Nightmare: "It hurts, something's biting me!"
Woke at 5:20 AM, after maybe an hour of sleep. Messed up -- napped from maybe 4 til 9 yesterday evening. Second nightmare in as many nights. I think they're becoming more frequent because there are actual emotional events going on in my life. It's not that the events are terrible. But having experiences that actually touch me, I'm moving away from dreams that are like TV shows -- where even when there are special effects, you know everything is going to turn out OK, because it's only TV after all.
I'm worrying about my friends. It's one of these moments that I have from time to time, where I feel connected to my generation, and go through a wave of compassion for my age-peers everywhere.
I think (and remember, I'm writing this at 7 in the morning) the question "What do I want to do with my life?" is ascending in importance, in terms of its potential harm within our psyches. Many odd and interconnecting thoughts about this.
I hear it coming from gl. I hear it coming from J, with a "mid-life crisis" flavor, relating to child-bearing, marriage, creating a family. I hear it coming from Leopoldo, questioning his career path, considering making a radical break in order to become a film professor.
"What do I want to do with my life?" ...The question itself changes over time. When you're in your first decade, it's a fantasy: I want to be a fireman, an astronaut. In your second decade, it's all about college; parents and professors push you to choose a major, but there's still disbelief that the training will actually connect to a real job. In your third decade, the shock of responsibility, that only you can bring about what you want, begins to set in. Desperation begins to increase, seeing how near 40 is, how much time has been wasted. It may be too late. Cherished dreams turn out to be fantasies -- and with those ripped from you, who are you?
Thoreau, Walden: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
In my last year of high school, I ran across a quote I thought very profound: "What is a Hassid? A Hassid is someone who aspires to be a Hassid." It is not the end place of accomplishment that makes us who we are; it is the activities we engage in, the striving. As we lose hope for our dreams, recognizing them as (or believing them to be) impossible, do we become less ourselves?
I think in America we have a mythology about careers very much like our mythology about love. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" makes me imagine that somewhere out there is the perfect career for me. It is like my other half, and I need to search the world to find it, so that I can be complete. Isn't this the same as Plato's notion of love, so elegantly retold in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"? Plato believed that in the beginning of things, our souls were all split in two. We spend our lives looking for our "other half", the one true love that will complete us.
But the nature of our economy isn't what it once was. It used to be that people would get married for life. Now we have serial monogamy, moving from one partner to the next; moving from one marriage to the next, even. Jobs are similar. Instead of getting a job with one company, which will take care of you for the rest of your life, all the magazine articles are saying that you have to be someone who is constantly learning and adapting. Supposedly, you should be prepared to retool and switch jobs as frequently as every five years. Really? Society is changing that fast? Jobs are that unstable?
Myself, I've been feeling frustration lately, unable to decide how to make plans for where I want to live. If I buy a house, it's a commitment to a particular place, and a particular living arrangement. If I think that I'm going to live alone, what happens with regards to current partners and potential future partners five years down the line?
I feel like I'm unable to predict where anyone I know is going to be five years from now -- which makes planning next to impossible. Aspirations around career are not so important to me as the people in my life. But we all have to eat. And now it's common to move across country to follow a good job offer. It used to be that people, more often than not, would live in one place their whole lives. [At least, that's the portrayal passed down to me.] Sure, it should be possible to maintain long-distance friendships. But the reality of all this geographical mobility makes it difficult to invest. Like a child who's moved from town to town, never having enough time to make lasting friendships, going from school to school.
So I return to my worry for my friends. We're all right around 30 now, and turning over the odometer is precipitating life questions. People I care about are waking up in the middle of the night in quiet desperation, or so I imagine. Go ahead, read into this that I'm projecting my own issues onto others. That's true too...
I've lost faith in the dream of creating lasting social justice. But I do have skills, out of having done all this activism. Knowing that I know something, gives me a sense of self-worth that helps me weather (or ignore) some of the turmoil I might otherwise be feeling. [Not all of my friends feel like they have a skill base that gives them worth -- I see how it undercuts them to a large extent.]
