons and Dragons, and I wasn’t even cool enough for Pokemon when they were the coolest thing. But I appreciate anyone who is interested in anything. The time and effort it must take to learn all those rules, all those details of the elaborate other-worlds inhabited in those games, the community that is created when the players come together to ‘battle’, and even the open display of such a fringe passion, is commendable. We all have our own alternative realities, and it seems to me that the one of wizards and dragons that the card-players seem to favor is much better than the altered reality the rest of campus seems to like to escape to (that is to say, the State of Intoxication).
I have probably grossly misreferenced the games these people love so much, and I have probably misjudged both this group and those who condemn them. But from where I sit, watching them without having them watch me, to care deeply is to take a risk. To display one’s passions is to risk being watched, being lauded, or being condemned. And these are risks we should all be willing to take to make a few friends, have a little fun, or make a tiny piece of our fantasy worlds become real.

The Fruit of the Matter

In the many, many discussion I have had with fellow adolescents about what the heck we are going to do with our lives, I’ve noticed a few trends. The first of these is that none of us really has any clue. The second, the even more universal and poignant commonality to all of our young, idealistic fledgling life plans, is simply this: we all just want to matter. As usual, this has inspired some questions for me: What is behind our compulsion to matter? Do adults who have already made their contributions to society feel like they matter, or is this desire (like so many that college students have) one that we grow out of?

There are, of course, innumerable things that could drive a person to want to make a difference. It could be a natural altruism and desire to help people, if you believe human nature is like that, or it could be something that one’s religion stipulates. But besides those obvious answers, why do we (meaning, I) try so hard to make a lasting impact on the people around us, and the world at large?

My guess is this: we need to exist to people other than ourselves. Even though we might believe that humans are benevolent creatures, we are also afraid we aren’t, and that life really is “poor, nasty, bruteish, short.” During our lives on earth we are drawn to careers that have a deep and meaningful impact on a great number of people. In criticism to my scathing indictment of children who want to be famous, a fellow young friend wrote, “The struggle to be famous and the struggle to be remembered are quite possible one of the greatest struggles of our time. If our names are not carried on past our deaths, our existence on this Earth is forgotten and quite possibly fruitless.” And I have to agree with this, at this point in my life. I want to have a meaningful impact on a great number of people, and I’d like to be well known. At my age, I do judge my potential future life by how many people I have touched and changed. I am afraid of being lost and forgotten in the apathetic anonymity that life looks like from here. I want to choose my career and my life path so that I am known and remembered, because that is the only way that I can qualify my life right now.

I sometimes hope that this desire to make a heartfelt difference in other people’s lives is a sign that we know that there is more to life than money (which is what all young idealists like myself want to believe). However, as deeply as we want to make a difference, there are precious few who are signing up to become Mother Therese, or even go into low-paying but “rewarding” (in respect to my argument) careers, like teaching. College students are misguided to tie their financial solvency in with their impact on others. I have to believe that every older person feels like they make a lasting difference, or they have another way to feel that their life isn’t fruitless.

When I ask my peers who matter most them, when I ask myself who matters most to me, the answer is far humbler than our aspirations. The most common answer: our parents. My parents have certainly taught me the most and touched me the most deeply, and I read that “mom” is the most commonly given answer when kids are asked who their heroes are. So why is it that any young girl who says she wants most to be a mother met with such deep scorn? And I have virtually never heard a young guy list “be a father” as something they want to accomplish by the time they’re thirty. If all we want is to make lasting difference on people that will carry our names on after our deaths, families are absolutely the best way. We have tricked ourselves into believing that our jobs must be dramatic and sweeping and glamorous or they are worth nothing, and that dreams beyond the workplace are worth nothing at all. What young people fail to realize is that one’s job doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) be the measure of one’s life.

