Order v. chaos

I was flipping through some style blogs I keep tabs on and found a blogger talking about a room they just love because of its symmetry, "how relaxing" they said.

I peered longer at the room. To me it seemed cold, stiff, overly formal. The idea of being in that room make me feel uptight.

Don't get me wrong, I'm an organization freak who loves me some clean, bold, sleek contemporary lines, but I feel most at home amidst the clutter and unordered mess of the boheme, "how comfy" I say.

And so this interests me.

To one person, an ordered environment can be calming, relaxing: no stress about chaotic, unpredictable lines and not knowing where to fit in them.

Yet to another, the chaotic environment can be more comfortable: no stress about rigidity and conforming to a defined space.

What makes the difference?

Let's throw the Christians under the bus

First off, what is it with that expression? Is everyone else using it as much as the people I'm around are? What's funny is that every single time I hear it I get an image of the scene at the end of Mean Girls where that one girl gets run over by a bus.

Anyway.

So we were in RA bootcamp a couple weeks ago and there's one particular event that I keep thinking about so I thought I'd blog about it.

We had a couple days of simulations where the old RAs acted out situations and the new RAs had to handle it. It was actually a lot more open-ended and realistic than I thought it would be (although I struggled with the fact that the actors were actors so I couldn't tap into their emotions as much, especially when I knew the actor and that they would never get themselves into that situation. But logistically getting a feel of the flow of situation dynamics and how to handle it was really good).

Anyway.

One of the simulations was a roomate coming out of the closet. Before we walked into the room to start the simulation, we would always prep as a group a little before going in, they would give us about as much information as we would have as RAs, so that the person heading it up would be prepared, and the rest of us observing (we rotated) wouldn't be clueless while watching.

We had some questions about what angle to take on approaching this, with respect to our role as an RA, and our leader made it very clear that, as in ANY case, we are primarily faciliators invested in enabling our residents to have a healthy living environment. With facilitating and enabling comes a sort of neutrality, we're open, we listen, we are flexible on how much we share and step in, but ultimately our goal is to help the residents live the life they chose to live, and to live it healthily and happily.

Neutrality....live their life......"so we can't have any opinion on if they should be gay or not?" asked one of the girls. Uh. No. The leader made if clear that anything along those lines would get you out of a job faster than you can say fire me. "But what if we don't support gays? We can't facilitate them being not gay?" was the girls response. Again: uh. no. definitely not.

I think she took it kind of personally. She rolled her eyes and sighed and said, "well let's just throw the Christians under the bus."

Hm.

In a way, I got where she was coming from, I didn't relate to her personal opinion, but given places in life I've been in the past I could relate to her feeling like she had to support the opinions of an organization that didn't align with her own and she felt jipped.

The thing is. It's not a zero sum game. DHRE wasn't saying "we are pro gay and you are not allowed to not be pro gay, so Christians, keep your opinions to yourselves." DRHE is saying that we are a neutral third party that allows our residents to decide and chose for themselves. If a student is struggling with homosexuality and they themselves do not support homosexulaity, we are there to help them access the resources and support they need to deal with it in the way that they want to. If a student is homosexual and embraces that, we're there to faciliate that aspects of life, theirs and otherwise, that are effected by that choice.

It's not that you can't have your own opinions, its just beyond your role as an RA to impose those opinions on others. Granted, maybe not speaking up about what you believe is against your principles, which is where it could get sticky.

Anyway. I thought her reaction was interesting.

Dreams

Literally every day so far this week, I've had some degree of a nightmare. As in, I wake up suddenly in a cold sweat, or out of breath, or scared, or just plain unsettled.

And every dream has involved a (ficticious) close friend or family member (or both) DYING.

A weak and sickly younger brother that falls ill and dies, an invisible serial killer who targets my closest friends, a grandfather passing away in some strange way I can't recall, etc etc.

I'm not a big dreamer, I've never been the kid who every day goes, "I had this dream last night" no, like seriously it's once in a blue moon that I wake up remebering my dreams. And as far as I can remember, death is not a common topic.

Interpretations please?

(tbh, I think it's bc I'm stressed about my relationship with some people, particularly the possibility of losing them in my life)

How full is full?!

I know this sounds ridiculous, but the most difficult adjustment to being back in the states was resuming my old/normal eating habits.

You'd think after 21 years of having relatively similar eating habits, it wouldn't be hard to bounce back after eating differently for a mere 9 weeks.

My best guess (I have no idea how this stuff works) is that because it was something that was difficult for me in India, and took a tremendous amount of self-discipline and effort to adjust to in India, the habits ingrained themselves just that much deeper because of how deeply it impacted me while I was there.

My (amazingly awesome) host family was Jain and thus were not only what Americans might most conceptually equate with "vegan" but also did not waste anything. As in, however much food got made for dinner, it had to be completely consumed (baring death bed status).

My parents never demanded I clean my plate as a kid so this was completely new for me. I struggled the first few weeks and derived little methods to ease trying to squeeze in the final bites I just didn't have room for.

1. Eat as fast a possible, especially at the start of the meal
2. Chug as you have never chugged before. Smoothie? Gone in a gulp.
3. Liquids last. This includes drinks and any food that doesn't require chewing. Chewing makes the inevitably approaching need to swallow that much more arduous.
(4. When all else fails, pitch the leftovers out the window in an unattended moment or feed it to a cow on the street)

This led to a bit of a paradigm shift on what eating was and my mindset while eating. I thought about my food less, enjoyed and savored it less. My focus changed. You'd think I would have been very determined and goal oriented towards finishing my food. Interestingly, that wasn't the case. I can't exactly explain it, but I....I sort of just got into automatic pilot of finishing my food. I didn't focus on the end, I just ate until I reached the end without thinking about it.

