Failte!

I'm excited to share my adventures with all of you! I want your first taste of my life in Ireland to be this poem that I wrote very late one night when I was a Junior in College. Its meaning seems eerily prophetic now. More than anything, I've created this blog to make the actualization of this life-long dream of mine visible to those I love: my friends who are my foundation, my endlessly supportive family, my mentors and co-workers who inspire me, and my former students who have given me enough satisfaction and fulfillment to last two lifetimes... Have the courage to believe that your wildest dreams can come true.

Is fhearr fheuchainn na bhith san duil, (It is better to try than to hope)

e
Mourn (A Seaside Peak in Southern Ireland)

The dark, earthen sod saturates her fair feet,
but briefly since she frolics fast in knee high
blades of greenest grass that blow dizzily in the Celtic-sea air.

Her wool skirt, stiffened by ware of evenings past
is splashed by cresting waves that break
against a beach blacker than her hair.
Those once stiffer fibers were loosed by nights upon nights
of hanging perfectly on his line before being wildly blown dry
by the crisp Hibernian salt air.

The pair sits to rest a while instead of dodging
breakers or skipping paler stones.

"Indian summer's here," he says softly,
but all of summer here feels like the edge
of autumn to her, even though she grins in agreement
as she dangles her pale, soft feet off Achilles' peak,
where Erin's vermillion-gold sky meets
an ocean that is grey with years.

She sleeps with her eyes closed tight most nights.
He asks her if she believes in Tier-Nan-Og,
and she asks him if he believes in anything eternal.
Outside the tide is rising, or it's receding—
She never can tell but for the strengthened smell of
salty freshness strained through his light, lace curtains.
She thinks to herself that he is like trying to hold the sea 
and she imagines the water running between her fingers--
clenched so tight.

And so, the night calls her out of her sleeping,
like daytime chides her into dreaming.
She slips her white fingers through the holes of an old loose scarf
that affords her more company than warmth
on these newborn autumn evenings. She is off-- 
Night clouds reflect emerald from land to sea,
And the tara that she never eyes from long hours of
staring too far into star blanketed skies,
feels cool against the thickening pads of her pallid feet.

Elisabeth Lewis (2005)

04 August 2011

Forget Regret


It’s hard to believe that I’m leaving in less than 3 weeks. Panic is beginning to set in, as every item I cross off my To Do list multiplies into 5 new ones.  I’ve barely even had time to get around to the NC bucket list that is made up of things like “sit outside at Caffe Driade,” which I’m doing right now as I type this…

What I want to talk about in one of my last posts before I leave is the classic battle between (no, not good and evil) our hearts and our heads.  How many times has each of us witnessed the showdown between how we feel and how we think we should feel? For the record, I am the [final] product of two parents who went to pre-marriage counseling in their twenties and were told that they had the unique dynamic of one spouse (my father) scoring 100% thinking and the other (Mumsies), 100% feeling on the Myers-Briggs personality test. So, though the easy assumption is that I am always someone who follows my heart, let it be known here and now that genetically, I am 50/50 and in truth, my rational genes get stronger every day.

We choose between our heads and our hearts on a constant basis; when we apply for jobs, choose relationships, move between cities, peruse menu options… It seems that we’re always choosing wisely against our will or just “going with our gut.” I’ve been wondering lately, what does the perfect marriage of the two look like? And how do I get there? As a chronic impulsive, I’m tired of going with my gut just because it feels right and “following my heart” because that’s the only vapid and useless advice people can come up with when there’s no clear answer.  I’ve been making gut decisions since I developed a gut, which (let’s be honest) came in sometime around 3 ½ with epic Dirty Dancing marathons and a bottle diet (the oral fixation caused by 6 years in this Freudian stage will be illuminated in a later post one I'm in Ireland). The decisions I have coming up in the next year will determine my career as an archeologist, and I want to know just how these two juxtaposed organs of mine should weigh in and compliment, rather than contradict each other for once. So, I asked a few of my friends...
Which do people most commonly regret; impulsive decisions made with their hearts or  logical decisions made with their heads?