As such, I must conclude that we will grow out of clamoring so desperately for a way to feel like we matter. I will someday cease to care that I’m not a World Famous Life Changer, because I will have other things that satiate my need to connect and rescue me from the vast unknown. That’s my answer to the argument: we shouldn’t care if our names are carried on after our deaths. We can matter for people, exist for people other than ourselves, without the mass fanfare and fan base that we adolescents so deeply desire. We just need to change our definition of what it means to matter, and realize that the fruit of life is much more subtle and sweet than any of us could have guessed.

I think there’s a name for this, what is it called? Oh, yes. Maturity. And I, for one, have a long way to go.

Epiphanies(?) on Decisions(!)

Almost a year ago from right now, I was in the middle of making what I considered at the time to be the Biggest Decision of My Life. I thought that I was going to decide the fate of the rest of the rest of my life by choosing where I went to college, what I majored in, and other exceptionally inconsequential decisions. Adolescent Society (or at least, my high school guidance counselor) had told me that I had to know who I was, what I wanted to do, where I wanted to live, and who I wanted to become, all as a an oh-so-worldly-and-knowledgeable senior in high school. Now that I have made said decisions and am living the life I dreamed of (and dreaded) lo those many months ago, I have learned one or two things about right and wrong decisions. I will be the first to admit that none of them have gotten me any closer to being a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher or a small-time con artist or whatever it was, in my hubris and my naivety, I decided I was going to be.

One of the first non-sequitors I realized about this Life Altering Decision I supposedly made is that nothing is as life-altering as they tell you it will be. From the way college brochures and teen magazines tell it, mass fanfare will accompany a correct decision and mass destruction will follow an ‘incorrect’ one. I believed them, of course, as much agony ensued on choosing right. But now that I have made the decisions, and am living with them, it’s certainly not so clear-cut. Of course college is fun, but it’s hardly the striped-scarfed, colored-leafed Tree of Knowledge OR the party-a-night drunken tomfoolery the movies portray (and that I believed. Was high school like the movies? No. Did that stop me from believing what the movies had to say about college? Well.). I think I’ve made the right decision, I’m certainly learning and having fun, but really the only moment that’s ‘taken my breath away’, as the saying goes, is when I tripped and fell on the stairs outside my dorm. Maybe I’m anomaly and other people do feel an immediate sense of The Right Decision. But as wrong as I was in believing it, it is wrong for society (that is, the SAT and college guides and teen magazines and high schools and the entire industry that has sprung up around The Decision) to make that Decision into anything more than it is. Here is what it is: not much. A choice of snow over sun, mostly. Maybe of prestige over price, or of urban over suburb. But it is decidedly NOT a choice of success over failure, no matter where you end up. (Did I believe the people who told me this, that one year ago? Ahem.)

As for the career choice – does anyone get to say, “I want to be that” and automatically be it? It is a curious thing to ask a five-year-old what they want to be when they grow up (why do we do this?), but an even curioser thing to ask an eighteen-year-old. What does either know of what his chosen profession is, or what is will take to get into that profession? Countless children of both ages have said they want to be doctor – but that does not make them one. Toys and make-believe generate their concept of what a doctor is: play doctor kits or television hospital dramas. Such a choice may be underscored by a love of science, or a desire to help sick people, but there are many people who are not doctors with that. A major means little to nothing about what you will become, in my (admittedly limited) experience. Why is there such a pressure to choose what work we will do, precisely? I am by no means advocating not having a job; I am merely pointing out that what one wants to be is hardly ever what one actually becomes. It is not wrong or undignified to do work that isn’t exactly what you said you wanted to be when you picked your major, and I might even say it is necessary and sometimes inevitable. I want as much as anyone to ‘turn out okay’, but just when does one ‘turn out’? I will strive to become what I thought I wanted to be, what I dreamed of being, but I might learn that it isn’t right for me or just isn’t possible. It is no fault of mine to have a job that is different form what I thought I wanted to do when I was a senior in high school, making the Decision of a Lifetime, and I am beginning to learn that it just may be a virtue.

