Writing 101, Writers 1-1

Focused and determined to work, I came to Starbucks. Before I even got my coffee and got set up, I was caught off guard by a post on facebook, which led me to a blogger whose blog posts gave me support and comfort. It opened up my heart and put me at the cliff of an open world with my arms wide open, where I can feel myself being powerful, smiling courageously, and embracing what may come. 

I don’t know what I feel about this post and the blogger analytically. But I am happy she exists, and is writing. And these are the two paragraphs that stood out to me:

“..Do not give up as God never gives up on you – Just let potential suitors who are not worthy of your hand in marriage drift away. Say that is OK and let them go. Know you will have to kiss a few frogs to find your prince or princess. But once you do you will not even remember those scoundrels.

Praying for specific people only works once there is a connection already, a spiritual connection. If you are alone keep it general. Do not get involved with people who are not idealistic. It will set you back. Screen for ideals early on. Ask probative questions about ideals, vision and values. Do not go out with people who believe in divorce or are nihilistic or cynical about the Absolute…”

“…One last metaphor about finding love

Imagine you are entrapped in a castle of ice. You need to start to chip away at the walls and find your way out. On the other side is your prince or princesses waiting in a beautiful green meadow to ride away with you. However, the way out is for you to do the work, that is prayer. Use spiritual weapons to break though these walls. The will come down once you follow my advice. Once you have the vision, pray your way out.”

-http://claritaslux.com/girls/pray-for-love/

Embracing the moment got me to finally break my blogging lull and dull. Toasting to blogging, girl power, courage, idealism, love, prayer, and heart-felt and life-lived advice! Thank you, Facebook, Internet, thank you, Universe.

Daughter of the Lion-Hearted

I want to partake in the rhythm today as the rain pours down. It has been a long time since I wrote, and it was probably a long time coming. I’m blessed to have a door with a porch screen that allows me to smell the rain from a quaint quiet apartment, while the red brick walls outside and the trees with wet green leaves egg me on to write and pour my heart out. I miss my dad. That’s all that this post is about…

I avoid thinking about it, but my dad will always be missing from my life in some way, and as I go on living, this realization becomes stronger and stronger instead of fading away. His smile becomes more and more like the part of a picture, never to be seen in person again. On the one hand, I am so proud of his love for me, love that has never let me down, and never will. I think of him probably every day, and I hope that he looks down at me, and knows who I am finally. I hope he is proud of the woman he has helped me become and continues to give me courage to be.

Of course he would also see my mistakes and wish I had not made them, but I hope he realizes that the courage his love and wisdom gave me are some of my most important tools in learning and growing from mistakes and living life. My dad was a fighter, he was a cutie, he was honest, and he loved me so much. He believed in being unconditionally good to people, and he mostly tried to be as well. He used to make people laugh, he was the life of most parties in a super witty way. What’s amazing though is that my dad always saw me, and always knew me. He knew my strengths and my weaknesses. He was wise. He never ever had to tell me how much he loved me and how he believed in me, it always oozed out of him. Even today, I know he knows, I know he loves me, and is doing his best to take care of me. He’s a fighter, and I know he’s fighting for me.

I imagine him using all his wisdom and entrepreneurial skills up wherever he is to make way for me, make paths for me. I imagine him using his best judgment for me, for my heart and for my soul. I imagine him worried about me, but smiling like crazy each time I take care of myself. He used to cut fruit into little pieces and bring them to me while I studied, and now he managed to get me addicted to eating two fruits a day because of my health obsession.

He thought I was so fun and funny – could never resist my daughterly tricks and charms to make him laugh even if I could be annoying. I do hope my dad still has my back, because honestly, I can’t imagine him having it any other way. Each time I think of my dad, only two things overwhelmingly represent him- a deep heart and a loving smile.

