Quotability

inspiration for T minus 2 weeks...

"Love is never finished, and life is never as clean as the stories we tell ourselves. If that robs us of a certain resolution, perhaps it’s enough that those moments let us sit back and look at one another and say: we almost didn't make it, but we got here. Now let’s keep going."

Daniel Carlson, from his film review of Before Midnight

(photo from Vogue, July 1940)

Joy by Zadie Smith

Read this essay by Zadie Smith discussing the difference between pleasure and joy:

"Occasionally the child, too, is a pleasure, though mostly she is a joy, which means in fact she gives us not much pleasure at all, but rather that strange admixture of terror, pain, and delight that I have come to recognize as joy"

(photo via weheartit)

Dénouement

It's been such a chaotic week with crazy highs and crazy lows - I'm sure you know what kind of week I'm talking about. Anyway, there have been some scary things going on with a good friend and I've been having a really hard time with some extra-curriculars at school that will be culminating in 2 big concerts within the next 4 days. And then exams in 3 days after that. And then my week-long medical trip to Nicaragua in 2 days after that (oh, I never told you guys about that? Oops.) It felt like I had to single-handedly shoulder a lot of the burdens. Especially earlier in the week, I was feeling quite lonely, overwhelmed, and helpless. Tonight when I left school at 10pm, I was still feeling weak and sorry for myself.

The thing is, life stops for no one. The light drizzle became heavy rain during my drive home. The holiday radio station that usually provides familiarity and comfort was overbearing in its cheer. Sometimes, people and things that you want to count on will disappoint you. And somehow, through all the confusion and hurt, there is a fittingly gentle yet undeniably clear sign that things have changed. For good. I have answers. No more wondering. No more feeling sorry. No more looking back with such longing. Life moves on and I need to too.

Anyway, I got home and was cleaning out some old emails, all mopey and sad (do any of you also feel the compulsive need to purge and expunge yourself of distracting clutter after a really terrible day? That feeling that you need to seriously clean up and re-examine your life?). But then I came across some old emails that I sent out and replies that I received while I was in Peru for a month in 2008. Emails to and from some of my closest friends. Reading them made me so delightfully happy! I've actually just agreed to blog for my school during my Nicaragua trip and so these emails were found in perfect timing too. There are so many happy, thoughtful, sentimental, and true moments in those emails. And some really special discoveries that really pulled me towards the road I now travel.

In dramatic art forms like drama and film, the good story lines will always follow what pedagogues call "the dramatic arc": exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution/dénouement. But real life doesn't always follow such a convenient pattern, does it? I guess that's the whole beauty of experience. It's just extra encouraging when life does that funny thing of giving you exactly what you need to help you to get by during those sad moments, you know? I hope you're coming across some of these similarly perfect findings amidst your own chaos (if you're having any) too.

(top photo of pensive me in Puno by the JJB, 2nd photo of a boat ride to the floating Uros islands, last photo of Cusco's central square)

Ingrid Michaelson's Sort Of

I can't really pinpoint why, but it feels like this song is speaking for me all the words I cannot say.



It was also featured on this commercial that makes me tear up every time (no surprises here). You can get the song for free here: http://goo.gl/RnsKt

An Ending

My last day of work (again). Feeling a little differently this time compared to last year as I realize that I won't be back for a while - at least not in the foreseeable future. I recall the gentle sadness and affection I was feeling when I left the lab last year. I was thinking my life would never again be the same. This time around, while I am a little apprehensive when I think about the dreaded second year, I'm also hopeful for all that it holds: pathologies, diseases, the bread and butter of medicine. While I'm not quite ready for it per say, I am determined and prepared to be unwavering in its onslaught.

Regardless, some things have stayed the exact same. Forever grateful for my time working with some amazing researchers, doing significant work on a few projects. Despite the (not so subtle) longing for complete relaxation during my last summer vacation ever, I can safely say that I made the right decision coming back. Definitely quite satisfying.