While I was foolish for being taken in by the shiny, attractive claims that my Life was in my oh-so-capable hands when I picked where to go to college and what to major in, the industry surrounding mine and my peers’ belief in those erroneous epithets is really who’s at fault. High schools seniors are already arrogant and self-righteous – no one needs to be giving them more power, more choice, or more control than they already have, be it authentic or not. Adolescents deserve to be told what is real and true about life, not coddled and cajoled by advertisers or schools or high school guidance counselors trying to curry money or favors or whatever abstract thing it might be that an eighteen-year-old might have to give. So here is what it is, advice to my year-ago self that I certainly wouldn’t have believed: Life is not so dramatic as a movie, and neither is college. Saying you want to be something does not make you any closer to actually being it. Not becoming what you said you wanted to be isn’t a vast tragedy, it’s just life. I can only hope that, a year from now, I will have grown and learned enough to look back on my current self with as much benevolent head-shaking, and maybe this time, I’ll be able to listen to advice.

Being Seen: Are You What You Try To Be?

When I get a new haircut, it is one of the only times I am consciously thinking about how I come across to other people. For example, while I might hope that my choppy bob comes off as “young sophisticate”, I am usually just praying that it doesn’t come off as “mental patient” or worse, “shabby Victoria Beckham imitation.” As much as I’d like to deny it, I place as much hairstyle-choosing faith in those who will see my hair as I do in my own power to choose. And though I am at least aware that I’m doing it, I am not alone in the time-and-money consuming pursuit of a certain and specific persona.
Everything a person appears to be is at least to some degree the result a contrived and conscious effort. Like, if I was really a young sophisticate, would I be so concerned with my haircut broadcasting it to the world? In every choice one makes (at least in their young, keeping-up-appearances years), one is cultivating a brand, a symbol, a projection of oneself. If a girl hopes others will think her an aspiring pop star, she will probably wear faux-distressed jeans, a bedazzled tank top, and Rainbow flip-flops, if that’s what she thinks music darlings favor. She’d probably talk about her recent trip to LA long after it was recent, and her screen-name might be “Luvz2SingXO”. Just as an author would develop a character so that the reader would believe and maybe like her, we each cultivate ourselves – how are character appears – for our audience – society. As anti-self as this may sound, it is inevitable and undeniable, for at least in younger years, that how others view us is how we validate ourselves. Through our clothing, our speech, our screennames and Facebooks and preferred hangouts, we are creating an image, a reflection, a brand of ourselves that we are just hoping the rest of society believes. If someone appears to be fashion-forward and worldly, it’s probably because they wear expensive-looking dark fabrics in flowing skirts and pepper their daily language with delicious morsels from foreign tongues, be it correct or not. We are hardly at fault for wanting to portray ourselves in certain ways, but just like the author I mentioned above, we have little to no idea of just how our efforts to appear actually come across. Our potential Mariah may think she looks like the next Grammy’s darling, while everyone around her thinks she’s silly to wear a tank top in November and thinks she should stop bleaching her natural brown hair. The Francophilic Fashionista’s trans-Atlantic banter may come across as offensive and her many skirts may make her look like a bag lady. Do we ever know when our attempts at creative costumery fails? I can think of any number of people I’ve seem who could not possibly see themselves how I see them (as an example: I think all can agree that Spandex does not come across as confidence after a major weight gain). And what do we do, if we find out that people are thinking that our attempts at looking like a young sophisticate make us look like a Jersey sale rack? We can not care, of course. But just as everyone, consciously or not, tries to control how people views him, everyone lives in a society and at least to some degree has to cultivate their appearance in order to be accepted. Maybe there are people who don’t think about this phenomenon, or who just look great without trying, but in perfect keeping with my point, the people around then probably think they look like slobs, or sluts, or are trying too hard. We can wait until we’re say, thirty, and such things don’t matter anymore. Or we can go on trying to convince other people – and ourselves – that we just don’t care, to hell with what people think of us, it doesn’t matter anyway. And just to make sure everyone knows we don’t care what they think, we might wear a lot of black, buy a MacBook, get a young-sophisticate’s piecey bob, and start a blog.

