What I do at the mall

 Malls are fun. There's fun things to try on and never buy, really greasy food, and, most importantly, dozens of people to watch. Normal people, weird people, tired people, efficient people, people with relationship problems, rebels without a cause, bored cashiers, people trying to sell you things.... the list goes on and on. And the stuff you can do while people watching is endless.

Typically when I go to the mall, I'm the one watching other people but today, I was the weird person at the mall. I was the person people were watching, trying to figure out my motives. I even caught the gaze of people who were not invested in people watching.

See, for my sociology project I have to take pictures of commodified space, like a mall for instance. This mall in particular is structured to make you feel like you're outdoors, using natural lighting, real trees, and store fronts made to look like buildings, etc. Anyway, since I don't have a car I had to bike there and of course I dressed in my biking spandex which makes me look like a lame superhero. And I kept my helmet on because I didn't want to lose it. So there I was, in the mall, dressed head to toe in spandex, wearing a helmet and taking pictures of store fronts and the ceiling.

It was after catching a confused look from a couple who had been previously been making out that I decided to have a little fun. Instead of casually taking pictures like a person asked to do so for a research paper, I went undercover, hiding behind plants and dashing to and from hiding spots like a spy or an undercover agent or a private eye or a very childish college student wearing spandex.

What did I accomplish from my endeavors? I got plenty of stellar pictures (and plenty of blurry ones as I tried to take them mid-sprint), made a couple people laugh (including a pretty hot kiosk guy that was selling remote control helicopters) and I accidentally broke the lens protector off my camera. Was it worth it? That has yet to be decided by figuring out how long the warranty lasts on my camera. But other than that, it totally was!

Contrast

I’ve been writing little pieces of this idea for a long time and have mentioned it several times in previous posts. It’s certainly not a new idea by any means and it’s been written about before by many, many people and I’ve read many of these works myself. But there’s something about trying to formulate an idea for yourself that makes everything mean so much more… So here it is. It all makes sense in my head so I hope it can be bloggified in a way that isn’t totally confusing. I just don’t feel like putting a ton of effort into this. And by that, I mean I don’t want to have to worry about trying to make it so everyone understands what I’m saying because that’s really hard to do and I don’t feel like defending my thoughts. I'm a lazy pretend philosopher when it comes to blogging.

Anyway, so contrast. Here’s what I’m thinking.

Some of the greatest stories of love and forgiveness, of achievement, or simply of being an exceptional human being, come in the light of extreme sorrow, suffering and adversity. Why then are we so opposed to adversity? Why then do we try so hard to get rid of sorrow or depression or hate? We automatically assume that these things are inherently bad. But what if they’re not? What if they are opportunity for something greater? What if they are simply part of the experience? To be acknowledged and felt and accounted for? Not to be whisked away because they're uncomfortable. What if it’s only through this contrast that we are able to feel otherwise? Hate could never exist if there was nothing to love. And I don’t believe you could ever truly love if there was never any risk of losing it, or of hating your beloved, or of suffering to the extent that you love.  They give rise to each other.

Take for example the story of Corrie Ten Boom: survivor of the holocaust after hiding Jews in her house. After experiencing the horror of multiple concentration camps, after losing hope multiple times, after losing her sister, she still persevered. If that wasn’t incredible enough, she talks about her experience with a former Nazi guard that asked her to forgive him for the things he had done to her. And she said that in her mind she couldn’t forgive him and she hated him and there was no way she could ever see him as a human being. And yet, out of her hate and out of her faith and with God, she was able to do it. How remarkable is that? Yet, if she had never experienced what she had, this could have never happened. If she had not hated, she could have never forgiven. One cannot exist without the other. Here, Corrie was given an opportunity through her hate and through her experience to rise above and feel and give one of the greatest gifts we could ever ask for.

I mean, this kind of dialectic is found everywhere… In our understanding of good and evil, of right and wrong, of true and false. These kind of dichotomies are a world view that we have adopted. And they aren’t necessarily true or a good way of classifying the world because we need the wrong to know what the right is or the evil to know what the good is… Or think of colors. You could never know what white is, if there was no black.

But here’s where the problem with this idea come for me. If we cannot have joy without suffering, should we ever try to get rid of suffering? Think of social work policy for example. I think everyone agrees that preventing child abuse is a good thing. I certainly do! But what does that mean for this idea of contrast? If suffering is an opportunity, then should we ever try to take that away from someone else? Or should we just say, “hey yeah I know you’re being abused and it sucks but this is a great opportunity for you!”…. yeah, that’s not working for me. And what does it mean for other, bigger conflicts? When people are ravaged by war, or poverty, or whatever, should we stop it? Or is that the opportunity to do good? By stopping it?

