An Old Reflection on Love.

Reading back through some of my old journals tonight, I found this reflection in one from my senior year of college. It's pretty deep, but honest, I think...

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23 February 2008

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I have suddenly thought of Jesus' command that we love our enemies. Perhaps we are to love our enemies because they are no different than our selves. Perhaps in loving them, we learn also to love ourselves. Perhaps they are our "enemies" simply because they manifest the traits we work so hard to deny or ignore in ourselves. Perhaps the speck in my neighbor's eye is only a reflection of the plank in my own. Can I love my enemy? Or, perhaps the greater question, can I love my self? What if I am my own enemy? Will I accept my own faults, my own fears, my own pain? Or will I always flee my shadow side and what it tells me about myself?

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I am reminded of my own journey to trust and love again. Loss and betrayal ripped away my childhood innocence. Survival required strength--not grief, or fear, or anger. But I was angry; I was deeply afraid; and my pain tore at the very foundations of my being. For years, I built up my defenses, denied my pain, and forced myself to be perfect, to be strong, to be utterly independent. But the shadow never went away. As much as I tried to repress my own "negatives," they would pop up again--in loneliness, depression, anger.

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And then someone sneaked behind the walls. Ellen, my mentor for most of high school, began to love and care for me. She looked into my eyes and saw the depths of my soul; she saw everything imperfect that I hated about myself--and she loved me. In spite of my pain and anger, because of it, in the midst of it, she loved me. And it was her love that helped me learn to accept myself, to love myself. I embraced my shadow side--and all the pain it brought with it.

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But in finally letting myself feel that pain and accept it for what it was, I began to heal. I grieved the loss of my father, but also the loss of my mother's joy, my childhood trust, and my siblings' innocence. I was angry--at God, at Tony, at my father, at the church who wasn't there--and I learned not to be angry with myself for being angry. Healing came as I stopped blaming myself for all that had happened, as I was able to recognize how wrong our pain was. Not that it was wrong for us to feel it, but that the world is a wounded and unjust place.

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The shadows of my pain and fear became part of me, were integrated into who I am. Today, now, I am no longer ruled by the hurts of my past. They are part of my self, and they affect who I have become. Every so often, I cry for our loss, and for what should have been. But the shadows no longer overwhelm me.

Geometrical Formulations

"Tutor."

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It's a role I've played for years in numerous guises. As a junior and senior in high school, most of my income came from tutoring. Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometry, Trig, Pre-Calculus, Biology, Chemistry, Latin, English: I not only helped with homework, but also re-taught material covered in class, helped prep for tests, and previewed upcoming concepts.

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In college, I worked for a private tutoring center, expanding my repertoire to include Physics, Religion, SAT prep, and ACT prep. All of this to say, I think I've got a fair bit of tutoring experience under my belt... and it also probably demonstrates well that I enjoy tutoring!

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Anyway, that's not what this blog is really about.
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Actually, I wanted to share about one of the more exciting parts of today [warning: some of you will think me entirely bizarre for enjoying this, but...]: helping my fifteen year old sister with her Geometry homework after supper tonight.
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As a high schooler, or actually, as a middle schooler, I hated Geometry. It was the first time I hadn't (intuitively or otherwise) understood a math class. I was still one of the more advanced students in the class, but, like Physics, it was too conceptual and spatial for me. I did obviously learn most of the concepts, enough that I could do well in the class and even tutor the subject a few years later, but I neither understood nor enjoyed Geometry. Math was always my favourite subject, but Geometry I certainly could have done without!
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In college, years removed from the last math class I took (AP Calculus, as a junior), I found myself once again tutoring Geometry (and Physics...). As I studied the high school books and retaught the same concepts multiple times over the course of every week, Geometry finally clicked for me. Seven years after I took the class myself, I finally felt like I understood its most basic concepts.
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And then, tonight, the moment that brought on all of this random reflection: I took a nap before dinner and came downstairs to find that my family had finished eating. As I warmed up some tomato soup and made myself a salad, I half-listened to Dad helping Rachel (my really-close-to-15-year-old sister) with her Geometry homework. A few seconds after I sat down across the table from them, Rachel read me the problem that was pestering them both [Dad would surely have figured it out quickly had he not been taking post-surgery pain medication...].
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"Each figure above shows noncollinear rays with a common endpoint. Write a formula for the number of angles formed by n noncollinear rays with a common endpoint."

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As Rachel quickly read the problem to me, all the words rushed over my head and my own high school feelings about Geometry quickly came back: ahhh! I pled the kind of confused tiredness that comes in the first few (or thirty, if you're me) minutes after waking up, and I started eating my supper.

