Will I ever be as cool as my parents?

Sometimes I worry that at 23 I'll never be as cool as my parents were. People don't usually think of their parents as cool, but mine definitely were. They never tried to kid us into thinking they were angels, reflecting on their decisions and hoping to impart at least some of their wisdom on us. But my parents were the people who DID things. They were slightly rebellious, outgoing, adventurous people. Sometimes I worry that my goody-two-shoes life means that I've let all my opportunities for acceptable rebellious adventures pass me by. It's almost time for... REAL LIFE. Ugh. How depressing does that sound? I'm jealous of my brother who has always bucked the conventional trends and is pursuing a career in culinary arts. (Plus, that will DEFINITELY benefit me later on!) And my little sister, who is applying to schools near Tahoe so that she can snowboard all the time. She's also debating deferring for a year and literally just working retail or waitressing while spending all her spare time with her boyfriend on their boards on the mountain. I am JEALOUS.

But then I remind myself that there's no need to have accomplished everything by age 23. In fact, by this time in my mother's life she was already pregnant with me and their lives were settling down. This year my mother will have been married more of her life than she was single. It's a bizzare concept when I really think about it.

I think what it comes down to is that I've always focused so much on pleasing my parents by focusing on the things you're supposed to that I gave up free time for the wild, crazy things I wanted to do. Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled to be graduating Northeastern magna cum laude with my bachelor's in journalism and sociology. I just... feel like I haven't quite reached my full potential yet. As soon as classes/finals are over, I'm going to go back to making more me time. And in that me time I want to work on my lists of goals that I've created (To Do Before 30 and Life Overall). I'm totally inspired too by the blogs My 99 Problems and Boston in 60. Maybe I'll work on a format like that for 2009?

My private property trumps your freedom of speech

Last night as I was leaving the library on Northeastern's campus I noticed a large chalk drawing on the granite landing outside. Now, chalking isn't unusual on campus. In fact, it's usually one of the cheapest and easiest ways for campus groups to advertise an event. This chalking was different though.

In large letters it read OBAMA HILLARY with the communist symbol in the middle.
I almost took a picture because I thought it was odd and interesting. But since it was almost 11:30 and cold, I wanted to get to the train as fast as possible.

I'm mad now that I didn't take a picture. I arrived on campus this morning at about 10 am to find several Northeastern maintenance employees washing the bricks in Krentzman quad. There was a puddle of blue chalk forming below the hose.

My immediate assumption was confirmed later when I got to the library to find a puddle in place of the chalking last night.

So my question is why did Northeastern find whatever the chalking meant to be so offensive that it needed to be washed away before most kids crossed campus this morning. What did the other chalkings say besides the one outside the library? If you know, please leave a comment.

12:27pm Update: Apparently chalking was done by "freshmen college republicans." It is a priviledge on campus, which makes total sense since it's private property. Northeastern retains the right to get rid of anything they deem not okay, especially if you didn't get permission. NEU's publicity rules.

Celebrating Life

Celebrate life. Carpe diem. Embrace those in your life that refuse to let you be too serious about the little things. Get outside. Be barefoot. Make grand plans. Execute with a thuroughness as yet unseen.

Those are the lessons I took away from last night. And yet today I found myself on the phone with my mom crying - against my desperate attempts not to - in the library about writing a paper for my capstone and about being seriously in debt (we've gone well beyond broke at this point). How do you applyt he above lessons when all these little, yet serious road blocks are in your way? At some point can you just ask to start with a fresh slate? Shouldn't everyone get one opportunity to say, "I know I was foolish, can I start over?"

My heart literally feels heavy. I can't tell if it's just because my chest is weak from this sickness I'm trying to fight off or symptom of anxiety. I just need to graduate, find a job, and unburden my debts. Nothing big.

Altruism in America

Excerpts from an article by David Graeber in Harper's (Jan 2007):

Imagine, for a moment, that the United States as it exists today were the creation of some ingenious social engineer. What assumptions about human nature could we say this engineer must have been working with? Certainly nothing like rational choice theory. For clearly our social engineer understands that the only way to convince human beings to enter into the world of work and the marketplace (that is, of mind-numbing labor and cutthroat competition) is to dangle the prospect of thereby being able to lavish money on one’s children, buy drinks for one’s friends, and, if one hits the jackpot, spend the rest of one’s life endowing museums and providing AIDS medications to impoverished countries in Africa. Our theorists are constantly trying to strip away the veil of appearances and show how all such apparently selfless gestures really mask mine kind of self-interested strategy, but in reality American society is better conceived as a battle over access to the right to behave altruistically. Selflessness–or, at least, the right to engage in high-minded activity–is not the strategy. It is the prize.

When we are dealing not with strangers but with friends, relatives, or enemies, a much more complicated set of motivations will generally come into play: envy, solidarity, pride, self-destructive grief, loyalty, romantic obsession, resentment, spite, shame, conviviality, the anticipation of shared enjoyment, the desire to show up a rival, and so on, These are the motivations impelling the major dramas of our lives that great novelists like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky immortalize but that social theorists, for some reason, tend to ignore.

...we are so used to operating inside impersonal markets that it never occurs to us to think how we would act if we had an economic system in which we treated people based on how we actually felt about them.