Tear down the walls

I'm proctoring an exam in an auditorium like classroom with the same brick walls, gator jerseys, and blue chairs,  I used to sit in to take exams as an undergrad. Now I'm at the front of the classroom again, not because I want to pay close attention to the teacher, but because I want to pay close attention to the students. I walk around looking for signs of cheating and cheaters. I see a huddled group of friends that perhaps studied together and are now just sitting close for moral support, but this loving group of friends is often more likely to collaborate and help each other: they are usually picked up in my first scan for cheaters. I remember sitting in classes with my best friend throughout my life, hoping that we both do well. Looking at a question, knowing which answers we discussed in a study group as friends and which ones we were all going to discuss after the exam as the ones we should have discussed before. It's bitter sweet being here, being on the other side of this imaginary transition-marking wall. Of course, there is a sense of accomplishment, a the sweetness and joy of experience, but there's also a tinge of nostalgia. The kind that makes you miss your friends, your younger life. But the satisfaction of having lived and conquered is elevating. There is also a reminder that there are other walls and other sides to cross over eventually. Until then, it is so crucial to make amazing use of the side I am on right now. I take this moment to feel the here and now, because some day,  from another angle, I'll look at this then old spot and hopefully have a deep sense of connection and understanding of the world and the several phases we all pass through. If there's such a thing as a calling, mine is to be a teacher, or to simply pass on what I know.  I'd want to help lay the bridge that helps someone else cross over, obviating boundaries and constraints, potentially into limitlessness...

You can quote me later!

I remember that some two years ago I was doing the regular shower time thinking, and kept hoping that there would come an answer as to how to incentivize truth telling - because people just were not doing it enough! So, I was thinking of how to create such an environment. I did not know then that there are economists that have theorized on creating such self-enforcements.

I also remember a friend once saying, "I like to have my space to be able to lie." I thought that was a cop-out justification for lying because I felt that this particular person did not even make enough of an attempt to tell the truth. Small opinion of mine. Moving on. I knew that that sentence stood out to me because there was something deep embedded in it.

Back to economists creating these systems to self-enforce truth-telling. An enforcement is being designed by someone other than the self, still. And perhaps always. 

I'd like to patent my next realization today by self-quoting:

"As much as I love Truth, if I was ever forced to tell the Truth, I'd most certainly lie."

I guess there is something that runs through human veins deeper than Truth - Free Will. "Choice" is a super underrated word in my humble opinion. I think it is written in some book that the Truth will make you free - but I'd add my little tid bit: only if we are also free to lie.

No one quite says it like Carrie

The Optimist Economist

I’m just going to do a quick run through of some definitions and some rooting back of words. Economics has been defined as “the allocation of scarce resources” for as long as I can remember.

I looked it up recently because as economic graduate students, my classmates and I are always talking about optimization. Some of us really do enjoy talking about how to optimize every decision we take in our routine life. I hear so much about optimization, yet I was shocked that my program was filled with few optimistic thoughts. Optimization is the maximization of the benefit desired, given some constraints. However, to my surprise, people in Economics seem to focus more on counting constraints instead of the optimization.

I have often been disheartened when the world places unnecessary constraints on themselves and on others – even if these constraints exist only mentally. I think they affect our decision-making process, and our ability to truly make the best of our situations, because I think our situations may often be better than we realize.
 
It is especially heart-breaking to see economists place these limits. It is as though the resources themselves have been made scarce. Allocation of these “scarce” resources can hardly be considered maximization without a proper evaluation of the constraints. Constraints must be exogenous of nature, not chosen (at least not in terms of quantity).

When I was growing up, I thought of myself as an optimist. I set out in the world to discover myself, and I landed up really connecting to the field of economics. My graduate studies brought me closer to the realization that this is exactly what I am supposed to study – this is what has always been natural to me – to make the best of the little (or a lot) that I have. When I’m viewed as too idealistic or too optimistic by my peers, it is a bit discouraging, but I don’t let that become a constraint – and this is part of my optimization as an economist. I chose my advisor because he's the type of person who would subtly point out to my classmate that the research question is not posing a "problem", but posing the "next step".

Economists will know what I mean when they are reminded of the etymology of the term, “optimism”: 1759 (in translations of Voltaire), from French optimisme (1737), from Modern Latin optimum, used by Gottfried Leibniz (in "Théodicée," 1710) to mean "the greatest good," from Latin optimus "the best". The doctrine holds that the actual world is the "best of all possible worlds," in which the creator accomplishes the most good at the cost of the least evil. Sound a bit like Pareto?

A true economist must be an optimist! And apparently a great household manager! The etymology of "economist": 1580s, "household manager," from Middle French économiste; meaning "student of political economy" is from 1804;1580s, "art of managing a household," perhaps from French économique.

References: Dictionary.com and Etymology.com

Life Lessons Keepsake in Quirk Code

Well, hello my darling blog. I miss writing to you, with you. I wonder what would happen one day when you are gone. If the internet disappears, and I lose you. I have so much invested. I have the strength to be myself because I have you. Thank you, Freedom. It’s funny how people always debate free-will and destiny. Both coexist and both are amazing. Truth. What a funny thought sometimes. I miss Ahab.

