The Ways We Lie

"We lie. We all do. We exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people's feelings, we conveniently forget, we keep secrets, we justify lying to the big-guy institutions. Like most people, I indulge in small falsehoods and still think of myself as an honest person. Sure I lie, but it doesn't hurt anything. Or does it?"

I recently read this essay in my book for my composition class, and something about it stuck out in my head, I went crazy with the pen, underlining and scribbling notes in the margins. Unfortunately, recent events in my life made me think directly back to this essay. It's funny how something can stick out in your head so much, and then it has a direct connection with an upcoming event, like it was a warning sign or a red-flag or something.

Have you ever tried going an extended period of time, without telling a single lie? Maybe you weren't aware that you were lying to start with, maybe you don't consider lies to be what they are...lies. If you had to stop and catch yourself at every single little lie you told, it could be utterly paralyzing. If you have never tried to consciously be nothing but 100% truthful, I urge you to give it a try, just for a week.

"What far-reaching consequences will I, or others, pay as a result of my lie? Will someone's trust be destroyed? Will someone else pay... We must consider the meaning of our actions."

If you can't get yourself to not lie for an entire week, then perhaps you could try justifying every lie you tell. Step back and ask yourself some questions to see if your justifications are actually valid reasons for telling an untruth. If justifying lying is acceptable, does that make you any different from politicians telling you what you want to hear, I mean, they want your vote, isn't that justified?

"Saying it's ok to lie one way and not another is hedging. I cannot seem to escape the voice deep inside me that tells me: When someone lies, someone loses."

I had this notion in my head that whatever possible reason anyone could give me for telling a lie, whatever justification they could muster up, I could always come back at it with "Bottom line, lie."

Deception, lies, capital crimes, and misdemeanors all carry meanings. Webster's definition of lie is specific:

1: a false statement or action especially made with the intent to decieve; 2: anything that gives or is meant to give a false impression.

A definition like this implies that there are many, many ways to tell a lie. Here are few of my favorites from this essay.

And I guess for copyright or plaguerism reasons I will tell you now that anything from this essay is either a direct qupte, paraphrased, my reaction, or my personal story, which may or may not pertain to Stephanie Ericsson's The Ways We Lie.

The White Lie

A man who won't lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings.

--Bergen Evans

The white lie assumes that the truth will cause more damage than a simple, harmless untruth. Telling a friend he looks great when he looks like hell can be based on a decision that the friend needs a compliment more than a frank opinion. But, in effect, it is the liar deciding what is best for the lied to. Ultimately, it is a vote of no confidence. It is an act of subtle arrogance for anyong to decide what is best for someone else.

Yet not all circumstances are quite so cut-and-dried. Take, for instance, the sergeant in Vietnam who knew one of his men was killed in action but listed him as missing so that the man's family would recieve indefinite compensation instead of the lump-sum pittance the military gives widows and children. His intent was honorable. Yet for twenty years this family kept their hopes alive, unable to move on to a new life.

Facades

Et tu, Brute?

-- Ceasar

This writing about facades was pretty interesting, but the writer used personal experiences to make her points. Basically it's stating that putting on a facade is the same as pretending to be something we aren't, to fool somebody into thinking that we are more professional than we are. Like when a writer puts on a suit to go see a client, in order to obey the expectations that serious businesspeople wear suits rather than hanging out in sweatpants or pajamas all day long.

Facades can be destructive though, because they are used to seduce others into an illusion, and the simple fact that facades work very well, is what is keeping con-artists in the market.

Ignoring the Plain Facts

Well you must understand that Father Porter is only human...

--A Massechusetts priest

In the '60s, the Catholic Church in Massechusetts began hearing complaints that Father James Porter was sexually molesting children. Rather than relieving him of his duties, the ecclesiastical authorities simply moved him from one parish to another between 1960 and 1967, actually providing him with a fresh supply of unsuspecting families and innocent children to abuse. After treatment in 1967 for pedophilia, he went back to work, this time in Minnesota. The new diocese was aware of Father Porter's obsession with children, but they needed priests and recklessly believed treatment had cured him. More children were abused until he was relieved of his duties a year later. By his own admission, Porter may have abused as many as a hundred children.

Ignoring the facts may not in and of itself be a form of lying, but consider the context of this situation. If a lie is a false action done with the intent to deceive, then the Catholic Church's conscious covering for Porter created irreparable consequences. The church became a co-perpetrator with Porter.

Deflecting

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.

--Cicero

I am guilty of a form of deflection to an extent. I deflect my feelings as a way to keep people at a certain distance. It isn't fair because they end up feeling a lot closer to me than I do them, because they think I have let them in, when all I've really done was figured out a way to get them to quit questioning me.

I've discovered that I can keep anyone from seeing the true me by being selectively blatant. I set a precedent of being up-front about intimate issues, but I never bring up the things I truly want to hide; I just let people assume I'm revealing everything. It's an effective way of hiding.

Any good liar knows that the way to perpetuate an untruth is to deflect attention from it. When Clarence Thomas exploded with accusations that the Senate hearing were a "high-tech lynching," he simply switched the focus from a highly charged subject to a radioactive subject. Rather than defending himself, he took the offensive and accused the country of racism. It was a brilliant maneuver. Racism is now politically incorrect in official circles--unlike sexual harassment, which still rewards those who can get away with it.

Some of the most skillful deflectors are passive-aggressive people who, when accused of inappropriate behavior, refuse to respond to the accusations. This you-don't-exist stance infuriates the accuser, who, understandably, screams something obscene out of frustration. The trap is sprung and the act of deflection successful, because no the passive-aggressive person can indignantly say, "Who can talk to someone as unreasonable as you?" The real issue is forgotten and the sins of the original victim become the focus. Feeling guilty of namecalling, the victim is fully tamed and crawls into a hole, ashamed. I have watched this fighting technique work thousands of times in disputes between men and women, and what I've learned is that the real culprit is not necessarily the one who swears the loudest.

