Poetry

Byegones

by Marina Keegan

I had a dream the other night that I was checking my email.

That dream sucks.

And woke to woes of seniors writing

Love songs for tomorrow and

Tomorrow and the melodies

That flirt us forward, whispering

The next thing and the next thing

And – so we beat on

Birds flocking south until we

Circle round and realize maybe

Maybe all that running wasn’t worth it.

Maybe we should build a cabin.

Or teach high school.

Or use our hands.

My palms are smooth as words –

Weak with fashion and double spaces.

I want everyone else’s club and job and class.

The grass I sleep in always browner than

Than that around erasing dreams

To sit and breathe because you

Only bank for two years then it's over

And twenty two is nothing new

It’s just another chance to build

For when we’re twenty three

And twenty four

And time begins to sell for more than

Any 9 a.m. to never.

We’re not stuck.

That's the thing, we're not stuck. 

We owe no one our nothings.

Yale will be what it was,

Gothic dreams of lucky, of amazing 

Not a staircase or corner office contract.

At home, I walk in forest fields,

Orange light and dry trees,

Becoming slowly sleepy,

And disgusted with my vintage shoes

And the thinness of my skinny pants,

My florals laughed at by the flowers,

whispering, "hip." Whispering, "there’s no sidewalk that cares."

But let me tell you, I look cool at parties

And success sufficient to make men fall in love

As we smoke again and open wines

And text to leave because the here is never

Good and "I heard that thing on Chapel was fun, well do you wanna leave soon?"

"Who’s there"

"Do you wanna leave soon?"

I want to bake my blackberry into blackberry pancakes

And live wire-less

With a husband who runs in the mornings

And lots of books

And a baby who I raise…

To be anything – or nothing

Because that’s okay too.

Because working in a bookstore and having babies

And nothing and being in love is okay too.

Ambition is a choice.

Ambition is a race we chose to run

So we could get here so we could

I don’t know so we could save poor

People or invent something or be in charge.

Last winter I slept in word counts

Face pressed to table tops until the

Snow came and the sun rose

And a man came in to vacuum the floor.

And I’d be tired.

Not just sleepy, but tired.

Tired until all I wanted to do was put on something

Acoustic and romantic and vacuum castle floors.

Why do I feel like I can’t do that?

I’m not sure anymore if I want

To schedule meals and be late

And delegate because that’s what

Good leaders do.

And I’m tired of justifying with tomorrow’s bliss, because

Yesterday’s tomorrow is today and

Someday the sun is going to die

And then the human race will end and

I’ll still be texting to see if that other party’s better.

"Do you wanna leave soon?"

No, I want enough time to be in love

with everything.

We’re too smart to sell our time

For cocktail moments of

"This is what I’ve done,"

And summers lost for

Three lines on a document

That can’t contain the time

We got high on pancakes

And built a snow fort.

We’re not that young.

We’ve always been young

But now we’re not that young.

And the world is so beautiful.

And this is what we’ve got, you know? This is what we’ve got and we’ll just keep flirting forward,
shrinking fonts and grays in love songs to future companies who may decide they want us on their team.

The middle of the universe is here, is tonight,

And everything behind is a sunk cost

Lost in our oceans and our oceans are deep.

So I went to Yale.

So I got good grades.

So we beat on

Birds flocking south until we

Circle round and realize maybe

Maybe all that running wasn’t worth it.

Or the snow comes, and the sun rises, and the vacuum starts,

And I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short.

4 Sentences on Feminism

Modern day feminists treat men and women more as though they are the same than as though they are different, but equal.

"Feminists" hurt women by denying the importance of women's unique ability to produce and care for children, and lifting up women who destroy this power through abortion.

"Feminists" devalue men by insisting that men's abilities are never greater than women's and demanding equal wages, regardless of job performance.

"Feminists" shift the blame to men and dilute real discussion of issues by carelessly throwing out the "sexist" label.

Realization

Until the last year, my ambition was to attend the University of Nebraska and study nursing. That way, I could get a full scholarship, ace a public university's easy classes, sit in the student section at Husker football games, see a lot of my high school friends, and be able to go out and have fun in a city I know well instead of just studying. These were my reasons to attend UNL.

The only other college on my radar was Hillsdale (where my sister attends), a very intellectual liberal arts school that is one of the most difficult colleges in the nation. I had dismissed Hillsdale in my mind, telling myself this was because it was too far away and wasn't a good college to study science anyway, but my real reason had been that I didn't think it was fun enough.

