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saradz
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Name: Sara
Location: Maryland, United States
Birthday: 10/9/1987
Gender: Female
Interests: exploration
Expertise: indecision, impulse, and all the words to every goo goo dolls song ever.
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
AIM:  saradz2
Member Since:
3/17/2004
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| As I look out onto the horizons of another hot Washington summer, I have realized something about why I struggle. I will deign to make a bold a statement: It is hard to live in the environment I live in. Ironic, considering all the pleasures and plenties that I feast on, considering all the limits and obstructions in life that I do not experience, but only read about leisurely on weekend afternoons. Painting a picture of infinite opportunity and opulence isn't entirely stretching it either. As an American I'm considered to be thousands of steps "ahead" of the average person, just by having the passport to prove it. Despite other notoriously disadvantaging characteristics such as my gender, my age, and my inability to keep my opinions about the government to myself, I am still, somehow, in the very most advantaged position in the world. In front of me stands only one real "problem", and that is of choice. Enter the difficulty of living in this environment.
Our generation, and by that I mean the coming of age and twenty somethings of American society, has been repeatedly criticized as the problem-free "me" generation. What I have interpreted this to mean is the following: that we, as an unprecedentedly affluent demographic, expect all to be handed to us, expect that our silver spoons will carry us through life, and that we have no conception of the values of former generations, i.e. integrity, morality, or hard work. I won't begin to look to at the reasons why this perception exists, or the degree to which the perception and the reality are connected, but I will utilize it to analyze why we, the "me" generation, and why I, theoretically one of its monarch members, do in fact struggle.
This critique, at minimum, exemplifies the reality that American youth today are increasingly sheltered and cushioned as we enter into the "real world", and that the rosy depictions of the world that we were spoon fed in our childhood somehow stay in tact for much longer, if not indefinitely. Consequentially, older generations cannot rely on us to carry on the moral society they grew up in. The fear that accompanies this is, somewhere along the line, converted into unprecedented expectations for our performance, involvement, and accomplishments. While we may be unprecedentedly privileged, and may have somehow developed a perverse sense of entitlement and lack of responsibility for ourselves and others, we must amend for these dissapointing attributes by getting straight A's through six levels of school, by holding down a decent job and volunteer position (yes, at the same time), we must bring home "nice" friends, and more importantly "nice" potential spouses, we must be well-rounded, including rounding out our gender-conformed changed last names with six or seven letters that resemble something like, M.D., J.D., Ph.D, or preferably all three.
Indeed, pressure to succeed has always been an inherent part of American culture. But today the pressure is enormously higher, and more importantly, is imposed from older generations with a tone of disgust and disappointment that we can't seem to shake, no matter how well we do.
Considering this, the problem of choice becomes more evidently a problem. Making decisions has always been a concern of the rich. It is hard for us to decide between J. Crew and Abercrombie. It is harder to decide between Yale and Princeton. Then we can't choose between English and Art History as our majors. The penthouse apartment or the suburban mansion leaves us sleepless at night. And then we must decide between sleep-aids...over the counter or prescription??
As a generation it feels as though our decisions have been trivialized and belittled as we are constantly reminded of how privileged we are to be able to focus on these aspects of life, and to be making these types of decisions in the first place. Meanwhile we have unprecedented choice and opportunity, and decisions to make at every turn. It isn't like the old days where Mom was either a teacher or a social worker or maybe a nurse, and where dad did something to do with managment or numbers. The problem of choice is a double-whammy for our generation because the fact that we're able to make these decisions and choices enables older generations to call us spoiled and overly self-entiteled, and if we make these choices in any way other than the way they expect, the criticism is doubly piled on.
Maybe life would be simpler if we didn't have so much god damn stuff to choose from. If the grocery store didn't offer us seventeen different styles of q-tips (to conform to the shape of your ear!) and if the job world wasn't an open door into which you must dive and just continue swimming no matter how badly you want to stop and look around. If there was one way to raise kids, and that was yourself, and if there was one kind of bank account and that was, the one where you put in and take out money. If life wasn't such a dilemma of opportunities all the time maybe we would have the chance to focus on ourselves as a human race better, maybe we'd be able to pause and respect our grandparents for their accomplishments, to put down the beer and pick up a book, to turn of the reality tv and focus on what really matters. But it is scary to think about living this way, it is scary to confront these things when nobody believes in us as a generation and yet we're expected to clean up the messes that our critical parents are leaving for us.
How about "have a little faith in me", and we'll do the best we can?
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| a strange impulse has overtaken me to write in here. is it procrastination? perhaps. is it the desire to speak to the world (however limited that definition of "world" may be)? perhaps. is it the end of the year and i feel a need to say something to commemorate? yeah....
