“You definitely have talent as a writer…”

What does that mean?  Writing isn’t an adventure for the faint of heart, it demands discipline, courage, fortitude, ingenuity and the commitment to truth.  I’m more often a discouraged and undisciplined young woman.  I have grand dreams but dreams alone go nowhere.

Such brilliant characters: Jo March and Elizabeth Bennet.  And such brilliant writers: Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen.  How did they do it?  How did they pour the truth of their own lives into their novels?  Each story rings with the faint hues of reality.  Knowing some about the authoresses’ real lives makes it evident that they used their own experiences, situations, acquaintances and revelations to write.  They formed fantasy but it was fantasy molded with actual traits and ideas, molded with the world.

I don’t need to write the next great novel (though I admit it would be nice).  What I want to write probably wouldn’t even be considered great by today’s audience if Twilight and Eragon are anything to tell by (I say this slightly jealously and also with a reproof at my own unwarranted judgment).  What I want to write, what my heart cries to write, are stories that reflect reality in all of its absurdities, joys and sorrows.  I want to write characters that are real, that could live next door, but that still inevitably belong in their fictional worlds, for their worlds would be hollow without them.  But I haven’t discovered how to do this yet, the craft eludes me.  And while I enjoy an entertaining read, fantasy novels (whether half-baked or not) don’t quite reach my goals.

Am I called to write?  Do I know the ending?  Of course not.  As with all stories, I must wait and see.

I have no other title for this post than people, in all of their bewildering curiosities.  I guess I just can’t get over how complicated people really are.  Silly, huh?  But one minute you’re thinking one thing and the next, someone blows your mind away with something he or she says.  All the while you’re left saying, “I never knew they were going through that,” or “I never knew how they felt.”

Much of the time I claim to understand what I don’t really know.  My mind gets that other people are just as complex as I am…duh.  But I continue to forget, continue to let little irritations or bitterness override my view of people.  That is,  until I get stopped in my tracks and realize that once again I’ve bungled everything up.

My point?  I don’t really have one.  Everyone knows all of this already.  But if all I can say to myself, and to anyone else who cares to read this is, “Wake up and look at the people around you.  Make sure you really take in who they are and what they’re going through, stop making it about you,” then that’s enough.

One, particularly awesome day I got to munch on pumpkin pie with my grandpa while watching Eat, Pray, Love.  For awhile now this movie has come to my mind, inspiring several thoughts.  Now, I turn to the blog to handle these accumulated ramblings.

Quick summary, Eat, Pray Love is a story about a woman who wakes up one day wondering, “Who am I and where the heck did my life go?”  She leaves her husband and goes on a journey to Italy, India and Bali, basically to rediscover herself.  Obviously, large chunks of the story are missing but you’ll have to watch the movie for that.

The movie struck a chord with me because I’m not the regular get married and have four kids girl.  I’ve never really found that appealing, at least not yet.  So, I could totally imagine waking up one day and feeling the same way as the woman in the movie (which is not good, believe me, I know).  Beyond that, it’s also been bugging me because often I feel the same desire to break off from the “standard.”

To throw in some literary aspect here, Jane Austen once wrote, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”  Today, we could change that to, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a young person in possession of good wits, must go to college, work a respectable job, get married, and have two children.”  It can even be illustrated at family parties where the three things people ask you are 1) What school are you at?  2) Where are you working?  and 3) Do I hear wedding bells?  Ding, dong, no!  Thus, you see where my rebelliousness comes in.

Sometimes, I just want to throw off the expectations of a one way society, go to Bali or wherever and discover what life means to me.  It sounds appealing and, the other day, while already being bogged down by school and work, it sounded like pure bliss.  Once I put on my more rational mind set however, I realized that this would be a big mistake (thank goodness for the rational side).

Why would it be?  First of all, what in the world does discovering yourself even mean?  And what is the likelihood that you’re going to find it in Bali, or anywhere else?  Secondly, if the whole point of going to some other country is to be rebellious and defy society, better think again.  Society already has that fit into its sneaky little mold too.  It’s called, “discovering yourself by being single for a certain length of time before marriage.”  Obnoxious is what I call it.

The only thing that I’ve found that makes any sense so far is this: losing yourself.  Truly the exact opposite of what society preaches and I’m ashamed to admit that I forgot it.  What does the Bible say?  Lose yourself.  Lose yourself in God and, through Him, in others, in loving those around you.  Let go of the you.  And not in the selfish way that says, “My life is now all about you, so you better make me proud” or any of the other tricky ways of claiming to make it about someone else when it’s really still about you.  No, I mean this equation: I love God, God made people and loves each and everyone of them, therefore I love each and every one of them.  Now how can I best serve God and those around me?

