Monday, January 31, 2011

Death by Wallpaper and Flooring: What am I going to do with my life?

What am I going to do with my life?

I hear that question in my own head almost hourly and out of someone else's mouth at least once a day.

Whether from a friend or a parent, a teacher or a classmate, even strangers. It is just the go-to question when anyone is talking to a Senior: "What are your plans after you graduate?"

Not like what are you doing tonight or this weekend. Not even what are you doing in a year but -

What are you doing with... YOUR LIFE. 

It can be panic inducing.

Especially if you don't have a precise answer.

But, I do have somewhat of an answer, at least by process of elimination:

I don't want death by wallpaper and flooring.

Let me explain :)

Thanks to my good friend Matthew who lent me his book, I have started reading Drops Like Stars by Rob Bell.

The book flows so well in a random but well-connected way and the visuals are absolutely fantastic. As a result, I won't be able to do his presentation of the material much justice but here's an excerpt:

In the movie Old School, Will Ferrel plays a married, thirty-something-year-old suburban man who finds himself at a college party.

When he's offered a drink, he declines, saying,
"I have a big day tomorrow." 
When he's asked, "Doing what?" he responds, "Well, um... actually, a pretty nice little Saturday. We're gonna go to Home Depot, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed Bath and Beyond... I don't know. I don't know if we'll have enough time..."
Why is is that everyone I know who's seen that movie remembers that scene? Obviously people remember it because it's funny. But there's far more going on in the scene that just going to Home Depot on a Saturday. 
 This man in this movie is bored. 
He has the life that is often portrayed as the ideal - a wife, a house, a job, security, comfort, privilege, freedom - and yet it's left him bored, numb, and in a low-grade state of despair. His "success" has actually served to distract him from just how deeply unsatisfied he is with his life.
I assume none of us want to starve or be shot at or lose someone we love, but it's possible to die a sort of death at the other end of the spectrum as well, isn't it?
If we aren't careful, our success and security and abundance can lead to a certain sort of boredom, a numbing predictability, a paralyzing indifference that comes from being too comfortable.
 Death by wallpaper and flooring (p 39).

Yes, so for now, that at least is my answer to this ever-present and pressuring question: "What am I going to do with this life?"

I am going to LIVE, live in such a way that I won't suffer death by wallpaper and flooring.

I hope you're able to do the same.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

One Entire Day without Rape

What I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women's silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die.
And if there would be a plea or a question or a human address in that scream, it would be this: why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.
And also: that we do not have time. We women. We don't have forever. Some of us don't have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist. Those statistics are not abstractions. It is easy to say, "Ah, the statistics, somebody writes them up one way and somebody writes them up another way." That's true. But I hear about the rapes one by one by one by one by one, which is also how they happen. Those statistics are not abstract to me. Every three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is being beaten. There is nothing abstract about it. It is happening right now as I am speaking.

                                               - Andrea Dworkin, quoted again at the end of this post

I recently feared rape myself. Not in the every day underlying fear but in a specific situation. And at that moment, I had another boxing match between the Southern Belle in me and the Feminist. Generally, both of those points of view blend beautifully but this past weekend, they each took a corner in the boxing ring, ready to battle it out.

I was planning to study with a male classmate for an upcoming test. We had established in class as well as via text message days before that we were going to meet in the library.

Less than an hour before we were to meet, he sent me a text asking if I'd rather meet him in a different building because "it was quiet and there was no one around."

Guys, I'm sure you would not even hesitate, oblivious to any reason for concern. Girls, the wheels of "What if" are probably already turning in your mind. Here's what mine sounded like:

Feminist: that seems odd... why the last minute change? The library is just across the street.

Southern Belle: oh, no need to make a mountain out of a molehill.

So, the Southern Belle in me texted back saying, "Sure, where should I meet you?"

He responded with "On the second floor, down a long hall."

The Feminist in me was like: "last minute location change + no one around + long, isolated hall = rape waiting to happen"

The Southern Belle's rebuttal was "Oh, don't be silly. I mean he seems nice right? I'm sure he wouldn't do that."

"Ha," the Feminist responds, "famous last words. I'm sure that is what every girl thinks right before she is raped."

