Too much perspective? (Even this is too long still.)

Sometimes I feel like I see everything from so many different angles that I don't know which one is the one I believe in the most. I think I have this fear of being too absolute, too extreme, too single-minded. There's something to be said for stability and more to be said for permanence and legacy, but I like transience, too. I like being able to change my mind. To me, seeing anything as absolute is a trap and it hinders growth, it stops you from being able to learn and grow. I like being flexible and I like the fluidity of being open to multiple possibilities. I often don't like having to choose one way or another when I relate to both. I prefer to evaluate case by case, and not choose a blanket answer that is intended to encompass everything.

I'm in between about a lot of things, and sometimes I worry that I don't have definite, assertive opinions or beliefs of my own. I know I do. I just also know that it's not important to me to have absolute opinions on a lot of things, and I know I feel different ways at different times in different situations. I don't like feeling chained to one concrete belief. I don't like the feeling of being trapped that accompanies that. I like feeling free. I don't like narrowness.

Or maybe it's that I don't like broadness? I mean, I hate it when someone asks me if I'm pro-life or pro-choice. I don't think it's that simple. I understand logically and emotionally both sides of the argument. Sure, it's ethically shady, but I also think it's wrong for a baby to be born into a world that doesn't want it, where it will only be abused and mistreated. In that way it's cruel. At the same time, I'm usually an "everything happens for a reason" kind of a gal, and messing around with a potential life isn't something I think I'd ever consider. But my life is a piece of cake. I don't have to endure extreme adversity and it's easy for me to believe in some kind of fate. It's not like I'm a fourteen-year-old rape victim who's pregnant by her attacker or something. If I were, I don't know how I'd feel. I can't say. So I generally say that I think a woman should have the right to choose, but I also think most women shouldn't choose abortion. Even that's simplifying it more than I'd like.

I can choose to see things the way I want to. I can choose to see people as a bunch of foolish, ignorant jerks who are going to lead to the demise of all humanity, or I can see them as the last pillar supporting humanity from crumbling. I can be cynical and realistic or romantic and idealistic. It's not just that I can be these things--I generally feel like I am all these things. I'm sarcastic and cynical and pessimistic by turns, but eternally hopeful and idealistic at the same time. I want to see the best in people but often, they just show their worst. Being optimistic and idealistic can translate into naivete, though--like Gatsby or The Quiet American--and I don't want that, either. I see it sometimes in others and I know I know better than to have blind faith in people; I'll just end up painfully disillusioned if I do.

I go back and forth between the two outlooks all the time. I can try to be one way or another but I don't like doing that, because that's not me. As I told someone last night, I just am what I am, and that happens to be a lot of different things at different times. I hate it when people make me feel like that's wrong, like things have to be black and white, one way or another. Like I'm wrong for seeing things so many ways and relating to them all. There's a lot that I don't understand, that I can't relate to, that I can't imagine, that I disagree with. But I love it when I meet someone who is able to explain the unimaginable to me in a way that I can understand. Without being open to other perspectives and trying to identify with others, how could you understand anything?

I also decided today that I don't like it when I feel like I have to "try" to be myself around people. I don't like pandering and I don't like compromising myself, even though intrinsically I like making people happy, and there's a lot of things I don't mind doing or just don't care about that I'm willing to compromise on, if it'll make others happy. I hate it when I realize that I'm acting in a way I don't like around certain people, because then I have to make an effort to be myself and not to let them bring out this behavior that doesn't feel like my own. It's just not that frequently that I find people that I feel comfortable being myself around. I hide a lot, even though I know I shouldn't--that's just how I am. I suppose it's because I know there's so much that's contradictory about myself that I don't let myself show that unless I feel like a person will understand that I'm not being overtly, obnoxiously hypocritical or mockingly facetious and arrogant. I suppose. I don't know.