Omission

The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

--R. L. Stevensen

I think that everyone has a pretty good grasp on what omission is. I think this is the easiest form of lying to actually justify, because technically there wasn't an actual lie being told. The lie comes from the fact that aspects of the truth were actually left out, in order to make the person on the recieving end of the explanation believe something that is indeed, an untruth.

Omission involves telling most of the truth minus one or two key facts whose absence changes the story completely. You break a pair of glasses that are guaranteed under normal use and get a new pair, without mentioning that the first pair broke during a rowdy game of basketball. Who hasn't tried something like that?

What about an omission of information that could make a difference in how a person lives his or her life? What about an omission that could change somebody's perception of you? What about an omission that leaves someone feeling betrayed because they left out the truth out of fear of losing their current relationship with you?

Stereotypes and Cliches

Where opinion does not exist, the status quo becomes stereotyped and all originality is discouraged.

--Bertrand Russell

Stereotypes and cliche serve a purpose as a form of shorthand. Our need for vast amounts of information in nanoseconds has made the stereotype vital to modern communication. Unfortunately, if often shuts down original thinking, giving those hungry for truth a candy bar of misinformation instead of a balanced meal. The stereotype explains a situation with just enough truth to seem unquestionable.

All of the "isms"--racism, sexism, ageism, et al.--are founded on and fueled by the stereotype and the cliche, which are lies of exaggeration, omission, and ignorance. They are always dangerous. They take a single tree and make it a landscape. They destroy curiosity. They close minds and separate people. The single mother on welfare is assumed to be cheating. Any black male could tell you how much of his identity is obliterated daily by stereotypes. Fat people, ugly people, beautiful people, old people, large-breasted women, short men, the mentally ill, and the homeless all could tell you how much more they are like us than we want to think.

Groupthink

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, of the man afraid of the flight?

--Maurice Freehill

Irving Janis, in Victims of Group Think, defines this sort of lie as a psychological phenomenon within decision-making groupes in which loyalty to the group has become more important than any other value, with the result that dissent and the appraisal of alternatives are suppressed. If you've ever worked on a committee of in a corporation, you've encountered groupthink. It requires a combination of other forms of lying--ignoring facts, selective memory, omission, and denial, to name a few.

Out-and-Out Lies

The only form of lying that is beyond reproach is lying for its own sake.

--Oscar Wilde

Of all ways to lie, this is the easiest to see through. Sometimes you just get tired of trying to figure out the real meanings behind things, and it's easy to just give a simple answer that you can't argue.

At least when this sort of lie is told it can be easily confronted. And as the person being lied to, I know where I stand with the liar. The bald-faced lie doesn't toy with my perceptions--it argues with them. It doesn't refashion reality, it tries to refute it.

Dismissal

Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain! I am the Great Oz!

--The Wizard of Oz

Dismissal is perhaps the slipperiest of all lies. Dismissing feelings, perceptions, or even the raw facts of a situation ranks as a kind of lie that can do as much damage to a person as any other kind of lie.

The roots of many mental disprders can be traced back to the dismissal of reality. Have you ever considered the idea that madness is actually a sane reaction to an insane world? Psychologist R. D. Laing supports this hypothosis in Sanity, Madness and the Family, an account of his investigations into the families of the studied was a deliberate, staunch dismissal of the patient's perceptions from a very early age. Each of the patients started out with an accurate grasp of reality, which, through meticulous and methodical dismissal, was demolished until the only reality the patient could trust was catatonia.

Dismissal is a dangerous tool, because it's nothing less than a lie.

Delusion

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.

--Eric Hoffer

Delusion, a cousin of dismissal, is the tendency to see excuses as facts. It's a powerful lying tool because it filters out information that contradicts what we want to believe. Alcoholics who believe that the problems in thier lives are legitimate reasons for drinking rather than results of the drinking offer the classic example of deluded thinking. Delusion uses the mind's ability to see things in myriad ways to support what it wants to be the truth.

Delusion is a survival method, we all use it. If we really thought about the consequences to what we do as a precaution, we would be so stricken that we wouldn't be able to function on a day-to-day level without a multitude of side effects. We cut reality from our lifes because too much would be too paralyzing. I tend to differ on this one in the same way that I am similar. I can't watch the news or read the paper, because I get so affected from the media, and worry myself into such a frenzy that I can't focus on the things I need to do at hand. I have extreme emotional reactions to things, but I kind of like it that way. I can't imagine being desensitized to the emotions that I feel, and to try an decrease that level runs the risk of emotional desensitation.

Delusion acts as an adhesive to keep the status quo intact. It shamelessly employs dismissal, omission, and amnesia, among other sorts of lies.

It's most cunning defense is that it cannot see itself.

These are only a few of the ways that we lie, or are lied to for that matter. It isn't easy to eliminate lying entirely from our lives. No matter how hard we try, we will still embellish, hedge, and omit to lubricate the daily machinery of living. But there is a world of difference between telling functional lies and living a lie.

When we get to the point where we accept lies, it becomes a type of cancer that eventually distorts our perception of reality to the point that our morals start slipping out the window.

I recently had somebody very close to me tell me a series of flat out lies, and I feel betrayed, confused, flustered and hurt. I don't know at this current point in time, if this person's justifications for lying will be an effective excuse for me. I'm not sure if forgiveness is in the cards at this point in time, and I even wonder if I do decide to forgive this person, am I going to doubt or question everything that is said to me by this person?

I blame myself because I feel like I set up the situation, and I created the environment around us where this person feels like they are unable to be truthful with me for one reason or another. Afraid of my reaction, afraid of damaging our relationship beyond repair, or just plain not wanting to deal with it.

I have a lot of thoughts shooting around my brain about this one. I'm not sure what I should think or what I should be feeling. I'm still trying to see from both aspects of things, but I don't know that I posess the mindset to even begin to understand.

Trying to Hide

Trying to Hide

Everybody goes through a time in their lives where they face insecurities, and feel held back by their own personal demons. Some even feel repressed by their own silence, even though inside they are screaming, fighting, and kicking to feel as welcomed and accepted as everyone else around them appears to be.

