My World Is Small And So Am I

This world is very big, and I am very small. This has pretty much been my mantra since I started graduate school about a month and a half ago. I think at least partially by design of the program, as an entering Masters of Social Work student, I have been inundated with bad. I have learned so much about histories of pain and injustice and brokenness; I have learned so much about how those histories of pain and injustice and brokenness continue to perpetuate into today. Essentially, I feel like I have spent the last month and a half being taught why social work needs to exist: somebody has to fix all of it, right?  With each passing day, my mantra has become more and more true. Every day the world feels just a little bit bigger, and I feel just a little bit smaller.  There is so much in this world that I wish to help change, and I am me: a 21-year-old kid who may or may not feel like a good day consists of getting up, going to class, making sure the right paper gets turned into the right class, going to bed and hitting replay in the morning. Point being, graduate school feels big, and if graduate school feels big,  then how am I supposed to help to change a world that is oh so much bigger?  This world is very big. I am very small.  But there's another piece that I haven't said yet. My complete mantra is this: this world is very big, I am very small, and that's okay. Why is that okay? Because I am 21 years old and I don't need to be the one to change the world, at least not right now. So, I've clung to my mantra, I've said it out loud almost every day, if my friends hear me say it again, I'm pretty sure one of them will probably punch me in the face. I've said it so much  that it has started to lose its meaning for me, and  it's driving those around me nuts. Regardless, it's done its job, and I've made it through a month and a half of graduate school. It did its job until yesterday. Until  events that happened halfway across the world yesterday flipped my mantra on its head.  Now, I think that what I should have been saying all this time is, my world is very small and I am very small.

  And so, at the risk of being the 2 billionth person on the Internet, who really has no stake in it whatsoever, to talk about Paris, I am going to talk about Paris. The worlds of people in Paris were rocked yesterday. I would imagine that every notion of safety and security they had was long gone when several people entered the city with guns and intention to kill. And they make good on those intentions, they did kill, they took the lives of hundreds of people, and in doing so have changed the lives of thousands if not millions of others. My heart breaks for these people. Not unlike how I feel when I learn about histories of injustice in school, I feel a sense of sorrow and need to help. I don't think that I am alone in this feeling of needing to help. With the ability to help comes the ability to at least in part take control of an uncontrolled and unexplainable situation. And if I'm being honest, I truly believe that pictures that say Pray for Paris  come  out of this overwhelming desire to help.  The fact of the matter  though is that I don't know that these things are actually helping.

 My world was not rocked yesterday. I got up, went to class, made sure the right papers were turned into the right classes, and I went to bed with the expectation that today would be just like yesterday. It was a good day. No one I love died yesterday. My sense of safety wasn't shattered yesterday. No matter how much my heart breaks for the people in Paris, my world and my life did not change yesterday. I am not faced with the seemingly impossible task of having to move on. As much as my heart breaks, and I wish that it hadn't happened, I also recognize that it isn't about me. Why? Because while this world is big, my world is very, very small.

My little world is not perfect.  It has been rocked several times. I know  what it's like to feel suffocated by the weight of my world crashing on me. I know what it's like to feel out of control. I also know that in these times  it has been hard for me to watch the world move on when it was all I could to to sit in one spot and breathe.  I share this because I think it's why I'm having such a hard time seeing the words Pray for Paris trending on social media, and with the fact that there is now an option on Facebook to turn your profile picture into the flag of France.  If I change my profile  picture it shows my friends that I care, for two seconds I get to feel like I'm doing something to help, like  I have the tiniest bit of control because I am showing solidarity. But  I don't think I'm actually helping the ones who need it.

  Don't get me wrong, I don't think that there is anything bad with the pictures and the posts. It just drives me crazy, absolutely crazy, that I can't do anything more than that  to help. I think the same is true in respect to school. Yes, learning about histories of pain and injustice and brokenness make me feel small, but that is because my world, my small world, has not truly been touched by these things. My sitting in a classroom for three hours at a time learning about how many more people of color are incarcerated in this country than people of Caucasian descent does not change anything. If I were to go and post a picture that said  Black  Lives Matter in response to these conversations in class, the reality is I am not really helping at all. By posting a picture I am not really helping at all because I can't. These things are so much bigger and so much more complicated than I will ever be able to fully understand, than anyone will ever be able to fully understand. It's  impossible because it is so much bigger than individual people.

 Okay! It was not my intention to get all dark and depressing, but I think it may have happened. My intention was to say the events of yesterday changed the way that my brain is working just a little bit. This world is big, and I am small. Yes. That is true. It is also true though that my world is small and I and I am small. And I cannot and should not expect to change the whole big world in one fell swoop  because that would require me to get bigger than my little world. That, my friends, is impossible. As my life goes on, my little world will get  bigger, and the number of things  that I will be able to truly influence will grow as my world does. Right now though, my world is pretty small.  it consists of school, school, school, the occasional human contact, and more school. As annoying as it might be at times that is my world right now, and I can only directly affect the things and the people in it. I believe that that is true for all of us. So, take two seconds to post a pretty picture of the Eiffel Tower if you want to, but take two more seconds to do something that directly affects someone in your own little world. Hug someone you love. Go puddle jumping with friends because you can.   Force a friend to stop studying and have coffee with you. Change your world first.

