three mice, thrice as nice!

Nikkal

Baby Talaya!

Nikkal grooming Anahita

True love

journaling

I used to keep a physical journal; technically, I still do, but it's been neglected for several (upon several) months. I also used to write journal entries in this blog. On a whim, I just read through my posts from 2008 and 2009. I was confused by some things (my writing style was weirdly abstract), amused by others, but mostly happily startled by how consistent my life goals have always been. 

• In 2009, I expressed a desire to get teacher-certified.
• In 2008, I already expressed some doubt about attending graduate school. 
• Two years prior to my wedding date (to the day), I listed that I wanted to be a part of a "selfless relationship," which I understood then, and now, to mean a long-lasting romantic partnership.
• Even during my impressionable years of not-quite-adulthood, I had the same pet peeves and concerns about the world.
• I have always expressed a desire to know reality, to know truth. I yearned, and continue to yearn, to live in reality and to search for beauty stripped of delusion, even if that means I must deal more completely with sorrow.

Often, when I look back at who I was in 2007 or 2008, I see myself through a skeptical, self-deprecating lens. I scoff at earlier-me's naivete, her hope, her unknowing, free-flowing passion. But I should trust myself more. A little life experience and a lot of growing up has made me more hesitant to speak with force and assumed knowledge, but my heart is in it just as much now as it was then. I know better than to confront an issue as if no opposition could possibly arise. But I do admire myself, in all my child-like innocence, speaking passionately on love and loss and human experience. 

I hope that I can continue my 23 year old tradition of journaling, of observing, of making sense out of life events, no matter how inconsequential they are in the grand scheme of things. 

What I bring now is a better sense of how narrative works to inform us, to counsel us, to - in many cases - close us off to further discussion. I bring experience: loss, love, a new understanding of grief and struggle and confusion and joy.

I bring, hopefully, a more comprehensible writing style. I hope, though, I haven't lost the poetry. 

Three Cups of Tea

source: ikat.org

I finished reading Three Cups of Tea yesterday evening. It's a journalist-written biography about Greg Mortenson's Central Asia Institute, which builds schools all over Pakistan and Afghanistan for poor, rural communities. He focuses specifically on gaining female students under the premise that a community improves when women are educated. He and his associates fight terror in the only truly effective way - by building friendships and providing a means for better quality of life. They fight extremist madrassas with unbiased, equal opportunity schools run by locals and supported by local religious and political leaders.


The book opened my eyes to what's really going on in Pakistan and the middle east. For the first time, I'm ashamed to admit, I saw Pakistanis as people, as individuals, as communities that only want the best for their children and the best for themselves. It's one of those books that has fundamentally changed me. It's one of those experiences that helped me understand myself, and people living on the other side of the world from me, in a deeply reflective way.


I encourage everyone to read it.


"But working over there, I've learned a few things. I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death." - Greg Mortenson, p. 292


For more quotes from the book, please visit fractured-radiance.
For information on the Central Asia Institute, please click here.


I want to be the kind of person who does something about pain and sorrow and lack of opportunity, to take a leap, to rely on uncertainty, and to press on regardless of perceived barriers.

relationships

It bothers me a lot that people my age don't take relationships seriously, or if they do, don't truly stand firm in helping anyone else do the same. I definitely think there is more gray area than people like to let on when it comes to taking personal and physical steps in a relationship, but we have to stop pretending like we're all experts in our own lives and start paying attention to what research, and solid relationships, tell us about building solid relationships.


When I first met Daniel and started to fall for him, I listened to a podcast and did some research on the chemicals of love and commitment. I credit those things, not necessarily with making my relationship succeed, but with keeping me grounded. Why do I feel an urgent need to be around him every day? Oh, the norepinephrine. Why do I feel such bliss in his embrace? The dopamine. For some, this takes all the romance out of falling in love. For me, it was reassurance. I knew why I was going crazy. I also knew that when the surge of these chemicals subsided, it didn't mean I no longer loved Daniel, it just meant that the 18 month period of crazy had settled us into a happy relationship.


Because I was still in school and lived on campus when we got engaged, and because it really never crossed my mind, we didn't consider moving in together. But I had done my research anyway, and the results weren't pretty. As it turns out, living together no longer necessarily signals early divorce - but only if a significant commitment, such as engagement, has been added to the mix. When both parties are clueless about their future together, things begin to go awry.


That's not to say that people shouldn't be allowed to make whatever decisions they want, or that not reading up on hormones will ruin a relationship, but I think when it comes to building any relationship that could have a tremendous impact on our lives, we better think things through and not let hormones, or convenience, be our primary guides.


