Season Six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer concerns Buffy’s troubles with finding her way in the world. After dying (at the end of season five), and being resurrected, Buffy is having some problems finding her purpose in life. In the musical episode, “Once More With Feeling,” she sings that she just wants to “feel” and that she wants “something to sing about.” Spike sings to her, “Life's not a song/ Life isn't bliss/ Life is just this/ It's living.” (I know that sounds uber-corny, but trust me, the show is masterful at making the trite meaningful. Plus the way Spike – James Marsters – looks at Buffy at this moment is enough to make your socks melt).
ANYWAY, I love me this stuff, but as many times as I watch this episode, I’m always left sitting there thinking, “Come on Buffy, what the crap? You have super-slayer powers, a dreamy dude worshipping you, a stylish yet affordable wardrobe, cool friends, and perpetually shiny and bouncy hair. What is it you’re sad about again?”
And then I am spiraled into self-reflection, because I know it’s true that I complain too. But I know I shouldn’t. I have a lovely life. I am paid to read books that interest me and to talk about them and write about them in a beautiful place with smart people. I think of my friend Maggie at Mizzou who would talk about how she drove a forklift for ten years before coming to grad school. And why am I complaining again? And as much as I complain about teaching, it brings me incredible joy. Seriously. I woke up at 5:30am this morning because I was so excited about creating a lesson plan centered on Jeopardy. That’s joy.
So I’ve decided to just not complain anymore, because every time I complain, I am giving myself permission to be ungrateful for the good things I’ve got. I am giving myself permission to NOT “be here now,” to NOT “be mindful,” to live in some fantasy world where I’m thinner, have a car, and everyone thinks I’m smarter than they are.
I am currently reading Thomas Merton’s Zen and the Birds of Appetite, and I find that Merton makes a similar point: “I might suggest a fourth need of modern man, which is precisely liberation from his inordinate self-consciousness, his monumental self-awareness, his obsession with self-affirmation, so that he may enjoy the freedom from concern that goes with being simply what he is and accepting things as they are in order to work with them as he can.”
So here are some ground rules:
1. I am only allowed to “complain” to people who can do something about it. So if for example, I have a problem with a professor, I am only allowed to talk to the professor about it. This will also keep me from gossiping.
2. I am only allowed to complain about things that I can change or that can be changed (the wisdom to know the difference, etc.)
3. Before I complain, I’m going to think about how my complaining might come off to someone who, for example, has to work 60+ hours a week in customer service for less money than I make. In short, I want to look at myself the way I look at Buffy.
4. I am allowed to debate, analyze, and criticize for the purpose of furthering my own beliefs or for the benefit of others. For example, I can criticize a book we read for class, and discuss what I don’t like about it, but I am not allowed to complain that we have to read it in the first place.
We shall see how this works. I’m already feeling more positive.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Choosing between my money and my life
I’m reading a very interesting book called Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence, recommended by one of the productivity blogs I read, zenhabits. The book has a lot of great anti-capitalism messages, essentially showing how society programs us to want more and more while making us less happy. The goal of the book is to help you figure out how to get what you want from money. In this way, it’s very zen because you’re supposed to focus on what you want, as opposed to what TV ads or your friends tell you that you want. You need to find what is “enough” for you. It’s also filled with fun soundbites like “If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough” and “Most people have no idea how much money has entered their lives, and therefore no idea how much money could enter their lives.”
The book points out that we don’t tell people how to spend their money because it’s their “right” to spend it how they want in a free society. We take our “right” to consume to heart, sometimes even placing it above other rights, privileges, and duties of a free society. We also have the idea that it’s un-American to reject consumerism: “We have absorbed the notion that it is right to buy – that consuming is what keeps America strong … a day at the mall can be considered downright patriotic.”
I thought I was doing pretty well with money, and I thought that this book would be good “advice” but that I didn’t really need it.
Then I checked the mail on Friday and got my electric bill.
And it was $180.
Now, this is an unusual bill. LaRue was here for a couple weeks, and obviously two people take up more energy than one. And it was incredibly hot, and it’s cooling down now. BUT OH MY GOSH ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS IS A LOT OF MONEY. I don’t even want to think about how many hours I’ve slaved over grading papers this semester that have gone simply to keeping my apartment a balmy 80 degrees while I’m not even there.
