I Don't Want to Change the World Anymore

I'm not sure where this post is going. Some good posts have started out feeling like this, but a lot of others have ended up deleted. We shall see where this one goes.

I like to think of myself as a very reasonable, logical person—almost to a fault, at times. I have trouble empathizing. I don't usually care how people FEEL if it flies in the face of reason. I am a very black-and-white person.

When I was in eleventh grade, I studied American history, philosophy, and formal logic in the same semester. We dived deep into concepts like economics and Christianity. We constructed intense, rational arguments to defend our well-developed opinions. We memorized famous speeches that made us proud of being Americans, that made us want to change the world. We were going to change the world, and we declared as much to the adults in our lives.

In my memory, we were met with a lot of raised eyebrows and nods accompanied by smug looks. Sure, the expressions seemed to say. I remember when I thought I was gonna change the world. You'll grow out of it eventually. Their looks offended me and made me all the more determined to speak truth in a way that would make people listen.

I went to college to become a lawyer. I wanted to fight for justice using passion and logic. I wanted to persuade the world of what I knew to be true based on logic, history, morality. However, after an especially tedious class, I realized that becoming a lawyer was NOT the way I wanted to do that with my life. I became an English major instead, because what good are logic, history, and morality if you can't communicate them effectively?

I graduated in 2016. Election year. For all humans who had to endure that year while on a college campus, I want to offer my deepest condolences. If I hadn't already high-tailed it out of political science, that would've done it for me. Twenty-sixteen made me so glad I had evacuated the world of academic politics. To defend myself against accusations of racism, sexism, and bigotry from people who clearly must not know me was exhausting in a way that makes my soul feel tired just remembering it.

Back in high school, I loved to debate. I loved it so much that I would—and I am NOT kidding—seek out YouTube videos that went against my beliefs and engage in comment wars with strangers for DAYS. I would defend my beliefs about anything to anyone, and thoroughly enjoy myself. It might make me sad and frustrated and incredulous that some people wouldn't see the reason in what I argued, but it never discouraged me.

Now, I am tired.

Now, I understand the raised eyebrows and smug looks of the adults I encountered when I was seventeen.

It kind of makes me want to cry. It kind of makes me want to throw chairs against walls. It kind of makes me want to refuse to talk to anyone who believes differently than I do.

I feel very "done" these days. I'm done trying to get some people to see reason, and they're probably feeling the same way about me. I don't know that my logical persuasion has ever once convinced someone to change his or her opinion, and I don't know whose fault that is. Is it mine, because I'm not empathetic and winsome enough? Is it hers, because she refuses to see the error in her reasoning? Is it mine, because I'm too rigid and old-fashioned in my beliefs? Is it his, because he bases his argument on emotion? Is it mine, because I'm wrong but stubborn? Is it his, because he's wrong but stubborn?

I don't know. I'll probably never know. All I know is that talking about it does not seem to work, although I know that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to keep an open dialogue, be willing to listen—really listen—to people who think differently than us.

But I can tell you right now that I do not see myself changing any of my fundamental beliefs. How can I expect someone else to? *shrug* I guess I can't.

At this point, I don't want to change the world anymore; I just want to keep myself from going crazy. That seems like a big enough bite to chew these days.

Hopefully soon—now that I'm beginning to admit and process these thoughts and feelings—I will have a more encouraging, Christ-like update. Until then, don't expect me to join any comment wars.

~Stephanie

My Reason in the Rhyme: having kids when I'm selfish, scared, and cynical

Spoiler alert:  I am not pregnant.

Anyway.

Having kids has never been a question for me. Of course I am going to have kids. When I was little, I thought it was just what happened when you grew up and got married. As I grew up, I guess somewhere in the back of my mind (where I stored the information gleaned from The Talk) I knew that I didn't HAVE to have kids, but I always knew that I would. I loved babysitting; I never completely grew out of my love for "playing pretend;" I enjoyed conversations with children. Kids never intimidated me, even the ones "you couldn't do anything with."

As I grew even older, I began to think about what it would be like to raise a mini-me. What would she look like? Would she love to read? (Of course she would love to read.) Would she be allergic to peanuts? Would she be a worrywart like me?