My worry is that, especially in social policy, we try too hard to reach a stasis, or place where suffering and bad things can’t happen to people and everyone has the services they need and don’t have to worry or go through really bad things. It makes logical sense that we would want to do that but I don’t believe that’s even feasible or a good thing. But, implicitly, that’s what programs are aimed at. What does stasis mean? It means there is no contrast… That there is no possibility to feel happy because there is no possibility to feel bad. Are we then taking away the opportunity to live a richer life?

This is obviously over-simplified and generalized and I’m sure I’m missing something… I’m just not sure what that something is yet or how to find it… And I'm simultaneously picking apart everything I wrote because it's not a sound argument and has plenty of holes and places to be filled in. But, on a less serious note, today I made two pieces of toast. The first one I left in the toaster too long and it burned really badly but since I hate wasting food I tried to convince myself it wouldn’t be that bad. But it WAS that bad. It was disgusting. So I had to make another piece and let me tell you... that second piece was the most delicious piece of toast I’ve ever tasted…

Welcome to my brain, internet. Haha.

Some chocolate covered delicacies and some unclear philosophy

I’ve felt for a long time that I’ve been on the brink of something big. Something important… like a serious change or some random event like winning the lottery. I don’t know what this something is or if there even is a something…. But I feel a something. Whatever that means.

I’ve expressed before how I feel like two people. Like I’m one person on the outside and totally different on the inside. Like a chocolate covered cherry… except I don’t think I’m that delicious. Maybe more like… a chocolate covered bug. Because they seem pretty normal from the outside but only people with a select palate actually like eating them.  And I’m perfectly ok with being a bug because I would totally eat a chocolate covered bug. Heck, I’ve eaten several non-chocolate bugs largely due to my tendency to never back down on a challenge or my willingness to weird things for a small sum of money. No prostitute jokes please.

Anyway, this two person thing is like I’m this chocolate covered bug on a plate of chocolate covered cherries. I’m just pretending to be a cherry and for all intents and purposes I am a cherry: I look like a chocolate covered cherry, I’m with chocolate covered cherries, I act like a chocolate covered cherry, and sometimes I actually believe I’m a chocolate covered cherry. That is, until someone tries to eat me, then, unless they like tasting bug guts instead of the cherry they were expecting, the game is up. And suddenly I’m confronted with the gap between what I wanted be and what I actually am. A big, terrifying gap that really shouldn’t be there.

Once in a while, when I’m feeling brave, I’ll acknowledge the gap. I’ll consider building a bridge over it or sewing it together or go exploring down it. But I only go as far as I don’t get hurt. At the first sign of the acknowledgement being difficult or unsure in anyway I abandon the project and continue pretending to be a chocolate covered cherry.

But this time, I don’t think I’m going to abandon it. For the first time in literally years I’ve really felt what I feel. I’ve been afraid of it, frustrated by it, hurt by it. This whole process is like stepping into the dark and all I have to hold onto is faith that this will end up ok. That by stepping into the gap, even though I can’t see the bottom, I won’t literally die. I might figuratively die but I think that would be ok. 

I can’t really explain how lost I feel and yet how utterly found I am. Lost because I’ve abandoned control (which I endlessly covet) and found because whether this is good or not, it’s where I need to be. Found because as I’ve stepped into the void, all I’ve had is faith to keep from turning around. Faith that I’m doing what I’ve been asked to do.

It’s so much easier to deny the existence of something that hurts you than to acknowledge it and accept it and welcome it. It’s easy to avoid feeling pain in order to save oneself. But in the process we deny the experience of it and we deny the meaning of it and we deny ourselves the possibility to feel anything other than an emptiness. I don’t think we can ever really understand the meaning of anything good in the world without accepting and even embracing its contrast.

I think for the first time, I’m actually understanding what I’ve known in my mind is true, because I’m coming to know it in my heart. And it hurts. It hurts a lot. Like when your hands have gone numb from the cold for a really long time and they start to thaw. Sometimes it’s really tempting to stay outside because you know how bad it will hurt to come back in. But I don’t think I can be outside any longer. Just like I can’t pretend to be a chocolate covered cherry any longer.

....

I’m really tempted to abandon this chocolate covered cherry analogy because it assumes people can’t change who they are and I whole-heartedly don’t agree with that idea. And I’m disappointed I don’t have any chocolate covered cherries to eat right now because they always sound delicious. That's all I have to say.