One might put it this way: if value is simply what one considers important, then money allows importance to take a liquid form, by enabling us to compare precise quantities of importance and trade one off for the other. If someone does accumulate a very large amount of money, the first thing he or she is likely to do is to try to convert it into something unique, whether it be Monet’s water lilies, a prizewinning racehorse, or an endowed chair at a university.

The problem, of course, is that a higher education system cannot be expanded forever. At a certain point one ends up with a significant portion of the population unable to find work even remotely in line with their qualifications, who have every reason to be angry about their situation, and who also have access to the entire history of radical thought.

More thoughts on this later.

The revolution will be televised, blogged, and podcast

Obama - Change I hope to believe in
Politics absolutely blow my mind sometimes. Obama has been crowned the Dem's nominee finally after a long, hard, and bitter road through primary season. At the time of my primary in New Hampshire, way back when, I voted for Edwards because his policies aligned most closely with what I feel are right. (One of the best websites for objective comparison: The Pew Forum for Religion & Politics.)And, partly I see now, because I didn't want to have to choose between the first black nominee and the first woman nominee for the big seat in this country. As the battle raged on, I found myself irritated with HRC for failing somehow - failing to be the WOMAN candidate, failing to capitalize on what many saw to be her greatest weakness. So now that the party's decision has been made, and even though I'm registered independent, I'm going to learn as much about Obama as I can and pray to god in November we make history.

Listening to his speech after the last primaries, I can't help but feel what most of his supporters have felt all along - that slight twinge of hope. Maybe? Maybe this candidate will do what he says he can, or at least he'll try, maybe he can save our country from being the ridiculed, petulant teenager of the world. We'll see what happens in the months to come.

Michael Michalko - Creative Negotiation
Interesting read about 2 people, 3 coins, and the way we negotiate power, assets, and position with each other. Reminds me of the mother who has one kid cut the peanut butter sandwich in two and then lets the other kid choose which side he wants. Cut unfairly and you're likely to get screwed, so you're better off being fair out of the gate. And who knows, maybe one day you're brother will give you the whole damn thing in exchange for your extra cookie.

New Math
And sometimes you just need something silly to make you laugh. Mike, the infinite YouTube master (at least to me), sent me this link last night: Bo Burnham - New Math.

The Attraction Paradox & Other Burning Questions

If you really want to convince someone that they want something, tell them that they can't have it. You probably wouldn't even really need to literally tell them, as long as you made them think that for some reason the object was forbidden.

Why? Why are we most attracted to people we cannot have? Or is it less of us being attracted to what we can't have than the essential struggle between the self and the other. I want that. You say no. I want to win, so I want it. But how often do we really win? How often do we buck society and say, "No, you know what: I want this; I deserve this; this is going to be mine."

What are we so afraid of? Insulting others? Being excluded from the group that is denying the object to us? Are relationships with others more important than the relationship you have with yourself?

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[Jan. 15, 2007]
When people move on are you supposed to just accept that? When you see pictures of people is it okay to wish to talk to them one more time, to hang out one more time, with them the way that they were? Is that okay to want sometimes, even if it's the easy way out.

Is it okay to not miss someone? Is it okay to not miss someone the way they are now, to not think about them everyday? Is it okay to be okay without them?

You wake up in the morning and it feels like a dream. When does it become real. When does it stop being a vacation and become your life? Do you have to let go for that happen? Can you hold on and move on? Or do they each require an amount of betrayal -- to reality, to memories, to dreams.

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[Feb. 13, 2006]
How come I can never make up my mind? How come I'm never satisfied? How come I always want what's just beyond my reach? Or the one thing I'm not doing? Why is it that everything on the outside, gets in my head and makes me doubt things? Does everyone, at a certain point, ask all these same questions and wonder about the answers?

Would you? Could you?

Drinking from bottled water as the kids ran barefoot through green, slimy water, wearing my fairly new, good quality clothing as they wore hand-me-downs that don't fit them quite right... dabbing the sweat off my face as kids with hundreds of bumps from skin disease run around as if nothing is wrong... Their eyes were just so sad. The camera made them smile, for some it even made them smile brightly, like those other smiles that I saw. But even then, there was something missing... And most of the eyes showed suffering. Just looking into them... I wished I could switch lives with them, give them everything I have.. and then felt worse because I didn't want to live there either. If I were given the choice to switch places with one of these children.. to give them a chance to live in the comfortable life full of opportunities that i've lived in... would I do it? What if I could trade 2 of them for 1 of me.. what about 3. I'd like to think that I would, but would I? Could I? And if I can't.. what does that say about me? Would you be able to do it? Some say because I'll be a doctor, its better that I stay healthy and that I get a good education... because I will be able to help more people that way. But what if one of those children that I could have switched lives with were going to discover the cure to cancer... or find the solution to world peace? Would I switch then? Would you? I would like to think I would... but would I - could I actually do it?

Read the rest of CSK's post & blog as she travels the world.

What if we're where we are, who we are because WE are the ones meant to cure cancer, solve world peace, or simply inspire? Is that narcisstic? Do we say we would switch lives because it's what we feel we should do - be altruistic?

There are so many more questions than answers.