Boys and Girls Are Different

My cousin James and me when we were both babies

In my marriage prep class we've spent the last couple of weeks talking about how boys and girls are different. Is this really news to anyone? It shouldn't be, but I think what we do need reminding of is that our differences are meant to complement each other, not make us antagonistic towards each other. 

Today we were talking about how we think differently. And by "think", I don't mean your opinion on something, I mean it literally. This is something I never knew until I took this same class last semester, and I gather from my class's reaction that it was pretty much news to them, too. I remember a few months ago, I was talking to my little brother about some things that were bothering me. I can't remember exactly how the conversation went, but at some point he asked me if I ever just thought about nothing. I looked at him strangely and thought about it, and I realized that my brain never shuts off. I've never made a really concerted effort to not think about anything, but just normally, during the day, something's always knocking around in my brain. Usually several somethings at the same time. When I told him that, he looked at me sympathetically and said that that must be very exhausting.

And you know? It is. 

I think that that fact is one of the reasons I watch so many dramas and read so many books. With no "off" switch to keep myself from ODing on thinking, instead I've developed a strategy to switch my brain onto another track. Which is not a bad thing, per se. But it becomes a handicap when it turns into a crutch for not confronting and coping with my problems in healthier (and more effective) ways. Because as a friend of mine once pointed out to me, your problems are still there when you get back from your little "mind vacation", and now you have even less time to deal with them.

We also talked about how girls internalize things. That's a very true truth, too. Not all girls are the same in the extent to which they do this, but in extreme cases some girls take responsibility for everything - everything negative, that is. Rarely are girls with this problem as quick to internalize success as they are to internalize failure. It always seems like a very silly thing to do when you're talking about it in the abstract, but I've done my share of this, too. Every little critique, no matter how lovingly given, becomes the source of a major wound. And I think this results because of the third thing that we talked about today, which is that girls are very focused on what "I am" over what "I do". When you criticize what I do, I think the reason I take it so hard is because I feel like that critique - no matter how valid, no matter how nicely phrased, no matter how much praise accompanies it - is an attack on who I am. That every mistake I make is a flaw in my personality, that every failure to do something is a failure in who I am. 

There's a philosophical question for you - just how closely connected are what we do and who we are? Obviously, stubbing my toe is not an expression of how flawed I am - but is snapping at someone when I'm having a bad day? Not being a great cook shouldn't be a measure of what kind of person I am, but is it? The intellectual part of me scoffs at that, but there's another part of me that isn't quite so sure it isn't right. Like I said, not every girl struggles with this as much as some others, but I think it's a good thing to keep in mind. Hopefully it will make us more understanding of each other and more compassionate with each other when we make mistakes. Because once you've attacked someone for who they are, it's hard for that wound to heal and neither the wound or the hurt are easily forgotten. Sometimes this can lead to a strained relationship with the person who inflicted the wound, but I think the even scarier outcome is that the girl will internalize that relationship strain, as well, and hear a constant inner monologue of "If only I'd done better, this is all my fault, I should have done more, I should have done something different," etc for a long, long time.

I love to see the temple

Seoul Korea Temple

"Holiness to the Lord

The House of the Lord"

Today I am missing this haven of peace. Oh, there's a temple here, too. And I love it. But it doesn't hold quite the same significance. The Seoul temple is literally smack-dab in the middle of the city, and yet, when you step inside the grounds, you can barely hear the hustle and bustle, or even see much of the city.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The other day I was thinking about a friend of mine. This friend is a truly good person - she's kind, she loves people, she goes out of her way to make people feel welcomed and appreciated, she's smart, she's spiritual, she has a great grasp of the world and her place in it, and she's the kind of person you just want to be around all the time because she makes you feel like the world is a good place. And she has a killer smile and a ready laugh, not to mention she's very beautiful. Now, my own talents don't happen to lie in that direction at all. But as I started thinking about what my strong points are, that got me thinking about all the exceptions to those strengths.

