There are many important things that I've learned this past year. 2008 has been a long, good, hard year. It's been a year that has held many lessons for my little self, but there's one thing that stands out to me.
However, I guess I'd have to preempt that one thing with something else I've been brewing for a longer time. I think that there are three ways to "know" something. Maybe more, I don't know yet (no pun intended). But I have to say that Greek, Latin, and all the Latin based languages, also known as the Romance Languages begin express this notion more adequately than English. In all of these languages there are two different verbs for our one: "to know". I'll use Italian to illustrate.
There's one verb that connotes the knowledge of a fact: "sapere". And there's another that connotes the familiarization with a person, place, thing, or idea: "conocere". And it's funny because all of these said languages seem to break our single (and, in my opinion, inadequately ambiguous) verb down into these same two categories. But I've learned that, in my life, there's one more category. It involves the idea part.
There's a difference, I think, between knowing an idea in your head (sapere) and "knowing" and understanding something in your heart in such a manner that it works itself out kinesthetically into your life and actions. Like, something that starts with sapere and transforms into something beyond conoscere. And a lot of times, this tertiary kind of knowledge materializes only with raw experience. Most of the time, actually you can't bridge this gap between knowledge and understanding without such experience. The best words that we have for this transformation of knowledge is perhaps "understanding". And then action upon this turns eventually into "compassion".
This, obviously does not apply to every last fact in life. Like, the Periodic Table for example. But it does work for the more ambivalent ideas in life, I think.
This whole principle is kind of like a caterpillar. It starts out as knowledge of a fact, a bug; it turns into an understanding of the idea via experience with it, a chrysalis; and it can then metamorph into something amazing and uniquely beautiful if nutured and encouraged, eventually compassion. Compassion comes out into your life looking like myriad virtues, foremost probably being kindness. This is the ultimate goal.
Then there's the Chrysalis Condition. When someone realizes something, but never does anything about it. It just lingers somewhere between sapere and a foggy understanding. Or even worse, somewhere between understanding and compassion. This is an awful intellectual stagnance. May it be eradicated in our lives and society. But then, there are also those people that are seeming born with internal butterflies fluttering everywhere. The ones that ooze innate and awe inspiring compassion with no effort at all. Those people are gifted, I think. I want to learn from them, and may our lives and society be more full of them.
This year, the most formative and impacting thing I learned belongs to this third category. The butterfly category. I did not really obtain new knowledge (sapere) about this thing. In other things, certainly, but in this, I rather gained the necessary experience, because I'd always inarticulately known it in my head. I'm now at the chrysalis stage aiming for a metamorphosis.
So, this is it. What I've learned this year:
You can't just treat people the way you want to be treated. The Golden Rule has another clause. It goes something like this,
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Which means behave toward them the way they want and/or need (which is not always the same thing) you to because of course you wish that they'd do that for you."
I just think that the second part doesn't fit on a keychain too well, so "they" just shortened it. You know, the proverbial "they" on which all things negative tend to get blamed. Poor they.
I've concluded that a part of growing up isn't just realizing and learning about who you are. It's also about learning how everybody else isn't. And learning where your strengths and weaknesses are in that whole web and scheme of things. And then. And then learning how to negotiate that. This is the Golden Rule part. The whole thing, not just the section that people quote.
I'm a "thinking" person. I've found that out about myself this year. I make decisions based on logic. There are many types of people in the world (duh) but many of them can be put into two camps: the ones who make decisions based on logic, the Thinkers, and those who approach those same decisions from the direction of how it makes everyone feel. The Feelers. I belong to the former.
I'm a "Thinker", and I've realized that this comes from personality and my family. As a result, I have good ideals, and morals for the most part. And I've always had wonderful ideas/ideals on the way people should be treated, but there was a breakdown in communication somewhere between my ideals and how it all worked out in my life. I've discovered that I'm not a kind person. I'm not unkind at the core, at all, just on the exterior. I've learned poorly how to express my existant ideals. I think. It's mostly when I talk. The things I say are not always bad, it's often how I say them. Most of you that know me, also know this, I'd venture to say.
Now that I know this, I'm not going to be this way...someday. I, of course, cannot build this figurative Rome in a day, but I want to spend this coming year and the ones following laying the bricks.
I have to give credit to some people this year, too. I have definitely not come to this realization on my own. It's taken some freaking patient and loving people in my life all being on the same page about this to get through to me. I want to thank them. Kristen, for identifying this professionally, and being pretty much the first to articulate it to me. Casey, for the conversation we had at Panera in West Palm, you told me what I needed to hear, in a really loving way--thank you. Rachael, you were on the same page as everyone else, and you also let me know, thank you, too. Sam, we've had this conversation before, thanks to you too. Amanda, you're so patient with me, I love you. Shelli, being a mirror sometimes, and an identifier, too. Abby, for being encouraging, and pointing out the good when I needed that as well. And Jami, for just thinking I'm great when I'm really not. And truly, Karissa. It's been with and through you that I've gotten here. That we've gotten here, really. I love you so much. Thanks for not just letting me be, but for helping me be better. Thanks for making it through 6 weeks in a car with me. And for not giving up, all of you.
So, I'm now beginning to take this stuff and make it work in my life. This is the exciting part. Hard, but exciting. I think the most humbling part was just realizing that I didn't "get it" before like I thought I did. I've got a lot of relearning to do. But it's just as good as it is hard. That's just one beauty of it.
So, experience from this year has annhilated the inertia of the "head" and "fact" knowledge I had about the subject (once again, sapere) and nudged--or violently shoved it--into its subsequent lifelong journey in kinesthesis. It was a rough summer on the train, I began to get stripped down to the core out there on the rail (or at least it felt like it). And then Karissa helped me sort it all out (she didn't know it most of the time) on our epic trip around the US this Fall. Then we got back and I've been further working it through. And all this is what I've learned and where I've arrived this year.
And can I just reiterate something? I've discovered that a part of growing up isn't just realizing and learning about who you are. It's also about learning how everybody else isn't. And learning where your strengths and weaknesses are in that whole web and scheme of things. And then learning how to negotiate that. And aiming for butterflies and not bugs or weird chrysalises. And yes, that is the plural of the word. I looked it up. :-)
Therefore, with that said, here we go. 2009...
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