Dass 3

It was December 24, 1999. I was an excited nine year old, dancing and skipping around my mom’s waist as she hung up our Christmas wreath on the door and set up all the annual Christmas Eve decorations across the house. Bing Crosby’s mellifluous and calming voice was radiating through the walls and flowing over my excited, tiny frame. Christmas Eve! Stockings, candy canes, cookies, a warm fire…nothing could be better! I sat down on the couch to put together a nativity scene my mother had handed to me and waved to my dad as he walked out of his bedroom, wearing khaki shorts and a t-shirt. (Me with my dad, at age 9. image is author's own.) “Where are you going, Papa?” I asked him. He didn’t usually dress so casually, especially going into the office like he was on that particular day.

My dad smiled and sat down on the couch next to me. “Well, sweetie, I’m planning on leaving the office a little early this afternoon to go do something nice for some people. And you and your mother and brother are coming with me.”

“We are? Where are we going?” I questioned him, not too sure I liked the idea of leaving the miniature heaven of my living room for even a couple of hours.

“Tonight, we’re going to go serve food to some folks who can’t afford to have a Christmas Eve dinner. It’s at a homeless shelter in downtown Dallas,” my dad replied.

“What’s a homeless shelter?” I asked, enunciating each of the words carefully, trying to figure out exactly what my dad was trying to explain to me.

“Well, sweetie? Remember when Uncle Roger lost his job last summer? He was lucky enough to find another job quickly, but some people lose their jobs and don’t find new ones right away. Some people lose their homes and have nowhere to go. A homeless shelter is a place for people like that to stay – to sleep and eat – until they find jobs again like Uncle Roger did,” he said, while stroking my hair lightly, trying to lull me into understanding.

I did understand. But I was not happy. “So, we are going to spend our Christmas Eve night with homeless people?” came my crassly incredulous response.

I knew I was being surly, and I waited for my dad’s angry reaction. Instead, however, his mouth twitched into a small smile and he chuckled a bit.

“Yes we are, and I guarantee that by the end of the night you’ll be so much happier about it than you are right now. It’s important, Spin, to help those who aren’t as fortunate as we are. Imagine if you were in their place, wouldn’t you want someone else to help you? It will only take a couple of hours, and we’re going. No buts about it,” my father concluded with his favorite phrase. I rolled my eyes.

Five hours later, I understood exactly what my father was talking about.(At first, I was scared of the haggard looking people I saw sleeping on cots in the shelter, like this one. image courtesy of:http://blog.lib.umn.edu/marqu154/architecture/01-19-07-HomelessShelter2.jpg). The night had been a whirlwind for me, to say the least. I went from being unhappy about going to the shelter, to scared of the people there, to nervous that I would spill the food I was ladling out onto their plates, to curious about not just their living conditions but their lives and hobbies and emotions, to excited to play with the kids my age, to amazed at the strength, kindness, and dignity each of the individuals I connected with showed. The experience was honestly the most rewarding I had ever had in my short, single-digit aged life. Just seeing the utter gratitude and thankfulness in the eyes of the strangers I was handing bread and salad to was enough to cause me to forget all of my own so-called woes. I read the Bible with my family and my class at school, I had developed what I thought was a good conscience, I didn’t lie or cheat or steal anything and I tried to be kind to those around me. But never in my life had I given myself over to a moment of service. Knowing that I was part of the reason that the elderly lady with the pink shawl and missing teeth was grinning a huge, toothless grin – well that feeling was beyond irreplaceable. Ram Dass speaks of service to others with a reverence akin to what I felt that night, saying that “[with service] we see our deepest yearnings reflected in others, and this encourages us to believe in our own purity and beauty,” (Dass, 217). Not only did I feel the compassion Dass speaks about when he says that, “through these practices, and our efforts to keep our hearts open in the presence of suffering, we find ourselves more available to whoever we are with….compassion is increasingly an automatic response,” but I felt actually connected on some kind of otherworldly level with the people I was interacting with (Dass, 225).

I went home that night and cuddled up between my mother and father by the fire (my little brother was in bed and I had my parents to myself, much to my delight). My parents took turns reading the “Christmas” story from the book of Luke in the Bible, but I only half-listened. I couldn’t focus on anything other than the faces in my mind of the people I had bonded with at the shelter. For the first time in my short little life, I felt like I had some kind of massive purpose that I was just starting to unwrap. Dass said, “service not only reveals a larger vision of life, but steadily moves us along and supports us in our efforts to realize this vision,” (Dass, 224). Indeed, I didn’t know exactly in what capacity or when, but I knew that the night’s act of service would certainly not be my last. Selfishly, I wanted to experience the warmth in my belly that I was feeling tonight every single night of my life. The act of service had caught hold of me, just as Dass promises it will for all of us. I tugged on my dad’s sleeve, stopping him from his reading aloud.

