me before you (additional material)

Hi, all! It’s been a while, and while I’ve published more articles than just this one in the past several months, I really wanted to put out some additional material for the article that came out in June:

Why the Message of ‘Me Before You’ is So Dangerous

It’s been shared around 30,000 times now, and I’m so glad the word is getting out about how awful this film is – but here are the bits that I had to cut from the article for space. Let’s go.

• “Do you know the video game Life is Strange?” Madeleine asks me. I don’t. “There are two characters that attempt suicide in the game. One of them is an able-bodied sexual assault survivor and the other is a quadriplegic woman. In the former situation, the game puts stress on the player to save the able-bodied character. In the latter, there’s all this emphasis put on how much money the disabled character is costing her family. After each chapter of the game, they show you what percentage of players chose which option. The majority chose to assist in the suicide [of the disabled character]. I was absolutely shocked at how different their morals were when applied to a disabled body.”
  Madeleine on Life is Strange
• “This is about the complete devaluation of disabled lives,” says Alice Hewitt (silversarcasm.tumblr.com). “I feel so deeply uncomfortable and disgusted with how abled people are focusing on their own tears and emotions, how disabled people are just like f***ing tragedy vessels. I get so many people sending me messages like, ‘No, you don’t understand! The true message of the film is to live boldly and fulfill your potential!’ No, it’s not! That’s the message for abled people. The message for disabled people is ‘kill yourself so that abled people around you can profit from your death’.”
• “I really, really do not make Nazi comparisons lightly,” says Hewitt, “but creating propaganda videos encouraging the idea that disabled people are burdens, and it’s better for everyone for us to die, is absolutely something that happened in the Third Reich.”
• ^ She’s right. In the film, Will doesn’t want to “hold back” the people who love him. “I don’t want to become a burden” was a pull-quote from a New York Times article on assisted suicide. And in a Nazi propaganda photo from the 1930s, photos of disabled individuals are captioned “life only as a burden”
• …and “life without hope.”
• In reality, wheelchair use is an adjustment, but it’s not hopeless. “Many disabled people have a wildly different way of appreciating life and defining a life worth living,” says Shannon F. “I was so weirded out when Kylie Jenner did that photoshoot and used a wheelchair to represent being ‘trapped’ or ‘limited’ or whatever. I’ve always associated wheelchairs with liberation.”

I’m going to start trying to post more on this blog, including more “extras” (aka, I consistently send in articles that are hundreds of words over limit, so I feel compelled to stick those somewhere…).

Thanks, friends.

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boston

Well, here I am.  I’ve finished the first week of my internship in Boston.  The place – remember when I accidentally moved into a frat house? – is cleaner than clean (thank you, Mom), and my New Girl-esque living situation is beginning to transition into something more typical.  I can almost find my way to work without the help of Lola, and I’m starting to feel a little less awkward at work.

Work, by the way, is just about perfect.  I get to read and read and watch movies and learn.  I stayed two hours later than I was supposed to on my first day because right then, sitting in that brightly-colored Walden room felt a lot more like home than a house of people I didn’t know.

This doesn’t mean that I’m confident, though.  Anything but – I don’t feel very Savvy.  I second guess and double check and wonder why everyone else seems to know what they’re doing when I’m just trying to figure things out.  I keep feeling like I’ve got my grandfather’s PT Cruiser entered in a drag race and wondering if they’ll come by my desk and have to awkwardly break the news to me that they didn’t really mean to pick me to do this.

Comparing myself to others is one of my biggest struggles.  It’s something that we do in order to help ourselves, and to be honest, it can be useful.  Picking up on others’ cues and using role models to realize when you have an issue is healthy.  But like all things, an overabundance is problematic.  It’s much, much harder when you’re new somewhere, and when I look around and see how others are athletic, and know what they’re doing with their lives, and have real jobs, and seem so together, I start to feel inferior and overwhelmed.  I try to pattern my life onto someone else’s in order to reassure myself that I’m doing things the right way, the way that made them successful, the way that worked.

But here’s the truth that I know even as I try to trim away the unkempt edges of my choices: nobody has it all together.  The façade that I am presented with may look shiny and perfect, but I have no idea what someone is struggling with behind that.  Maybe they’ve got one area of their life under control, but maybe they struggle with something that you don’t.