I spent many years of my life trying to find myself, trying to figure out exactly where I belonged in this world around me. I didn't think it was realistic for me to ever find that place where I could just let everything go, and express myself freely without feeling like every set of judging eyes were aimed in my general direction. Throughout my early adolescence I spent a large quantity of time drowning myself in music and trying to creatively express myself through a paintbrush or a lump of clay. It wasn't until my freshman year of high school that I discovered an additional outlet that seemed to be the best remedy for anything that ails you, as well as the most fulfilling friend when I needed to share whatever high school secret seemed so important at the time.

Around the time that high school began, I wasn't a very diligent student, I also spent more time trying to remain invisible than I spent trying to actually hold on to the few friends that I already did have. In an attempt to stay out of the way of those vengeful eyes and out of the line of fire from the tongues quipped with tasteless remarks, I decided to join the clubs that the school had to offer, and as a pathetic attempt to keep even more invisible, I opted for the clubs that met during lunch and homeroom. I guess I just found comfort in the structured environment, and slightly more protected from the jeers and unkind remarks that seem to freely fly out of the cruel mouths of teenagers trying to show off for their friends.

I dabbled in keeping diaries and writing in journals throughout my entire life, but I was always afraid to really open up and run the risk of one of my three snooping siblings unveiling a secret or an opinion of mine that surely would have brought an end to the world and sent the sky crashing down around me. I never actually gave any realistic thought into writing as an art form, even though I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I still considered writing as some form of work, and what high school student enjoys doing anything that is expected out of them?

I joined the school newspaper staff without any intention of making any sort of a contribution to the content of the newspaper itself; however, eventually my body being in the room wasn't acceptable and I was informed that I either needed to give some input and pull my weight as a member of the staff, or I needed to withdraw from the club altogether. At first, I started out by taking on small tasks, such as calling businesses and verifying their placement of an advertisement, but inevitably it happened, and I was asked to write an article concerning the new foreign exchange student that was currently living with my family. The article turned out pretty well and I was asked to write more and more as time went on. Unfortunately, I was not an academic overachiever and I slacked on my studies, thus ensuring that I was no longer eligible to continue writing for the newspaper.

Spending time writing for the newspaper didn't quite open up my eyes to how rewarding it can be to create a masterpiece, how great it feels to write something you are so proud of that you can't wait until you run into somebody and are finally able to share your work with another set of eyes. I decided that I did enjoy my time on the paper staff, and I needed to raise my grades in order to be eligible to rejoin, and vowed to dedicate myself to my studies. My English and Literature classes really caught my interest and I began putting a lot of work into the essays and written assignments that I was handing in. I discovered the ability to take myself away and get lost in a new world, similar to that feeling you get when you fall into a captivating book, except you create your own imagery and you control which direction your story goes. I discovered that with a pen I could take every situation or strain that I wanted to get off my chest, and write them into my journal using my imagination to disguise my words so that the average person wouldn't be able to directly decipher my ramblings, had he or she happened to stumble upon my compilation of random ruminations.

Around my junior or senior year of high school I was under the impression that I had found myself as a writer, and even considered the possibility of pursuing a career in journalism, but because I was so terribly shy, I never allowed myself to fully open up and give everything I had to a work that was going to be seen by a multitude of people, and even though a few of my teachers tried to coax me into submitting or writing as essay for some local contest that was being held, I could never convince myself that it was all that brilliant of an idea. I also had a teacher that assigned an essay, and allowed the class a couple of weeks to complete the few pages that it had to be in length. I worked diligently on the essay, using the thesaurus and having it proofread until I was sure that it had reached its maximum potential. I then proceeded to enlist my mother as an additional and fresh set of eyes, to read my paper and give me her unbiased opinion. I was confident about my essay and I was certain I would receive a rather good grade; my mother was also impressed and enthusiastically commended me, assuring me that this was the best of my papers that she had read so far.

I worked so hard, and finally for the first time in my life I was finally sure that I had accomplished something worthwhile, something that, being my own worst critic, I deemed worthy enough for other eyes to view. When the teacher came around to collect our assignments I had already taken mine out of my folder and had it ready to hand to her. Barely able to contain my excitement, I gave the teacher a smile as I passed my paper forward to the front of the row. She grinned back, just a small grin. Her forced smile seemed almost painful.

As I look back on that day, my memory distorts the teacher's reaction to my animation as I enthusiastically handed in that assignment. I know she kind of smiled and I interpreted that "kind of" smile as her acknowledging my excitement and her silent understanding of the work that I put into this essay. Those last few events, however, do not replay in my head in that such manner. Now when I think back on the last day that I even slightly considered writing as a career, I can see her forced fake smile, and I can see the pain in her eyes from forcing that fake smile. I clearly see the edges of her evil leather face cracking like plaster as her demon horns broke the surface on the top of her head.

Holding my head up high, I walked into the class the next day secretly hoping to be revered for my amazing essay. I swear she put mine at the end of the pile, just to torture me while I waited to see the grade given to such a brilliant paper. I saw her slightly smiling when she laid that paper upside down on my desk, and without even making eye contact she turned and walked away. My stomach had butterflies in it as I reached for the paper and quickly snapped it around to see the highest grade in the class. The entire room went silent and I sat there. My stomach sunk as I remembered her little smile, that evil smirk she had just moments before she knowingly destroyed every ounce of confidence that I had. She didn't say anything as I got up and calmly walked out of her class, struggling to hold my composure in front of the many sets of eyes staring at me, as if they were just waiting for me to give them a show.

The last day that I was sure I was going to be a journalist will always play on a loop in my head, and it will always be a devastatingly emotional day in the history of my life. It's amazing the impact that one little letter can have on your self-esteem, and how it can make you so discouraged that you second guess everything you do for the rest of your life.

My Many Many Dreams

There is nothing wrong with dreaming, but I think sometimes we get lost in these dreams, and sometimes we get stuck on just one dream, spending entirely too much time dwelling on what we want, instead of working on how to get it.

It might be a little tough to pull yourself out of a dream, but it's necessary to remind yourself that there are many dreams to dream, so why spend so much time and focus on only one dream? Why put your happiness on hold for something when you are perfectly capable of being just as happy, if not happier by choosing another route, or fulfilling a different dream.

