Onism - n. the awareness of how little of the world you’ll experience

Not to be confused with Ownism, which is an entirely different awareness involving the inability to ever cross ethnicities, gross over 300 mill like American Sniper, get a really drawn out intro anytime you enter a room and always have an answer.

http://www.purewow.com/travel/10-of-the-Most-Colorful-Places-On-Earth?utm_source=synd&utm_medium=HUFFPOCOLOR&utm_campaign=FEB15
There's a bubblegum colored lake in Senegal and a gay pride tulip field in Holland?!

3 Things I've Realized:

Sometimes you’ll never know the answer, and that’s alright.

I’m sitting at our tiny kitchen table drinking orange juice and looking up at my mom, watching as she leans against the kitchen sink twisting her wedding ring around her finger and wondering what thought she has spinning through her head.

I have so many memories like this, stories and images I’ve clung to and searched to find the meaning in years later. What good is that though? There are definite aha moments when a situation you could never make sense of suddenly becomes clear some time later. It’s usually completely out of the blue, and you end up feeling incredibly foolish, or maybe that realization ends with you high-fiving yourself--either way, it’s a load off. But then there are those pesky parenthetically thought through situations you’re constantly toying around with, unable to ever find that perfect fit. You can’t overanalyze when you haven’t given yourself any real solid ground to grow from, it just doesn’t work. Any meaning you make is just that, made up. You have to remember that. You’re stuck in this limbo until you do of guessing and gun jumping and getting absolutely nowhere.

"Do you ever see people running incredibly fast and wonder if they're running to something or away from something? The answer is always both."

Go for a run; it’s far better than sitting still.

Make your own mayhem; stealing someone else’s is plagiarism

“And true it’s quite a trick to tell the dancers from the dance.”

It’s easy to get caught up in chaos, to let what surrounds you become your reality, as opposed to picking the positives and otherwise disengaging. In talking to the moms I’ve nannied or babysat for over the years, this is one fundamental they’ve mastered that I’m still struggling to grasp. I guess with so many voices screaming in either ear, you become this finely tuned filter, able to instantly address or dismiss, but never let linger. We all have our own shit—peanut butter allergies, overdue rent checks and library books, fish we forgot to feed...and then you think about your mom, or your best friend, or your dog, and the daily annoyances and frustrations those lives incur, and adding those to yours just sounds insane. Yet, we let ourselves do it anyway. We get stuck in someone else’s dance, trying to watch their feet while we watch our own, making sure they all fall in the right places at the right times. I think life’s all about finding rhythms in relationships, that you learn how much or how little to take in and give back. I don’t think it’s an effortless process, but I do think it’s an essential one to have happen at some point. It probably requires a lot of meditating and caffeine cutting which already sounds like a drag.

And that's all there is, there isn't any more.

So I don’t know where it came from, but whenever my sisters and I have no response for our behavior, we say, “I do what I want...like a rockstar!” And somehow that’s sound reasoning for stealing your expertly crafted grilled cheese or ruining the end to Harry Potter. Really it’s just our way of saying--this isn’t me, this is some exception, so we can laugh about it later.

Aside from siblings, I think it’s rare to be stuck with someone for so long you see almost all there is to them. Having had 26 solidly sister-filled years, it’s fair to say that those are the relationships I (and they, I’d assume) know best. Outside of that is where it gets a little murkier; how can you truly know someone when we all have these sides with varying shades seemingly beyond comprehension? The answer is that you probably can’t, but you can be an expert on any of the relationships you share. You can learn dynamics, what traits or selves you feel surface when surrounded by certain personality types.

What’s in all of us, what we give off, is greatly due to who we’re with and how they are responding to us. We’re instinctively adjusting our actions, taking precautions, resetting out boundaries, talking in codes we’ve created without even realizing it. We all do this. It’s not that we’re these sensitive tightrope-walking type of conversationalists, but we’re all at least a little aware. I’ve found some people are aware of only themselves, some are only aware of others, and few are aware of both.

"I watch the world spin by every day and it's filled with curiosity,
All of these people looking for someone to notice a world they see"

I think that we are like stars. Something happens to burst us open; but when we burst open and think we are dying; we’re actually turning into a supernova.

And then when we look at ourselves again, we see that we’re suddenly more beautiful than we ever were before. 

                                             - C. Joybell C.

            "Emily, you think too much."

                                             "I think you're right."

Why Won’t You Listen?

So, for starters, I suck at stories, not really news to anyone I’m sure. I can’t tell them, I can’t retain them, I can’t dip them in yogurt and cover them with chocolate buttons the way Leah can. Out of all my impossibilities, this one bums me out the most, well, with whistling a close second.

There’s the clear problem of telling long-winded stories that go nowhere, but I think how I hear them is where I struggle the most. The reason for why a story was told always gets lost in translation; I sort of skip past the plot and just listen and watch the way someone says it. I have a small group of close friends, but they’ll all tell you how little they sometimes feel I actually know about them. They’re constantly repeating themselves, filling in fragmented stories with a sigh and saying, “Emily, I told you”. I get the frustration, I sort of wish we could all pick and choose how we process people. Then someone could write a handy dandy how-to book, and we could have book clubs where we all sit around and discuss our impeccable people skills over old fashioneds and icebox cookies...That sounds like a date I just went on.

