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.