I have also linked myself to a "higher cause" (as they say in AA), another source of inner strength. Working for justice gives me a sense of purposefulness. Even if I feel ambivalent about it, it gives me a bit of an upper hand over death. My mother (for one) has lived a life for immediate family. As she watches my grandparents approaching the end of their lives, she tells me that she sometimes thinks it would be easier if she could believe in god. Part of that is obviously wanting things not to end, for there to be an afterlife. But another part of it is wanting to be seen, remembered, to matter. Giving to a church, or some other community can help give you that feeling. You die, but the community you care about lives on. I think investing oneself in community is more effective in this respect than investing in family, simply because community's bigger. Like god, we imagine it granting a form of immortality; perhaps less because it remembers us, than because our life energy has returned into its great pool...
Social justice work is a bit like this for me: the movement was here before me, and will go on after me. I give it my energy out of love -- just as the religious are commanded to love god. It's a Romeo & Juliet kind of love: something you'd be willing to trade your life for.
"Don't you have someone you'd die for?" Belly, Someone To Die For.
I'm not a true-believer; I wouldn't really trade my life for god, nation, or Revolution. And to the extent that my energy is my life, I've taken steps back from such monogamous commitment with any kind of activism. I want to be a catalyst now, bringing myself to projects, but then walking away when I've accomplished my specific and time-limited goals. Talking to gl, she describes having felt very identified with her job when she lived in San Diego. Easy enough to do; we probably all view ourselves as our job at some point. Like true love, you've heard about it all your life -- you have to try it at least once.
What we care about will innevitably break our hearts. If I invest myself in a dream of career, or a dream of relationship, eventually I'm going to be disappointed. And not just disappointed, crushed. Pouring your heart into a dream, we repeatedly discover that no container exists to carry our hopes that cannot be cracked and shattered by the realities of life.
So I worry. How are my peers and I going to find new ways to care, as we learn that all investments of hope end with frustration and disappointment? How are we going to stave off the erosion of selfhood that accompanies losing hopes and dreams? How are we going to invent new plans when the social world around us has become so unstable?
I care more about the people around me than anything I could accomplish. I don't want to make plans in isolation -- I want to take their lives into account. I want their lives woven into my own fabric. But none of us seem to be able to answer "What do I want to do with my life?" adequately. Our 20 year plans are shrinking into 10 year plans, which shrink into 5 year plans. Most days we forget imagination entirely, living only in response to the circumstances of our present situation. ...The corner we've been painted into seems too small.
I'm increasingly convinced that "What do you want to do with your life?" is going to be a key question. It is the wall past which I can't know you; it is the final barrier to intimacy. If it's something that friends can't even answer themselves, then all I can know is their patterns of behavior. This question is maybe as close to defining a person's soul as you get -- and that's the kind of intimacy that I so crave. ...Yet, how many people actually have an answer? How many live their lives with the purposefulness of knowing how they want to die? It's really too much to ask for... But the confusion I sense in us is like a rising fog, occluding what little I could have known just a few years ago, before hopes began to break (like the sound of icicles falling with the approach of spring).
I recently came up with a better description of what kind of intimacy I want. I want to feel as if there is an "ethereal bond" between people. I want our friendships to be valued; I want the sense that even when we move to other states, we can't forget that we're still existing in the same world simultaneously with each other. I want closemates buried so deeply in me, that I can feel their presence despite the distance.
Contrast this with the way so many friendships actually go. We see each other regularly, but no value is given to our relationships. An acquaintance, whom I'd like to think of as a friend, might leave town forever without even saying goodbye.
Part of creating friendships with "ethereal bonds", friendships between souls, has to be knowing what our deepest answers to "What do I want to do with my life?" are. It's like knowing what direction a particle is moving in. In a closed space, you're likely to keep bumping into each other; but if the enclosure is expanded, you're going to lose each other if you know nothing about vector motion.
