Topic 3: Home - Jaehyeong Lee

Once upon a time, I thought home was a place where I'd grown up and lived a great deal of my life in.

This place was the magical land of Rancho Palos Verdes near Torrence in Southern California.

Kinda far away from the land of my culture, South Korea, but after living for about 7 years, I ended up there. I would spend four years of my life there, the longest I had ever settled down to live in one place. My dad had a relatively stable job that allowed him to stay while he waited for his permanent residence application to pass through so he could improve his, my mother's, and my, career paths.  I didn't realize how much staying in one place for so long could change the way I felt about a place, or how much it would affect the way I felt about the people there or the culture around me. Here are a couple things that changed.

1. I made friends and stayed with them long enough to like them, hate them, and then love them.

2. I got attached to my former place of residence.

3. I met someone I would have a relationship with for 7 years afterwards.

Because I got to feel those things, my definition of home changed in a very drastic way. I'll explain how they changed me.

1. Years after I moved away from sunny California to the land of rain, water-air and tree, NC, I realized how much I missed my friends. I missed them so much that I was depressed about being friendless in NC, that I wouldn't see my friends the next day. I missed my friends so much that I didn't make any friends for the first few months in NC. I didn't want to make any new friends. Depressed, lonely and destitute, I began my angsty middle school years missing home, which I mistakenly thought was California.

California wasn't my home, friends. California just happened to be the place where my close friends were.

2. I really missed the old place. Its compact walls, its white-walled apartment feeling, its flat roof, its stone staircase (not part of the apartment, just the access stairs). I missed it so much that I actually scootered my way to it when I visited my best friend, Nick, the last time I went to visit him and other friends. I scootered miles. MILES. ON A SCOOTER.

Trust me. You haven't lived until you've ridden a scooter going 25 mph on bricks with rounded edges that tried to bump you off and signs hip high that you had to duck under to avoid getting blown off of your scooter.

No helmets, no pads. I felt like such a badass.

Anyway, getting back to the main point! When I saw the apartment again, I couldn't believe it. It was so much smaller than I had thought it was when I was little. It started a chain in me from that point on to try to revisit every part of my past physically, from Santa Barbara to Long Island to all of the cities we lived in in Korea. Now that I have the ability to hold memories in my conscious, I will be able to revisit them for the rest of my life. I finished, for the most part, what I started, the revisiting of old places of my youth, and I now look onwards, having changed my final, now current, definition of home.

The journey to physical locations helped me in my realization about the true meaning of home. We're almost there, folks.

3. This girl was my first love. She helped shape me into the person I am today. This person also solidified the definition of what my home was. When we decided to split, the entirety of Rancho Palos Verdes, a place I drilled into my mind as home for 11 long years, looked completely foreign to me.

I was a complete stranger in my own "home".

That's when it hit me, as I walked down the sunset lit hill I remember, shining so beautifully. Home is not a physical place.

Home is where the people you love are. My home is in my beloved friends, in my family, in my current beau. Home can be experienced through the senses, but it resides where one cannot ever physically enter. It's in another person's love for you.

That's not to say a roof above your head is not necessary. It's just not everything a true home is.

To end, I want to leave you with another question. Who are the people in your life that are part of your home?

A side note: I recently got to listen to an author that was introduced to me in the 9th grade. Her name is Sandra Cisneros, and if you haven't read her books The House on Mango Street and Carmello (I'm reading this one, I take back some of my sass), I strongly suggest them to you. They are written in vignette style, which carries an elegance unknown to most, but quite fitting for the English language. It's like the analog, vignette is to English as condensed poetic form is to Chinese. Highly limited in length, a requirement for the most precise control of the language. Regardless, she talked (and talks) of homes, what they are to her, and how she dreams of them. For more insight, I highly encourage a glimpse into The House on Mango Street.

Another side note: Ayn Rand also mentions the necessity of a home for the self in her book, The Fountainhead. It's a bit daunting of a read, and she certainly does press her philosophy deep into your psyche; however, she makes claims about a home for the individual that I believe ring true to nearly every person. In a metaphoric perspective, she makes even more complex, interesting points about home, but you'll have to read for yourself to get what I mean.