I’m not claiming that I live this way, far from it.  But it’s something I’ve been pondering lately: two, amusingly polar opposite ideas.

I was going to write a blog all about friendship and C.S. Lewis’ book, “The Four Loves.”  After looking over the material, I quickly became overwhelmed by the vastness of it all.  It would have been easy if three fifths of the stuff had been ignorable nonsense, but that’s just it: it’s all so good.  So, I’ve decided not to try and cover the weighty topic of friendship at 12:00 AM.  Rather, here are a couple of quotes and my thoughts.

“When either Friendship or Eros is one’s theme, one finds a prepared audience…but very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value, or even a love at all.”

“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can bring out.  By myself, I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.”

“The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What?  You too? I thought I was the only one.”

“It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their visions-it is then that friendship is born.”

“The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends.”

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create).  It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

“…we picture lovers face to face, but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead.”

“You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him.”

Those are some of my favorite quotes as well as my favorite ideas about friendship.  I can’t re-write everything Lewis said but as it’s worth a read, or two, my recommendation: pick up the book.  Also, while most of the quotes I posted were positive views of friendship, Lewis honestly points out the flaws in friendship as well.  Envy, “clicks” and the like all act to make friendship an imperfect love.  I focused more heavily on the positives of friendship because I, like Lewis, am beginning to realize how debunked friendship is.

The real inspiration behind this post actually came from the movie, “Arranged,” about two friends, a Jewish girl and a Muslim girl, who relate over their upcoming arranged marriages.  While watching it, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between Nasira and one of my close friends: bold, lovable, goofy, honest and so eager to see her friend happy.  Interestingly enough, the other character, Rochel (which is Rachel…weird), reminded my friend of me.  I’ll leave that description up to someone else.

I like the last image from the movie (above), of the two friends sitting on the bench together, discussing life.  It’s so simple and so unasked for.  It reflects Lewis’ idea of being shoulder to shoulder, instead of eye to eye.  It’s not all about knowing each other but rather, experiencing life and, through that, beginning to know one other along the way.

So, life rushed on and I went with it.  That’s a lousy excuse for not blogging but there it is.  Anyway, I figured that now that I’m starting to write again, I should probably give a quick life update.

1)  I’m back in college, heading for a major in English, possibly a major in Writing as well and, even more uncertainly, a certificate in Chinese.

2) I work as a janitor and note taker.

3) I’m still me.

4) Sam is still always asleep while I’m up doing something productive.

5) That’s it.

Rach

“Moving on,” is a phrase one tends to associate with death.  “You need to move on, you need to get on with your life.”  For a long time, I thought this only referred to the death of a person…okay, maybe to the death of a pet too, but beyond that I thought its use was pretty well solidified.  That is, until I felt the death of a season in my own life.

I know, it sounds pretty vague, maybe poetic, but still obnoxiously symbolic (my dad would bring up his deep aversion to metaphors and butterflies here).  Nevertheless, it accurately depicts what I’ve felt over the last few months.  To put it even more poetically, here’s the inspiration of this post:

Reluctance  (By Robert Frost)

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question “Whither?”

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

My cousin and I have spent the last few months in a state of bewilderment.  After our respective graduations (my high school graduation and her college graduation), neither of us knew what to do.  I tried to go away to school and quickly backtracked, while she tried a job only to find that it wasn’t where she belonged.  We pondered, we talked, we drew up plans and re-worked them as they inevitably changed.  Often, we looked back.  Neither of us could quite accept that portions of our lives were over (at least in some respects), but neither could we deny it.

There is so much that I miss, so much that only happened a summer ago or a year ago.  I miss my youth group and the church I used to go to.  I miss high school or, rather, the carefree spirit that went with it.  I long for my laughing, bumbling group of friends.  I long for a season that has dwindled away so quietly, that I barely noticed its passing.

Nothing is completely over.  New adventures await and I still have many of the aspects from my “old season.”  I still hang out with my friends, meet up with my cousin for some coffee and poetry,  banter with my family, and generally live my life.  You might even come to wonder what’s all that different but, while I can’t pinpoint it exactly, something still has changed.  The season has concluded, giving way to a new one, one that’s a hybrid mixture of old and new, as all seasons are.

While I started off lost and baffled, I’m beginning to ” move on.”  I’m getting over it, and I’ll continue to do so, but my heart still gives a little sigh as it accepts the end of this season.

Robert Frost, you wrote it well.

(p.s.  Your post inspired me Lauren Conley.)