Moving on, I know I am certain about at least three things. The first, high school is officially over, and last minute dealings don’t work, ever. Secondly, the life that claims you after high school is nothing less than a mental battle ground. A war that many can’t survive, let alone attempt to. And thirdly, “college life” and life beyond, is simply a social bubble, where competition is rampant and the only way to survive is to be.
Being in a different space I’ve come to understand that potential, is only the beginning, and without drive there is no possible measurement of success. We all have places we aspire to go, and we all claim a face that is not always entirely our own in order to get there. College is a learning ground but it’s not always about hitting the books although that reason, is one ideally glorified by the masses. It’s equivalent to a game of Sorry, every couple of cards you draw your driven closer to the place you want to be, but, with just one wrong card your suddenly sent back to where you started. And the world screams sorry and says that you should try again next time. It all seems a bit scary but this semester has meant so much more than just a couple of A’s,B’s,C’s…and that other stuff. It has meant new battle grounds and sometimes new faces. But I’ve come to learn that if I want to make it to the finish line in this game, then is it so wrong to play face.
One of the best face makers Mrs. Dalloway in my opinion would completely agree with me, so would the next YouTube star of 2018. Discussing surfaces as a fundamental bases for not wanting to necessarily “stick out” in all the wrong ways was a practice adopted basically before time. In Dalloway we see how such ideas are perpetuated and have no real positive effect on those whose practices keep such duplicitousness close at hand like a religious text. But why are we and why do we continue to produce such behavior. Behavior that has done nothing but give cause to mental unrest while sometimes even jeopardizes physical health. It is because we are taught that this idea of social acceptance and social mobility will be the only crutch attached to a one way ticket to success. The measurement of success and well being has always used social relations as its unit, and it is continuously supported by the world’s standards. But I’ve realized that it’s full of nonsense, to execute a type of behavior that leaves you wanting to be nothing but senseless. And although I feel that such demeanor is poor, I can’t help but agree with Shakespeare on the matter. The world is in fact a stage and we are merely players. Everyday in order to survive we play different roles, and constantly change face.
I’ve realized that since high school, and probably well before that I had been playing face. Being valedictorian of the class came with it’s own pressures. And having to be someone who “knew” all the answers was really bothersome. I had come accustomed to acting a certain way in certain setting because it was expected of me. It meant that sometimes I couldn’t express certain feelings or attitudes, and coming in to college I didn’t expect to be an actor. That’s not to say that the way I acted in high school was entirely an act but it meant that I had to showcase just one part of myself and when i’d try to show the different layers of who I was it seemed unnatural and unauthentic. Coming to college didn’t prove to be much different until I realized that it was.
Being in ENG 203 we came up with the question of what our class has been about? I think a more important question is, faced with what the class has been so called “about”, as a reaction what have I come to be about? I think the class has about playing face. And not in a unproductive fashion but in the act of critical thinking that enables us to see the fluid faces and identities in literary works and all around us. In class we’ve done a ton of analytical work that revolved around literature like Walden, Alice and Wonderland, and even some poetry pieces that poked at the theme of fluidity. And although we looked at those works and countless others as almost separate from the fluidity of the reader I feel that in a sense we were actually studying the fluidity of the world into a text. Whether a piece of work be nonfiction or fiction it seems like the stories being told are always the one”s that relate to us as human beings. I guess in some ways connections to mankind are merely inevitable seeing that it’s mankind that produces such works. But beside the origins of such pieces the different characters are just changing faces with the same rounded complexity, problems and themes as human beings. In contrast works like Walden by David Thoreau and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll both explore the theme of identity in two completely different ways and yet, we are able to connect them by analyzing tools like symbolism, and metaphor By asking questions about these concepts and their relation to the works we developed and moved up different levels of abstraction in order to clearly understand the relationship between the reader and the text. The class this semester has ultimately been about introducing and exposing ourselves to different parts of who we are. Parts of ourselves we haven’t quiet met yet, and being able to recognize ourselves with different faces through literary works. It’s been about showing a different sides of ourselves and being able to open up our minds eye to conversation and relation without losing different parts of who we are. I would say that through it all we have come to understand ourselves better and how we just by existing effect the text.
I’ve come to understand that ultimately it’s ok to perform everyday, because just by existing and interacting with one another we tend to do so naturally. It’s not about trying to suppress the roundness of who we are, but more to do so with developing the characters within ourselves.