Mother DB

So. I'm not going to break the trend, because I don't think there was much variation in our immediate responses to seeing the prompt for today's DB: Sheer flabbergastedness. I definitely was baffled for a while, and struggled to figure out how i would possibly condense my entire experience thus far into one blog entry. This class, the experiences of this semester, has been such a powerful factor in my growth that I couldn't comprehend trying to explain it all. However, a trip down the path to nostalgia is never one to turn down!

Reading back on our first DB, I laughed out loud. I remember how nervous I was to write about Hopkins' poem, to analyze something like "Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,/ Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion" (Anthology 1, 85). It turns out that the phrase "Fall" would be one I'd soon become ultra familiar with as we kept began to discuss this concept of free falling.

The concept of free falling was a difficult one to grasp. We came to university as high achieving uptight high-strung high-stress highschool graduates (well, maybe not allllll of us), and to be told that to succeed in learning and leading in life, we'd have to let go was pretty shocking. It was like hearing that to make the perfect architecture project, I'd get splashed with wet plaster, ripped apart by a panel of reviewers, and fail a zillion times - the whole thing was "process." Oh, wait, no one told me that, it just happens! Life isn't exactly full of convenient warnings.

Pretty respectable and clean cut, right? Picture of a great student, yeah?

A failaure on the way to success... and learning all the way.

 We continued expanding our mind to new concepts. We learned about Dobie and his significance at UT, and rooted for Table Cloth, who "was full of the pride and energy of life" (Anthology 1, 116). Our third blog, written about perfectionism in which we read of the destructive habits of perfectionists, of suicide, and serious(ly) depressing topics, I found out what exactly it takes to be a Bumpster. It requires an unabashed ability to talk about yourself - to REALLY talk about yourself. Somehow, I ended up writing about stuff that I planned to tell hardly anybody ever, but I guess I couldn't stop myself. This resonated with me: "Perfectionism is a duel with oneself, the ultimate "no-win" situation" (Anthology 1, 164) and I basically spilled my guts. I was terrified actually, that I'd be the only one who came up with something personal, but reading everyone else's blogs truly touched me. It seemed we all collectively decided to take our first step towards free fall. We were letting go, just a bit. But that little bit at the time was huge.

Then came our rebirths. Our animal rebirths. Here was our first defining moment of self-discovery. After meditation, we were instructed to look within ourselves, and find out what animal was our spirit animal. With some searching, I discovered I was akin to the Owl, who provides strength, wisdom, and sanity during an all-nighter spent in the architecture studio.

Guided by my spirit animal...



Cause during those late nights, sanity can be in short supply!

My other spirit animal is the hummingbird. If you wonder why I'm always so chipper, I think the hummingbird can provide a clue. Despite the fact that its life is so tenuous and transient, it is playful and colorful and vibrant, and thrilled with whatever life has to offer. Besides discovering our wild sides, we also charted our growth through life with Alice and Ram Dass. With Alice, we learned more about free fall, and how she exclaimed, "After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling downstairs!" (13). By falling hard, we'd see how we make such a big deal out of things that really shouldn't be a crisis, and look with fresh eyes at what is truly worth being upset about around us. Ram Dass supplemented this learning by teaching us how to listen to suffering. "We need to enlist the service of the intellect, but not let it block the intuitive compassion of the heart," (130) he teaches. THis lesson in learning and awareness and compassion was right on time as we moved into our unit on Speciesism.

Earthlings was awful. I'm not going to filter this - I personally thought it was just terrible. Not that it was made terribly or anything like that - it was just so gut-twistingly horrifying to see. It was precisely the type of shocker people need in order to open their eyes and be forced to reexamine an issue. For us, this was the issue of how we treat animals. We read about the connection between speciesism, racism, and sexism, and a plethora of texts including Elizabeth Costello by COetzee, The Jaguar, and things about cruelty, such as Nero and the Four Stages of Cruelty. This all connected together and forced us to confront the issue of suffering, an issue most humans try to avoid thinking about unless its about themselves. Nevertheless, we strove to put ourselves in another's shoes... or paws, ,whatever the case, and think about the issue of animals vs. humans from a different perspective. Perhaps what we were trying to learn is that there is no different perspective? 

Regardless of whether we think the same way or not, we share the same planet.

As we progressed on our pilgrimage, we delved into religious texts and how they deal with love and compassion. Our basic conclusion was that all religions embrace this concept of love and empathy and compassion towards our neighbors, whether stranger or friend. While discussing this, we of all diverse backgrounds in our class found how much more alike we are than we are different. It was refreshing to see so much open-minded learning and curiousity about each other. "Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others. It crushes and destorys the pain of others; thus, it is called compassion. It is called compassion because it shelters and embraces the distressed. -The Buddha" (Anthology 3, 107). We have all been on this journey, and have been compassionate towards one another. Eastern thought and Western thought are different in many ways, but also remarkably similar. REading Ishmael though, we learned about Takers and Leavers, and within Takers, there was no East adn West. There was just Takers, which is who we are now, and who we won't be soon if we continue on a path towards destruction. I think Ishmael was probably one of our more controversial readings - it just forced us to think in ways we weren't used to and presented so many new and different ideas of thinking about the world. Perhaps we were more hesitant to accept some of these thoughts because they dealt with our religions, and people get very attached to their religion. I personally went back to the Qur'an and started researching my beliefs a lot more because of this, so I'm truly glad we read the book.

And then there was Siddhartha. Siddhartha went on a journey, just like we are - perhaps our trips are not identical, but we are similar in that like him, ours is chock full of questions and a search for ourselves. "The hours  where he found his own being were inescapable, whether in shadows or in rain he was once more Siddhartha and the agony of the cycle of existence was once more laid upon him." (18) Siddhartha had a long and strenuous search for himself, but in the end, he realized the journey, the search itself was his answer. THere was no such thing as time, only the present existed, and he was himself at every moment of his life. I wonder what earth shattering discoveries we are to make before the semester is over?



Om.

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