In high school, I always used to take pride in the fact that I didn’t have self-esteem issues like most other teenage girls do. However, I guess I never knocked on wood after I said that, and so it came back to bite me in the butt because in the past year, I’ve experienced the lowest confidence levels ever. Currently, I am still recovering from the loss. I don’t know how the loss came about, but there could be numerous reasons. It could be reasons due to another person, it could be psychological imbalances, or maybe it is inevitable and everyone must experience a time of low self-esteem. Whatever, the case, I am currently experiencing my time of depression, and I am trying to work my way out. However, in order to know what actions to take to get out of the rut, one has to know what maintained the confidence level before. I think this certain aspect varies from person to person, but for me, I think that main thing was the feeling of independence.
In my high school years, especially in the last two years, I was extremely confident. I was not too confident, to the point where I was egotistical, but I was confident to the point where I never ever compared myself to others. The thought of comparing myself to others never even dawned in my head. I was happy being myself and did not feel the need to change anything about me. I never once looked at another girl and thought – “oh, I wish I could look or be more like her”. I guess in a superior/inferior sense, if I ever did look at others, I felt gladder that I was not like them. I was proud that I was different and wanted to be nothing at all like anyone else. However, somewhere in my time of college, I lost those feelings. I began comparing myself to everyone else, wanting to be something I was not, and feeling as though I was not special enough. It worked in reverse order for me, I guess, because in most scenarios people hear about insecure high school students going to college and gaining a sense of independence, but for me I went to college and lost that sense of confidence. Maybe it was because there were so many other kids like me, and so I lost that feeling of being different. I do think that played a huge part of it. I relied too much on “being different” in my last two years of high school for my sources of confidence. Perhaps my confidence then was false. Why do I have to feel different to feel confident and independent?
It is extremely hard for me to feel independent when I am engulfed by masses of people that are just like me. When people exhibit just as much passion, if not more, for the same things you possess a passion for, and when people are just as unique as or more unique than you, it really makes it hard to feel distinguished from others in any way. I suppose one could think that everyone in the world in unique, but a lot of times, I doubt and feel that everyone really is not unique. This world is so interconnected; everyone it seems goes through the same emotions and experience similar events. It is almost scary how universal feelings are. Judging from experience, to me the saying that almost every thought is unoriginal is so true. So how do you fight that, accept that maybe you are not unique, and still be confident?
The definition of confidence is: “freedom from doubt; belief in yourself and your abilities”. I used to possess so much of this before, but now I feel I always doubt myself. I do not feel I lost any abilities that I possessed before, but I feel as though what I had is not really enough anymore for what I want to be. In addition, as mentioned in previous essays, I feel that I have lost some of my passion. But I think a lot of my passion was fueled by the same theory: that I had this passion and no one else did as much as I. I really need to dispose of this false feeling of confidence gained from feeling different. I need to realize that you don’t have to be different to be independent. I think I am starting to gain back my confidence, but I think I am doing it in a similar manner as before: by banking on the fact that I am different than others. But now I am wondering if I need to change that, is it really that wrong to create a false feeling of difference to gain confidence? Maybe I am heading in the right direction and by writing about this; it just shows that I again doubt myself. I do not know. My roommate was the one who first brought this to my attention… asking me “why do you have to feel like your different”. But thinking about it more, I think she herself, prides on the fact that she is different and unique. She has that arrogance I used to have in high school, but I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Age-Influenced Passion and Optimism
So I recently the question on whether passion and optimism is really determined by how a person feels or by their age was brought to my attention. If you meet a child, and have a conversation with them, you realize that they are filled with so much optimism and so much passion and purity. Merely asking a child what they want to be when they grow up, most will respond with extravagant answers such as an astronaut, an actor, or a doctor. However, as one grows older, “reality” sets in, and the ideals begin to weaken and the individual begins changing, accepting and compromising. If you ask and older person what they want to be, the answers become less and less extravagant, and a lot of them end up with the classic, cubicle, nine-to-five job. So bringing this idea with myself, I begin to wonder if my passion, creativity, and optimism to see change done with the environment is really fading out because of other reasons such as school, or if it is fading out because I am getting older and maybe that is just the natural progression of things.
This topic was brought to my attention through the simulation game we did in class. The instant I heard about the environmentalist – I knew which group I wanted to belong in. I actually thought that almost everyone would choose this option and that, some would have to sacrifice this group and to be in another, to make the numbers even, but surprisingly enough, there were the fewest amounts of people in our group, and it seemed as though some of the members were a little reluctant to join. In addition, after reading the scenario, which I thought was reasonable and agreed with most of it, many of my group members, especially the older ones, were somewhat satirizing it and wanting to alter it. “Do we have to go by these thoughts or can we modify them?” they asked.
Apparently they felt that the environmentalist scenario was too extreme and too optimistic. They wanted to modify it in a way that would make it more realistic with more compromises. One of the girls kept laughing and saying, “This was so me ten years ago”. Basically saying that was how she felt ten years ago, but how she no longer feels to this day. I’m sure she agreed with some of the thoughts, but she and many others in the group wanted to take a more “realistic” approach. (But then the question comes into mind, who is to say what is “realistic” and what is not? But that is another topic discussed perhaps later. For now, we will assume that realistic views, in this sense, deal with making compromises and accepting some things as impossible.) Although I say that my passion has faded some, after this exercise, I realized that I still have it in me. I still have a lot of that optimism and perhaps “extremist” passion in me, it is just buried, but this exercise brought it out some and re-reminded me about those feelings. It rekindled the flame a little. The people in my group had to turn to me for the “youthful, enthusiastic” ideals, for I suppose their purity had been tainted with realism and acceptance. But I am fearful that my optimism and passion, which I have already felt has faded, will deteriorate as I age. I fear that I will be one who thinks, “This is how I used to think ten years ago.” But hell, when I was reading that scenario, I was thinking… “This is how I used to think a year or two ago”. Now I understand why my father once described me as an idealist.
Does passion and optimism always have to die out with age? Does reality always have to “set in” as one gets older, or is there a way to stop it from happening? If there is a way, what is it? I want to find the way, and I want to take that path because I don’t want to loose more than I have already lost. I already feel my passion and optimism fading, and I feel its fading fast. College perhaps has for me made reality set in fast. Disappointments after disappointments have made me very weary. I have realized that maybe I will not be able to get all that I want done, done, and maybe I’ll just have to accept just making a small impact on helping improve environmental conditions on the world because every effort helps, right? These are what my recent thoughts have been, but they were not always this way. Perhaps it is too late for me; perhaps I cannot go back to that way of thinking. However, rekindled passionate feelings give me a little hope. Maybe there is a way to go back to those feelings, since I know they are not completely lost. But if I do go back, how do I keep them? How do I deal with dealing with disappointments, while keeping my passion and optimism alive? These are things that I need to figure out soon, so that I know what actions I need to take.
This topic was brought to my attention through the simulation game we did in class. The instant I heard about the environmentalist – I knew which group I wanted to belong in. I actually thought that almost everyone would choose this option and that, some would have to sacrifice this group and to be in another, to make the numbers even, but surprisingly enough, there were the fewest amounts of people in our group, and it seemed as though some of the members were a little reluctant to join. In addition, after reading the scenario, which I thought was reasonable and agreed with most of it, many of my group members, especially the older ones, were somewhat satirizing it and wanting to alter it. “Do we have to go by these thoughts or can we modify them?” they asked.
Apparently they felt that the environmentalist scenario was too extreme and too optimistic. They wanted to modify it in a way that would make it more realistic with more compromises. One of the girls kept laughing and saying, “This was so me ten years ago”. Basically saying that was how she felt ten years ago, but how she no longer feels to this day. I’m sure she agreed with some of the thoughts, but she and many others in the group wanted to take a more “realistic” approach. (But then the question comes into mind, who is to say what is “realistic” and what is not? But that is another topic discussed perhaps later. For now, we will assume that realistic views, in this sense, deal with making compromises and accepting some things as impossible.) Although I say that my passion has faded some, after this exercise, I realized that I still have it in me. I still have a lot of that optimism and perhaps “extremist” passion in me, it is just buried, but this exercise brought it out some and re-reminded me about those feelings. It rekindled the flame a little. The people in my group had to turn to me for the “youthful, enthusiastic” ideals, for I suppose their purity had been tainted with realism and acceptance. But I am fearful that my optimism and passion, which I have already felt has faded, will deteriorate as I age. I fear that I will be one who thinks, “This is how I used to think ten years ago.” But hell, when I was reading that scenario, I was thinking… “This is how I used to think a year or two ago”. Now I understand why my father once described me as an idealist.