People close to me are always telling me to speak up more, or be more assertive, and stuff like that, but I like flying below the radar. Sometimes other people will tell me I'm the kind of person that doesn't say much, but when I do say something, others listen because it'll be good. I don't think this is necessarily true. Often when I do speak up, people still talk over me or just don't listen. I'm also quiet a lot of the time, though, because I don't have anything to say about the topic at hand. If I don't have anything to say, it's probably because 1) I don't have a definitive opinion or 2) one of my biggest pet peeves is people who talk pompously about things they know nothing about. You want to talk about how Michael Phelps smoked pot? Congratulations, talk away. I don't really have anything to say about it, other than I think it's been blown way out of proportion. You want to talk about philosophy or music theory? Awesome. I'll listen, and I'll be interested. But I'm not going to tell you what I think of Plato's Republic, and I'm not going to argue you when you say Beethoven is better than Mozart, because I wouldn't have a bloody clue as to what I was talking about. I know who Plato is. I listen to Beethoven and Mozart's works. But I'm not going to pretend I am anything more than vaguely familiar with them in a very rudimentary way. I'm not going to bullshit about it. But if you want to recommend a piece to listen to and explain why you like it and what I should listen for, then fantastic.

And if you want to talk about the injustice of the admissions process at tier one colleges and universities, or modern American playwrights, or why TV news programs make me angry, or pretty much anything I write about on here, then just try and get me to STOP talking. But who wants to have a conversation about any of that? Hell, that's one of the main reasons I write so much on this stupid thing--who wants to ponder all this shit with me. Hahaha. Someone told me the other day that I should write a screenplay, and I asked what should I write about? They asked me in return, "Well, what do you have to say?" I said not a heck of a lot, but that was a silly untruth, and I didn't realize it until later on. I have a lot to say--I just can't always find ways to say it, let alone creative ways, or people who care to hear me. That's how it finds its way here. Which isn't exactly an awful thing. I'd hate it if I had absolutely nothing to say about anything ever.

I realized one of my problems when thinking about the "Future" is not that I don't know what I want to do--there's just way too many things that I want to do, and I can't make myself pick just one. I can't shut out everything else to specialize on one thing. I keep telling myself that I'm better off for picking one thing and learning a lot about it than knowing a shallow amount about a lot of things, but I don't feel like anything works like that. Everything's interdisciplinary, especially in the arts. Everything overlaps. There is no one single field. Even my specialized classes overlap. Everything in both my majors intersects all the time. And I know I mention this all the freakin time, but it's true. And I don't want to pick just one thing to focus on. I don't want to end up cornered into one field. Even though I sort of know in the back of my mind that that will never happen. And I don't want my voice to be any more limited than it already is. Which is quite a lot.

Meh. Too much thinking.

Cultural Identity?

I never really thought about my cultural identity until I came to college and was kind of forced to think about it in class. It's interesting, I suppose--fairly unique, in a way. I was born in Korea. Lived with a foster family until I was adopted at four months old by a white middle class couple living in suburban New Jersey. Same for my sister, who is three and a half years younger than I am. She was seven months when she arrived.

We grew up in a predominantly white town. Culturally, we are white. Alec Baldwin's character on 30 Rock tells a white man on the show that, "Socioeconomically speaking, you're more like an inner city Latina." Well, socioeconomically speaking, my sister and I are white. White-washed, Twinkies, what have you. I mentioned this in a rant about a year ago, actually. I never really thought about this until college though.

Here, I do meet other Asians who have this presupposition that I can identify with them as an Asian girl. Except, only on the surface am I an Asian girl. Nearly all of my friends in elementary and secondary school were white. I can think of maybe six or seven total that weren't. Most of them came from Asian families that still held some of their cultural values beyond assimilation. I have no Asian cultural background at all. This doesn't bother me. I am what I am. But what I am is not what people assume. Which I enjoy, on some level. But on others, it's frustrating. It's another inherent contradiction. Just last night, I stopped by my friend's apartment. Before I'd gotten there, she'd told a friend of hers who didn't know me that I was coming. Later, he told me that he'd been surprised to see that I'm Asian because my name is so Irish.

I'll get back to this later. I for real need to sleep.

"I've never been in love...it all feels more like fiction to me."

