That meme that's going around, about drawing your high school self?

[owlectomy]

I don't draw, but I do have this.

Recently I found my reader's response notebook for Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. This is a school assignment from when I was in tenth grade, 15 years old. (For Mr. MacDougal's class, cesario.) It's probably my only writing from that period that I still have. I'm not sure whether I find it poignant or hilarious. Mostly I find it incredibly banal, so I'm just posting a few of the more interesting parts.

I feel, too, that "One must find the source within one's self." Yet I often feel that I can't be myself, simply because I don't know who 'myself' is.

This is probably the biggest disagreement I'd have with my 14-year-old self; I feel now that the idea of the self is so constructed by other forces, I'm almost more suspicious of anything selling itself as "authentic" than something that acknowledges itself as a constructed and arbitrary thing.

I dislike the concept of Nirvana, or any "escape" from the cycle of death and rebirth. I want to throw myself into the pain and folly of life"! I like absolute emotions - not absolute in the sense of being definite, but in the sense of being extreme - to such an extent that I like melodrama. My favorit show is the romantic-to-the-point-of-being-ridiculous Sailor Moon.

I'm surprised that at that age I actually recognized my own melodramatic tendencies! I still almost agree with my teenage self. But I hope I have a slightly more nuanced understanding of Buddhism by now, and I've gotten smacked on my head by my ego enough to say "You have a point."

The most persistent question is, "Am I, like Siddhartha, afraid of myself?" Eventually I always tell myself that even if I don't know much about myself, I do know a few things. There is life, and there is happiness. Instead of trying to figure out who I may or may not be, I should just go ahead and be who I am, for the best way to find something out is to live it.

I knew that then, and I had to keep on telling myself the same thing for a few years more! Which I suppose only stopped when I started believing that a True Self wasn't for discovering, but for creating.

I don't think [people who are shallow] truly feel that way, they have only resigned themselves to the world. I have resigned myself to the world as well, but I have resigned myself to my feet and my status as a nerd. ... Injustice is wrong and I will fight against it.

Like many high school nerds, I had a bit of a problem with feeling superior to people I considered shallow.

[Kamala] is the only woman who appears in the entire book, and I hope her personality doesn't mean that Herman Hesse is sexist. That would disappoint me a lot because he seems like such an insightful writer.

Aww, my naive little proto-feminism.

There are about a dozen places where I chasten myself for going off on a tangent. But surely what I'm really scolding myself for is the self-revelation, the sense that I'm writing things that are too personal, and I want to write them and don't.

[Many people] say to themselves, "When I have reached X I will be happy," and set X as a new car, a boyfriend, a job, fame, kids, or whatever. If they don't reach it, how awful! Their lives become constant miseries of always seeking, never finding. And if they do reach their goal? They are sure to become disillusioned, or to set a new and higher goal.

Funny how I still haven't learned that one...

Comments

[cesario.livejournal.com]

Do you mean Donald McDonald? I saw him not too long ago. He hit his midlife crisis early, poor guy.

And I envy your insight at that age. I wish I'd known you better, then, but I confess I always kept my distance because I really, really couldn't stand your sister's boyfriend and I never seemed to see you except when you were with them.