I have never been able to depend upon the kindness of strangers.
Woke at 5:20 AM, after maybe an hour of sleep. Messed up -- napped from maybe 4 til 9 yesterday evening. Second nightmare in as many nights. I think they're becoming more frequent because there are actual emotional events going on in my life. It's not that the events are terrible. But having experiences that actually touch me, I'm moving away from dreams that are like TV shows -- where even when there are special effects, you know everything is going to turn out OK, because it's only TV after all.
I'm worrying about my friends. It's one of these moments that I have from time to time, where I feel connected to my generation, and go through a wave of compassion for my age-peers everywhere.
I think (and remember, I'm writing this at 7 in the morning) the question "What do I want to do with my life?" is ascending in importance, in terms of its potential harm within our psyches. Many odd and interconnecting thoughts about this.
I hear it coming from gl. I hear it coming from J, with a "mid-life crisis" flavor, relating to child-bearing, marriage, creating a family. I hear it coming from Leopoldo, questioning his career path, considering making a radical break in order to become a film professor.
"What do I want to do with my life?" ...The question itself changes over time. When you're in your first decade, it's a fantasy: I want to be a fireman, an astronaut. In your second decade, it's all about college; parents and professors push you to choose a major, but there's still disbelief that the training will actually connect to a real job. In your third decade, the shock of responsibility, that only you can bring about what you want, begins to set in. Desperation begins to increase, seeing how near 40 is, how much time has been wasted. It may be too late. Cherished dreams turn out to be fantasies -- and with those ripped from you, who are you?
Thoreau, Walden: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
In my last year of high school, I ran across a quote I thought very profound: "What is a Hassid? A Hassid is someone who aspires to be a Hassid." It is not the end place of accomplishment that makes us who we are; it is the activities we engage in, the striving. As we lose hope for our dreams, recognizing them as (or believing them to be) impossible, do we become less ourselves?
I think in America we have a mythology about careers very much like our mythology about love. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" makes me imagine that somewhere out there is the perfect career for me. It is like my other half, and I need to search the world to find it, so that I can be complete. Isn't this the same as Plato's notion of love, so elegantly retold in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"? Plato believed that in the beginning of things, our souls were all split in two. We spend our lives looking for our "other half", the one true love that will complete us.
But the nature of our economy isn't what it once was. It used to be that people would get married for life. Now we have serial monogamy, moving from one partner to the next; moving from one marriage to the next, even. Jobs are similar. Instead of getting a job with one company, which will take care of you for the rest of your life, all the magazine articles are saying that you have to be someone who is constantly learning and adapting. Supposedly, you should be prepared to retool and switch jobs as frequently as every five years. Really? Society is changing that fast? Jobs are that unstable?
Myself, I've been feeling frustration lately, unable to decide how to make plans for where I want to live. If I buy a house, it's a commitment to a particular place, and a particular living arrangement. If I think that I'm going to live alone, what happens with regards to current partners and potential future partners five years down the line?
I feel like I'm unable to predict where anyone I know is going to be five years from now -- which makes planning next to impossible. Aspirations around career are not so important to me as the people in my life. But we all have to eat. And now it's common to move across country to follow a good job offer. It used to be that people, more often than not, would live in one place their whole lives. [At least, that's the portrayal passed down to me.] Sure, it should be possible to maintain long-distance friendships. But the reality of all this geographical mobility makes it difficult to invest. Like a child who's moved from town to town, never having enough time to make lasting friendships, going from school to school.
So I return to my worry for my friends. We're all right around 30 now, and turning over the odometer is precipitating life questions. People I care about are waking up in the middle of the night in quiet desperation, or so I imagine. Go ahead, read into this that I'm projecting my own issues onto others. That's true too...
I've lost faith in the dream of creating lasting social justice. But I do have skills, out of having done all this activism. Knowing that I know something, gives me a sense of self-worth that helps me weather (or ignore) some of the turmoil I might otherwise be feeling. [Not all of my friends feel like they have a skill base that gives them worth -- I see how it undercuts them to a large extent.]