I think it could be kind of fun to create a sort of dream time-capsule. It could be something simple, like a decorated up shoe box that you hide under your bed, or stash away in your closet. I don't mean your dreams that come to you as you sleep (although that would be fun too). When I say dreams, I'm talking about your aspirations, your hopes. When you think of something new you want to do with your life just jot it down on a little slip of paper, with no limitations on how long or short they can be. Simple, quick scribbles or long, elaborate plans with steps on how to get there included.

I'm not sure if referring to it as a time-capsule is the right way to describe it, because you can feel free to look through it as often as you would like, as a matter of fact I encourage you to take the time every once in a while to reread, change or edit your dreams, but don't throw anything out. Make sure that you date them, just so you know that as you dream and envision how you want things, you are somewhat tracking your growth as you take the steps to persevere and make your dreams come true.

I'm falling

What a long day it has been, I just need a moment to sit back and gather my thoughts, a little bit of time to reflect to myself the upcoming and recent events that seem to have taken over a majority of my free time.

I steal moments here and there to just close my eyes and try to make some sort of sense out of what is going on around me, but as soon as I close my eyes, I suddenly feel as if the floor has opened up underneath me, and I'm falling so rapidly that it feels as if my brain is still sitting up in my chair.

This has been going on for as long as I can remember, but I am usually able to feel grounded again as soon as I open my eyes back up. The falling sensation never particularly bothered me, unless it left me feeling nauseated, which has happened to me on quite a few occasions. Usually the feeling was completely gone after I opened my eyes, but the familiar dizziness would sometimes linger, causing me to jerk quickly to try and stabilize my balance.

Lately I have had the feeling happen more and more frequently. At night when I'm laying down, I feel like as I lay back, and sink into the cozy softness of my bed, the sinking feeling just doesn't quit, and this happens with my eyes wide open, like it could be linked to the relaxation of my muscles.

This feeling even happens to me when I ascend or descend stairs, and today it happened to me from just sitting down in my chair here at the computer. The lingering dizziness that seems to be the aftershock of the falling sensation usually only lasts a few minutes, but today I just felt like the bottom was knocked out of me, and if I didn't get somewhere to lay down quickly I was going to pass out. I didn't end up passing out, and as a matter of fact I just kept talking to myself aloud and I regained my composure, but I'm kind of shaken up by the entire experience.

I have had other circumstances that feel kind of similar, and one of them is the dizzy nauseous feeling I get when I'm high off the ground, or when I look down into deep or dark water, and those are explainable I guess, just a simple expression of fear on my body's behalf. I also get the same familiar gut-wrench when I am laying on a water bed, but I just have always described that as sea-sick, since it won't really set in right away, I can get all cozy, but after a while I almost feel as if I have a hangover, and make a mad dash to wretch my guts out.

I think what concerns me the most about it, is that I have a preexisting neurological condition that causes a lot of other problems, and as of now it's been going untreated for nearly a year now, since I've lost my health insurance. I'm supposed to have injections and medication to help with the spasms, the swelling and the pain. My concerns are stuck somewhere in the idea that these two things are somehow linked together, and getting treatment for my medical condition could help curb the spells of the falling feeling. I really have no idea, I could be way off, either way I'm kind of helpless to the entire situation.

I have combed the Internet for something that even comes close to comparing with what I am experiencing, and so far I have come up empty handed. I really hope that I'm being silly about the entire thing, but something inside tells me that things aren't right.

Manet vs. Picasso

Compare and contrast Manet, Le Dejeuner sur l' herbe to Picasso, Les Demoiselles d' Avignon. Each of these paintings shocked the art viewing public and critics when they were first exhibited, but now both are considered masterpieces. Why were they so scandalous in their time, and why do they not shock art lovers today?






Edouard Manet’s painting Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe was deemed as indecent because it depicts two fully clothed men in the casual company of a nude woman. The woman’s body almost seems to be glowing, as if she’s intentionally intended to be the center focus of the painting. Since she is staring directly at the viewer, holding a firm gaze, it seems as if she is completely unashamed of her lack of clothing. The nude woman also seems to have a slight smirk, almost like she is slightly amused at the shock given to the viewer when he or she first lays eyes on the painting. The woman in the background is supposedly too large and takes up too much spatial area on the picture plane, and Manet’s painting is considered sloppy and not very good to some, because of his obvious brush strokes, and how it appears to be unfinished in some parts of the scene.




Pablo Picasso’s painting titled Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon depicts five prostitutes blatantly displaying themselves to the viewer, as if they are trying to seductively entice the viewer into a space that appears both smooth and splintered, and almost confuses our understanding of the painting. Picasso’s painting was considered controversial in it’s time because of the bold solicitousness of sexual energy that seems to flow throughout the work. His painting style was considered controversial in the sense that he was strongly influenced by Spanish sculpture and African carvings, which is shown by the masks being worn by the two women on the right. Picasso’s hacking brush strokes have been referred to as impetuous and violent and assumed to be based on the idea of African savagery.
Both of these works broke all of the rules of their times, and forever changed the way that nudes would be painted and viewed. In Manet’s time, his painting depicted women as being brazen, or shameless, which is something that was unheard of then. Women were expected to be modest or prudish, and for this woman to be in your face with her nudity and her direct stare was simply unheard of.
Sexual freedom wasn’t a norm at the time when Picasso painted either, especially in the middle class society that most painters in that time targeted as traditional patrons of their works. Since impressionism and fauvism were the current movements, Picasso’s decision to use lines along with cubism seemed like a direct rejection on his part of the popular movements of the time.
Art lovers today wouldn’t be shocked by nude women like they were back then, because of the extreme desire of people today to do anything for some sort of shock value, and due to their thirst to evoke a radical uproar from the people around them, more and more brazen ideas and expressions are getting to be socially acceptable. This social acceptance of art that would have once been considered controversial is causing desensitization to the general art viewing public.

