all the baby elephants in this room

I recently found Gillian Anderson’s recommended booklist online, and I think that she has pretty good taste, so I decided to start chipping away at her book picks.

(Fangirl note…this is Gillian Anderson…she’s kind of my hero)

After three years of high school disillusionment, I’m starting to like reading again. Awesome and sad, because as a child, I loved to read. I read all the time. Some kids got in trouble for flushing paper clips down the toilet; I read during class. Nerd? In probably more ways than one.

I started with this one. It’s called Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I figured that since it had a couple music (opera!) undertones, I might find it interesting. Because really, who writes about opera?

This book. This book…dear Lord. So beautiful. I’m only halfway through it, and it’s my new favorite. It’s about violence and terrorism and the intrinsic beauty and goodness that can arise out of human beings. Go read it. Drop what you’re doing and go out and buy it. Now.

With that said, I get to my point (way down here, I know). Roxane Coss, the soprano in the story, makes a reference to a social experiment in the middle of the story. I read it on the bus today on the way back from downtown DC to George Mason, and it made me think a little bit. And this is a stretch, undoubtedly fueled by four days of little sleep, but what happens when you shove a bunch of strangers in a room together and make them interact? It’s not too different from what’s happened here at WJMC.

During my past four days here (and this is just four days) with this group of about two hundred kids here and a handful of advisors, I’ve realized that we’ve already mapped each other out, sorted each other into categories: people I like, people I don’t like, people I want to talk to, etc. By the second full day here, groups were pretty much established…an unwritten set of rules was written. And I’m not necessarily saying that any of this is wrong. That’s just the way things tend to work out.

Now, my personality…I suppose I’m a pretty outgoing person…not quite leader material. I’m more of a witness. I see things, hear things. People’s personalities are so interesting…throw a bunch of them in a room together, and you’ve got some amazing energy you can harness. Just from my group this week (the group of the awesome and revered T-Py), I’ve already seen some interesting people.

There’s the strong personalities, the leaders, the slightly crazy people who always seem to make some sense. There’s a couple of rebels, people who’d rather go down fighting than retract one of their opinions. They’re variety. They sway the group ever so slightly to the side. There’s the introverts, those who don’t mind being a little bit different and are by no means acquiesing. With one well-thought-out sentence, they send the majority’s decision flying out the window. And then there’s the peacemakers, people who sit in the middle of the group, keeping all the energy outward so that it doesn’t turn inward and self-destruct.

It’s the weirdest, most ridiculous combination of people, and without knowing anything about human nature, you’d find it strange that we didn’t rip each other to shreds the minute we met. But there’s so much maturity in this group of people. There is compromise, questioning, inclusion, even though we’re different. And yeah, we’re far from the group of the most perfect kids on the block, but I love this group of people. I love that they care outside themselves, that they really know what they’re talking about.

I don’t know. Human nature continues to surprise me, even with something as simple as this. Because the fact that something like this can work is a little bit of a miracle…I think so, anyway.

Tags: books, fangirling, reflection