Does passion and optimism always have to die out with age? Does reality always have to “set in” as one gets older, or is there a way to stop it from happening? If there is a way, what is it? I want to find the way, and I want to take that path because I don’t want to loose more than I have already lost. I already feel my passion and optimism fading, and I feel its fading fast. College perhaps has for me made reality set in fast. Disappointments after disappointments have made me very weary. I have realized that maybe I will not be able to get all that I want done, done, and maybe I’ll just have to accept just making a small impact on helping improve environmental conditions on the world because every effort helps, right? These are what my recent thoughts have been, but they were not always this way. Perhaps it is too late for me; perhaps I cannot go back to that way of thinking. However, rekindled passionate feelings give me a little hope. Maybe there is a way to go back to those feelings, since I know they are not completely lost. But if I do go back, how do I keep them? How do I deal with dealing with disappointments, while keeping my passion and optimism alive? These are things that I need to figure out soon, so that I know what actions I need to take.
Thursday, March 3, 2005
To Live For Success or To Live For Life
I came into UT with so much potential, so much ambition, so much creativity, so many goals, and an optimistic view on life. But, by my second semester here, school had ripped all those things away from me and crushed them without me even noticing how or when it happened although I did notice it happened. I became what they call a “good” studious student, but that was the extent of my life. That was all I was, a good student in the mass of thousands of other good students; an arbitrary number striving to get good numbers that decided whether I was a “smart, knowledgeable” nobody, or whether I was just a plain nobody. And boy did I strive to get those good numbers. My free time consisted primarily of studying, eating, sleeping, and then more studying. I fell into the routine. A perfect good little nobody student routine life – study during the week, go out a bit on weekend nights, then study some more. I was perfect in every which way – if you consider that being perfect. But I was missing something, and I knew I was missing something, but couldn’t really pinpoint exactly what it was that I was missing. I realize now I was missing life.
I remember my first year here was just very numb. It is hard to remember anything from then because I was so neutral to everything. The good part was that I knew that I was neutral, or I guess you could say apathetic, to things. People would ask me how things were going and I really didn’t have a response, other than things were going. There was no substance, things just went and that was all they did. They just went. I did things, though, and some of them were fun, but the fun was only temporary and didn’t have a lasting effect. I didn’t know how I became like this, I have faint notion of what it might have been, but I only realize it now. I think it may have been disappointment. I always used to say disappointment ate at you, and it really ate away at me. But the thing is, it ate away at me slowly, to the point where I didn’t notice it. Plus, my extreme passiveness didn’t allow me to get too “disappointed” with things too easily because I was very easy to take what was in front of me and take the easier, less confrontational route, even if it wasn’t really what I wanted. The fact that I did that, and still do that today, could be a bit of passivity and pessimism working together: a combination of a kind of acceptance that I’m never really going to get what I want, so I might as well settle. And that is exactly what I did, I settled. It seemed with every aspect of my life I compromised and settled. I did what I was good at – making the grades – but I didn’t strive for what I truly wanted – having a fulfilling life. Or maybe I didn’t know what I really wanted or I was scared and didn’t know how to approach doing it, and so that left me with doing only what I knew how to do best, studying and getting good grades. Whatever the case, I was in a major routine. Sophomore year came and the routine started changing.
