Embracing Awkwardness

Every once in a while, I like to sit down and watch Before Sunrise or Before Sunset with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy. There are a lot of ways to dismiss these films as "chick-flick"s or "light." And that's fair, I suppose. But, on a basic level, each film is really just a conversation between two educated and emotionally-perceptive human beings. And in that respect, I think there is something for everyone in them.

Anyway, there is a lot of wisdom in the dialogue, and sometimes I catch myself writing quotes down and referring to them again and again. One of these comes from a fortune teller reading Celine's palm in the first film. She gives Celine a piece of advice that resounds enormously with me:

"You have to resign yourself to the awkwardness of life. Only if you find peace within yourself will you find true connection with others."

There is something so profound about facing and accepting the "awkwardness of life." That, no matter how hard you try, you can not ride smoothly and cleanly through this roller coaster. I went to an extremely competive all-girls school in Los Angeles from 7th-12th grades and am now a senior at Stanford. Competition and perfection have been the driving forces behind everything I have done for the past decade. And, now that I'm poised to go out into the world with a clean profile and impeccable resume, I find myself wholly and utterly unprepared. My greatest challenges and struggle lie in simple, regular human interaction, humbling myself before others, making myself vulnerable, putting myself out there, taking chances. Interaction, I have learned (in my short experience) is messy and thrilling and shocking and hard. It is also more rewarding and enriching than any formal educational experience I've had.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, while I've spent so long working on my perfected image, the resume I'm going to put out into the world next year, its my scars, the flaws and imperfections Ive accumulated over the years, that I identify with most strongly. These are what make me interesting, a person worth knowing. And I've only come to know them through interaction and experience, putting myself out there awkwardly and blindly. And failing.

Life is awkward. And I don't think thats something we need to fight against. All of our color and our fire comes from our failures, and the best relationships come from sharing those failures with others. This summer I am embracing my failures and my flaws... wearing them as readily on my sleeve as my accomplishments and points of pride. I'm ready to know myself, and share that whole self with others.

Kurt Vonnegut

I read Breakfast of Champions when I was 15. This was an unusual usage of free-time for a 15-year-old girl. It was an action, like most at that age, motivated more by a crush I had on an older guy than any intellectual impulse.  I read it because of him. I loved it for an entirely different reason.

Vonnegut is raw and blunt and honest and hilarious and SPOT-ON. I subscribe less to his philosophy than to his delivery, the way he plays with language and words. Sentences like: "His mouth tasted like horseblanket puree" (Sirens of Titan) or "Helmholtz and Miss Wiley were behaving like pilot and co-pilot of an enormously pointless voyage through space that was expected to take forever" (also Sirens of Titan) are so on point, they send me reeling with laughter for minutes. Vonnegut's real genius, I know, is when he employs this style and these hilarious and bluntly honest metaphors on really serious topics (Slaughterhouse Five). But I admit, I care less about the serious topic than the way he conveys his thoughts. I am a person that likes to draw lines and create links between things, to draw an accurate map of reality in my mind with links and words and metaphors. And to me, he is the master of that.

Five years later and, I admit, I'm reading Vonnegut again because of a guy. Again, the guy has let me down but Vonnegut hasn't. His zinging metaphors and dark, hilarious and blunt observations are keeping me company and entertained as I settle in Denmark this first week. I love him the same way I loved Lemony Snicket (author of A Series of Unfortunate Events) growing up. Its just a hilarious, no frills, often dark approach to life that will always resonate with me. Maybe next time I'll rediscover him on my own impulse (we can hope...)