Will: Emily, will you, uh, marry me?
April: No.
Will: Goddd.
April: What do you mean, “Will you, uh, marry me?”?! I haven’t seen you in weeks. You don’t look happy or excited about the prospect of our marriage. You’re asking me to give up my . . . my freedom, my joie de vivre, for an institution that fails as often as it succeeds? And why should I marry you, anyway? I mean, why do you want to marry me? Besides some bourgeois desire to fulfill an ideal that society embeds in us from an early age to promote a consumer capitalist agenda.
Will: Oh! Ohhh my god.
April: You should have got on your knee.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it seems so easy to fall into the trappings of social norms, because they set the status quo on so many things that we don't even think about. Like, as April points out, marriage.

[Long excerpt coming up]

Celine: I was thinking, for me it’s better I don’t romanticize things as much any more. I was suffering so much all the time. I still have lots of dreams, but they’re not in regard to my love life. It doesn’t make me sad; it’s just the way it is.
Jesse: Is that why you’re in a relationship with someone who’s never around?
Celine: [laughing] Yes, obviously I can’t deal with the day-to-day life of a relationship. [seriously] Yeah, we, you know, have this exciting time together, and then he leaves, and I miss him, but at least I’m not dying inside. When somebody is always around me, I’m like, suffocating.
Jesse: No wait, you just said that you need to love, and to be loved.
Celine: Yeah, but when I do, it quickly makes me nauseous! It’s a disaster. I mean, I’m really happy only when I’m on my own. Even being alone—it’s better than sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely. It’s not so easy for me to be all romantic. …I’ve just had too many . . . blah relationships. They were mean, they cared for me, but there was no real connection or excitement. At least, not from my side.
Jesse: I’m—I’m sorry, is it really that bad? It’s not, right?
Celine: You know, it’s not even that. I was fine. Until I read your fucking book. It stirred shit up, you know? It reminded me of how genuinely romantic I was, how I had so much hope in things, and now, now it’s like, I don’t believe in anything that relates to love, I don’t feel things for people any more. In a way, I put all my romanticism into that one night and I was never able to feel all this again...
Jesse: I—I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that.
Celine: You know what, reality and love are almost contradictory for me. It’s funny. Every single of my ex’s, they are now married. Men go out with me, we break up, and then they get married. And later they call me to thank me for teaching them what love is, and that I taught them to care and respect women—
Jesse: I think I’m one of those guys.
Celine: —You know, I want to kill them! Why didn’t they ask me to marry them! I would have said no, but then at least they could have asked! But it’s my fault, I know it’s my fault, because I never felt it was the right man, never. But what does it mean, “the right man”? The “love of your life”? The concept is absurd, that we can only be complete with another person is evil, right?!

Also, the more I watch Before Sunset - well, first of all, the more I realize it's absolutely brilliant, especially when paired with Before Sunrise, then you realize Jesse and Celine as characters and performances are that much more beautifully, beautifully subtle and nuanced and real and detailed and perfect than when the movie stands alone - but really, the more I watch it, the more I identify with Celine. Take out the ultra-liberal activism and I'm basically her. But it always makes me think that marriage is just an institution that makes you take something irrational and impermanent and constantly changing, and force it into a mold of practicality and pragmatism and sensibility. It just doesn't work like that in my mind. Yet I think there's this constant pressure on most people I know to want to marry. Beyond that, even - in high school, we're practically forced to take the SAT's and apply to college, and it's implied to us that it's impossible to succeed otherwise. From there, we have to choose a degree. One line of study. Then we graduate and we have to get jobs. But not just a job - we have to choose a career, a practical line of work to which we can devote ourselves and from which we can make a comfortable living. And obviously after that we have to get married and start a family. Because that's the thing to do. It's like the whole '80s yuppie thing only evolved, so it doesn't necessarily mean a life of luxury but one of financial success, if only on a middle class level.

And my problem with that is that not everyone wants the same thing. In fact, most people don't want the same thing. Or else, they really don't want the same thing but they think they do because they've been tricked and trapped into it. But really, this whole life doesn't apply to everyone. It's one of the things I like about St. Elmo's Fire. Kevin starts off as this crazy cynic about love and marriage, even though he changes by the end, and Lesley accuses Alec of not wanting to get married, but of wanting to be able to send out a Christmas card with a picture of them on it, and Billy ends up realizing that the "after college life" isn't for him and he has to stop trying to be Alec. They all start off with these ideas of how life is supposed to be and they eventually realize that they just have to do their own thing. Well, to some extent.

