This is My Story; This is My Song

For those of you who are new to my blog, welcome! This is the first time I’ve ever shared my writing on social media, so bear with me. All of my previous posts on this blog were for a philosophy class, so they probably won’t be very interesting to most people, but feel free to read them if you’re interested in philosophy or extremely bored (or both).

I’ve always enjoyed writing for class, but I’ve never really just sat down and written something because I wanted to. I’m writing this reflection on my time in Taiwan because I need to put into words something that scares me, intrigues me, and most of all excites me. I need to write about something that happened to me while it is still fresh because I know that when the fall comes and real life starts again, I’ll brush it off and ignore what was one of the most important and life-changing things that has ever happened to me if I don’t have anyone holding me accountable.

I grew up in a Christian home. I was in church every Sunday, I did all the camps, Vacation Bible Schools, mission trips, choir tours, and other extra curricular stuff I could do, I prayed every night, and I knew a lot about the Bible and about Christian doctrine. I was doing all the right things as far as I knew, so I didn’t really question my faith much. My senior year of high school was pretty awful for a variety of reasons, so I was ready to get as far away as possible for college. I applied to Northwestern University in Chicago, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and Baylor University in Waco as a safety school. I really didn’t want to go to Baylor because I wanted to get out of Texas and start over. I have a lot of family and church connections at Baylor, and my brother was a Baylor student at the time, so it was not an appealing option for a fresh start, but it was the only school I got into, so my decision was made for me.

I spent my first few weeks at Baylor mad at the world. My roommate was not interested in being friends with me, my classes were weird, and I shouldn’t even have had to be at Baylor because I had all the test scores, grades, and extras to get into the schools I wanted. I joined the Baylor Religious Hour choir (BRH) because I knew a few people in it and I knew that I would miss singing if I didn’t. I also joined the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core (BIC) because my dad told me to and the classes seemed interesting. My original plan was to keep my head down and study so I could bring my grades up and transfer in the spring. The friends, professors, knowledge, and music BIC and BRH brought into my life changed my attitude in a mighty way. I decided to stay and invest in the people around me, and I became much happier and more engaged.

Another result of my change of heart was a new curiosity about faith. I was very against talking about my faith in any detail when I first got to Baylor because I felt attacked and put off by random people asking me to go to their small group the first time I ever met them and advising me to just pray until I felt better whenever anything bad happened. Through BRH, I was able to find people I could trust and ask questions about faith. I never really took advantage of this until summer 2015 when BRH went on a mission trip to Mexico. That trip was the biggest challenge to my faith I had ever undergone. I was one of our group’s translators, which meant I had to be alert and ready to help at all times. It was a lot of fun, but I grew weary of explaining heaven and eternal life and love and the absence of suffering to people living in awful conditions. I was weary not just because I had to explain abstract concepts in a foreign language, but because I felt like I was making promises I couldn’t keep. I felt like I was lying to people because I kept telling them God loved them and wanted relationship with them, but I had never felt that in my life.

I spent a lot of time in prayer over the next year, asking God to make good on His promise. I felt like a lot of my prayer was a monologue delivered to an empty theater, but I kept asking for Him to hold up His end of this so-called “relationship.” I began talking to trusted friends about my spiritual frustrations and allowing them to help me bear my burden through prayer. My prayer changed to something more along the lines of, “God, ask me to do something, anything, and I’ll do it. Just talk to me. Please, just say something.”

When I went to Taiwan last month, my prayer was finally answered.

I didn’t think I would particularly enjoy Asia, but I was very wrong. We spent most of our time there getting to know students around our age and making friends with them. We talked to them about our faith when the opportunity presented itself, but we mostly just hung out with them and promoted the work our missionary, Todd Blackhurst, does in the community. I felt like our time there was kind of pointless at first. All we were doing was talking to people. However, about five days into the trip, I found myself falling in love with the people and their culture. When I had to use a squatty potty rather than a Western toilet, I found myself thinking, “This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” When I walked outside with my new friends on humid days (every day) and literally dripped with sweat, I realized that my heart was as full as my pores. One night while we were there, we sang at Todd’s church. As I looked around the room, I suddenly had this overwhelming urge to fall to my knees because I just knew in my heart of hearts that God was not finished with me in Taiwan and I had to go back. This was it! God had finally answered my prayer!

