Final Project

When I wrote the proposal for this project, I said that it would discuss the importance of emotional connection and how that happens with so many mediums. However, in the last couple of months, this has been something that has been quite a challenge for me to do. I’ve been battling mental illness my entire life; major depression showed up six years ago. And, as it always tends to do in difficult and challenging times, my depression decided to rear its giant, terrifying, and mean head in the last two months. I’ve been in a state of perpetual vulnerability. While that is wonderful, as there are so many opportunities to learn and grow when we are at our most vulnerable, it has also been decidedly scary and almost life-threatening. 

This left me at a bit of a confusing crossroads. My project was supposed to be arguing the importance of connection, yet, in my own life, I was finding that I had to disconnect in order to keep it together and make it through the day. How does that add up? How can I make sense of these two seemingly opposing ideas?

I don’t know that I have a definitive answer to this question. It’s something I’m currently wrestling with, and probably will for years to come. But here are my thoughts on the matter.

To begin my exploration, I will discuss emotion. There are many theories that “describe” emotion; there are two in particular I would like to discuss. One is cognitive appraisal theory, which essentially states that emotions are subjective reactions that occur based on whether or not actions or situations contribute to furthering a goal of an individual. There are also much more physiologically based explanations that state that emotions are what occur when we notice physiological changes in our bodies. What I personally believe is a combination of the two theories: that emotions are a subjective interpretation of events that occur in our lives and are simultaneously affected by our physiological reactions to those events. 

Emotions allow us to connect to others, to make decisions, and to protect ourselves. They provide opportunities for growth and opportunities to strengthen and enjoy what is already present in our lives. In my opinion, they allow us to feel alive. 

The beginning of the semester was very exploratory for me. I came to this class, I opened my mind to a completely new way of thinking, and I took in all I could from this course, its texts, and the discussion of my peers. I sucked the marrow out of this experience, so to speak. Eventually, I realized this was wholeheartedly overwhelming. 

I left this class feeling out of control every day. Some days I would get home and burst into tears. Others, I would be in a rage. More than a few I left feeling helpless and suicidal. This scared the shit out of me. How come I was leaving class with such strong emotional reactions? What was I doing wrong? Why was I feeling so vulnerable and confused?

I soon realized that I was somehow tapping into parts of myself that hadn’t been accessed in years. Not since high school, undoubtedly the more difficult and darkest years of my life thus far. I was excited and frustrated, for, as my therapist always says, we can only truly deal with our demons until we go there, we experience them, we fully invite them into our being and accept them in their entirety. So something in this class was pushing me to deal with all of these emotions that I’ve been pushing away for some time.

I got stuck on the why, as I so often do. Why is this class triggering me? Why am I so emotional? When no answers came, I moved on to where. Where is this all coming from? Where does Dr. Sexson get these crazy ideas about life and mythology and that everything is repeated? Who gave him the authority to decide this? And I got mad. And confused. And it always came back to this class. Every time. Something in this class was getting under my skin.

Most days, I leave this classroom with a heightened heart rate. Sometimes, I’m warm, heated, noticeably upset. Others I am quiet, slow, more subdued. There have been a few where I leave neutral, as I came in, disconnected. There are even a few where I left happy, uplifted, inspired. The majority, however, I left feeling some sort of negative reaction. 

This frustrated me. Thus far in college, I have been able to skate by and do what I needed, write papers, read books, “memorize” information, and not really gain anything from the process. And, at the same time, it didn’t hurt. So while I wasn’t necessarily learning or growing, I also wasn’t struggling emotionally each and every day.

But this class. This class is different. Last semester, I decided I wanted to take a class that would challenge me. I wanted something that would make me think. I was hesitant to take this course, for I knew it would be different from anything to which I was accustomed. But I decided to do it. To put my neck out there and try something new. And as disappointed as I may have seemed thus far, I wasn’t. 

