A change in perspective

I don’t often use the word “epiphany” causally, and I certainly would not usually associate Friars (or St. Patrick's day) with any kind of epiphany, but last weekend I was hit with quite powerful moments of clarity after a series of unexpected conversations. A trilogy of enlightenment.

The first was a compliment received  from a person who I thought disliked me. Here was a person who I thought looked down on me. I did not expect their nice comments about one of my personal qualities. Suddenly their good qualities were revealed and I understood that my one dimensional view of them was quite incorrect.

 The second revelation was when I realized that I had severely misjudged a guy based on gossip about him and the people he hung around. I found myself sitting across from him at the bar and I could feel my scowl forming as he began to speak. I was quite unprepared for the friendly: “Hi, Elri.” Using someone’s name is a powerful thing. It means that you acknowledge them as a person. It means you listened. Long story short I ended having a lovely conversation with him. Turns out we have a lot in common.

I think the third conversation had the most profound effect on me. I ran into a fellow Writing kid (who isn’t Ashleigh) and we somehow landed up talking about our class and where we fit it.  I shocked to find out that I wasn’t the only one that felt like they didn’t clue about what they were doing. I was shocked to realize that I wasn’t the only one that felt like my opinions weren’t good enough to be voiced in front of the others. Let alone having my work read out. And I was shocked to realize that I wasn’t the only that felt like they didn’t belong. Ironically this person used to be someone who intimidated me. I thought they had their life sorted more than I did. Turns out they are just like me.

I’ve always had Ashes in Journ. We often tell each other that we would not survive Journ without each other. But not everyone has an Ashleigh.  If I look at our class it’s now clear to me that most of us are very good at hiding these feelings. Writing is a very intimate thing. It’s also quite lonely. As John Green put it:  “Writing is something you do alone. It’s a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story, but don’t want to make eye-contact while they do it.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." I know he was talking about the struggle of human beings to achieve their goals by both transcending and re-creating the past, but the image of boats beating against a current speaks to what we are going through. We are boats beating on against the current. Struggling just get a little ahead and not sink.  Maybe we should try beating on together.

It’s quite a calming thought to know that we are not alone.

(I know that this blog post is a little out of sync with the rest of my posts and it’s a little muddled, but moments of enlightenment usually are. I promised the person who inspired this change of perspective that I would write a blog about it, so I’m sticking to that promise.)