It's funny because I just got back from my Theater & Society class, in which we're watching a bunch of documentaries on the 1950s. Today's was called "Let's Play House" and it was about how after World War II, there was this huge marriage and consequently baby boom, and the consequences. Men felt their masculinity was being threatened when they had to go back to civilian life and enter the corporate world - thus Sloan Wilson's book The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Women, on the other hand, were feeling pressured to find a husband - after the war, the numbers said that 1 in 7 women would have to be single because of the death toll. So, they were pushed into this lifestyle of hyper-femininity in which they couldn't work, had to be housewives and mothers, and had to literally fit this physical mold of the American woman. She had to be the June Cleaver figure. And then all these men were unhappy because their lives were dull and corporate life was dissatisfying, and all these women were unhappy because they weren't allowed to do anything but cook and clean and basically not have a personality. Everything in the media was supporting this - movies, books, magazines - until a few people broke out and rebelled, like Wilson, and Betty Friedan (who wrote The Feminine Mystique).

In comparison, we have so much freedom today, so much choice, yet I feel like the current is still carrying us towards these unfulfilling lifestyles that society mandates are what we should want. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with wanting that whole packaged lifestyle, either, though, even though it very much sounds like I am, haha. The more I think about it, it's just not for me. While it's liberating to realize what you want is not what everyone else wants, it's also daunting, because in a way, you're preconditioned to fail. Or preconditioned to succeed, I'm not sure which. I mean, you're setting out to do what no one else wants you to be able to do. That's what I meant. What is that quote?

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

And also, I'm really not totally condemning marriage here or anything. Because in the society we live in, it does make sense. I just don't think it makes sense for humans in general, haha. And I'm not bashing love here, either. It's just...a mystery to me. Which sounds painfully obvious and stupid, but I mean it in a beyond-the-cliched-ways way. Because to me, love is different to everyone. And in some people, I think it's buried deeper than in others.

Jesse: We’re just living in a pretense of a marriage, responsibility, and all these ideas of how people are supposed to live.…and, and I know that there’s something wrong, and I know that I can’t keep living like this, and I think, there’s gotta be more to love than commitment, but then I think that I might have given up on the whole idea of romantic love...

Oh yeah. Romance. That's another thing. One of those Interview segments quoted Pop artist Ronnie Cutrone as saying that Andy Warhol taught him that, "All romantic love is an illusion." I never thought of it like that. All romance in general, though, I think is an illusion. It's all in how you choose (whether consciously or unconsciously) how to perceive things. Romance and cynicism are both just filters. They're films through which you see the world. So it makes sense that romantic love would be an illusion. It's just how you're choosing to see love. Not that I have a problem with that. Romance makes life palatable and easier to digest. That can become problematic, but in general, that rosiness is nice. Romance, in a way, is hope. And while part of me hates hope - because hope, like expectation, often leads to severe disappointment - a character one movie or another that I was watching in a class the other day pointed out, "We all hope. It's what keeps us alive." I think that was during one of the John Cassavetes movies that I didn't really like. Faces maybe. But I digress. Except not really because I think I was done.

No I wasn't. I was about to say that I might have misinterpreted the way Cutrone meant "romantic love", but it still made me think of it the way I did. If he meant "romantic love" not as, being "in love" with romance, but just as, being "in love" in general (did that make ANY sense? Yikes, I need to sleep), then I'm not sure I agree. But like I was saying before, I think it's different for everyone. For some people it's harder to fall in love than for others. "Here's what I know. There are some people who fall in love over and over. And there are others who can only seem to do it once." Haha, that was from the fourth Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book. But I like it. And I like that it says "seems," because I don't think that it's humanly possible for anyone to fall in love only once. I think it's possible to go your whole life being in love with only one person - but that's just because there's no way you'll ever meet all the people you could fall in love with. And then there are those people who are perfectly capable of falling in love with each other but they don't let themselves. But that's something else entirely.

