It is my last day at Hof van Twello today and I'm going to miss this place. My farming adventure is not over, I am going to spend two weeks at another farm, but it is past its halfway point and thoughts of Los Angeles are constantly creeping into my mind. I'll reflect about all the experiences I've had at the Hof later in this ramble, but I want to talk about something from my last post.
In the last post, I talked about committing myself to dealing with some of my flaws which I tend to avoid thinking about. Luckily for me, one of those flaws got thrown in my face yesterday: my crippling fear of rejection. After being chosen for the last stage of an application for a research opportunity at UCLA, the professor that I wanted to work under "did not find that there was a match in your interests and his current research projects."
The first rejection I remember feeling the hurt of was when I was in eighth grade. That was the year my stepmother, Christy, rejected me: we lived in a house together and she refused to say a word to me. I was fourteen, the prime age for developing chronic insecurities, and that unpleasantness, that sinking feeling of being unwanted, has stuck with me ever since. Ultimately, for me this is my summer of rejection. I am in the Netherlands, living out a dream of mine, because I was fired, rejected from a job. After eight months of working in Outdoor Adventures, my boss, who had gotten to know me, decided she didn't want me in the program because of who I am and tossed me out.
But since eighth grade I have learned that life isn’t your circumstances, that is what the world is, life is how you choose to deal with your circumstances. What got me through the feeling of being unwanted was focusing on my little siblings, Bess and Sam; their love and acceptance of me, no matter how much of a shit show I was at the time, played a pivotal role in me becoming the resilient, loving person who I am today.
Why Nations Fail is a book about how economic growth is based on the institutions a country has, instead of the deciding factor being its geography or culture. The authors' thesis states that critical junctures, events in history, shape the politics of a nation and that "the contingent path of history" makes it so that each of these gradual changes in governance have large effects when nations come to a critical juncture. For example, the Magna Carta and Peasant Rebellion that both took place in England before 1400 made England less monarchical than its European counterparts and so when trans-Atlantic trade opened up in the seventeenth century, a critical juncture, it was monopolized not by the Crown but by the merchant class. The introduction of capitalistic competition instead of a crown monopoly made the government more accountable to the people so it protected property rights, which then enabled the Industrial Revolution to take place. In their logic, this contingent path of history eventually creates the modern world.
When faced with the critical juncture of being fired from OA, my constitution, shaped by the events that happened in my early teens, allowed me to pick myself up and chase one of my dreams. Sure it hasn't been easy, some nights I can't sleep because I think about all the little things I wish I had done or I wish that I didn't, but I'm here, writing, farming, and living my life. The counterpart to rejection is acceptance. Bess and Sam accepted me, and that got me through the critical juncture of Christy leaving, but what is accepting me here? I think more than anything, Hof van Twello has given me time to accept myself, learn that my flaws can also be my assets and that my mistakes are not fatal. For example, my fear of rejection is also what makes me a caring human, I want my friends to constantly know they are cherished explicitly because I don't want them to feel rejected, and sure, I made the mistake of getting fired, but that in itself has created a plethora of opportunities.
At the farm, I have sowed seeds, manured saplings, weeded beds, weeded more beds, weeded even more beds, and harvested crops but I have also made connections, tried new things, and reflected on how fortunate I am. I am here because I was rejected, but I haven't let that sinking feeling take over, instead I have carpe'd the fuck out of this mensis and I get to leave the farm with no regrets. So yeah, right now Professor DeShazo's rejection stinks, but it's an opportunity to do something else, to volunteer more, to intern at Santa Monica Farmers' Market, to be a better frisbee teammate, or to spend more time with my friends that I love.
I'm excited for the next farm, working with animals on an island nature preserve sounds pretty rad, but I'm really going to miss Hof van Twello because I'll be leaving behind an awesome community filled with peculiar people who have taught me so much about myself. Here's a picture of me, happily rejected; check out the other pictures from this month in the other post!
In the last post, I talked about committing myself to dealing with some of my flaws which I tend to avoid thinking about. Luckily for me, one of those flaws got thrown in my face yesterday: my crippling fear of rejection. After being chosen for the last stage of an application for a research opportunity at UCLA, the professor that I wanted to work under "did not find that there was a match in your interests and his current research projects."
The first rejection I remember feeling the hurt of was when I was in eighth grade. That was the year my stepmother, Christy, rejected me: we lived in a house together and she refused to say a word to me. I was fourteen, the prime age for developing chronic insecurities, and that unpleasantness, that sinking feeling of being unwanted, has stuck with me ever since. Ultimately, for me this is my summer of rejection. I am in the Netherlands, living out a dream of mine, because I was fired, rejected from a job. After eight months of working in Outdoor Adventures, my boss, who had gotten to know me, decided she didn't want me in the program because of who I am and tossed me out.
But since eighth grade I have learned that life isn’t your circumstances, that is what the world is, life is how you choose to deal with your circumstances. What got me through the feeling of being unwanted was focusing on my little siblings, Bess and Sam; their love and acceptance of me, no matter how much of a shit show I was at the time, played a pivotal role in me becoming the resilient, loving person who I am today.
Why Nations Fail is a book about how economic growth is based on the institutions a country has, instead of the deciding factor being its geography or culture. The authors' thesis states that critical junctures, events in history, shape the politics of a nation and that "the contingent path of history" makes it so that each of these gradual changes in governance have large effects when nations come to a critical juncture. For example, the Magna Carta and Peasant Rebellion that both took place in England before 1400 made England less monarchical than its European counterparts and so when trans-Atlantic trade opened up in the seventeenth century, a critical juncture, it was monopolized not by the Crown but by the merchant class. The introduction of capitalistic competition instead of a crown monopoly made the government more accountable to the people so it protected property rights, which then enabled the Industrial Revolution to take place. In their logic, this contingent path of history eventually creates the modern world.
When faced with the critical juncture of being fired from OA, my constitution, shaped by the events that happened in my early teens, allowed me to pick myself up and chase one of my dreams. Sure it hasn't been easy, some nights I can't sleep because I think about all the little things I wish I had done or I wish that I didn't, but I'm here, writing, farming, and living my life. The counterpart to rejection is acceptance. Bess and Sam accepted me, and that got me through the critical juncture of Christy leaving, but what is accepting me here? I think more than anything, Hof van Twello has given me time to accept myself, learn that my flaws can also be my assets and that my mistakes are not fatal. For example, my fear of rejection is also what makes me a caring human, I want my friends to constantly know they are cherished explicitly because I don't want them to feel rejected, and sure, I made the mistake of getting fired, but that in itself has created a plethora of opportunities.
At the farm, I have sowed seeds, manured saplings, weeded beds, weeded more beds, weeded even more beds, and harvested crops but I have also made connections, tried new things, and reflected on how fortunate I am. I am here because I was rejected, but I haven't let that sinking feeling take over, instead I have carpe'd the fuck out of this mensis and I get to leave the farm with no regrets. So yeah, right now Professor DeShazo's rejection stinks, but it's an opportunity to do something else, to volunteer more, to intern at Santa Monica Farmers' Market, to be a better frisbee teammate, or to spend more time with my friends that I love.
I'm excited for the next farm, working with animals on an island nature preserve sounds pretty rad, but I'm really going to miss Hof van Twello because I'll be leaving behind an awesome community filled with peculiar people who have taught me so much about myself. Here's a picture of me, happily rejected; check out the other pictures from this month in the other post!
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