musings on social role theory, silent radios, and pink bunny shirts

In the dashboard of my little plucky Honda is a silent radio. Silent radio is not its own particular art form, like silent film. In fact, "silent radio" is nothing but a euphemism for broken radio. I just find it a more aurally pleasing and slightly less depressing phrase. A few weeks ago, I needed to have my car battery replaced (which was a bit of an adventure in itself, but a story for another time), and apparently when the car loses power, it resets the radio. Because the radio has an "anti-theft" feature, there is a code which must be entered to make the radio work again after it loses power. I have no idea what that code is. If I had the serial number of the radio, I could potentially contact the manufacturer and request the code. The serial number is--according to information I've been able to gather through google searches--on the back of the radio. Which wouldn't be a major problem if the radio wasn't currently installed in the dashboard. But it is.

Maybe this is the universe's way of telling me it's time to get a new radio. It's true that the old one had developed a bad habit of holding CDs hostage, refusing to either play or eject them. This could be fixed only by artfully prying the CD from the slot with a fingernail or credit card. Not so good for the CDs, nor very safe when one is driving. Still, I'm a little frustrated to have to replace it right now. Currently I can't even set the clock (to ascertain the correct time requires adding four hours, then subtracting ten minutes, from the time on the display). This wouldn't really be too urgent except that we are heading down to Louisiana next week, which is approximately a 16 1/2 hour drive each way. Too long to go without a radio; no euphemizing your way around that one.

But that's all really very minor, as concerns go. Other current minor concerns include a long list of homework assignments, the few extra pounds I seem to put on each winter despite my best intentions, the pile of dirty dishes in my sink, figuring out what I'm going to do this summer, and a general uncertainty about what the future holds. So it seems like some of my current concerns could be addressed through increased motivation, and others through relaxing and not worrying about things. I'm not sure I can do both at the same time, though.

I also have some other, more abstract concerns (you can't be surprised). Somewhere along the line, I realize I have equated being an adult with being adaptive. In high school and through much of college, I was determinedly, even self-consciously non-conformist, even a little bit of an iconoclast. As I've gotten older, I've let go of what I think of as the outer expressions of that. I wanted to be taken seriously, so I lost the baggy jeans, lip ring, bleach blond pixie cut, etc. And truth is, I feel equally at home in my skin with low maintenance long hair, fitted jeans, and my relatively conservative nose stud. But I'm worried that that adaptation becomes a habit.

It's easier to blend in, once you get used to it, and I start doing other things that aren't just entirely aesthetic. Like since I've moved from WV to here, I shave under my arms for the first time since sophomore year of college because I don't want to offend people, or I don't wear my pink shirt with bunnies on it (that I _really_ like) because I'm concerned about looking professional. I have really mixed feelings about all this. I don't need to stand out or be in people's faces about things--that feels to me like a positive thing that comes from self-confidence. At the same time, I wonder how much I'm compromising my own expression and values to fit into the culture of a place...and whether that is ok with me or not.

The outer stuff is, of course, tied with the inner stuff. It's hard for me to feel entirely myself here, and I think the fact that I'm thinking about those externals is pointing to some deeper discomfort about trying to fit in or be something I'm not, and that putting me in danger of losing myself, or parts of myself. It's not as though I am in danger of losing my moral core, or turning into someone else. I am the first one to jump into a debate, or push back against a decision I don't think is fair. But there are things that are less clear--my leadership style, my beliefs about and approach to "discipline," the way I think about young people I work with, my spiritual beliefs--that are less rock solid, and that tend to be pushed around by the pressure of a dominant culture or approach. And it's not as though I'm in fundamental opposition to that dominant culture, but I need to remember that I have freedom to work within it in my own way, and that I don't have to fit into a mold to be good at what I'm doing. In fact, I'm much better at everything--job, school, life in general--when I am working authentically, in my own style and my own voice. It's not just an idealistic desire to do things my own way, it's also that I am actually better at things when I do them my own way (not to mention happier).

But I have a habit of feeling like there is some 'model' that I am supposed to be emulating, an ideal that I'm expected to live up to. And I have a related habit of feeling as though I'm never quite living up to it. I'm not sure if I'm articulating it well...the difference between having high standards for oneself, and wanting to do the best job at something that one possibly can (which is positive) versus feeling like one is being judged against some external standard, and needs to live up to someone else's expectations of what she should be doing (which is negative).

It feels like a very delicate balance--working hard, respecting the culture you're part of, being open to other's suggestions, staying true to yourself, growing up and not losing yourself.