The thing about strengths is that they always come with some kind of drawback attached. Think about it for a second: say you're really good at empathizing with people. That's a great thing, and it can really help you in interpersonal relationships. But think about this, too: sometimes being so empathetic can be completely overwhelming, or render you incapable of being objective about a situation or a person. Or being logical and rational - those are surely good, and they give you the ability to examine connections and weigh decisions carefully. But taking too-logical an approach to certain things - like religion or people's motivations - can be detrimental, not helpful. Let's take one of mine: perfectionism. This can be a great thing, because it can increase the overall quality of everything with which you're associated (like, for instance, how I just corrected my sentence so it wouldn't end with a preposition). On the flip side, it can also mean that nothing ever gets done to your specifications, or lead to a perpetual dissatisfaction with yourself and everyone else - because for sure this world is not a perfect place. It can lead to strife in personal and work relationships as your expectations for people's behavior and performance are unrealistically high. And the list continues, but I think I've made my point.

Every plus has its minus. I'd like to have perfect pitch, but I'd also have to live with knowing every time anyone was just a hair flat or sharp, and that might possibly ruin my enjoyment of some otherwise amazing performances.

So think about this the next time you're tempted to envy someone else's apparent strengths: Would you be willing to accept the drawbacks that come along with that strength you're coveting?

Life in a Bubble

Photo can be found here

When I was in school at St. John's, there was some talk of "the Johnnie bubble", as if there was an invisible forcefield surrounding our tiny little campus. And in a way, I think there was, a forcefield of ideas and lack of interest in what was happening in the world at large. Of course, there are always exceptions - not everyone was unaware of what was happening around us while we read the words of long-dead thinkers and talked about them in the shower, at dinner, and in class.

I admit I was firmly inside that bubble, not caring much about what was going on in the city outside SJC, let alone the state, country, and world outside of that. Inside a "bubble" there's a real sense that the things happening outside it are semi-dreamlike, a little unreal, and they certainly don't effect you or your world. Everything is distant and removed from you.

It wasn't until I was serving in my very last area in Korea on a mission - another very real type of bubble - that this view got substantially challenged. I started to think about that way of life, living like all the things outside your immediate sphere don't have much import or effect. And as with all other real thinking, it started snowballing into a reconsideration of how I'd fundamentally viewed the world to that point.

Bubbles are dangerous. Living in a bubble has disastrous effects on everything from your personal relationships to the economy of your country, depending on the size of that bubble you live in. When we cozily draw our comfortable, "normal" worldview around us and tuck ourselves into its warm, enveloping folds, we close our eyes and ears and hearts to the suffering and struggles of millions, even billions of people. We turn everyone outside it into "others" who become stereotypes and sometimes even less than human, or worst of all, simply vague concepts that aren't really that important in the grand scheme of things. We close ourselves off from new ideas, new ways of examining our problems, from the very experience we've been sent here to obtain. We rob ourselves of the opportunity to grow and become better people; we deny ourselves opportunities to love and serve our fellowmen. We do ourselves a horrible injustice, because what happens around us certainly does impact us. A web of choices and consequences connects your decision to purchase a certain item in one country to the dramatic altering of a person you've never met's life in another country. What you do matters. What other people do matters to you, or it should, because it effects you.

All you have to do to prove that is to examine history. Do you think people in America really gave much of a thought to an assassinated Archduke somewhere over in Europe in 1914? Probably not. Probably the majority of Americans didn't even know it had happened. And yet, the consequences of that one action - and all the actions that preceded that decision to act - had a terrible, tremendous impact on Americans then and are still effecting us even to this day. You have a stake in internal politics in China. The economic situation in Europe is effecting you right now. They may seem far off and remote, but life has a way of making a mountain out of a molehill.

Or maybe it's only our perception that makes one a mountain and another a molehill. The thing about bubbles is they have a disturbing tendency to pop.

Photo can be found here

Questions and Answers

I wrote a while back that I didn't know why I was here. Of course, no one can know all the reasons for everything - I'm a firm believer that everything serves more than one purpose, and that God never does anything for a single reason. But I think I know some of the answer to that question now, although the greater part of it goes unanswered.