Voting from Passion and Youth

As I am still twelve days shy of the legal voting age, I have watched this election as more of an outsider than most can: I am an American who understands the governmental process, and my future is certainly invested in the outcome of today’s election, but I can watch it with a strange kind of detachment as I won’t be casting a ballot. I've been observing the passionate, impressionable eighteen-to-twenty-four voting demographic as they cast their vote to determine the next President of this fine country.
Since the voting age was moved from 21 to 18, the new voters have yet to make much of an impact on an election, but this time, they could be a decisive part of the voting population. Their set of key principles is different from an older adult’s, their responsibilities are different, and their opinions on many key topics vary greatly from an older voter’s. From what I have observed, the tide of popular opinion has had the greatest affect on the red-vs-blue decision, with shows like Saturday Night Live and promotions from stores like Urban Outfitters making a greater impression than scholarly articles and candidate’s web sites. Granted, there are those students who are passionate as well as well researched, and they also play a large role in persuading those young voters who are less interested. The issues that matter most to young people – like the legal drinking age – are so drastically different than what matters most to a voter only a few years older – property taxes, or healthcare. Though I appreciate that the young people have a chance to be heard, it scares me that people who have yet to own a house, or care for a dog, or do their own taxes are making decisions that could change the nature of this country. I am not saying all young people are ignorant or ill-informed, but I am venturing that there are some questions they are unqualified to answer: one will undeniably better understand property taxes and how best to vote on them after they have actually paid them. One will better understand healthcare and how best to organize it once one has been seriously sick. In some states, one must be over 18 to own a gun, so how could someone younger than this really understand the micro-implications of owning a gun? I have heard far too many discussions between young voters saying they are just going to guess what is best when voting for propositions and the less-glossy categories on the ballot. Is guessing any way to make an important, informed decision? I am hardly advocating the white-landowning-male restrictions of the past, but I deeply hope I am wrong in my appraisal of how much research and time the young voters have devoted to this momentous decision. The right to vote makes everyone into an expert, and as unpopular as it may make me to say it, the under-twenty-one age group is hardly expert on mush at all. It strikes me as illogical that the drinking age (formerly 19 in most states) and the voting age (formerly 21) have switched in the last 30 years, because frankly, most people between those ages care more about the former than the latter.
Another popular heated debate for young people is the Electoral College: the usual logic is that whoever gets the most votes from the most people should win. While political pundits and political science professors alike have discussed this countless times, I also argue with this rationale. Some governmental historians have argued that the Framers of the Constitution created the Electoral College because they didn’t trust the masses to make the right choice for president, and sometimes, I don’t either. Even in times not wracked by economic and political turmoil, Americans hardly even seem to like each other, let alone trust each other with the most important decision many of them will ever get to make. Though the Electoral College is hardly a stopping point for stupidity and un-trustworthy voting, in whatever its many forms, I admire the Framers’ foresight. Especially in this presidential election, the candidate one chooses is more a reflection of one’s own hopes and dreams than an accurate reflection of who each candidate is as a person, what he or she is capable of, and who is best qualified to lead this nation. Just like youth and passion, hopes and dreams are shaky foundations to lay a vote -- and a presidency -- on. I just hope most that when people vote, whatever their age, they are thinking first of red-white-and-blue and not merely red-versus-blue.

Here's the Why:

It feels like a crazy kind of hubris to think that anyone (other than, like, my mom) would care what I think. As a young person, I am mostly thought of by the rest of the world as a depressing statistic, a harbinger for the scary future of the country, or at least something that can't be understood. So as a girl who is trying to be aware of the world and thinking about what it means, I think there are a few adults who might like to know "what the young people are thinking about". That's what I want to write about: what strikes me uniquely about pop culture, politics, Pop-tarts -- anything. It's not that I want to say something; it's that I've got something to say. There's a quote that says "So many adults is that they forget what it's like to be a kid." So here's a piece of that: what it's like to be this kid.