I'm sitting in my student center, Macintosh, days before my sophomore year ends and this building is demolished. Over the next two years both it and I will be rebuilt, transformed, and hopefully better on the other side. Am I claiming that I identify strongly with this 70's building in which I consume coffee and muffins, check email, and meet my friends? Not really. But the transitional process that it is about to undergo, yes even has begun to undergo, is certainly a parallel in my life.
At the close of this semester I'll look forward to many things. A relatively mundane summer, self-selected to be centered around three things: making money, relaxing, and not going anywhere (for the moment anyway). I have my doubts about that, and am sure to get anxious and bored at times, but for the most part I think the coming 3-4 months will be extremely restorative. This has been an unbelievable year, and my nerves are ready for some rest and relaxation.
Come next fall I will be returning (gasp!) to the place I left in the spring, something I haven't done since August of 2004. A strange feeling for sure, but I think it is really important. I have come to know and understand my wanderlust this year, realizing that if I followed my impulse I'd probably be transferring again. No, not out of discontent with Barnard, but out of a pure need for change and newness.
Coming to understand that about myself has been incredibly enlightening. I have come to recognize the uselessness in envying another person's life or set of circumstances. I have come to appreciate with unprecedented readiness the beauty and worth of what IS. I have come to learn the value of stability and to respect those who resist change. I have come to have better foresight for the next ten years of my life, which I'm sure will be filled with a daily struggle between my wanderlust (for however much I have come to understand and detach myself, it is still there!) and my confidence in the moment.
New York is not one for appreciating the moment. Living in this city is always thinking about your next move. Where to next, with whom next, what about the next day, where's the next train, who's standing next to me and why...it goes on incessantly. My challenge this year has been to stick myself within all this forward thinking and not get entirely carried away by it....NOT an easy task. In efforts to stick in the present moment I put on my headphones, stand on the train, smile at the tired employees, and think about each step I take.
And still, I must consider the next step. The next step is beginning the second half of my undergraduate education in relative sameness as the year before. I will live with the same people, study some of the same things (although hopefully different enough), probably eat the same food (who wouldn't eat two eggs on a bagel with muenster cheese and a small iced coffee every day if they could?), visit the same cafe's and that list goes on too.
And here's where it's different. My plan is to invest myself fully in the activities of this college, having realized my international activism is somewhat futile (although always important). I hope to work on Speak, the Students for Empowerment an Knowledge organization that is trying to bring an ethnic studies department to Columbia. I plan on taking a dance class or two, spend less time working in an office and more time on my school work. I plan on exploring new neighborhoods and appreciating the dynamic and multicultural diversity of New York City. I plan on working with the new transfers next year to get the acclimated to New York and indoctrinate them with activist energy. (hehehe).
And most of all, I plan on letting my plans fall to pieces and have to rebuild and figure out life one step at a time.
Here's to a great year of learning and growing, exploring and changing, and very little staying the same. To the priveledge of living where I want, saying what I want, doing what I want, and being who I want to be.
Here's to a new year where I have more things to learn, more space to grow, more exploring to do, more changes to have and make, and all the while, if fate should have it, letting things stay the same.
In the word's of one of my most esteemed advisers: "no regrets, coyote." see you all in a few weeks!
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| I feel really in the mood to write. Maybe because I've been on my own for 11 hours now with nobody around and almost nothing to do. The stillness makes me depressed; i feel totally alone. Nonetheless i'm inspired by the silence, so here goes another entry...
Looking back on more than two years of this online journal business, i am now so grateful for continuing to keep it, as irregularly as I may have. Although photos and memories allow you to watch yourself grow, expressing yourself even in the most trivial or silly ways (ehem, public internet journals) really chronicles your thoughts and growth better than anything else.
I have kept journals all my life. When I was little they were harriet-the-spy type journals in which i'd write about other people with indiscriminate detail for a day or two, and then forget the whole thing. As I got older the journals were sporadic and kept only for the emotional crises that sprung up, when writing seemed to mark those crises as just that much more tragic. I moved into my older, less emotionally insane years keeping a journal to record the adventures i took, or larger changes in my life. I started this journal around that time, but it was more for the mundane in life, and more to help establish what I realized was an emerging identity.
I'll explain.
Having this journal helped me express to other people who it was that I was, and who it was that I wanted to be. I didn't really know how to do that in direct words, and while other people were wearing their chucks and black outfits, I had these words. They may not have had depth or significant meaning, but they helped me sustain communication to the outside world about who I was, what I thought, and the character I aspired to be.
And that is the difference between a personal diary and a journal like this: things like your choice of words and the color of your font actually makes a difference because you know that down to the shape of your f's and r's you're being judged, even if only on a subconscious level by the people you're so desperate to please and impress and trust without question.
So I knew that beyond the answers I gave in class and the brand of my backpack (always Jansport, always blue) I had something else to depend on. If i needed a way to say "I think you might have the wrong idea about me, this is what i'm actually like" here was the place for it.
