confused

It's funny how even when I'm having a hard time, I'm not allowed to have a hard time. I somehow can't let myself show that I need someone to talk to or need some guidance or help or just comfort in situations. Literally, when I am upset (sad, mad, whatever) I smile. It's like my way of letting myself know that I can't show how I truly feel. And it's a reflex. When I'm mad at someone, I can't even control it, I just start smiling. 

The thing is, when I'm having a hard time, I know that other people are too, and I don't like to selfishly put all the attention on myself. I don't like to feel like a selfish person, so I naturally don't like talking about what I'm having trouble with or being comforted because it feels weird and wrong. Why should I complain about my problems when I know for a fact that people have worse things that they deal with and such. My life is so unimportant to me compared to others that I put people first in almost all situations because I would rather be the person people feel comfortable going to when they need to. Maybe it's because I want someone like that for me, who I can talk to about anything and who will give me unbiased advice and listen thoroughly and be engaged in what I'm saying rather than trying to turn the conversation back to themselves. 

It's completely selfish though. I'm unselfish in conversation because I selfishly want people to think of me as a good listener, or a good friend, or someone who isn't annoying or doesn't talk too much about themselves.

It's made me vulnerable. A pushover. And honestly, it's draining me. I just want someone to care. I want someone to be worried about me. But when they do, I immediately close myself off and make it seem like I'm okay so that they won't worry anymore.

Honestly, I come off as a very emotionless and rational person, and I am. I really am. I'm extremely realistic and people tend to think that it means I am pessimistic. But I'm not. I literally am not optimistic or pessimistic. I just don't even really care. I don't worry about myself. Like, when something bad happens to me, I hardly ever break down or go crazy or freak out. I'm calm about it because honestly I don't care much. I feel like what happens will happen.

And even when things happen to me that should spark some sort of change, what is on my mind right now is not my health, or how to get better, or how to change, or how to cope or get through this. What's on my mind is what I'm going to tell people when I get back so that they won't ask what's going on. Or, how I am going to make it up to my boss at work that I missed today for a reason I'm not comfortable sharing. What's on my mind is how bad I feel that I'm not at the apartment to let my roommate in who forgot her key. I know it's not the stuff I should be worried about. I shouldn't be worried about what time to book the bus to get back so that I'll make it in time to work out with a friend. I should be thinking about resting and getting healthy and whatnot but I'm not and I can't.

I don't want people to know what went on, because I don't want to be pitied, and I don't want to be judged, or questioned, or felt sorry for.

But I do want someone to care. I want someone to know that I'm hurting and without asking just hold me or comfort me or compliment me and make me forget about things. I want someone to ask if I'm alright and then accept my answer and cheer me up regardless of the fact that they don't know what's going on.

People care to know things, but they don't care about me. They're curious, they want to know, just to know. Not because they actually care if I'm okay or not.

So that's why right now, I'm feeling very, very alone and very emotionally drained. I don't want to have to explain myself to someone. I want someone to just accept me for what I've done and for who I am and how I handle things and help me overcome them.

Instead, people like to throw their own advice of what I "should have done" or "should do" and don't actually sit down and listen to what I have to say and try to understand me. People try to tell me how to act and give me "advice" when they don't even understand my situation. How can you tell me to do something when you won't take the time to listen attentively to my story?

People ask how I am in anticipation of my return of the question, not my response to it.

So how, when it is so insignificant to others, can I find any importance to my life?

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Control

Something that I personally find very frustrating about life is that just when you are starting to feel in control of yourself and your life, life reminds you that ultimately you cannot have a firm grasp over all aspects of living, and regrettably to subject yourself to sociological and biological rules.

Since coming back from spring break I have been very good about going to the gym and eating good healthy meals, at the expense of my rest. As a result, I found myself getting sick earlier this week, but rather than attacking it at the outset, I ignored it, hoping it would pass, and continued to overwork myself until yesterday, when I woke up completely exhausted and down with a very bad cold.