Topic 3: Home - Matt Litzsinger

Whatever and wherever home is, it's one of the most reliably positive places in our world. It's a place where you can be open and vulnerable, because you know you won't be judged. It's a place where you can be yourself, know that that person is cared for and loved, and not try to put on a front. It's also a place from which you can reliably derive happiness. Home meets many of our basic physical and emotional needs as humans, so it's no surprise that we tend to gravitate towards our version of home, but how do we determine what home means to us?


image by viahouse.com

The Role of Home / Leaving Home

I believe that to understand home, we have to contemplate home with its opposite (being uncomfortable, being away from home); because we take our homes for granted, our views of what a home does may under-represent what functions it actually does provide. Looking at the presence of home and the absence of home is meant to counteract this biases.

1. You must anticipate a safe return to voluntarily leave.

In order to voluntarily leave home, we have to anticipate being able to return in the future. Let's examine this for a moment. There is something that is biologically hard-wired into humans about having a home - we as a society often value fitting in over standing out. Why is this? Going back to our hominid days, it would have been more advantageous to survive if you were in a part of a tightly-knit group who defend the other members in the pack, making the overall group much stronger. This makes it very advantageous to be in a tightly-knit group, which explains the huge incentive to make friends in the modern world. When we decide to leave home, we have the perception that something else is better (perhaps another home), or that when leaving home we will be able to return, thus keeping the benefits of that home. These interactions of temporarily leaving groups and joining others is too complex to discuss here, but the point is that leaving home must:

1. Have high perceived value
2. Allow for a safe return

In addition, we could apply these concepts of leaving and returning home to music. First of all, we would consider the home to be the key that the music is in. Whenever we start the piece in a certain key, we expect to return to that key at the end of the piece, maybe even by the end of the phrase. These expectations are also associated with emotions; wherever there is dissonance, we feel tension and anxiety, and whenever there is consonance, we feel emotional release and catharsis. However if these expectations are not eventually met, we are deeply dissatisfied because of the emotions that go with these expectations; this could be the reason that people dislike atonal music (music without a particular underlying key), because there is nowhere to return to. This role of "home" within music also reveals a particular function of home that is often forgotten: it provides structure among the chaos of everyday goings-on. The structure of tension and release is usually reasonably predictable (4 or 8 bar phrases), and allow humans to understand and make peace with the chaotic world (represented by the piece).

image by Susukifarag

To reiterate, without safety at home, we will not feel compelled to venture out. This means more reclusive behavior, and less willingness to try unfamiliar and unknown activities. However, when you do have a safe, reliable home, those activities become much more fulfilling. Except for maybe your biological home, which has likely always been your home since birth, we at some point were an outsider at all places we consider home. This makes branching out and finding new opportunities for home extremely important.

Finding Home

Many people consider their true homes to be wherever their favorite people are; so a similar approach to finding a home could be used.

1. Observe potential groups from the outside

1. This is similar to the approach I discussed in week 1 with making friends. Try to observe a group from the outside and look at how they treat each other? Are there one or two beneficiaries with every one else following the motions or is everyone benefiting? This could help you understand your role should you try to make that your new home.

2. Nostalgia

Think of your most nostalgic moments. Nostalgic moments have a sense of home and familiarity to them and are distinctly positive (never negative); it is a way of making sense of our past and using it to predict what might work in the future. It also makes returning home much sweeter; you remember all the good aspects of home, want to remember and reflect on the past, and thus learn what places functioned most easily as home and what was so special about those places. For these reasons, nostalgia seems to be a very good way to remember where your home is and what you value most.

Conclusion

"Home is where the heart is" - it's cliché, but true. It's a way for us to make sense of the world, understand what environments are conducive for our emotional and physical well-being, and be as happy as possible. Nostalgia helps us to understand the keys to our emotional and physical well-being, and reminds us to be happy. These feelings are especially strengthened after a long period away from home. Home grounds us in what is distinctly human: interpersonal relationships, caring for one another, and enabling the happiness of others. No other species does this in quite the same way as humans, so cherish this; it allows our society to function properly.

Topic 3: Home

So this week's topic is home. This topic is more about figuring out what exactly home is, generally, subjectively, superficially, existentially. I strongly believe in open ended responses, so it's up to the writer to come up with what they'd like to discuss. If no ideas come up, try these.

• Going home
• Defining home
• Expectations of home
• Leaving home
• Finding home
• Losing home

It's my hope that you'll realize your own definition of home is more complicated than it seems...

Topic 2: Character - Matt Litzsinger

Definition

Whenever one talks about character, one usually refers to the parts of a person that make them act in a certain way time and time again. It seems to me that character therefore refers to the amalgamation of unchanging habits of an individual.

