DEAR WOMAN

“Dear Woman,

Sometimes

You’ll just be too much woman.

Too smart,

Too beautiful,

Too strong.

Too much of something

That makes a man feel less of a man,

Which will start making you feel like you have to be less of a woman.

The biggest mistake you can make

Is removing jewels from your crown

To make it easier for a man to carry.

When this happens, I need you to understand,

You do not need a smaller crown--

You need a man with bigger hands.”

~Michael E. Reid

When I first came across this quote about two years ago, I felt like I had just been broken into a million pieces by a man who made me feel that I was never good enough. I read the words of the quote over and over, hoping that maybe if I read them enough times I would start to buy into the words that were staring back at me. As much as I tried to assume the role of the mature woman with perspective who is the target of this quote, two years ago, the words that I read over and over couldn’t have felt further from the truth. And tonight I sit, two years later, revisiting the words to this quote that once felt foreign to me, feeling heartbroken and numb, looking at myself in the mirror, ironically sent back to the place of gut wrenching self-analysis by the same man who put me there two years ago. But tonight when I read the words in this quote, fighting back tears and forcing myself to get my eyes to sift through the words one at a time, I feel different. They resonate with me. I feel like a woman with the dignity and strength to pick up the pieces, and to know with confidence that when I read the words in front of me, I actually believe them.

Two years ago, I was a newly graduated tiger roaming around the big city, with not an inkling of an idea how to navigate this complex world that surrounded me. Even with a Princeton degree in hand and blonde hair to toss over my shoulder, I felt small. In the fashion world, I always felt like I wasn’t thin enough. When I’d step into a venture capitalist’s office, I felt like I wasn’t smart enough. When I’d stand on the sidelines of runway shows during fashion week, I felt like I was never pretty enough to survive in that world. In the midst of fending off my own internal battles and pondering whether to run a fashion company or to chase my high school dream of becoming an economist, I met this guy. I had never wanted anything so badly in my life, and for the first time, I had no idea what the formula was to get what I wanted.

While I did everything in my power to make him a priority, I never was to him. In my eyes, he was the guy for me, but in his I was just another girl who he could string along to get what he wanted. No matter how hard I tried to be the person that I thought he wanted to be with, I never felt like I was good enough. Here I was willing to do whatever it took to give us a real shot, to try to make it work, and he constantly gave me every excuse in the book as to why we couldn’t be together. He couldn’t have a girlfriend right now. He needed to focus on work. The list goes on. But he didn’t want to lose me in his life. Or so he said. So he kept me there, on his own little leash, always an arm’s length away. And against my better judgment, that’s where I stayed.

After putting as much effort into my appearance as humanly possible and hiding my nerves in a face full of makeup and a ballgown, I mustered the strength to ask him to a society gala that I had been nervously anticipating for about a month. When the night ended with tears running down my face and a feeling of blatant rejection like I had never experienced before, I probably should have taken that as a pretty clear indicator that he wasn’t that into me. When I went home the next day and buried myself in my covers, I knew that I had hit rock bottom. I had been pining after a guy who constantly made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. Like I was never enough for him. For the first time in my life, I didn’t understand what else I could possibly do to get him to feel about me how I did about him. In attempt to savor any remnants of my dignity that remained as far as he was concerned, I decided to give it a rest. In the midst of my self-designated period of ‘reconnecting with myself,’ I stumbled across the quote that I included above.

As I read the words after feeling constantly rejected by this guy that I was completely falling for, I did everything in my power to try to believe it - to believe that I was strong, and pretty, and that maybe he was actually the one who wasn’t good enough for me, rather than it being the other way around. But as I stood looking at myself in the mirror day after day, I genuinely didn’t believe it. I knew that deep down in my heart, I wasn’t my best self. That I had more to offer and that there were plenty of ways that I could improve the way that I looked and to improve upon my intelligence. Part of me wanted to change for myself. But the majority of my desire to make the changes that I made in my life stemmed from trying to please him, from trying to be the girl that I thought he might finally want rather than just being the girl that I was.

I told myself that if I could work hard enough to be skinnier, or smarter, or prettier than I was, that maybe he would finally come to see things differently. After a brief stint of gauging on macarons in Paris, I told myself that I was going to do everything in my power to become my best self. For months on end I pushed myself to lose weight. I spent hours at the salon trying to make my hair look better, to try to fix my eyebrows, to make my nails look perfect. I focused on getting back to all of the things I used to love - to reading the Economist and The Wall Street Journal, to geeking out over graphs and math models to try to get myself back on the right track. To try to be someone that I thought maybe one day he could love.

While I set out on my personal journey to better myself for him, about part-way through, I realized that I was doing it for myself as well. While I tried to play it cool and be moderately nonchalant when I reconnected with him after my little makeover, of course I still had feelings for him. They’re not just something that you can throw away. As time passed, we became something remarkably civil - and while part of the old me still remained, I slowly felt myself starting to change. As I started spending more time with him, I couldn’t help but ponder what it would feel like to be more than friends again. And as I changed, so did he. He seemed different.

I never knew if it was me reading signals wrong or overanalyzing every little thing, but I really felt like there was finally something there between us. One night when we were walking on the sidewalk after he took me to a special dinner for my birthday, it seemed like he was trying to hold my hand. But I wasn’t sure, so I pulled away. And when I’d see him, the tension between us was suddenly through the roof, and I had no idea how I was going to possibly continue to tame what I was feeling. For once the signs somewhat seemed to be there. He started to look at me differently. But I couldn’t tell for sure. And given all of the progress that I’d made, there was no way that I was going to make a complete fool of myself as I had in the past.