My realization came in July when I took part in a girls' Bible study on Ruth. One week, the question was posed: did Ruth really want to stay with Naomi? The leader of our study made the point that the biggest decisions we ourselves make often reveal our deepest desires. Perhaps Ruth didn't want to stay with Naomi–who, in her situation, really would? But more than to please herself, Ruth desired to do what was best for Naomi (even though Naomi told her to go) and what was best for herself (not the same as what she might have liked).

I pondered this and eventually came to the conclusion that my reasons for wanting to attend UNL were all wrong. Don't get me wrong–there are good reasons to attend the University of Nebraska, but mine were not good. I began thinking about college entirely differently, asking questions like: what is best for me as a person? what college will benefit my future life the most?

I came to the conclusion that Hillsdale is what is best for me. I need to be challenged, taken out of my comfort zone, and educated on what it means to be human instead of simply what I have to know to get the right job. Hillsdale has an excellent community of students–the kind with whom I want to engage and make lifelong friendships.

If the price of my college education is five figures, whether I, my family, or a scholarship pays for it, I'd be a terrible steward to make my college decision based on fun. Instead, I decided to follow Ruth's example and do what will truly be good for me as a person.

Why Smart ≠ Popular: Thoughts From a Harvard Grad

". . . if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really want to be popular.

If someone had told me that at the time, I would have laughed at him. . . . Telling me that I didn't want to be popular would have seemed like telling someone dying of thirst in a desert that he didn't want a glass of water. Of course I wanted to be popular.

But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things.

. . . If someone had offered me the chance to be the most popular kid in school, but only at the price of being of average intelligence (humor me here), I wouldn't have taken it.

Much as they suffer from their unpopularity, I don't think many nerds would. To them the thought of average intelligence is unbearable. But most kids would take that deal. For half of them, it would be a step up. Even for someone in the eightieth percentile (assuming, as everyone seemed to then, that intelligence is a scalar), who wouldn't drop thirty points in exchange for being loved and admired by everyone?

And that, I think, is the root of the problem. Nerds serve two masters. They want to be popular, certainly, but they want even more to be smart. And popularity is not something you can do in your spare time . . . ."

-Paul Graham, "Why Nerds Are Unpopular"

You can read his full article here.

Conditional Love

People seem think shy people have a problem. Apparently, introverts just need to, "get over themselves," because, of course, extroversion is the preferable trait. I, myself, am sort of halfway in between, so I can relate to both sides, but these ideas about shy people really bother me. 

Those who know me well know I can be very shy at times or very lively and social at other times. Shyness can come across as disapproving, but I'm not shy because I dislike people. I'm shy because I'm afraid. I can work to overcome fear, but I can't take away what I'm afraid of. Now, I'm not afraid of vulnerability—rather, that which often come with it: rejection. See, I love getting to know people well and understanding their strengths and faults and their beautiful little details that make them unique, but I see a lot of people who value others for completely different things. 

People value the person who talks the most, tells the most gossip, says the funniest things, looks the cutest, flirts the most, has the most friends, or dresses the best. I don't want to be valued because I have any of that or rejected because I don't have any of that. It absolutely disgusts me. Unfortunately, it's become a reality difficult to escape in this day and age. 

We seem to have forgotten what love is—and it's no wonder, since we use "love" interchangeable with "like." People are so quick to say, "I love you," but what I hear so often instead is, "I love me." See, when you value someone for their money, their appearance, or the nice things they say to you, you aren't valuing them. You are valuing you. If you like a friend because they make you feel popular, that's valuing you. If you like a crush because they make you feel giddy and special, that's valuing you. Additionally, "loving" someone for their body, their popularity, their money, or how they make you feel is not love. All of those things are changeable, but love–love is unconditional. 

When two people break up or get divorced because they can't get along anymore and say, "well, people change," I say to them in my head, "then you never really loved each other." Love, by definition, is unconditional and is not dependent on changeable things. I see faulty relationships of all kinds everywhere I turn because our idea of love has been distorted. It is that—conditional love (which really isn't even love)—which I am afraid of. I'm afriad of being valued for the wrong things. I'm afriad of being cared for only as long as I please people and hide my faults because I know that I, like everyone else in this world, will fail. I'm sinful and flawed, but unconditional love—true love—acknowledges that people are broken, and it is forgiving and understanding (and I'm not talking about romantic love, this is about all love). It is the love the Father has for us, and it is this kind of love that I strive to give and seek to receive.

