skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A week ago, I woke up wanting to do something different with my day. So I packed up my computer and my history notes, made sure I had enough money for the bus fare, and hopped on the 86 bus to Harvard Square. I grabbed a quick lunch then settled down to study for my history final in a wee shop there called Tealuxe.
You know the icebreaker game that asks what special rooms you would have in your ultimate dream home, if money wasn't a problem? Well, I would have a room like Tealuxe. When you walk in, hundreds of little drawers fill up a whole wall behind the simple wooden counter. Each drawer is filled with its own loose leaf tea. The whole other wall is full of tea kettles, tea cups, and any other tea-related contraption you can imagine. You can order any of the over one hundred and fifty kinds of tea, hot or iced. Or you can be indecisive, like me, and just order one of the five teas that they brew twice daily and keep on tap. You can also buy a tin of the loose leaf tea for your own home-brewing pleasure. I don't remember exactly how many types they had, specifically. But I know that there are over one hundred and fifty, because I bought 30 grams of tea #151: white tea with undertones of coconut and pineapple. It's one of my new favorite places.
Later, as I was walking around Harvard Square, I did a little people watching. I was really struck by the extravagant means which some of the individuals there had embraced just to communicate their individuality. Funky, off-beat clothes; daring haircuts; unique shoes or no shoes at all - everyone wanted everyone else to know that they were not like everyone else. I couldn't help but look at myself. That morning I had donned my blue broomstick skirt and a white, short-sleeved button up shirt; tied my hair up; and wrapped a thin, blue scarf around my neck in a very European-esque manner despite the forecast for a swelteringly hot and humid day (by Boston standards). I had wanted everyone in Harvard Square to know that I am artistic, that I am the mainstream, that I am an individual. But at some level, that behavior distrubs me. Not so much in other people, I almost expect it from everyone else. But I thought, wrongly, that I was a different story.
I realized that just because I can identify someone else's issues doesn't mean that I am immune to those same issues. In fact, I have discovered that if I can see a weakness clearly in someone else's life, I am perhaps crippled by that same weakness to the same degree, if not more.
This whole process of discovery has given me a new pair of lenses with which I now perceive myself and those around me. I realized than over ninety percent of what the average person externalizes is self-motivated. For example, in sharing information in class or discussion or even in casual conversation with a friend, more often than not, one says something not because you genuinely would like to inform the person with which one is talking, but because one wants the recipient of the information to know that you know. In my own reflection, my best record was 50/50. Fifty percent other-motivated. Fifty percent self-motivated.
Public displays of affection, tears especially, are no better. We want everyone to know that we are sensitive, caring individual capable of being completely and wholly moved by the words we are hearing or the images we are seeing.
So where do we go from here? How can we hope to change something that seems to be so indelibly engrained upon our souls, woven into our very humanity?
Awareness helps: helps us to suspend judgement, helps to identify the problem, helps to know that you are not immune, helps us to fight against it. When I next get the urge to blurt out a random fact I know that's related to the conversation, I plan to bite my tongue. When I next find myself on the verge of tears in a theatre or any public place, I plan to discreetly deal with my emotions.
More importantly, I can utilize this understanding of a fundamental need: the need to be validated as a person, the need to have needs recognized, the need to feel special, the need to be loved. I can choose to love. The next time I'm in Harvard Square or anyone, I can share the joy of the Lord with freedom and reckless abandon rather than be taken aback by the myriad of personal choices. When someone shares a story or fact with me, I can receive the information with love, praise, and validation, in sincerity. When the person next to me begins to cry, I can give them the deference and recognition that I myself crave so desperately at times.
Isn't it great how God teaches these funny little lessons about ourselves, and all from a day surrounded by tea leaves...
So yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and tonight at IV (aka Intervarsity Christian Fellowship) Father Don spoke on what Lent really is. He gave a lot of history about the season of Lent, how certain traditions developed and the context through which such traditions can be applied today. While nothing earth-shattering or spectacular was revealed to me through his talk, I did think a lot about what Lent is to me.
