Bridging the gap: What I thought I wanted vs. What I really wanted

Throughout my life, I have made it my goal to be a consistent person and, for the most part, I'd say that I've achieved that goal. Many of my thoughts and opinions in life have remained constant, albeit most of them have deepened with maturity, and my personality traits have remained constant. As an adult, I still read with the same voracity that I had when I was in elementary school, I still see the world with the same wonder and awe, I still doodle the living daylights out of any sheet of paper that is suitable for drawing on, I love everybody, and once I love you, to put it frankly, there's not a damn thing you can do about it. (As one of my home church members put it when I was 7, "forgiveness is just in [my] bones")

However, there is one part of my life I've been very wishy-washy on: what I want to do with my life. When I was small, I went through the "obligatory-veterinarian-phase,"and was often told that I should teach, although I decided I would never want to do that. I eventually settled on art when people discovered I was decent at rendering objects (and thus encouraged me to do it) and I stuck with that until high school. Throughout high school, I studied art alongside my traditional classes like AP math and Physics. During my junior year of high school, a group of faculty from my local trade school visited my pre-calculus class to see about interest in a pre-engineering course. I'd enjoyed my math classes, and also my physics class, so I signed up. The next year (my senior year), I was in the class, and preparing for a competition in a major, worldwide robotics tournament. Doing well enough in that competition made me change from wanting to study art, to wanting to study engineering.

I thought that engineering offered me almost everything that I wanted to do. I admit that I did struggle through my classes sometimes, but I made it through. I kept telling myself that eventually I would find a job that would let me work on planes (I've had a long standing love of aircraft because dad was a pilot), and that I could channel my creativity (something I loved) into engineering (something else I loved).

But it's not that easy now. I've discovered that I absolutely adore the BRIDGE office at my alma mater. (Small aside - for those who don't know, BRIDGE is a program for students that want to go to college but have an ACT score (or equivalent SAT score) of 18 or below.) I've worked one-on-one with several students that nobody, except the BRIDGE program, had any faith in. I've watched them glare at me when I take away their calculators, only to watch them ace their math finals at the end of the semester. I've seen some students write papers with so many comma splices and nonexistent words that you'd think an elementary student wrote the paper only to turn into some of the most eloquent and well-written students on campus. I've seen them go from mimicking the lack of faith others displayed for them to deciding to take up the reins and gallop through their studies.

In short, I've discovered that I want to teach. Don't get me wrong - I'd still love to get an engineering position at Tinker AFB, but now, instead of wanting to have a glittering career there until I retire and travel the world, I want to have a glittering career so that I can come back to a university and teach. And then travel the world later. (And to any OC faculty reading this - I could be your first female engineering professor... sounds pretty awesome right? Eh?)

KONY 2012

Recently, the Invisible Children movement has been gaining momentum and attention across the United States. This attention has sparked a rather impressive response, but also, as with almost every large movement, it has garnered its fair share of criticism.

Among the major criticisms are issues with The Invisible Children's financial accounts, their methods of spending, and their suggested methods of ending Kony's reign of terror in central Africa.

While many critics of The Invisible Children have some valid concerns, there are a few things that I feel should be addressed.

First, I do think it would improve their image to allow for external auditing. However, I am not quite as opposed to using funds raised to keep their salaries - at least not on a philosophical level. This type of mission is something that takes up just as much time as a full-time job. Perhaps that means that they shouldn't be a non-profit organization, but I don't have a huge issue with people that work as much as these people do using some of the funds so that they can actually spend the time they need to on the work.

Second, I don't really find it too weird or uncalled for that they spend so much money on filmmaking. The people that started this are, first and foremost, filmmakers. Making a film was the entire reason the founders went to Uganda. Films are what they've marketed themselves with, so it's only natural that they would want to continue using what works (especially when it's also what they are familiar with.)

