…
there are too many people too broken down to have dreams and risking dreams and visions, yet if we do not have visions, then what is the use of all this.
we must feed the Dream.
-Fay Chiang
A more overtly political post in line next. But as Fay encourages us, I need to share a bit of my vision for myself.
Sometimes a year passes and it feels much longer than one year. How could so much emotion be felt, so much growth take place? And how could it not! I am grateful for the opportunities to develop, succeed, fail, fear, and love. A flurry of experiences in the past few weeks alone have influenced how I want to approach the next year, and by next year I mean the rest of my life. Just six months ago, I feared not being able to continue to grow. When I finished college in May, I wrote to a friend that I was scared of losing the critical thinking I developed and practiced there. Now I imagine her laughing at me from across the country as she responded, “That’s YOU, Phuong. You carry it with you.” As I think of the lessons others have taught me, I understand how this fear represents a powerful contradiction that supports elite academies, which benefit from the popular thought that we cannot learn or think outside of a well-regulated degree program. This is not true and so we must struggle to remember that we can do all of those things (sometimes even better) outside of the academy.
I realize the glaring differences in life lessons during college and post-college. As an undergraduate, I learned to take myself seriously. I learned the power of my voice, written and spoken. I grew to understand that simply being was political and I needed to decide how I wanted to use my being. My own idea about "being" was expanded and questioned. I learned that I fear lack of courage and lack of self-knowledge. Essentially, I became conscious of the world and myself in it.
Recently, I have been taught about how I relate to people personally. There are lessons about what I cannot be, what I am not, and what I am not yet. I enter the next year striving to be cognizant of these last questions: While debates and discussions have their place, am I being inclusive through my words and actions? Am I expressing my love and respect and how? Am I figuring out why people care about the issues they do? Am I too concerned with a final decision or product that I forget to understand or appreciate the process and the emotions, the people, the resistance involved? While ready to question, I need to respect peoples’ experiences and actively learn about others. The work is time-consuming and difficult, but I am less afraid of it remembering our human fallacies, knowing mistakes will be made.
Until tomorrow, folks!
