A Culture of Dependence

There's no question that the social community supporting Humans of New York is overwhelmingly kind and compassionate and there's no question that I'm not an economist. How do these two topics relate? It's not conventional and may not be deemed the "nicest" of ideas but hear me out. Here's some quick food for thought.

To be completely, completely honest, I have never been that excited about the idea of college. Unlike most of my friends, the freedom of college and moving away from home was not all that thrilling because one, I wasn't planning on doing anything risky with this newfound freedom (god forbid I go out to party and drink) and two, at the end of the day, it's just more school. The one part of college that I was very much looking forward to however, was studying abroad. 

You see, I've always believed that if you had a job that directly helped others, you would never regret going to work. Even on the worst work days, you will have some kind of positive influence on another person's life and how could you ever regret that?

And that is why I decided to become a doctor.

Just kidding.

(Long story short the process of becoming of doctor requires more school and plus, I have an innate fear of chemistry)

And that is why I decided to major in engineering. 

(Still has some chemistry, but not as much.)

With enginering I knew that during my four years in college, I'll have the chance to travel to some far away, less fortunate country, immerse myself in a completely new environment, and help engineer waterways, wells, bridges, whatever and get to do that something good. 

But now I'm not sure if I want to travel abroad because if you think about it a little more deeply from my un-professional, self-proclaimed profession, economic point of view, this idea of charity, donations, volunteering, maybe be a little bit....selfish? 

As citizens of a well-to-do world power, we inevitably see ourselves as superior to our third-world country counterparts. When we see pictures of starving children, impoverished villages with no electricity, nations torn by war, by disease, we have a very human instinct to help. And a lot of times when we travel cross seas to help, we pity the people we are helping. Because they don't have as much as us, because we see them as in need of our help, because sometimes, when we see their different lifestyles, we think their lives are not as good as ours. But who are we to judge the lives of others? To envade their culture and label it as in need of help? To march in with our superior complex and say this, this, and this needs to be changed? Because the bottom line is, philanthropy is not about helping out of pity, it is about aiding through respect. 

"Aiding" being the key word here. Because unfortunately, philanthropy, traveling to another country to build a bridge or a well can create this concept called "a culture of dependence". When we blatantly give material goods or build infrastructure, we do good yes, but what about in the long run? What if the goods were stolen? What if the infrastructure falls apart? Do the people wait for another altruistic group of volunteers to come to the rescue and bring more goods? Build more infrastructure?

Charity, humanitarian work, volunteering, should be based on the end goal of building independence for those who need aid. Otherwise what we ultimately create is a perpetual, never-ending cycle of dependence.

Which brings me to this week’s Humans of New York photo:

“My mother and I lost our apartment when the landlord raised the rent. She went to live in my aunt’s attic in New Jersey, but there were too many stairs there, so I had to go to the homeless shelter. Most of the people at the shelter have addiction problems and mental issues. I’m living with people that I never thought I’d have to live with. The M35 is the only bus that goes to the shelter. Disabled people are supposed to get on first. But as soon as it gets to the stop, everyone rushes in until it’s full, and the bus driver is too intimidated to say anything. A lot of times it leaves without me.”

So naturally the good-hearted Facebook community immediately rushes to his aid, offering to raise money for the man. Brandon Stanton's comment on this picture? "The man in the photo has requested that funds not be raised for him. He is in the process of finding a place with his brothers and would like to figure out his living situation on his own, but he thanks everyone so much for their well wishes and thoughts."

So maybe it's not about helping others at all. It's about aiding them, supporting them, and allowing them to help themselves.

Closure.

"I'm not capable of faking enthusiasm for a paycheck."

I confess: I am a huge BuzzFeed quizzes addict. 

This addiction has gotten to the point in which I have to go back and tediously search for old quizzes because I have already taken every single one that fits on the general quiz dashboard. 

And maybe also to the point where I've considered writing quizzes for BuzzFeed myself because gosh darn it, they take way too long to upload new ones. 

Let's be clear here.

I do not joke around with these quizzes. 

So unlike my friend who intentionally skews her answers so she can get Daenerys as her Game of Thrones spirit animal and Dr. Alex Karev as her Grey's Anatomy boyfriend, I am very honest with my answers. So if they ask me, "You could be best described as....?", you can be sure I will, at the very least, consider phoning (texting) a friend and ask for their opinion. 

Needless to say, there are only a handful of personality quiz questions are I can answer without hesitation. So if they ask me, "What is your greatest fear?", easy. 

Failure.

Not so much failure as in failure on exams (been there, done that on Wednesday's physics exam), but rather failure at reaching my fullest potential.