It's like that Jane Austen Book Club bit:

"A person's no more sane falling out of love than falling into it, I guess..."
"What do we know about it, you and I?" Allegra asked. "We're not the sort who fall out of love, are we?"

Oh, and it reminds me of Persuasion. Anne and Capt. Wentworth both try to love other people. They try to resign themselves to the idea of loving another. What is it, eight years, that pass? Anne firmly believes that it's easier for men to fall out of love than women, that they are better at forgetting, and that women suffer more, but then Capt. Wentworth writes her that wonderful, wonderful letter completely contradicting her. "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant." Oh, that's also like in Before Sunset. Nine years pass and Celine pretends to have forgotten because Jesse waltzes in all romantic and married and she thinks he's moved on, so she has that breakdown in the car, but then he reveals that he hasn't, and that he's still suffering just as much, if not more, than she is. Most amazing scene in the whole movie.

Ack, think I wrote enough? Too much overlap right now. None of this even makes sense any more. Sorry about that.

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Now playing: Feist - So Sorry

Apathy is a heartless beast.

Sometimes I feel like I spend too much time being angry, but honestly, I'd rather be angry than apathetic. So many people I see are filled with this meaningless apathy, this emptiness and complete lack of desire to do anything or be anything. They have no passion, no spirit, no vim. It's the worst in today's youth, the people who have the most to care about, the most energy, the most potential - they have their whole lives in front of them.

I love meeting people who are hungry for life, in any way, especially creatively, or even intellectually. "Intellectually curious," haha. People who challenge me, who inspire me, who show me new ways of thinking or of seeing things. People who make me feel free.

Yesterday I wrote that it bothers me that so many people feel the need to hide themselves and act like someone they're not, yet at the same time, it amazes me that there are any people who are fully and wholly just themselves, or even remotely close. There is so much in this world that binds and restrains us, that holds us back and prevents us from embracing ourselves. It's one of the things I love about the arts. Art is liberating. So many people who are inhibited in the practical world are free to be themselves in their art, be it painting, sculpture, photography, music, theater, dance, writing, or anything else. I guess that's one reason I couldn't stay away from writing - here, there are no rules, no boundaries, nothing stopping me from just being myself, no matter how flawed and imperfect and contemptible. I suppose I could keep it to myself, but I guess by posting it in what is technically a public forum, I don't feel like I'm hiding as much as I really am, and as much as I tell myself I'm upfront and unaffected among others, I know that truly, I'm never as free with most of the people I know as I am in my writing. I hate it, but I'm working on it.

Though I hate that I keep coming back to Venice, one thing I truly loved about being there is that I felt freer in waking life than ever before. I was accepted and loved and it was easy to just be myself, to love myself, and to love others. Even though others tend to see me as anti-social and not fond of many people, it's really pretty easy for me to find the best in people and love them for it, and as much as I don't like a lot of people, I love the people I do like even more. I'm a lot more passionate than I let on, I think. Which, I guess, makes life even harder. Someone once told me you can't be loved if you can't be hated. I 'd rather be hated that dismissed completely. Indifference and apathy are worse than hatred. So I've gone full circle - bottom line: do whatever it takes not to be apathetic. To me, it's pretty much the worst thing you can be.

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Now playing: John Mayer - Bigger Than My Body

Haha. I just realized that apathy is the last thing I wrote about in May before I stopped blogging. Clearly I'm paying attention to what I'm writing about.

These angry people who are waiting to judge you...

...Have their own judgment that they'll have to live up to...
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, "Life is Beautiful"

So lately I've been frustrated with the human tendency to judge others. It's just something that I hate accepting. Ironically.

My whole problem with people who tend to make snap judgments of others and hold it against them is connected to my annoyance with people who pretend to be what they aren't. If that makes sense. Occasionally someone will tell me they like that I'm just myself, I don't try to be anything, I just am myself, and I'm so accepting of everyone else. I don't quite understand why people ever try to be anything. You are what you are, and that's just how it is. I don't understand how people who try to be someone else, who are forever acting, can ever be truly happy.