As you may recall, I was very resistant to the idea that life is mythology continually repeated in different bodies. This notion drove me crazy for the first six weeks of class. I hated it. I perceived it as very disempowering, as if I didn’t have control over my actions. Even when Dr. Sexson explained to me that if I am aware, I have the power to choose the myths I embody, I was still frustrated.

After some time, some frustration, lots of tears, and lots of confusion, I’ve figured out why this class has been such a challenge for me. I have been resisting, with every ounce of my being, the idea that Dr. Sexson is right. 

You know how they say acceptance of a problem is the first step in recovery? I wholeheartedly believe that, partially because I’ve been brainwashed by therapy, and partially because it makes logical sense. Once I started to entertain the idea of my life being displaced myth, it all sort of fell together. And I seemingly fell apart. 

I realized that, while each day is a brand new day, I come into them with the same stories and feelings and experiences that I have had with me for my entire life. Yes, new things are added, and yes, some things eventually fade away. However, those feelings, those emotions, those ideas, those perceptions, those wishes, those desires, those needs, those questions, those fears… They are all there. They are all a part of me. And they are displaced into each and every new day.

There are emotions that I haven’t touched in years. They’ve come up slightly, and I’ve pushed them away. Some of the darkest depths of my being are parts of me that I was born with, that I’ve experienced, and that will be a part of me until I die. However, they are parts of me that I have to accept and embrace in order to have power over the myths I displace and therefore the path I choose. Fighting their reality will get me nowhere.

My therapist said something the other day that astounded me. We were talking about my feelings the previous evening and how everything hurt so badly and how I felt so empty and yet so overwhelmed at the same time. I couldn’t put into words everything I was feeling, because, as Emerson theorizes, all language is essentially analogy, and an inadequate analogy at that. I was frustrated and confused and starting sinking into those feelings again. I felt them come up, envelop me, take over every piece of who I am. She asked me how I felt. I was scared. I was alone. I was empty. I was bombarded. I was out of control. I was desperate. I was scared. 

Then she asked a question.

“Can these feelings kill you?”

I thought about it. At first, I thought, of course! Have you not been listening to me? Have you not heard my life’s history? I was angry. Insulted, even. Then I realized something. It was not the emotion that almost killed me. Rather, it was my actions. I may have felt suicidal, but the feeling itself did not stop my heart from beating. That’s when I realized emotions are stories in my head, responses in my body, cultural scripts that I read. They are socialized. They are universal. They are harmless. They are necessary. They are vital to finding meaning in my life. They are nothing, and they are everything. 

I am my own myth. I have many emotions. Some of them repeat themselves daily; some of them take years to pop up again and remind me they exist. Yet they always seem to reappear. Sometimes they are new or a little different, based on the situation. Sometimes they are shared with different people in my life than the previous time. Sometimes they are experienced on my own. But these same core emotions keep showing up, all because of some story being told, some myth being played out in my life that allows me to experience life the way many before me have. 

Yes, sometimes, I have to take a break and put my emotions on the back burner for a bit. I can’t always be 100% on and connected and feeling everything. But that’s isn’t wrong and it doesn’t mean I’m not living my life. It’s a defense mechanism that has been around since the beginning of man; it’s simply another myth. 

Sometimes there’s an obvious connection between my life and a classic Greek myth. Sometimes that connection is a bit more blurry. These connections, however, are all based on situations that bring up particular emotions. Regardless of the theory of emotions you believe, we all experience emotions and we all experience many of the same emotions. This is why we are able to empathize. This is why we are able to connect with one another over mutual (and sometimes seemingly unrelated) experiences. And this, above all else, is why the notion of life being displaced myth truly works.