And there’s never just one way to do things.  God’s guiding me somewhere right now, and I know that He’s working to lead me to Him and to my future, but the faster things start to happen, the more frightened I become.  The more I doubt the validity of my choices.

Being in a new place is weird and confusing, and you embarrass yourself and try not to ruin your new shoes in the rain and get blisters and drive badly and act awkward and get sick and cough all over your fellow, near-stranger intern and try to cook while the pot bubbles over and get lost in Boston and have to call your best friend to pretend that you know where you’re going, pushing down fear and uncertainty and anxiety and maybe crying in your new room a little when your mom comes by to help you move.  But that’s okay.

There’s this idea that being an adult means knowing what to do all the time, but there’s not a certain age when a switch in your skull flips back and turns on a hidden panel that tells you how to Do Grown Up Things.  Like most things, it’s a process.  You learn as you go, and your mistakes often teach you more than anything else.  It’s trial and error, but eventually, on certain issues, as the trials increase the errors decrease until you maybe almost understand what’s going on.

(That said, I think teenagers should be taught more useful life skills before they’re launched from college into the real world, but that’s another post entirely.)

Small steps.  That’s what I’m working with right now in this weird sort of half “real life” situation.  But here’s the thing – someone mentioned recently that we all talk about ‘real’ life as something in the future that we’ll get to eventually when we’re a little wiser, older, more stable, more.  But each stage of life is no more real than the last.  It’s all real life – your childhood, teenage years, college, adulthood.  And I feel like I’m in between things so often and think that I’m standing right on the edge of a huge, unknowable something that I want to label ‘real life’.  But it’s all real, and it’s an adventure.

As I have heard from those wiser than myself, you can’t keep waiting for ‘the future’ or you might miss out on your life.  Although this weird time when I’m just shy of two decades is preparing me for something, it’s not a dress rehearsal.  It’s the real deal, and I’m going to do my best at this and keep trusting God with my future and my present, because what life brings isn’t entirely in my hands.  It never has been.

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Check out Walden Media! http://www.walden.com/  MOVIES.  BOOKS.

rest

Spring Break is finally here, and I know that it’s going to run through my fingers like water, but before that happens, I’m going to try to be nourished a little bit.  It’s good to be home, especially after the craziness of the first half of the semester.  This was the most needed break I’ve ever encountered.  I was sick for exam week last week (as I always seem to be), and after the staying up too lates and the studying for exams but not maybe enoughs and general exhaustion… I was immensely ready for Spring Break to start.  Coming from the ice to the sun was startling.

Much of the time, I use this as an excuse.  “I’m tired” is my knee-jerk response to anyone’s “Are you okay?”, even if it isn’t entirely true.  And often I justify my own laziness by telling myself that I really need the rest.

And here’s where it gets so confusing for me, because I can never quite draw that line between merited and lazy excuse.  I always have something to do.  Even if I ignore it with outward laziness and the procrastination of watching too much TV, my insides are twisted and fighting with each other.  Even if I don’t have something to do, I’ve got something to do.  School projects are queued in my head in a different line than personal ones, and there’s always a story I should be working on, a goal I shouldn’t have missed, things I should have done.

It’s a hard mental balance for me, but I’m trying to learn, and I’m trying to slide that scale somewhere in between apathetic procrastination and frustrated perfectionism; between extroversion and the life of a hermit.  What often happens is that I end up staying up much later than my body can deal with because procrastinate homework, try to keep up with my own writing (in this and in stories), and eventually do that same work.  I’m trying to limn.

We need rest.

We need to take breaks to refresh ourselves physically, mentally, spiritually.  I should have learned this long ago.  Physically speaking, I am prone to sickness, and I need more actual rest and sleep than many people.  I keep trying to push myself past that, but I need to stop and take care of myself.

Spiritually speaking, I need it even more.  The Holy Spirit will never deny you peace if you ask Him for it, but I must remember to ask.  The most common excuse for not praying or reading my Bible is “I’m too busy”.  But even Jesus went off by himself in order to pray and be renewed (Luke 5:16).

And here’s the thing.  It may take up more of your time than you think you can spare.  But there comes a moment when rest becomes the priority, because you are no good to anyone killing yourself over your work, whatever it is.  The “wasted time” that periodic rest takes up is small in comparison to what will happen if you burn yourself out.