Single

Sometimes we fear that if we are independent and single, there won't be any love. We resist becoming independent because we're afraid that if we do, we'll be lonely, unloved, and uncared for. We suspect that we'll be bored, with nothing to look forward to, and so we resist growing up. The sad part it, we miss out on the feeling of being in love, in love with life.
Love doesn't necessarily have to be a relationship with another person, it could be as simple as being a quality of our own heart. If you ever felt like you were in love, but you had no lover, then you know what a tremendous joy an open heart brings. An open heart responds to the goodness in yourself and those you meet.

"Everyone is single, think about it, we each come into this world as one tiny, little individual. Oh yes, we have a mother and a father, and we may have brothers and sisters and a whole bunch of relatives, but basically each one of us, regardless of our relationship to others, is one human being. We have many types of relationships, which often give us the illusion of not being single at all. Yet if we examine our situation more closely, we see that regardless of our relationships to others, regardless of our marital status, we are still just one little person. Throughout our lives we have playmates and friends, acquaintances, casual contacts, and colleagues. We have lovers and spouses, and various combinations thereof, but still we remain uniquely one human being. No one else ever abides in our skin." Judy Ford

Life as a Movie

No doubt about it, we all have a story to tell that is worthy of the silver screen. That's life...agony and humor juxtaposed with pain. It gives us depth; it gives us perspective; it makes us think of the great heroines and heroes, and the stories they have told us.

Some days, thinking of it in that way makes it easier to get out of bed and keep life's disappointments and the daily ups and downs in perspective. Then, no matter whats happening on the periphery, we can stay detached, as if we're sitting surrounded by an audience watching the stories of our lives unfold.

When we're in the middle of heartache, we're like any great actor; we have to go into the pain totally and express it fully. In doing so, we begin to heal, and it's when we don't express the pain that our life becomes a continual drama. When we are finally able to acknowledge our situation, it is then that we are able to rise about it and turn our heartbreak into heartwarming victory.

We can be in pain and know that something positive will come out of it. When we view our life as a movie, we can play our role well, but not get stuck in it or typecast. Like those great actors, we trust that sooner or later another good role will come our way.

Great literature, poetry, and movies are filled with broken hearts and shattered dreams. Beautiful love stories don't necessarily have happy endings, and still the resilience of the human spirit is amazing!

When you are having a bad day, step back and observe what's going on around you. Watch what's happening as if it were a scene in a movie. From this perspective, you'll have a more objective view and you're likely to feel less devastated. Too bad I just can't take my own advice.

Middle Adulthood

When you ask a person who has not yet started to grow physically or emotionally what their thoughts on aging are, it is probable that you are going to get a negative response, or even a reaction from them like they think that it is never going to happen to them. I think that there is a stigma attached with the aging process. The media, personal peer groups, and other everyday encounters seem to influence the opinions people have on growing older.

I interviewed my father on his thoughts about the aging process, and to me it seems as if he enjoys the effects of aging and the quality of his life now that he has reached his early fifties. He told me that the only negative noticeable physical change that he is going through is losing his hair, nothing else really seems to upset him entirely too much.

My dad has had some pretty serious recent health concerns, and he is convinced that getting older has made him more susceptible to specific risks, such as diabetes. He recently has been diagnosed with diabetes and is still working to figure out how to control it through diet and exercise. Some other health related concerns that my father has become more susceptible to since he has aged are diverticulitis, which affects the intestines, and gall stones, both of which he has recently been diagnosed with. In early December, my father went in for surgery to have part of his intestines removed, and because of his age, he felt like the healing time took a little longer than it would have just a few years earlier.

The main causes of my father’s stress are financial reasons, and he said he can for retirement, which should be here within the next five years. My dad also told me that he hasn’t gone through a mid-life crisis and has never reviewed his life to see if he would do anything differently, he is happy with where he is in his life at the moment, especially with his marriage. My dad said that now that he and my mother are older, they do more things together, and they are closer than they were before. His relationship with his children is excellent, even though they all live further away from him than they did before, he claims that absence makes the heart grow fonder and they value the time spent together even more since they aren’t around each other every day. My dad also said that he felt the empty nest syndrome with each one of his four children when they left the house, but contributes their absence to the ability of him and his wife to spend more quality time together, and do more activities together as well.

He kept clinging to the idea that absence makes the heart grow fonder when I asked him about his relationships with his siblings and with her personal friendships as well. He is referring to moving to southern Iowa, and how it just seems to make the time spent with his family and friends more meaningful. He is still in regular contact with all of his living siblings, even though since there are ten of them, it can get a bit tough to keep up with everything and not actually be around. My dad said that even though he still keeps in contact with his friends since he moved, it isn’t as often as he would like, and he has made an entire new set of friends where he is living. The difference is now, the friends that he has since he is older, have more interest in the same hobbies as he and my mom do, such as fishing, and camping.

Being a grandfather is one of my father’s favorite things, and he explains it to me as “Wonderful! We get to spoil them rotten, and then send them home!” And when I asked him about how he felt about his aging parents, he replied “It’s life, you have to expect it. I don’t like it, but I accept it”.

The last thing I asked my father for the interview, were his thoughts on death. He has been a police officer for over twenty-five years, and worked with the United Nations on dangerous missions to Kosovo and Bosnia, so on more than one occasion he has had to think about the possibilities of something happening to him. When I asked him about his thoughts on death, he was kind of short with his reply, and just told me “Another one of those things that you have to learn to accept.”

Insert Something Clever Here

Everyone sets goals in their lives; some are left unachieved, and others are obtained with minor effort. Some people even set similar goals time after time, and they fail time after time, only to pick themselves back up, dust themselves off, and try just as hard for another goal comparable to the one that they failed to meet. I envy this tenacious attitude that is possessed by seemingly few people, and as I sit here on the sidelines I wonder if I’ll be able to quit being so easily discouraged by a minor bump in the road, and just be passionate enough about something to keep bouncing back.