(photo via kittenskittenskittens)

Sunday Seven

I attended a seminar recently where we watched an episode of This Emotional Life exploring the concept of happiness. I eat this stuff up. In college, I was an English Literature and Biopsychology double major and I've always been drawn to the intersection of science and the human experience. Not only has the link between proof-seeking science and intangible emotional experience always been fascinating to me, in many ways I've often felt reassured because my own questions about such ideas, even ones as basic and fundamental as happiness, are shared by many. Things aren't always as simple as they appear... How many secrets of life I have yet to discover.

In this particular episode, they describe a technique used in Positive Psychology in which an individual focuses on positive aspects from their normal day. They are then asked to describe these moments and why these experiences inspired positive feelings or thoughts. From there, one (or his or her positive psychologist) is able to see patterns in his or her own experience of happiness.

Jenny and I always wanted to keep a record (public or private) of 3 things we were grateful for that happened to us in a day. It's always easy (and quite satisfying) to wallow in self-pity or seek pity in others for all the hardships that we experience, but I'd argue that it's just as easy to find the good too. Because of this, I want to challenge myself to find the good in each day, be it an overall good or bad one. I'd ideally like to do it daily, but let's be honest, I don't even shower that often (TMI?). So I think I plan on recording 7 positive things every Sunday that hopefully will cover the past week. The Sunday Seven. Here we go:

1. Seeing all of the pictures from Debbie's wedding (a real post about this soon!) popping up all over Facebook because they let me relive such a happy day.
2. Dessert with Jenny on Tuesday, having fun with Albert yesterday, phone calls with JJB Friday, Debbie today. Getting to talk about anything and everything makes me refreshed and grateful for these friendships.
3. The cherry tree blooming outside my room window, pictured above, because though it flowers only fleetingly, the pink flowers and even the withering, fallen petals are just beautiful.
4. Picture texts from my sister from Shanghai! iMessage is so awesome and I'm so glad she's getting to enjoy her vacation with our dad.
   
   
5. A chance to really learn through something unpleasant. The power of communication and having a little hope can do wonders.
6. The first of countless salads for this summer: http://instagr.am/p/JvfKuyoLxs/. Tomatoes, cucumbers, garbanzo beans, purple cabbage with the dressing from my favorite salad. So simple, so delicious.
7. A day off today because I can play catch-up while semi-relaxed. I intentionally skipped orchestra rehearsal for this...

Whew, there are a lot in here! I hope you have an inspired week!

"Got Heart" Ring

This is my first piece of "everyday wear" jewelery that I actually wear all the time. I bought this Got Heart ring on sale from a little East Village jewelery boutique, on kind of a whim during my winter break. Of course, only Helen could bring me to a place as quintessentially New York as Verameat. She, along with my sister, were integral in my decision. Having worn this ring daily for a few months now, I feel like it was a worthy purchase. This buying nice jewelery for oneself - perhaps a physically small item, but significant in a young woman's life. At least for me, it is a daily reminder of what I'm capable of, my independence to find my own happiness, and the recognition of my own self-worth.

Happy Monday to all.

Stage Fright

I really have nothing to say during the closing hours on the eve of my first day of classes. I'm calm but tired, nervous but hopeful, ready but so not ready. I remember reading Connie's poignant thoughts as she was about to embark on her own journey to law school and I recall being so moved at her fear, longing, and hope. These are emotions that I too now know.

It is so crazy to think that these were her feelings from only about 11 months ago. In less than a year, my little bear has changed so much and, to put it lightly, she has kicked absolute ass (top of her class, Law Review, etc., etc.). If I am but a fraction of the woman she is, I will be living a dream.

"Tomorrow is the beginning of an odyssey that will change my life, and I am feeling very small indeed."

Conmonster

Baby's First Day

Today was my first day of orientation. It wasn't so bad thanks to my propensity to overreact and blow tiny things way out of proportion until they weigh so heavily in my mind like gargantuan, over-indulged baby animals at a petting zoo with no inclination of mercy from morphing into every permutation of a worst-case-scenario. I didn't meet too many people but I plan to. As I've heard from upperclassmen, almost as important as orientation itself (possibly even more so) are the nightly "orientation parties" scattered throughout Metro-Detroit allowing me to schmooze, network, and mingle with my classmates. Partying every night for a straight week. This has me more stressed than the entirety of orientation.