I got ice cream once that had these horrible chewy gummy things (ew gummy) in it that would have been grounds to discard the food. I noticed that I didn't continue eating out of guilt, I continued eating out of habit.

My first couple meals at home, with significantly larger portions, I exhibited the same behavior. At one meal, I realized that portions were just so incredible that I literally would have made myself sick had I kept eating and had to force myself to regain awareness of how much I was eating such that I was able to stop myself from finishing.

Yet this posed a new dilemma. If I wasn't going to finish, when did I stop? There was a large buffer range of when I could possibly be considered full.

I remembered in the past, always just sort of knowing when to stop eating. Just as I had made a habit of not thinking about working on finishing, I'd previously lived a life of habit of not thinking about when to stop eating.

My paradigm hadn't shifted all the way back, and it took about a week of effort to get back in touch with my stomach capacity and forcing myself to try to be consistent on when to choose to stop eating.

I still feel like I'm eating more than "usual" and probably more than I should. It all tastes so good though! OH MY GOODNESS it feels so good to be nourished and healthy again! To feel my body strong and feel it soaking up the nutrients in the food!! Asparagus! Broccoli! Zucchini! Pasta! Salad! Chicken! Who cares if I've gained back those 12 pounds I lost, it feels GOOD! Yet, now that I'm healthy again, I recognize that it's time to exhibit some restraint; I don't need TWO plates of butter laden carrots at each meal....

Which lane is the right lane?

Getting used to driving on the left in India took me a while. I was around more organized roads and more traffic than I was in Uganda (in other words, another drive on the left country that I've spent comparable time in) and consequently had to adjust to it more for sake of minimizing stress.

Even then, when I personally was behind the wheel more towards the end of my time there I found myself automatically reverting to driving on the right as instinct kicked in while I tried to handle everything else on the road.

So I thought I actually wasn't that well adjusted to the road system.

Funny thing is, three weeks back, and I STILL frequently, when I'm making a left or a right hand turn, have a moment in the middle of the turn where I become very, very confused about which lane I should be turning into.

Weird, right?

But seriously, I keep having to pause and stop and intentionally tell myself to turn into the right lane. I'm sure the people behind me appreciate it.....lots.

Dog Tricks, $1

The main street by my campus is known for two things. Cool spots to shop, eat, and drink. And homeless people begging.

I think a lot of us share a common story with how we respond to walking by a homeless person (in the States) waving their coffee mug of coins or their cardboard box with a few sparse dollars. We approach, divert eye contact, and keep walking; often times feeling slightly guilty, but more comfortable with the guilt than the idea of giving money to a strange person that might use it in strange ways. We all know the stories of the beggars that use the money to go buy alcohol, the scams for bus money to visit sick relatives that probably aren't actually sick. Certainly there are a VAST NUMBER of tough life stories that are actually true, of which we may reserve our own opinions about whether situations could have been avoided or handled differently, maybe even with some extrapolation to our political stances and general philosophy on why the world is as it is.


Yadha, yadha, yadha.


So I was walking down the street today and saw a man on a bench with a sweet looking golden retriever lying next to him. Next to the dog was a sign that read "Dog tricks, $1"

How very interesting.

I immediately went through a flood of thoughts and emotions trying to determine what my reaction to this was. My first thought, as I glanced back over my shoulder at the dog, was oh that poor, poor dog taken into possession of his master entirely to serve his master. Like a circus animal (I always threw a FIT about going to the circus as a kid because it made me too sad to see the animals make ridiculous displays of themselves. Not that I was an over-sensitive child or anything...). I also recognized that the dog was probably safer with this guy than roaming the streets and probably quite well fed by passers by.

And then I smirked a little. At this little piece of human behavior that this homeless person (and many others) had picked up on. I doubt many people that pay their $1 to watch the dog trick are actually looking for amusement from watching a dog roll over or sit on command. More likely, that dog, and the owner responsible for the dog whom it's life depends upon, is probably the source of much sympathy.

OF COURSE we feel sorry for the dog, it's in a helpless and desperate situation. And it's a dog, it's sweet and cute, and we cannot judge it for its life choices.

And yet our sympathies for the homeless owner are often mixed, conflicted, if not confused in the complicated mess of how we feel about ourselves, others, our society, etc. And so, this man had figured out that his best shot at inciting money from his peers is to turn attention to the dog. People might not help him. But people will help the dog.

What does that say? What does that mean?

If life is a journey, why not have a full-time travel blog?

I've kept up this site while traveling the last two summers, and when I tell people about it, I always seem to get the same question of if I'll continue blogging when I'm done traveling.

I've always slightly had a thing against blogging about one's life, sure it's interesting, often insightful, and resourceful even, but just didn't seem like something I was interested in.

Then I got a life.

What with the whirlwind of returning from India, the craziness that was RA training, having some free time for the first time in I can't remember how long, exploring my role as an RA, settling into some really interesting class, the woes and joys of starting the job hunt, and a massive expansion of my social group both in size and diversity.........I've got a lot to talk about.

I still haven't decided precisely what the purpose of blogging is for me. As best I can gander, I like having a platform to sort out my thoughts and the accountability that comes with knowing people might be reading it. Forces me to think things through more. As for how I'll decide what to share and why....I'm leaving that up to what I feel the urge to share.

So check up occasionally, and please! Comment! I always like feedback and discussion :)

Best,
Sole Searching