Tag Archives: life

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What The Notebook and The Kite Runner Have in Common

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This doesn't have a lot to do with my post. Although, the "yes means yes" is a feminist formation of "no means no" so it kind of relates to my side note at the end. But I really like the blog this is from, and it's too good not to post. Some Ryan Gosling eye candy for your Tuesday night.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I think that Ryan Gosling is about one of the coolest people ever. I made this decision a long time ago when I was forced to watch The Notebook by a gaggle of girls. I say “forced” because I would never first watch a Nicholas Sparks movie of my own accord. But friends, neighbors, and countrymen, let me tell you that it takes very little to convince me to watch The Notebook these days.

The Notebook has one of my favorite scenes from any movie ever in it. When it’s on television, I usually flip back and forth with something more manly like Teen Mom until the scene happens. But once it does, I’m hooked. I have to watch the whole thing. The scene happens when poor-handsome-charming Noah (Gosling) and rich-beautiful-witty Allie (Rachel McAdams) are caught together late at night. Allie’s wealthy stuck-up father sends the whole town searching for his missing daughter and when she is found with Noah, she is forbidden from ever seeing him again.

Noah reaches Allie’s house just as the forbidding is happening. I haven’t seen the movie in a while (shame, I know) so I’m a little hazy on specifics here, but somehow, Noah and Allie get into a fight over the whole thing. Allie starts hitting Noah. And then Noah does the coolest thing ever, he starts hitting himself. It’s awesome.

This scene is relatively similar to one of my favorite scenes in all of literature. It happens in The Kite Runner. Amir (main character) and his servant/best-friend, Hassan, get into a fight one day by a pomegranate tree. Amir starts smearing pomegranates on Hassan. Hassan begins to pick up pomegranates himself and do the same. It’s a deeply moving moment, mostly because by this point it is relatively clear that Amir is doing horribly by Hassan. He is in the position of power in the relationship, and he regularly misuses it. And so Hassan’s submission is striking and hard to imagine.

I love these scenes because they are sacrificial. They show love that is so full, that the lover loses his sense of ego. It’s beautiful. There’s that song “Love is a battlefield.” It’s not. Real love doesn’t have winners and losers. In fact, people who think that end up being like Amir. They abuse and take advantage of the people they care about. Real love is about people working together.

[Sidenote: Sacrificial love is a tricky thing. There are a lot of people suffering out there because they are being abused by loved ones. That’s not right. Sacrificial love can only be sacrificial if it is a real, free, and true choice. If someone is demanding you to be submissive, that person does not deserve your sacrifice.]

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A Change In Perspective, I Was Praying That You and I Might End Up Contemplative

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Sometimes a change in perspective, like Ohio weather, hits us unexpectedly, disorients us for a while, and then profoundly alters our feelings.

Our brains are funny machines for two reasons. First, they often work on problems without us knowing, running endless permutations of solutions of those problems until they sneak exactly the right one into our self-talk during a conversation. Second, when our brain is running these calculations the absolutely last thing it tries is changing perspective.

You can’t blame your brain, though. It’s hard for you to be someone else too. That’s what a change in perspective requires of your mind. It must take on the thoughts and feelings of another sentient mind. Imagine you were suddenly given the body structure and muscles of Michael Jordan in his prime. Would you know how to use them? I figure that’s kind of what it’s like when your mind is forced to change perspective.

Lucky for you, you are in charge of your mind. And you can make it do the hard work of changing perspective. But Spencer, I can already hear your minds whining, why do you want my person to make me change perspectives?

It’s very simple. It will make you happier.

Here’s an illustration. Suppose you are driving, and you are at a stoplight. You are the first car to go when the light goes green. Before you go through the intersection, though, you cautiously look both ways like a very defensive driver should. It’s a good thing you did because a car shoots through its red light. If you had gone, it might have hit you.

If you are anything like me, your immediate reaction is to get mad. What kind of idiot driver was that? He could have killed me! Doesn’t anyone respect the driving laws anymore? Yada yada yada.

This is boring. And that anger is never going to serve a useful purpose. So I like to change that energy. So I imagine the times in my life when I might run a red light. I know that I would most definitely run a red light if my future children’s births were happening. I like to pretend that every red-light-runner is a dad-to-be or mom-to-be rushing to the hospital. After all, it’s just as likely that that’s the case as that the red-light-runner is a selfish horrible law-breaker. And your brain will probably settle on the latter explanation well before the former.

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Important Timelines

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Excuse the absence the past couple of days. I have been recovering from the culture shock that is that introduction of Facebook Timeline. I have been waiting for Timeline since some time in October when Zuckerburg and the team first announced it. I have always been team Facebook. Even when I opened a google+ account, I did it begrudgingly. But over the past couple of months I have been happy to see Facebook keep its mass public appeal while making additions that seem to be mostly cluttering and superfluous.

But then, several days ago, Timeline went live to all users. And I have never been more excited to log on. I switched immediately and made my new profile public without even thinking of the consequences.

You see, the whole shtick behind Timeline is that it is meant to show your entire life through pictures, interactions with friends, and events. Sounds cool. Isn’t cool.

As I started scrolling through my 2007 and my 2008, I realized that I really didn’t want all 700 something of my closest friends to be able to see all of my triumphs and failures and friend interactions from almost half a decade ago. Now, in winter of 2011, I treat all of my online interaction as if I were on a street corner shouting. I never say anything that I wouldn’t want everyone to know. But back then, I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking that Facebook was a gateway that would help me better communicate with my friends. Of course, that was entirely misguided.

The joke on my Facebook news feed as people began to change to Timeline was that we were all about to get a lot closer. But I don’t think my friends will get a better idea of who I am by understanding the person I displayed myself as sophomore year of high school.

From time to time, I talk about sincerity and making meaningful connections with people. I stand by all of that. But I also think that we decide what about ourselves is going to be meaningful. The reason it’s okay that I hid all my Facebook posts from January 2007 to August 2011 is that those posts aren’t necessary information about me. You don’t have to know those things to know me.

I think we often get caught up in our “important” narratives. I have a nasty habit of telling new romantic interests my dating history within the first couple of weeks of dating. I do it because somewhere down the road I decided that my romantic history was an important narrative – that it defined me. But, you know, it really doesn’t. And neither does my Facebook news feed.