The Maddening Task of Memorizing Kubla Khan

As the title implies, this memorization task has been a bit of a struggle for me. The last time I had to memorize a poem was in 6^th grade Honors English, and I’m fairly certain it was a 20 line poem. And it was much easier than Kubla Khan. Kubla Khan is quite the project to tackle. I find myself back and forth. If I just say it, it makes no sense. When I feel it, it makes sense. But then I don’t know what I’m saying. And I’m still not sure that it is ingrained enough in my memory for me to feel it and perform it as it was intended.

I’ve found myself reading several cultural scripts to a) put off memorizing this poem and b) excuse myself from memorizing it. I said I could do it; I always pull things off in the end. I said that I can’t do it, that I’m a product of my generation, used to having anything and everything available at the click of the button. Excuses, excuses!  I have plenty.

As I’ve buckled down and worked on memorizing, I’ve let out far more f-bombs than I can proudly state. It’s hard! It’s a sweet and miserable challenge! I’m having a hard time not going AWOL with my language right here. But I digress…

Why is it that memorizing things has become so difficult for me? I can memorize concepts and explain them. So why is this a challenge? It is 3 stanzas, 54 lines, 349 words, barely more than a page. I know hundreds of songs, if not thousands. I thought of putting this to the tune of a song I know. It didn’t feel right. I feel an immense pressure to do this poem justice. I don’t want to simply put it to the tune of some Lady Gaga song. It has to be performed. As I said after Brady performed it a week ago, I felt it made sense for the first time when it was recited in this way.

It’s a poem. It’s just a poem. Is it just a poem? What is it? Why is it so important? Why has it held up so well over time? SO MANY QUESTIONS! STOP!

There is something here that “makes me a part of my generation:” my desire for perfection. Perhaps my environment is more appropriate. I was raised by college educated parents, and going to college was never an option. I worked myself til I was sick so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting into a school and I could have as many options as possible. I was a 4.0 student at the best all-female high school in the city. And then I fell apart. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I gave up. But I didn’t. I became dysfunctional, but I’ve never let go of the desire for perfection, nor will I likely ever.

So where does his leave me? How does this relate to the task at hand?

I have been given the assignment of performing a classic Romantic poem in front of a class of very unique and intelligent individuals. What a task! It’s a bit terrifying because it’s so very vulnerable. The thing is, I can only perform this poem if I truly open myself up to it and let it run through me, baring my soul in the process. That’s scary as hell. And if I’m gonna do it, I want to do it right. No half-hearted attempts here. It has to be spot on.

This kind of pressure can be crippling. It’s also completely internal, so I can get rid of it at any moment. However, because of my love for extremes, I find getting rid of that flips me to excuses. So this memorization task has been a serious test in my ability to find balance in my life.

The thing is, I don’t think a balanced performance of this poem is adequate. That’s not how poetry of this magnitude is to be performed. As I said, it has to be felt, to flow through me. So how do I exercise balance in my mental attitude toward the assignment while putting myself into it wholeheartedly? Is this the ultimate exercise in balance or absolute extremism masked by an attempt at balance?

I really wish I knew. I also wish I knew this poem as well as I want to. I’m working on it, and we’ll see if I get there. I’ll see if I can find a balanced path to an extreme performance. My therapist would be proud….

Maybe.

Memory: My Desire For The Past

For some reason, this song has seemed very relevant recently. I've been listening (read: singing along pretending I'm a Broadway star) to it on repeat.

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I've been searching for something in my past, a feeling, a time, a state of mind. Yet, as we all know, we are possessed by the past yet can never truly experience it in the same way. I've been exploring this longing to go back in time. Why it is that I feel it, what the appeal is, and why, though I know it will never be the same, I have this constant desire to go back to the "good ol' days."

The first part of this is easy. I feel a desire to go back in time for two reasons. One is that I am struggling with myself right now and that entails a lot of unknown. As an individual who particularly desires control, the past is appealing because I know the end result and there is no uncertainty. The other reason I desire the past is because it seems easier compared to the present because I've already been through it. What I so often forget, however, is how hard the past felt when it was the present. It often hurt and was accompanied by all of the same fears and doubts and questions that I possess right now. So, in actuality, the past isn't nearly as present as I think it is because I overlook the parts I don't want to see. It's so easy to forget the difficult or push it aside when I think what I am currently feeling is worse. So I forget that part and the past seems easy.

