Story of the Bottlecaps Covered in Beans

As part of a service project a while back, I visited an Adult Learning Center.

It was there that I learned a momentous clue about the meaning of life.

A woman confined to a wheelchair and living with a mental disability was sitting at a table. In front of this Oracle was a box full of beans. Sprinkled and mixed throughout the beans were plastic caps like one would find confining Pepsi or Coke or anything into a bottle.

I looked around the place, thinking of the meaning these adults living with mental illness could find in their lives. The oracle's long trips down into the beans often left her feeble hands empty. Occasionally, she would lift up a cap and smile. Does her life have any other pattern?

Does my life have any other pattern? I play video games. I take long trips into an online world. Many times I lose. Sometimes I win, and it feels good. Is this accomplishing anything? Is this a complicated box full of beans?

Forget video games, what about other things in life? I am interested in psychology research, biomedical research, philosophy. Is searching for the answers in these fields just digging our hands in bigger and more complicated beans, sometimes getting a good cap out and sometimes coming back empty-handed?

I use the wrong words. Life lived this way can have "meaning" but does it have any "significance"? I'm not qualitatively different from an invalid staring out the window and occasionally flooding himself with joy (and possibly urine) as he sees a pretty bird outside his window. This dignifies his life, but what does it say about mine?

I finally figured out what I want from life.

First, there are the simple things:

• FOOD
• SLEEP
• MY FAMILY
• MY FRIENDS
• WOMEN

Next, there are the more complicated things:

• GOOD FOOD
• LOTS OF SLEEP
• MONEY$
• LEARNING ABOUT: psychology, biology, philosophy, evolution (especially human evolution and evolutionary psychology)

I'm tired of worrying about what I want to do with my life. I started my undergraduate experience in college wanting to be a pharmacist. I have no desire for this. I amended that to wanting to get a Medical Degree. I barely knew what a medical degree was. In fact, it took me a lot longer than a semester to realize just what "Dr." meant. I still (I'm in my third year) have trouble coming to terms with that title.

I'm the first person in my family to go off to college, and everyone is very proud. But, I still come from a non-academic background. My high school guidance counselors were CRAP.

So I now see that there's this magical thing out there called a PhD, and if I have one... I get to do lots of research and get paid for it.

I want one.

almost two years

what can happen in almost two years?

• you can have an ex-fiance
• you can gain a dog
• you can think about the meaning of life. a Lot
• you can find the meaning of life
• you can realize death will come to her
• you can realize life will come to her1
• you can get up at 3:00 a.m. after no sleep, and howl
• you can realize you weren't meant for her2
• you can get tired of her3
• you can get to know kyle maclachlan
• you can get to know your siblings
• you can call the cops on some prostitutes
• you can hate her4
• you can meet the legend
• you can watch the legend burn
• you can see a NIN concert
• you can watch some movies
• you can make good friends
• you can forget.
• you can forget.
• you can forget.
• you can forget.

i fell asleep thinking thoughts.

i fell asleep thinking thoughts,

I was in a house of someone I love. [my fiance, her dad's house, he's here, i see him but he's in a different room, i can see through the walls so i really don't mind that he's in a different room] I had no shirt on.[i'm so uncomfortable, where's my shirt?] I'm at the junction of about five sets of stairs.[i can smell my grandmother's stairs in her basement, these are those same stairs, only five of them, and i'm still scared of falling down the stairs with no railing and smashing my three year old bones on the concrete, i'm still so scared of cutting my ten year old skin on a sharp nail when i fall and getting tetanus, and i'm terrified that when i fall my fifteen year old self will be embarrassed, all at once]

I never did make it through the door of any of the stairs, but I could see through the walls fine, so I didn't mind so very much.[i'm so scared that i can't get through one of the damn doors. i am stuck here in this hole, if only i could get through at least one of them, i can smell my grandmother's kitchen on the other side, it's christmas there and thanksgiving through that one and i'm visiting her back from college and i smell the summer through that one and that one her dog is scratching under the door and that one i'm crying on the other side of because i'm upset i lost a toy and it's only in the other room but i just want to cry a little, and i don't blame me i'd cry too if i couldn't walk straight and couldn't remember my toys were in the other room, it's bad enough i'm under two feet tall.]

