Last night I had a wonderful conversation with a very dear friend. At some point in time, I started verbalizing goals I wanted to keep in mind after I graduate:

1. Develop a list of personal core values and adhere to them.
2. Remain constantly motivated even when faced with other people's ironic, tired, or blase dispositions.
3. Remember that I am a verb: my actions speak louder than my words - and appropriately so.

Last night I attended Greek Week's Recognition Night. The final portion of the evening was dedicated to seniors. First, they presented a slideshow with pictures of us as babies and as college almost-graduates. Second, they delivered letters from our parents. Although seeing the picture of myself was funny - I had never seen it before - I was particularly affected by the letter.

At first, I didn't think much of it. I'm a little disappointed in myself in admitting that at first blush, I felt the letter was rather blase. I think I read over it and imagined that it was the same letter that every other senior would be receiving. Nevertheless, I called my mother and thanked her for the effort. She told me I was welcome, of course, but also told me that dad cried a little after he wrote it. We both chuckled at the cuteness of it: the tenderness most-times hidden beneath a tough, austere face.
 
When I called last night, I was out with friends, and so couldn't talk for very long. I called her again this morning and after talking with her, spoke to my dad. He expressed that the letter was very hard to write. After my conversation with them, I picked up the letter again and read it. I think this is when the disappointment for how I originally viewed the letter sank in, but then was quickly washed away by what the letter actually said: "We couldn't be more proud of you."
 
Although I constantly think my parents are insane for being proud of me and I don't understand where their perception of me comes from, I'm realizing that their pride means something very special to me - much more than I originally thought. I regularly get down on myself for not doing enough. I don't study enough, I don't work hard enough, I don't mean enough to enough people, I don't win enough awards, I don't make enough money, I'm not being a good enough friend or lover, and so forth. This morning, I woke up mired in that familiar well of disappointment and regret. When I read the letter my father wrote and was confronted with how proud he and my mom really are of me, I started feeling that everything was okay. I started to realize that I usually subject myself to a pretty impossible rubric for what I should be as a human being. And although that will probably never change...and honestly, I don't know that I ever would want it to change, I'm realizing now that the only rubric that should matter to me is the one my parents put forth. Honestly, who do I owe more for all that I have been able to experience and do? And who do I care more for? My love for them runs so deep that I can easily forget about it: it fades into the background of who I am, something as vital but discrete as blood or bone.

I may never think that I've done anything worth a damn, but I've got to say, so long as my parents think highly of me, I can feel proud of that. I hope that in the future, when I get down on myself, this is what I'll return to.

My dad started off his letter by commenting on how wonderful spring is because of the sense of newness one gets from flowers and trees starting to bloom. As I was writing, I looked out my window and realized that the oaks outside were in full bloom for the first time this year. My father ended his letter by proclaiming how excited I must be at the newness that lays before me. I guess he was right.

Over the last few weeks, I have been asked to participate in interview luncheons for candidates to the Assistant Professor in Leadership position open at the McDonough Center. Each candidate has been posed the question, "What is your definition of leadership?"

This question is interesting, and problematic to me for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is the underlying assumption that such a concept needs distilled down to basic, elemental parts; an assumption which seems to be relentlessly compulsory.

Although I seem to contradict myself, one definition attracted me more than any others. Dr. Bechtold, of the University of Hawaii (I believe), suggested that "Leadership is the process in which a leader creates a message which followers can endorse."

Food for thought.

I just experienced a major breakthrough with my honors thesis in English literature. The irony? It is best articulated as a mathematic formula: (a+c=I)+(r+s=E)=U.

Who'd have thunk it.

I saw the picture below featured on Reuters' website and promptly began salivating. The caption reads: "An employee takes a nap in a nap pod which blocks out light and sound at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California March 3, 2008."

A work in progress, naturally:

1) Put my father through school
2) Put my mother through school
3) Backpack through Europe.
4) Seriously consider, and explore, every major religion/spirituality.
5) Write a book, then burn it.
6) Travel to a place where there is nowhere left to go.

An hour and nineteen minutes into a day stretching ignorantly into an obliviously lengthy future, I'm waiting on a program to
run - just, run, damn you! - and let my head sink into its 'relaxed' pose: cocked slightly to the right, angled towards my left. In direct line of sight is a whiteboard I've mounted, but never used. A smattering of reference papers ("Return Reason
Codes...) and self-important notes begging for attention ("Call Amy! 000-000-0000"), but above and beyond them, an understated expanse of white which begins to call to me. Perhaps its just the ridiculously upbeat overtones of Belle and
Sebastian's'For the Price of a Cup of Tea'("If you want to know the truth / Her friend the stars dripping from the jewelled sky...She can finally be the person she wanted to be"), or maybe its a lack of sleep, coffee deprivation, or something similarly mundane, but I find my mind heeding the whiteboard's furtive whispers, and all of a sudden, everything looms large.