Origin of Character in an Individual

1. Character Must be Developed

This leads us to question of where character originates from. You might say that it comes naturally. You have always remembered being patient, for instance. However, you would not classify a baby as being 'patient', as it cannot outwardly exude patience or impatience. Babies have not interacted with the world long enough for any of their tendencies to be described as unchanging, so don't have character. Therefore, there has to be a point in which you developed a trait or in which that trait became outwardly evident. You may have been born with tendencies to form certain habits, but they only became part of your character through action.

2. Theory of Character Acquisition

Aristotle wrote about the topic of character acquisition in his Nicomachean Ethics. A small part of his theory says that the ability to acquire any virtue or vice is present at birth, but characters (which are composed of virtues and vices) only develop through performing the corresponding actions to develop the corresponding habits. I would argue, however, that there is major portion that Aristotle missed, namely that we learn most of our early habits through imitation.

Picture by jlorenz1

3. Character Acquired by Imitation

From birth to age 18, children spend a large amount of their time with their parents, and because they strongly imitate them, they develop many of the same habits as their parents. Presumably the children will receive the most exposure to the habits of the parents which are unchanging. A parent could go through a mid-life crisis, but these are recently developed habits, and the children won't have as much exposure to them as they do to unchanging habits. Unchanging habits of the parents which are learned through imitation by the children, are reinforced by the parents throughout their childhood, so are also unchanging. Therefore, children inherit some of their character from their parents, as these imitated habits are a part of their character. Certainly, there are also some outside influences that determine character, but I think that it's predominantly inherited from parents.

Are you Responsible for Your Character?

1. You Control Your Surroundings

As discussed previously, your parents determine much of your character as they are your primary example of what a person should be. As a child, you have a choice on how much to idealize each parent, which determines how much of each parent you will imitate. Thus, even though there are only two choices of people to imitate, the child has a little control over what they idealize, and what they subsequently imitate.

More control over character emerges as one leaves home (particularly work or school). As discussed in my post last week, you can decide who you spend the most time with and who you develop friendships with. These friends will determine many of your character traits. Presumably you are friends with them because you see them as good people, worthy of imitation, and thus imitate them.

2. There is Time to Change

Although you may have limited choices about who to imitate as a child, when you are in your late teenage years, you develop rational thinking independent of your parents and have the ability to make decisions for yourself. This ability gives you the power to change your habits and thus your character.

Changing habits is a slow process, but a majority of your life is still ahead of you, so changing your character to match your ideal as closely as possible is a worthwhile thing for you to do. In the end, I believe that if we indeed have free will, we are responsible for our character. Additionally, because we have the ability to improve our habits to make us and those around us happier, I believe that we should do so.

Picture by Matt Litzsinger, taken at the Berlin Wall.

Improving Yourself

1. Introspection

The first step on improving yourself is to understand what your character currently is and what you desire it to be. There are many tests you can take to tell you what your character is, such as the VIAsurvey and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, although honest introspection is also quite helpful.

2. Persistence

This week, I challenge you to develop a new habit and then stick with it. Share it with your friends and carefully develop incentives to make sure that you follow through with your habit. This week and following, I will make my sleep cycle more regular; specifically, I will go to bed and wake within the same 30 minute window every day (10:30 - 11:00 PM sleep and 6:30 - 7:00 AM wake). I will report my results on this blog to help ensure my success.

Topic 2: Character - Jaehyeong Lee

To me, character is social signage. It exists to help let people know what to expect of you should a certain event or action happen. If a person falls, depending on a person's character, their reaction will be different. Helpful, kind, considerate character will aid the fallen. Apathetic, selfish, busy character will not have enough time to aid. It's important because if the time should come when someone of your character is necessary, people will know who to reference or come to for response. Yes, character is something unique to a person; however, that doesn't mean it isn't influenced by the environment. Character is built naturally as one communicates with other people. The amount that it can change is dependent on how many interactions one has with however many different people. I'll consider how one can build their character and how one can help someone else build their character

1) How one can build character

There are a number of solutions. You can meet people, out topic of consideration last week, you can make more promises and keep them, you can take on more responsibility, you can try to break old habits, you can try to reduce the amount of hypocrisy you have, you can do nice things for others, the list goes on. Find something you have fun doing with a community of people, like group study, dance or music (those are the ones I do). 

