Metacognition: Get Organized

Ever since I was very little, I have had a very interesting relationship with organization. The majority of the time, the mere thought of the task conjures up one strong emotion: blah. Categorizing, stacking, filing, labeling… it’s all very dull. Mundane at best. I’ve found that the only time when I actually enjoy organizing is when it involves items which hold some of my interest, like music or art supplies. So, for this assignment, I chose to challenge myself and organize my desk in all its overflowing glory.

When I first looked at my desk, I just didn’t know where to begin. There were textbooks supporting mountains of worksheets, which were buried under scattered pens, pencils, and the occasional stray eraser. My laptop lay in the middle of the disaster, silently screaming out to be rescued from an inevitable avalanche.

After a little mental prep-talk, I decided to work top down. I carefully picked up all my writing utensils and sorted them into different containers according to type. The most tedious job was next, as I filed away all the loose papers into various folders and binders by subject, and threw away all the old and irrelevant ones. I finally hauled all my textbooks onto a nearby shelf. To my surprise, there was a whole host of tidbits and leftover who-knows-what’s that were hiding beneath all those books, so after that was all swept off into the garbage bin, the wood of my desk was visible at last.

The effect of this seemingly obvious discovery that I could in fact see and feel the surface of my desk was shocking. I felt as though an enormous burden was lifted off my shoulders because I realized that all the clutter on this small table had actually been an obstacle in my way—I was always trying to work around it. Before I had gotten started on the daunting task of organizing, I thought very little about what all I carelessly cast to the side, and how those little things can build up into a mountain of stress in no time. With every pen I sorted, every used-up scratch paper I discarded, my outlook on my workload became much clearer and more confident.

Ever since the first time my parents told me to clean my room and taught me the importance of doing so, I’ve understood that organization is extremely beneficial in order to stay on track and know where everything is. But, I realized something after this simple project of combing through and tidying my desk: organization can also be a way of letting go of unnecessary things. Day after day, scores of odd papers and ideas accumulate around me, and I’ve realized that I rarely take the time to just sit down and purge the superfluous ones that all tying me down. After this project, my mind feels cleaner as well, and I can now think about and move into tomorrow with more ease.

I will definitely be incorporating this useful and therapeutic exercise into my life more often, so that my burdens never become too heavy.

Blogging Around

My first comment was on Ross Steinberg's blog post, iMedia: It seems like society could totally possibly learn to articulate better, right? He introduced a poem in video form by poet Taylor Mali, and along with a critique of the poem itself, he discussed the importance of clear and expressive speech and writing.

My comment:   
Ross, I just have to start off by saying I really enjoyed this poem and video, and ironically, after watching it, I remained speechless for several minutes because of how deeply it made me reflect on myself. As much as it pains me to admit, I am a serious culprit of inarticulate speech. But, before your blog post, I never really analyzed what deeper meaning this might have about me as a person.

Just like many other “reformed and refined” teenagers, I try to avoid using filler words such as “like” when I’m talking. Whenever I use those superfluous syllables, I am hiding behind them—cushioning the impact of any potential negative reactions to what I’m saying. This is an obvious place to start when improving my communication skills. However, it was only this year that I started to contemplate the importance of word choice and conciseness. The video brought up a wonderful point about how the words we use really reflect the passion behind our assertions and beliefs, and, Ross, I found your idea of visual poetry to be very refreshing. These new aspects to the way we express ourselves seemed to be a big burden though… I mean, now every time I say something, I not only have to think about whether or not I am saying exactly what I want to say, but also whether or not I am saying it in the best way possible.

I’ve come to believe this will all just come with practice, though. Upon much reflection, I have realized just how much can be gained from speaking with more conviction, because along with earning more respect, I have a feeling it will lead me to a better understanding of my own beliefs. Thanks for the great thoughts, Ross!

*****

My second comment was on Nina Galanter's blog post, Best of Week: Wait for the Author to Follow Through Before Judging a Book. She discussed how she now understands the importance of withholding judgment about a piece of art until the artist, or author, has finished presenting it fully.

My comment:

Nina, it is quite unfortunate that I too have had much experience with this human tendency. In fact, sometimes it gets so frustrating because I feel like my brain is screaming at me, drowning out everything else I’m trying to pay attention to. Our class discussion about withholding our judgments of literature and art until the author has fully made his or her point struck me too, but it was only after reading your post that I began to wonder… to what degree can we actually control this?

Two summers ago, I read a fascinating book called Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. He wrote in depth about multiple scenarios when the “snap-judgments” we subconsciously make actually benefit us and should be trusted. Although his references were not directly related to interpreting literature, I think there are some parallels that can be drawn. I believe our mind works so fast and in so many directions every second, that it is almost impossible to trace its path. We draw from so many memories and emotions every time with unknowingly interpret or categorize something we encounter, and I don’t think this can just be switched off, nor should they be.

Instead, I would propose letting oneself make those judgments, and interpretations, but not letting them cloud or close one’s mind. Acknowledging them and just tucking them away until the author has finished speaking is definitely no easy task, but it can be very valuable. After one has finished reading a novel, watching a play, or listening to a piece of music, looking back and contemplating one’s previous interpretations or trains of thought could be extremely enlightening… uncovering a wealth of insight about how certain little tidbits in that work of art connected to the human mind.

Thanks for sparking those ideas, Nina!

Change of Mind: The Works of the Bard

Imagine descending into a swimming pool to find it is only 3 feet deep—shallow enough to comfortably stand with the water up to your waist. Yet, you feel quite cold. As you start to move toward the other end of the pool, the surface of the water slowly inches up toward you neck, and your toes grow less and less acquainted with the ground. Soon, however, the depth of the water is so much that even your tip-toeing ceases. You must now flail and kick in order to stay in place. You are forced to swim, and it is a little terrifying, but you find that you are enjoying yourself at the same time. And you are no longer cold.

This has basically been my relationship with William Shakespeare’s works… until last year.

In elementary and middle school, the works of the Bard were exactly that: chilling waters that I just did not want to jump into. Of course I had heard all about him—everyone had. He was a classic, and I went along with that. But, as much as it pains me to admit, I only agreed because I couldn’t refute. I mean, who could honestly understand this guy? I distinctly remember countless questions about his sonnets on standardized tests I took even as early as third grade and the utter perplexity that came with them. If there was actually something Shakespeare was trying to say in his writing, he was definitely doing a terrible job at expressing it, I thought. I would just end up guessing the answer and moving on.

His mazes of words flustered me to no end, because everything we were learning about grammar in school just didn’t seem to apply to him. Verbs became nouns, and nouns became verbs. And don’t even start on the adjectives! When it came time for the rite-of-passage of reading Romeo and Juliet in eighth grade, I found myself deeper in that maze than I had ever been. Thank God for the left-side-of-the-page-translations, I thought, because I certainly wouldn’t have been able to discern Benvolio’s role in the story without them.

It really wasn’t until my second run-through of Romeo and Juliet, this time in my freshman year of high school, that I thought Shakespeare actually might be up to something with his wild words. It was only then that I let go and started swimming.

We took one stanza in the play and read and read and read it over and over again like we were trying to unearth something which was stubbornly stuck in the ground. All of a sudden, realization would strike me and everything made sense. I remember my sense of astonishment when we explored Shakespeare’s use of the ideas “saints” and “prayer” when actually talking about hands and kissing.

This shift in my thinking after our painstaking analysis of Romeo and Juliet is almost tangible to me. Shakespeare’s words were no longer obstacles in my way… they were different colors on his palette which he used to paint pictures that I never had access to before. I began to notice the melody and emotions of his lines which normal, grade school grammar would never have allowed. And finally I could say I enjoyed reading the right sides of the pages more than the now-bland left sides.

Although there are still times when I have to reread one of Shakespeare’s lines at least ten times before I can make any sense of it, I now realize just how much that persistence can pay off. There is so much more to discover in the deep end.

360 Degrees: Anticipation

Cool beads of sweat on your upper lip. The anxious churning in the pit of your stomach. The heavy beat of your heart marking every second which gets you closer to that moment that you dread… or that moment which you can’t wait for. That moment that makes your stomach feel weightless and giddy just thinking about it. That moment which plants a smile firmly on your face no matter how hard you tug the sides of it down. But throughout all of this, no one can really truly say whether that moment will even arrive.

It is the sheer power of our anticipation which makes us feel those things. We feel an event before it comes and our whole body reacts. More often than not, we realize that our anticipations end up setting expectations, which the real moment never seems to live up to: The premiere of that hilarious new movie that you’ve been looking forward to for months… really wasn’t that funny. Or that math test that you lose sleep over for weeks… actually wasn’t that hard. Everyone knows what I’m talking about. So, what exactly is at play here?