It happens all the time, especially with artists of any sort.  The manic sort of focus on your work can be good, to a degree.  Constant desire to create is comforting and wonderful, but you have to balance it with the rest of your life.  God himself rested! And then put the Sabbath into place – not for us to follow the rules, but for us to have a set time of not working.  Sure, maybe I use my exhaustion as an excuse to be lazy sometimes.  But I think it’s better to give yourself room to breathe.  

So, no.  I probably won’t finish that play I’ve been working on this week.  And that’s okay.

On my way home, I encountered a group of guys on their way to an infinitely more needed break.  My friends and I hung out with a group of young soldiers who were all going home briefly before they headed off to their different assignments.  We talked while we waited for our delayed flights, and they told us that they were the military’s “truck drivers”.  Their group often drives over the IEDs.

And after complaining of my own tiredness for so long, this was a paradigm shift.  Talk about perspective.  I don’t know what will happen to them, and I don’t think I’ll see them again, but I will pray that they enjoy their short rest now and be able to find rest even in the midst of such hard lives.

In conclusion?  Sleep!  Rest!  Take time to step back and renew yourself for whatever you will create in the future.  I’m going to spend some time with God, my family, my friends, and my books.

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P.S.  Help, I’m still listening to Bastille… to use their wording, they’re properly mental.

on revolutionaries

I’ve been a little bit obsessed with revolutionaries since seeing Les Mis, and although it’s waning now, I still wanted to examine why I felt so strongly for those who give their lives for what they believe in.

The revolutionary is otherworldly.  Men rarely follow mere mortals into death, but they will fight for stronger and more lasting things – ideas and the Divine.

I know that the trope of the revolutionary isn’t realistic, that revolutions today are bloody and futile and rash when there are other ways to revolt.  They’re desperate. But still I think that there is something attractive in the strength of ideals, because we are drawn to those who know for what they fight.

They have to be fighting for the right things, of course, because when you’re a revolutionary, you lose yourself almost entirely.  You become a man consumed, and at such a price, you’ve got to be sure that what you’re fighting for is worth the toll that it will eventually take on you, even demanding your life.

Something had unsettled me about Enjolras’ appearance in the Les Misérables movie, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  I realized the last time I saw the movie that Aaron Tveit’s (marvelously acted) Enjolras was both the youngest and the oldest looking that I’d seen.  His extreme youth reminded me that the Revolution of 1832 was indeed a student’s revolution where the boys who died for their beliefs were hardly older than I am now.  It also contrasted so heavily with the ancientness of his spirit that it shocked me.  Enjolras is a tired old man in a young man’s body, and sometimes, as the revolution consumes him, his weariness begins to show through the cracks, and I began to fear that revolution would rip him apart and burst through those seams.

In The Prelude, Wordsworth speaks of this same condition in his friend, Michel Beaupuis, the pre-Jacobin revolutionary in the French revolution of the late 18^th century:

“His temper was quite mastered by the times,
And they had blighted him, had eaten away
The beauty of his person, doing wrong
Alike to body and to mind”

Wordsworth notices that the revolution has stolen his friend’s youth.  And yet,

“a kind of radiant joy
Diffused around him, while he was intent
On works of love or freedom”

This is why we love them.  We admire the ones that turn their words into actions, whose lives are so transparent that there is no discrepancy between their beliefs and their deeds – a life without hypocrisy that seeps from the heart to the external.  When someone can live their beliefs out, as Wordsworth would say, “truth is more than truth”.  As a side note, we want to love someone like that, too.  Love isn’t really love when it exalts the other into an obsession; instead, we want a partner in a shared love, someone that we can love as we are both consumed by a greater passion.

The revolutionary, in his purest form, rejects himself in order to serve others and even to die for them.  In order to create a better world for his people, he gives his own life to make theirs worth living.

I know that this is a common theme with me, but I don’t think there is harm in repeating it: we are all men consumed.  The question is, by what? And is it worth the toll that it’s going to take on us?

If we’re truly living out our faith, we should be as radiant as the revolutionary, and the love of Christ should be ripping out of our hearts in order to touch those around us, breaking us apart in the process.  We look to the most revolutionary act of history for our hope – Jesus “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:6-8)  He gave his life to redeem ours and to change the fabric of our world from that moment on.

And that’s something worth both living and dying for.

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Read this: all aforementioned works.

Hear this: In a bout of revolutionary fervor, I unashamedly give you this: SING

journalling

I am in favor of journalling.  As catharsis, as a thought-process, and as a recording of not only events, but the way that God moves through them and your feelings and perceptions in them.