“Papa, can we do that again on Christmas too?”

My dad smiled down on me, his whole face lighting up. “You caught the bug too, huh little girl?”

I sure had.

Who Am I Now?

“Let me reintroduce myself

as a man with a cause

I’ve had a lot of time to think

and look at who we are”

- Cartel, “Let’s Go”

In order to do an analysis of the person I am now versus the person I was before this class began, I decided to look back at the “Who Are You?” discussion board prompt from this past summer. I got so caught up reading everyone’s entries before I even got to mine and, boy, was that a fun experience. It’s so funny to read everyone’s descriptions of themselves while being able to not only put faces to names but personalities to names as well. It felt almost like looking back on a school yearbook or something – it made me both happy and yet depressed because we’re almost done with this year, and there will be no more figuring out who we are or writing long, thought-out DB’s about ourselves. There will be no more exploring this journey of a class together. We are finished! It really was so cute to read everyone’s posts – each of us so excited to begin our college experiences and naïve of what this class and all of classes here at Plan II would open our eyes to. I feel like we have all grown up SO very much this year, it’s really incredible.

My post about myself from last summer was totally typical of me – way too verbose and not at all concise (nothing’s really changed in that department, even though Bump has tried….)! On the surface, a lot of things are the same. I’m still a swimmer, I’m still dealing with a back injury, I’m still a TV fanatic, I still have a weird name! However, if you look deeper, I see a lot of really cool changes between who I was then and who I am now. I think the most notable change in how I describe myself in that post and how I would describe who I am now is the sort of lack of substance in my summer’s post. Not to say that I had no substance to me back then, but it just seems to me like there are so many important things missing from that post. I don’t mention religion – that I am a Christian who is still searching for exactly what I believe and scared sometimes about finding the answers. I don’t mention any of the things I struggle with that I have learned about myself this year – like dealing with stress, problems with patience, and being open to different views. The last one is the most important, I think, and I have improved that a lot this year. I didn’t include any of that in my last summer’s DB but I definitely see fit to include them now.

Another noticeable difference in how my view of who I am has changed is in regards to animals. Last summer I wrote, “Over the years I think we've had about 19 pets ranging from rabbits to geckos to cockatiels to guinea pigs - we've pretty much done it all. I love my pets and am excited about the connection this class has to animals.” Now, when asked to write about my feelings for animals, it would be a completely different paragraph. I’d talk about Earthlings, how much it affected me and how heartbroken and physically sick I felt for days after watching it. I would talk about how important it is that videos like that get seen by more and more people, so that this incredible cruelty to animals that goes on right under our noses can stop. I would talk about how I plan on adopting a little kitten from a shelter next summer – and that all future animals I acquire as pets will no longer be from pet stores or breeders but instead from the pound or SPCA or another shelter-type organization. I know that my love for and undestanding of animals is ongoing, and if you check back with me at this time next year I might have a whole NEW set of things to talk about regarding animals. I’m just grateful this class opened my eyes to something I hadn’t – and didn’t really want to – see before.(My love of animals goes far beyond that of just my pets, now).

I feel secure in myself now. I didn’t feel that way last summer. I talked last summer vaguely about working in television when I grew up, but I didn’t really have any crazy goals or dreams that most almost-college-students have. It’s weird, while most kids feel their outlandish dreams fade away once they enter the “reality” of college, I think that Plan II and especially World Lit have caused me to START dreaming big. I’ve forced myself to confront issues this year that I definitely did not want to like racism, animal cruelty, all different kinds of religion, and compassion. I wrote an entire project about supporting homosexuality – something I NEVER would have felt comfortable doing before this year. I’ve inspected myself under the microscope we have used to look at our books and our themes and I feel confident that I have held up okay. I have formed real, lasting opinions about really important issues. I feel less shallow now, if that makes sense. So I feel like I can talk about my big dreams. Like how I want to go to the Olympics, like how I want to run an entire television network, like how I want to save as many animals from pain as possible, like how I want to get some kind of writing of mine published, like how I want the world to understand the INCREDIBLE value and importance of compassion. I can say those goals and dreams out loud now because this class and this year at college has given me confidence in myself to speak without fear of judgement from others. That’s what I’m most proud of.