Gatsby Got Greater

Gatsby Got Greater (alliteration?) I thought about this phrase right outside my house while parking the car. I wanted to hold on to it, just like I often want to hold on to the potential titles of my never written never posted blog posts, in moments of small and large epiphanies such as this one. I needed to get inside my room, in that perfect dim light, which people often wonder why I created: for moments like these! I mostly know myself and what drives and motivates me. I understand myself, not in logic, but in emotion. Yet, I am not sure that people speak emotion anymore, but I attempt to articulate nonetheless.

I knew I wanted to get to my laptop soon, so that I could stay in the movie, and think out-write my realizations. I want to now run my thoughts in slow motion while I type as fast as I can to capture it all. Nick Carraway was the protagonist of the book, not the Great Gatsby. I was told this in my class.

I was in 11^th grade then. I wondered how it could be that I had read a whole book, and I could not know that the book was about Nick – how could I have missed that? And why wasn’t it mind boggling to the rest of us? Did those discussions from class matter to others as much as they did to me? Do the people in the movie theater see what I understood?  My drive back from the theater was like when you wake up from a dream, and want to hold on to every possible thought, yet it is impossible to keep it intact the way you truly dreamt it, if you dreamt it at all.

Nick starts the book, as I remember being highlighted in my class when I was 16, on judging – how he makes for a great narrator because he is not inclined to judging and making judgments. He often mentions that he was "again within and without", living and observing at the same time. Nevertheless, in the whole book, and in the whole movie, he never speaks or truly gives opinions. The billboard of God-like watching eyes symbolize his quiet watching. And I just connected what stood out to me during the movie; Gatsby mentions that he kissed Daisy and waited…waited because he knew he could not be God anymore…he could not because he had to live and love, love this girl, and forget the neutrality that can only be retained as an observer. Towards the end, Nick could also not resist but make judgments and have opinions and passionately lash out when he was appalled at the world around him – when he was disgusted. 

This is why Nick was the protagonist, and not Gatsby, my English teacher had mentioned. Nick was dynamic, Gatsby was static. It stood out to me then as a definition – but I dwelled on it over the years to understand it as I often do. It connects perfectly with the changing world, with the first law of life, and the only constant being change – that is life. A character is not living and it is not his own story unless he hits a conflict and comes out with a resolution or personal growth. Gatsby got Nick to live, by just being him. Nick gives Gatsby the only compliment – “..they’re all rotten..all of those people are rotten…you’re worth the whole bunch..” The friend I watched the movie with could not understand how I remembered the class and the discussions so distinctly. That class either ruined me or was one of the best things that happened to me- it got me to connect and articulate the deep, it got me to think.

I always knew Math and English were my favorite subjects, and I always get excited when there are a few people that tell me these two are their favorite subjects. I think I can take a stab at the seemingly odd connection between the two. I recently discovered on my journey that emotion and thought are two completely different things - that one cannot directly impact the other without the larger forces of Time and Life at work. I knew I loved Math because it was the language of logic. Why English? Why Language? Why Literature? The language of emotion, I think..

F. Scott Fitzgerald gave the world such profundity, and such deep connection to a wandering soul like mine. Jordan mentions at Gatsby’s party how she "loves large parties because of how intimate they are, and that small parties don’t allow any privacy". I loved that bit. He knew people had come to accept their alone as their private comfort zone – no matter good or bad. Nick Carraway saw in Gatsby the man who had the smile that made people feel understood like everyone wants to be. I want to be understood. I have said it all along – why doesn’t anyone else say it with me? Why does Fitzgerald clearly claim it as a basic human necessity yet no human admits it? It amazes me – these books with knowledge with so many lessons of humanity to offer. I cry for people to connect and see similarities; I never wanted to accept those lines that keep us separate. Why should we not relate to each other and not connect? I smile when my gym bag tells me “you belong.” Someone recognizes my need as a need of many of its consumers- as a fundamental human need; and knows the simple comforting phrase a friend would know to say.

Gatsby got killed, but the life to be saved was Nick’s.  And despite this crazy idealistic hopeful man’s death, he gave life to someone else. His strong heart, and Fitzgerald’s recognition of it. This post is dedicated to strong hearts, hope, and simple friendship like Nick and Gatsby’s - the kind of heart the crocodile’s wife would want to steal – the sweetest in all land – the monkey heart. And the awe and wonder of the book, literature, movie, the 3D effects, the life – and the ability to know exactly what phone call you want to make as soon as the movie ends. As I saw Gatsby's world and era glitter on the big screen and reconnected with him, Gatsby got greater - Cheers!