I finished my most recent journal a few weeks ago, and it was an odd feeling.  Accomplished, yes.  I realized that almost all of it detailed my summer and its decisions.  Each successive volume that I complete seems to cover a shorter and shorter span of time.  That’s a good thing, I think, because it means I’m writing more and more about less trivial things.  Looking back on Volume 1, which spanned several years and simply kept a record of events, I’m glad I’m growing.

I thought I’d post the last few pages of this one.

I’m sitting on my bed, per usual.  My desk is cluttered, and I haven’t used it.  I have three Czech Mucha posters above my desk, and it’s no secret that Hamlet is my favorite.  My super classy bookcase. Posters: El Greco, Rene Magritte, Sherlock, Vertigo.

I’ve finally opened the window, and a cool breeze is drifting in.  I can hear it softly moving the trees.  It’s carrying fall, and the seasons will change and change again until I am grown and dead and gone, and then they will continue to change.

I’ve been trying to name the breeze in the leaves.  It’s not quite an ocean. The best I can do is to call it breathing, living.

I’m reminded of the moment when Aslan approaches the statues in the White Witch’s castle, breathes softly on them, and brings them back to life.  Yes.  It’s carrying magic.

Deeper magic.

And God’s been breathing softly on my heart, and I know He’ll continue to do so as I turn and grumble and strive and harden.

It’s apt that this journal, filled with so much anguish and confusion and so many places, faces, worries, and miracles should end on such a note as this.  It isn’t what I expected. I was going to write about my doubts in writing, my feelings of inferiority in fiction, and my fear.

No.  Instead, I speak of peace, of changes, and of growth.  I speak of the God who breathes life into my own heart as surely as He moves the trees with an unseen power.

I worry, and I strive.

But there is One who takes my worries and shoulders my strivings, bearing them to death and beyond.  There is One who forgives and gives me life and stills my frantic soul.

So.

I will write.  I will write and write and look forward and backward.  I will live and not just exist, I will follow my God wherever He leads and trust in Him.

I will not write for others, afraid of their judgement.

I will write for myself a small bit, and for my readers, if they exist, and I will write for my God.

May the God of peace and life-giving breezes melt your frozen soul.  May the God who has the power to move mountains and dig rivers, who deserves all awe and glory yet loves us still, and who has the power to move our broken hearts in an immensely personal way, be with you always.  In the name of our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ,

Amen.

On to Volume 5.

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death

About a month ago, my father gave me a copy of my own will to read over before we left for my great-aunt’s funeral.  Suffice it to say, I did a lot of thinking about death that weekend.

It was a lovely service, but then came the moment that I always dreaded.  I hate looking into the casket and seeing the waxy, lifeless body of the person I had once known.  Their features are fixed in place, caked with a garish sort of makeup, and you can tell that there is no spark there.  “It doesn’t look like her,” I whispered to my father.  “That’s because it isn’t,” he returned.

That’s why I hate looking in there.  I understand why it happens, as a final farewell and to give closure to the grieved.  But you can tell when you look that something has left.  Everything that made up their personality, their tiny quirks, opinions, and Great Loves has gone.  Their soul has left that flimsy, mortal shell and entered into eternity.

A storm was brewing on our way to the funeral, ominous in the distance.  It split the sky into dark and light geometrics on our right, fading from black to white on the left.  We were in Oklahoma, and it looked very honestly as though some of the clouds would touch down.

My family was worried.  My brother hates tornadoes.  I turned to him and asked him what the worst thing that could happen was.  “Uh, we all die a horrible death?” he replied.  I met his eyes.  “Is that all?”

Because for the believer, death does not hold the same dreadful power that it once did.  It’s a crossing over from one dimension to the next – the vehicle that takes us (in a Narnian vocabulary) to Aslan’s Country.  “Death opens a door,” says C.S. Lewis, “out of a little, dark room (that’s all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.”

We no longer fear death, because all it can threaten is a better life than the one we have known here.  Eternity with God lies on the other side, and it is magnificent.  As someone once pointed out to me, life on earth is as close to hell as the Christian will ever be.  And if life here is so beautiful even despite the decay and depravity of this world, can you imagine what heaven will be like?  This world is but a dim reflection of the next, and eternity is being in God’s presence forever.

