On Echo Chambers

The world is full of people who agree and disagree with you. And me. There are millions of people on both sides. But we don't like to think about the people who disagree with us, we like to think that those people are stupid and that we wouldn't bother ourselves with people like that. We like to laugh at the idea of them from afar, without engaging in their debate.

And the internet has become another place for us to surround ourselves with others of our own opinions. We follow facebook pages of political parties and comedians and scientific groups and all sorts of communities that share our ideals. So we can point and laugh at The Other and how silly they must be for their opinions. We unfriend the people who disagree with us until we are sitting in an echo chamber; screaming at people who agree with us.

Because it's nicer to say something and hear "yes! you're right! that's true!" than to hear "well actually I disagree, I don't think that makes sense". So that's what comes up in our newsfeed. People who agree with us. Our social media pages become an echo of the thoughts in our head. They make us feel comfortable and content.



After the Vegas shooting (and oh gosh, I hope when you read this the world has not reached a point where we say "which Vegas shooting?"), my newsfeed changed. I started seeing pages from pro-gun people. I started seeing arguments I'd never heard before. I started to understand why they thought they were being logical. They laughed at anti-gun people just the same. They mocked them - pointed out flaws in their logic. And of course, there are always flaws.

I wonder if Facebook made this choice. If I was some pawn in their game, trying to determine whether my viewing habits changed from this. Or if it was just a mistake in the algorithm. Too many of my friends liking and commenting on these pages that they thought showing them to me was a good idea.

I wonder if it changed the way I converse with these people. I wonder if it made me more tolerant or helped me search for compromise.

I wonder if realising the racism of so many of my friends and family members makes me more tolerant of those people. Or does it make me less tolerant?

I wonder if hearing my family discussing at the dinner table the idea that it's perfectly ok to assault someone if they assault you first will make me a more hateful person or a more accepting person.


...I just want to go back to my echo chamber. Where there is always someone who knows the answer. Where there is wisdom to defer to.

Please let me go back.

Broken Things

If I’m attracted to a woman, chances are she’s a dancer

And moves with a studied grace, owns a dog,

Struggles with some sort of eating disorder, is a smoker

Or has been raped at least once in her life

I’ve spent a lifetime telling myself this does not make me ugly

But a lover of beautiful, broken things

Be they a little dangerous, or just lonely

Needless to say, any combination and I am likely to

Fall in love, heart under heels

Which means I fall in love a lot

Such combination being as likely as they are tragic

As common as the bent and broken spokes on rainy days

Of all the blown out umbrellas, abandoned in the trash

Because they cause each other

The dancer smokes to keep from eating

Or studies and covets her dog’s sheer love of movement

Lies with him at night, and whispers

“I will die before I let anyone hurt you again”

The prize

I know,
You might roll your eyes at this,
But I'm so,
Glad that you exist.

---

So yes I feel nostalgic for that time when I was still figuring things out and making eye contact with someone could still give me butterflies and playing the game

But there is something in the contentment of coming home to the same person every day and having someone I can rely on and someone to look after and who looks after me. In coming home after a long day and having you cook me dinner. In not having to play the game anymore because I've won.
I've won the game that everyone is playing.
And you are a wonderful prize.

---

Sometimes it feels like I have everything I've ever worked for and sometimes it feels like I've failed at everything. Particularly when I break things. I hate breaking things. Maybe one day I will wake up and everything will feel ok but I think that day might be a while away. Do other people have those days? Or is it just always disappointment?

Do I blog more when I'm sad or am I just always sad?

---

And part of me is always terrified that we are going to wake up one day and realise we have grown too far apart and don't love each other any more.
Us, the fairytale couple.
The party pie and the sausage roll
The scientist and the engineer
The logician and the dreamer
The selfless and the selfish
The brain and the brawn
The yin and the yang

Us who compliment each other in every way.
Will stop being us.

And we will be left with nothing. Because all we have is each other, and all we want is each other and all we know is each other. And we will be stuck knowing and wanting and having nothing.

I don't want to be that empty.

Happiness is a destination, not a journey

I'm exactly where I was a year ago and it's still just as hard. It's stressful, putting this much pressure on myself. I know that this is why I chose this job, I work so well under stress and pressure, I want a job that I can devote everything to and see something in return and I definitely have that, I'm just not quite at the point I need to be at yet that will actually make this all feel ok. People keep telling me not to take on so many things and responsibilities and stresses and I smile at them and tell them I'm ok and sometimes I even believe it.

But I am happy. I'm stressed but I'm happy. I don't feel sad anymore. I didn't know that the day could come where I could be happy. I don't even remember what sad feels like and that is a major achievement for me. I've spent some time culling my life of all the things that brought me down and trying to keep the things I like. I've gotten rid of some toxic people and I've brought in some plants and teddy bears and books. So many books.

I love to read, I've always loved to read, and now I work at a place that has a library and I can just have books all the time without having to really go out of my way or like, pay for them. Libraries are miracles! Books let me have all the experiences that I don't actually want to experience. Maybe that's why I still like teen fiction so much, because I haven't had all the teen experiences yet and I feel like I need to before I move on. Maybe I'm just super immature.

I still sometimes second guess my choices. I suppose I've made the choice to forego a lot of experiences, in exchange for a number of other experiences. And I suppose that's ok. But I've always been the girl who loves options and suddenly I don't have the options anymore. I've chosen. I've never made such concrete choices before.

But here I am with a mortgage and an impending marriage and a permanent job that I can keep for the rest of my working life and it seems like things are really set in stone. I've made concrete choices. Which is fine, it's fine, I'm happy. This is happy.

Seriously, this is why I struggle so much to discipline students, I'm just so goddamn cheerful.