At this point in my short semester-and-a-half blogging career, I have already done my fair share of writing about the thoughts and worries of all typical college-aged students including doubts about major selection, dream jobs, not just setting goals but also reaching them, and even being too ambitious about who we will become in the future. In short, every college student’s fear of the great, big, beautiful, also really ambiguous, slash highly questionable, slash annoyingly uncertain tomorrow. So today, I am going to give myself (and you, if you’re still on the same boat as me) some closure on this topic.

Not to get all philosophical or cheesy or anything fluffy like that, but the thing is, no matter how well thought out and planned you think you have your life right now, life will not, can not, work out the way you expect it to. 

Take my spring break for example. The plan was to write the rest of my passion and CI blog posts so I can finally stop scrambling Thursday night, study for the physics exam (ha, good one), and get ahead on calc.

Needless to say. None of that happened. And here I am writing my blog post on Thursday. Again.

Bottom line is, if we cannot even stick to a short seven day plan, there’s no way a three, ten, twenty year plan is every going to hold. And you know what? That’s really, really ok. Because something will always get in the way, whether it be a new sense of purpose or sheer laziness (on my part). The only important thing is to know when it is worth fighting to stay on track for your dream and when to accept change and let it lead you somewhere new and unexpected.

So like the man in the photo, I don’t think I’m capable of faking enthusiasm for a paycheck because as of this moment, I know exactly where I want to be in ten some odd years and if I’m not where I want to be, with the job I envisioned (and the beach house I want plus the accompanying surfing skills), it’s going to be tough, because I know I have the potential to accomplish what I have envisioned. But the point here is to have goals but also to be peace with making wrong decisions and making changes.

So now we can stop worrying about choosing the right major or setting the right goals because all this is relative.

That, folks, is life.

Call it the relativity of life.

Ok.

Enough of this fluffiness.

Case closed.

Lust for the Forbidden Fruit

My first thought when I saw this picture: "Draw me like one of your French girls, Jack."

But I guess not everyone is ready to quote Titanic on the spot so the actual caption of this photo is: "I'm just waiting for summer." 

To which I say, amen, brother. 

Amen. 

Don’t get me wrong, winter is wonderful and being a Christmas baby, I feel like it has always been my moral obligation to say that winter is my favorite season. And I have always held up my end of the bargain, until I came to Penn State, that is, because enough with the cold already.

Sure, the holiday season makes everyone warm, cozy, and sentimental with thoughts of family while soft snow flutters and falls in front of the glowing hazy lights of home. But once the New Year comes and goes and we see winter for what it really is.

Cold.

And quite depressing.

To be fair, the yearning for summer has some correlation with the three nice long months of absolute nothingness. But there’s also something so nostalgic and dreamy about the freedom of the outdoors, wrapped in the slightly stifling blanket of the season’s humidity and moisture while cicadas compose the perfect soundtrack for your endless summer escapades. Call it a “midsummer night’s dream”, if you will.

But then the temperature breaks 100 degrees and I’ll be the first to admit that I have prayed (more than once) for there to be a refreshing blast of cool Arctic wind and that I will never complain about the cold ever again…so where does that leave us?

It seems like we are always yearning for something we can’t have. The human attraction for something grows exponentially when it is clearly out of reach. Forget my innocent examples of the changing seasons. Even from the very beginning, the Garden of Eden had its own forbidden fruit tempting the desires of humankind. These desires can be as trivial as a celebrity crush or that last slice of pizza you know you should leave for someone else out of pure kindness of your heart and impeccable manners or something completely life changing; the need to prove someone wrong, a job, a relationship.

So what’s the deal? Why is it that we are always driven by the forbidden fruit that we seemingly and knowingly cannot have?

According to psychologist Dr. Pauline Wallin and American educator George Loewenstein, this unrelenting lust and unyielding sense of determination is decided by four factors:

1. Heightened Attention: To be put simple, when someone tells you not to do something, all you can possible think of, of course, is doing it; even if you had absolutely no desire to do it before.
2. Perceived Scarcity: Who knew the laws of economics also governed human nature? When you can't have something, you want it more because you sense that other people will want it too. Bring on the competition because nothing will stop you from coming out on top
3. "Psychological Reactance": We're all rebellious by nature and no one is about to tell you what you can or cannot have.
4. Information-Gap Theory":We become curious about the unattainable and feel the need to take action and bridge the gap.

Whatever the reason is for this phenomenon, there’s no doubt that it can also be beneficial. Maybe all you need to get an A on that calculus exam is to have someone tell you that there’s no way you’ll ever be good at math.

So for now, all I can do is taunt Mother Nature and tell her that summer will never come.

Please excuse me while I make plans to buy a beach house in California as soon as pay off all my student loans and am finally financially stable because as right now, like that man, I’m also just waiting for summer.