Just as we need not fear the consequence of death, we can also have faith in its timing.  And that’s scary, too, because there’s so much we want to do here, so many people we’re connected to, and so much life we want to live.  But I have realized this: if God takes me, then He will be even more glorified in my death.  If I die tomorrow, it simply means that my time here is finished and that my work here is done.  As long as there is still breath in my lungs and blood running in my veins, I have a mission.  The only reason I am still alive right now is because God has not finished with me here.

This summer I was driving my friend back to her house, moaning as we hit our third red light in a row.  She answered, “Maybe God just wants us to spend more time together.”  I laughed.  “No, seriously,” she said.

I think I forget how much of my life God has planned out.  He is a God of big pictures, but He is also a God of precise details.  There are so many reasons why we could have hit those lights.  What if we would have gotten in an accident if I’d gone through – and died?

I wondered then with shock – how many times has God saved my life without me even knowing?  How many details, breaths, or decisions could have resulted in my death had they been even slightly different?

My mortality stares me in the face at times like these – at funerals, during car rides, at night when I stare up at the shelves above my bed.  But I can stare back, unafraid and unangered.  I do not despair at death because I know that there is life beyond its threshold.  And it hurts, and the grief is almost too much to handle, and we don’t understand why God has Death take our loved ones when He does.  All I can say is that He knows better than we do.

One of the reasons that I love The Book Thief so much is that its narrator, Death, is not depicted as evil, but as tired, sad, and haunted by humans.  Death is only the messenger, and he is an old friend.  He tips his hat in my direction and I nod in his, knowing that he does his job without spite.  He takes each soul and carries it gently at its perfectly ordained time. I watch him pass, and he acknowledges me, and I know that when the day arrives when he comes for me, my work here will be finished, and I will have nothing to fear from him.

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Read this: 

“Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.”

“Crossing the Bar”, Alfred Lord Tennyson

shakespeare and co

When we first set foot in Paris, it was hot, we were dragging our luggage, and we didn’t know exactly where our hotel was.  But I didn’t care.  My first impression of Paris as we stepped out of the train station, despite the stress that my parents felt, was untainted.  I took in the cyclists, and the cafes, and the lampposts, and the trees planted every so often, and the effortlessly elegant natives that crossed the street with us.

There are a lot of beautiful people in Paris.  It’s sort of unfair, how attractive they are.

We finally caught a cab, and I cobbled together a sentence in French from my crash course and knowledge of Spanish, much to the delight of our cabbie.

We wandered that day to the Louvre and down to Notre Dame.  I think we walked the whole way, since we hadn’t bought our Metro passes yet.  It was gorgeous, and I loved it, even though I was incredibly out of it.

This is where my favorite discovery came.  I ended up going here twice.  Shakespeare and Co, an English-language bookstore in the heart of Paris.  My professor had mentioned it to me before and it sounded fascinating – who wouldn’t want to visit a bookstore that famous expats of the 1920s had frequented? Seriously.  Just imagining all of them converging on that one city, creating, thinking, writing… Ugh.

(On a related note, I saw Midnight in Paris shortly after I got home… OH MY GOSH.  It was brilliant.  I actually threw a pillow across the room when T.S. Eliot popped up.  But I’m getting sidetracked…)

This bookstore.  It’s… it’s one of the most incredible places I’ve been.  And that sounds odd, having seen monuments and architecture and museums.  But I cannot even describe the atmosphere there.  For a book lover, it was absolutely mind-blowing.  Books were organized enough to be found but not enough to give it an atmosphere of sterility… The whole place was just breathing.  Everyone inside that store was there because they wanted to be, and nobody was in a rush.  A love for books just permeated the whole place.

I could have stayed there forever, and I mean that.  I really do.  My family had to drag me out of the shop.  Everything about it was perfect, and I’ve never been anywhere like it.  It’s almost entirely classics, and the atmosphere is… homey?  There are signs, and little sections you can visit.  Hanging above the stairs is a sign that reads “Be not inhospitible to strangers lest they be angels in disguise”.  They have a section called “BEAT” and one simply titled “LOST” for Joyce, Hemingway, and their whole generation.  There’s also a well in the floor labeled “FEED THE STARVING WRITERS” and a cell filled with poetry.  Did I mention the entire Shakespeare section?

