she's only happy in the sun

As someone who is interested in education, you think I'd understand that you don't learn something just once. Well, maybe you do - maybe the next times are deepening or extrapolating the understanding you've already achieved. Any way you slice it - I realize I learn the same lessons over and over. Maybe these are personal challenges I'm supposed to repeatedly face in my lifetime. Something that, because of who I am, is my responsibility to ponder, challenge, share, and re learn 80 million times.

Recently through the feminist women's magazine BUST, I've become interested in sexual education and development. What all of the information I'm coming across is saying (in an underlying, not outright way) is that you need to love yourself before you can love another. I formulated that saying in high school - probably while dealing with a break up before my sr. year. and kept it to myself. Thinking back, since I've discovered this idea, I've relearned it every two or three months. maybe even once a month. It's quite amazing to me how easily I forget things - even ideas that I decide are central to my personality and way of life.

I decided once, also during high school, that I believed in love and education, and that was just about it. What I didn't realize was that by choosing to believe in those two things, I was choosing to not believe in hate or anger and ignorance - which kind of sounds good until you look at it closer. How this manifested itself in my life was by me eliminating intense anger or dislike of people, ideas, events, anything. I would use the word "annoyed" or "upset" but I was never angry or mad. My mind and body have a lot of capabilities - and I had shut two of them off. I put myself in disconnect - controlling responses, reactions, and thoughts. I have since learned that believing in love and education REQUIRES that i believe in the opposite - something I learned in a different form this JTERM (Every bend is a stretch. everything has its inverse wrpped up in what it is. For every actions, there is an opposite - and its potential is in the initial action).

I was going to keep going but I'm feeling a bit lost right now, because I wandered. I think this'll make more sense to me later and I'll keep going :)