I’ll end this DB similarly to how I ended it last summer. Last summer I said, “I can’t wait to meet you guys and experience this journey together!” Well, we made it. I honestly can say that I feel like we are a little family – we’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve teased each other, we’ve learned together, we’ve disagreed with one another, we’ve all stressed out together. It’s been the most amazing experience getting to know each of you, I’ll miss you all SO much next year. Promise me that we will all get together as one big class every so often next year, I don’t know how I’ll get through the year otherwise! Lots of love,

Spin.

Alice graduates as a leader

“I wonder if I’ve changed in the night. Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 23). I have loved this quote for a long time – ever since I first read Alice in Wonderland in middle school. I even used it as my favorite quote on my high school senior yearbook page. While perhaps some might think this question is more prevalent for next class’ DB, I am reminding myself of this quote to remind myself of how much who I think I am has changed this year, especially in terms of my views of ethics and leadership.

I always thought of myself as a sort of leader. I had been voted captain of my swim team and ran very student council organizations all through school.(Being captain of my high school swim team, I thought I understood what being a leader meant.) But now, after taking an entire year of Bump’s Plan II World Lit, I see how naïve I was about my leadership skills. To me, leadership meant speaking up only when I felt very passionate about something. Being a good leader meant that I had to be very loud about my opinion and not really consider the arguments of others, because doing so would show weakness. This class changed all that for me. More specifically, the DBE’s changed that for me. Aside from never having written so many papers in my entire life, the DB assignments and the whole idea of a blog in general challenged everything I thought about being a good leader. I was forced to form my own opinions about topics I knew next to nothing about, topics I didn’t understand, and topics where I didn’t know what my position was. I was the type of girl in high school to sit back during intense discussions about gay rights or abortion because I truly didn’t know where I stood and I certainly didn’t want to offend anybody. This class has forced me to form my own opinions about almost every subject – and it’s forced me to do so while considering ALL sides of an argument and not just my own. I’m still not sure about my view of abortion, but I know if I had to go back to high school and sit through those debates again, I wouldn’t be silent. I would be listening to both sides of the argument and I would very proudly stand up and announce that I am not sure what I believe. This, I feel, is much like Alice who was originally concerned about hurting the animals’ feelings and never felt brave enough to stand up for herself. Eventually, after journeying throughout Wonderland enough and dealing with the animals, she learned that her voice was important and that she could no longer be a pushover simply to preserve the animals’ feelings. This was exemplified when she came across the Mad Hatter’s Tea party and exclaimed to the animals, after they told her there was no room for her at the table, “There’s plenty of room!” and then sat down! (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 69).

"Manners are not taught in lessons,' said Alice, 'Lessons teach you to do sums, and things of that sort,'" (Through the Looking Glass, 253). When it comes to ethics, Alice's words are exactly correct. You can't learn ethics by reading about them. You have to form your own opinion about subjects of ethics in order to learn about them. When I think of this, the first and most prevalent class material that comes to my mind is the documentary Earthlings.(image courtesy of:http://www.johnwise.com/blog/i/BLOG_050129200639_PST2B/Image/2007/March/20070311_IMG_Earthlings.jpg). When we watched this film, I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that a big part of my life changed completely. Like my classmates, I was so disgusted and appalled by the treatment of animals in this film that I simply shut down for a couple of days, unable to really talk to people or eat or do much of anything except remember the haunting images of animals being tortured and killed before my eyes. Now, I have learned to cope with what I saw and channel that into telling as many people as I can about the film. Before this class began, I probably would have heard about Earthlings and said – nope, not for me. I would have said that I would rather not know about what happens to animals, that I would rather live in ignorance. My view of ethics was sort of a don’t ask don’t tell kind of thing – I preferred my little bubble to the actual world where there was pain and suffering and uncomfortable subjects to address and deal with. Now I know that I cannot put the blinders on when it comes to issues like animal rights and other such topics that I can make a difference in. As I said before, I tell just about everyone about Earthlings and encourage them to watch it. I seek out other films and literature on the subject of animal rights to send out to others. I try to eat as little meat as possible and plan on becoming a full vegetarian once my swimming career is completed.

This class has done so much for me as a person, student, leader, athlete, and friend. I have learned compassion, I have learned understanding, I have learned about racism, sexism, ageism - every kind of discrimination, it seems. I know I have a lot to learn about all of this issues to come, but I feel very confident that myself as a person has been altered this year as a result of all of these new concepts. This class has taught me a new way to think and I am thrilled to know that I will never be finished learning new things and forming new opinions about tough subjects. World Lit is only the very beginning of my adventures in "Wonderland", it is only the door (or rabbit hole, if you will) for me to continue in this quest, much like Alice's own journey.

(This is a video I found regarding more animal cruelty. I showed this to my dad and plan on sending it out to my friends, as my new understanding of being a proactive leader has taught me to do.)