These suddenly inherited responsibilities are a far cry from my laughably sloth-like day-to-day existence of just a few days ago. I found myself oscillating between utter giddiness at my awesome life and then ennui and listlessness during the hottest parts of the day.... But now the distant mirage of my previous life which consisted of waking up at the socially responsible hour of 9am, eating as I pleased, watching cooking shows on TV, and cleaning, taunts me as I stand to take on even more in just one more week - once school actually starts. I am sure that in my lectures and studying, I'll be daydreaming of coffee with Debbie and Smurf, errands with my Dad, and riding in the family boat, my greatest worry only being if I put on enough sunscreen.

On Loving What You Do

Though written by a pregnant and Christian blogger, the message of work hating and loving what you do can be applied universally. How often I catch myself grumbling over the minutiae of my day... I hope to cultivate the courage and the patience to find pleasure in my work, to honor and appreciate those who are working beside me, and to end thoughts of "if only I had...." I want to run forward without looking back.

(Photo via weheartit)

In 2011...

I resolve to...

chase after and achieve my dreams instead of just fantasizing about them

stretch every night

be fearlessly positive towards others and myself

floss at least 3 times a week

take on a creative endeavor once a week like cooking, sewing, writing

not be afraid to ask for help or to say no

drink more water

live confidently and joyfully

Though this is about a week late, I've actually been in trial mode for most of my resolutions during December. I can already touch my toes! I think 8 resolutions won't completely overwhelm me; plus 8 is an auspicious number.

I hope this year finds you determined, renewed, and inspired. Here's to a fulfilling 2011!

(poster by francesca, via mary ruffle)

Twenty Four

Twenty four. Twenty four feels so unimaginably old...

When I was ten, I remember thinking sixteen would be the age of mature innocence (if this phrase could indicate to you the complete oxymoron that I predicted of teenage adolescence). When I was sixteen, I thought twenty was old. And when I was twenty I thought surely twenty four would be the year I would turn into a "grown up".

But now I'm twenty four. I'm older than so many people in the world and younger than so many more. I still can't think where I'm going to be in ten years or ten years after that.

It's dark and quiet. I watch the neighborhood Christmas lights flicker outside my window. They shimmer and glow in the still silence, faintly illuminating the street below. The branches of the wild cherry tree in the front yard sway gently and cast comforting shadows against the back wall of my room.

You never know where you're going to be. I know this idea has been run into the ground and then some, but the thing is, you never quite believe things until you realize them for yourself. That's when you listen to the cliches as if you were hearing them for the first time - as if you were the first to ever think them, the first to ever feel them. Then that cliche isn't a cliche. It's just yours. Your truth. The truth.

Twenty four. So many have been twenty four before me and still more after. But this twenty four, let this one be mine.


(Inspired by S from 2006 when she was only 22, photo from weheartit)

Teen Angst

Being back in Ann Arbor has inspired both a hazy nostalgia and a desire to critically examine myself juxtaposed to the girl I was when I first came to know this town. Though often surrounded by dense undergraduate crowds, my daily walk to work through campus in all of its collegiate splendor framed by vibrant foliage, is usually the second best part of my day - the first being lunch (of course).

I kind of couldn't resist this when I came across it. How overly emotional and perfectly angsty is this? I have to admit that I never overwhelmingly felt a great chasm between my expectations and realities ever in my life. This is due in large part to the fact that I intentionally try not to have grandiose expectations. In fact, I tend to have very low expectations so that reality can pleasantly surprise. However, the combination of these two lists pretty much sums up my entire college experience. I wonder what it means that I'm only reflecting on it now?

On another note, doesn't this list remind you so much of this? I loved this particular scene...

(list by (Speak) via Satellite Heart, photo via weheartit)

Quotability

Have an inspired week!

(from weheartit)

Subway Car Reflections

Very often, I don't feel like my 20-something years at all. In line with the quarter-life crisis or the increasingly popular theory of delayed adulthood, I find in lieu of actually taking much action, I think elaborate thoughts of "I would do X, if Y" and I daydream plans of "if A, then I would do B". Hiding behind many insignificant, self-imposed constraints, I definitely forget how great it is to be a young adult.