I never did make it to the top of any of the stairs, and never was turning out to be a long time, so I just left. I didn't exit the room through any doors, I just suddenly was a different place at the intersection of a hall[the hall didn't actually exist, and i knew this] and some stairs. I walked up another set of stairs, not one of the original sets of stairs, mind you, and as I walk through the door I interrupt someone I love on a cell phone. She didn't know how to react, actually, she wasn't expecting me and didn't really want company.[i was so embarrassed i wanted to talk to her but she was on the phone and it's rude, but the phone can wait anyway, i want to call my grandmother's house from here but know it won't work, i can't smell anything any more, i've moved on...] I knew she really wanted to speak to me, it was just not the right time. That was fine, actually, because her entire house was actually a library, so I walked through the books.[i couldn't read the books though, because i knew the second i started reading one i would wake up. never enough time to read books, is there]

You can only understand this analogy if you understand the concept of a slope field created in calculus. The slope field shows you all the possible answers to a differential equation. Each book was one point on the slope field.[but i didn't have enough time to read, i'd just wake up anyway.] This guy I used to work with shows up, and he has a beard now. I hug him.[i don't know why, i never hug anyone and don't know him that well.] He's doing something. Civil War reenactment, possibly; just something that requires a large group, which he had with him. A girl I have class with was with him.[i hugged her too; she was sad. she didn't feel any better because i only dreamed i hugged her, and i knew it didn't really happen.]

I never did see my fiance. I never did see the girl who[unbeknownst to me] owned the library after she left, talking on the phone.

To start out here and now in the house with the stair room[it's here as soon as i wake up i'll be back i know it where is this i can see it if only i open my eyes but i'm too tired i'm sleepy] and be able to smell so vividly the sights on the other side of the stairs[i remember that, i remember that too, i was so little, that was only yesterday but i was two years old and it was earlier today that i was fifteen and drove for the first time but it was a few weeks ago that i gave a speech in class but it has been years since i couldn't see over the countertop by myself how... is this], only to end up in a damn library[depository]. What a waste. The worst part was the annoying person on the phone[it was actually me] that kept telling my friend what I am like in the future.

That's none of anyone's business. I guess it's not even any of my business, since she took the phone away.

and i woke up feeling feelings.

ch eck sh eet

checklist

service project, check: erwin clean-up as well as rmh trips that i helped coordinate

great room gig, check: stop the traffick, and the guitar hero tournament that i helped set up

d2l, goldmail, check: i'm addicted to checking my damn goldmail...

resume, check: in progress

pos, check: constantly being updated

rogaine, check: i need to pull that back out and revise, now that i think of it

blog: not nearly as many as i want to claim, actually.

projects

1. impacting the world

well, i want to do two things next semester. first, i am starting this semester with helping brittany r. set up a relay for life team, the first ever for governor's hall. i'm excted.

next, i'm going to help coordinate at least three fundraisers next semester for fimrc, we're throwing around the idea of fundraising for playground equipmen for the ronald mcdonald house. even if that doesn't stand the fires of winter break, good things are in the future.

2. "why?"

this is so hard. i've just been reading, as i usually do, keeping this topic in mind. i really have no more questions that i intend to follow. i wrestled with religion for years, but now i'm at peace with myself about it. i want to delve into psychology-- i'm reading "40 experiments that changed psychology" right now-- so i'm becoming a psychology major..

3. who am i?

the one time i really connected with this topic was in a series of heated arguments and discussions between myself and a couple of people i love that are very close to me...

turns out that the direction my entire life was(is) going was(is) completely wrong. i was(am) doing things for the wrong, selfish reasons. actually... i am still doing things for the wrong, selfish reasons, and enjoying them, no less.

i prefer to think that the ends justify the means(and the motivations)

4. motivation

well, this ties in too closely with who i am for me to seperate them. my whole life is guided in the right direction using the wrong map.

how..... to fix this? actually, does it need to be fixed? do i need a new map?

this is so crucial to my entire life, but i don't know. i just don't know.

i'll be damned if i don't impact something somehow

i can impact the world.

first, i'm really happy that brittney is starting a relay for life team for governor's hall. i am going to help as much as i can whenever i can.

and, i still really like meira's idea of the playground at rmh. i'm going to help as much as i can whenever i can.

if only i had some original thoughts inside my damn head. maybe someday.

i do have my own ideas, they are just a little...... disconnected.

Motivation

"i want to do something that matters"

but just what is that?

i'll take a look at the baser things first, work my way up. why do i want to do psychology? because of the way i talk to people sometimes, like i am a seperate thing from them instead of a continuity of their humanity.
i don't like being a continuity of your humanity. i like being seperate. i'll tell you that you are human, alright. i just won't participate in it.

why do i want to do pre-med? because i can't think of anything to do with a degree in psychology that is as rewarding financially as a doctorate in psychiatry. i'm sorry that i think of money as a motivation, but i already have a big family and want to just increase on that. i want security, and money is security. no, i don't plan on "scraping by" on the salary of a psychiatrist. but the money is a comfort.

there's no telling what a degree in psychology or anything else will get me-- med school, if passed successfully, is a little definate.