Fall semester of sophomore year, I was still in a very distinct routine. However, it still consisted of very typical things. Now, not only was I a good student, but I was also a good girlfriend. Inserted into the equation of the studious student routine, was the girlfriend routine. Every week I would study and focus on school, and then on the weekends I would go home – driving all the way to north Dallas - and visit my boyfriend of 3 years. I must admit though, that it did take me a while to fall into the “good girlfriend” routine, and I’m very sorry to him that it took me that long because I think I hurt him in this way. However, I’m also sorry to myself that I fell into that position because it made me a weaker person. Now I was a combination of your stereotypical insecure girl who was extremely dependent on her boyfriend along with your stereotypical studious student. However, being an insecure girl with a boyfriend did add something new into the equation, something that I had been missing the previous year. It let me experience feelings again. Although they weren’t the best emotions all the time, they were emotions none the less, and they added a taste of some substance in my life. Bitter or sweet, having a taste of something is much better than not tasting anything at all. However, over the break I experienced the most horrible tastes of all: the taste of a heart broken. My boyfriend of three years broke up with me, only to start seeing someone not even a week after. By this time the bit of substance I did have in my life focused primarily on him and having him ripped away from my life really, really hurt. As shallow as this was, I was in a lot of pain – it was probably one of the worst things I’ve had to experience in my life. I have to admit that even here and now, about three months after the fact, I am still suffering. I feel horrible for it affecting me so much though, because it seems so shallow, and trust me, in my life I’ve had to face things that were much, much more horrible. Not saying that those things didn’t make me feel just as much pain as this, but the pain didn’t seem to last nearly as long as this, or maybe I was better at hiding it. Actually I think one of these tragic events that I experienced happened earlier last year, and may have been the cause for my extreme attachment to my ex, as a means to try and fill a void. I was in pain and mourning all winter break, and I came back to school extremely confused as to how I was going to handle it and if I was going to be handle it. Juggling heart break and despair with academic success is quite a task to take. Thus far, however, my life has seemed to go in a direction I didn’t completely anticipate.
I anticipated that I might be able to, or would try to avoid my ill thoughts about events from the previous year, by replacing them with school work. I knew it would be hard, but I figured that would be the only way I could deal with both, by avoiding one and focusing on another. I guess I planned on going back to the neutral school routine, where I didn’t allow myself to feel anything or latch on to any feelings. Which according to Buddhist thought is the best way to reach enlightenment. I would have made a perfect Buddhist during my first year here. However, things didn’t go as planned, but I can’t figure out if it is a good thing or a bad thing. I did the school thing for a couple of weeks, but it was hard. My fatalistic and now even more pessimistic view made it hard for me to dedicate my life to making good grades. I knew before that wasn’t the best way to live, but I didn’t know how to get out of the cycle. It was installed in me that I must study and make good grades. It has always been programmed in me to do this, and I don’t think I’ll really be able to get away from that, but one can still maintain to get good grades and have a life outside of school. However, I began to realize more and more that a grade really means nothing in the end. I mean, I used to realize this a while back, but was never able to get out of not stressing over grades. I was living my life for success and I didn’t know why, but I guess I didn’t really know what else to live for, since it’s so installed in our society to aim for success. But has no one considered living life for life?
One may ask, what does “life” encompass? It may encompass this strive for success, but I don’t think one should dedicate their entire life for just this, although this seems to be the case for many. Straying from my original plan of dedicating my life to “being a student”, I began to actually have a life outside of school. I cannot credit this “outside” life all to myself, however, and I owe a great deal to someone I met only a month ago. In our month of knowing each other, she has had a huge influence on my life. Some may see her as a bad influence on my life, pulling me away from studying all the time and stressing so much about school, while others may see her as a good influence, leading me to having fun and enjoying my days. I admit, sometimes even I have a bit of conflicting thoughts on whether it’s good that I’m being pulled away from my school ways to actually having a life. I think this is because my grades are somewhat reflecting it. Although, I still study as hard as I did before for my tests, and I’m putting the same amount of effort, my actual “test taking” skills have for some reason diminished, and I don’t really know why. It could be because of her influence or it could be because subconsciously I am forcing myself into realization that grades don’t matter – because I do have the knowledge and I do learn from the class but I just doesn’t seem to reflect on my tests because of pretty dumb reasons – or it could be that I’m doing just as well as I used to but my teachers have different expectations or it could be because ill thoughts about my break up are still haunting me. It could be a number of things, or a combination of all of them, but whatever it is, it is forcing me to reconsider things. Do I want to go back to “living for success”, blocking out all emotions, all life, and dedicating it to school work so that I can fair better on the tests – note that this might not be the right solution at all to “doing better” on these tests because I feel like I know the stuff just as well as I did with my other classes that I did well in. So taking this risk could prove faulty and may make me regret what I did.