When I fell in love with Gabe, my future wonderings grew concrete in a breathtaking, exhilarating, frighteningly real way. His was the other half of my kids' DNA. Brown eyes are dominant, so my kids would now probably have brown eyes. Gabe is much more patient than I am, more steady. Maybe my kids would have his patience and surefootedness, rather than my peanut allergy and inclination to stress about literally everything. Maybe one kid would be like me, another like him. Maybe they'd all be perfect mixtures. Maybe some would be completely out of left field and we'd have to learn them together.

I've never doubted that I want kids.

But then...

Then we started premarital counseling, and had to put our goals into categories:  short term (3-5 years), medium term (5-10 years), long term (10+ years).

Clearly, at age 22 and wanting four children, the logical category for kids was Short Term. But a spark of panic leapt into my stomach and bloomed into something hot and scratchy.

Three to five years? Gabe won't even be finished with school for three and a half years. What, he graduates and gets a job and then BAM--babies? No time as married adults with regular jobs? No years as DINKS to travel and eat at fancy restaurants and go to movies at full price?

Was I terrible for thinking that way? I really did want kids. I love kids. I want my own kids. I want to read to them, and fix their favorite foods, and take them to historical places, and play pretend with them, and hear their thoughts about the world.

But I already worry about my body. I'm already a bit of a hypochondriac. Can you imagine how worked up and freaked out I'd be if I were pregnant? Still worrying about myself all the time, except ALSO worrying about the little person inside of me, and how my own health would affect him or her.

And, if I'm absolutely throwing good taste to the wind, I might as well say that the idea of being pregnant freaks me out. My stomach is going to swell. There is going to be an ANIMAL (I know, a person, I'm there with you, but it is, in fact, a creature) forming out of tissue and soul in my stomach. Growing. It'll be like I swallowed a person, except that it keeps growing.

And don't even get me started on how scared I am of actually giving birth and nursing not sleeping for months.

Also, the world today. What if my baby has to know Hilary Clinton as his first president? Or Donald Trump? What if my baby's best friend has two mommies? What if my baby tries to tell me that he thinks he's actually a she? What if my baby's brain is skewed by the prevalent use of social media? What if he subconsciously feels like if he doesn't take a picture of an event, it might as well not have happened? I already struggle with that, and I wasn't even born into this craziness.

I feel so scared--and so selfish--when it comes to having kids. I feel like a bad person. Sometimes I want kids RIGHT NOW, sometimes I can't even pretend like I might want kids any time soon. But God is doing several things to keep me sane about this, the biggest of which is my job.

I work for Classical Conversations: a classical, Christian, community-based curriculum program for homeschooling families. Its mission statement is "to know God and to make Him known," and one of its core beliefs is that parents are the best educators for their unique children. I did this program growing up, and its philosophy and content prepared me for college and life better than anything else could have. Seriously, I will have to write a post entirely about this company sometime.

But this is not that post.

I'm the assistant editor for the multimedia side of the company, which means that I get to read a lot of the curriculum and the catalog and the resources and the emails and basically everything that this company is putting out there for parents and students.

And guys, it makes me so excited to have kids.

I want to read Story of the World to my kids. I want to hear their little voices rattling off complex history sentences from memory, the way I did when I was their age. I want to show them the beautiful logic behind Latin, and how fun it is to read original documents. I want to see the light go on in their heads when they see laws of science work in experiments. I want to hear their thoughts on the Dred Scott decision. I want to see the map of the world they can draw from memory.

I want to help them love learning, even more than I did. I want to help them understand the truth, goodness, and beauty of the world even better than I did. I want them to live a life of learning, even more intentionally than I did. I want them to see the connections between Latin and music, western culture and theology, math and literature even better than I did.

I want them to live with more love for and awareness of God than I did. I want them to feel His joy more than I did. I want them to see His connections better than I did.

Every day, I get to work with resources that help kids become the best humans they can be for God. I'm selfish, I'm scared, I'm cynical, but how can I not want to have little humans who will learn and grow and love and explore and understand better than I did? I know it sounds sort of backwards and silly, but Classical Conversations is such a great program that it makes me want to have kids just so they can participate.

I know this isn't the best thinking process, and I'm struggling with whether or not I should even hit "Publish," but this is my truth for the time being. This is my reason in the rhyme. This is how I'm staying sane and wanting kids even though I'm selfish and scared.

*shrug* I'll let you know how I feel in three to five years.

~Stephanie

Between Two Trees

Everything felt crisp and happy. The whole world was biting into a cold, sweet apple; opening a fresh, blank notebook; sliding between cool, clean sheets. The air touched her skin and set it free:  she felt infinitely open and infinitely comfortable and infinitely light. The sun watched from a distance, throwing down light--clean and clear--without heat.

