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ever dumbening
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Preface:
A great interview relies on the ability of the questioner to thoroughly know the strengths and weaknesses of the questioned. Further, the questions must exact both. This question has so pierced my core, producing anxiety and glee. Of course, the great interview also requires well-crafted responses. I can only guarantee that the first half of this equation has taken place and strive to fill out the second half.
Introduction:
I am both the best and worst person to be asked this question. I have struggled with doubt and crippling (at times) depression for the last fourteen years of my thirty-two. Though in the last seven years I have seen much growth and change, only during the past year plus have I noticed the first signs of true self-awareness. So I know change intimately: it is elusive, slow, difficult to elicit, temporary. I'm also fully aware that dumb luck is integral. Finally, I look at our species and am often struck by how stupid we are and how unable we are to _truly_ improve ourselves, both individually and collectively. Nevertheless, I stand and breathe and change. I have found no answers and know that what is true for me may bring certain catastrophe for another. All three of the following require incredible patience and risk and time. Time.
The Response:
I. Seek
II. Listen
III. Learn
Seek
greatness and beauty--ALWAYS. Don't be complacent or settle for mediocrity. Even if greatness and beauty elude you as products of _your_ hands, know that you can only be inspired to move when you see something you want to emulate. Music, literature, food, people, interactions, places, ideas, _new_ ideas. Let the best pour into you; osmosis is slow but effective. External greatness will eventually oscillate harmonically with the within--physics! Tchaikowski, Mary Oliver, Thai food, dragonflies--they ring within me like a bell choir.
Listen
to others and to your heart. "Thoughts _are_ when they are ripe." Though you may not be ready to use or understand the things you are hearing from yourself and others, if you aren't listening those seeds won't be around when you _are_ ready. To accelerate the time between first hearing and first knowing: listen, and listen again, be honest and listen again. I didn't listen very carefully in high school and have been repairing the damage caused ever since. It was not until eight or nine years after completely ignoring them that I sat in my apartment in Beijing and was floored by Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau. Words from my most trusted have taken years to sink in, all from my poor listening.
Learn
generalized and specialized knowledge, and especially learn to see the transformation in the decay. I started out with a heavy dose of math and science. Analytical ability is a powerful, if a bit unwieldy, tool. I smashed into the wall of a large university's engineering program and changed gears to anthropology. When younger, I also learned how to play music and sing. I learned how to garden and cook. I learned how to mend and build with my hands. "Learning to live with love" has thus far been one of my most challenging and enlightening lessons. The resultant crushing pain of then fumbling away that love has provided the opportunity to observe the fertile soil in the decay. I see that my love of words, of Chinese, of love making, of tai chi and Buddhism, of skiing, of dancing, and my slowly increasing self-awareness would not have been what they are without the learning from both lightness and heaviness.
I could be wrong.
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