The Southern Belle in me begins to agree, recalling my previous post on rape where I found that 83% of rapists are known to their victims and their attackers often include classmates.

Ultimately, however, the NERD in me won.

I needed to study so after allowing the Feminist to text a few friends a heads up on the situation and allowing the Southern Belle to send up a quick prayer, I met my study buddy down the long, dark hall and saw not a single other soul while I was in there.

Was this a dumb move? I like to think of myself as a pretty smart girl usually but this scenario left me perplexed and unsure if I was making a smart decision.

Was the Feminist in me over-reacting? I thought no since this is literally the kind of thing I have read about for the last 4 years of college!

I am happy to report that not a thing happened. As the Southern Belle assumed, this guy was totally nice and not a threat at all.

But, what if I had been wrong? Back to that previous blog post of mine, EVERY 7 MINUTES a woman is raped in America.

Guys, if you're still reading, do you understand why girls have this internal mental boxing match over something as simple as a study buddy session?

We. Are. Not. Over-Reacting.

Rape is a real threat.

Though I have not been raped, I have several friends who have been. I've heard their stories and their tears.

But it could be you or your sister or your mother or your girlfriend or your daughter or your grandmother.

Any. Woman.

1 in 4 women will be raped. 


But it can be stopped.

Andrea Dworkin gave a speech in which she simply asked for a


Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape. 

That was back in 1983.





She gave this gutsy speech to an audience full of men. I relate to so much of it and suggest you read the whole thing but here are some excerpts I really appreciate: 


As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I've talked to over the past ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you've seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.
I speak for many feminists, not only myself, when I tell you that I am tired of what I know and sad beyond any words I have about what has already been done to women up to this point, now, up to 2:24 p.m. on this day, here in this place.
And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less--it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.



And, 

men come to me or to other feminists and say: "What you're saying about men isn't true. It isn't true of me. I don't feel that way. I'm opposed to all of this."
And I say: don't tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There's no point in telling me. I'm only a woman. There's nothing I can do about it. These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying that they represent you. If they don't, then you had better let them know...
It's not enough to find some traveling feminist on the road and go up to her and say: "Gee, I hate it."
Say it to your friends who are doing it. And there are streets out there on which you can say these things loud and dear, so as to affect the actual institutions that maintain these abuses. You don't like pornography? I wish I could believe it's true. I will believe it when I see you on the streets. I will believe it when I see an organized political opposition. I will believe it when pimps go out of business because there are no more male consumers.



And, I leave you with this: 

I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don't mind begging you to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?
And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can't begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives--both men and women--begin to experience freedom... For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.



Monday, January 17, 2011

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"

I know it has been a while since I have written. Where to begin?

At the end... cause "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

2010 ended with me preparing for the Passion 2011 conference in Atlanta. It was SO amazing!!!! Starting on the first day of 2011, in just 4 short days, 22,000 college students raised over a million dollars for social injustices around the world.

There is strength and impact in numbers.

And our age is not a limitation:


1 Timothy 4:12

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.

Louie Giglio started out the conference saying 2 things that really stuck out to me:

  1. TIME's  Person of the Year was Mark Zuckerberg who is only 26. He undoubtedly changed the way we communicate and ultimately impacted the entire world. And, Louie said, we can impact the world too. Soooooooo true.
  2. He pointed out that this New Years was 1/1/11. And 1 is the number of new beginnings. And that many ones represent lots of new beginnings for 2011. 


     And, according to Semisonic, "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."


    I think this is really true too.

    As I start out the beginning of 2011, I face an end: It is "Closing Time" for college.

    Their song sums it up for me:

    Closing time
    Open all the doors and let you out into the world
    ...
    Closing time
    You don't have to go home but you can't stay here

    As my final semester unfolds, I don't know where it is that I'll be going BUT I look forward to new beginnings...

    And impacting the world :)

    I hope you do too, embracing 2011 as a year of new beginnings, whether you are a senior in college or a senior citizen... 12 or 20 or 103 or anything in between.

    Best of luck in 2011!!!

    Also get excited for November... 11/11/11 ;)