Category Archives: Thoughts

Thoughts

The Giving Up Thing

So one of the things about life is that from time to time we think about how it actually works. For example, this whole thing about giving up.

Have I ever given up? Was I ever close? The second question produces memories more quickly. As is often the case, a lot of these memories are connected with areas like university studies or work. The interesting thing is, in my mind it has often applied only to “big decisions” that affected my life trajectory, decisions that manifested change outwardly. The truth is, the question of whether one was ever close to giving up applies to a lot of issues and aspects, not just the ones that result in moving to another city or getting a raise.

When was I close to giving up? I was applying for scholarships to pay for my Masters degree and I was rejected for every single one of them. I remember very clearly how I got the last rejection letter, about three months before the application deadline for my chosen course. I had read it through and was sitting on my couch, a mixture of bewildered helplessness and unfamiliar lack of inspiration filling me up. I had tried for so long and so hard, what if this was a sign my aspirations were simply not going to work out? The voice did whisper – from very far away, from the deepest recesses of my brain: maybe I should give up?

Those two words have always carried such a strong sense of finality and that terrified me. The terror would make me stir inwardly and always bring me back to confronting the same two choices: let go and start the what ifs, or just do it again? There was nothing epic about it, no film-ready soundtrack in the background. It was real, in my face, and I had to deal with it. This scene would repeat itself several times over the course of the next few years.

I may not have gotten those scholarships, but I got a job straight out of graduation, samples from which were actually helpful in the application. I also had a family member say, “Don’t be paralyzed now.” My choice university accepted me, and looking back I wonder just what I was thinking, as it was the only one I applied to. For various reasons it did indeed turn out to be the right choice, or at least I didn’t have a massive list of things wrong with it and got the absolute best out of the years I spent there.

I was close to giving up when I was searching for a place to live after my second graduation (who hasn’t been). The process simply has no rules, only tips, and it’s an incredibly tiring experience. I was already expecting to have to figure out whether I could stay longer in my student dorm, though there was this one place I kept inquiring about. So maybe I wasn’t that close to giving up after all.

The what ifs come back after you succeed at something you might have let go, in a different way. If I hadn’t tried again, we wouldn’t be sitting in this park, having this conversation, laughing until we cried. I wouldn’t have seen this band in this arena. I wouldn’t have met several more mentors. “I wouldn’t have…” and so on, and so on. These moments are still exciting to me.

But to be able to take on something you do need to be able to let go, and that’s where giving up does come in. But not on yourself or what you want to do – for yourself. Sometimes you do really need to give up. On contacts that leave you with the wrong feeling no matter how often you try to make it work. On doing things that make you feel continuously uncomfortable. On saying things you neither really feel nor think. On holding on to destructive experiences, bad relationships.

Maybe the trick is simply listening to the inside. If the feeling spreading through your veins is verbalized with “I still need to do this”, then you haven’t given up, regardless of what is happening around you, regardless of whether you think you have. Whether it’s a mindset, an action, a project, a person, a letter you want to write, a conversation you need to have – we usually know inside. And we might even be lucky enough to have people around us to point us in the needed direction.

The possibility of grand things unknown is a very powerful competitor.

 

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Thoughts

Of Bullies and Not

I’m at a turning point at the moment, and sometimes in these cases you remember other pivotal phases of your life. And I find my thoughts turning to my high school years.

Being a teenage freshman and hoping to have more choice of subjects that interested me was enough to fill up my mind. Some crushes still accompanied me in to the autumn. I wasn’t really thinking about what high school would be like. I just assumed I was grown-up already. Then I walked in to my first class and immediately knew that the next years until graduation were going to be a challenge. And that being grown-up was probably just beginning (though I have felt that way several times since).

What stands out in my memory of that first day was the note I made in my diary. “It’s scary how opposite they are.” I didn’t mind being different, or other people being different. But quite a few people did. And they did things I didn’t want to be a part of. I wasn’t telling them so, I just didn’t need to participate. Our opposites became evident as soon as I declined to go for a smoke, refused to give my homework to copy, didn’t want to cut class, had to sit in the first row due to being nearsighted etc etc. The usual. Long story short, I was bullied all through high school.

