Reviving Ophelia

It has been a while since I’ve last written, for a number of reasons. It’s been a time of change, and a time of returning to solidity in myself and giving myself permission to be alone and to not feel guilty for wanting to be the subject of my own life rather than an object in others’. That’s something strange to wrap your head around. Realizing that you see yourself as playing roles in someone else’s movie, or always putting others comfort and happiness first. I want to be the star in the movie of my life.

Lately there’s been a lot of things going on that I don’t really understand. I was talking with a friend yesterday, and phone sex for one- I don’t understand that, or the game of cricket perhaps- not a hope in figuring out that one, and ultimately one of the biggest and most cliched puzzles- relationships. I’ve been watching myself and my friends lately in our attempts to make sense of our relationships and where we fit in the world. A lot of these conflicts seem to have arisen from the battle that seems relatively engendered in the cultural construct of being an adult female; the struggle between the heavily weighted goal of pleasing others, versus what feels necessary for our own autonomous happiness. The battle occurs when the two fail to overlap or match, and it’s no wonder- they are not a mirrored pair. Serving one of these goals means shirking the other and vice versa.

I know for myself and my loved ones- our relationships are extremely important to us, and I worry at times, perhaps too important. I know that all humans essentially want to be loved and have their needs met, however what becomes risky and dangerous is how we’ll find ourselves defining who we are by others’ reflection of us, and by how pleasing we are, and how much love we receive and from who. It’s a scary realization to find yourself measuring your own success or inherent value by how people respond to you- and realizing that the parts of yourself that people don’t respond fondly to, just get squelched and hidden- even though they are all part of what makes you a whole, multi-dimensional person. And what kind of impact does that mean then if you’re scraping to have your needs met, and at the same time swallowing some of those needs and pretending as though they don’t exist? It’s no surprise then to become starved for validation and approval. It’s like we beg each other “Please let it be ok for me to be who I am, and please show me that I deserve love by loving me.” It’s a huge burden to put on anyone and a terrifying way to live life. I’m trying to understand how to shift that value to being self-defined, however I have yet to discover how that is done successfully.

I’ve been reading the Twilight series of books aimed at teen girls, written by Stephenie Meyer, as they’ve become a huge cultural phenomenon. I’m very concerned with the notion violence and love being inextricably linked that she sells along with the warped, flat image of what a quality female looks like. Knowing that on a cognitive level, reading fiction molds our brains and impacts our empathy- changing us on some level with every book read, this flares a great deal of distaste in me. It’s clear that many people feel strongly that books, media, TV, movies, and so forth don’t really impact us because we have the sense to know they aren’t real. However, the science tells us that these things do have their influence, and perhaps the impact comes in covert ways that are not as obvious to us as we hungrily consume more and insist we can handle it.

This is something I’m interested in not just on a personal level, though it certainly is something that is pertinent to my immediate well-being and life. My passion for psychology is largely just passion for understanding how people (and myself of course) really work, and understanding why and how. My goals have always been to seek the truest sense of happiness I can find, one that is as genuine and honest as possible, so where better to start in figuring out who I am on a most sincere, unfettered level.

Signs of Spring

This weekend rang in true spring for me, and the weather today was actually warm, with daylight lasting from early morning (pre-6:30 am when I dragged myself to my car to head to work), and is still out at about ten to 8. Impressive! It’s like it just happened out of nowhere, too, though I know I’ve waited too long for this to not be a surprise.

Today was a day of seeing different worlds in a couple very familiar places. First off, I handed in my final paper for the semester with a heavy sigh of relief as that weight was lifted from my shoulders. Our professor had extended them until today, and instructed us to drop them off at the department office. I’d never been up to that level of the Fir building, which of course sounds pretty stupid for someone who’s gone to this school for way longer than normal, or let’s just say “on and off over the last few years.” Ahem. Anyway, alternate universe. When I returned down from the 4th floor, I didn’t stop on the 2nd like I usually would and kept going to the 1st floor. BLAMM-O. The much spoken-of music department. Classrooms with people playing huge brass instruments that I can’t remember the names of. Giant battered lockers. The token humming lights overhead that flatter no one.

I’m not doing anything any justice in my descriptions, but how foreign to discover something new in an every day place.

On the same theme, I’ve discovered Wall St in East Van here along the waterfront on my edge of things, and somehow this whack of decent pricey-looking houses line this street, and it’s quaint and pretty, smells like ocean. The view is beautiful, though obstructed by some trains and other industrial crap, but it is definitely a sliver of awesome and a new walking route to take. I was absolutely gleeful at the realization that some of the cherry blossoms (of the Yoshino variety, I think) are already out and smelling sweet.

I also stumbled upon a tiny patch of grass with a bench overlooking the water. The sign said “Meditation Park” and I think I’ll be paying some visits there very soon.

Why blog?

I was thinking yesterday about why people have grown this urgent need to create blogs and put them out there for the world to see. I started thinking about what life must have been like before anyone could keep an online diary of sorts where the personal was nowhere near as public as it is these days (god, this makes me sound young- to wonder what it was like pre-internet, and not immediately have this in my recollection. yipes!).

I can relate to the idea of documenting, as people have kept traditional journals and records since the dawn of time, but this vulnerable, public version seems a bit foreign. Voyeuristic, maybe? Egotistical as well, perhaps? To both produce and consume the inner-most thoughts and tidbits of someone, sometimes a complete strangers’ every day… And to consider those bits and pieces of someone fairly random as something of great value to our daily lives.

Why do we want to know? Is it really an ego thing- are we just hoping to see ourselves reflected in the human condition of others as spat back out at us from people in other corners of the world, writing about similar things, and sharing similar experiences along with their different ones? Or are we looking for those differences to better understand each other and discover something new?

There’s this running theme in all the things I’m looking at in school, and of course life as well right now- and it’s the social aspect of humanness, and how social intelligence is extremely valuable in our culture and 21st century world. And it’s strange to see that as we try to connect with each other more and more in this progression, there’s a bizarre detachment that occurs when we put a computer screen, cellphone, blackberry, ipod, etc, between us, and literal face-time contact becomes nearly obsolete altogether.

As newspapers fold , and we find ourselves reading the daily news of peoples individual lives and experience, what does this mean for culture in the long run, I wonder.

And as for me? Why have I started this thing up? Well, I’ll be honest. I like hearing myself talk as much as the next person, and I don’t want to miss out on an experience of creation and connection either. It’s pretty normal to not want to be alone in your experiences, I think. But also it’s nice to have a sparkly clean screen full of the nice parts of your life highlighted and recorded (complete with photos!) and probably glorified a bit to hold on to while you’re around, and maybe to leave after you’ve left.

Then again, I don’t want to take myself too seriously, and I doubt that everything I may stick out here will be of significant value to anyone aside from my own little set of whims, but right now those whims are a good enough reason for me.