Since he began his painting career after the pressure to paint from a religious basis was no longer prevalent, and since the church had previously been an important element of artistic creation, artists were now free to explore new avenues and express themselves without feeling compelled to use the symmetrical values that were associated with the religious art, and were free to creatively seek out their own methods of self expression. Monet was able to incorporate new ways of expressing himself and represent reality through the content and structure of his work.
Many artists of the same time period spent endless hours working in their studios to produce their paintings, but Monet wasn’t fond of being trapped inside. Instead, he preferred the natural lighting and shadows that were cast onto objects and surfaces, and he thought that being outside was perhaps the best way to go about getting that.

Monet painted in the style considered impressionism, and in my opinion this is proven mostly through his “Water Lily” series, which do a great job at showing the painter’s affinity for using nature as his muse. An artist’s ability to capture the quality of light and atmosphere out of doors is considered plein-air, and such quality is usually captured through painting. What impresses me the most about Monet is that he was steady at being an impressionist, since most painters of the time generally only stuck with a certain style of painting for a short period of time throughout their career, but Monet remained an impressionist throughout his career as a painter. I was particularly surprised to learn that the title impressionism gained its name from Monet’s painting entitled Impression, Sunrise, and they proceeded to go on and have multiple impressionist exhibitions. Impressionism didn’t even catch on at first, but through their relentless perseverance, its influence eventually spread throughout Europe in the late 1880s.

I really admire the fact that Monet painted everyday subjects, it really shows that he was able to see that beauty does exist in everything. I enjoy how his subject is usually some sort of a landscape, and how he paints it over and over again at different times of the day, to capture the different effects of the changing light from the sun. Monet has done many series paintings which to me express the painter’s fascination with the changing beauty of nature, that within just hours something can look completely different simply because the lighting has changed. My favorite of his series paintings would have to be the haystacks. Not too many people are able to see the beauty in a quaint haystack sitting in a field, but Monet manages to capture the beauty of them by painting them under different lighting conditions at different times of the day. He would wake up very early in the morning before dawn and paint on his first canvas for a half and hour, and in that time, the light is changed, so he would switch to the second canvas, and keep repeating this process every day. The way that the light shines on the haystack is different every time he goes to paint them, thus ensuring that each haystack painting differs from another.

Throughout my studying Monet, I have come to be more and more fascinated with him and his painting style. Although there are certain aspects that have been publicized about his personal life that I don’t necessarily deem appropriate, my interest in Monet and impressionism has peaked to a new level, and I intend on continuing my studies and researching more artists in the times to come.

Middle Childhood

Spending time with young children is something that I have always particularly enjoyed, and now that I live with my brother and his two daughters I am able to spend all the time in the world with them. I chose to interview and observe my oldest niece, Alyssa for my paper on middle childhood.

Deciding to start with questions pertaining to her physical development, I asked Alyssa, who is seven years old, if she has gotten any taller or any heavier since she was six, and she told me that she doesn’t think so because she still fits into all over her clothes from first grade still. When I asked her mother about this, she verified that she hasn’t changed much at all, and her growth spurt happened right before first grade. I also asked Alyssa if she has ever tried to diet or lose weight, and she said “Yes I have, I ate lose-weight waffles for a couple of weeks, but it was really because they were there and they didn’t taste like lose-weight waffles with lots of syrup.” I think that she was under the impression that just because she ate low-fat food, she was trying to lose weight.

Alyssa used her fingers to feel around in her mouth the teeth that felt “bigger” and came to the conclusion that she has lost nine teeth so far. When she gets home from school, Alyssa goes to her babysitter’s house, where she has snacks and draws until someone picks her and her sister up.

Soccer is one of Alyssa’s physical activities, and she has been on the soccer team for two years now, and is planning to join for a third year this summer. When I asked her how many hours of television she watched she told me twenty-four at first, then confessed that she really didn’t know. Her favorite shows are The Suite Life of Zach and Cody and Hannah Montana. Alyssa’s mother later told me that she sometimes doesn’t watch any television in a day, but other days she will sit there and watch anywhere from one to three hours worth.

Next, I moved on to the questions concerning her cognitive development, and started out by asking Alyssa how long it took her to get to school. She told me it takes twenty minutes, which is just a little bit off. Her trek to school usually takes about ten to fifteen minutes depending on how cooperative both kids are to get out of the house.

When I asked her how many outfits she could make, she first asked me if there were any belts, then she said she could make three whole outfits out of three pants, three shirts and 3 pairs of shoes. She knows you can have other outfits, but “since the clothes might actually belong to a different outfit, the other outfits aren’t real outfits.”

Alyssa told me that she absolutely likes nothing about school, and she dislikes reading, math, and music class very much. Her favorite joke to tell is “Spell ICUP!” And when I did the liquid conservation experiment on her, she told me that the tall glass had more because it was taller.

Moving on to the psychosocial section of the observation/interview I asked Alyssa what she thought about herself, she replied “I think I’m gorgeous and I think I’m different.” and singing “drawling”, designing bedrooms and designing clothes were the things that she considers herself good at, although she wishes she could be better at basketball, skateboarding, and skiing.

Shopping, make-up, purses, jewelry, and fashion are the things that Alyssa is interested in, which fits well with what she wants to be when she grows up, which is a fashion designer.

The definition of a good friend, according to seven year old Alyssa is “Being truthful, not letting you down, not saying you are going to do something and don’t, and not lying.” And she said that she experiences peer pressure at school when “Lindsay pressures everyone to play cheerleading on the playground.”

I asked Alyssa who’s sweater she would choose between her mom’s and her best friend’s, and she didn’t skip a beat before telling me that she would pick her best friend’s, because “Hers is a lot cuter! Morgan’s sweaters are more in style, now, this century.” And when I asked her if her parents let her do anything different now that she was seven that they wouldn’t let her do when she was six, she told me no, because “they won’t let me pretty much do anything until I’m like ten.”

Alyssa is from a blended family, that is more traditional than blended, and she informed me that she doesn’t get along with her sister very much because she feels like her sister gets more attention than her.

I wish I could trade all of my stress for my niece’s stress, which is merely stressing over a girl at school who is bossy and rude.

Early Childhood

Sometimes I wish that I could step into a time machine and travel back to a time and place free from the chaos and worry that seems to have worked its way into my life. I still catch myself attempting to escape into my imagination in hopes of catching a glimpse of what it was like to have a completely different perspective on the world around me.