She swung her arms as she walked. Well, at least she did in her mind; it was hard actually to swing them with a drink in one hand and a heavy bag on her shoulder. She felt good. She felt at peace. She had just enough control of her life to feel safe and optimistic. She felt capable, though challenged; unburdened, though busy. Her life was, as always, a beautiful conglomeration of oxymorons and ironies, paradoxes and asterisks. Everything was overwhelming, but nothing overwhelmed her. It was a good feeling.

Her comfy boots hit the brick path in a perfect steady rhythm, carrying her between two rows of young trees. The wind whispered to them what a good day she was having. In happy response, they sent two red leaves twirling down in front of her. She knew they were for her and she smiled.

Out of the corner of her eye, between two trees, she saw the world ripple and shimmer. This took several seconds to register, and when it did, her mind labeled it "spiderweb." But a second later, she slowed her steps and glanced back. She did not see any spiderweb, and as she recalled the peripheral memory, it seemed less like a glittery web and more like a thin, shiny, warped window.

Her smile twitched wryly. Not too long ago, she would have taken the sight as a portal to another world.

This thought stopped her. She stood on the brick path, a few paces past the mysterious shimmering space between trees. It had to have been a web. But...was anyone watching her?

She noted no one in front of her and no one behind her. Someone might be watching from a building nearby, but that would be okay. She felt too happy to feel foolish.

In a fragment of a moment--so sudden that she startled herself--she must have decided to go back and look again. Her bag bumped her hip and the ice in her drink rattled as she turned and trotted back a few steps.

She did see a spiderweb, but it was small and strung among the leaves and twigs of one tree. Nothing filled the empty space between the two trunks. She must have imagined the shimmering; it must have been a trick of this beautiful sunlight and clean air. She allowed herself just moment to be sure before continuing on her way, bag bumping and drink rattling. There wasn't anything between the trees. She knew that.

But it bothered her. She didn't go back, but it bothered her. She should have stepped between the trees to be sure. She should have put her hand there. She knew it was silly; she knew it was the light.

But she didn't, was the thing. Years ago, she would have gasped, run back, and reached her fingers into the shimmering space. She would have half expected to see her hand disappear into the force field and feel some alien air on the other side. She would have followed her hand with her body and been Who Knows Where. It would have been magic--maybe. Maybe.

But she didn't, was the thing. Today, she didn't think to try, really. It hadn't been a spiderweb; it hadn't been anything. Just a trick of the light.

Maybe this was the time, she wondered, fully joking--but fully distracted by an unnamed loss. Maybe this was the time it was real, the first time I did nothing, the first time I didn't try. Maybe that's how people miss things: they grow up and stop trying. Maybe it was Narnia and I wasn't looking for it and I could have gone. But if I think so, and I try, aren't I looking for it? Doesn't it then go away?

It wasn't really anything, and she knew that. But it bothered her.

Poetry and Party Poopers

No one knows who wrote "Beowulf." But because of "Beowulf," we know a lot about ancient culture, particularly about some of the first literary heroes and villains.

For instance, the villain--the monster named Grendel--hates music. He first attacks the kingdom because he hears singing and it annoys him. He hates the sound; he hates the celebration; he hates the fellowship.

Grendel lives far away from people. {I guess he just has phenomenal hearing.} We later find out that he shares a home with his mother, but it's just the two of them. He hates company.

From the way Grendel is villainized {I choose to believe that's a word}, we modern-day readers can gather that in "Beowulf's" day, silence and solitude were frowned upon. If you didn't like poetry and parties, you were evil.

But then you have the hero, Beowulf, himself. Beowulf doesn't LIVE in solitude, but does insist on going to battle alone. How come the hero can get away with the very actions that make the villain what he is?

I don't know.

I also can't decide if I think today's values have changed or not.

Certainly, today's heroes must be team players or they're labeled "arrogant." If modern heroes demand to work alone, 9 times out of 10 they end up suffering some kind of "humbling" experience that teaches them to value others. This is because today’s issues are increasingly of global rather than regional importance, causing heroes to model teamwork as a subtle lesson for society.

What about poetry and parties? Personally, I support the idea that hating poetry makes you a villain XD But parties?

I think today's society is at least a little more accepting of introverts. We don't rip their arms off or anything. However, there's still the whole wallflower/party pooper stigma, and being "popular" is a timelessly desirable trait.