The best part about it, though, was the way that they encouraged reading and, further, writing.  They fostered creativity in that spot.  Upstairs, they had two reading rooms, a chess board, a piano, a typewriter, and the kid’s section.  There are so many places where you can write, though.  By the typewriter and the YA section, you can just leave notes, scraps of paper, and bits of prose and poetry, tacking a little bit of yourself up on a Metro ticket or shoving your soul into a crack in the wall.  A mirror in the poetry section also urged you to leave your own poems.

It was beautiful, and alive.

And so began a new adventure, which was chronicled with just as much love and affection as the last.  More later, maybe.

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thoughts on travel

Hello, my dears! Or rather, Guten tag… 🙂 right now, I’m on an Austrian train from Salzburg to Vienna, have finished with my school trip to Ireland (which was amazing) and am about a week into my family trip.  I’ll try to post as often as I can, because I have a lot to say, but we shall see.

This is where I went to church this morning:

It was lovely, and the choir may have honestly been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.  It was also entirely in German, but oh well.  Details.

I thought I’d briefly type up some of the things I’ve learned thus far while travelling.  Maybe it won’t be brief.  But here are my reflections:

Pack light.  With all of the stairs, trains, and cobbled streets, the last thing you want is a giant suitcase.  Mine, regrettably, seems to be growing with each stop.  I just keep sitting on it… Also, you don’t really need everything you think you’ll need.  Vacuum bags are a thing of beauty.

Another reason to pack light is that you’ll buy things.  And you should.  Not the stupid knick knacks that they sell at souvenir shops.  But if there’s something thats sort of expensive but that you’ll a) never see again b) use a lot c) cherish for a long time, buy it!  I ended up going into a tiny Parisian shop that sold dresses and coming out wearing one of them.  But it’s designed and made by a local woman, so I’m sort of excited about that.

Accept that you will lose something.  Like maybe a brand new CF card.  Or the food your brother steals from you.  Or all of your socks.

Accept that you will be a tourist.  That always makes me feel awkward, going to a sight and taking lots of pictures and speaking loudly in English, but I just had to say screw it and smile when my mom points the camera our way.

Be a good tourist, and not an ugly American.  That means being quiet (such a struggle for me…) and being aware of cultural differences, like bathroom fees and opening train doors…

Unfortunately, you’re still going to offend someone.  Like the very angry bathroom attendant who yelled at me when I didn’t have money to pay the optional fee.  I didn’t know!  Oops.

Make friends!!!  This one is my favorite.  People have so much to say.  Just start talking to someone.  If they’re unfriendly, then all you’ve lost is their opinion of you – and who cares.  They’re a stranger, let them think you’re weird or awkward.  If they’re friendly, though, you’ve gained a connection, a friend, a way to pass the time, and all of the stories that they tell you.  Be safe, CLEARLY.  But chatting with your cabbie, listening to the stories of two old Irish men revarnishing a Presbyterian church, getting emotional with someone about the Gutenburg Bible at TCD, or talking to a dapper British man reading Roald Dahl at a Parisian laverie? Probably okay.

Try to learn the basics of the language.  I haven’t been very stellar with this one this time around, but I can say “please” and “thank you”, apologize (sort of), say “it’s good”, and greet people.  My accent may be awful and embarrassing, and I’ll probably make some hilariously awful slip ups, but most people appreciate the effort.  Well, some people.  It’ll be a mess when we switch countries.  Oh well…

Be aware of the homeless.  This one doesn’t just apply to traveling.  Okay, if I could, I’d give money to every homeless person or street performer I came across.  Maybe not the rude ones.  But I feel for them, and I really want to help them.  Money doesn’t do much, but it’s one of the only ways I can show them that they are loved.  I’ll never forget.  We were walking into the subway system in one of the cities when this very sweet man asked for money.  We moved on, since I didn’t have any, but I got some and ran back to give it to him.  He kissed my hand and absolutely beamed.  Not because it was a lot of money, but because I went back for him.That said, be careful (girls especially).  Don’t be stupid, and don’t talk to people when you’re alone.  Some homeless people will hassle you, and many are mentally unbalanced, so don’t disregard your own safety in your generosity.

Wander.  Dear heaven, wander.  This is some of my favorite advice, because I’ve found some of my favorite places this way.  Stray a bit from the beaten path of touristy areas and find somewhere cool.  Shakespeare and Co is the most wonderful place in the world, and I LOVED IT, and I wanted to live there… I’ll probably write a whole post on it.  UGH.  And in Salzburg, we walked through an outdoor market and bought food from lots of different stalls, then stood around a table outside to eat. We had fried chicken, pretzels, and raspberries, and it was lovely.