Should I live solely for success, or should I live for life. I’m in a dilemma. Still stressing about grades – as you can probably see, – still trying to realize that they really don’t mean much in the end, and still trying to figure out how and what I want to live my life for. Should I accept what I was raised to do, to live for success, or should I actually start living life the way I want to live my life – the way I see most fulfilling. Although I’m not really sure what that way is, I can tell you one thing I know for sure: my idea of a fulfilling life isn’t one consisting of a million dollar house, expensive cars, and a rich neighborhood. That’s all I’ve concluded thus far. But this adds into the equation – why am I striving for good grades if I don’t even need them for my future. Although getting a good grade is nice for my pride presently, will it matter in the end? Is it good to stress about grades and success in school and dedicate your life around this one goal for a feeling of pride and a sense of accomplishment one day in the future, or is it better to live and enjoy every present moment and learn what you want to learn when you want to learn it?
I remember my first year here was just very numb. It is hard to remember anything from then because I was so neutral to everything. The good part was that I knew that I was neutral, or I guess you could say apathetic, to things. People would ask me how things were going and I really didn’t have a response, other than things were going. There was no substance, things just went and that was all they did. They just went. I did things, though, and some of them were fun, but the fun was only temporary and didn’t have a lasting effect. I didn’t know how I became like this, I have faint notion of what it might have been, but I only realize it now. I think it may have been disappointment. I always used to say disappointment ate at you, and it really ate away at me. But the thing is, it ate away at me slowly, to the point where I didn’t notice it. Plus, my extreme passiveness didn’t allow me to get too “disappointed” with things too easily because I was very easy to take what was in front of me and take the easier, less confrontational route, even if it wasn’t really what I wanted. The fact that I did that, and still do that today, could be a bit of passivity and pessimism working together: a combination of a kind of acceptance that I’m never really going to get what I want, so I might as well settle. And that is exactly what I did, I settled. It seemed with every aspect of my life I compromised and settled. I did what I was good at – making the grades – but I didn’t strive for what I truly wanted – having a fulfilling life. Or maybe I didn’t know what I really wanted or I was scared and didn’t know how to approach doing it, and so that left me with doing only what I knew how to do best, studying and getting good grades. Whatever the case, I was in a major routine. Sophomore year came and the routine started changing.
Fall semester of sophomore year, I was still in a very distinct routine. However, it still consisted of very typical things. Now, not only was I a good student, but I was also a good girlfriend. Inserted into the equation of the studious student routine, was the girlfriend routine. Every week I would study and focus on school, and then on the weekends I would go home – driving all the way to north Dallas - and visit my boyfriend of 3 years. I must admit though, that it did take me a while to fall into the “good girlfriend” routine, and I’m very sorry to him that it took me that long because I think I hurt him in this way. However, I’m also sorry to myself that I fell into that position because it made me a weaker person. Now I was a combination of your stereotypical insecure girl who was extremely dependent on her boyfriend along with your stereotypical studious student. However, being an insecure girl with a boyfriend did add something new into the equation, something that I had been missing the previous year. It let me experience feelings again. Although they weren’t the best emotions all the time, they were emotions none the less, and they added a taste of some substance in my life. Bitter or sweet, having a taste of something is much better than not tasting anything at all. However, over the break I experienced the most horrible tastes of all: the taste of a heart broken. My boyfriend of three years broke up with me, only to start seeing someone not even a week after. By this time the bit of substance I did have in my life focused primarily on him and having him ripped away from my life really, really hurt. As shallow as this was, I was in a lot of pain – it was probably one of the worst things I’ve had to experience in my life. I have to admit that even here and now, about three months after the fact, I am still suffering. I feel horrible for it affecting me so much though, because it seems so shallow, and trust me, in my life I’ve had to face things that were much, much more horrible. Not saying that those things didn’t make me feel just as much pain as this, but the pain didn’t seem to last nearly as long as this, or maybe I was better at hiding it. Actually I think one of these tragic events that I experienced happened earlier last year, and may have been the cause for my extreme attachment to my ex, as a means to try and fill a void. I was in pain and mourning all winter break, and I came back to school extremely confused as to how I was going to handle it and if I was going to be handle it. Juggling heart break and despair with academic success is quite a task to take. Thus far, however, my life has seemed to go in a direction I didn’t completely anticipate.