And so we come to an explanation of the popularity of facebook. People love it because they know it is a free-for-all of the thing we love to do most in this world-- judge and be judged. Its human, I don't think its so bad, and I know it has connotations for being such a negative thing, but in the end, how could such an instinctive thing be so bad?
anyway.
Growing up is a weird thing. I think for a good part of your younger years, when you are truly growing the most, both literally and figuratively, it is a passive and natural process. You do not have the emotional or intellectual abilities to have insight into your own growth; introspection is a skill that comes with maturity and age. Now that we're older and wiser, (or so the saying goes, at least) we look at ourselves with more critique and concern, greater understanding but a lot more questioning too.
Jamie Cullum titled one of his albums twentysomething, and the title track explains a lot of what i mean and what i'm getting at... being our age means we know more about the "shoulds" and "shouldnts" and are getting to know better our own strengths and interests, but at the same time we're overwhelmed with a new big mess of questions about the unknowns. Mine are something as follows...
how do you live a meaningful life
what will make me happy
what is most important
what the fuck do you do when instinct is what you should go on, and you're instinct can't make up its mind...
As overwhelmed and maybe even plagued by these questions as I am so much of the time, having just put them into words and on screen, I realize they are so generic and universal. I've heard these questions a million times and somehow i've been believing they're unique to myself.
So, I guess the real question is:
Are there ever any answers?
There is no answer for a question about answers. Its a mystery, i guess thats what they mean when they say "that's life."
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| true or false: this journal has become my activist mouthpiece?
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| Well, I can't say i'm too excited to be going back to school. In a few days time it will be back to the library, the cramped gym, studying and stressing, caffeine every morning, and the strenuous routine that I just wonder about the worth of.
Being at home has been a really good time, for the most part. I haven't become bored or restless, taking in as much of suburban calm that I can (while trying to ignore that im actually in the suburbs) and I've been unwinding progressively day by day. Not having a car this break has been a mixed blessing-- challenging in that I'm completely immobile and completely dependent, but it has also allowed/forced me to hang around at home and be on my own more, which is a good thing. I've been drinking a lot of tea, reading a lot, sleeping lovely amounts, and generally recharging what turned out to be extremely worn out batteries.
My friends at home are still the best part though-- I may be seeking more time to myself and may have been generally more antisocial than usual, but its still wonderful to be so close to everyone here and know that for the most part, that closeness isn't going anywhere. As we go our seperate ways this time, I have no doubts or fears...I just look forward to the next time we're together again!
And going back to school won't be entirely bad either. I'm not looking forward to the intensity, as i've certainly discovered I am more low key than I thought, and definitely more low key than New York City. But when I'm in it, I love it, and so I know i'll be happy to be back once i'm there. It should be an interesting semester with it being my first having a single room to myself, and having no meal plan or cooked meals to depend on. I like the independence i'm gaining from all of that, and in general I will just await it all with optimism, as long as I can muster the energy!
A few other things I've discovered over this break:
1. it is hard to deprive yourself of the things everyone else allows themselves. In this society, avoiding starbucks and buying ethically made clothing and having a good time without spending tons of money are all really hard things to do. In accordance with my feelings about this and my commitment to human rights and ethical-environmental living, I try and live by high standards I set for myself. I put energy into promoting those standards to my family and friends, who adopt those they agree with, and politely discard those that aren't important to them. And I appreciate anything that anyone does to contribute to a more humane and healthy world, but living in a society of such intense waste and consumerism and disregard for the impact of our behavior makes living this way a burden and a challenge. I guess what is important is to try and find a balance-- to make allowances for the the fact that happiness is found in what you believe in, but what you believe in is not always easily translated into how you behave. I think everybody lives like this to some extent, but our level of responsibility to other people and to our environment varies from person to person, and I hope that one day American culture will endorse and support, maybe even demand, greater responsibility...
2. Democrats aren't as pathetic and helpless as I've come to believe. At least now that they have power, change is already coming around. It's rejuvinating to see positive changes taking place, and despite Bush's plan to send 21, 500 more troops to Iraq, I think in general, the U.S. does have the potential to move in the right direction. Or at least a better one.
That being said, I think its disgusting the way we endorse the military as our means for foreign affairs. I think it is revolting the way we see the killing of extremist leaders as a victory for our country, or, as John McCain so eloquently stated, that our soldiers are competent because "they're willing to sling a gun over their shoulder and go out and get the job done". State endorsed violence is the disease of our culture, and...
how many times must the cannonballs fly
before they're forever banned?
3. I am a fish out of water in my own age group. My friends are too. We are significantly more politically active and opinionated and informed than the majority of the 18-24 voting bracket, and its pretty awesome the way we care when nobody is forcing us to. In referring back to our responsibility as humans, I would say we've done quite a superb job on this issue.
Alright, this post is long enough. Time for some packing. much love!
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