Regardless, there is this incessant desire within me to go back. Despite my realization that it's not as positive as I may recall and the physical impossibility (at least to my knowledge), I still yearn for the past. The obvious reason for this longing is simple: happiness. As a human, I crave happiness each and every day. Those times when I'm not happy, I often look to my past to remember times when I was happy to either get me through the day or perhaps help me to change my behavior so I can attempt to replicate those happy feelings. The more complex part of this is the role my memory plays. Memory is a very interesting thing. I've discussed and read at length on the topic. It's much less reliable than we tend to believe and is very impressionable. When we recall a memory, it physically changes the memory. So, if I recall a memory incorrectly, my brain changes the memory. When this happens over and over, this new, fabricated memory is  reinforced and becomes the memory. The original story may be completely gone.

For some reason, I often think of a cross country party we had at McGregor Lake in high school when I'm having a rough time. It was an excellent day. Burgers and food and swimming and fun! What's not to love? What's not to desire when I'm having a bad day? If I think further on it, I remember that I was very uncomfortable that day. I felt isolated from my team and alone in a crowd. Not a very fun feeling. But, when I'm having a bad day, I don't want to remember that part. And, were I to let it, I could get rid of the real memory altogether and change the story. Maybe not get rid of it entirely, but displace so it is much more difficult to access than the "happy" memory.

So I'm having a tough day and I remember this happy time on the lake and I want to go back. But what would that really do for me? Do I really want to be on that lake, with those people, having that experience again? With any of these longings for the past, the immediate answer is yes. Some memories are more convoluted because I truly cannot see any negatives, and perhaps there were none for some of them. But still, do I really want to go back? Do I really want to go back to being six and running through corn fields? As appealing as it is in the moment, I don't think I really do.

I believe that harnessing these experiences and desiring to relive them are a way of holding on to hope and trying to rekindle those positive feelings in my current state. I know that I can't go back to the past, but I can emotionally bring the past to my present. And that doesn't always work, so that's where the hope comes in. If I can remember a happy time when I'm sad, even if it seems to great a challenge to change my mood, at least I'm able to remember and desire that I reach a similar place again. And it's those little moments that keep me going, though it may not always feel that way at the time. At the end of the day, it's all about hope.

Additions to Today's Discussion

What I wanted to add to this discussion today was my further developed thoughts on emotion. As I said in class, The Magus took over my life in a way that was emotional, heartbreaking, and, at times, infuriating. In class I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Dr. Sexson’s comment about being able to feel something better than another infuriated me at first. Then, I realized that I did just that with The Magus. But something about that still didn’t feel right. And here is what it is.

We all experience emotion in our own, individual way. Sure, there are similarities. My ecstatic probably doesn’t look like the average person’s distraught. That being said, emotion is such a personal experience. I am going back to my original thought that it’s ridiculous to say that one can feel emotion more accurately or with more depth than the person who originally experienced it. There is no such thing as wrong emotion or better emotion or anything that implies ranking. It is simply different. If I told Nicholas that I felt his emotion better than he, I would not blame him for slapping me across the face. I’d do the same thing if someone said that to me because it’s pretty insulting. Even though I have an incredible capacity for compassion, I would never EVER say that I can feel an emotion better than the person who went through it. Here is why.

We are all different. We all have different life experiences and backgrounds that have shaped who we are today, right now, in this moment. I have no goddamn clue how anyone else feels because I don’t know an individual’s life and everything that has happened in that time and how it feels to that person. Those cumulative experiences result in an emotional experience that will be decidedly different from my own. Even if I was the identical twin of this person and went through life side by side this person, I wouldn’t say that I know how this person feels.

