Quote of the Day: Empathy

"All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life. Where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it." - Miranda July

When I was little I loved staying at my friend's houses. I saw it as a glimpse into their every-day lives, what it was like to be a part of their family, what daily customs they took part in that were foreign to me. Now, I hardly have to think twice about that curiosity. I can't help listening to the interesting conversation in the next booth over at a restaurant, or wondering what the person sitting alone on a park bench is thinking about.

What I love about this quote is that in just two sentences Miranda July taps into so many aspects of human empathy and curiosity. It's both empathetic and reflective. It makes you want to look at the person across from you on the subway and wonder, "how are they making it through life?"

Somehow, though, she manages to make it less about our own nosy tendencies, and more about the possibilities for empathy. The tender line "Where do they put their body, hour by hour" doesn't connote eavesdropping on the subway. I find it reminiscent of the Annie Dillard quote, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." It's about looking at the minute in order to understand the big picture, the overall arc of our lives. And then there's that last piece, "how do they cope inside of it." She's not asking what you had for lunch today, who you're going to meet for dinner tonight. She's not even asking what you're thinking. She's asking about how you experience the world. She's seeking out that thin thread that leads to whatever it is that makes you who you are, all tangled up in your experiences and your thoughts and the things you believe to be true.

I think that we can seek empathy wherever we are. I think that curiosity, while it can seem shallow at first glance, creates a ripple affect where the questions we ask lead us to a more well-rounded answer. Someone once said that you can't hate something you're curious about. I love that.

Too often I find myself stopping at that first rush of curiosity. I'll feel a question coming on at an event, or when I'm listening to someone tell a story, and I'll write my questions off as silly, or not worth asking. I'm careless with my curiosity, and so I don't give myself as many opportunities for empathy. These are words that are easy to throw around so much that they lose their meaning (I'm well aware of that), but Miranda July has the right idea in breaking them down into smaller pieces. Empathy starts with asking questions and really listening to the answers. It starts with a single person in a single body in a single hour. We should all begin by marveling at the little things.

Quote of the Day: Departure

Today was my last day of classes as a college freshman. No matter how many times I say that to myself it still doesn't seem real. So much of my week has been taken up by the weight of everything I have to do before I leave (turn in my last few assignments, study for finals, do laundry, pack), that I haven't had time to think about what it means. Leaving for the summer. Moving out of my dorm room. And then I discovered this quote:

"Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. Lost keys, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor. I hate it all. Even now, when I have done so much of it, when I live, as the saying goes, in my boxes. Even today, when shutting drawers and flinging wide a hotel wardrobe or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa is a methodical matter of routine, I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived. We have been happy. This has been ours, however brief the time. Two nights only have been spent beneath a roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not a hair pin on a dressing table, not an empty bottle of aspirin tablets, not a handkerchief beneath a pillow, but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood. This house sheltered us. We spoke, we loved within these walls. That was yesterday. Today we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again." - Dauphne du Maurier, Rebecca

To me, this quote captures everything I've been feeling and then some. You might think it silly to mourn leaving a place that I know I'll be returning to in three months, but live for two semesters in the confines of a dorm room, and it becomes a home. Of course that's not to say I'm not excited about my living arrangements for next year, but I've grown accustomed to the slamming of the front door to my residence hall (my room is the first door when you enter), and the view outside my window, and the random bits of paraphernalia I have pinned to my cork board. So there is a sadness in the fact that a few days from now, among the chaos that is finals week, I will also be slowly disassembling my room: getting rid of papers, cleaning out drawers, rolling up the rug that I so clearly remember picking out at Ikea last August.
There is something mutable, too, about a dorm room. There will always be the knowledge that it has been inhabited by so many college students before you, and so many more to come. Somewhere out there there are people, probably even a few on this campus, who have their own memories of my dorm room. I think that's why I love the idea of a place's ability to capture "a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood." When I leave this room, I will be leaving behind pieces of freshman year. A year of firsts, and friend-making, and movie-watching. And next year, this room will be a clean slate, its walls bare for someone else to pin their memories to.

Quote of the Day: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Over winter break I got a chance to see the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Besides confirming my dream of one day traveling to Iceland, it was also a beautiful movie to watch, and it was superbly acted by all those involved. This film is full of memorable quotes, from the funny ("You know who looks good in a beard? Dumbledore. Not you.") to the profound ("Beautiful things don't ask for attention."), and of course it's hard to overlook the "motto" of the film (And of Life Magazine): "To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the meaning of life."But the quote that struck me the most was something said in a conversation between Walter Mitty and the photographer Sean O'Connell.

They are on a mountaintop, watching a snow leopard that Sean is trying to photograph.