It's funny, because there is this recurring cultural narrative that features the characters who were rebellious or idealistic in their youth, and now have become conformist cogs in the machinery of society, people who lose their dreams. But it's not as simple as all that. You aren't just an independent idealist or a soulless conformist. There's all sorts of intervening variables of context and personal evolution and respect for other people and other values and changing priorities. I mean, I live in rural West Virginia and am in graduate school for conflict transformation. It's not as though I've sold out, gotten highlights and an SUV and moved to the suburbs. But I'm not sure that the subtle shifts and small compromises are any less dangerous, in the long run, in terms of the project of finding and holding on to yourself--your true, authentic self--in the world.

Which is again over simplifying the matter--as if there was some true authentic self we could ultimately reveal and put on display and act as 24/7 regardless of anything. I think perhaps only zen masters and tiny children are capable of that. But the point, I suppose, is that I am concerned when I start to feel alienated from myself, and I need to be conscious about getting back to the center. Sometimes that means taking a hike, or doing yoga, or going on a road trip, or spending time with people I love. Sometimes I think it means cutting off all my hair, or wearing my pink bunny shirt--silly as those things may sound--just to remind myself that I'm not sensible, or conservative, and to remember that I'm brave.

Persephone's snapshots

Blogger has a little blank spot on the form you fill in to make a blog entry. It is a space for "Labels for this post:" Beneath that title, there is a little caption (can you "caption" words? I vote yes...) that reads "e.g. scooters, vacation, fall." It reminds me of a list poem. Here is my list poem for today--an unseasonably warm Mardi Gras in Virginia: Cardinals, okra, summer shoes.

I spent the weekend at home in West Virginia, seeing friends, sleeping in, and working on floor plan drawings for the schoolhouse (which may be getting some interior walls in the near future). I also spent a good amount of time taking photographs with both the new digital camera we got and Drew's digital SLR. When I look at photos, I'm so often struck by the way they can be almost perfect, but in failing to achieve perfection, they're sort of useless. Like the framing was a little crooked, or there is a weird dog hair that got on the lens and marred the shot, or I didn't quite focus on what I meant to. Because the photo is a distilled moment, concentrated image, those objectively small flaws render the whole thing ultimately ineffective. That's not quite the right language...too mechanical sounding...but to say the photo is ruined seems overly harsh. The photo class I'm in is about doing photography as a contemplative practice, a discipline, and being open to receiving images in an attitude of awareness and receptivity. Which means the focus is specifically not on the product of the final image, but I can't let it go that easily.

Sometimes when I look at those almost perfect photos, I wonder if I would feel less disappointed if it were totally wrong--completely out of focus, not at all what I meant to capture, obviously boring or poorly conceived or composed. That makes me wonder about my approach to life--would I rather have something totally fail, a person totally disappoint me, an experience be completely awful, or would I rather have something that is (or think about something as) nearly successful, almost perfect, not quite wonderful?

I think the truth is that I would much rather experience something as almost perfect. That way, you still get the imaginary version in which it was perfect. When I look at the photo that was almost great, I can picture what the photo would have looked like if it had come out perfectly. I can adjust the focus in my mind, change the imaginary lighting, pluck the dog hair from the frame of my fantasy world. And I do that with life, as well. When I look back on experiences, relationships, attempts that didn't work out, I realize that I tend to frame those things in my memory in such as way as to preserve the parallel, imaginary memory of that thing working out differently.

And in doing so, I simplify (reduce, essentialize--look, I'm constructing the alternate sentences that I might have typed!) the complexity of these failures and disappointments to a small or single "fatal flaw." If I can do that, I can take the leap of fantasy to remove that flaw and construct the alternative version--like the photos. Like the really important friendship that I lost the summer I turned 20...all of those complicated things can be reduced to "I was very depressed at that time." Then I can imagine hypothetical, not-depressed me, who would have done lots of things differently and would still have that friendship today. I can imagine going to visit that friend the next fall, going to each other's college graduations, I can picture her at my wedding, I can imagine the phone conversation we would have had last week. I can do all that because I can revert to the idealized image or memory of our friendship. I don't think I could do that if I saw the situation as one in which everything fell apart and our relationship fundamentally changed--because I can't imagine from that what the friendship we didn't have might have looked like. Just like I can imagine the photo I would have taken if I'd focused just a little sharper on that one petal, but I can't look at a completely underexposed frame and picture how it would have turned out if I'd done everything differently.

Is the almost-perfect version more heartbreaking? Intuitively, one might think so, but I don't think that's true. I think it's sweeter and softer. It's like cheating...you get the real version, but you also get to keep the imaginary, perfect version (which of course would not have been perfect in real life, just like the photo wouldn't have been). To me, it makes it easier to feel good about my life and my choices, and to forgive people--and myself--for times when things didn't turn out, I can see how it could have worked. I'm more motivated to take pictures if I can look at a photo and believe that I almost got an amazing image. Because then I feel like I might next time...if I can just remember to focus a little more carefully.