This is the first time in recent memory that I've spent longer the four or five months in the same place, associating with the same people. In fact, at this point it's almost been twice that amount of time. And so, I think for the first time in a long time, I've learned something new about myself. Or rather, somethings. Putting yourself in a lot of new or different situations will teach you a lot about yourself, but I think I'd forgotten that remaining in the same place or situation for a while will also teach you about yourself. It's been awhile since I've had relationships with people that I didn't leave after just a few months. Being in the same place with the same people has given me the opportunity to examine myself in this context in a little more depth. Actually, I should be more accurate: it's not that I've learned anything really new about myself, per se, but that I've learned more about how those things are interconnected. I've (I think) come to see a little more clearly the whys of certain things, and how one thing influences another so that x result comes out. And it's never just one or two things. People - and especially their motivations and actions - are seriously complicated things.

To be honest, I'm not so happy with what I've discovered. But then, I've always been the type not to see the good in something for staring at its flaws, and that includes myself. Especially myself. It's like being unable to see the beauty of the whole forest for mourning over a few dead or dying trees. Or, when you finally do look around you, bemoaning that even the healthy, beautiful trees have their flaws. Of course they do. Nothing on this planet - human, animal, vegetable, mineral, or otherwise - is perfect, and expecting anything to be perfect will only result in disappointment. I think I've done a good job at embracing this in other people, but as of yet I struggle with allowing myself to make mistakes - to be human, in other words. Am I ever going to be perfectly patient? Not in this life. Perfectly understanding? Nope, not that either. Nor will I ever be perfectly honest or perfectly nice or perfectly full of love. But it's one thing to tell yourself that and know it intellectually, and quite another to forgive yourself and move on and let those imperfections and mistakes go. The gap between knowledge and true understanding can only be bridged with help, and no ordinary mortal help, at that. And is true with anything involving the divine and changes of human nature, that takes time and patience and a lot of work.

Happy Quarter-Century to Me!

25 years ago today, at this very hour (1230), I was just over six hours old.

In that 25 years, a lot has happened. 25 years. It's a whole quarter of a century.

The last year of my life has been quite the upheaval. I decided that I wasn't happy where I was (academically speaking). I dropped out of school. I changed my life goals. I nannied for a semester. I moved 2/3 of the way across the country. I made new friends, settled into a new educational atmosphere, took care of my grandparents, adjusted to a different culture, lost both grandfathers, made life decisions impacting my immediate (and possibly long-term) future. I've smiled, cried, laughed, shouted, slept and dreamed and made mistakes. I've grown. Perhaps not as much as I should have, or could have, but I know that I'm a better person today than I was one year ago, and that's something.

Here's hoping the next year is better than the last.

Not That Today Was A Rainy Day At All

비오는 날 (Rainy Day) by 김사랑 (Kim Sarang)

I love this song. I don't know that I've ever even listened to the lyrics, I just love the sound of his voice singing, the simple guitar accompaniment in the beginning, and the mellow, flowing melody. It captures perfectly the feel of a rainy day for me. And there's something about that first breath he takes before he starts singing, and every other intake of breath we hear throughout the track, that makes me love this song. Usually you don't get to hear the genesis of a song, but I think it's a good reminder that there are two sides to everything, and that we cannot just give continuously, but need to pause every once in a while to be refreshed.

The End of Summer

Summer has never been my favorite season. I much prefer the milder temperatures and back-to-school bustle of autumn. But the thing I do love about summer is the long hours of sunlight, and sitting on the porch lazily watching the sun set and swinging my feet. Summer evenings are especially gorgeous here in Utah, when the sun sets in a blaze of red-orange-yellow-pink glory behind the mountains. I love the slight chill that creeps into the air as the sky gradually darkens, and the ch-ch-ch-ch-ch of the sprinklers as they spray arcs of water across the lawn.

