Imperfect

Have you ever watched someone butcher a job so badly that you would pull all your hair out to get them to stop? For example, when someone is coloring something with colored pencil but are coloring in all different directions. Or when someone is trying to squeeze a large object through a narrow hallway and they keep knocking down picture frames and vases. I hope it's a feeling that resonates; an overwhelming sense of "oh my gosh, please stop what you're doing right now; you're just making things worse!"  But I've been wondering lately if this situation might be an analogy for life. I'm pushing this "life-cart" blindly down this narrow "life-hallway" and I can't see ahead of me; I can't see where I'm going. And in my periphery, I can hear the sounds of all the things I'm breaking along the way: I'm bruising people's feelings; I'm breaking people's trusts; I'm severing relationships and destroying things I will never be able to replace. I'm walking through a neat hallway and in my wake, I am leaving behind a chaotic mess. And so the question is, how do I overcome the fear that I'm just making things worse than before, that maybe I should just stop pushing the "life-cart"? How do you live with yourself knowing that you are imperfect? How do you live with the paradox that all you want to do is to help people, but you realize in the process, you will probably hurt more people than you help? I don't know how and it drives me crazy. In the meantime, my thoughts play ping-pong with themselves: maybe sometimes the most beautiful things are also the messiest? Maybe sometimes you have to mess things up in order to fix them? Or maybe both of those are just selfish excuses for hurting other people. But maybe sometimes you have to be selfish in order to save yourself. Maybe only by saving yourself can you save someone else...

17 Bucket List Items for Summer '17

-- Go to Disney World (done)
-- Watch more Marvel & DC movies (watched Wonderwoman and Spiderman: Homecoming so far. Dr. Strange is next on the list.)
-- Go to the drive-in movie theater
-- Go stargazing/camping
-- Have a bonfire!
-- Have a pool party
-- Read more
-- Go on a road trip
-- Have a slumber party
-- Have a barbecue (vegetarian, of course)
-- Learn to code
-- Go on lots of hikes
-- Bike downtown and spend the day at the cafe
-- Go on a French brunch date with friends from French class and our French teacher
-- Go to the zoo
-- Visit colleges
-- Go to a concert

Learning to Occupy Space

When I was in 9th grade, I learned about diffusion for the first time in chemistry. I learned about how you could spray perfume in one corner of a room and the gas molecules would spread out, filling the whole room. We've all met people like that -- people who walk into a room and fill the space with their personalities. Partially, I think, this is a talent. Some people are born with an extra sense that causes heads to turn. For the rest of us, learning to quietly demand our space in the world is a skill that we must develop. Sometimes I feel like my brain is hardwired like some caged wind spirit. With unnerving frequency, my brain tells me "Run. Get out of here. Start over. Go somewhere where no one knows you. Try again." And surprisingly, this has been fairly easy to execute. By chance and circumstance, I've found myself going to a new school every couple years, a school where no one knows me. As I start thinking about colleges this summer, a new fantasy grips me. Just get through this year, I tell myself, and then you'll go to college and everything will be perfect. On a rational level, I realize this is silly. I am grateful for my friends and family and friends, of course. Overall, I am happy with my place in life. But the next instant, I find myself in another awkward situation and all my subconscious wants to do is grow wings and fly away. I think maybe this is the plague of youth. Sitting in a room where everyone has more experience than you and everyone seems to be doing more meaningful things than you, the first instinct is to try and not bother anyone. There is a strong reflex to fold into yourself and make yourself invisible. All the alarm bells are going off in your brain telling you, "I don't belong here!". As young adults finding our way into the world, we are pioneers. We don't know where we belong and neither does anyone else. Anytime we venture into the unknown -- whether it's applying for a new job or exploring Mars -- it's our job to stake our claim in the ground. Fighting for a seat at the table is one task but being able to say, "yes, I'm new here but I deserve this seat and I'm here to learn"  is a new task on it's own. Slowly, I'm learning the only space you can occupy in the world is the spot you carve out for yourself. What is the beauty in living your life scrunched up in a corner, just squeezing through the crack of the door? Naivete is a blessing -- it is simply the opportunity to learn in disguise. Awkwardness is most often an illusion, a trick your mind plays on you. This summer, I will learn to wear my self-confidence like armor and I will distribute my thirst for knowledge like a business card at a career fair. I will learn to be more present, to show up to every opportunity with three tools in my tool-belt: an open-mind, an eagerness to work, and the determination to stay put, to claim my own space.   

Etched Through Time

For the past week, I traveled with my family through the Southwestern U.S. There, blessed by the incomprehensible beauty of the American National Parks -- the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, and the Valley of Fire -- inspiration comes searching for you, as it has for millions of others through history. Surrounded by towering cliffs the size of skyscrapers and brilliant blood-red rocks, it is difficult to avoid contemplating time. All around you is a lesson in both patience and perseverance -- the rocks form intricate carvings and statues that could only be conjured by the human mind. And yet, they remain more beautiful, more enduring than anything the human mind could ever fathom. Whole temples of rock stand on the foundations of older, stronger rock; each layer represents the work of a few billion years. Vast expanses of this barren landscape remain relatively undisturbed by human presence, and, as a result, an overwhelming calm subdues the atmosphere. Far from the blaring lights and stench of Vegas, these places are havens for introspection and thought. Despite this, life oozes through the very pores of the canyon walls. Lush green vegetation thrives off the water dripping through the rock, forming the famous Hanging Gardens. Down below, lightning fast geckos and fiery red ants make their homes among the sand and gravel. The cliches of my descriptions do not escape me. I am hardly the first person to be left awestruck by these locations -- nor will I be the last. Millions of people with words and talents far better than mine have tried to capture this grandeur. But for the past few months, I have been gripped by a shocking realization. Our mind is never truly our own. It is simply a composite of all the minds that have ever existed or will exist. There is no such thing as pure originality. So what then is the point? Why do we try with our finite tools to explain the inner workings of the infinite? I read a story somewhere about an anthropology professor who told his students, "you all have a little bit of 'I want to save the world' in you. That's why you're here, in college. I want you to know that it's okay if you only save one person and it's okay if that person is you." For a while, this story disturbed me. What a defeatist argument, I thought. But I am starting to think that maybe I was wrong. High up on the sheer rock cliffs, with more courage in their little pinkies than I have in my whole body, rock climbers make their move. Virtually invisible from both the sky and the ground, these individuals have the faith that they will be able to save themselves. There is a strange simplicity in giving yourself up to the same forces of nature that carved the canyons, letting them save you. And like the rocks, finding the patience and perseverance to believe that someday, when the time is right, you will change if not the whole world, then at least someone's world.