Last, and my personal biggest issue with many critics, I think it is foolish to pitch a fit about how The Invisible Children are petitioning for a military response. Kony has repeatedly been approached to find a peaceful way to end his war, but every time, he has only used the peace to "recruit" more children. I'm kind of convinced that there isn't a peaceful way to end the issue unless he dies and nobody steps up to take his place. Which is extremely unlikely. That's just how it is with psychopaths. They do not feel remorse for what they do. Combine that with someone that's narcissistic, and honestly think they deserve the power, and frankly, I would be very surprised if Kony ever surrendered. So, while there isn't a fiber in my being that would ever praise the idea of killing children, which is what would happen if military action is taken, I'm honestly not sure there is an alternative.

I know this sounds really pessimistic, but I can't help but see the children he currently has as lost causes. First, because if military action is taken, they will likely be killed; second, if we find him, offer the option of leaving to the children, he will likely kill any that try; and third, even if we could somehow save them, they will need excessive amounts of therapy to have a chance to function in society again, and even that isn't guaranteed to succeed.

At the risk of sounding heartless, this is what I would propose: organize an international manhunt through Uganda, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to work together and hunt this man down. I'd be entirely supportive of other countries offering manpower and resources to find him (assuming that the countries he operates in are accepting of the aid). After all, he is literally the most wanted man in the world. I know that it's likely that the children he has will die in the process, but I honestly don't see any way to save them. I suppose that if he is tracked down, that it's possible that the area could be flooded with troops that are trying to subdue him, but even then, some of the children will die. Besides, if some children are saved, they wouldn't really be kids; their childhood has been erased to the point that the resemblance to children is only physical. Instead, I believe that the focus should be on ending his reign of power so that more children are not lost to his cause.

That said, and at the risk of appearing to contradict myself, I don't really see how this problem is an international problem. As in, politically, this is a problem within several African countries that, at least to my knowledge, haven't really asked for international help. Asking for international help isn't hard, so I have to wonder if the governments of central Africa really care about solving the problem.

Les Miserables and Love

No deep insights from me today. Just an excerpt from Les Miserables. This one is the love letter that Marius leaves for Cosette.

The reduction of the universe to the compass of a single being, and the extension of a single being until it reaches God - that is love.

Love is the salute of the angels to the stars.

How sad the heart is when the rendered sad by love!

How great is the void created by the absence of the being who alone fills the world. How true it is that the beloved becomes God. It is understandable that God would grow jealous if the Father of All Things had not so evidently created all things for the soul, and the soul for love.

It needs no more than a smile, glimpsed beneath a hat of white crepe adorned with lilac, for the soul to be transported into the palace of dreams.

God is behind all things, but all things conceal God. Objects are black and human creatures are opaque. To love a person is to render them transparent.

There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars - all the beauties of creating. And why should they not? All the works of God are designed to serve love, and love has the power to charge all nature with its messages.

Oh, spring, you are a letter which I send!

The future belongs far more to the heart than to the mind. Love is the one thing that can fill and fulfill eternity. The infinite calls for the inexhaustible.

Love partakes of the soul, being of the same nature. Like the soul, it is the divine spark, incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is the fiery particle that dwells in us, immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine and nothing extinguish. We feel its glow in the marrow of our bones and see its brightness reaching to the depths of heaven.

Oh, love, adoration, the rapture of two spirits which know each other, two hearts which are exchanged, two looks which interpenetrate! You will come to me, will you not, this happiness! To walk together in solitude! Blessed and radiant days! I have sometimes thought that now and then moments may be detached from the lives of angels to enrich the lives of men.

God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love except to make it unending. After a lifetime of love, an eternity of love is indeed an increase; but to heighten the intensity, the ineffable happiness that love confers upon the spirit in this world, is an impossibility, even for God. God is the wholeness of heaven; love is the wholeness of man.

We look up at a star for two reasons, because it shines and because it is impenetrable. But we have at our side a gentler radiance and greater mystery, that of women

Each of us, whoever he may be, has his breathing self. Lacking this, or lacking air, we suffocate. And then we die. To die for lack of love is terrible; the asphyxia of the soul.