There was a pack, as is often the case. But it was a numerous pack, consisting of half the class. There was one other girl I could hang out with, which helped. But they had picked me. And the remaining few huddled together, anxious to be ignored. Swift parental interference after I had overheard some threatening plans being made about me stopped the situation from escalating physically. When I came to school afterwards and bumped right in to one of the bullies, she said, with a strange mixture of disappointment and disbelief, “You told your parents?” Looks, whispers, outright insults, powdered chalk on my seat, noise when I had to make a presentation followed me. It wasn’t easy. But I remember knowing right then and there: they were all cowards.

My family, three teachers who weren’t afraid and setting myself goals kept me going.

Looking back now, I see that I was immediately not compromising on my values and simply not doing things I knew were bad for me. As if it was natural. I didn’t yet know how to put it in to words, but I was plunged in to feeling what it was like to stick with being yourself, living the version you know you should. The one that feels like the real one. I wasn’t proving anything – I simply was.

If meeting yourself was possible, it would undoubtedly be a strange experience. But I would give that girl a hug. I can see her now. She worked her butt off for her grades and was first to be called on the stage on her high school graduation day. The pack were astounded. She didn’t feel any regrets. She didn’t feel any sadness. I remember walking through the school dance area later that evening and some weird drunk guy grabbed my hands. I wrenched myself free and thought, I’ve had enough, I don’t have to be here anymore. I walked back home with my family, and if there is some way to feel as if there are literally wings speading behind your back, I had found it then.

Friends laugh with you if you trip and your skirt flies up, and at the same time they grab your arm to prevent you hurting yourself. “Next time you can tell me sooner” is what they say when you share something you confess has been bothering you for a while. You give back the happiness you receive. You keep getting as good as you want at something, or slow down, and they let you, while doing the same themselves. When they are proud of something they achieved, big or small, you’re proud with them. You remember daily things. You say you’re having a bad day and don’t get judged. You discover you are sometimes quiet next to each other and it feels just as comfortable as chatting. Laughter comes easily.

A few paragraphs about bullies, and you might also ask what does all this matter, it was a long time ago. True. But the experience made sure that I would not have illusions in life, but hope. That I would know friendship when I saw it. Would I have felt as deeply and as purely about good things later in life otherwise? I hope so.

 

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Thoughts

Five Things That Make One Feel Exposed

Being halfway to work and realizing you left your phone at home. Wanting to go back and get it but knowing you’ll be late otherwise. Wondering how you’ll coordinate getting to tonight’s spontaneous get-together at that new cafe. Forgetting things like email. Feeling so alone. I forgot my phone, alright?!

Your longer socks sliding down from underneath your pant legs. While you’re trying to walk through the city like a put-together human being. All the pulling up in the world won’t help.

People with time on their hands who want to tell you their life story and who don’t see that your hands don’t have time on them.

Hearing questions like, don’t you want to be doing something else for a living?/ you really think this city is cool?/ do you know (insert any male or female name from the country you’re from if you’re a foreigner). Get me out of here.

Suggestions at a flea market stall that you try on a skirt or trousers right then and there, and you know that asking, “Uh, do you have a changing room, or something?” is not a valid option, based on preliminary scanning of the perimeter. Oh, well. We’re all just doing the best we can.

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Thoughts

Facts of Life Worth Knowing

Chocolate is also a dish (sometimes) best served cold. That cool crunchiness carries happiness in it (just don’t bite down too hard).

You can match your umbrella to your bag and it looks cool. This is something I saw on the street in lilac. Style idea! Fashion statement!

Not jumping down to the level of a person being full-on, directly nasty to you and even smiling at them while they are is actually fun (not that this needs to be repeated often and if you can get out, do). It is entertaining to see them being perplexed.

Going online to find fan fiction if characters you were rooting for in a book did not work out as a romantic couple has an oddly therapeutic effect, within reason.

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Thoughts

Urban Scenes That Bring Out Sarcasm

Dudes (because obviously they are duuudes, not guys, not men and certainly not proper drivers) with slicked down hair, in v-necked T-shirts, who roar down the road in a Cabrio, with the music volume turned up to qualify as blastin’.

People who insist on screaming explosively at someone else in the street for something the other person did not do.

Teenagers walking around town with speakers attached to their players/iPods/ I don’t know. Aw. I didn’t think this still existed in this century. Cute that it got updated.

An older drunk man I once saw at a bus stop, staring sullenly at passing women and audibly spitting out, “Slut!”

Misspelled name cards on booked restaurant tables (but more a shake of the head and maybe just a sarcastic smile).

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