Walter Mitty: Are you going to take it?
Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.
Walter Mitty: Stay in it?
Sean O'Connell: Yeah. Right there. Right here.

Those few lines of dialogue hit me right in the stomach. There, sitting in the dark movie theatre, I thought of my phone nestled in my purse. I hadn't turned it off; it was still on vibrate. I could feel every e-mail, every text message I received. The same was probably true for everyone in the theatre.

I come from a family of photographers. We record everything, from Christmas and birthdays to visits to our favorite coffee shop. We once spent a good chunk of a family dinner showing my Uncle how to use Instagram. Don't get me wrong. I love taking pictures. I love documenting little moments, enhancing them with filters, and the thrill of sending them out into the world. I love film photography, too. The smell of chemicals, the feel of developer on your fingers. I love that the stakes are higher, and that it forces you to be thoughtful at every stage in the process. As a writer, I am a recordist by nature. Every moment is trapped, filtered, and congealed on the page, but words still pale in comparison to the actual experience.

That little moment in Walter Mitty made me reevaluate the way I was living my life. It reminded me that not all moments have to be recorded in order for them to be meaningful. The most powerful memories can only happen when you are fully present. Sure, I'm glad I have so many instagram photos, but there's a certain kind of comfort that comes with knowing I wasn't distracted during the experiences that meant the most to me. Things like standing on the stage at Carnegie hall, or having Thanksgiving dinner in Ireland with my family in the 7th grade. Things like that don't need to be validated by a photograph or even a poem or a short story. They just are.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is full of messages like this one. It's a movie about going into the unknown and facing your fears. It's about living life to the fullest and not letting yourself fall into the trap of dreaming but never doing. In a world where everything is vying for our attention, I think we could all learn to be a little bit more choosy about what we let ourselves get distracted by, and inevitably, what we're missing.

Afterthoughts: I don't want anyone to think that after seeing this film I suddenly gave up instagram (or facebook or youtube or one of myriad other distractions). Sean O'Connell's words (or, really, his character's words) simply inspired me to think (and write) about this subject. My goal is to find a balance between capturing moments and experiencing them.

I hope you found this post interesting, and if you have thoughts on Walter Mitty, photography, or anything discussed above, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. This post is part of a sporadic series that I started a while back, where I take a closer look at the quotes that resonate with me. You can read the first of this series, here. As always, thanks for reading!

Quote of the Day: The Page

So, I'm writing this from my phone. I'm not sure if that makes me more or less professional... Needless to say I will be thoroughly checking for typos when this is finished, and I apologize for any weird autocorrect problems.

It seems only fitting that after a short hiatus we start at the beginning again. We start with the blank page. I recently ran across this absolutely stunning quote from Annie Dillard's The Writing Life:

"Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know. The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time's scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity..."

I think writers struggle with the blank page for much the same reason we struggle with uncertainty. That's what it is, isn't it? The uncertainty of not knowing what to write, or if it will be good. The sheer terror of knowing that you are creating something from thin filaments of thought that may not hold up on their own. Everyone has felt dread like a weight in their stomach. Everyone knows what it is to be alone and unsure, staring if not into a blank whiteness, then into a blue sky or a pair of eyes that don't answer back. When I first read this quote, I thought "the page" sounded like a cruel teacher. But then, what is life if not the same thing?

But there is one crucial difference between life and the page. Between all the uncertainty and mystery they both hold, the page is permanent. That is something that life will never be, and maybe that's for the best. I love what Dillard says about ruining everything you touch but touching it anyway. Making art is the act of ruining, of marring something that was once clear and white and beautiful, and only when the ruin turns into beauty can we call it art. I used to get so frustrated when my teachers would pose the "What is art?" question, usually citing one of Duchamp's ready-mades as an example of something that was questionable. I used to think, aren't we done with this question? Haven't we figured this out by now? And what's more, if everyone's interpretation of art is different, then why bother to ask? I still think that "what is art?" is a poor question. I think we can do better than that. I think we should assess our own ideas about art and ruin, about uncertainty and permanence. We should come up with our own questions that have answers that belong only to us. And this leads me to my favorite part of the Annie Dillard quote, which is that she is asking us to choose action over uncertainty, to say yes to ruin. This is the part that I'm still working on. For some reason I've grown comfortable with the uncertainty and the doubt, and I think if I just hold out long enough it will fade to the background. And then, when I do act, I discover again how wonderful it is, and how much better it is than staring at a blank page. This is all still a work in progress, but I'm beginning to be okay with that. I'm beginning to understand that writing is work and that it doesn't always come like it is now, straight from my fingers into this tiny phone keyboard. And yeah, most of what we touch is ruined. But there's always an exception to the rule.