My last year of undergrad starts Monday. The evenings are getting chillier, despite the 90+ degree weather we still have during the day. September is less than a week away. Autumn is right around the corner now.

The State of AnnMarie

Houses and businesses in the middle of Seoul

Still jobless. Still place-to-live-less. Still carless. BUT! Purposeless no longer.

A couple of days ago, Tuesday to be exact (that would be 9 August), I finally decided what I'm going to do after I graduate next year.

I'm going to Korea, people.

Crossing the Han River running through the middle of Seoul in the morning on the train

Ever since April, when the whole question of what I was going to do after I (finally!) graduate in May 2012 first presented itself to my mind, I've been worrying this like a dog with a bone. Should I go to graduate school in the fall? In America? In Korea? What about working for a year and paying off a good chunk of my student loans? In America? In Korea? What the heck would I go to graduate school for, anyway? Something to do with Korea, yes, but what? Literature? Language? International politics? Should I try to work for the government? Should I teach? What should I do? Underneath this whole debate was the fact that I very much want to start a family - preferably before I die of old age. Or, you know, I turn 30. And let's face it, the odds of finding someone to marry in Korea are much smaller than they are in Utah, or even in the DC area (which is where I was contemplating going to grad school).

Kimchi pots at the historical village Minseokcheon

I finally took the question to the temple when I went on Tuesday. As I sat in the celestial room after thinking about it from many different angles, I concluded that there were really two things I want in life: First, I want to have a family and live with them in such a way that we can be together forever. Second, I want to serve the people in Korea in some fashion. Right now, I don't have control over the first one. But I do have control over the second one. And honestly, I don't want to do the "responsible thing" and go to graduate school; I want to go to Korea. This whole debate was ultimately just that: a debate between what I wanted to do and what I thought I should do. When I finally decided to go with my heart over my head, I felt so much better. Of course, that doesn't mean that I'm not open to a change of plans. I still trust that God, possessing the Big Picture, knows what's best for me better than I can. And so I'm willing to make a course correction if I need to. But at the same time, who's to say that what's best for me isn't going to Korea? Just because the odds of finding someone to marry in Korea are small doesn't mean that I won't find someone; after all, if that person is in Korea, it doesn't matter how good my odds are here, because he's somewhere else.

So there you have it. That's my plan. I'm still not solid on any of the specifics, like when exactly I'll go, or if I'll teach English or go to grad school in Seoul, or even if I might end up doing something else entirely. But I'm going. And I feel good about that. ^_^

Looking down on Seoul from one of the surrounding mountains

Some Things I Am Passionate About

family

For someone who travels around as much as I do, the fact that I'm a huge homebody is a little surprising. But of all the things that matter to me, my family matters the most. Despite their flaws, they are good people who love and appreciate each other, and me.

 learning & knowledge

 From the time I was very little, my parents instilled in me a love for knowledge. To me, the world is an amazing place full of so many things to know and learn about.

solutions

I love working out problems, finding the answers to complicated questions. Logic puzzles, crosswords, and sudokus are only part of it; practical things like rock climbing also fascinate me. I love that feeling when things finally click into place and you experience a moment of pure understanding.

connections

The world is probably more interconnected than we can possibly imagine. I love exploring how things are connected, on the micro scale as well as the macro. I love the connections between people and discovering why things and people react the way they do.

Korea

This won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me even a little bit. I love Korea. I love the people, I love the food, I love the culture, and I love the way I love Korea. I love my country, but I was born here without choosing it; to me Korea is the home I chose to love.

respect & understanding

I'm passionate about mutual understanding and respect. So many problems in this world are caused by making snap judgments about people and their actions based on how that person sees the world. The truth is that there's more than one "right" way to live, and most people do things for a reason - even if that reason or logic is not immediately apparent to you.

light

I love light. I love sunsets, the subtle glow of a sunlight-filled home, well-lit movie and drama sets, the way good lighting can make or break a picture. I love the warmth of the sun's rays, the twinkle of the stars in a pitch-black sky, the shy radiance of a quarter moon. I love how light can make my soul exult.

stories

Stories play an integral role in human existence. Stories can teach, can warn, can inspire and uplift, can be a way to express things too dangerous or too personal to express in any other way. The stories we tell ourselves tell us about ourselves; they can open a small glimpse into another world or another way of thinking. They offer us the opportunity to explore our lives and the possible consequences of our actions.

music

Of all the things humans do, I think music is the one that brings us closest to the divine. I love listening to music, and I love creating it; there is no other feeling quite like working together with others to bring to life something that makes you feel bigger than just the sum total of your disparate parts. The transcendence of Palestrina's gorgeous counterparts, the sheer triumph of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overature...with those as evidence, you could never convince me that there is no God.

Photo credits: books, solutions, understanding, stories

All That In Such A Small Space?

I've been thinking a lot recently about what I want. Lately my head has been such a mess that it's been driving me crazy, thinking about what people are thinking about me not having a job yet and not having found a place to live next semester yet, etc, etc, ad infinitum. Sometimes I wonder if they think I'm just being lazy for the heck of it, "freeloading" off my grandparents, like my grandpa sometimes accuses me of doing. It boggles my mind to think that some people really think I enjoy being like this, or that I don't know just how much of a loser I'm being, and so feel compelled to point it out to me. Trust me, I am infinitely more intimately acquainted with the situation than anyone else. Except maybe God. But anyway.

So, I've been thinking about what I want. The thing is...I'm not sure what that is. I have long term goals - I want to have a family, I want to live in Korea, I want to help the people of the world somehow - but the problem is, I don't have short-term goals to act as stepping stones to get to those long term goals. I don't know what to do. I don't know where I'm heading, exactly. Honestly, beyond the desire to have a family, I don't really have any other specific goals at all, really.

Thinking about all this has been making my head spin around and around until it literally gives me a headache. One morning I was in the shower, and I started thinking about all the things I've been pondering the last month or so: getting a job, paying for school, paying off my loans, finding a place to live, my relationship with my grandparents, my complete lack of any romantic relationships (ever in my life), domestic politics, international politics, feeling almost guilty about being full when millions of people are starving, using running water so casually when millions don't even have it, various and sundry character flaws, graduate school, taking the GRE, studying for the GRE, whether or not I should go to Korea and work a year before starting graduate school, contemplating what the heck I'm going to do with my life...etc. After a half-hour+ of this (I take long showers), I was ready to scream and desperate to find a way to just SHUT IT OFF already. I told a friend once that I felt like all my worries were roped together, and every time I started trying to think about one in an effort to find a solution, it gave the whole string a tug and everything came crashing into my brain all at once. It's enough to make one go insane.

I think I could handle all of this a little better if it wasn't for the fact that in the last year my entire life has totally changed. I moved all the way across the country into a very different cultural setting, left behind all my friends and my comfort zone, radically changed my educational environment and my expectations for my future, and live in an environment fraught with emotional pitfalls and guilt trips. My response to it all hasn't really done a lot to make me love and admire myself, which in turns feeds the cycle of think-get overwhelmed-avoid-reap the consequences-self loathe-repeat. And yet, I don't think much of all of that shows on the surface, except for maybe as it manifests as a bad attitude, increased touchiness and sensitivity, and an increased penchant for snapping at people and using hurtful sarcasm.

I need to find my iPod and start running again. Maybe that will help me sort out my head a bit and give me a little motivation to be up and doing. Only, I haven't seen my iPod in two weeks...I hope it didn't get stolen. ~sigh~

Gone

My family left this morning.



I miss them already. ~sigh~

Pink Martini - Aspettami

Half the Sky

Photo can be found here

A friend of mine is spending the summer in Uganda. She just posted this post about the thing she's found the hardest about being in Uganda. The whole post is very thought-provoking and interesting, but I'll just quote a little bit here:

"I may be in Africa right now, but still there is a separation between me and these people, as tangible as the glass pane separating me and these little boys.  It’s a weird feeling.  I wonder how long it takes in Africa to stop feeling like a philanthropic tourist.  I’ve wondered a lot since being here if I love Africa for the right reasons.  Or better, do I want to make changes in Africa for the right reasons?  There are over 8,000 NGOs registered in Uganda all trying to make a difference, some for the right reasons, some for other reasons.  It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of development here.  It’s different than I thought it would be.  It’s messy and disorganized and sometimes (often) ineffective.  I believe in it though.  And I believe that the sooner we’re on the same side of the glass the better it will be."

