i hung out with leigh and richard yesterday, which is always inspiring. its good to be around people with optimism without feeling them assessing me as a competitor. genuine and funny - i like them.
left there for a dog walk with jeremy, about whom im absolutely crazy.
tomorrow i have to present a 12 page paper i havent written yet about a topic in post-feminism. suggestions welcome.
to do well a person needs to WANT to do well. to attain success you need to work toward it. jefferson put it right at the beginning of the declaration of independence, "all men are created equal, ... they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, ... among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Humanity is not entitled to happiness itself, he must PURSUE it. maybe man does not deserve happiness, maybe we're not capable of comprehending it - or maybe jefferson hadnt yet understood happiness and its pursuit is all he knew.
what kind of world-view is that? is this the flaw in the american dream that led my generation to abandon it? to follow this fundamental text, this pillar of the american identity, is to consent to the impossibility of happiness, but to work toward it endlessly anyway. and everyone is ok with this?
the american dream - to achieve greater success than your father had and to provide your son with greater opportunities than you had, all with the knowledge that you owe it to your predecessors to pursue happiness. so you define happiness as success because you have to. you have to merge the burden of opportunity with the responsibility of the american dream.
i have to wonder if this curse of unattainable happiness is a specifically american problem or if it extends to everyone. i refuse to believe that the constant striving without ever grasping is what's meant by the 'human condition.' if thats true i see very little purpose to life generally.
i got started on this because of school, and this paper more immediately. to succeed you have to want to succeed. the work defines the degree of success so you have to be as dedicated to the work as to the success. im not. i dont care whether i impress my professor, or score higher than my classmates, or follow the rules of research and composition to synthesize the same arguments from the same texts that have been used for decades. im not interested.
i am looking for answers, but theyre not the kind that columbia can provide. i never even wanted columbia. when i was in high school it was never going to be columbia. i was deciding between brown and georgetown for years but the night before the early decision deadline the columbia rowing coach called me and said i was in. i was so excited to have a guaranteed ivy league acceptance i took it and the whole decision was over. i never fit here though. i thought for the first two years that i didnt fit because i was a club kid and a drug addict, but now im neither and its still not right.
kelsey is coming here on wednesday!!! im so fucking excited. if i spent all my time with people as genuinely good as kelsey is i would be so fucking stable and happy. i cant come close to describing the depth of her honesty or enthusiasm, but i will say that i can count on one hand the number of people i've known in my life with true integrity, and she's one of them. she's also a fucking riot so i know we'll have a lot of fun. unfortunately i have to work wednesday and thursday night, but she wont leave until i think sunday so we'll still get a lot of time together. she just sent this picture
shes one of a very few people who like my jokes. thats all for now. i suppose i ought to write something for this class.
No comments:
Post a Comment