I couldn’t take the uncertainty anymore. But I also had no idea how to move forward in any direction. Given that his thirtieth birthday was coming up, I decided that it might be a good time to show him how I really felt. I mean, I had already gone through the trouble of losing ten pounds, becoming blond(er) than I was, and doing all in my power to constantly maintain my composure, so I thought there wasn’t much left to lose by attempting a grand gesture. I had never done anything like this before, had never put my heart on the line like I did that night. I was so nervous that I couldn’t sit still all day at work. I had been planning this for months. Given we were in ambiguous territory, the night held the potential to end in two ways: it would either be the best birthday he’d ever have, or it would be yet again another humiliating evening for me, far worse than any degree of humiliation I had ever experienced before.

After buying a new dress and getting dolled up just to impress him, I stood there in the hotel lobby waiting for him, hoping for the best. My heart was in my throat wondering how he would react to the night that I had planned, which may or may not have ended up with us being more than friends again. While I was mentally and emotionally hyperventilating the entire evening, the night was everything I had hoped for, and it seemed to be for him as well. Unless he would have felt too guilty embarrassing me after everything I had planned and was doing his best to hide his real emotions, he really seemed to enjoy the night and everything that came with it. And the way he looked at me when he looked into my eyes the next morning, made me think that just maybe, he loved me too.

That night was hands-down one of the best nights of my life, but I didn’t really know where we stood after that. I put myself out there and he seemed to respond well to it, but I was fairly surprised when nothing seemed to change after that. I had never put so much continuous effort into anything in my life, and for just once, I wanted something about whatever this thing was between us to be easy. I wanted him to believe in me like I believed in him, and to be there for me like I needed him to be. As the holidays came around a few weeks later, this was the last I had heard from him. And I couldn’t help but wonder if the night that meant so much to me meant nothing to him at all.

Two years of building one of the most emotionally and intellectually intense connections I had ever experienced in my life, and he just removed himself from my life with no explanation. As the last year passed, I wondered when he was going to contact me again. Deep down in my heart I knew that after everything we had been through, all of the nights of wondering what was possibly going on in his head would be worth it, because one day things would become simple. I had no idea that when he wished me a happy new year about a year ago, that he never had the intention to speak to me again. Coming off of such a high that felt mutual, I wouldn’t anticipate something like that, even from him. During the past year, I’ve constantly wondered when the day would come when he would contact me again. Letting my thoughts run rampant, I would daydream about how he might surprise me with a trip to Paris or do something spontaneous to tell me how he really felt about me once he was done with his project at work and was ready to give us a real shot.

While I’ve continued to battle with whether I should try to hold on to my feelings for him or to do everything in power to let them go, I’ve found myself simultaneously clinging to the past while everything else in my life has been moving forward. I genuinely believed that he would want to be with me for good when the timing was right, that he’d finally come to see in me what I saw in him all along. But as another New Year’s Eve passed and I had yet to hear a word from him, I knew that I couldn’t sit around waiting anymore, waiting to wonder how I should feel about the remnants I had left of him and about everyone else in my life waiting on me to make that decision.

So gathering the courage to contact him as I had so many times before, I sent him a text that I must have proofread twenty times before sending, even though it was only about four words long. A year of daydreaming about when he was going to perform some grand gesture to whisk me away on some spontaneously romantic adventure ended in the harsh realization that all of this time that I was waiting for him to be ready to be with me, he was busy seeing someone else. And here I thought he was preoccupied trying to move his investment project forward so that we could finally be together, when his preoccupation clearly lied elsewhere. So I suppose that he never had any intentions of contacting me again at all. After a year of allowing my mind to come up with all sorts of reasons as to why he may have stopped talking to me so suddenly, the answer I found lied entirely contrary to everything I ever thought I knew about his character. Rather than having the respect to have a conversation with me a year ago after everything I had done for him, he blew me off without a word.

Without knowing what to do or how to handle what I’d just found out, I instantly remembered all too well what it felt like when he hurt me before, time and time again. After running as fast and as long as I possibly could, I reread this poem earlier this evening. As I sit here reading the words of this poem that I’ve stared at all too many times before, I know in my heart that I’m not the girl that I was two years ago when I first stumbled upon it. As I looked in the mirror after my spontaneous evening run brought on by this special occasion, I saw a woman who I was proud of. I saw a young girl who once started running to lose weight to please a man, who had turned into a woman who has made running a hobby that she genuinely enjoys. I saw a girl with a fresh tan, blonde hair, and a mind full ideas. I saw a girl with eyes that showed more promise than any man would ever deserve. As I cleared every reminder of him out of my room and let the last tear that he’ll ever cause me to fall, I realized that how he looked at me or what he thought of me was no longer my concern. And in the midst of the emotional confusion and heartache making me wonder if I should have left things ambiguous, holding on to the hope of everything I wanted forever, I knew all too well that I was the only one with the power to finally set me free.

So why am I telling you all of this? As a Princeton graduate, a former entrepreneur, and a current PhD student, most people in my life look at me as if I have things all figured out. But the reality is, that I don’t. Every day is a chaotic and wonderful new adventure, and I'm still in the process of figuring it all out. I’ve always liked economics because there are a clear set of rules. There are guidelines that dictate which way the curves should move, and life exists within the bounds of rationality. But real life doesn’t come with a manual. It doesn’t come with a clear set of rules.  People are incredibly irrational in their behavior. And love is no exception. Sometimes no matter how hard we try or how much effort we possibly expend trying to be the best person that we can be, there is always someone who will see us as ugly to make themselves feel prettier or who will speak condescendingly to us to make them feel better about themselves. That is no excuse to be anything other than the person that you are.