I just finished the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide yesterday. (I wrote a little about this before here, before the book came out. The authors had released excerpts as articles in the New York Times.) It's a sobering read, but a very eye-opening one as well. We, as humans, have a tendency to block out the uncomfortable things about life and the human existence. I find this tendency to be much stronger in America; the majority of us tend to turn cringing away from the homeless man on the streets of our own town, let alone from the suffering of millions in other countries. Safe in our little bubble of (tenuous and fragile) prosperity, we don't really want to spend a lot of time contemplating the plight of the uneducated, abused, malnourished, and impoverished "other" people that live all over the world. People that don't even have a real floor or running water, let alone the latest iPod or the newest smartphone.

And then, when we do finally look outside of our carefully constructed bubble world, we go into these people's countries and cultures and try to "solve the problem" with no reference to their situations within that culture. Which doesn't really solve anything and just takes a lot of money to achieve (usually) very minimal results. And so, for the last few days I've been thinking about that, and my friend's post just helped me articulate some of my thoughts. The authors of Half the Sky make the point that the kind of aid that countries like Uganda and Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, etc really need is the grassroots kind - that is, locals helping locals, funded by foreigners when the locals don't have the resources. Reading Half the Sky has really gotten me thinking about how we're supposed to fulfill the commandment the Savior gave us when He said we need to love our neighbors as ourselves. Obviously, we need to spread the gospel, and obviously it's the only thing that's really going to fix the problems in this world; everything else is just some form of a stopgap measure, when you get right down to it, or treating the symptoms instead of the actual disease, if you will. But on the other hand, the Church (or its members) can't just waltz into places and start teaching the people and telling everyone to clean up their act without so much as a by-your-leave, and some kind of action must be taken in the interim. The question is, what is most effective? And how can I be part of the solution instead of part of the problem?

That's what I've been pondering. And no solution has readily presented itself. That's the thing about problems that confront half the population of the world - there are no easy solutions.

Things As They Are

Photo can be found here

 Recently I have been pondering on things as they are: our justice system, our food, our cars, our school systems, even the music industry. And though it isn't very profound, it's been occurring to me, over and over, that just because things are as they are right now, doesn't mean that they should be that way. We punish criminals in this society by sending them to jail. Our cars run on gasoline. We HAVE cars, as opposed to any other form of transportation. We eat flour as our primary staple. We send our kids to school starting when they're five and teach them in a certain way, expecting them to stay in school for the majority of their youth.

It's true enough that things as they are work well enough for the majority the majority of the time. But if there's one thing that SJC taught me, it's to question your underlying assumptions. And what I see is the penal system failing to actually improve the lives of those who are sent through it, pollution from all the millions of personal cars and a lack of adequate public transportation, rising education costs and fewer returns on the investment of so much time and money. I see a culture getting increasingly top-heavy, bloated, and stagnating. To my eyes, Americans have little experience with things as they are for other people and other cultures, and so are touting their own status quo loud and long as "the way things should be". And really, "things as they are" is really only "things as I see them from my point of view", since none of us are capable of seeing all the facets, nuances, and variations of life.

Not that I'm advocating radical social change here. I'm just voicing what's been rattling around in my head lately, and maybe suggesting that you take a little time yourself to contemplate what things you're doing in your life just because "it's always been that way" or "we've always done it that way". Tradition and habit are not sufficient reasons for doing anything; there should be thoughtful meaning and purpose in everything you undertake. So get out this week and maybe drive to work or the grocery store along another route and take the opportunity to see things from a different perspective.

Quote can be found here