What I understand more is people who hold themselves back. Who are never fully comfortable with just being themselves, in part because of people who judge them. I guess I understand that better because that's where I feel like I am right now. Trapped. Not completely free to just be myself, not because I want to be someone else, but because for some reason I can't understand, I feel like I need to hold myself back.

I wonder if I feel, unconsciously, like the people I know have this image of me that isn't quite accurate because they don't quite understand, and I, for whatever reason, feel like I need to continue to be what they think I am, to maintain the image of me that they see.

I guess, like usual, it all comes down to fear and love again. Mmm.

I have more to say but I'm beat.

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Now playing: John Mayer - Dreaming With A Broken Heart

I was being facetious.

I think it's funny how different aspects of our personalities are highlighted around different people.

I feel like generally, people try to be themselves. Or say they just "are" themselves. That they don't try to be someone they're not, or pretend to be someone they're not. I think these people generally tell the truth, or at least, think they're telling the truth. But I also think that they're not always wholly themselves. Different facets of themselves shine around different people, all of them part of a single person, though they may seem like completely separate personalities. When these are all together as a unified whole, I think that's when a person is most "himself".

It's easy to find people who bring out different parts of your personality, but I think it's difficult to find people around whom you feel like you are being wholly and completely yourself, in purest and most unaffected form. I even think it's easier to find people who bring out the best in you - or who bring out the worst. Finding someone whom, when you're around him or her, you just think, "I feel like myself" - always - that doesn't happen often, I don't think. And in a way, it's kind of a miracle.

That's all.

"Know thine self."

I was just thinking the other day about Joe Cermatori, who spoke when my class was inducted into NHS 3 years ago, and that's what his speech was about - "Know thine self." This is what I wrote (typed?) in my journal about it:

The ceremony itself was nice. Joe Cermatori was the guest speaker, he graduated here in 2001, went to Princeton majoring in English Drama, keeping up with his acting and singing, and working on directing a few productions as well. Next year he’s entering Yale starting his doctoral work. He gave a great speech centered about Hamlet’s “To thine own self be true” speech, and how it should really be “Know thine self.” How character is the hardest part of the 4 characteristics concentrated upon in NHS, and how to be true to ourselves, we have to know ourselves, and be sure we don’t spend all of our time on advancing our résumés, but also time doing stuff like writing in journals and reading and just thinking, getting to know ourselves. Dad went on about how he had a very sharp speech, and how he’s a smart, wise kid, which amused me greatly, seeing that I’ve thought about a lot of the stuff he mentioned in his speech before now – the whole know yourself bit, only I thought about knowing oneself to respect oneself, not being true to oneself, but how much difference is there anyway?

Hahahaha. Funny how things change in a few years. I thought I knew myself so well then. That spring is when I first started feeling more aware of my life. Everything before that is hazy, blurry. But I remember isolated moments from that spring, on, so well. I thought I was just this strong, independent girl who didn't have time for assholes. Who interfered when her best friends were being hurt. Who didn't have a problem "preaching," who learned more from observing other people's mistakes than from making them herself. Now I'm not sure what I think, but I plan on figuring it out. I have somewhere to start now. I think this summer's going to be good for me. ( :
<333

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Now playing: Augustana - Hey Now

Steps to being happy:

So here it is. Backwards:

7. Love life.
6. Be loved for who you are.
5. Love other people for who they are.
4. Love who you are.
3. Be who you are.
2. Accept who you are.
1. Know who you are.

Jeez, that makes it sound so easy. Really though. How can you love others or be loved if you don't love yourself? And how can you love yourself if you don't be yourself? And how can you be yourself if you don't accept who you are now and know what kind of person you want to become? And how can you do any of that if you don't know who you are?

Conundrum.

"Find out who you are, and do it on purpose." -- Dolly Parton

I like this better:

3. Smile. Laugh.
2. Stop thinking.
1. Stop caring.

Hahahahahahahaha. I'm so funny.

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Now playing: Missy Higgins - The Sound of White