Never change for anyone. Never try to be someone else simply to please another person when you are perfectly fine the way that you are. Never let someone tell you that you’re not good enough, simply because they are not on your level. Never let someone make you feel like you’re one of many. Never let a man make you feel like you’re just another girl. Never chase someone who has you running in circles with no clear destination in mind. Never wait for someone to decide whether or not you’re worthy of being with them. Never let yourself accept excuses as truth. Learn to see what’s in front of you, no matter how much it hurts. Never let someone convince you that you need to be anyone other than exactly the person that you are. Because as you’re chasing a man in circles, waiting for him to throw you a bone, you must stop and realize that he’ll never let you stop running.

So here I stand, completely vulnerable. Simultaneously the most heartbroken I’ve ever been, and the most autonomous I have ever felt. Because instead of looking backwards, holding on to the remnants of what I once thought was and the hopes of what I thought would be, I’m finally looking forward. While it took me two years, many tears, and more anxiety than I can put into words, I have finally come to realize that it was never really about me. No matter what I did, I was never going to be good enough for him. He was never going to see me as the right level of pretty or the right level of smart to suite his ever-changing needs. But as I look in the mirror tonight, finally mentally free of the notion that it is any of his concern, I know that never again will I apologize for being my imperfect, quirky, nerdy self.  In the process of bending over backwards to please a man who has never jumped over a puddle for me, I’ve come to find what I was looking for all along: the woman who knows exactly who she is and the understanding that comes with the reluctance to be anything other than that person.

To Gain, To Feel, To Miss, To Hurt, To Wonder

Have you ever missed someone so much that it hurts?

So much that every day is a recurring struggle to find the acceptable equilibrium between falling back into a memory and removing yourself enough to function in the present. So much that thinking about them becomes addictive, and part of you wants to wean yourself off of the image of them that you have in your mind, but the other part of you is too afraid that going a day without thinking about them would somehow make them fade into oblivion - forgetting the curves of their face, the sound of their voice in a room, or the taste of their lips on your tongue. So much that you find yourself staring out the windows of planes and trains and boats and buses, wondering where in the world they are at this very moment. So much that, as frustrated as you are at them for not being there for you when you needed them, you’d still do anything just to hear their voice. So much that everything falls into perspective, and the small things that used to matter suddenly seem so insignificant.  So much that you know you’d fly halfway around the world to have five more minutes with them, if you knew they’d be there for you when you got off the plane. So much that no matter where in the world you run to so that you can try to get them out of your head to finally regain your focus, it’s never far enough, because they’re always with you.  So much that you can’t fathom what it might be like if you never saw them again, as you can no longer imagine a forever without them in it.  So much that you wonder if they think about you as much as you think about them, or if you’ve become as insignificant as last month’s spot price on crude oil.  So much that no matter whom else comes into and out of your life, the inexplicable pull you feel towards them makes you sure that they’re your person.  So much that your attempts to replace them are laughable at best, a PR fiasco at worst.  So much that you think you’re finally getting somewhere, feeling new butterflies for someone else, and then something always brings you back to them.  So much that you just need to know that they’re okay, that they’re safe, alive and breathing.  So much that you shamelessly look at their Facebook page so many times per day that you might as well make it your screensaver.  So much that every time you reach a new milestone, all you want to do is tell them – and then you reach to pick up your phone, only to remember that they’re no longer there for you.  So much that looking at a picture of them is enough for you to crack a smile.  So much that you begin to wonder if there will be another next time, another smile, another memory, or if the last time that you saw them will be the very last.  So much that every memory you have with them suddenly becomes clearer than ever, and you wonder how it’s possible for your mind to drift back to the same moment so many times per day.  So much that you freeze-frame certain moments and run them back again – thinking about what it might feel like to have them there by your side.  So much that you feel like you’re treading water, kicking your legs, moving up the ladder of life, but somehow you’re not going anywhere, trying to hold on to moments passed.  So much that you build such a body armor, waking up each day putting on a good face, when part of you feels entirely lost without them.  So much that you find yourself constantly stuck in a predicament, knowing you shouldn’t wish even one day of your life away, but wondering if today might be the day when the wondering and the waiting and the treading water finally stops. So much that you miss all the things that you used to take for granted.  So much that you didn’t realize how well they understood you until you suddenly had to try to start understanding yourself all on your own.  So much that you’re mentally caught between your own selfishness, consumed by want and need, and your selflessness, consumed by the want for them to do whatever makes them happy.  So much that caring about another human being takes on a new meaning when you suddenly have to do it from afar.  So much that you feel the need to say goodnight to them even when they’re not there, wondering what it might be like if they were.  So much that you try as hard as you can to make sure that they’re the last thing you think about before you fall asleep, in hope that maybe they’ll find their way into your dreams.  So much that every day starts out with a ray of hope, but ends with a smidgen of disappointment.  So much that you hate how much mental energy they consume, but deep down you know you wouldn’t have it any other way.  So much that the gaping hole they’ve left in your life is too large and too personalized to be filled by any other human being, so you’re forced to find a way to fill it in yourself.  So much that somehow having them so prominently on your mind reminds you how much they’ve shaped you as a person, how much they’ll forever be a part of you. So much that you give it everything you’ve got every single day to be the best possible version of yourself that you can be – because even though they’re not physically present, the thought of them inspires you to keep dreaming big.  So much that you keep trying to let go, to push your feelings aside, but something in your gut tells you not just yet.