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But of course, like any other time that I get a problem into my head, my brain started processing it. I stole a look at the problem in the Geometry book, then started to doodle on a napkin. "What are you doing?," Rachel asked me. "Just trying to figure out the pattern," I helpfully explained. My napkin soon had columns of numbers like this:

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1 = 0 = n - 1 = n - n

2 = 1 = n - 1 = n - (n - 1)

3 = 3 = n = n - 0

4 = 6 = n + 2 = n + 1/2n

5 = 10 = n + 5 = 2n

6 = 15 = n + 9 = n + 1.5n

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Slowly, slowly, and as Rachel gave me numerous "you're so weird" glances, I started to see the pattern... and the formula emerged:

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n - [(3-n)/2]n = no. of angles

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So then, the easy part: explaining it in terms that a fifteen year old beginning Geometry student could understand! I showed her the formula, mostly explained how I got to it, let her copy it into her notebook, then made her "check" it against all five of the figures shown above. I also told her she should probably tell her teacher she had help; otherwise, she'd probably end up pegged as the "Geometry whiz kid." She told me not to worry: she was sure nobody else would solve the problem either and that her teacher would surely go over it in-depth. But, could she please take my napkin in to show her teacher?

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It feels good to play with numbers again.

Obama Nation

"They showed the president's speech today during 3rd and 4th lunches, and they're showing it again tomorrow during 1st and 2nd lunches. They're showing it in the auditorium. And you're not allowed to eat food or talk to your friends there. So, it's like, if you want to be anti-social and anorexic, you can watch the president."

--A fifteen year old's take on her school's concession to showing the president's speech.

Altruism?

After running multiple errands--for myself and my parents--I decided to come to Panera for lunch. Nice place, decent food, good place to write, free wi-fi, and a bit of the college atmosphere I've been missing a lot lately. Hot tomato soup, caesar salad, and a caramel latte: a warm and tasty indulgence on a chilly and overcast day.

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Driving into Death Crossing (as one of my friends refers to this shopping center), I saw that guy again, the one who sometimes stands on this corner with a cardboard sign:

SPARE SOME CHANGE

Sometimes it's on the back of a pizza box; today it was just a piece of old poster board with letters that ran a bit in the morning drizzle. I've seen him a few times before: he's a little taller than me, has brown hair, is a little scruffy on the chin, wears a white t-shirt, and carries a backpack.

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I've usually seen him while driving through this part of town. He sometimes stands at this intersection, sometimes elsewhere. I've thought about stopping, giving him some food or money or whatever, but hadn't ever done so. I feel like it'd be a good, kind, "Christian" thing to do, and I usually feel more than a tad guilty when I drive on by. It's just that, as much as I want to be compassionate and generous--altruistic, if you will--I don't usually feel comfortable doing such things. I'm young and female and read a few too many detective stories as an impressionable child. By all of which I mean, I'm generally afraid to stop and offer help to other motorists or to talk to strange, apparently homeless, men on street corners.

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But today, I decided to give it a try. After all, what horrible thing could happen at the corner of a busy intersection, in a popular restaurant at lunch time? I'd buy him lunch and visit with him a bit, do a random act of kindness for another human being and all that.

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So, I parked my car and walked over toward him. We chatted for a few minutes: awkward small talk interrupted by his dash to get the coins a woman offered him out the window of her car. A nickel fell under the vehicle, and he knelt to pick it up. I learnt that he's homeless, unemployed ("it's hard to get a job without a phone number or permanent address."), and that he moves around Virginia. He has a slight accent and avoided eye contact with me.

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I finally made my offer: "Can I buy you lunch?" In my mind, this was an invitation to come in out of the dreary day, get something hot to eat, and talk a little. I was curious to hear his story and figured he'd appreciate the chance for conversation.

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"I prefer ham and swiss," he politely informed me.

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"Oh, do you want me to bring it out to you?" He nodded his head slightly.

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At that moment, as I walked back toward the restaurant entrance, my cover was blown, at least for myself. So much for any self-righteous notions I may have had of getting to know this guy a little, perhaps hearing his story about how he ended up holding this sign in this town on this day: he preferred ham and swiss.

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As I waited in line to buy lunch for a guy whose name I never did learn, I realised that I had expected him to want to talk to me, to tell me his story. I guess I felt like he should, since, after all, wasn't I doing him a great favour by buying him lunch?

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But, instead of indulging my desire to feel fulfilled by this grand altruistic gesture, he accepted my gift and offered nothing else in return. While I went inside to collect a ham and swiss sandwich, apple, and brownie, he continued to hold his sign and collect the meager offerings of drivers halted by the red light.

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I came back out and gave him his paper bag. He thanked me and walked away. The encounter ended.