Living on the campus of a Catholic school where, decidedly, not everyone is Catholic has been an interesting experience for me. I've made lots of wonderful friends from assorted backgrounds of faith, and life in general. But somehow, for some reason, I always feel like that part of me, the faith that is so central to who I am should be kept somewhere inside, somewhere that I can't go with everyone that I meet.
Walking across campus on Wednesday, knowing that I have a huge black cross on my forehead, was so exhilerating. Knowing, that for whatever it was worth, at least my identity as a Catholic was clear to those I met. Sure, no one could really know how deeply my faith takes root in my life from casually passing me in the Quad, but I know and that's what is really important. It made me wish that every day was Ash Wednesday, that I could walk around with an ashen cross on my forehead everyday, not in a prideful way, not to prove to everyone that I had gone to mass that day, but as some outward, physical symbol of what is so clear to me on the inside.
So that's my Lentan goal, besides trying to eliminate sugar from my diet, which is proving more difficult than anyone could imagine. :) To seek to live a life true to who I am and who God is in me...I think that's a journey I will be honored to travel.
I watched a video on Thursday for my Nursing class highlighting the history of the profession of nursing. It talked a lot about Florence Nightengale. Apparently when she opened her first school for nurses in the United States circa 1861 (she was called over by Lincoln's Secretary of State to improve the condition of military hospitals with an educated nursing staff), she published an advert in the papers putting the call out for prospective nurses. She had a couple of criteria, though. The women had to be single, homely, and unsentimental. Sounds like a charming women if I've ever heard of one.
After further examination of the criteria, I'm just not sure if nursing is the profession for me. :) Now, I am currently single, so the first really isn't much of a problem, but I should like very much to have the opportunity to go out or even marry someone (scandalous, I know) if I feel so inclined without the threat of losing my job.
As to the second, I'm not, obviously, a very objective judge, but I wouldn't really describe myself as "homely." Hmm...I guess I'll have to ask around. :)
The third is really where I feel I might have the biggest problem, though. Although there are many ways of viewing sentimentality, I feel like more than one apply to me. I am a self-admitted romantic. I like the happy endings, and the quirky coincidences, not just in a relationship with a guy, but in life. As I have grown up a bit over the past little bit here at school, I've been learning to meld my expectations and dreams with the reality of who I am and who other people are. But truly, my heart does beat a little faster when the guy gets the girl, all arguments are reconciled, and the classic riding off into the sunset occurs.
Translate that into my future profession, and I can see where I might be facing a little bit of a problem. People get sick, and people die, something that doesn't happen very often in your traditional, happy-ending book (unless it's a tragic death that serves the greater good and brings all involved into greater love and harmony a la Romeo and Juliet). But life is messy sometimes, and questions about it tend to go unanswered in this world, at least to our fundamental understanding.
I think, though, when it comes down to it, I'd rather be sentimental. If that means I'm going to feel the pain of heartache more acutely, then I accept that. It's better than not feeling at all...
One would think that after nearly two years of Anatomy and Physiology (between high school and college) that I would be extremely capable to maintain nicely moisturized and soft hands and feet. Surely I should know how best to care for my skin, but alas, my hands and feet are both sorely dry and cracking. Lovely. :)
It has been especially bad this winter, my first in Boston. I don't know why exactly. Perhaps it is the drier air, perhaps it is the more humid air. Maybe the root of the problem is the extreme cold, or maybe it's the heat in my room. Whatever the case is, before Christmas break, my hands were cracking and bleeding really badly. I think it might have been worse than a papercut. I went home and everthing was fine. My hands healed, and my feet started to look like feet.
I have now been back at school for a grand total of three hours, washed my hands twice, and I can see and feel the skin drying out. My reasonably human hands have transformed into something more reminiscent of a mummy or one of those frozen people they chop out the ice somewhere in Finland.
But really, in the grand scheme of things, everything could be much worse. For one, my skin could dry out so much that I can't bend my fingers at all, which would be terrible as I am finally getting around to starting a blog. Not to mention that eating and doing just about anything would be extremely difficult. Or, I could have the skin on my face dry out and tighten up to the point that I couldn't shut my eyes. That would be bad.
So I will continue to faithfully apply lotion whenever I think about it, wear my glittens whenever I go outside, and celebrate my first real winter and all that it brings.