(Just to clarify, this post was inspired by several separate events and experiences. No single individual is meant to be targeted. On a related note, we have to stop portraying our relationships as rainbow bubbles of mushy love, to begin to convey realistic experience with its wonderful ups and also its downs - I think it's potentially harming those who are currently looking for love, but that's for another post, I guess.)

TMI

Social media exists for sharing, but too often we are tempted to over share. Last week, I got myself in a lot of trouble on Facebook (again) by forgetting to behave as if the person with whom I disagree is in the room with me, by acting as if they were an automated troll rather than a real person. I see careless arguments break out through social media all the time, ones that can seriously damage relationships and negatively influence public opinion on sensitive issues.

source by Teeney 2

Don't be an internet troll.

Maybe we're automatically more caustic toward each other on facebook and blogs because they exist in part to make us look good. We carefully construct our public identity through these forums and when someone responds unfavorably to them, our immediate response is to lash out. We want so badly to be perceived as confident, respectable individuals with numerous interests and talents that we will compromise relationship to keep our online personas intact.


Blogs in particular seem to tempt us to over share, to vent our frustrations as if we're writing in a private journal when we're really allowing the world to access every gut response and judgment. I try to be very careful here to create a distance between my life as it happens and how I express it. A friend and I agreed recently that the best way to avoid bitter and angry comments is to not invite them in the first place - to share thoughtfully and non-defensively, to explain your actions and address possible criticism maturely, and to realize that some life decisions and topics will invite comments no matter how you address them in your writing and that it is your responsibility to create a space for constructive criticism.


Although it is our right to spew whatever crap we want into the virtual universe, it's not always in anyone's best interest to do so. Don't pretend like you are justified to speak and act irresponsibly. Stop behaving as if your opinion is the only one that counts. Recognize that you are initiating a conversation every time you post. And if you use writing as a tool to help you sort out your emotions and make solid decisions, consider closing your lap top and settling down with a pen and paper instead. Good, old fashioned private journaling never hurt anyone.

"about me"

Wife.

Christian.

Framer.

Nanny.

Goldfish owner.

Crafter.

Singer.

Fashion lover.

I recently ran into some stereotype-driven conflict on a blogger's page. After urging others who commented on her post about divorce to realize that marriage is not passive and that you can't gauge your commitment solely on feeling butterflies, someone responded rather bizarrely:

"Leah, it's obvious you have a religious axe to grind, but this is not the place for it..." 

To further clarify, this is what I posted:

"the farse here is feeling that there should always be butterflies. no wonder so many people get divorced. those butterflies are dopamine, which hype you up and stay in your body for about 18 months after you fall in love. they leave after that and you're still left with a relationship to work on. nobody would still be married if they expected prolonged butterflies. plus, that would be very uncomfortable. 

i'm not saying this to outright disapprove of your decision, - . I just felt a need to clear this up. Marriage is hard work. It's not something that happens to you; you actively pursue it or you don't." 

I can only conclude that the respondent either thinks anyone who is pro-marriage is also a fundamentalist Christian or - and this is more likely - she read my little bio on my profile and mentally linked my criticism to it. I can imagine her saying to herself: "oh, isn't that just like an ignorant American Christian to say something anti-divorce on this blog where we're all supposed to be nice and supportive." 

I will concede that my Christian upbringing likely has something to do with my commitment to marriage. But I think it makes just as much sense to say I have been too heavily influenced by those old married couples who think marriage is a life long commitment. Or human society who prizes relational commitment. Or love itself, which demands I give up a little of my own comfort for the comfort of my friends and family. Or maturity, which tells me that life is, in fact, not about me at all, that life is much more worth living when I live in relationship and take responsibility for my behavior.

In conclusion, my "axe to grind" is really just an attempt at waking up my self-obsessed generation to the destructive nature of too much self love. I've heard it said that you have to love yourself before you can love others fully, and maybe that's true. But if you love yourself too much, it's impossible to love anyone else fully. It's impossible to really commit to anything or anyone. When the end goal is to make yourself happy, you will search your whole life and never find it. When the end goal is contentment in a responsible community of people who have striven and nagged and hurt and let go of themselves for your benefit, alongside you, you will probably be surprised one day, waking up to light and birdsong, at how happy you are.

To round out the whole discussion, think about this: next time you read someone's fragmented online bio, try not to see them as a list, but as a nuanced individual. I am not a naive, fundamentalist, Republican housewife (which one may assume from the word, "Christian"). Even if I were, I would be much much more than that. Judge me on my words, not on my particular life situation. Judge me on my heart, my intentions, my sometimes over-the-top passion, not on a single word placed out of context.