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I came inside to buy coffee and soup and get my fix of the "college cafe hang-out" atmosphere. No stories exchanged; no excessive expressions of gratitude; no good feeling about my generosity; no greater sense of meaning and connection in the world.

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Instead, all I came away with was another reminder that all people have dignity--and that I, like most everyone else, generally do things that will make me feel better about myself and my place in this world.

100 Books

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Copy this into your NOTES. Put an 'X' next to those you have read.


[] 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
[X] 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
[X] 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[X] 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
[X] 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
[X] 6 The Bible
[X] 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[X] 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[X] 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
[] 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 8

[X] 11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
[] 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[X] 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
[] 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
[] 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
[X] 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
[] 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
[] 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[X] 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[] 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 12

[] 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[X] 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
[] 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[] 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[X] 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
[] 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[X] 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[X] 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
[X] 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 17

[] 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[] 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[X] 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[X] 34 Emma - Jane Austen
[] 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
[X] 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
[] 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[] 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[X] 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
[X] 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total: 22

[] 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
[X] 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
[] 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[] 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
[] 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[X] 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[] 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[] 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[X] 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
[] 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 25

[] 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[X] 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
[] 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[] 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[] 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[] 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[] 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[X] 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[X] 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[] 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 28

[X] 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[] 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[] 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[] 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[X] 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[] 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[] 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[] 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[] 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[] 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 30

[X] 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[] 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
[X] 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
[] 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[] 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
[] 76 The Inferno - Dante
[] 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
[] 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
[] 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[] 80 Possession - AS Byatt

Total: 32

[X] 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
[] 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[X] 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[] 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
[] 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[] 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
[X] 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
[] 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[X] 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
[] 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 36

[X] 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[] 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[] 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[X] 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
[] 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[] 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[] 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[X] 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
[X] 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[] 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


My total: 40

Copied over from Facebook... because Alicia tagged me.

Life

Life is like a puzzle,

....an odd-shaped puzzle that doesn't fit.

You can try to fit the pieces together,

....but that's an impossible goal.

You can sort them by their type,

....family, friends, basketball, school.

You can sort the pieces by jumbling them together,

....a long lost shoe,

....your great-aunt Bertha.

No matter how you try to fit them,

....the pieces of life won't form a perfect puzzle,

....it will always be mishapen.

-Written February 7, 1999, when I would have been in seventh grade; found today in an old notebook in my parents' attic.

BASKETBALL

B is for the bumping and banging you feel.

A is for your attitude; sportsmanship or not.

S is for the shots, the 3 pointers, rebounds, and free throws.

K is for the kind of game you play, not whether you win or lose, but how you play.

E is for the excited fans, whether you win or lose, they're yelling in the stands.

T is for the technical your coach gets when you have bad refs, and he gets excited.

B is for the basketball, a leather sphere that is the center of your attention.

A is for your agressiveness during the game, but after, you can joke with the friend you fouled.

L is for the last second when a long 3 point puts you up by 2.

L is for the losses, many at first, but then you begin to have few.

...That's what basketball is all about!

-Written February 7, 1999, also found today.

A Letter to My Father

Dear Daddy,

I love you so, so much! And I miss you almost as much. We live in Grottoes, now. The house is okay--kinda small, though. I miss the farm in Keezletown, though. If you were here, you would be proud of me. I'm taking Band at school this year. I can play 1 or 2 songs on my trombone. I'm taking a 7th grade acellerated math class this year. It's cool! We're learning all sorts of neat algebra things. Nathan's getting big--he runs instead of crawls. He gets into everything! Nothing is safe from him [or] Rachel. Music is his thing, now. He loves to dance and its funny to watch him shake his knees.

Love ya Daddy,

Kristina

-Written circa September 1997, shortly after I started middle school and a few months after my dad passed away; found in another notebook in the attic.

A Dentist Appointment

Today my sister Melissa is going to the datsit, it is her first time, it is my mom's doter, when I go it will be April, melissa has two big teeth, thay have little yellow bits on tham, and I think I know wey, she fell dowe the steps when she was yoge, she hit the teeth, and thay almost came out, my mom had to pash tham back in, she was two,

-Written February 24, 1993, when I was seven years old.

Chapter-Books

I can raed chapter-books, I have lots of chapter-books at home, I have rad 4 chapter-books, and I am on the first chapter, of Ramona and Her Father, chapter books, are fun, do you know how to,? it is fun, if you have not you shord tuy, you will have fun, you cord raed 10 or 11 or more chapter books, I am going rad a 12 chapter book, than a 13 chapter book, now I am on a 7, you ; have to tuy, you will have fun fun fun, I am having fun, so you will, too, the books are DELL YEARLING BOOKS.

-Written February 1, 1993.