Be patient with your fellow travellers.  This is something that I have not been, and I’m so sorry for that.  When you’re with someone constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, sharing rooms, you might start to wear on each other a little.  And that’s normal.  Be gracious, and forgiving.  Try not to fight (or apologize after you do).  Give each other space and alone time.

Don’t sleep in.  Also ridiculously difficult for me.  But when you roll over in bed, and it’s deliciously comfortable, and you’re warm and sleepy and never want to move, try to remember that you’re in a new place that begs to be explored.  (this is a bit of a confession/ self-reminder since it took me 30 minutes and my entire family yelling at me and pulling off the covers for me to get out of bed…)

Do your research.  It will help you be a savvy traveller, and you’ll feel super cool when you know your way around and have tickets and things planned out.  It also makes things less stressful.

But embrace when things don’t go according to plan.  I say when, because they won’t.  Make the most of it, though, and see where the changes take you, because it might be better than what you originally planned.  One day, our episode of Awkward Adventures in Germany was entitled “We don’t get off of trains when we’re supposed to”.  So it turns out that doors don’t actually open automatically… Another American was very upset about it.  And we were too, to a degree.  But we were sitting (serendipitously) next to a wonderfully sweet stranger from the Railway Advisory, and he helped us.  That day was also one of the most fun I’ve had with the jokes that happened and the people we met (Too late…….).

Record your adventures.  Take pictures (but don’t spend so much time behind the lens that you miss out!).  Keep a travel journal.  Don’t say, “I’ll remember”.  You won’t (I’ve forgotten many things this way).  Write it down.

Finally, consider it a beautiful, glorious thing that God is the same in any language.  Christianity allows people to keep their culture and individuality while still being a part of the same family, and it’s amazing to meet and see others who worship the same God all over the world.

That’s all for now!  And I realize that wasn’t brief at all.  OH WELL!  I’ll write more soon with excerpts from my Ireland travel journal and places I’ve been (SHAKESPEARE AND CO).  Until then!
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coincidence?

I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything about what God’s been doing in the past few weeks, because it’s been amazing and a hundred percent Him.  This month, He’s really shown me a lot and put me in different people’s paths.  In the past few weeks, I’ve had so many long conversations with people about God, what they believe, why they struggle with the ideas of Christianity, and what’s been going on in their lives.

During one of these conversations, my friend looked at me very seriously and intently and asked me if I believed in coincidences.

No.  I don’t.

The more I begin to see these connections, and the more I “coincidentally” run into people, the more I realize that everything fits together in a way that I can’t possibly imagine, orchestrated perfectly in an intricate, weaving dance by a Creator who knows what He’s doing more than I do.  Sometimes I imagine what it would look like to map out, lining out each person’s interaction with others as these lines converge and diverge, but that’s too overwhelming of a thought.

A few weeks ago, I felt that I should text this friend to tell her that she was loved, and so I did.  The day after that, I went to her dorm room and we talked for an hour and a half about God, Jesus, grace, and forgiveness.  And, coincidence.

I asked her why she wanted to know my views on coincidence, and her answer absolutely amazed me.  She said that she almost started crying when she got that text from me, because she had been going through so many horrible things at that very time, and it was exactly what she needed to hear.  She looked at me hesistantly and asked me if I’d known.  I chuckled and told her that I honestly had no idea.

I don’t believe in coincidence (at least on the important things.  You and your friend both wearing the same shirt is probably not that meaningful).  I think that God moves people and uses us, in all of our fallability, to do His work.  And what He did with that text message made Him more tangible to my friend, who had doubted if God even existed.

Since then, I’ve “run into” so many different people.  I happened to sit by a girl who goes to my church last weekend on a five hour bus ride, and we talked the entire ride.  She was also on the bus back, and took me back to campus when I didn’t have enough cash for a cab.

While visiting my friend, who also speaks Spanish, we met a homeless woman from Madrid and talked to her for a long time.

All these high school seniors are visiting my school right now, too, and some of them are staying with students.  I walked into my suitemate‘s room to find a kid that I went to pre-first with and figured out that all this time, we’d been living in the same neighborhood back home.