God Does Not = Success

Often I hear or read other Christians praising our great God for causing them to win prizes, protecting them from failure or catastrophe, and enabling them to conquer any struggle. My [silent] response is, "yes, but aren't you missing something?" I have heard too many a dramatic testimonies of how, "when I found God, everything went right," or what have you. This is such a false idea of what the Christian life should/does look like. Why, of course, when some people put their faith in Christ, God may heal, protect, and raise up his people. But what about those who have true faith and still suffer hardship? What do you say to them? 

I heard a fellow Christian recount the story of a tornado that was heading toward her home. She talked for some time about the greatness and faithfulness of God because when she and her family were praying hard that they would be protected, the tornado changed route and they were one of the few areas not destroyed. By all means, praise God that he kept you safe, but what about all the other people whose homes were destroyed? Was God unfaithful to them? I think so many people have allowed these ideas to distort their faith in God. If we are taught that God keeps us safe and helps us succeed, it's no wonder that so many lose their faith when bad things happen. 

Instead, we need to learn from the martyrs of the early Church who understood that our faithful, loving God does not protect us from suffering; rather, He protects us in suffering. With God in our hearts, we aren't guaranteed to be happy, but we can be content in any situation. 

In the words of Paul, "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want."

All blessings and success come from God. H o w e v e r, God is not great simply because he gives us blessings and success. A faith based on this false idea is a selfish one. We are not called to trust our Lord because we will get a good life in return. We deserve absolutely nothing. God is great because He is the Author of everything, He is goodness and right, He is all-powerful... and, on top of all that, He loves us. To me, the most incredible part of the Christian life is not when God blesses us with success–because, um, not all of us live perfect, happy, "successful" lives. It is when God enables us to rejoice in suffering and be content in hardship.

Just as real, just as hurt

A lot of girls make posts about how they don't fit the culture's idea of an "ideal body." Sometimes they say they're "real" because they aren't really skinny or blog about how much the twisted idea of beauty harms the girls who don't fit it. I agree to an extent, but I think there are issues on the other side of the problem as well.

The culture's idea of an ideal body is also harmful and even painful to those who do fit it. Unless all a girl cares about is attention, being called ideal can hurt. It makes her feel like an empty object. So, please, just remember this: valuing people by physical appearance doesn't just hurt those who aren't deemed physically beautiful by the culture. It also hurts those who are. Girls who are angry about the culture's twisted sense of beauty seem to label everyone who fits it as "fake" or "unrealistic." Instead, they need to recognize that harm is done to girls on both sides of the culture's faulty definition of beauty.

I wouldn't mind selfies IF...

1. People were creative.

There are millions of ways to take a self-portrait.

2. People made them their own.

To me, most selfies are the same picture... just with lots of different faces. Make them original, please.

3. People cared about photo-quality. 

If you have a good camera, please use it. iPhone cameras are not good, by the way.

4. People smiled when they're happy instead of duck-facing. 

Do you really think that's attractive?

 5. People did not post them on Facebook (okay, maybe twice a year at the max).

That's what Instagram and Snapchat are for.

6. The pictures related to the captions.

If the caption says you're going somewhere, the picture should not be of you in the car on the way there. Ugh. 

One imprtant sentence that I've been wanting to say for a long time:

If you text or chat online with someone frequently, you should be able to talk to them in person easily and just as frequently.

Rebalanced

"But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved." Ephesians 2:4-5 

There are particular moments where I am struck by the degree of my sin. Today, I was hit by my anger and self-righteousness toward another sinner. Even though I may persuade myself for a time that I'm in the right, I know deep down that the truth is quite the opposite. Sooner or later that truth dawns on me and with it comes a rush of emotions: guilt, regret, and the desire to change what I've done.

Today, that desire was to repair the damage I know has been done to both me and her. I wanted to do everything I could to make up for my wrongs. The problem is, the more I realized the extent of my sin, the more I came to see that I can never make up for it. I can apologize, ask for forgiveness, change my behavior, and reach out, but even that will never be enough to rebalance the scale again.

Our sin weighs us down so heavily that we have no hope of freeing ourselves. Though we try, our efforts are to no avail. But along came one who can free us from sin. Christ paid for everything in full. By the grace of God, my scale has been rebalanced. Now, I've been a Christian as long as I can remember, but that grace still blows my mind. Every time it hits me, I am filled even more with love for my God and joy in him.