Being surrounded by young children makes mental time traveling a lot easier and far more exciting. I find it fascinating when a child opens up and lets you peek into their head, and after spending some time with the six year old daughter of a friend of mine, I was able to get a better picture of what it was that I have been struggling to remember. Mya, as she will be referred to, was a bit shy at first, but after a few minutes of playing around she came out of her shell and for a short time she allowed me to see the world from her point of view.

From having the initial conversation with her mother, I found out that Mya started out as a small girl and weighed six pounds and three ounces at birth, which has slightly more than quintupled in the last five years to thirty-two pounds, and her height which was twenty-one and a half inches at birth has doubled to forty-three inches, which keeps Mya as being a small girl.

The actual interview with Mya was extremely entertaining and I discovered that she isn’t what I would consider a typical six year old girl, her favorite foods include corn on the cob, fruit, tomatoes, and “dry” green beans. Her mother later explained that she only likes green beans fresh and won’t eat them if they are cooked in any way. Mya informed me that so far she has lost two teeth and when I asked her what she did before bed, she simply said “nothing”. I was able to find out that her bedtime is eight o’clock and she sleeps with a bear named Amy (subject to change at any given time). At bedtime Mya said that she was afraid when she has to sleep on the bottom bunk of her bed because she thinks someone is going to jump out from under the bed.

I was able to observe her gross and fine motor skills when I witnessed Mya writing, which is an example of fine motor skills, and she showed me how high she could jump which demonstrates her gross motor skills. She was also playing games with her little sister that further demonstrated her fine motor skills, and her interest in ballet expresses her ability to control her gross motor skills even better.

Moving on to the cognitive section of my observation/interview, I started out by asking Mya what she thinks that I would like for my birthday, to which she replied “a Webkinz!”. I also asked her if she could remember anything from a long time ago, and she said she remembers swimming at a hotel and also remembers going to Wal-Mart to get her pictures taken.

Originally, Mya told me that she was French when I asked her to describe herself to me, but she took it back and told me that she was Italian, she likes ballet, and she can do math. Throughout the entire interview I was assessing her language and was very impressed with her articulation and rather extensive vocabulary. During the three concept of conservation experiments, Mya was able to distinguish between the two rows of skittles but counting them out, and wasn’t fooled when I spread out one of the rows. She did, however, tell me that the Play-Doh that was rolled out into a “cylinder” as she called it, had more, as well as the tall glass of Bug Juice had more that the shallow bowl of the same liquid.

When I started the psychosocial part of the interview by asking Mya to tell me how she tells the difference between boys and girls, to which she replied “Boys do cooler stuff, like jump off swings, and boys have different colored eyes. Boys have short hair and girls have long hair.” Mya also told me that mommies take you to school, get you food, and push you on the swings, and daddies take you outside and play with your Barbie guitar, and color with you.

As far as temperament goes, I would say that Mya has an easy temperament, because she was interested in our interview and her mom informed me that she is very social, very adaptable, and not afraid to try new things. When she was telling me about her friends, Mya told me that they were funny, and they like to play Hannah Montana together at recess, which she also described as one of her favorite things to play, along with Uno and Checkers. Playing her guitar, playing the piano and playing with Play-Doh were among her favorite things to do.

Mya told me that she could “build stuff, like towers out of blocks”, when I asked her what kind of things she could do, and that iCarly, Drake and Josh, SpongeBob, Wonder Pets, and Hannah Montana were her favorite things to watch on TV, even though her mom doesn’t like her watching iCarly because they have boyfriends.

When it comes to her parenting style, Mya’s mother is a combination of permissive and authoritative, and when I asked Mya how she was punished when she was in trouble, she told me that she gets sent to her room and sometimes gets grounded and spanked.

The observation/interview ended with Mya’s mom and me talking about her responses, and how initially I was interviewing Mya’s little sister, but she was too busy playing dress-up and running off to her bedroom to change her costume. As we were sitting there chuckling about Mya and her sister’s responses to my questions, I felt a little tap on my back. I turned around, and there was Mya, with a pencil in one hand and a pad of paper in the other. With a very inquisitive look on her face, Mya climbed into the chair next to me and asked me “Angel, what is your favorite food?” I laughed hysterically as I answered her questions. After all, she was patient enough to let me interview her; I guess it was her turn now to do the interviewing.

The Deaf Adult

For a class in school I had to read a section in our text. I was particularly interested in the comparison that a specific poem had made to the education of Deaf children to people living near a community continuously falling over a cliff. Rather than put up a fence to prevent anymore people from falling off of the cliff in the future, the people of the valley just set up an ambulance at the bottom to take proper care of them after they had fallen. The comparison to the education of Deaf children, to me, was that instead of focusing on the student’s ability to learn and making sure that the students had proper education in the first place, they prepared for how to handle the situation when the education system fails them.

The focus on education for students with hearing loss seems to circle around just a basic education, and not taking the time to consider the individual needs of each child as far as learning goes. Deaf adults are trying to reach out and let hearing parent’s know how it was for them growing up, and what they would liked to have when they were being educated.

I wasn’t very impressed with the idea of parents just tossing their deaf children into a “sea of knowledge and let him sink or swim”. I personally feel that every student, no matter what type of alternate arrangements are made, should be given the equal opportunity to achieve the same results as their peers. If a student needs more attention than that of another student, with or without the same circumstantial setbacks, they should be given enough floatation devices necessary to accomplish whatever goals they set for themselves. I definitely don’t think a hypothetical life raft should be thrown out to them, but just enough assistance to make students feel like they achieved their goals, and give them incentive to keep on pushing forward and setting new goals. In an attempt to keep up with the same line of analogies, why not allow the use of floatation devices, paired along with swimming lessons to teach these students how to do these same tasks by themselves. Who knows, eventually they may not even need the floatation devices at all.

Every person handles circumstances in their life differently from one another, and some people, hearing or deaf, need a hand or even just someone to take the time out to show them the ropes. Who would know how someone is going to handle something better that someone who is going through the same things. All they are asking for is for people to take the time and communicate with them, listen to what they are saying, and take their opinions and points of view into consideration.