The most thoughtful response I got was from my dear, and very recently married, friend Lilly Lampe. She seemed convinced that she lived without suggested regret, but came to question the mentality that fueled those more logical decisions. Enter the perfect target for my questions: Lilly, the logical thinker, who compliments me so well as a friend for that very reason. She thinks when I feel, and I guess I'm drawn to that because I need it in my life. I’ll quote her,

“What draws me to you is not (or not just anyway) the fact that we are opposite thinkers and that my rationalism is balanced by your romanticism. What I love about you is that as long as I have known you, you have always been yourself.  Honestly, joyfully, at times brutally and even painfully, you are true to yourself and who you are and you make no apologies about it.”

What Lilly found in her reflection on my questions was not that exclusively logical decision making is wrong for her, but that it often comes with fulfilling some sort of expectation that a person or society puts on us.  Perhaps then, “following your heart” or "going with your gut" *cliche cliche* is just another way of saying that the more emotional decision is based on self-interest and personal desire rather than any outside perspective. And isn't this what we should aim for since we are the ones living the daily effects of our decisions? I don't think self-interest is necessarily selfish. Lilly said that her wiser decisions came from a place of self-knowledge, and I would argue self-love, a state in which we can not "forget" or "lie to" ourselves.  She writes,

"When I look back on college and the immediate past, what I see is a chronology of me forgetting about myself, of working on myself, of working away from my self, and re-realizing my self and trying to celebrate that person and live the life that person needs to thrive.  And although your road has in many ways been a bumpy and uncertain one too, I don't think you've ever forgotten about yourself or tried to lie to that person."

A compliment that I'm not sure is true...but does it seem true because of my emotionally-driven decision making?

What everyone can agree on is that the mind and heart work together in some way when we make big decisions, and perhaps each person has his own “perfect storm” of rational and emotional thinking. I  don’t yet know what I think of this. Perhaps I’m just an extremely intuitive person, and the strength of that intuition takes over for my lack of logic whenever I’m stuck.  I suppose we do survive by playing to our strengths. So maybe I shouldn't try to change?

I invite you all to self-reflect (NOW!) with these timeless and wise words from Polonius that my mother and Paul North often remind me of:

“This above all, to thine own self be true and it must follow as the day doth the night, thou canst not  then be false to any man.”

So this is what you’ve been waiting for, MY current heart vs. head dilemma…prepare for total nerd-dom because I’m about to get Archeological. In about 4 weeks,  I have to choose my stream in graduate school. Will my intensive focus be A) The practical Heritage Management which includes classes on dig management, grant writing, and Heritage rights (think awesome job with the World Heritage Organization, and the freedom to move to Boston or London or Asheville and manage/curate heritage sites) or will I B) Follow my heart and stream in  Prehistoric Civilization, classes that include studies on Bronze Age burial tradition, Neolithic farming, and Prehistoric art and religion (think stone henge, bru na boines). The truth is, I’m not sure I want to get my Phd. And what I’m most afraid of is that that fact (combined with job market) makes the answer to my decision very clear.

Contrary to what you might think, I’m not writing this to bore you. I’m writing this because I want your opinions! Please leave me messages with thoughts on how you make decisions AND any advice you have for me, Elisabeth: the romantic, emotional, gut thinking, heart-following archeologist (quite the epithet) as I make this decision before September 2nd! How could I trust anyone more than my friends?

Farewell! My blessing season this in thee,

e
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2 comments:

  1. Elisabeth04 August, 2011 21:53

    Here is the bottom line Question you can leave a response to: I’ve spent my whole life leading with my heart, and any organ you leave that vulnerable on the frontlines is bound to have been bruised and broken. Is this my opportunity to use all the experience that has refined me and make an adult decision with my rationale or is now, more than ever, my chance to lead with my heart?

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  2. Far31 August, 2011 13:28

    Lilly is right. You are the best kind of romantic - you're never completely irrational, you still make solid decisions, but they are motivated from the most personal and beautiful foundations. It's perfect. Now, go dig up something famous.

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