For group study, break a difficult chapter into sections and have each person do their little section before the group gets together and then present the information in the most succinct way possible to the rest of the group. Sure, there will be some people who don't do their fair share of work - work around it. Get motivated about the upcoming material, appreciate the coursework, help others with their sections. Make it enjoyable, and people will come back and work hard to give to the group. When the payoff comes with that last A you received on your paper, the number of people interested in studying with you will rise dramatically. This will help you become more responsible, considerate and helpful, improving your character every moment of the way.

For dance, have everyone choreograph to their own music and present it to everyone the next practice. Have some of them teach it and perform it later. When making your dance, pick your favorite song, get the feel for it, add your own styles, nuances and moves. My motto when dancing is, if you think it looks awesome when you do it, everyone else will think it looks awesome too. If you hesitate, you've already made the rest of your audience doubt whether you can do the next move or not. There's no time to take steps back, just do it, evaluate, improve, do it again. This will build a sense of passion and motivation for your work, helping your character be more positive, upbeat and progressive. This is infectious at school, work and home.

For music, orchestras, bands and big groups are excellent forms of responsibility. The conductor already expects a great deal from you, so just do one better. Why stop there? You're already lovin' it, you're already groovin' to the music. Move your body to the music. Change the way you play the instrument. Breathe. Flow. Feel the sound come out of your fingers. The entire world changes if you've ever experienced playing music in this way. This will help you embody your work and give your character an insatiable drive for curiosity. What if I tried applying these new ways of perceiving music to different pieces, scores, styles? What kind of interesting things will happen then? Is there more to learn, to improve, to play? It can only get better from there. Others will notice, some will follow the same path. Charisma is contagious.

2) How one can help others build their character

Well, you've learned about meeting people. Maybe you realize they are shy, non-confrontational, independent. Get acquainted with them. Help them learn to build their character by showing them some of these things you might do that help your character grow. Don't force them to do anything - just show them that you, having build your character in such a way, are shining, and convince them that they can shine too. 

Be a role model. Be yourself.

Topic 2: Character

The topic for week two involves character and how it affects our interaction with other people. Here are some guiding questions:

• How should character be defined and what is it?
• How does your character develop?
•  How does it determine how you relate to other people, and, connecting to last week, make friends?
• Is there a character which is most ideal? If so, what is it like, or what motivates it?

Have fun with this one, and I hope that writing about this will improve your character.

Topic 1: Meeting New People - Jesse Wu

Let's get this started shall we. Meeting new people. Hmm. I actually come to a roadblock (or should I say writer's block) and would like to generalize this to experiencing anything new.

I have found that experiencing anything new for the first time is an incredible feeling that really cannot be repeated. For example, say I watch a movie which I didn't know anything about what would happen in it. A recent one I've watched is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. In this case, suppose the watcher had never read the book. The movie would have been pretty entertaining in that you really would not know what would happen. Would Bilbo succumb to the draw of adventure and journey with the dwarves? Would the group get eaten by some trolls? Who is this brown wizard? What is this ring and will Bilbo make it out past this mysterious creature to escape with it? Will Bilbo kill the creature to get past it? When does this movie even end (since its the first part of a trilogy, one really can't guess where it would end)?

From these questions, there are  answers which really say plot-twist! Experiencing this story for the first time allows one to enjoy being surprised and/or mind-blown. Knowing the story already makes experiencing it somewhat boring. Why is giving away plot sometimes called spoiling and why do people say "Spoiler Warning! Do not read ahead!" before spoilers? The element of surprise is a powerful tool for storytelling. I would bet that story lovers would rather get sick or lose money as opposed to being told spoilers because it ruins their experience.

Speaking of The Hobbit, that movie had some amazing music. I've found that the first time hearing a great song has one of two effects. One is that I hear it and I think "this is pretty strange," and I play it again and then start to think of it as a great song when I hear it the second or third time. The first time hearing it is just a warm-up in a way. This is kind of like developing love or not judging a book by its cover. The second effect is that the first time hearing the song makes me instantly enjoy it. This is like love at first sight. However, listening to a great song repeatedly for many times makes the song become boring after a while, which I kind of find depressing. New songs are always surpassing older ones because people get bored of music which they have already listened to many times.

The same effect of enjoying something the most on the first time extends to stories in books, stories in video games, video games in general, food, places, and even pure knowledge. Maybe it is better to not know everything in this universe (have omniscience). Being constantly curious has its benefits. One would prefer to not know everything. I guess being an omniscient being like a god wouldn't be a very exciting job.