It reminded me that there are things that we do have control over, and should absolutely make sure we maintain, such as our health, social lives, grades, relationships, etc. but there are limits to our control over these things. In college, I have a wide range of options for how to spend my time, but sacrifices must be made as there are only 24 hours in a day. In my case, I gave up sleep, finding it a small opportunity cost to the fitness that I valued more. But this has implications. When making decisions, we can't simply consider our own values, or ultimate goals to put certain things over others, but must also consider the consequences that result from by not choosing other things.

Getting sick is definitely not easy, especially right now, as I have two tests next week and a very busy weekend, so I will have to be careful about allocating my time to things that will help me accomplish what I want to and not distract me from these goals.

Another thought on this topic.

I was talking to a friend of mine, who is currently a sophomore, and she said some interesting things about setting goals and whatnot. She told me that it's important to maintain a GPA, because your resume is what will get you an interview, but to go further than that, and where you go from there depends on your soft skills: your people skills, team work, communication, etc. I never really thought about this because I was always so focused on making good grades in high school, but I'm starting to realize how important these sort of things are. It's good to value your grades, it's good to be focused on your studies but it is equally as important to make sure you are a well-rounded person with good values and who is trustworthy and respectful.

Anyway, I'm trying to take it easy today and still get some work done so we'll see how that goes.

Have a nice day!

Hanna

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Opportunity

Sometimes I think about how far I have come in life, and realize that I am extremely blessed to be where I am. I had the opportunity to be involved in sports and music as a child, and was able to join organizations in high school that increased my chances of getting into a good college, and I was given the chance to work hard at my grades and be at the top of my class. I realize that this is something to be thankful for, and I respect those who do not have the same opportunity as I do yet make it far in life with many successes.

But often, I wonder how much further I would have gone had I come from different circumstances. In middle school, for about six months, I attended a school in San Antonio, and found a friend who, like me, was academically bright and focused on studying more than other things. We usually got around the same grades on things, and in many cases, I was praised for my work above hers, and we competed against each other for better grades. We were both in the Gifted & Talented program, and having someone like her to compare myself to made me work harder in order to achieve and be the top. We both attended a violin class after school once a week, and since I had played for much longer, I was naturally better than her, and I could see the jealousy on her face when the instructor asked me to play for the class instead of her. And I was proud of it. I liked being accomplished, and even when she did better than me at things, I lied the idea of working harder to beat her, even though she was a good friend. This doesn't sound like a healthy friendship but it was; this unspoken competition between us is what drove me to do better, and I'm sure it helped her in the same way. At this point in my life I think this sort of competition between peers is important, and it was what drove me for many many years to do my best.

However, later in my life, after I moved back to Houston and had gone through more years of school, I slowly lost this state of mind. I am very thankful for the high school I attended because I had amazing teachers and huge opportunities, but it was also one of the poorer schools in my district, and was looked down on by other schools as being "ghetto," and fewer people that surrounded me had the same mindset to work hard. The fact that I always did the best I could became something that was looked down on; people disliked me for it, they would make fun of me for it, or call me an "overachiever," like it was wrong or something. People around me laughed about procrastinating, and would brag about how quickly they could finish an assignment after putting it off until the last minute. This was a common way of thinking, even among those who were incredibly smart. There were many who worked hard, but also many whose natural smarts allowed them to get by without doing as much work or putting their all into what they did. I found myself slowly becoming this way as well; I didn't have to do much to get an A, so I didn't do much. Slowly school became tiring and boring, and I dreaded it. The only thing that kept me going was setting goals in gymnastics, but by my sophomore year of high school, I had quit gymnastics and this mindset was completely gone, and I wasn't sure what it was I was working so hard for anymore. And I stopped trying. My grades slipped, I was unmotivated, and I didn't perform as well.

By Senior year I made up for a lot of the damage, and now am in a wonderful college in Austin, at one of the nation's top business schools. But I still wonder what would have happened to my life if I had lived my life out like the girl from middle school. Her parents were wealthy enough to send her to a small private high school, and she is now at Harvard, studying law. Once, we were on the same level academically, which makes me wonder how it is possible for our lives to be so dramatically different today. Not to say that I am not thankful for where I am; like I said, UT is a wonderful school and I am even blessed to have gone to a high school with great teachers and smart students, but it is interesting to me how different our lives are from each other now after parting ways.

