I tend to call myself an optimist. I don’t think everything is cheery and good, and I don’t walk around giving people hugs or anything else like that. I simply do not understand what I see as a huge stigma surrounding optimism in general.
For some reason, especially visible at Bard college, there is a deep tract of pessimism. There are multitudes of people who seem to love seeing the negative in everything, people who talk openly about how much they love self destruction, being unhealthy, etc. It seriously bums me out.

I do not understand people who A) choose to see the world from a negative perspective and B) attempt to force that perspective on other people, especially if any of those other people call themselves optimists. Maybe it’s a sign of depression, or maybe its a condition of our generation, the aloof, apathetic role playing, the way people wear t-shirts depicting bars they’ve never been to, the culture of irony at the cost of true emotion.

If you could write the script to your life (which you certainly can), why would you write yourself as the loser? Since getting to this school I have been trying to figure that out, and I still can’t.

A week ago I checked out a christian youth group at my school, but I didn’t find it at first and stumbled upon a Muslim service. They were very welcoming, and I ended up discussing face recognition with a very pretty shrouded egyptian computer science graduate student. I was able to relax and was served copious amounts of food. At the end of the service, they prayed, and I sat to the side and meditated while they prayed. The melodic prayers were enchanting and empowering. I observed that the women were behind a partition, but the partition was aligned to make it more sybolic than any thing else. It made me think completely differently about what we call the unjust treatment of women of Islam. The seperation makes sense; I hate when people act like there are no differences between men and women especially when t comes to their social roles.
Confidently I leave the Muslim group to find the Christian group upstairs. I enter a room where an overvealous annoying guy is playing a guitar and ranting about Jesus. Man, I love Jesus, but this guy loves Jesus. I thought the song would be over in a minute, so I shrugged it off in anticipation of some good bible study into which we could debate about David and Bathshebba, and Judah and Timar and all the rest of those cool guys. Instead this man decides to sing each verse about 6 times before moving on, and the singing went on for well over 45 minutes. After the singing was over, I talked to this African girl about comparative literature, then this fucking guy starts to talk to us. I though it’d be like a minute, then open it up to the group, but this man went on. After that, he fucking gets on his guitat again.
This is where things change, the other people start freaking out. One guy was on the floor crying. Another girl was a complete mess in the arms of this other huge woman. People just spread out over the room and just get it go. You would think I could get down with it, but it was the most uncomforatble I’ve felt in a long time.
I couldn’t relate to the people who shared my language and the religion of my household, yet I could to they people I could hardly talk communicate with and who’s traditions I am completely ignorant. I say that I understand and can relate to any belief systems and any faith, and I still believe it, but I just felt so hypocritical when I was with the more familiar set.
Should I become Muslim? Na, it probably won’t be so cool when I learn Arabic. Should I say I believe in no religions? I think I’ll have the get the skeletons out of my closet. But it just so happens that I misplaced them. Can anyone help me in my tressure hunt?