So much that your body hurts, your heart aches, your mind wanders.

I have, I do.

If Love Could Kill

The power of love is nearly inexplicable, and as I’m sure many of us can relate to, it can often lead people to go to some pretty inordinate lengths to satisfy their innermost desires. What does happen when love consumes us - when it consumes our minds and bodies to the extent that we no longer feel completely in control of our thoughts or actions? Can love be so all-consuming (and in some cases arguably possessive) that it can excuse us of behavior that would otherwise be deemed unacceptable, inappropriate, or even deadly?

 Crime in detective fiction and film presents a whole realm of complexity in and of itself, so when love is factored into the equation, this creates an entirely new set of questions to be considered when reading a text or viewing a film. Playing to typical gender stereotypes, the author or director often depicts the male as the criminal in detective works, and therefore he is often portrayed as the character possessed by the allure of love. When love becomes an element within a detective story, it can take shape in the form of a distractor, a motivator, or all of the above.   In various prominent works of crime fiction and film that influences the behavior of a global audience, love primarily serves as a source of motivation that drives detectives to solve a specific crime; yet with this motivation comes a source of complexity and entanglement that complicates the plot schemes in these works. Through referencing love as the core motivator driving a particular criminal act in a work of detective fiction or film, the narrator often evokes an enhanced degree of sympathy for the criminal in comparison to a portrayal of a crime that is solely motivated by the criminal’s self-interest.

Arguably one of the most iconic examples of the possessive complexities of love, Humbert’s love for the young girl in Lolita makes the crime appear to be more excusable than it would have been otherwise. In comparing Lolita’s relationship with Quilty, Humbert sees his own relationship with Lolita as one that is more than that of a rapist and a child being abused. Humbert thoroughly expresses his passion and love for Lolita throughout his depiction of their relationship together, and paints the story in this light. While the narrator undoubtedly draws Humbert out to be a criminal, his scandalous behavior is significantly masked by his deep love for the child. While Humbert is expressive of the fact that he is attracted to a certain type of young girl in general, he provides various reasons as to why it is that he will put himself in abundant risk to be with this one particular girl. As hard as it is may initially be for the viewer or reader to believe, many readers walk away with the clear impression that he loves her. Though it is almost unanimously inexcusable for a man of Humbert’s age to be engaging in this type of relationship with a young girl like Lolita, the fact that his criminal acts are motivated by his love for her makes the sequence of crimes appear to be slightly more acceptable than they would have been otherwise. The role of love in the story allows the reader to feel sympathy for Humbert through the way that he tells the story from his perspective; he expresses himself as a hopeless romantic for the first half of the novel, who will do anything within his power to call this particular girl his own possession. When she is taken from him and he assumes the temporary role of a detective, his deep love for her is ultimately revealed when he goes to her door years later and is extremely happy to simply have the opportunity to see her once again.

In the movie Memento, love further motivates crime, as Leonard will continue searching for who he thinks is his wife’s killer for years to come. Leonard’s vivid memory with his wife is the last thing that he is able to recall before he lost his ability to form new memories. With this deep love constantly replaying at the forefront of his mind, it is arguably all that is motivating Leonard to continue his search, which shapes him as both a detective and a criminal. Leonard’s story is slightly more complex than the previous motivator of love in the sense that his criminal acts are even further excusable as a result of his lack of ability to form new memories. When the viewer reaches the end of the film, only to see Leonard rip up the photo as the film comes full circle, he makes the conscious decision to continue to commit the crimes because it seems that it is the only way to continue to feed his obsessive love interest. While at that one moment, he tinkers with the idea that it could all be over, his love for his wife is so passionately consuming his emotions that he feels that the act of searching for revenge in itself is the only thing that will tie him to the memories and love for his wife. In this case, his love for his wife contributes to the sympathy the viewer feels toward Leonard, as it shows the viewer that he is committing these crimes in the search of rekindling a past love.

While the criminal offense depicted by the narrator of Time’s Arrow is not motivated by the same type of love as in the two previous examples, the love the narrator implies for his country and the family he left behind similarly makes the crime seem more excusable than it would have been if love were not the primary motivator of the crime. In Lolita and Memento, the criminals both come to commit a sequence of crimes that exist on a more personal level, as the protagonists are motivated by their personal love interests. The narrator and criminal in Time’s Arrow portrays the power of utilizing love as a means for justifying a criminal offense on a much larger scale. The Holocaust is one of the most studied ‘criminal acts’ of all time; yet, the narrator still finds a way to allow the reader to see his side of the story. He obtains some sympathy from the reader and is able to partly justify his criminal offenses through telling the story in a way that articulates his character as someone who is so closely tied to the love of his country and to his wife and child that he left behind. Though the readers may not find themselves being able to sympathize with this particular narrator to the same extent that they did in the other two works, the fact that an occurrence as violent as the Holocaust can be arguably ‘justified’ in any light whatsoever gives reason for the interpreter to believe in the power of love as a possessive means of rationalization.

While love takes different shapes and forms in the three works mentioned above, it similarly provides a means for the reader to create a space between the criminal and the consequences of the crime itself. If the criminal acts in certain disturbing, and otherwise inexplicable means, but they can attribute these acts to their all-consuming love interest, this makes the crimes slightly more justifiable than if the criminal were to have expressed an alternative primary motive for committing the crime. Love is something that many readers can personally relate to, and many readers and viewers understand the extent to which love is perplexing, frenzied, and often larger than life itself. Therefore, through depicting a criminal’s motives as ones that are primarily aligned with a significant and culturally relatable love interest, the criminal may not appear to be as rash as they may be in actuality.