Maybe there is no “right way,” but there’s definitely a right time for a specific way, which is when you’re still strangers. People want you to be attentive, to remember knitty-gritty details you can impress them by bringing back later. You have to prove you have some kind of character, that there’s care at your core and the basic knowledge of how you can express that in a pretty universal way. So, recalling some song you both like or the name of a preschool boyfriend is sweet. Telling someone you remember the one thought it took to get her gaze up from off the floor, or how he bit his bottom lip to keep from cracking a smile at something you said is less impressive. And there you go, I just made you an instant easy friend...or lost you one, sorry. 

I think most people write me off as spacey or absent-minded, it's like this switch you see go off when you sit with someone long enough, "Oh, you're one of those." But if I saw it, shouldn't that mean something? The ways we search for substance can be so obscure, yet we find ourselves disappointed when people do it differently. It frustrates me though that the norm is this nearsighted way of seeing any situation, that you’re an outright oddball if you look at it from any other angle. All of these nonsensical how to be human expectations are just completely wasted on me, also, I hate them.

It’s weird to think that I can be aware of other people in such a specific way, but in that same sense completely oblivious of myself. Especially when I’m just meeting you, having those first conversations usually about other friends and family, work, hobbies, etc. I know I give you really little to go on. It's because I can’t let go of thinking about you yet to focus on what will make me real in your eyes. I also just don’t really give a fuck, my game of getting to know you can be a little one sided that way.

Ideally, I’d love to live in the moment and let there be this perfect back and forth balance where everything’s fair and we both win...it just doesn’t happen. I have a setlist of stories I spew out that I at some point deemed adequate in defining what matters most to me. I find myself power talking my way through, skipping stops and only taking the turns I know I need to hit for it to make any kind of sense. Emotionless and to the point...some of the greatest stories I’ve said.

At least this goes away over time; I get a good idea of you and then ease off a little. I guess generally the more I like someone, the longer it takes. With my closest friends, I’m still learning more about them in any interaction we have, and I love that. It’s crazy to think how complex people can be, how understanding someone entirely is always out of reach. You just have to search to find the ones you keep coming back to, where your curiosity doesn't cut short.

One of my friends said, “I hate people in general, I love people in specific.” I can’t really think of a better way to put it. The world's full of specifics, some I know, others I have yet to meet, but they all have the potential to excite, challenge, and surprise me in ways I could never predict. If life ever gets you down, think this, think of people and possibilities, of everything you were ever unsure about just falling into place when you shake someone's hand.

free to be you & me

What I have to Offer from Eliot Rausch on Vimeo.

What I have to offer is me. 

What you have to offer is you.

Love, Empathetic Emily

So I just had this really unexpectedly beautiful moment with a guy from my improv class. It was our last class, and the teacher decided to go around and give everyone a personal shoutout. He got to me and started saying things like, "You're chockfull of kickass creativity, I just want to publish you. I wish your scenes could go on and on, that you could get all your ideas out and developed...(Too bad you can't)." So, rocking around my pessimistic brain was some disjointed stream of thoughts that looked something like this--

You're using your creativity as a crutch...
Stop.
Lock eyeballs.
Drop it.
Hobble your way over and lean on someone else's.
Why aren't you moving?
This isn't the place Palmer.
This isn't your place...

I had to me grit my teeth to keep my blood from boiling over and projectiling out all over his pretty little baby face. 

*Cutting back to beautiful moments.*

The class ends, and we’re all walking to the subway, sort of breaking apart into smaller groups as we go. I end up with this guy that until then, I’d had very little interaction with, not sure why. But, he comes up to me and very flat outly says--I see you, and this is what you are, and this is how you need to see it.

You know those out of body conversations when you feel like you’re an alternate in some mind-bending play? It was that. Specifically the part when you realize shit's just getting real, but you have to pee like a racehorse! I gritted my teeth again, told myself to focus, and tuned back in. He started talking about the French complicité, which is a fancy term for showing up and committing. Recognize what it is that makes an instance precious and do all you can to hold on to that as tightly and as fearlessly as possible.

Firstly, you have to know that it's a dynamic, not a bounce back and forth but that spark somewhere in the middle. It’s not your version of it, or hers, or his, or hers of his; it’s one entity that requires a specific kind of connection with the trust and patience to forget your terms, to let go of having to relate, to not spin it or refocus it, but to just be in it. It’s about so much more than teamworking it to the top, but both spotting that something amazing is happening and knowing your why’s match without having to ask. 

I love working in groups, I always have. But it’s always been, what do I bring, or what am I getting? It’s never just, what will we be? There’s something so special about just being, about synching in a way that in itself, plot/character/zaniness aside, is precious. So thanks, Crazy Kyle, for putting a yes and on a shitty day and turning it into something pretty unforgettable.

"I don't know Who--or what--put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone--or Something--and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal."

                                    -Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings