Is it weird of me to blog on Christmas? Yes? Well, I'm doing it anyway. I'm home(legitimate, with-my-parents home) until New Year's Eve. It's a little cool in my room, but I don't mind. I'm glad I chose a darker color for the walls...of "my" bedroom in the house that my parents built after I moved out. Thanks, guys.
I think this room is sort of symbolic of my parents' hope that I'll end up back here. That I'll visit home more often, that I'll realize I moved out too soon and put down semitemporary roots here while I go to graduate school in St. Louis and then stay here until I find a job in Cape Girardeau. Then I'll marry a guy from Cape or the surrounding area, buy a house within the same, and do my "research stuff" until I have a kid a few years later.
They've never told me that this is what they want for my life, so I can't respond to tell them that the odds of all of that are about as high as Ralph Nader's of winning the next presidential election. Don't get me wrong, I'm a hardcore third-party supporter. I won't get into why I hate the bipartisan system we insist on perpetuating upon ourselves, since it's a long and soapbox-like speech, and instead I'll just say that I'm proud of Nader for trying. But I can read the election results too.
I love following presidential elections. Every four years, I'll stay up as long as it takes until a winner is declared(which was pretty killer during the Bush-Gore debacle - I did give up on that one). If I hadn't gone into chemistry, I think I would have chosen history as a major. I did consider it as a freshman in high school, before I officially set my sights on something within medicine. But besides not really knowing what I would do with a history degree(not that there aren't options - just that none of them sounded appealing to me), I started to find out a little more than I wanted to know. I was fine with what I had heard about all the figureheads in history, and didn't really want to hear that they were all actually jerks. If someone was such a jerk, how could they still be remembered for all these great accomplishments and humanitarian acts? Obviously, part of it was that someone rewrote the stories and wanted events to be remembered in a different light than the one in which they actually happened, but that wasn't what bothered me. It was that I was confronted with the gray area - phenomenal good and terrible bad within the same person.
I don't like the gray area much. I am my father's daughter 100% in that respect. I want people to be good or bad, right or wrong. Danielle was always better with the gray - the misinterpreted motives, the external factors in a situation that needed to be considered, the exceptions to the rule. We came to a head over it often in high school - Danielle, from the "rules are situational and sometimes you have to bend them" side, and me, from the "why even have a rule if you're just going to change it anyway" side.
The difficult part is that neither of us was all right or all wrong. She was right because there are weird situations, and there are exceptions. There are times in which breaking the rules has a better outcome than following them, and being a stickler hurts rather than helping. But I was right too, because someone still has to take responsibility, and if not the person who messed up, then who?
It comes to a head in so many situations in life. Every day, one kid goes into the yard and calls the neighbor kid names. Day after day, this kid calls this other kid names. When the neighbor kid goes to his parents, they are unsympathetic. So finally one day, the second kid walks over and beats up the first kid.
Who's wrong? The first kid, for speaking in such an awful manner, and antagonizing for days on end? The second kid, for escalating the situation to physical violence? One set of parents for not disciplining their child, or the other set for not defending theirs?
A compelling case could be made for all four. And in my opinion, each carries some blame. But if the situation happens at school, who is punished? Especially since schools have no way to punish parents. Which child do you choose? Or both?
And that's a simple elementary-school situation, where it's not unlikely that the children will be best friends in a month's time. This is why I hate the gray area - when it comes right down to it, it's a matter of opinion. And the opinion of whoever's in charge is the one that gets implemented. If there's a rulebook of some sort, this doesn't happen. We all have to agree to the same thing and play by the same code, and opinion is less of a factor in the situation. And yes, I realize that the rulebooks are written on opinion as well. But at least you know what you're getting from the beginning. Also, it's a power check on the people in charge, a concrete, this-is-what-we-agreed-to statement that can't be denied.
Ahem. Anyway. Rewind through my musings on morals and politics, and I think I was talking about going away. My closest potential graduate school is in Indiana, followed by schools in Virginia and Washington. It'll be a little while before I'm worried about that though. This week, I'll be doing nothing.
Cheers,
~Kassius~