I don’t have the firmest grasp of my readership, so I won’t put my earnings here, but suffice it to say I am living on a grad student salary, which cannot typically bear that kind of stress. So I pulled up my checking account online, made a budget, and decided to make some changes. I’m posting some of these ideas to hold myself accountable and to perhaps give other some ideas:
1. I read online that you can usually downgrade your internet speed and generally you won’t even notice the difference. So I called the cable company and asked how much I was actually paying (before reading this book, I would have just set up automatic bill pay and forgotten about it). I was paying $30/month for high speed internet. “I want to downgrade,” I told the woman on the phone. “I want the $15 per month tier.” “Okay,” she said, “but it’s going to be a lot slower!” Guess what? She changed it, and I can’t tell the difference.
2. I live down the street from a place that buys, sells, and trades books, DVDs, music, etc., so I’m going to go through my stuff and see what I can get rid of.
3. I’m going to buy:
a. An energy efficient showerhead
b. Energy star light bulbs (I have some, but not in all my lights)
c. Glass pans (which retain heat and cook faster, meaning that the oven doesn’t have to be on as long)
d. Pots for the stove with flat bottoms and tight covers (I’m also going to cook with the lids on)
4. I’m going to look into getting reflective film for my windows which will let in the light but not the heat. Also, I’m going to consider getting ceiling fans.
5. I’m going to try to do my cooking early in the morning or late in the evening. Last night, for example, I made pasta and tofu to take for my lunches this week. That way, I don’t have to keep heating up the stove (and thus the apartment) every day or during the heat of the day.
6. I’m going to study on campus during the heat of the day, so I can leave the AC off in my apartment.
I’ll keep you posted. Anyone have other energy-saving ideas for me?
Thursday, September 13, 2007
That Quiet Kid
It happens every semester.
There is one student (in my mind, usually male) who never talks. Sometimes he's in the back, sometimes he's in the front, but he just sits there and stares (sometimes under the brim of a baseball hat).
Then, inevitably, this kid writes a brilliant paper. And everything you said on the first day of class about the importance of participation, about how you have to talk to learn, about how we're all in this together and you have to contribute to learn right along with everyone else, etc. doesn't make sense. Because this kid said like one or two things the entire class thus far and yet seemed to get it more than anyone else.
I was always baffled about why this happened, up until this last week reading Living Speech by James Boyd White. White argues that much of what we say is "dead" speech -- cliches, empty phrases, chatter, propoganda -- it lacks meaning and life. He discusses briefly Quaker church services and Trappist monks, both of which are marked by silence. In a Quaker church service, everyone sits in silence until someone feels as though he or she has something meaningful to say. Similarly, the monks take a vow of silence not to alienate others but to clear away the clutter of daily life, to perhaps hear God better. (Though perhaps not as erudite of an example, there's an episode of Buffy where everyone loses their voice -- a similar point is made about how little of what we say actually means anything.) I mentioned this (the silent student, not the Buffy ep) to my professor, who remarked that studies of gifted children show that they spend a good portion of their day staring out the window.
I believe in silence in the classroom. After I ask a question, I usually let the silence stretch for quite some time -- silence gives students time to think. Sometimes you can't just answer a question right off the bat. Sometimes you need to look at your notes, or the reading, or the book, or sometimes you just need to stare out the window.
There is one student (in my mind, usually male) who never talks. Sometimes he's in the back, sometimes he's in the front, but he just sits there and stares (sometimes under the brim of a baseball hat).
Then, inevitably, this kid writes a brilliant paper. And everything you said on the first day of class about the importance of participation, about how you have to talk to learn, about how we're all in this together and you have to contribute to learn right along with everyone else, etc. doesn't make sense. Because this kid said like one or two things the entire class thus far and yet seemed to get it more than anyone else.
I was always baffled about why this happened, up until this last week reading Living Speech by James Boyd White. White argues that much of what we say is "dead" speech -- cliches, empty phrases, chatter, propoganda -- it lacks meaning and life. He discusses briefly Quaker church services and Trappist monks, both of which are marked by silence. In a Quaker church service, everyone sits in silence until someone feels as though he or she has something meaningful to say. Similarly, the monks take a vow of silence not to alienate others but to clear away the clutter of daily life, to perhaps hear God better. (Though perhaps not as erudite of an example, there's an episode of Buffy where everyone loses their voice -- a similar point is made about how little of what we say actually means anything.) I mentioned this (the silent student, not the Buffy ep) to my professor, who remarked that studies of gifted children show that they spend a good portion of their day staring out the window.
I believe in silence in the classroom. After I ask a question, I usually let the silence stretch for quite some time -- silence gives students time to think. Sometimes you can't just answer a question right off the bat. Sometimes you need to look at your notes, or the reading, or the book, or sometimes you just need to stare out the window.
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