For a single day over this Labor Day weekend, I met up with Helen and D in Manhattan. Expertly guided by city-savvy H, we made our way through NYC neighborhoods and places I had only read about in glossy magazines or saw on TV. Through the day, I found myself incredulous at certain moments: I was slightly amazed when our names were called for our lunch reservations at a Zagat-rated hot-spot. I felt deliciously indulgent, when, after lunch, we carelessly gorged ourselves on cup cakes and brownies, then fresh figs all afternoon long as we lounged in the trendiest park just because we felt like it. I caught myself marveling when we grocery shopped and then enjoyed a Debbie-directed dinner of goat-cheese, arugula, and shitaki mushroon pasta paired with a fancy salad and a deep glass of a merlot malbec blend in an impressively clean Williamsburg apartment just because we were ironically too lazy to go out to eat. I still paused in wonderment as we buzzed up boys, no, men, into this apartment late at night for an evening of catching up on life since high school just because we wanted to.

When I left and was making my way back to my family in Queens, the night had picked up a capricious wind that relentlessly threatened to blow up my dress. Hopping the L to the 4 to the 7 train, my thoughts meandered smoothly, unperturbed by the jolts, lights, and noises of the subway cars I sat in. I was serene and content, feeling a strong affection for these friends from high school - all of whom are such well-adjusted individuals doing powerful, meaningful, important work. But perhaps the greatest surprise of the night was that I was feeling this same affection for myself, for joining, maybe just temporarily, but joining nonetheless, the ranks of adults who have successfully attempted this transition before me.

As I sat alone, physically worn out but spiritually renewed, I felt like for a day, I had left the lost and dreary 20-something culture and was part of an altogether different zeitgeist: the one in which young adults claim and celebrate their youth by dabbling in the world of modern sophistication and all the charming adult-ish trappings that come with it. I have a feeling that before long, these will become the stories of the rest of my life.

(photos by the lovely Helen and Debbie)

The Anatomy of Trying

"Don't let success go to your head or failure go to your heart."

I've come to realize that I'm intensely self-critical and almost debilitatingly introspective. While I think that for some people, these qualities can be spun into positive and motivating characteristics, mostly I'm just fighting an unending war in my head, beating myself up for past doings that leave me slightly but constantly depressed and hopeless about the present and future. I know how terribly self-indulgent this all is, but with the uncertainty plaguing my own life, I find that I have become increasingly more and more so. Perhaps it is a symptom of the quarter-life crisis? I fear it is and oh, to be so cliched! Though I'm still technically two years early for the typical quarter-life, I've always been precocious in a thoughtless way, of the mindset thinking I'm ready to handle more than I actually should. 

I've always wished for an even temperament. One that is strong, solid, and mild in its few fluctuations - so different from my own tumultuous, internal neurosis. But after nearly a decade of this, how silly it all seems. First, wishing doesn't accomplish anything. Second, is being a little neurotic so bad? Wallowing in self-pity or self-loathing for me is what I imagine deep sea diving to be like: the murky dangers that exist in the depths of the water really can't be known prior to the journey, but what is even more terrifying and paralyzing is knowing that I have to make my way back to the surface.

After reading some inspiring stuff, I think during this free time that I have chanced upon (which one could view as horribly tragic, or as I am now choosing to think of as fortuitously liberating), I will work on forgiving myself for all of my awkward, stupid, selfish, and profoundly short-sighted behavior that I have been dwelling on for so long in order to bolster myself for the tomorrows, the next weeks, the next years. In seizing this time, I hope to quiet my head in order to heal my heart.

(photo by now voyager, via Cup of Jo)

A Hero's Homecoming

April 13th marked the home opener for the New York Yankees and the ring presentation for their 27th World Championship was to be held before the game. Bernie Williams threw the first pitch. The glitz of a pair of fighter jets punctuated the glamour of Kristin Chenoweth's operatic rendition of the national anthem. Then the legends of Yankee folklore Billy Martin and Yogi Berra came out to present the rings with manager Joe Girardi, he himself a Yankee championship athlete. As they handed out the rings in descending order by number, everyone was wondering how they would honor the World Series MVP, now a member of that day's opposing club.  

