I've been thinking a lot about the opposite sex lately. Not in a scandalous
or sinful sense, mind you, but more in a spiritual, relationship sense:
specifically, my relationships with them.
No, I have never been involved in a relationship, and I currently have nothing
on the radar, so to speak. And yes, there have been special
girls in my heart.
[If you're reading this, you may already know the identities of the three
people I have in mind. Well, maybe not. For everyone else, I'll only say that one
of them is at an Ivy League school now, and the other two are currently at
Stanford. None of them has ever read this thoughts page, and I am trying to
make this page bolder and spicier but still, I don't feel
bold enough to expli*censored*ly mention their names here in a page potentially seen by
the whole world.]
A potentially-scandalous bit from my past: When I went to Stanford, one of my
"goals" was to try and find a significant other, ASAP! One could imagine how I
felt about it by thinking as if there was a 1-unit P/NC activity course called
FINDING A GIRL that appeared on my study list. Tense. Yeah, I know,
how could you be thinking that? Well, it was never really externally visible, and
I guess after freshman year, I just sort of laid the whole women issue by the
wayside. It's kind of like the Vulcans in Star Trek (a la Spock) "Here on these
shores, our ancestors forever cast our their animal passions and from then on,
devoted their minds to logic" the inscription somewhere on the planet Vulcan
reads. (Note: I am by no means a Trekkie -- I just like to watch their movies
and read their novels from time to time and I remember random trivia, so it might
not be accurate.)
But now, I'm looking at it from the other extreme of the spectrum. While I
don't "openly" "avoid" girls like, say, some of my fellow FiCS brothers, looking
at the big picture, I haven't really been into developing close relationships
with them -- my relationships with most of them have been on the superficial
side compared to my relationships with guys. Have I "overcorrected" my desire
for female companionship? Is this a good thing? Bad thing? And it's been
bothering me because I know there's no real rational reason for being so
detached from my fellow sisters in Christ.
So my bold claim in this thought is that I suspect that a small part of it
has to do with FiCS itself, and how there is this "facade" of pretended
"disinterest" towards the opposite gender: that if you are seen, for instance,
talking to a girl, or say, bringing them food if they're sick, it is viewed as
being scandalous, or tense. Don't get me wrong -- this
is by no means an indictment of FiCS, but just some interesting thoughts on how
group mentality can manifest itself. I use the word "small" because it's
an issue whose core has to do with solely my own nature and character, but still,
how my brothers and sisters think still come into play somewhat.
Anyways, I'm just thinking. Our unity as FiCS and our customs and trends
that are
present in the group -- how exactly has it influenced us, both directly and
indirectly? Is we shaping the fellowship, or is the fellowship shaping us? Is
the flux in one direction greater than the flux in the other?
Even more fundamental than that though: What do people think of us as a
group, anyways? I'll admit that a
reason I decided to join FiCS was its Asian atmosphere. Even though at times,
it might be a bit strange to an outsider coming from a more heterogenous
environment than this, it is, in an overall sense, an asset, not a liability.
Anyways, my take on the whole LA Korean thing that's been raised and discussed
on various thought pages recently.... as a non-LA non-Korean who has pretty much
been an observer to all of this culture, it interests me the most, just from a
"anthropological" viewpoint: it's interesting to see how such a culture is
articulated here at FiCS and KCPC.
As far as the "fitting in" issue, from talking to some other people not in
FiCS, such as people in other fellowships at Stanford, or in other KCPC
ministries, while maybe not feeling outright discomfort, sometimes they do get a
sense of exclusivity, of not belonging unless you're already in it by default.
Of course, other people don't feel this way, too. So, like I said, it's as much,
and much more, in fact, a personal issue as much as it is a group issue, and one
has to make the effort to reach out, gradually, starting with a few people that
share common interests, and then gradually expanding outward in friendship, kind
of like diffusion. And it takes time, definitely.
Hey y'alls!
Just as an example to illustrate some points, there's one group that I want to
mention -- the Georgian
contingent here at Stanford. None of them read my web page anyways, so I'll
just take the time to mention they're all da bomb. Everyone that I know from
there just exudes an aura of Southern hospitality. I guess that is a real
notion. For instance, Steven "Our Dad's da bomb!" Chang. Just by reading, say,
the e-mails that he writes, you can truly see a heart on fire for the Lord.
Kind of like, say, the Asian version of Scott Dollar (who doesn't read this page
either.)
Also, another person I deeply admire is a former roommate of mine, Leo Jeng.
As you might know, he went to missions in Kunming, China, last summer. I regret
being so busy sophomore year that I never really got to develop a relationship
with him. Leo, if you ever read this, I'm sorry I wasn't as present and
supportive a roommate and a brother sophomore year as we both would have
desired. Yet, just by talking to him, and hearing about the frosh group that he
is leading for InterVarsity, His spirit has been working in Leo, and he has a
true servant's heart and a sincere desire to reach out to others, as he did in
China and he's doing now with some members in his small group.
