18 Things I Learned in 2018

1. Because not all of life should be on display, it is okay when I can't remember what stories or thoughts lie behind old cryptic journal entries. I feel a sense of loss when I can't figure out what I was writing about, but it is okay for some things to stay private to the past.

2. I learned what it feels like to stand in my childhood closet and refer to another house as "home."

3. During a college class last spring, I developed a deeper understanding of the Civil War's causes, events, and results. I enjoyed the in-depth survey, and it will never stop being funny that Abraham Lincoln said that "the world will not long note, nor remember what we say here" while he was giving the most famous speech in American history. He would have been right in most cases, but not with the Gettsyburg Address!

4. There is framed art in the otherwise grungy bathroom at my local Just Tires. Even though I discovered this back in February, I am still stunned.

5. As a teenager, I routinely asked my peers without any hint of irony or sarcasm, "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?" Last spring, I learned in a social psychology course how near-inevitable conformity can be, and I was shocked, because it has always been fairly easy for me to reject social norms and do my own thing. I am now significantly more patient with other people, because I realize that I am an outlier and shouldn't expect other people to experience life the same way I do.

6. I also took a course in historical methodology, and one of the main assignments was to study my own family history. It was really interesting to delve into my family tree and discover things that I had never known before, as well as seeing official confirmation of familiar stories.

7.  This past summer, I went through my card box, reading the notes that people have given me throughout my life. This was a delightful experience, and afterward, I realized that the reason it meant so much to me is because my love language is words of affirmation. Even though some people don't save cards after they serve their immediate purpose, it's incredibly meaningful to me to reread kind, encouraging words from people who were involved in different eras of my life.

              When I remember what I was like in late elementary and early middle school, I usually recall the things that were most selfish, awful, and dysfunctional about me. Looking through these cards gave me the opportunity to see what people who knew me well at that time appreciated about me. For example, a former babysitter often saw me at my worst when I interacted with siblings, but she also appreciated my "creative stories and live entertainment," as she wrote in the note pictured below. It's nice to see things like this and remember that I wasn't all terrible.

8. Also on the subject of stories, I now realize that the reason my fictional characters are so complex is because I constantly have to create harmony between new stories and existing canon. This leads to multi-layered, contradictory characters full of emotional variation, and that is why they are like real people to me.

9. I learned my Enneagram type. I'm a One, which means that I'm a perfectionist who desperately wants to make the world a better place, gets super angry about people doing bad things, and fears being corrupt and defective. I was already highly aware of these attributes, but becoming familiar with this personality inventory gave me a new framework for understanding my core values and enduring traits. 

              Because I now understand my Enneagram type, I better understand why certain books, movies, and songs mean so much to me. The reason why I want to watch twelve hours of extended Lord of the Rings DVDs, while other people fall asleep during the first movie, is because this film series speaks to my core values more than any other. The story is all about making tremendous personal sacrifices to fulfill your duty, fight evil, and preserve goodness, and it inspires me so much to see characters choosing to do the right thing against impossible odds.

10. However, even though my type motivates me to pursue righteousness and oppose evil, it also has many negative consequences. For example, even though I have claimed before that I value mercy over justice, this is absolutely false. I know that I'm supposed to value mercy, but I actually want everyone, including me, to bear the full weight of their guilt and experience all of the consequences that they have earned. Forgiveness is hard, and I'm working on it, but everyone should be REALLY GLAD that I am not God.

11. I finally learned how to declutter material objects, and have applied my new mindsets to photographs as well. I don't need to keep thirty-eight photos of one flowering bush, because even though I'm afraid of deleting one that I'll later want, keeping all of them will just stress me out later. If I preserve my favorite shots from different angles while deleting anything inferior, I won't regret having made a decision.

12. Even though we talk about God being outside of time and say that our lives and sufferings are just a blip on the scale of eternity, Jesus entered time and knows what it feels like to experience suffering and feel like the pain will never end. He knows how six years can feel like a million years when you're living it.

13. This year, I began to apply the "one minute rule," which says that you should accomplish a task right away if it will only take a minute. This has relieved a lot of stress from my life, because it keeps my living space neater and prevents future tasks from weighing me down mentally.

14. This summer, I remembered that when I was younger, I routinely prayed for specific people in my youth group. Everyone advised me to pray for all the people that I didn't like, and I tried this, but it never made me like them any more. I started praying instead for the people I appreciated, asking God to guide their paths, protect them from making destructive choices, and provide them with good, meaningful futures where they would serve and love Him and others.

              I'm old enough now to see how God answered those prayers. The people that I prayed for are in varying stages of life, but they are all are sincerely following Jesus and leading loving, kind, productive lives. I'm glad that I remembered that I used to pray for these people, because it's encouraging to see how faithful God has been.

15.  When my 2015 journal musings seem like exercises in stating the obvious, this is only because I was so successful in having those thoughts at the time. Because I can go back and reread my journals, I have the opportunity to see how my ideas developed, instead of just taking them for granted.

16. Goodwill and some other thrift stores accept fabric scraps and worn-out clothing, because they can sell the material to textile recyclers. This eliminates landfill waste and gives new life to otherwise useless items.

17. During an American literature class this fall, I learned about the late nineteenth century author and critic William Dean Howells, and I now greatly admire him. In addition to experiencing success as an author, he worked as the editor of The Atlantic for many years, championing the careers of women and racial minorities. For example, the black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar is only part of our cultural history because Howells promoted his career. I always appreciate historical figures who worked behind the scenes to help other people succeed, and it's especially nice to learn about men in majority culture who recognized the need for diverse voices and fair treatment within the literary world.

              Howells's later career focused on literary criticism, and because of his own background as an early American realist, he had a unique perspective on this literary tradition. In one essay, he says of the ideal realist author, "In life he finds nothing insignificant; all tells for destiny and character; nothing that God has made is contemptible." I enjoyed learning more about his philosophy of fiction, and love his insistence that people can write entertaining stories without sensationalizing sex to create false excitement. That essay was hilariously scathing and spoke to my soul. I appreciate Howells's impact on the literary world and the value that he placed on writing about the ordinary, real, and true.

18. In December, when I was having a panic attack over something embarrassing, I declared that being human was "an unbearable burden," and then took advantage of the Advent moment to point out to myself, "Yeah, and Jesus chose to take on all of that unbearable pain! He became human, and he accepted human physical limitations, and he accepted human neurological limitations, and he chose to carry with him that sense of brokenness and death so that he could save you from your sins. And a lot of other people. But also you!" That's a nice thing to remember.

              Previous posts: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013