Once we hear about something that may happen in the future, a seed is planted in our subconscious. Depending on how exactly we feel about the possibility of this event, we construct a specific and elaborate scenario of it in our mind. We then become immersed in that fabrication, even believing it to be real. It replays in our mind constantly and this is what makes our heart feel like lead or a feather: an overwhelming hypothesis.

Now, some people appreciate this phenomenon and others condemn it. One person said, “He who matures early lives in anticipation,” while another stated, “Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.” Is anticipating events really a part of maturing? I suppose in this sense, anticipation is equated with learning and gaining wisdom from past events in order to predict future ones. It could also mean being one step ahead of life and always being prepared. But, this interpretation is focusing more on the physical aspect of anticipation. What about the psychological aspect of it? I believe this is what the second interpretation was getting at. The thoughts of the future can preoccupy us so much that we don’t let the present moment soak in. And on top of that, those preoccupying thoughts have the potential to make us feel pretty miserable. But I know that, personally, looking forward to an exciting event has made for some of the happiest periods of my life. I even find myself seeking out events just so that I can enjoy the thrilling anticipation of it.

So, should we try to anticipate what is to come in our lives, or try to solely live in the moment? Does looking forward lead to a more alert and “mature” person, or a more worried and disappointed one? And I am especially curious about how our expectations of an event actually influence how we end up experiencing it. Maybe being thrown into every situation like a blind man into cold water, would unlock a whole new level of exhilaration in life that an anticipating person will never know.

But most importantly, is any of this really under our control? If all this is going on in our subconscious, is it even in reach? And if it is, how can we tame something that has so much power over our health and happiness?

An Inconvenient Truth: The Eye-Opening Experience of Death

We never know what we have until it’s gone. And even more devastating, we never seem to fully appreciate the lives of others until their death finally opens our eyes.

I became aware of this startling reality just this past week and it left an awful taste in my mouth. I became aware of it the moment that Steve Jobs, a man of a thousand legacies, passed away last Wednesday, October 5. Many things shocked me at that moment. For one, this man died at the mere age of 56, with almost half his life left unlived. A mind like his should not have an expiration date. But more shocking than that was the fact that I had known almost nothing about him a week and a half ago.

Of course I had known that he was the co-founder of the great Apple Inc. and that he was one of the people who had designed and developed the first successful personal computers all those years ago (or not so long ago). I had heard his name several times before, but only when it followed a mouthwatering description of a new Apple gadget or when my mother emailed me a copy of his Stanford University Commencement speech… when I was nine years old. So that is what I saw him as for all those years: a name; not a person. In a manner of speaking, I knew that this flower existed, but I had no clue how deep its roots reached or how far its seeds spread.

For example, I had no clue that Steve Jobs had in fact been put up for adoption after his birth parents were prohibited from marrying, or that he was the co-founder and former chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios. And I still cannot fully believe that he was Buddhist. My utter ignorance bothers me to no end.

Because of it, the genius behind the iPod never had a face or a story. If I had just understood him a little better, maybe when I was shuffling through my playlists, I could have realized that I was also peeking into one of the most brilliant minds on Earth. Or maybe I could have followed his brave struggle with cancer and meaningfully connected it to my life at that time. But all this came too late.

Why? Why does realization always have to hit us after the fact? Perhaps it takes a concrete publication of a person’s life, like the whole Bloomberg Businessweek edition dedicated solely to the story of Steve Jobs which came out the day after he died, for us to sit down and say with certainty, “Yes, he was a good man.” Perhaps we cannot fully appreciate what all someone has done while they are still alive because, heck, they’re still alive… they still have time to screw everything up.

Now, I don’t know whether it is the worst thing that I never knew much about Steve Jobs until now. I don’t know if it is really reasonable and attainable to immerse ourselves in everyone else while they are still alive. But, I do know that death should not be our wake-up call. We should always try to appreciate the mind and stories of all those around us, no matter what’s going on in ours. I personally owe it to Steve Jobs to do that much.

Best of Week: Obscurity

“Obscurity is dark, ample and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness.”

My initial reaction to these lines in the second chapter of Orlando was of utter amazement. The word choice and sentence rhythm painted such a deep and vivid picture in my mind that I was surprised when I realized it was in fact an intangible idea being described, not a black, viscous liquid. Soon, however, this literary awe faded and was replaced with brow-furrowing confusion. Wait… obscurity is a good thing?