God does these sorts of things all the time, and there is no way that all of these coincidences could be coincidences.  It’s honestly impossible.

It’s like hearing a song and then realizing that it’s playing on the radio all the time, or meeting a person and then seeing them all over campus, or your neighborhood, or wherever you frequent the most.  Once you see God, and once you realize that He’s working, these random happenings grow extinct as you begin to see Him all the time.  He’s always been there.  You’d just never noticed it before.

A coincidence is nothing more than our inability to see.  A coincidence is when we don’t notice God moving in a powerful way and decide to attribute his magnificent power to mere chance.

So no, I don’t believe in coincidence.  I believe in God.

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keats, classes, and the future

So this morning, at 8:30, I signed up for classes for next semester.  Translation: I had freaked out about it all day yesterday, talked to several professors and parents until I finally had some semblance of a schedule… So I woke up at 8:25, clicked some buttons on my laptop while still in bed, and went back to sleep instead of going to Calc.  Uh…

Basically, I’ve decided to take Chem next semester, just to keep my options open.  And… well, lots of angsty feelings and miniature crises.

I rediscovered John Keats a few months ago, when I found a book of his poetry in a bookstore and bought it on the spot.  He has a marvellously sad and beautiful story (let’s add him to the list of my historical crushes who die young…).  Basically, he was a doctor, and he was torn between practicing medicine and writing poetry.  The enormous amount of time he spent being a doctor meant that he didn’t have time to write, and eventually (and scandalously), he left his career in order to pursue poetry.

Thank goodness he did, because he didn’t have much time to do so.  He was engaged to Fanny Brawne when his tuberculosis worsened, and because of his medical training, he knew that he was going to die.  It’s absolutely heartbreaking.  He died in Italy in the arms of his best friend.  He was only twenty-five.  Twenty five!

But as I sit in my MedPrep class (which basically tells you what it’s like becoming a doctor), I feel like Keats.  Okay, no, I’m not an amazing poet who will forever be remembered by history.  But I understand why he felt the way he did.  I understand feeling split between two very different things, feeling like that Raskolnikov, like a split soul.  I understand worrying that writing isn’t a real job, that I don’t have anything good to say.

Honestly? I hate making decisions.  Thinking about my future makes me feel a little sick to my stomach.  And I’m just tired, and burnt out, and just focusing on getting through finals and to summer.  But that also means another year passing, getting one step closer to making a dreadfully important choice.

And I don’t want to choose something, because I can see myself doing so many different things.  My problem? I love everything.

Alright, that’s a lie.  I don’t love diseases, or ants, or not sleeping, or being sick, or mosquitos, or homework, or fatty foods, or people reading over my shoulder, or getting bad grades, or axe murderers (oh… wait, also a lie… see Rodion Romonovich Raskolnikov…).  I don’t love decisions.

But you know what I mean.

My friends call Wednesdays, when I have MedPrep, my existential crisis days, which is pretty accurate.  It’s frustrating, because it reminds me of all the reasons I wanted to be a doctor in the first place and shows me how hard it is to balance medicine with anything else.

I love problem solving, people, helping others, learning new things, and seeing the beauty of the human body.  I love the logical side to it, the fact that it’s a puzzle with a solution.

But I don’t love how much time it takes.  It’d be years before I became a doctor, and then once you’re there, it’s so time consuming.  Medicine takes over your life, and I don’t know if I could deal with that.  That and people dying.

So, I’m struggling with this.  And thinking about it terrifies me.  Honestly, I just want to go and travel the world or live in a big city where I can learn and meet new people and collect their stories as I go.  I love meeting people and talking to them about the things that really matter.  The eternal things.

I’ve tried to give it up to God but a) I’m very good at worrying and b) I don’t know what He wants me to do.  Honestly? I just want to do whatever He would use me best in.  I know that He’ll use me in whatever I do… but still.

I want to do something that matters.  And sometimes I don’t know if that’s fueled by my own selfish desires for greatness or for the right reasons.  But I don’t want to waste my life.

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P.S.  I’m terribly sorry for the poorly-written, intensely personal post.  I don’t think I was very clear and or insightful.  Excuse me while I melt into an awkward puddle of feelings.

EDIT:I just got back from my meeting with my Christian group, and we talked about… worrying.  God is good, all the time, and He keeps reminding me to trust in Him and find my worth through that.