I recognize here that I am a) being stubborn and not very open and b) clearly a product of my environment and what I have been taught. However, I’m not okay with saying or thinking or believing that I can feel something better than someone else. That is a value judgement that I do not feel okay making. Emotions are so personal and so raw; words do not do them justice. Sometimes we may feel very similar emotions. Sometimes certain individuals may experience emotions more intensely than another. However, there is no better or worse. Not in my mind, at least.

I've been thinking a lot lately about gender roles and how those play into emotion. There is a lot of conflicting research regarding whether men or women are more emotional. I hate the premise of this research because I like to believe that we have a bit more control over our actions than what our traditional gender roles seem to allow. Perhaps I’m naïve, but I don’t see a fundamental difference between men and women with the exception of certain biological differences after puberty. I belive the majority of sex differences are culturally created, defined, and perpetuated. This comes back to how I feel about emotion. People say women are more emotional than men. Be it beuase of their periods, estrogen, or any other trivial thing, we have this idea in our culture that women are much more emotional than men. However, how can we know this if we’re limited by language to describe emotion and the words we have don’t do emotion justice? All research in this field is flawed from the beginning because of this one simple fact. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. It kind of works because they’re kind of related, but it’s not quite right. Emotion is simply not something you can accurately put into words and describe, let alone make sex-based generalizations or value judgments about it. I don’t buy it. Perhaps it’s twelve years of psychotherapy that’s brainwashed me, but that is something that I hold true to my heart and have no intention of changing anytime soon.



As a side note, I am almost a bit frustrated myself with being so stubborn on this. I feel as if I've done a good job of staying open-minded to the ideas in this course, and this is something that I have no desire to change. I think this requires some further exploration for my own sake. I want to delve deeper and find out why this is so important to me.

I’ve really been struggling with this journal on quality. I’ve written it a few times and it hasn’t yet come out right. I think I may have started to figure this out, though it still seems a bit I complete to me. It's a large question, and I suppose I may never have an answer that I fully understand.

Something of quality is something that provides meaning in life. It’s hard to define because it’s very individual. Emotional connection and vulnerability provide meaning in my life. As such, relationships of quality in my life are ones with emotional depth and openness. However, my friend Bob over here may see quality as something completely different. It may be creating music or even curing cancer that provides meaning in his life, and therefore also quality. I could list billions of examples; it simply is different for everyone.

A quality education is not something that can be institutionally implemented because of the personal nature of quality. One could argue that small liberal arts schools provide quality in education. Similarly, it could be argued that large research institutions provide the best quality of education. I think what’s best is a little bit of everything.

Because quality is so individualized, there needs to be a wide variety of options (be that classes, professors, or extracurricular opportunities) in order to best provide and promote quality in the collegiate realm. You need English professors who are far out and mystical and perhaps a little nuts (Yes, I mean you Dr. Sexson). You need physics professors who are completely immersed in their research and in finding new ways of looking at the world. You need people who know other cultures, people who are experts on our own. You need excited undergraduates who bring a new perspective and perhaps even some of those kids who seem like they’re lazy and unmotivated but really they’re investing their time in something outside of the classroom that is meaningful to them. You need everything and everyone. That is what produces quality.

One side of a story does very little for us. As we said in class this past week, if there is only one message, there is no meaning to be conveyed. It is through multiple perspectives that we are able to expand our horizons and grow as individuals. It is through this exploration and exposure to new things that we find meaning; we find what works for us. This is what provides quality in the educational system, and I would argue, in life. The more you experience, the more you are able to decipher what is meaningful to you and find quality as it fits in your own life. 

Annie Dillard Startled Me!