My gray threaded cubicle office widens beyond the normal sight I'm possessed of and gives way to white, all white, as my body- and something deeper, depper - falls (simply falls!) into the small two-foot by two-foot whiteboard which I know just shouldn't be able to contain me, but there I go! It is, in this moment, the window I had never too-seriously hoped for. Standing atop a cliffface, I'm overlooking the endless sea of land dotted with budding forests, rising and falling breaths of hills, and creeks running in the direction I'm facing - which the rising sun on my right tells me must be North - as though racing each other to see who can get farthest away from the cliff first. Wind whips around my face and seems to challenge my right to stand here, right here, and brings to bear a cloying scent reminiscent of Rome and its proud, old trees. Sia's voice howls around me, "Just breathe," and then holds. The world becomes silent and I close my eyes. Without fear or the hesitation which common reason screams would be wise, I close my eyes and spread my arms. I'm suddenly aware of the world slowing down around me in its silence, my heart beats, and the pulse sallies forth through my veins and I feel it like I would a
shockwave, flowing down through my body to, yes to my heel. As though it were a powder keg and that wave of sanguine energy the match, my foot explodes into a minute expression of inertia, released. My toes gain strength and inch upwards, my foot pushes against the ground it was, seemingly for eternity, married to. I'm cognizant of a sweet sense of freedom, of flying, of becoming.

"Just breathe."

When I made this blog, I had hoped to avoid entries that were entirely "me" focused. I'm going to do my best to avoid that now, but I felt I should at least update this blog with something, since it has been barren for so long.

I'm entering the third week of my senior year. I feel that academically, my semester will be strong: challenges along the way, but challenges I can prepare myself for and capably overcome.

Quite by surprise, I find that my biggest challenges come from other aspects of my life. I don't want this blog to be a place for me to complain about what hurts me or outline what I hope will come around, because I know that this simply isn't the right place, and that those people who need to know probably already do.

I suppose I could sum up my entire emotional being into one word: hopeful. I have made a few pointed mistakes in the past year, mistakes which have made me a patent fool and may very possibly cost me something(one) I hold dearer than nearly anything(one) else. This mistakes might not have been terrible on their own, but life has thrown a few curve balls of its own the last six months.

I am hopeful that the wish I made the other night while stargazing will come true. I am hopeful that I will rectify those mistakes as best I can, even if the best medicine right now is a promise and the will to see it through. I am also hopeful that I won't continue to work against a wall and that I won't be working alone. It's damn hard to pick someone up if they don't extend a hand. That's true for relationships, also, I think.

I need a hand.

I went on a drive today. I hadn't intended to. It started out as a Wal-Mart run, but then my trip was soon hijacked by the sudden impulse to revisit Route 26 - my old friend. Somewhere along the drive I started to recall this piece by Richard Brautigan. It is nice and homey, after a fashion.

I have been assigned to bring in a poem to my British and American Poetry class tomorrow and explain why I like it. I don't know that I'll be able to bring this in, simply because I don't know if I have the right words.


IT'S RAINING IN LOVE  

I don't know what it is,
But I distrust myself
When I start to like a girl
               A lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
Or perhaps I start
               To examine,
                               Evaluate,
                                              Compute
               What I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start thinking:  Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
               with someone
than it is to be in love with them."

I think he's right and besides,
its raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
               That's all taken care of.                         

                               BUT

if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think:  Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
               Instead of me.

“I am young and I'm alive
I want to talk about things
I am young and I own my life
I need to talk about it, baby

I am one but I asked for two
I didn't get anything
This puppet's lonely without you
It's tough to walk without strings

I do my dance in the round

I'm right on track but this state is frail
You slip out and derail

I do my dance in the round
So people clap your hands
Clap your hands

I wanna do it right this time
I wanna step in time
I wanna do it right this time, yeah!

Clap your hands

I gotta get get it right this time
I wanna step in time
I wanna do it right this time

I do my dance in the round

I am young, coming at you live
People gonna talk about me
When I'm done, please hang me high
For everybody to see

Cause I do my dance in the round
So people clap your hands

I wanna get it right
I'm dyin' to get it right
I wanna get it right
I'm dyin' to get it right”

- "In the Round," The Cardigans.

Find it. Listen to it. Though complete strangers, you and I will be so much closer tonight.