I have also linked myself to a "higher cause" (as they say in AA), another source of inner strength. Working for justice gives me a sense of purposefulness. Even if I feel ambivalent about it, it gives me a bit of an upper hand over death. My mother (for one) has lived a life for immediate family. As she watches my grandparents approaching the end of their lives, she tells me that she sometimes thinks it would be easier if she could believe in god. Part of that is obviously wanting things not to end, for there to be an afterlife. But another part of it is wanting to be seen, remembered, to matter. Giving to a church, or some other community can help give you that feeling. You die, but the community you care about lives on. I think investing oneself in community is more effective in this respect than investing in family, simply because community's bigger. Like god, we imagine it granting a form of immortality; perhaps less because it remembers us, than because our life energy has returned into its great pool...
Social justice work is a bit like this for me: the movement was here before me, and will go on after me. I give it my energy out of love -- just as the religious are commanded to love god. It's a Romeo & Juliet kind of love: something you'd be willing to trade your life for.
"Don't you have someone you'd die for?" Belly, Someone To Die For.
I'm not a true-believer; I wouldn't really trade my life for god, nation, or Revolution. And to the extent that my energy is my life, I've taken steps back from such monogamous commitment with any kind of activism. I want to be a catalyst now, bringing myself to projects, but then walking away when I've accomplished my specific and time-limited goals. Talking to gl, she describes having felt very identified with her job when she lived in San Diego. Easy enough to do; we probably all view ourselves as our job at some point. Like true love, you've heard about it all your life -- you have to try it at least once.
What we care about will innevitably break our hearts. If I invest myself in a dream of career, or a dream of relationship, eventually I'm going to be disappointed. And not just disappointed, crushed. Pouring your heart into a dream, we repeatedly discover that no container exists to carry our hopes that cannot be cracked and shattered by the realities of life.
So I worry. How are my peers and I going to find new ways to care, as we learn that all investments of hope end with frustration and disappointment? How are we going to stave off the erosion of selfhood that accompanies losing hopes and dreams? How are we going to invent new plans when the social world around us has become so unstable?
I care more about the people around me than anything I could accomplish. I don't want to make plans in isolation -- I want to take their lives into account. I want their lives woven into my own fabric. But none of us seem to be able to answer "What do I want to do with my life?" adequately. Our 20 year plans are shrinking into 10 year plans, which shrink into 5 year plans. Most days we forget imagination entirely, living only in response to the circumstances of our present situation. ...The corner we've been painted into seems too small.
I'm increasingly convinced that "What do you want to do with your life?" is going to be a key question. It is the wall past which I can't know you; it is the final barrier to intimacy. If it's something that friends can't even answer themselves, then all I can know is their patterns of behavior. This question is maybe as close to defining a person's soul as you get -- and that's the kind of intimacy that I so crave. ...Yet, how many people actually have an answer? How many live their lives with the purposefulness of knowing how they want to die? It's really too much to ask for... But the confusion I sense in us is like a rising fog, occluding what little I could have known just a few years ago, before hopes began to break (like the sound of icicles falling with the approach of spring).
I recently came up with a better description of what kind of intimacy I want. I want to feel as if there is an "ethereal bond" between people. I want our friendships to be valued; I want the sense that even when we move to other states, we can't forget that we're still existing in the same world simultaneously with each other. I want closemates buried so deeply in me, that I can feel their presence despite the distance.
Contrast this with the way so many friendships actually go. We see each other regularly, but no value is given to our relationships. An acquaintance, whom I'd like to think of as a friend, might leave town forever without even saying goodbye.
Part of creating friendships with "ethereal bonds", friendships between souls, has to be knowing what our deepest answers to "What do I want to do with my life?" are. It's like knowing what direction a particle is moving in. In a closed space, you're likely to keep bumping into each other; but if the enclosure is expanded, you're going to lose each other if you know nothing about vector motion.
I have never been able to depend upon the kindness of strangers.
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