I anticipated that I might be able to, or would try to avoid my ill thoughts about events from the previous year, by replacing them with school work. I knew it would be hard, but I figured that would be the only way I could deal with both, by avoiding one and focusing on another. I guess I planned on going back to the neutral school routine, where I didn’t allow myself to feel anything or latch on to any feelings. Which according to Buddhist thought is the best way to reach enlightenment. I would have made a perfect Buddhist during my first year here. However, things didn’t go as planned, but I can’t figure out if it is a good thing or a bad thing. I did the school thing for a couple of weeks, but it was hard. My fatalistic and now even more pessimistic view made it hard for me to dedicate my life to making good grades. I knew before that wasn’t the best way to live, but I didn’t know how to get out of the cycle. It was installed in me that I must study and make good grades. It has always been programmed in me to do this, and I don’t think I’ll really be able to get away from that, but one can still maintain to get good grades and have a life outside of school. However, I began to realize more and more that a grade really means nothing in the end. I mean, I used to realize this a while back, but was never able to get out of not stressing over grades. I was living my life for success and I didn’t know why, but I guess I didn’t really know what else to live for, since it’s so installed in our society to aim for success. But has no one considered living life for life?
One may ask, what does “life” encompass? It may encompass this strive for success, but I don’t think one should dedicate their entire life for just this, although this seems to be the case for many. Straying from my original plan of dedicating my life to “being a student”, I began to actually have a life outside of school. I cannot credit this “outside” life all to myself, however, and I owe a great deal to someone I met only a month ago. In our month of knowing each other, she has had a huge influence on my life. Some may see her as a bad influence on my life, pulling me away from studying all the time and stressing so much about school, while others may see her as a good influence, leading me to having fun and enjoying my days. I admit, sometimes even I have a bit of conflicting thoughts on whether it’s good that I’m being pulled away from my school ways to actually having a life. I think this is because my grades are somewhat reflecting it. Although, I still study as hard as I did before for my tests, and I’m putting the same amount of effort, my actual “test taking” skills have for some reason diminished, and I don’t really know why. It could be because of her influence or it could be because subconsciously I am forcing myself into realization that grades don’t matter – because I do have the knowledge and I do learn from the class but I just doesn’t seem to reflect on my tests because of pretty dumb reasons – or it could be that I’m doing just as well as I used to but my teachers have different expectations or it could be because ill thoughts about my break up are still haunting me. It could be a number of things, or a combination of all of them, but whatever it is, it is forcing me to reconsider things. Do I want to go back to “living for success”, blocking out all emotions, all life, and dedicating it to school work so that I can fair better on the tests – note that this might not be the right solution at all to “doing better” on these tests because I feel like I know the stuff just as well as I did with my other classes that I did well in. So taking this risk could prove faulty and may make me regret what I did.
Should I live solely for success, or should I live for life. I’m in a dilemma. Still stressing about grades – as you can probably see, – still trying to realize that they really don’t mean much in the end, and still trying to figure out how and what I want to live my life for. Should I accept what I was raised to do, to live for success, or should I actually start living life the way I want to live my life – the way I see most fulfilling. Although I’m not really sure what that way is, I can tell you one thing I know for sure: my idea of a fulfilling life isn’t one consisting of a million dollar house, expensive cars, and a rich neighborhood. That’s all I’ve concluded thus far. But this adds into the equation – why am I striving for good grades if I don’t even need them for my future. Although getting a good grade is nice for my pride presently, will it matter in the end? Is it good to stress about grades and success in school and dedicate your life around this one goal for a feeling of pride and a sense of accomplishment one day in the future, or is it better to live and enjoy every present moment and learn what you want to learn when you want to learn it?
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