 Paris is public. It's everywhere, we couldn't escape it if we wanted to, but it's also important to realize that these things happen all over the world every day and gain far less publicity. They're not even on our radar. And yet it happens. Realizing that I think probably makes us feel even smaller. And I think that's okay. We were not designed to change the world by ourselves. Rather, I think that we were all intentionally placed into our own little worlds so that we could change those. It's not our job to fix the big world. It is our job to  touch our little worlds. Post about Paris if you need to (I obviously did), but go jump in a puddle too.

  This world is big, but my world is small and so am I. And I think that's pretty great.

A Gift Is As Much For The One Who Gives As It Is For The One Who Receives

My 21st birthday was a few of days ago, and I got crazy. So crazy, the last thing I decided to do that night was to go see a movie.  As my friends and I left the theater, I heard the sound of music playing. With very little investigation, I discovered where the music was coming from. Outside the theater, just a couple of feet up the sidewalk were two young men-one of whom had a keyboard.

As we stood on the sidewalk waiting for my ride to come, the music soon stopped. The music stopped, and these two guys started to have a conversation with each other. The guy without the keyboard asked the other if people ever stopped and talked to him there. "Nah" he replied, "most people just keep walking." His friend said that that sucked and it must get pretty lonely. And, in so many words, the guy with the keyboard agreed that it did suck and it was indeed very lonely.

That was it. The conversation was over. But in that short little  conversation, it was clear to me that these two guys shared an understanding that not many people have- these two guys, both of whom presented as likely being homeless, seemed to truly know exactly what the other was going through. 

I don't know if my friend overhead their conversation too, but a minute later, she walked over to the guy with the keyboard and asked if he could play happy birthday. I had told her not to, thinking that the absolute last thing this guy who was obviously struggling would want to do is sing happy birthday to me. But she did anyway. He wasted no time in telling her that happy birthday was the one song he didn't know. 

Ha! I thought, he obviously wanted nothing to do with this. Because really, who doesn't know the happy birthday- he inturupted my thought then, by saying "but! I can make something up!" Intrigued, I turned  to watch as music began to hum through his keyboard once again. 

It was the most unconventional happy birthday song I have ever heard, and I couldn't tell you what half the words were-something about lots of bar hopping and many more years to come. But as he sang, his face lit up with an absolute unmistakable joy. Almost a childlike joy, like he didn't have a care in the world. 

And I thought we were bothering him...

I love giving gifts, and taking any opportunity I can get to remind people how important they are to me. But I am horrible at recieving the same from others. It almost feels like... an unnecessary inconvenience? I feel bad when people go out of their way for me, and I'm never quite sure how to react. 

But this kid, his keyboard, and most of all, the joy on his face reminded me of something: Sometimes a gift is not only for the one who receives. This kid gave me the gift of a song that I almost didn't take. And if my friend would have listened to me when I said "no, don't bother him" I would've robbed him of the chance to share what he loved with us. In giving me the gift of my one of a kind birthday song, he was able to share his music with people. To have his music be heard, instead of just being  more white noise in the ears of people who may or may not give him a second glance...Happy birthday to me!

I might also add that he was the only person to sing happy birthday to me that day and it was pretty great. 

I'm Too Quiet For My Own Good

 "What?? I can't hear you, speak up!" I have heard this phrase or some variation of it almost every day for as long as I can remember. This is the phrase that tells me I need to take a deep breath and start over, making a conscious effort to speak louder so that the person standing just 3 feet away from me can hear whatever it is I have to say. I can assure you that I have full lung capacity and the complete physical ability to be loud, but for reasons I don't quite understand, my default has always been quiet.

Perhaps along those same lines, perhaps not, I have what you might call a very good filter.  You know that person who seems to say anything and everything that pops into their head, usually resulting in inappropriate comments at even more inappropriate times? I am not that person.  I tend to say very little of what is actually in my head. I can think of a couple reasons for this: first, I hate confrontation. It is one of the very few things that I truly hate in this world. As a result, if my saying something has the potential to make someone else angry, subsequently creating confrontation, I would rather just not say it. Secondly, verbally articulating my thoughts has never been a strong suit of  mine. Words seem to get stuck in my mouth, and frequently I end up sounding like an idiot who may or may not know the alphabet. This is especially true when I tried to talk about things that I am passionate about.

Fortunately though, I do know the alphabet, as evidenced by my recent graduation from the University of Washington. I loved my time in college. And I even learned a few things there. Not the least of which is that, while I despise it, I'm a pretty good writer. I'm a pretty good writer, and when I write, I have the ability to articulate my thoughts in a way that I often don't through speech: clearly and concisely. The only explanation I have for this is that writing allows me to first be able to think about and process how I feel about a situation before responding. When in conversation with someone, it is often the expectation that a response will be immediate. While I can and do do this on a daily basis, my responses through speech, in my opinion, are far less intelligent sounding than if I have the chance to sit down and write it.

 College taught me something else too: I have a lot to say. In the weeks since graduation, this fact is left me with quite the dilemma.  I don't speak much (at least as compared to what's in my head, anyway), and when I do, it's likely that I won't say it anywhere near loud enough for anyone to hear, but I have a lot to say. Essentially, I am too quiet for my own good. This leaves me with one option: writing what  I think. As I said earlier, I really don't like writing, but as of about three weeks ago, I suddenly have a lot more time on my hands.

So, I figure I will give this blogging thing a try (again). Welcome to  Sometimes I Think_____. This is the place where I will say what I think without actually saying it.  I hope you enjoy the ride, it could be a fun one :-)