From an individual perspective, it is completely my fault, of course; I should have lived up to my potential, I should have kept trying, and working hard to be more intelligent and successful. I am in no way trying to blame my regrets on my situation. But I think this concept is more external to myself rather than being solely a problem with myself, it's an institutional phenomenon, a sociological one. I have been studying a lot of sociology this semester because of a class requirement, and currently we are going over class distinctions and what causes society's hierarchical differences, and I find these things extremely interesting.

For class I have to read a book called "Privilege" by Shamus Rahman Khan, although I haven't gotten far, I read that the term "meritocracy," what my country builds itself upon, was coined by a person who saw it as "the cold scientization of ability and the bureaucratization of talent." I never thought of this as a bad thing; of course I prefer this over aristocracy or other hierarchical systems but it's interesting to put into perspective a little. Khan says that it obscures "how outcomes are not simply a product of individual traits."

To me, this means that it makes it seem like in this country, everyone has the same opportunity to get far, when that is not the case in the slightest. It makes it out to be something that gives every innately smart person an equal opportunity to make use of this, something that gives every person an opportunity to make use of their talents, but this really isn't true. Actually, and Khan explains this, this "increase" in opportunity has actually increased the gap between the wealthy and the poor, which seems to contradict the purpose of doing it this way. He writes, "What seems natural is made, but access to that making is strictly limited." More and more as time passes, people who attend college are those who come from wealthy families, who make possible more opportunity for nurturing natural talent. The differences that result aren't because of innate differences but because of situation ones, to some extent.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."- Karl Marx

I think that is really true; I mean, in a lot of ways, we don't have control over some things that hinder us. I'm not in any way trying to say that we can blame our failures just on circumstance but I've always kind of thought it was unfair to think of everyone as having "equal opportunity" because I don't think this is the case. I don't think it's right to use that as an excuse though, which some people do as well. I'm realizing the importance of making the best of your situation, no matter what, so that you are comfortable accepting the things you cannot control because you know you've done everything you can to make the best for yourself.

It's what you do with what you're given that is important.


[PS. This post may or may not be all over the place, and my point may not seem clear but I've never been good at getting words out so there you go. This wasn't supposed to be this long either. Oh well.]

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Introduction

Hi, this is Hanna.

On my old blog, I found that my posts were most often very angry or selfish and that I was using it as a way to justify my venting instead of as a way to reflect on things that have been on my mind, which had been my original intention. I also found it becoming increasingly messy, with both personal and kpop posts on one blog, so I decided to split it into two new blogs and start fresh, hoping to make things more organized. So far I have been regularly updating my kpop blog and have been enjoying keeping up with that, and now I am going to try to keep up with this one as well.

As for the name of my blog, "hannashumility," I want to stress that in no way do I look at myself as a humble person. I am far from it; I am selfish, and often very self righteous and conceited. Even knowing this, I continue to act this way and make mistakes. However, the person that I strive to be, the person that I make effort daily to be, is someone who considers others before myself, and someone who values herself enough to be confident but is not proud or boastful. My name, "Hanna" comes from the Hebrew word for grace, and I've decided that I want to fulfill that meaning through my actions and become a more merciful and caring person. I've always valued being open-minded and non-judgmental, which is why I am the way I am today, and I strive to be someone that understands people. So, I feel that if I name my blog this, slowly it will become part of me, until I can truly be a representation of the type of person that I want to be.

If you look up humility on dictionary.com, at the bottom there is the Bible definition, which includes lines from verses such as "a prominent Christian grace" and says that the "great paradox of Christianity is that it makes humility the avenue to glory."

I hope it is clear now that my intention with this new blog is to take my life experiences and try to make something better out of them; I hope to share some daily experiences and thoughts in a positive manner and reflect on them to better my life. This doesn't mean, at all, that I am optimistic, rather, it means that I am attempting to find positive meaning in my situation despite the fact that I have little faith in myself.

I'm honestly not sure exactly what it means for a person to be humble, and I don't understand how to balance confidence with arrogance, optimism with realistic thought, opinion and respect of others, etc. but I believe that I have grown a lot since becoming a college student and hope to continue to do so and start to understand some of these very abstract concepts of life.

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