The Truth About Men

Men and women are fundamentally different creatures.  We express emotions in different ways, have different approaches to problem solving, and have a different internal hierarchy of needs.  As distinctive as we know we are from one another, all too often women try to interact with men as if they are talking to another one of their girlfriends – and then proceed to spend hours pondering why their communication style is ultimately ineffective.  In attempt to find answers to many of the questions I’ve wondered about for some time, I recently picked up Ian K. Smith’s book called The Truth About Men. While I am typically skeptical of books of this nature, I was impressed with the candor of Smith’s writing style, and came away with a body of information that helped to build my understanding of the male psyche. 

Here are ten of my main takeaways:

1.   Men are terrible mind readers and can’t read between the lines in the same way that women can. Don’t beat around the bush; say it like it is.

2.  Men care about appearance, and they particularly care about the fact that a woman takes care of her body and looks presentable. Even if you didn’t win the genetic lottery, do your best to look like the best possible version of yourself.

3.  While men are often driven by power and like to be the ‘hero’ in a variety of situations, most don’t want a woman who is a wallflower. Don’t be afraid to present a challenge and display some iteration of aggression.

4.  Both physically and mentally, men like to have their own space.  Most men don’t like to gab on the phone for hours about the same nonexistent problem in the way that women do in girl-to-girl gossip sessions. Give men the space that they need, and don’t call them to talk about nothing or just ‘check-in.’

5.  Men don’t mind when you set down certain parameters, but extensive lists of rules from the get-go is off the table.  Don’t send mixed signals or implement your own personalized form of a guessing game.

6.  Men like to communicate in a rational and logical way.  While there is often subtext when women speak, men often say what they mean in attempt to check the box and move on to their next point.  Don’t always overanalyze everything they say, in attempt to find some deeper meaning that is likely nonexistent.

7.  Men hate shopping. While you may be in tune with the latest fashion trends from the hours you spent flipping through VOGUE or watching Project Runway, men don’t like it when you expect them to look like a GQ model.  Don’t constantly criticize the way that men dress.  They have been dressing themselves for quite some time and won’t be amused by your constantly trying to alter their appearance.

8.  Men don’t like being compared or propped up against your past experiences with other men.  Men often have the capability to put their past experiences into little boxes and stack them neatly under their beds; so when in their presence, find a way to do the same.

9.  Contrary to popular female belief, men do have emotions.  They are often reluctant to express emotions in the outward way that women do as a result of their need to uphold societal male expectations and avoid looking weak.  It is possible for a man’s raw emotions to be triggered, but they are often set off by different stimuli than those that might emotionally stimulate women.

10.  Men are rational creatures. They prefer to work through conflict in a succinct and logical way through quickly and analytically addressing a problem and respectively developing a solution.  Rather than allowing your emotions to interfere with your ability to have a sound discussion, try not to linger on problems or overreact to the situation at hand.

While there will always be outliers who challenge the conventions of a particular subgroup, this book helped me to gain an understanding of how men as a subspecies interact and communicate at large. Once women acknowledge the fact that men are fundamentally different creatures, we can stop repetitively running straight into a brick wall and begin understanding how we can effectively communicate and interact with the opposite sex.  Rather than seeing the men in our lives as flawed creatures that we are obsessed with changing, we should invest that energy elsewhere and accept the fact that sometimes we need to simply let men be men.

Why You Shouldn’t Shut Your Kids Down When They Ask You ‘Why’

In the first few years of life, children are inundated with new stimuli. They are constantly looking every which way, trying to make sense out of the colors, shapes, tastes, scents, and sounds in the world around them.  During childhood, children begin developing their own way of viewing the world, each piecing together the components of the world that they are slowly introduced to in a slightly different way.  As older siblings and parents, children look to us to help them to fill in the missing pieces, to close the gaps in their understanding and add color to their perspective.

In many ways, we serve as a backboard for children – a platform that they can bounce ideas off of to shape their interpretation of the world accordingly, based upon our reactions. When children are exploring all of their ‘firsts’ in life, their inherent curiosity is running wild.  They point at objects, and they ask an overwhelming amount of questions – trying to gage the whats and whys of what they are seeing, feeling, tasting, hearing, and touching.

Though our interactions continue to shape our individual perspectives as we progress into adolescence and adulthood, children are particularly vulnerable to the constraints of conformity influenced by the opinions and reactions of others.  As their backboards, we as older siblings and parents largely hold the power to shape the way that our children think and the way that they develop new ideas and interpretations about the world around them.  Given the power imbalance between children and their parents, children are taught to assume that their parents are always right; given their inability to fully formulate complex ideas and arguments on their own, they often have no other choice.

As I’ve watched my four younger siblings grow up and learn to form their own individualistic perspectives, the one question that I heard them ask over and over again, was (why?).  As infants, children are fixated on learning the whats of the world around them – working on object and word recognition until they have a good enough grasp on their surroundings to function as an individual.  After mastering the basics and accepting what they have been taught as simply conventions or the ultimate truth, they begin to develop a deeper level of curiosity, as they want to know why they can’t do certain things or why aspects of the world around them are the way that they are.