When love has melted and merged two persons in a sublime and sacred unity, the secret of life has been revealed to them: they are no longer anything but the two aspects of a single destiny, the wings of a single spirit. To love is to soar!

On the day when a woman in passing sheds light for you as she goes, you are lost, you are in love. There is only one thing to be done, to fix your thoughts upon her so intently that she is compelled to think of you.

That which love begins can be completed only by God.

True love is plunged in despair or rapture by a lost glove or by a found handkerchief; but it needs eternity for all its devotion and its hopes. It is composed of both the infinitely great and the infinitely small.

If you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human, be love.

Nothing satisfies love. We achieve happiness and long for Eden; we gain paradise and long for Heaven.

I say to you who love that all these things are contained in love. You must learn to find them. Love encompasses all Heaven, all contemplation and, more than Heaven, physical delight.

"Does she still visit the Luxembourg?" ..."No, Monsieur" ..."It is in this church, is it not, that she attends Mass?"..."She does not come here any more"..."Does she still live in this house?"..."She has moved elsewhere"..."Where has she gone to live?"..."She did not say."

How grievous not to know the address of one's soul!

Love has its childishness; other passions have pettiness. Shame on the passions that make us petty; honor to the one that makes us a child!

A strange thing has happened, do you know? I am in darkness. There is a person who, departing, took away the sun.

Oh to lie side by side in the sam tomb and now and then caress with a fingertip in the shades, that will do for my eternity!

You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love is to live by it.

Love! A dark and starry transfiguration is mingled with that torment. There is ecstasy in the agony.

Oh, the happiness of birds! It is because they have a nest that they have a song.

Love is a heavenly breath of the air of Paradise.

Deep hearts and wise minds accept life as God made it. It is a long trial, and incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, his true one, begins for man on the first stair within the tomb. Something appears to him, and he begins to perceive the finality. Take the heed of that word, finality. The living see infinity; the finality may only be seen by the dead.

In the meantime, love and suffer, home and meditate. Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.

I encountered in the street a penniless young man who was in love. His hat was old and his jacket work, with holes at the elbows; water soaked through his shoes, but starlight flooded through his soul.

How wonderful it is to be loved, but how much greater to love! The heart becomes heroic through passion; it rejects everything that is not pure and arms itself with nothing that is not noble and great. An unworthy thought can no more take root in that a nettle on a glacier. The lofty and serene spirit, immune from all base passion and emotion, prevailing over the clouds and shadows of this world, the follies, lies, hatreds, vanities and miseries, dwells in the azure of the sky and feels the deep and subterranean shifts of destiny no more than the mountain peak feels the earthquake. If there were no one who loved, the sun would cease to shine.

2012 Reading Challenge!

One thing that I started last year as a New Year's Resolution was a reading goal. This was made fairly easy with the Reading Challenge widget on Goodread's website. Since last year was successful, I have decided to attempt to complete a yearly reading goal again this year!

Here is a copy of the books, in no particular order, I want to hit for-sure this year:

1. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

2. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

3. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

4. The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown

5. Watership Down by Richard Adams

6. The Knight by Gene Wolfe

7. The Wizard by Gene Wolfe

8. Wicked by Gregory Maguire

9. Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire

10. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

11. Dracula by Bram Stoker

12. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas

13. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

14. Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

15. God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert

16. The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

17. A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

18. The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

19. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

20. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

21. Animal Farm by George Orwell

22. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

23. Paradise Lost by John Milton

24. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

25. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

26. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

27. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

28. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

29. Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles

30. Antigone by Sophocles

31. The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

32. The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

33. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

34. Sandman by Neil Gaiman

35. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

36. The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*

37. Agatha Christie's Detectives by Agatha Christie*

38. Stardust by Neil Gaiman

39. Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty

40. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

41. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

* asterisks denote books that I own that are single volumes with multiple books bound within.