I found myself frantically vacillating from agreement and disagreement with this thought. Agreeing, I recalled all the times I didn’t play very high in the line-up on the tennis team (playing against less skilled opponents), and there would be nobody who came to watch my match. I felt completely obscure, but at the same time, there was virtually no pressure on me, so I would take my biggest risks and hit my best shots. However, disagreeing, clips of certain TV shows would replay in mind, where hundreds of Americans would fight over a chance to be in the spotlight because it would fulfill their dreams and lead them to a better life. Well, which of these is more accurate?

Thinking about these specific examples brings up many questions. What is more valuable: the way one feels in the moment, or the outcome of one’s actions? Our life or our legacy? Of course this could be completely turned on its head. Some people feel much more comfortable when they are out of view of others, and some people perform much better under watchful gazes.

Linking and swirling around this train of thought are the questions of motivation. What gets us to do what we do? In Orlando, after his painful experience with Nick Greene, Orlando finds he would write much better if he did it for himself, not anybody else. Thousands of local police officers, firefighters, teachers, software engineers, and doctors will never get their name beyond their county borders, but does this stop them from taking pride in their job? Not in the least. There are also those who live off of the views and support of others—those who walk to be followed, so to speak. Thousands of musicians, Broadway actors, professional athletes, and comedians project themselves onto the global screen to live out their dreams or bring about the change they want.

So, with all these thoughts, what can one take away from this quote? For me, it is a different perspective. I have always believed that the emotions of the moment and the way things end up years down the line are equally important. And, I have realized over time that everyone is guided by a different light—for reasons of their own. However, I had never really considered the pursuit of obscurity. In the future, I don’t really see myself seeking out opportunities to bury myself in the darkness, but I will definitely give more credit to this option. After all, a person on center stage and a person behind the scenes have an equally important role in putting on a show. Why appreciate one and leave the other to be ignored?

What If?: Memories Unearthed

The piece “Memoria Ex Machina” was built on a set of very unusual ideas. However, it was one in particular which really had me thinking. And, when I say “thinking”, I mean the not blinking for several minutes on end because that would most definitely disrupt my train of thought kind of thinking. The idea was very simple, yet profoundly complex: Perhaps the objects of our memories are better off left in oblivion, never to be unearthed.

According to “Memoria Ex Machina”, when we see an object or relive a moment from way back in our past, we run the risk of being disappointed when they don’t live up to our memories of them.

When I first read this, I got very depressed. Suddenly I felt like my whole childhood was an illusion. However much I hate to admit it, though, I have had a great deal of experience with this phenomenon.

One day, when I was only about six or seven-years-old, I heard a song in music class that made my heart soar. It was called Sammy/ I’m Glad I’m Me. I don’t know what it was about it that made me feel so light and exuberant. Maybe it was the lyrics, which my classmates and I acted out by flapping our wings and hopping around, or maybe it was the infectious melody. Whatever it was, I would be humming that tune for the rest of the day with a smile on my face. Soon, one school year morphed into the next, new friends joined the old friends, a baby sister was born and before I knew it, eight years had passed. And Sammy had been left behind.

Then, one evening last year, for reasons I have yet to explain, that fateful tune suddenly popped into my head. At this point, the Internet had evolved so much that within a minute, I had located the song, whose name I had since forgotten, and eagerly began listening to it.

Immediately, my smile deflated. The lyrics were mediocre at best. The melody seemed inconsistent and manipulated. To say the least, the song before me was a disappointment compared to my old childhood sweetheart. I was just about to “x” out of the YouTube page when the chorus began playing for the first time. With no warning whatsoever, my heart became as light as a feather and started soaring.

Yes, technically, I was disappointed after I unearthed this melody of my youth. What I had hypothesized were the reasons I loved the song were absolutely incorrect. I could honestly think of nothing complimentary to say about Sammy as a musical piece. What was it that made me feel that state of joy and bliss, then? It must have to do with what that song really reminded me of—what I connected it to the first time I heard it all those years ago.

The song was about a father. It was about independence. It was about pretending. It was about friends. Could these ideas have made me feel happy and alive when I listened to it? I also remember shedding all my worries as soon as I walked into my music class every week… feeling clean and pure as can be. Could this somehow be woven into my memory?

I have a feeling it wasn’t just Sammy that was unearthed on that evening last year. Because of unfounded expectations and a closed mind, I demonstrated the “Memoria Ex Machina” reaction: disappointment. But, I also rediscovered a great deal of my childhood and caught a fleeting glimpse of my young, buck-toothed, innocent self in the process. So, could I say I wish that memory had remained in oblivion? Yes, I could. But I would be lying.