Shouting Up the Stairs

"There are people who never take the time to engage with other human beings to have a meaningful dialog about things... If you have no productive, active, engaging conversations with other people, something is severely missing from your life." -the Partially Examined Life


The Partially Examined life is the title of a podcast that I have enjoyed for about four months now. I use it as a mind-expanding device when my whole family is entrapped in the world of computer screens and no one "feels up to discussion." Anyways, the quote posted above sparked a long train of thought for me. 
     My first thought was that we always tend to notice people who don't engage in said meaningful conversations. These tend to be the same people who are glued to their phone and computer screens. Although these groups are not mutually inclusive, people who are glued to their screens typically fail in certain social areas. Real social life is more fulfilling and engaging than social media. Productive conversations can happen via social media, but ideas are more difficult to convey online. Online/texting conversations are a lot like shouting from downstairs to upstairs. You stand at the bottom of the stairs and (not being able to see the other person nor being quite sure of their location) holler your words up at them. They might hear, they might not. Words will be confused, and intentions might be misconstrued. 
id est:
Person A: "Come downstairs, let's go!"
Person B: "Bum some flares? Legos?"
Person A: "Plumb gum? Dingo?"
Et cetera, et cetera.

So, why rely on technology when it is only comparable to an unfulfilling conversation? The answer can be found by looking to my wonderful Dad, and my extroverted friend. We'll call her giggles, for all intents and purposes. She had a question for Dad, something about logistics, so she called him. After dad answered the question, giggles started making small talk. My dad got annoyed. Dad asked giggles if he had answered her question. Giggles said yes, and the conversation ended. I was annoyed at dad's bluntness with my friend- but I shouldn't have been. You see, Dad only uses phones for what is necessary. It might have something to do with his failing hearing (he spends most of the conversation saying, "what?" And "slow down and speak up!"), but we can still learn a valuable lesson from his evasion of phones. So many times I've seen him on the phone with a talkative person, holding the phone just above his ear, rolling his eyes, waiting for them to quit talking. I don't quite think that rudeness should be resorted to when trying to end a conversation, but when someone is trying to communicate deep feelings over a text/Facebook message/email, reconsider and perhaps either call them over the phone, or hold the conversation until you can meet face to face. In my opinion, communicating through the Internet should be reserved for logistics and necessary conversations.

Snowboarding and life

Snowboarding is a lot like life. You fall a lot and learn a lot.

Most of the time it's fun and exciting.

If you learn to love learning new things, the whole thing is a lot more interesting and thrilling.

Both snowboarding and life get us places, but sometimes you have to wait for the snow.

Sometimes you have to wait a very, very long time for the snow.

Some people have better tricks than others, some people get handed better boards than others, but in the end, it's all snowboarding, and we all make it down the mountain alive.

Introvert

“Introvert” was the word that was often used

To describe my life and to describe my views.

They called me “quiet," “a good listener”

My silence had made me a prisoner.

I hated loud noises and party scenes

I always avoided them, by all means.

Because the loud music made my head hurt,

With the flashing lights and the concerts,

I think they thought I was barely human.

Who doesn’t like all of that noise looming?

“How can someone love anything,” they asked

“if it doesn’t match partiers amassed?”

But they failed to look at the part of me

that said “I do love things, just not parties.”

They ignored it. They’d rather label me

As an introvert, as a nobody.

What they did not know, what they could not know

was that in my silence, thoughts began to grow

They grew until they almost burst out, but

I held them close, didn’t let them escape my mouth.

Until one day, when parties finally

fried the last of the partier’s brain, entirely.

Today I said what I was thinking about.

All of those thoughts started flowing out;

And before I knew what was happening,

My mind had started to spread its wings,

The wings that had been growing too wide

And no longer held desire to hide.

They listened to me, now. Tables have turned.

If they had only taken time to think
Their chance wouldn’t have been gone in a blink;

Their chance to speak and change the world

Their chance to stop and fix the record

So, today the introvert changes the world.

Today the introvert is no longer unheard.

Slaves to Comparison

Women are slaves to comparison. I used to say that women are only slaves to comparison if they let the comparison happen, but more recently I'm realizing that comparison is nearly never an act of volition.
I happen to have this one friend who compliments me a lot. Most of the time, I just blush and look away, because I'm not only flattered but also slightly overwhelmed that this person would notice something specifically interesting about my appearance.
Truth be told, the aspects of my appearance that I like are my hair and my eyes. But these details seem dulled when compared to other women. I have long, blonde hair. It's natural. I like it. But that girl has longer, shinier, softer hair than I could ever hope for; that girl over there has better natural highlights. Whatever it is, some girl, somewhere, will always, always have better hair than me.
So, I learn to be lured into a false sense of esteem. I start to feel great about how I look, then the homecoming queen shakes her perfect hair, smiles her perfect smile, walks her perfect walk, giggles her perfect giggle, and I feel entirely, in every respect, ugly and alone.

I'm a good girl. I've always been taught that beauty is not wholly based on the outward. I know that pageants, prom, homecoming, etc. aren't the basis for what a person is like on the inside... but it still kills me to be ugly. I watched that video that Dove posted (see link here) and it never really had an impact on me. In my mind I could never relate to those girls because when I watched the video I thought that they were physically beautiful women and that I was different, that I was an exception to the laws of beauty.
I thought that their insecurities were inferior to mine, that their complaints about the everything from the length of their nose to the roundness of their face were all invalid because when I looked at their faces as a whole, I saw normal, pretty people. I assumed that when people looked at me they couldn't possibly see the pretty things because they were so overwhelmed by how my eyebrows are too dark, how my face has acne scars from high school, how my eyes bulge a little when I smile, and how my chin has the worst dimple ever, and how my nose was broken and never really repaired, so it's crooked.
People often marvel at how pretty people think themselves ugly. I don't. I know my flaws only too well, because I see them in the mirror every. single. morning. I see them in pictures, and even in the reflection when the computer screen goes dark. I fixate on them. I obsess over how to change them.
Comparison makes the whole situation unbearable sometimes. I'm not thin. My face has a --although I hate this word there is simply no replacement sufficient-- hearty, Polish look rather than a delicate, gentle, homecoming, prom queen, perfect yearbook picture look. I fought this for years. I tried diets, but I'm a reasonable weight, so they didn't really affect me or my face shape. I tried makeup, but ugh... I never really was an artist and it never really looked right on me.
Obsession never changed anything. I only ever tortured myself with my daily insecurities because I could never fix them for good.

I'm headed off to college, and I've had it with the lies. I'm a grown-up, and the lies that I've been telling myself all these years about being physically inferior are garbage. Garbage that I don't need or want. I'm starting to see myself as something God created for a reason. I've always known that beauty isn't everything, and now I'm coming to realize that truth in full. God gave me a purpose on this earth. Obviously, that's why I'm still here. If his purpose for me required that I be beautiful, I would be. I'm just as beautiful as I'm supposed to be. Maybe I'm not runway material. If I'm not, then I'm not supposed to be.
Although this frame of mind will most likely sound abrupt and less desirable to the reader, I assure you that it's superior to my previous state of mind. Coming to the realization that it doesn't really matter if I'm pretty or not has been one of the most freeing epiphanies in my entire life. I feel like my body and I are ready to conquer the world. Beautiful or not.