Flaws and All

When I'm upset about something or having a bad day, my (bad) tendency is to run to social media. I've thought about why that is and I think I've got it figured out: the internet is like another world. When my world isn't the way I want it, the internet is my escape route. Fact of Natalie: I hate crying and I hate being upset. I'm not very emotional (for a girl), so, to me, crying and letting any kind of pain get the better of me are signs of weakness. When the pain piles up, I'll do almost anything to push it away, to avoid letting it affect me.

Social media, especially, has a way of making life look a lot better than it is. Nobody (or almost nobody) posts about their failures, worries, or faults. We post about our achievements, good days, and fun times and when we get that, "like," we feel good because people like what we said or did. In this way, I think social media is very flawed. It gives us a false sense of happiness and popularity and creates a false impressionof of all of us. If I compare my life in the real world to someone's life on their Facebook timeline, I'm bound to end up depressed or discontent. The more I think about it, the less I like social media. It provides an false escape from your real-world problems, which only draws them out. But it also creates an distorted impression of us- one that leaves out the flaws.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on social media. Now that I think about it, this is not the fault of social media; it's our fault. We create the false impression. We hide the flaws. And we don't just do this on social media, we do it all the time. We concentrate so hard on making the right impression and looking good, covering up our struggles. Why? Our struggles are ugly, embarrassing sin. If people saw that, they wouldn't like us, right? Our struggles are also reality. Hiding that reality away- putting our sin out of sight- doesn't make it change; it only makes your sin harder to deal with. So, if that's not the right impression, what is? What kind of impression should I try to make? The answer is this: don't try to make an impression. To me, the most genuine people are those who don't try to cover up their flaws. It's easy to be open and honest with them because they're open and honest with you. They're real. They reflect God's unconditional love, accepting us, flaws and all. And that's the kind of person I want to be.

Philosophy

Sometimes I have a hard time saying what I mean... but here's a try:

What I am beginning to love most about debate is not the research, the social time, or the arguing itself. It is this- debate constantly forces you to develop, understand, defend, and even believe in new philosophies. As I am preparing for the National Championship with my partner, my reasoning behind our case is evolving every time I hear a new argument against it. Whenever I read about a new case we might go against, I'm forced to adopt a philosophy against it. Further research might develop or change that philosophy. When I discuss cases and arguments with other debaters, I realize how we all- even my partner and I- have such different philosophies. This is a good thing. Through discussion and debate, we come to understand the pros and cons of many different viewpoints. 

I am realizing how much this applies to life outside the debate round. We are so quick to criticize or correct someone's behavior just as we are so quick to reject arguments in debate. But without understanding someone's viewpoint- their philosophy- we cannot fully understand their behavior. That's not to say every behavior and idea is justified through a different view- no. Every philosophy is flawed. My focus, in debate and in life, is to understand outside reasoning and better my philosophy in response to opposing arguments.

Instead of rejecting the points by the other team, we should listen charitably, understanding the opposing philosophy, and pick our points tactfully.

It's how I look at things

I was reading some favorite blogs and started thinking, "How is it that all these girls can blog so well with only their words? How is it that I can hardly get through a post without a photo or two?" and then of course along came... "I'm probably just that bad of a writer that my posts are no good without my photography, " which was ridiculous, I know.

Feelings of inadequacy are pretty typical with yours truly. But it's my problem more than anything else. I make generalizations- that everyone different from me is normal and I am the oddball. Sometimes it's because I'm forgetting that there are people like me too, sometimes it's because I am just looking for an excuse to indulge in self pity. Sometimes it's because I fail to realize that being the oddball doesn't mean being inadequate. Just because I don't blog my thoughts in words and words only doesn't make me an inadequate blogger. God has given me artistic talent. I see the beauty of creation and capture it through the camera lens in a way to magnify His handiwork.

A picture speaks a thousand words.

The way I see it: what could speak more than 12,719,616 square pixels of God's beautiful creation? That's how much you get every time the button clicks down on my mom's camera. A picture speaks more than words. A picture speaks of the glory, beauty, magnificence, perfection that none other than God can author.

Those feelings of inadequacy wash away. Instead of complaining and wishing I had that talent for crafting beauty through words, I should be praising God for the blessings He has poured out on me.

"The heavens declare the glory of God; 

the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 

Day after day they pour forth speech; 

night after night they display knowledge. 

There is no speech or language 

where their voice is not heard. 

Their voice goes out into all the earth, 

their words to the ends of the world." 

-Psalm 19:1-4