There are others, of course, like Lorraine, Becca, Jenn Chou, but I'll let
you discover their spiciness for yourselves. Finally, here's a special shouts
out to Joyce Shou-Fang Koo. She is just an exemplar of a holy lifestyle, living
in the grip of the Lord.
But she still goes to dances and stuff and in general, doesn't try to insulate
herself in a
bubble away from the things of this world (not that this is inherently bad, or
anything, of course) -- in other words, her reputation is not something that
would create negative connotations of Christianity to non-believers, and so she
is someone that any Stanford student can easily relate to and strike up a
conversation with, and relate with.
In short, Joyce just brightens everyone's day. She is one of those people
that I can NOT visualize being angry, and her companionship is something that I
have truly missed this quarter. And, importantly, Joyce is not someone that
people, including myself, would feel tense or excluded being around.
So does this mean that Georgians are naturally more open than LA people? I
doubt such a generalization holds, but I do perceive that while they're united
(perhaps even more so than the SoCal people -- they all go to the exact same
church back home and everything) they do try to know others more, and really
realize that at Stanford, we should be meeting new people instead of just
banding together with our friends from back home. It's really encouraging
especially to see for example, Steven Chang, just growing so close to everyone
in the fellowship,
projecting his heart outward and taking the time to know people, step by step.
Through the looking glass
I know that freshman year, I would have been the one on the outside and
feeling a bit tense. Often, I felt a bit uncomfortable in the few FiCS meetings
I went to, at least initially before the meeting was over and I had a chance to
talk to people, and honestly, I thought it was better that I had the chance to
grow spiritually and personally, developing friendships and my communion with
God, outside the context of FiCS.
Yet, I know we've still discussed this issue quite a few times, both the
officers, as well as some of the brothers amongst each other. What _do_ other
people see us as: perhaps this hip, exclusive Asian group, like the Lambdas?
It's kind of interesting because we want and we value our identity -- it is a
differentiating element to be valued and preserved. But that preservation should
not come at the cost of intimidating other groups. Is our identity a stumbling
block right now? We have a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, and we do show
it pretty visibly at times. It's a question that eludes a simple binary-valued,
black-or-white answer, and indeed, I think that it differs with people and
personalities. FiCS isn't everything to everyone, and it shouldn't try to be,
just like the computer I'm writing this on isn't the best choice for everyone.
Anyways, this is getting tangential, so read my earlier thought on that for some
more interesting stuff.
In any case, since freshman year, FiCS has diversified -- there is little
question about that. Unfortunately, can everyone perceive that diversification?
Or more accurately, has this diversification fit in with FiCS growing closer
together as a group? As we've become larger, we've also remained pretty tight --
even though we have our individual classes, and everything, we still have that
"one big happy family" feeling that you get with few other
groups here.
So the tightness and "exclusivity" or lack thereof of FiCS, while a very
interesting issue in its own right, also leads to the question of how the
fellowship is influencing me and my own character, in the areas of relationships:
Ground rules
Technically, of course, we actually do have some explicit ground rules on
relations: as multiple speakers (definitely Pastor Eugene and Pastor Paul, for
sure) have said, the core of it is: "NO NON-CHRISTIAN DATING!" But to most
people, that unwritten standard of FiCS seems to be just "NO DATING" or even "NO
PUBLIC INTERACTION WITH THE OPPOSITE SEX," and the latter is what seems to be
partly influencing me and defining how I pursue relationships with friends.
Just look at family time. There's the co-ed family scattered here and there about
the place. But we're all generally either all-guy or all-girl when we split up
into our little circles of discussion and prayer.
So, it is the infamous "brother-sister-relationships-or-lack-thereof" issue
that has come up quite a lot in FiCS; but, like a hot potato, we never seem to
want to hold it in our hands for more than a few seconds at a time. I don't
know about the other classes, but amongst us juniors, we've talked about it, at
retreats, at class prayer meetings in Cubberly 229, and amongst ourselves. And
there seems to be no consensus on this issue.
A bold claim:
I think that "tense" has exerted sort of a Heisenberg effect on certain people,
myself included: in using the word tense as an observation of state, it actually
can cause a real increase in "tenseness", or otherwise, change the atmosphere in
said state.
Moreover, it gives us an excuse to be "tense"
when we would otherwise
not be tense. I'm not faulting you Dave for saying these expresssions, and I find
nothing wrong with them. But, even myself, I find myself saying (even
mentally!)
"tense" when I am, for instance, alone with a girl. For example, if I am in AmStud
(the only people I know in AmStud are girls) I am "tense". If I am in the
second floor of Serra, I am "tense". But would I be tense if I didn't know what
"tense" was? If we didn't have a name in our language for something, could we
still perceive it or experience it?