In an attempt to teach children to follow orders and respect authority at an early age, parents often respond to children’s questions of why with shut-down phrases, such as because I said so.  While we may be busy and not want to explain why certain things are the way they are, repetitively shutting children down when their curiosity is peaked encourages the type of deindividuation and conformity that we need to ‘unlearn’ in adulthood.  While it is crucial to instill a certain level of discipline in the household to lay the groundwork for the limitations and boundaries that children will be faced with in the school system and otherwise, allowing children to respectfully push back and ask further questions about the world around them will give them the foundation necessary to think outside the box.

In many ways, our society has enforced the conformity aligned with accepting what we are told as the truth through rewarding those who follow orders, respect authority, and do what we are told.  While we should not encourage children to be disrespectful to their parents, teachers, or older siblings, we should make a point to give them the room that they need to ask the hard questions to gain a deeper understanding of the world around them.  Through giving them this extra breathing room rather than shutting down their questions and imaginative ideas, we should do all in our power to reward them for asking the hard questions and thinking more creatively about the various aspects of the world around them.  This back and forth collaboration and form of brainstorming will help children to understand how to push their ideas further, how to ask the questions that others often overlook, and how to tap into their imaginations and begin to dream big.

Avoiding the Classic Backstab

On Sunday morning, I was sitting on my deck reading the screenplay of the movie Frozen for a research study that I am working on, and as I read through the pages, somehow I couldn’t get past the fact that Hans COMPLETELY manipulated Anna.  He took advantage of a young girl with only good intentions, and in a mere two hours, while the village was being coated with snow, he did a 180 on her and left her in a room to freeze to death.  I don’t know which part irked me the most – the fact that he so perfectly staged a run-in and charmed her enough to fall for him, or the fact that he waited until Anna was at the point of utmost vulnerability, when he was holding her in his arms as she was about to die, to stab her in the back.  

Yes, I am well aware of the fact that this is only a Disney movie, and Hans’s actions can arguably be chalked off as a mere attempt to model a classic rise and fall of a hero turned villain to catalyze a plot twist.  Yet somehow, the way that he so convincingly charmed her with full-fledged intentions to use her right from the start, left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.  Not only did I find myself buying into Hans’s love for Anna from the beginning, but I felt as blindsighted as she was as I watched his plan slowly unravel.  Call me a hopeless romantic, but I thought Hans’s accidental run-in and his take on love at first sight was pretty convincing… 

Though it’s only a movie, my naïveté towards the situation really took me aback.  With a man as charming and handsome as Hans playing the game so well, how was Anna supposed to know that with every move towards him she was falling one step further into his trap? If we look back on his actions, what signs was he giving to foreshadow his eventual turn on her? Well, for starters, as much as I would love to believe in love at first sight, more and more I am starting to realize that building a real connection takes time.  Again, I understand that inevitably things move faster in Disney movies, but they were going to get married after knowing each other for only a day!  They knew absolutely nothing about each other – and aside from his perfect eyes, stellar voice, and the status symbol that came with being a prince, she had nothing to go on.  But just as Anna did, we got swept away in the moment – taken by the catchy song and perfect image staring back at us, only to let a manipulative monster win us over.

While Anna was lucky enough to be saved by the mystical ice queen, not all of us can pick ourselves back up after being manipulated, just in time for Disney to paint the perfect sun over the village just as the credits are about to roll.  Though relationships are inevitably dramatized in movies, I think that there is an important lesson here on the topic of relationship-building and trust.  As I’m sure many of us can relate to, there are various instances that I can point to in my life where I feel like I have been used – by men, by my ‘friends,’ by my peers, etc.  While I generally feel like I am a decent judge of character, there are inevitably times when I get swept up in the moment, and I let my naïveté get the best of me.  Though there is often a part of me that is telling me to keep my guard up, to stop things from moving too fast or spiraling out of control, sometimes I think that I trust people too much.  I trust that when I let someone into my life, they are going to treat me with the level of respect that I show them.  But sometimes just when we start to lift up our guard and display our vulnerability, the person who we thought was there to help us is the one who we should have been running from in the first place.

While I continue to try to increase my ability to read people in developing personal and professional relationships, there are inevitably going to be people who don’t have the purest of intentions – and when we least expect it, there is a definite possibility that those who are closest to us could stab us in the back.  The people who we most willingly let into our lives are the ones who know the most about us; they are the ones who have access to the most intimate details of our personal lives, and thus – just as Hans did – they can work their way into our world and beat us at our own game.  Through letting people into our personal lives, we are undoubtedly opening ourselves up to vulnerability and the potential of getting hurt; this doesn’t mean that we should shut ourselves off from building those close relationships.  It simply means that we need to develop the skills necessary to assess the intentions of those who we let into our lives, so that we can maintain a sense of judgment in the midst of an array of new feelings that often hold the power to sweep us off our feet, just enough to get us to look the other way.

Though I am still not a perfect judge of character and cannot preemptively back away from every unhealthy relationship, there are a set of questions that I ask myself when trying to assess the personal and professional relationships that I am building:

1.     When I inquire about his or her life, does he/she reciprocate?

2.     Does he/she remember things that I’ve told him/her in the past? Does he/she actually listen when I talk to him/her?

3.     Is there depth to our conversations, or does conversation remain at a surfaced level?

4.     Is there a healthy exchange of communication?

5.     How does this person deal with conflict?

6.     Has he/she taken a reasonable amount of time to try to get to know me?

7.     Does he/she understand my long-term goals?

8.     Would he/she want to be there only on the good days or on the bad days as well?

9.     If something terrible happened, would I be able to call this person and know that they would be there for me and have my back?