Since this whole experience happened during a concert, I could not drop to my knees. After the initial shock of God calling me to Taiwan, I tuned back into the song I was supposed to be singing, and the lyrics we sang were, “I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and He heard me out of His holy ear.” Music is my preferred method of worship, so this felt like further communication from God. I wouldn’t have guessed that the first time I would feel direct communication from God I would be called to go to the other side of the world, but His timing is perfect and I promised to obey the call in trust. God is faithful, and I am ready and excited and more than a little scared to answer His call and see what happens.

Friends, I don’t know what exactly this call entails for me, but I know I have to see it through. I ask for your support as I continue to pursue God’s plan for me. Right now, I am looking at returning to Taiwan for the summer of 2017. Obviously international travel costs money and I am a poor college student, so any financial support you can offer me is greatly appreciated. More importantly, however, I ask for your prayers. I can attest firsthand that God answers prayers, so I ask that you join with me in praying for peace, financial provision, safety, health, and above all courage to see this call through and to do whatever it takes to follow it. Please keep me accountable; ask me questions as I get further in this process and encourage me to see it to completion. I know it must be important, because the devil has been trying his hardest to keep me from following through. It took a lot of encouragement for me to even talk to Todd in the first place, and even though I’ve only been back in the US for a little over a week, I catch myself trying to downplay my experience. It took me several tries to make myself sit down and write this blog, and I know that it will be easy to put Taiwan on the back burner once school starts again. I have already been so loved and supported by my BRH friends who I’ve talked to about this, and I thank them for that. I hope you will partner with me in prayer as I seek to serve Christ in the global community.

Thank you so much for reading my blog and for supporting me. God bless you!

Reflections on the Semester

In my sociology class, we spent the first day talking about why we go to college. Some of the reasons were very practical — it is expected of us, we need a degree to get a decent job, etc. But other reasons were more abstract, like becoming a better person, learning new ways to help people, gaining a deeper understanding of the world, developing oneself as a whole person, and discovering purpose. In the midst of finals, it is easy to lose sight of these pursuits of higher education among the menial requirements of attendance and grades. I often lack the motivation to work hard when studying for my finals because I have been working hard all semester, I’ve gleaned the important information from the classes that will benefit me later in life, and to be perfectly honest I’m burnt out and tired of studying and the task of committing the vast quantities of information I’m responsible for to memory is daunting to say the least. This semester, I’ve spent a lot of time in all of my classes looking at injustices. This has been eye-opening, interesting, challenging, emotional, and disheartening because I’ve been exposed to a bunch of problems that seem impossible to solve. I’ve learned a lot about time management, communication with peers and professors, conflict resolution, how to write long papers in a short time period, and how what I’m learning in the classroom matters and relates to the world around me. I’m excited to continue my educational journey for the remainder of college, but in the short term, I’m excited to wrap up this difficult semester.

The Life of Contemplation

In his Apology, Plato famously quoted Socrates, saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I first heard this quote on my first day of college, and it has been an integral tenet of my education. All of my professors have challenged me to examine my life, the lives of those who came before me, and the implications of history and current events on the lives of those who will come long after I am gone. Emphasis both in class and in the world around me on issues of things like race, class, gender, religion, freedom, expression, right action, and countless others have forced me to face some challenging questions.

