You Are Not a Number

Spring of my eighth grade year, I remember during ASB elections one girl used the tagline "You are not a number" as a main tenet of her campaign. She was rallying against the administration, a straight-A star, the kind of girl constantly winning awards and recognition for her outstanding work talking to the C-average laymen, her peers if you loosely define the term.

You are not a number. You are not a test score or a nameless ID on a form to be scanned and filed with countless thousands of others until you move on and it gets passed to the next office. You are not what the WASL tells you to be. You are not your grades -- a lesson I've found many an over-achieving student needs to learn sooner rather than later.

No. You are a person. You are an individual with unique perspectives and views. You are an artist and an athlete and a student.

I voted for her, but despite her perfect message, she did not win the election. At the time, she came across as too perfect. Perfect grades, perfect image, pretty and most of all, nice so that even if you wanted to hate her for her perfection, you couldn't without feeling bad for hating her.

I was reminded of this the other day when not hours after moving into my new apartment, my roommate mentioned some app he had on his iPhone. It was some rpg-style calculator that takes different actions and converts them into points that can be added to different areas of self-improvement like strength or intellect or spirituality. Get enough points and you move up to the next level.

My initial reaction to this was a mild interest because it's kind of a foreign concept to me, but the longer I sit with this, the more I get this gut reaction of distaste and I want to reject it and push it farther and farther away from me. This is wrong to me, you can't measure a life. To chart progress is to lose sight of the point of progressing in the first place.

And I get it, I'm not a gamer, who am I to judge, blah-de-fucking-blah. I don't care, I refuse this philosophy. It's a symptom of postmodern Western culture that it's okay to think like this. In Buddhist traditions, even in the search for Enlightenment, it cannot be achieved without first giving up the desire to reach Enlightenment.

There's part of me that wants to mock him. Danny learned a new recipe! *cue horn doo-do-do-dooo* Danny moved up to level 6 in cooking! But what's the point? I'm not going to change his mind by doing that.

This whole level thing is just another form of labeling. It's not rating, like a caste system or a hierarchy, but it's a box to put ourselves and each other in. To level up is to move out into a bigger box, a different label and name. But you are not a number.

It's confining because it's never escaping the cycle. It's ungrounded and leaves you seeking, seeking the next step, seeking the next level. There's no time to accept the present because it's too goal oriented. Where mediocrity and stagnation lie in too much stillness and not enough growth, this takes on the opposite extreme. Happiness only exists in movement and because of this you can never be satisfied unless you keep climbing the spiritual ladder.

I've asked it before and I'll ask it again (and again and again), but why does silence make us so uncomfortable? Stop thinking, stop doing and simply be. Receive. Listen. Feel.

I'm not unnerved by this philosophy because of JoeJack, but because of the culture that allows it to begin with. We're immature in that we as a society never reach beyond this and attempt to see the bigger picture. By trapping ourselves in levels, we put a cap on how far we can go.

The frustrations expressed in this post are symptomatic of a deeper dissatisfaction with the noise around me. I'm being pushed and I'm being pulled, lifted and weighed down by the love I surround myself with. I keep telling myself I'm grounded, but I'm not so sure anymore.

I love. I care. I want. I need.

The past few weeks disconnected from the world, surrounded by love so strong the world will move out of its way, I felt present. And it was a conscious intention of mine to remain present for myself, for those around me, to enjoy the experience. But now, back in the "real" world, I find myself at times overwhelmed. Is it possible to remain present from a distance?

I volunteered at a second Power of Hope camp in beautiful Leavenworth, Washington. Nothing I can write would ever really do the experience justice. There's something about spending a week making yourself vulnerable and open within a community of beautiful, artistic people that makes you fall in love with everyone despite gender, race, sexuality, age, class, ideology, etc. Eight days that go from 7:30am (if you're so lucky to be able to sleep in past the sun) until 10:30pm or later, full of non-stop activity are guaranteed to leave anyone emotionally and physically exhausted.

I spent a lot of that week trying to figure out how I can bring this experience out into my everyday life. I took notes on all the name games and opening activities. But when it comes down to it, I think the biggest way I can continue to carry Power of Hope with me is to internalize that message. Change starts with a decision, with a conscious effort to make a difference. In a society that believes that if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem, there's no room for any waffling in-between.

I've seen many different kinds of community over the last week and a half. As an organization, Power of Hope has created its own kind of community of individuals dedicated towards making that positive change in their lives. On the micro-level, there's also the community of our homes, the families who all to often are strangers to us. I've seen the beauty of a small-town community supporting and loving one of their fellows as a room of 40+ individuals sat together for an hour and a half and listened to him speak about the global community of which we all are a part.

I want this. I want this for myself and for everyone around me. And that's scary because it's one tall order. I don't know if I can deliver, but I'll be damned if I don't try.