10.  Does he/she really like me, or just like the idea of me?

While truly talented manipulators (and they are out there) will know how to act in order to deceive you as you try to answer these types of questions, for the majority of relationships, asking these types of questions will serve as a strong starting point in getting to the root of someone’s intentions.  For me, the most challenging question to analyze has by far been the last question: does this person really like me, or do they simply like the idea of me?  Even if someone is genuinely not a bad person and does not have direct intentions to hurt you, I have found from my past experiences that the relationships that are going to last the longest are those with a foundation based upon a genuine interest in the other person.  Given that I have found it extremely challenging to differentiate between judging when someone likes you as opposed to the idea of you, I will discuss how to distinguish between the two concepts further in a later post.

Now You See Me

In the last forty-five minutes you have checked your phone thirty-six times.  He still hasn’t texted you back. While you try to keep your gaze focused on the massive excel sheet in front of you, your eyes keep glancing down at your phone, and you can’t help yourself.  It’s been three days.  On day one, you gave him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was just busy – stuck at work until midnight? And then the next day comes, but now it’s the weekend, so you have to start conjuring up some new excuses for him - unless he’s an investment banker, then I suppose you don’t have to be quite as creative and can stick with the imagined excuse from day one, even if it’s Saturday.  For the rest of us, we start really thinking outside the box.  Maybe he had to go on an impromptu business trip and is on a plane without internet for twelve hours? Or maybe his grandma really isn’t doing well, and she’s back in the hospital for the fifth time.  Or maybe he’s really sick and is in desperate need of a delivery of chicken soup from his favorite restaurant? Or maybe his plane never made it back from Japan last week and something terrible happened to him? And as the days pass, your mind begins to wander into deep and dark places. 

But as you sit there worrying about him, paranoid that something happened to him, you wake up on day three only to see photos of him with a glass in one hand and a girl in the other, flooding your newsfeed.  And while part of you is relieved that he is alive and well, the feeling of relief quickly dwindles as you come to the harsh reality of the situation.  While you found yourself distracted for the past three days awaiting a mere text message, you weren’t even on his mind.  No matter how busy he may have been, how long does it really take to send a text message – thirty seconds? Or to pick up the phone and make a call – five minutes?  So while you were going through a rough two days, he didn’t even care enough to take five minutes out of his day to be there for you – and ironically YOU were the one worrying about HIM.  Busy or not, there’s no excuse not to be there for someone that you care about.  If a person truly cares about you, it comes through in their actions. Whether it be that you are going through family problems, or having a personal crisis, all you want to do is talk to him.  Yet while you’re grinding it out, just trying to make it through, he’s throwing back countless gin and tonics as you’re out of sight, out of mind.  So as hard as it might be to admit to yourself, the explanation is simple – he doesn’t care.  If he did, it would come through in his actions.

So now what? Well, you might push back at me and say that he is playing games – trying to make himself appear mysterious and aloof, all to set the stage for the never-ending chase.  Or you might play the naïve card, and argue that maybe he lost his phone or somehow missed your message.  But let’s take a moment to put things into perspective.  Given that you checked your phone about thirty-six times in the last forty-five minutes, do you really think that he made it through the whole three days without looking at his phone and reading his text messages?  He saw the message.  He opened it, read it, and blatantly decided to ignore you.  Not for one day, or two days, but three days.  And while there are a million excuses that you can conjure up in attempt to cushion the blow, there are a million more reasons that point to the fact that he ignored you because he doesn’t care.  Not only did he ignore you, but he didn’t think twice about it – didn’t consider what you might be going through or why you might have wanted to talk to him in the first place.  You are not his priority, and while you’re sitting there, fixated on his every move, you are not even on his radar. In fact, as he’s eight drinks in at the bar on Saturday and knee deep in march madness on Sunday, he barely remembers that you exist.  You might as well be invisible.

As petty and nonsensical as this all sounds, I have to admit that I’m not above this.  As much as I try to look at my life from the eye of a third party, and give advice to myself as I would to another, I get caught up in the pettiness just as much as you do.  When I really invest my time and energy into getting to know another person on any level, I put them on a pedestal.  Somehow because I initially thought they were worthy of my time and attention, I turn a blind eye to the reality of the situation in front of me, and I make excuses for them time and time again. He couldn’t possibly be ignoring me because he doesn’t care.  She couldn’t possibly have skipped my charity event to go to a dive bar with her friends.  But more often than not, the excuses that I craft for the people closest to me in my life are nothing more than fabrications of my imagination. 

When we really care about someone or feel connected to a person on such a deep level, we want to think the best of them.  Whether we intend to or not, we always give them the benefit of the doubt – and as they rip us into pieces and deteriorate in front of our eyes, we continue to see the version of the person that we’ve created in our minds rather than the person standing in front of us.  And this realization may in fact be the one that hurts the most.  When the smoke finally clears and we see them for who they really are, we start to question if any of it was real, or if it was all a fabrication of our imagination - right from the very beginning.  And then we close our eyes, and wrap our arms around ourselves, gripping the memories as tight as we can, knowing that in only seconds, the only way to move forward is to let them go.  To see the person for who they are.  To look at the situation in front of you.  To realize that actions speak louder than words.  To face the fact that you are a ghost to him.  To realize that the person who means the most to you barely knows you exist.  And to find it within yourself, to lift up the smoke screen and see the people in your life for whom they really are – even if it means admitting to yourself that you were wrong about them all along.