Clearly, there are inequalities and injustices in the world. All of these problems seem so big and complex, and they make me feel hopeless sometimes because there do not seem to be any real solutions. I am always thinking along several trains of thought at any given time. It’s pretty loud inside my brain. If you’re a contemplative insomniac with OCD like myself, you can imagine how allowing issues like these to become salient in your life and in your subconscious could create some problems. As annoying as it may be to spend hours contemplating things like the wage gap and child abuse when I would rather be sleeping, I have to realize that the fact that these injustices upset me so much is probably a good thing because it points to the strength of the morals that make me human and compassionate. This is not to say that people who get their eight hours in every night are not moral, compassionate people, of course, but it is to say that this phenomenon is an expression of virtue.

Aristotle says that the life of contemplation is the highest of the intellectual virtues. I can confidently call myself a contemplative person (even though Aristotle wouldn’t say so because I’m a woman, but that’s for a different blog). However, I am a bit perplexed as to how this contemplation in itself constitutes virtue because virtuous activity is supposed to bring pleasure to the virtuous person. I’m not perfect, but I would generally consider myself virtuous, and yet I do not feel pleasure upon contemplation of gentrification or human trafficking. I believe this is where Aristotle and I differ most widely. I don’t think intellectual virtue is enough. Contemplating things like God and literature is fine and should be pleasurable, but I believe we were gifted with reason and a moral conscience in order to understand problems and find ways to help. We shouldn’t feel pleasure in simply being contemplative when it comes to issues like restriction of civil liberties and the drug trade. Intellectual virtue is not enough in this situation. These sorts of contemplation should cause the virtuous person pain and inspire her or him to take action in order to prevent further injustice.

Altruism

One thing we talked about in our discussions on friendship was the question of altruism. Zach said that complete friendships seem inherently self-interested; if reciprocity is a key element of the complete friendship, along with well-wishing, then wouldn’t the friends only be wishing one another well only to be wished well in return due to reciprocity?

I thought this was a very interesting reading of Aristotle, and also a very bleak one. As a philosopher, I’d like to believe that altruism exists. I really do believe that people can do things just because they are good things to do. As to how often this actually happens, I am not as optimistic, but that’s a different blog post. I think the fact that we feel good when we do good things is definitely a perk, but if a person is truly acting in accordance with virtue, these warm fuzzy feelings are not the motivation behind the action.

Reciprocity is indeed a necessary condition of the complete friendship, but it is not a sufficient condition. We should expect our friends to wish us well just as we wish them well if we are entering a friendship of virtue. If this mutual well-wishing were not present, the relationship would not be virtuous. However, affection, intimacy, cooperation, and pursuit of similar activities are necessary to form the complete friendship as well as goodwill. There is an element of activity present in the complete friendship that is not found in the other types, and this activity is the active pursuit of virtue with another person. Virtue is a good in itself – we are supposed to practice virtue in order to become virtuous people, and we are supposed to become virtuous people in order to achieve the highest form of happiness. I don’t think it’s possible to achieve the happiness that comes from activity of the soul in accordance with virtue by acting on the motivation of personal gain rather than acting altruistically. In fact, I would argue that altruism is a virtue itself.

Virtue

“in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of virtue.”

Practicing virtue seems difficult with all of these parameters. In order to become virtuous, a person must learn to feel pleasure when practicing virtue and pain when he or she chooses not to practice virtue. Not only is the virtuous act itself important to Aristotle, but also the virtuous motive. This brings to mind the old saying, “Character is who you are when no one is watching.” Although it is cliché, I think it rings true in the context of virtue. Nobody can see your character. Similarly, nobody can every truly know your motives. There is no reward for having virtuous motives besides the intrinsic reward of being virtuous for the sake of virtue.