The Yankees, as always, did not disappoint.  They had saved the best for last. A normally stoic Hideki Matsui was showing signs of deep emotion as the crowd of his home for the past 7 years roared, greeting him with an overwhelming ovation.  As soon as he received the ring, all of the Yankee players rushed to him and individually gave him the welcome home that he so deserved. Not going to lie, this was probably one of the most moving sports moments in baseball I've witnessed in my humble lifetime. You can watch the whole video and almost cry too.

I've always been a very nostalgic and sentimental girl. Maybe it's because many of my friends and family are so far away or maybe it's just the way I've always been. When I was 15 and a sophomore in high school, I remember feeling the slight but acute pangs of anticipatory heartache at the thought that it would only be 2 years left at my familiar high school with the people who would come closest to resembling my "childhood friends".  I probably still would have felt that way even if my current self could tell the girl I was that she'd meet many new friends who might not be "childhood friends" but still could become "lifelong friends" and that despite 6 (!!) years and counting, she'd still marvel every once in a while that her relationships with these people would change very little at all.

Hopeful March

I was in a terrible slump this past week brought on by three things:

• Weather: daily winter weather warnings, endless snowstorms, dreary skies, hour-plus commutes
• All Things Olympics: the bitter pain and triumphant beauty of pride and competition... well, ok. I lie. I do love this about the Olympics, so really, it's just those peskily poignant commercials: P&G (my favorite one below), Chevy, Visa... and each one of these gets me every time.

• Personal Life Miscellany

But now it is March and these are the things enticing me out from my cave of self-pity:

• peanut butter and mashed bananas in my oatmeal
• possible tiramisu construction plans for a dear friend's birthday
• plans for spring/summer 2010 travels
• P for further alliterative phun.

Welcome to March, friends!

Memories of the Southwest

I remember the summer I lived with my cousins in Phoenix as one of the most life-affirming summers of my life. My cousins were physicians in a hospital-affiliated out-patient clinic, and Tiffany and I spent the most sweltering months of 2006 shadowing them and their colleagues in the range of specialties and services offered... and also playing with our seriously cuter-than-life baby nieces XinXin, AnAn, and Jingjing.

My cousin was pregnant at the time and I inherited the daily driving responsibilities to and from work. The surroundings were totally different than the developed suburbs I was used to and I remember being struck by the dry and cracked red clay that made up some of the roads, the fighter jets that seemed to race with me as they would glide through vibrant blue hundreds of feet above, and the piercing sun that would already be high in the cloudless sky during our 7:15am commute. But it was one of the rare mornings I didn't drive that I first noticed the dusty local roads we used actually bisected seemingly endless fields of corn plowed by farmers and their donkeys. I loved fixing my eyes and letting our speeding car turn the crop into a sunbathed golden-green blur.

However, as the summer progressed, I slowly lost pleasure in that cloud of color. Maybe it was because at the clinic, I was no longer blindly following along. Without realizing it, I had gained insight into the world of patient care and I could understand some of the common diagnoses, numbers, and acronyms thrown about in passing conversations between the staff. Tiffany and I could discuss topics we learned with each other, and then with our cousins over dinner at night. And every time I passed those same fields during our commutes, my eyes would dart quickly from point to point making me slightly carsick with the frequent lateral cycling of my eyes. This made me never desire to skip my driving duties anymore. Anyway, I had seen all the familiar sights and grown used to the familiar roads we used nearly every day. And mostly I had become much more eager to get to the clinic to see the less familiar sights and travel the less familiar "roads" of medicine and healthcare.

But there was one last time that I didn't drive. And that particular morning I really looked at those fields again. Like before, the speed of the car caused the fields to blur, but this time I found that if I happened to fix my eye at just the right point, as we passed it, I could see straight into the horizon through the space in between each straight row of corn. Though we'd quickly drive by and the rows would blur again, for that split-second before, my view was so gloriously clear and my path was so completely straight and unhindered that I felt I was invincible.


(photos from Flickr)