I dunno. In thirteen hundred years, a lot of things can change. But some things don't change a lot.

~Stephanie

I Don't Like Love Stories

I think I don't like love stories because they're all lies.

I guess to some extent, all stories are "lies" in that they're fiction. But see, no one expects {REALLY expects} to be able to read a character into our world or travel to Venus. At least, by the time you're old enough to look for truth in books, you know that those things won't happen. But by the time you're old enough to look for truth in books, you're also old enough to search for Love, and that is something we really DO expect.

In real life, we look for love and expect to find it, so it seems cruel and wrong to write stories that set people up for failure.

Books--love stories in any form--are pretty clear from the beginning. The main characters are laid out for you and you can tell instantly which guy{s} are on the list of potential Trueloves. By about half or three-fourths of the way through the story, you're sure whom the main character will end up with. {In movies, it's usually within the first fourth.}

Real life is absolutely nothing like that. In real life, you're sort of always and never in medias res. Yes, you're in the midst of your life right now, but at any moment, something completely new could be introduced. Every second of life could be the beginning of a new story. There's never a time where you can nod and say, "Okay, no more central characters are going to be introduced" or "Clearly, this is the main plot strain."

In a way, real life can never be authentically translated to a story, because stories deal with neatly defined sections of a person's life and include--for the most part--only details relevant to the story. {Unless it's by Herman Melville.} In a story, you know what to pay attention to, because if it's there at all, it's likely important. In real life, you have all of the details all of the time and must prioritize them on your own.

However, some kinds of stories can achieve more authenticity than love stories, for example ones that deal with solving a mystery, investigating a crime, or battling an enemy. Those stories can be more authentically contained by literature because they have beginnings and endings in real life too. Mysteries have answers; crimes have perpetrators; evil kings have deaths. In both stories and in real life, the components of the answer exist before you embark on the journey. In both stories and real life, you know for sure when you can check the box on the story's completion.

Plus, mystery/crime/morality stories contain universal, applicable life lessons. Love stories are generally mined incorrectly for wisdom. Instead of looking at a story and saying, "Clearly lying to people results in unimaginable heartbreak," people look and say, "Clearly a liar can still be your true love if you just don't give up on him." People miss the trees for the forest, instead of the other way around.

But even if crime-solving and enemy-fighting stories couldn't be applied to real life, the topics aren't sacred. They're universal and impersonal enough that it wouldn't be terribly offensive to distort them a bit.

But to distort something like LOVE...that's just sick. "Love stories" usually pump people full of unrealistic expectations of the scope and clarity and beauty of love. Real life and real love cannot be detected any better by familiarizing yourself with romantic fiction. Real love is too complicated to reduce to a finite story.

Love stories do a gross disservice to Love and lead people to false knowledge. I'd rather read something else. To me, "Inkheart" is somehow more real than "The Notebook."

~Stephanie

A World Spinning on Words

What if writing goes out of style? What if books become obsolete? What if one day, the last of the writers dies, and from then on, people just sit around and text and watch movies and talk? Maybe even handwriting will become extinct.

What if people forget how to write? What if imaginations get smaller and weaker until all people talk about are real events and the here-and-now?

What if novels are put in display cases in museums and people look at their covers and think, “Someone made up stuff and stuck it together with words for fun. Who does that? How weird.”

But you know what? I doubt that will happen. A lot of things have come and gone, but stories, words, and sharing have never faded. They’ve been around since the beginning of time. Humans have an innate desire to remember, create, discover.

I can’t imagine a world where words aren’t valued by a single person; a world where everyone goes around throwing out words that are “close enough;” a world where no one gets chills when words are put in a painfully beautiful order.

I think someone will always be writing.

But how much can be said, really? There are many words, but so many people, so much time. Will we ever reach a point where everything has been said? Will there come a point where every combination of words, every pattern, has been penned?

I don’t think so, but if that time does come, I think it will be time for the world to end; to quietly fold on itself in satisfied darkness, like a blanket. Tender, gentle, crisp finality will settle over the earth. When everything has been said, thought, experienced, loved, trusted, written, mocked, taught, and pleaded, what is left to live for?

The last written words would be like the final piece in a puzzle, or a dying man being forgiven, or lying down after a rough day.

Of course, if that time comes, it will be something new to write about, and someone will capture that moment and write it and keep the world spinning just a little bit longer.

~Stephanie