Music Lessons and Toilet Repairs – Modern Day Virtue

In Book 2 of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that one has become virtuous once he or she practices virtue in the same way as a virtuous person enough times that he or she finds pleasure in being virtuous because it is good to be virtuous. It is a learned skill that takes practice. But doing virtuous things in the same manner as virtuous people is an important aspect of the practice. Reading this section reminded me of my old harp teacher. She would always tell me I needed to practice more, but she would also remind me that “practice makes perfect” is not a true adage; she would always say “perfect practice makes perfect” and then make me drill whatever section I was struggling with until it was perfect. Aristotle’s method of learning virtue strongly parallels my experience with learning to play the harp. It was very hard at first. I would often feel like I had hit a wall, but I had to keep practicing. I did not enjoy practicing as a child, and it was a chore for me. Slowly, I developed my skill and became proficient. Now as an adult, I actually enjoy playing the harp for the sake of making music. I rarely play in public (because few people know I can play and also because I may be proficient, but I’m not excellent), but I practice frequently because it relaxes me, I enjoy the music, and it helps me take a break from studying by using my brain in a different way. Aristotle finds virtue in the arts, and I definitely find good in having a creative outlet.

Aristotle also talks about finding the mean in Book 2. Each virtue exists on a sliding scale of deficiency, mean, and excess. When I read Ethics last semester with Dr. Zori, his favorite example of virtue was magnificence. A deficiency of magnificence is stinginess. An excess is gaudiness. Dr. Zori’s grand plan to achieve the virtue of magnificence is as follows:

Step 1 – fix the toilet in the men’s room in Morrison that has been broken since Dr. Zori was hired here.

Step 2 – Tell whoever is in charge of naming buildings at Baylor about his generous contribution.

Step 3 – Install a plaque with his name on it in the stall.

Step 4 – Be magnificent.

Not to fix the toilet would be stingy, but to claim the whole bathroom with the Zori plaque would by gaudy and extravagant. Honoring himself in the repaired stall only is to exist in the mean and to have achieved the virtue of magnificence.

good vs. Good

I’m so excited that we’re finally reading Aristotle. I really like his ideas on moderation and virtues rather than forms. In Book I of the Ethics, he discusses the idea that different activities and items work toward different types or degrees of good, rather than the Good, such as bread vs. good bread or dancer vs. good dancer. Certain goods seem to be larger or of a higher degree than others, i.e. good friendship vs. good handwriting. They are both good in their own ways, but good friendship is of a higher order than good handwriting. One thing that delineates the different types of good is the difference between intrinsic good, instrumental good, and intrinsic-instrumental good. Intrinsic good is something that is good in and of itself, such as good friendship. Instrumental good is something that leads to a good end, though it may not necessarily be good or pleasant in and of itself, such as exercise. Intrinsic-instrumental goods are both good and pleasant in and of themselves, and also lead to good ends, such as getting a college education.

Socrates

Socrates is one of those characters who is entertaining in the story, but who you would hate to know in real life. At the end of the party, he bests the guest of honor, and effectively declares himself the best speaker in Athens. He also makes himself out to be the picture of perfect love based on Diotima’s story and proves that philosophy trumps tragedy.

In the end of the story, Socrates cannot be swayed by physical desire and believes that he would be getting the short end of the deal if he were to exchange wisdom for sex with Alcibiades. He is also never effected by alcohol, and spends his time alone thinking philosophical thoughts. He is entirely motivated by his love for wisdom, and cannot be distracted from pursuing it. While this is not a bad thing in itself, it results in Socrates becoming proud, arrogant, and rude, and spending his time convincing people to argue with him so that he can prove them wrong. Overall, Socrates seems like a smart guy, but I wouldn’t want to go to his parties.

Soul Mates

My favorite speech in the first half of the Symposium was Aristophanes’. He has a very unique take on love. Aristophanes told a story about where love comes from. He said that long ago, humans had four legs, four arms, two heads, and one soul. They were male, female, and androgynous. The males came from the sun, the females came from the Earth, and the androgynous ones came from the moon. One day, the gods were angry with the humans, so they split them in two, causing them to take on the form we now think of as human. The gods threatened to split them in half again and make them hop around on one foot if the humans angered them again. Since the original eight-limbed humans had one soul, the four-limbed humans only got half a soul in the split, and now we spend our lives seeking our other halves, or soul mates. Since some original humans were male and some female, both halves of the soul resided in people of the same gender. The humans who were originally androgynous split into one man and one woman.