It startled me when Annie Dillard ended such a dark and depressing book on a light note. For almost two hundred pages, I hurt. Reading the stories of genocide, of deformed babies, of murders... It was pretty rough. Fascinating, but rough. I suppose there were bits and pieces of optimism laced throughout the book, but I felt pretty negatively for the majority of my reading. I suck into a mini depression with each new story. Reading the horrific things that happen, sometimes naturally, sometimes at the hand of another man, is emotional. Death is something that is difficult for me to embrace at this point in my life. Logically, I know it is a part of life, and yet it is often difficult for me to see past the pain. I was constantly reminded of my own experiences of death reading this book. But with such an optimistic end, I had to go back and explore. Upon rereading, I saw all of the positives, all of the uplifting tidbits that were scattered throughout these pages. I realized that the whole time, Dillard was attempting to get me to see the contradictions; to hold two contradictory yet equally true thoughts in my mind simultaneously. This is not something that comes easily to me, which is likely why I missed it at first. Upon further reflection, I was able to see both the optimism and the pessimism, the hope and the despair. Dillard asks the reader to consider the importance of the dead, and also focus on the new and beautiful lives that surround us every day.

Two quotes at the end of this book that are on adjacent pages really struck me. “When one of us dies…it is as if an eye of the world had closed” (196). “It says in the Bible that to save a life is to save the entire world” (197).  At first these two quotes seemed to me to be contradictions. They seemed different. Then I realized they were saying the same thing, two sides of the same coin. Dillard fully understands and embraces the concept of the sanctity of human life. She also understands that an important and, of course, inevitable part of life is death. As depressing as it sometimes was, I realize that she was merely encouraging me to go deeper, to consider the beauty inherent in death, as it is a part of life. Upon further reflection, I got the idea that Dillard thinks life is extraordinary, so much so that we should not forget the lives (and deaths) of the 85 billion who came before us, but rather we should embrace and celebrate what has passed. Life is a beautiful thing, be it the beginning, the middle, or the end!

My Confusion (And Perhaps Denial) Regarding the Nature and Core of this Course

The Secular Scripture seems to be a foundational text for this course. It's everything we're being taught in this class wrapped up into a nice little paperback. Perhaps not everything, but a large, overarching chunk. Something Frye discussed sparked an interesting thought in me. He discusses criticisms of Scott, noting "that much of the criticism of Scott attempted to assimilate him to standards that were not his." I think this is something that we as humans do every day. From science to uttering the words "I love you," we judge interactions or works or accomplishments based on our prior understanding of related concepts rather than often being open to new and different interpretations. In science, we think something new and different is outrageous rather than remembering that our "science" is a set of explanations we use to describe the world around us and that it may not be the only correct set of explanations. When someone says "I love you," we assume we know what they mean (Alison does this, stating that Nicholas doesn't love her and that he doesn't feel as she does) rather than asking what that means. Does Alison really know that Nicholas doesn't love her? Is she accurate in stating that he cannot feel like she can? Perhaps it's different, but does that mean it's not still love or emotion?

So we're basing this class off of the notion that the past possesses the present; that themes are played out over and over again throughout time, that the same stories are told, that the same few myths are constantly being recreated and relived. But how do we know this is really true? How do we know that we're not simply making connections that aren't really there or inferring things based on one understanding rather than being open to all of the individual differences? Yes, we see similarities between the stories that have been told for centuries and the lives of people living right now. But how do we know that those similarities truly exist? How do we know that we didn't bunch the stories together because we didn't have the language and concepts to differentiate them? How do we know we didn't make all of these connections to simplify things because everything is truly different? This is something we will likely never know because we cannot separate ourselves from our language and our experiences. I can neither think about nor communicate this idea without using the very words that limit me. So, to a certain extent, perhaps I have no choice other than to resign to the notion that the same myths are repeated throughout time. Part of me thinks there may be something else going on, but I have neither the language nor the intellectual depth to say what it is. Something just feels off about all of this. I can't say I know what it is, but it's hard for me to believe that our lives can be so simplified into such a small collection of stories, re-appropriated century after century after century.