Don't Be a Broken Man

12. That’s about how many hours I spent in the testing center before I could scrape together a Princeton-worthy SAT score.  7200.  That’s about how many hours I spent training in the gym before I could land a double back on the floor.  30. Thirty seconds. That’s all the time it took for me to know that he was the one who would change my life forever.

No excuses, no distractions. My life consisted of five things: school, gym, coffee, work, and on special occasions, a few hours of shut eye. For the first two decades of my life, I was under the impression that if I let anyone get too close to me or let my guard down for even an instant, I would lose control.  At that point, I might as well throw up my hands and surrender because I would lose everything I had worked for. And for what, for a man who might be a nice accessory to have on my arm at the ballet, or even worse – a man who would actually expect me to give him my time and attention?  As appealing as that sounds, I would rather not. That is what my list of plus-ones is for.

For as long as I can remember, I have always put my personal success first, and for me that consisted of an Ivy League education, a high social standing, an overflowing bank account, a flashy job, and the power to change the world. I knew what I wanted and I was not about to let any man stand in the way of making my mark on the world.  But when I met the man at the coffee shop, I knew that I had been doing it all wrong. He wasn’t on the cover of GQ, and he didn’t take me out on a multi-million dollar yacht to pop some bubbly on a Friday night. He was actually quite the opposite. His hair needed styling, and his suit wasn’t properly fitted. He was socially awkward and stumbled to find the right words, as a deep shade of pink started to cover his cheeks.  But when I looked into his eyes, I saw something that I had never seen before – I saw a real man.  I saw a man who was more focused on what was inside my head than what was on my back, a man who was broken and flawed, with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. He was imperfectly perfect, and I wanted more.

As we spent more and more time together, this man changed the way that I saw the world. He made me realize that letting someone into your life doesn’t mean you have to veer off path; it means that they become a part of your journey.  I had gone through handfuls of men in my life, and this was the first time that I felt a true intellectual connection. It was as if we were instantly on the same brain wave, and before we knew it, we were collaborating on ideas and helping each other to improve ourselves in every way.  Rather than detracting from my productivity and pulling me away from my life plan, we helped each other grow both personally and professionally.  It was as if I found my other half - and knowing what this felt like, it became crystal clear to me that two heads were better than one. 

I have this vision for what I want my life to look like – next week, next year, five years from now, ten years from now, and in the distant future. There are so many things that I want to accomplish, all jumbled together in this convoluted brain of mine.  Just as with anything in life, there are various different approaches that we can take in order to get what we want. Until a few years ago, I thought that trying to segment my life into different stages would set me up for the greatest possibility of success. If I wanted to start both a successful company and a loving family by the time that I was thirty, I used to believe that it would be most efficient if I was to focus one hundred percent of my energy on work until I accomplished the majority of that goal, and once I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I could move on to developing the more personal aspects of my life.  

The problem with this mentality is that when you try to live your life in stages, you develop yourself unevenly and leave parts of yourself behind.  If you have a set of goals that span across different aspects of your life that you want to accomplish by the time you are a certain age, you need to invest in horizontal rather than vertical self-development.  In order to become the strongest possible version of yourself, you need to move each of your goals forward every single day. If you focus on bettering yourself in one aspect of your life while leaving the others untouched, you will be a person that is not whole, but a person broken into pieces.  Every single day, you show the world the person that you are; every aspect of yourself is exposed, and you continue to grow based upon your overall level of self-development.  You are only as strong as the weakest part of yourself. If you leave your personal life in the dust and focus singularly on career development, your personal development will fall behind and you will not be armed with the tools necessary to embrace the challenges that come along with high-levels of professional development.  You cannot expect to be successful in multiple aspects of your life if you do not invest in all segments of personal and professional development.

Where do you want to be by the time you are 30? By the time you are 40? What type of relationship do you want to have? What type of career do you want? Where do you want to live? What do you want to invest your free time in? What will make you feel fulfilled at this stage in your life?  Start with where you want to be at a certain benchmark in your life, and work backwards. If you want to be living in a different country, on a different career path, and married by the time you are 30, you cannot keep drudging along in the wrong industry, with a partner that you know you’re not committed to, and a blurry vision of your future, and still expect to accomplish your life goals.  You need to be honest with yourself, and be realistic about what you can accomplish within a certain time frame.  If you focus your full energy on career development until you are twenty eight, and intend to achieve the goals mentioned above by the time you are thirty, you cannot expect to suddenly pick up your life, move to a new country, and magically land upon the partner of your dreams all in the remaining two years.  While I am a big believer in serendipity, I am also realistic.  It is simply not feasible to spend eight years on work alone, while you keep pushing off every other aspect of your life, and expect to clump everything else into a two-year time frame.  Personal development, even more than professional development, has a habit of being unpredictable.  You never know how long it will take you to find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, or the perfect town to raise your kids in.  So if you have these types of goals, you need to be progressing in those categories as much as you are progressing in your career development.

Opening yourself up to personal development does not mean that you are going to be pulled away from your career goals.  If you find the right person to build yourself with, you can grow together and help each other to reach your personal goals that much faster. Instead of slowing you down, finding a life partner that you have a strong intellectual connection with allows you to better yourself in all aspects of your life; not only are you working towards the family that you want to build, but you are also forming an intellectual connection and partnership that will allow you to accelerate your career development as well.  So take a step back, and look at what you really want. Don’t let the day-to-day chaos take you away from pursuing your life goals, whatever they may be.  Make sure that every single day, you are taking actionable steps to move forward in every direction.  As a result, you won’t be a person broken into many pieces, but rather a well-rounded, fully developed individual ready to take on the world.