I don’t believe in the concept of soul mates, but I can identify with Aristophanes’ story. He makes the search for love out to be an all-consuming quest that overshadows all of life’s other obligations because love is the only means to happiness. Sometimes in college it feels like there is a lot of pressure to find that special someone, especially with Baylor’s “ring by spring” mentality. This can be a challenge as a heterosexual female in a place with a 3:1 female:male ratio. It is also challenging because the dating culture at Baylor is basically impossible to figure out. People don’t want to date someone they wouldn’t marry, so you’re supposed to somehow magically know if you would marry someone without ever having gone out. Since dating in this context is such a big commitment, people are reluctant to label their romantic relationships, which leads to confusion and hurt feelings; however, once the relationship is labeled, the two partners are deeply committed for the long term and if they break up, it is a tragedy. If you are one of the lucky girls who gets asked on a real live actual date by a guy (because girls can’t ask guys and homosexuality doesn’t exist on this campus), then you have to really consider whether or not you want to say yes because if things don’t work out then you can never talk to him again — although it might not matter because your friendship is pretty much over if you say no too.

For the people attempting to navigate this confusing social construct, it is easy to see how the search for love can become all-consuming. Personally, I don’t believe that there is one specific person out there that each of us is destined to be with romantically because I believe that God created us with free will. Dating at Baylor is difficult and confusing, and sometimes it seems as though the student body shares Aristophanes’ take on love.

#SorryNotSorry

Although the Greek apologia translates more accurately as “defense” rather than “apology,” I like to use the word “apology” because it makes Plato’s Socrates so much more sassy. The sentiment of the Apology is actually strikingly similar to Tina Fey’s Mean Girls, except Socrates is one of the Plastics (the mean clique) rather than the tragic hero. The basic gist of Mean Girls is that a new girl, Cady (Lindsey Lohan), moves from South Africa and homeschooling to an American high school. She makes friends with some of the less popular “art freaks,” but is soon sucked into the life of a Plastic, where there is a dress code (“on Wednesdays, we wear pink”), required participation in the winter talent show (Jingle Bell Rock, anybody?), and the Burn Book. The Burn Book is the Mean Girls’ version of philosophical dialogue. They cut out pictures of all the other girls in the school and write mean comments and gossip about them. The Queen Bee, Regina George, gets upset with Cady, so she devises a plan to get Cady in trouble. Regina puts her own photograph in the book with the caption “This girl is a fugly slut. Don’t trust her.” She shows the book to the principal to frame Cady and get her in trouble with school administration and then places hundreds of copies of all the pages around the school where their peers find them. All of the girls in the school start fighting each other, and the faculty makes them gather in the gym to work out their problems. The scene that follows shows all of the girls’ “apologies” to one another.

Gretchen Weiners’ apology was the one that came to mind when I read Socrates’. She’s the one who said, “I’m sorry that people are so jealous of me. But I can’t help that I’m popular.” I remembered this scene because Gretchen is not really apologizing for anything. She helped make the Burn Book, and she is not sorry that the other girls did not like her ideas because she believes they are true. Obviously, this “apology” went over about as well as Socrates’, because all but one girl refused to catch Gretchen, giving her a painful landing on her friend Karen.

The Mean Girls view themselves as the gadflies of the high school; without them, there would be no social hierarchy, no cool table at lunch, and no one to police everyone else’s fashion faux pas – basically, the school would descend into anarchical chaos.

Although nobody had to drink hemlock, the Mean Girls had to disband their clique and learn to channel their emotions into activities like lacrosse. They became more or less social pariahs compared to the status they held as the Plastics, but they got their message across to the public, even though it was not well-received.

In conclusion, Plato is still relevant and Mean Girls is an excellent movie that everyone should watch.