wise words from our man at b’berg

i know you are all sick of me wallowing in self-pity about the lack of direction in life and answers to big questions in life that hits you like a brick wall once you graduate. but anyways. here is yet another excerpt to add to your collection.

in answering an email from a confused twenty-something suffering a quarter-life crisis, michael lewis for bloomberg writes:

“Job vs. Calling

The distinction is artificial but worth drawing. A job will never satisfy you all by itself, but it will afford you security and the chance to pursue an exciting and fulfilling life outside of your work. A calling is an activity you find so compelling that you wind up organizing your entire self around it — often to the detriment of your life outside of it. There’s no shame in either. Each has costs and benefits. There is no reason to make a fetish of your career. There are activities other than work in which to find meaning and pleasure and even a sense of self-importance — you just need to learn how to look. Reading between the lines of your letter I sense that some of your anxiety is caused by your desire for the benefits of each — job and calling — without the costs. Perhaps that is what led you to Wall Street in the first place, and why your mind now turns to Hollywood.”

i find myself thinking about this supposed dichotomy a lot lately. if in part inspired by my friend david’s speech at a reception a few days back, where he passionately argued for the need for carving out your own sacred corners of this universe. or at least that is what i got out of it. about how not everyone needs to be a farmer and a fire fighter and an aid worker or a doctor. it is in truth, what you make of it. you can be someone who dispenses the contents of a curriculum, or someone who educates in the truest sense of the word. you can be an idle bureaucrat, or strive to implement radical policy reforms. you can be a business person or incorporate sustainability into your plan and do good.

and this logic brings me comfort; looking at the world through these prisms, you realize that the obsession over the “right career” is a false one. but i guess it is human nature to continue the procession of anxiety-filled self-doubt and worry. alas.

bahebak, ya lebnan

I have been thinking about Lebanon a lot lately. I wrote a Daily Star 101 email of sort to a few friends and acquaintance; they had all shown interest in the newspaper that I had worked for last summer. In the process of writing, I found myself growing green with envy (at another’s prospect of a summer in that wondrous city) but also hopelessly elated at the mere idea of unraveling its wonders to another.

The craving crescendo-ed to new heights last week when I met up with a professor/artist/activist, someone, needless to say, I admire. The meeting was so that I may grow to brave those dreaded words: post-graduate plans. The first thing she asked as we settled down was what languages I spoke. And from here, she became convinced that I would have to move back to Lebanon. What else is there? She seemed to be asking. Lebanon. Hmm. A country that has been deemed a bastion of liberal (and by this we obviously mean “Western”) thought in the Middle East, a possible refuge for something or someone, though what precisely no one seems to recall. Maybe even a blueprint on what-not-to-do-post-colonial-mandate, and a vestige of what could have been.

But one that also some how manages to be spectacular, with her undulating coast lines and her ineffable beauty. Lebanon is in that first sip of the freshly roasted Arabic coffee that makes your heart swoon, that seem to run through every vessel in your body, urging you to GET UP AND GO. In the small rituals of every day that you grow to embrace (like having no electricity and coming to terms with it). In the first bite of that manoushee and in the last bite too. In the maddening streets that ceases to be romantic on day 3 but keeps you coming back for more. Lebanon is also in the shitty parts of living in a bustling metropolis of never-ending, ubiquitous, blood-sucking traffic, the sexual depressed, wasta-driven social hierarchy, gender inequality, and economic repression. But it is also finding yourself still gravitating towards that maddening chaos.

With every friend who writes telling me that he is moving to romance that terrifying and beautiful country, I can just feel all the memory buds inside me surface to pose a singular question: Why not go? But it is not that easy. It is a hard-to-articulate dance of what I can do, and what I should go about doing. What I have done, and what I have yet to accomplish.

And I know I cannot return looking for the what has been. I cannot go back hoping for more of the same.

Or can I?

emanuel adler is my home boy

i have been meaning to write about my new love, sagmeister. or the weekly cook-offs that animate my life. or haiti. or joan didion and new york. or that illuminating talk by paul steiger of propublica on investigative journalism (and why newspapers will be around for at least the next few decades. yes!). or about tony judt and the business of living and dying in a social democracy. or that tundra-ridden weekend that i spent scouring through the archives of wronging rights, my renewed obsession. or: chatroulette (= the future. don’t fight it/).

but it has come to pass that i am having an i-love-emanuel-adler tuesday, and let me tell you why.

(note: to those of you who do not know this wonderful wonderful man, he is a professor of constructivism and middle eastern politics at the university. he is the only academic that i know of, who can keep a straight face when earnestly telling his students that the “children are the seed of hope.” he is pretty much the best thing to have graced teh musty corridors of munk centre.)

i walk into his office this morning. think mahogany furnishing and rows upon rows upon rows of journals and papers and books of all shades and shapes lining the walls. i had originally meant to talk to him about a reference letter, but conversations with adler inevitably flows into talks of constructivism, conflict, how we are to make sense of it all.

i tell him that i am interested in the dead sea and my big (not so original) idea: environmental security will be that common enemy, bringing competing factions together. he nods, and chuckles, and leans in to tell me how the dead sea is dying, and how this is all related to politics, and how everything comes down to land.

he jokingly asks what i want to do about it: “you want to save the middle east?”

i nod but quickly realize, maybe, he was kidding. or maybe i am kidding.

then somehow, in between the dead sea and the haiti earthquake, i find myself telling him about how i am having trouble figuring out what it is that i am supposed to do in this world. this quickly turns into a career advice meets therapy session. he casually asks what i would like to be when i grow up? and i smile at the underlaying compassion in his question that turns a blind eye to the fact that most people my age is expected to have figured it all out. i tell him that i believe in the social utility in writing. but that i am not at all sure of its raw worth. as in the case of haiti, writing about it from afar (or even up close) is not as effective as being a relief worker, or an emergency doctor.

i do not know what to do with this urgency.

he is quick to point out that this is not the point. the secret – sometimes – is not identifying the causes you are to adopt, but figuring out who you want to be: writer? a judge? an ambulance driver? a movie critic? what is it? and from there, all else will follow, he says.

he tells me that his father wanted him to run a hotel, but that he chose the – at times lonely – life of an academic, “because it is what i love!” and when i ask how he found himself committing to that chair, this table, he tells me this: that it is taking the measure of humility in realizing that you are not a big deal. that no one, and not a single thing really matters. it is knowing that no one will take note of that policy proposal you spend months writing, but doing it anyways. it is knowing that your writings will not alter the course of humanity, but hoping that those whom i teach might go on to maek a dent, somewhere, some how, some time.

and i am reminded of a quote from a lecture earlier last week, where william easterly defined democracy as not being the panacea, but the way you cope with the lack thereof. and i guess all of world’s greatest beauties can be found in this struggle, many of which at times seem absolutely hopeless. like climate change. like the arab-israeli conflict.

“you will find your way.”

“baruch hashem,” he says, smiling. “insh’allah,” i laugh and respond, and gather my things to leave.

passions and professions

please read this article from nytimes on writer john bowe and consider the following:

1. is it just me, or are you also convinced that the reporter is madly falling in love with the writer (“..later, in one of several late night phone calls when mr. bowe seemed less guarded…”). she also spends two paragraphs talking about the actual book (americans talk about love) before willingly and dreamily entering bachelor land of florid wall decor. you can almost hear her giggling at all his new york deadpan jokes.
2. john bowe is such an easy sell: he is not just for “women with a soft spot for social issues.” a man who put up with julian schnabel and wrote “basquiat” and uses mortar and pestle for preparing dinner? please.
3. kidding aside, this article directly references a talk i had with my friend while coursing through the holiday season in holland. rianne shares this deeply insightful observation. ready? so: this society urges us to focus on our professional careers, to do everything in our power to establish ourselves as productive members of this economy and to be gainfully employed, to climb to teh top and stay there. and yet, it is only after years have passed and only after it is too late to change the tide, that you will be criticized for being blinded by fame, and for not pursuing the great passions of your life. we live in a schizophrenic world that professional growth leave no room for passionate embrace. we live in a world where even willing writers cannot seem to find love.

rainy monday

still looking for gainful employment. to thwart these mid-winter blues (sharing tales on the job hunt only reveals more horror and deepens gashes i realize now), i am going try and post one happy link a day that will remind me of why this world is still, er, beautiful.

and so it goes: crayon vs. canon.