Interrupted From A Dream

Dancing around, playing silly games, and giggling uncontrollably. I’m encompassed by the overwhelming feeling that nothing could possibly go wrong. All around me are feelings of warmth and love, and the exhilaration of being near the love of my life has me so blissfully ecstatic that it feels as if I’m floating. Suddenly, out of nowhere, this awful, high pitched shriek forces me to sit straight up, and it is then that I realize that I have been dreaming of this utopia that I was living only seconds before. After shutting off my alarm clock, or pressing snooze, I unsuccessfully attempt to snuggle myself back into my dream and continue where I’ve left off.

Many morning have come and gone, where I was lying there, enthralled by one of my many fabulous, but mostly strange dreams, and suddenly I was shocked awake by the obnoxious screech being heaved into my slumber from the evil alarm clock that I had strategically, yet stupidly, placed across the room so that I would be forced out of bed to turn it off. This morning was different, my happiness soared as my dream continued on, and even though I was in paradise, I had this eerie sense that I wasn’t where I belonged.

Although I’m not quite sure if it was because of the strange feeling in my dream, or if I had just slept long enough, but I was eventually able to rouse myself enough to look over at the clock, only to discover that my alarm had not gone off and I was late for my morning class. Immediately I jumped out of bed and ran over to check and make sure that I had, indeed, set my alarm for the appropriate time. After confirming that the alarm was set correctly and it wasn’t my mistake, I hurried to take a shower and rushed out of the house hoping to catch the end of class and explain to my instructor that my alarm clock must be faulty and it didn’t go off that morning.

The same bizarre feeling that had plagued my dream seemed to have traveled with me to my awakened state, as everything around me just seemed mysteriously whist. I didn’t even seem to notice the usual banging and clanking around that I normally try to keep to a minimum so I don’t wake up my roommates, or even the annoying clicking and ticking of the water heater while I’m toweling off after my shower.
After rushing around in a slight panic, and debating if going to school is even worth it, I climbed into my car, and flipped on the radio in an effort to make the thirty minute drive to school more enjoyable. As if my morning hadn’t been marred already by my faulty alarm clock, I was very displeased to discover that my radio had quit working! Switching the radio to different stations, and even trying a few different CD’s, I must admit that I ineffectively lost my temper a bit and even tried violence to threaten the music into playing.

A few attempts to get my music to play finally exhausted me, and I gave up, only to find myself sitting at a green light, while the man in the vehicle in front of mine talked on his phone and looked everywhere but at the stoplight. Naturally I did what any other already perturbed driver would do, and I proceeded to lay on the horn. Wouldn’t you know it, my horn was broken too! After pressing on the horn numerous times, without even the slightest inkling of a sound, I deduced that I must have blown a fuse; maybe I should get my car in to get looked at before anything else decided to quit working.

What is this? The guy in front of me turned around in his seat and gave me the finger! Did he see my expression as I pounded on the horn? After returning the unfriendly gesture, I decided to keep a straight expression and test the reaction of the man as I pressed on the horn one more time. There it was, the finger aimed in my direction once again. What could possibly be going on? I tried to yell at the man, and quickly realized that not only were my alarm clock, car stereo, and horn broken, but my voice was broken too! I couldn’t hear myself talk, and even worse, I couldn’t scream back at this angry man flashing his middle finger all over the place!
I frantically pulled into the nearest gas station where I tried to place a call to my mother; she always knows what to do. How could this be happening to me? I couldn’t hear the phone while it was dialing out, and even though I was trying to cry and scream, nothing was coming out. Hanging up the phone and feeling defeated, I tried to send a text message out to my friend asking her to call me back. My phone couldn’t be broken too! I made sure the ringer was on its loudest setting, and waited impatiently for a call to come in. When I saw my phone light up, I eagerly waiting to hear it ringing, alas, it didn’t make a single sound.

Trying to scream out profanities to express my frustration and my lack of comprehension as to what was happening, I noticed people staring strangely at me. After all, I was in the middle of a gas station parking lot. I calmed myself down and tried to be rational about the situation, deciding what I should do next. Many minutes (that felt like hours) later I decided that I should drive myself to the hospital, possibly even to the emergency room, because after all, this was an emergency.

Upon my arrival to the emergency room, I felt panic set in once again as I realized that I wouldn’t be able to communicate with the receptionist at the desk, and I certainly wouldn’t be able to tell the doctor what was going on. Feeling frantic I decided to just go for it, I could write down my concerns and the doctor could write down his responses. I pulled a notebook out of my backpack and went inside.

While I was sitting in the waiting area, I felt a sense of calming take over my being. I noticed how peaceful everything was, and how I was able to focus on things without being distracted by the chatter of people around me. A placid feeling took over as I sat there cogitating how different my life was going to be. I’ve always been the type of person to look on the bright side of things, and decided that I should embrace my loss of hearing, and accept the ability to see life for what it is, rather than resent life for what I don’t have.

Finally the nurse came out and ushered me back into a small room, where I assumed that like any other visit to a hospital, I would sit and wait for the doctor to arrive. After a few more extremely long minutes, the doctor came in, and went right to work at looking in my ears.

He shined a little light in my left ear, and then in my right, and I could see his lips moving as if he was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t make out his words. He then guided me back so I was lying down on the paper covered cot, and he then took out another device which seemed to have a large speaker on it, and moved it towards my head. I wasn’t quite sure what to think of this, for I’ve never undergone tests for hearing loss before, so I didn’t object to his methods.

As the speaker was raised to my ear, I could hear a distantly familiar screeching faintly penetrating my ears. The longer the doctor held it to my ear, the louder and closer sounding the sound became. Before I knew it, the sound was so loud and abhorrent that I sprung up and found myself in my own bed again, with the sound of the alarm clock clamorously shrieking across the room. As I sluggishly made my way over to hit the snooze button, I smiled, and decided to switch the alarm off instead. I got into the shower, and realized that once again, one of my fabulous, but mostly strange dreams has been interrupted by the evil alarm clock.