As part of my work with the Computer Graphics Group and the RIVET project, I've
been doing research on how we perceive various components of color, and
this one guy makes a claim in a book that we humans can more readily
differentiate, compare and perceive psychologically various hues ("red",
"blue", "yellow", "purple", etc) than various levels of brightness becuase we
have various words in our languages for those hues, and nowhere as rich a
vocabulary for brightness. Spice, no?
So food for thought: if we didn't know what "tense" meant or entailed, might
we be "tense" less often when dealing with other people, especially those of the
opposite sex? Or "scandalous" for that matter?
So, back to the opposite sex. Again, I'm not criticizing FiCS, or Dave's
sayings, or being apart from women, I'm just trying, I suppose, to bring up
these issues in this medium. Now besides these, there's the personal element
as well -- a lot of this "tenseness" I feel with women is generally due to
elements of my own character. Case in point:
Personally, I feel especially tense if I'm talking to a girl that is
hooked up already.
Freshman year, I knew a girl who is currently an RA in a certain dorm on campus.
At that time, I was sort of afraid to have any kind of deep conversation with
her, because at that time, she was going out with someone (one of my current
drawmates, in fact.) So near the end of freshman year, out of the blue, she
sent me this long email saying how she was so concerned because she felt that
our conversation every time we met was superficial, and wondering what, if
anything, she had done to alienate me! I still have it. And it was frustrating
because
she wanted to get to know me all this time, and I was just tuning her out, not
letting our relationship progress beyond this certain threshold because I didn't
want to offend the person she was going with!
Crossing the line?
Nowadays, I somewhat feel the same way I felt freshman year with the
aforementioned girl, but this time with Linnea Kim, Lorraine Shih, Jelin Yen,
etc... again -- it's that feeling that I can converse with them on the "hi,
what's up?" level, but I feel as if I'm crossing into dangerous territory if I
take the conversation beyond that. Sure, I can discuss EE282 with Lorraine, or
even human reproduction and the "miracle of life" ( =) ) with Jelin, but I've
never even tried to really ask them personal questions.
Granted, when we've all got our own SO's and spouses, certainly we should be
spending time with them and they should be the ones that we share our feelings
and emotions with, but friendships are still friendships, and those that we
cultivate will still last a lifetime. Even if we can't always maintain them to
the degree that we do know, what is here now. Agree? Disagree?
We definitely should be closer to the sisters. Not just at Valentine's day either,
but as one body. Inviting them over for dinner on that day was a good start,
but it has to be something ongoing, right? I'm not saying every day, but more
often than one day of the year.
So, I guess, that I want to encourage my
brothers, simply as a fellow brother and not speaking from any position of
imagined leadership, try to at least join with
sisters in family time. Maybe invite them to dinner, you know, just for some
talking, sharing, or what not? It might be tense, but
hey, someone has to be pioneering right? I guess then, I should start doing
this myself.
Another point is that I'm not saying we should have coed small groups in
FiCS like they do in, say, IV -- and I will claim that single sex groups *are*
better, simply for sharing, for that is what small groups are intended for. In
the spirit of Ecclestiastes 3, there is a time for everything, including being
apart from the opposite gender, and being together with them.
But nevertheless, pure friendship should be transparent to gender barriers. Like
I said, Joyce Koo, who is not in FiCS, is one of my better girl-space-friends,
and
I will admit that I have a deeper relationship with her than any FiCS sister.
And there is no "tenseness" there, either.
Anyways, Desiree, in her very first thoughts page entry, writes:
Throughout our lives, people come and people go. We meet, we talk, we laugh,
we cry; we experience life together. We are friends. But there comes a time
when our paths must diverge. What now? We promise to write and keep in touch
and never change. But things change. Slowly our coorespondence trickles and
all we are left with are faded pictures and fading memories. We find that,
as time goes by, we have less and less in common. And the person I once
thought I knew is no longer the same. That person is me.
Though we may not see each other often or ever again, this I know:
You have touched my life in a special way. You have made who I am. You are a
part of me.
Because of this, we can never be far apart
for you are always in my prayers and in my heart.
So, we should be grabbing this opportunity now to open up our hearts to others to
leave their influence on, to indeed touch or lives before the moment passes.
So, coming full circle now... Expressing our thoughts solely as a
conversation carried on the medium of web pages: unhealthy -- perhaps. But very
cathartic, definitely, too. Those two concepts might not be mutually
exclusive...
Well, enough theorizing and waxing sentimental. Back to studying Maoist China
for Anthro 118A. A place,
by the way, where, I am pretty sure, there would be absolutely NO "unhealthy"
thoughts pages to worry about. Heck, if the WWW existed back then, and we were
attending school in China, and we wrote this kind of stuff, we'd all be branded
counterrevolutionaries. Of course, not that we aren't already, to some degree. =)
Maybe I'll write a thoughts page on that.
Later.