Pretty

We can love someone so deeply but they may not be the place to invest our lives. On the other hand, just because you can't invest your life in that person doesn't mean you shouldn't or can't love them. It simply means we understand the extent of what we can invest in our love for them. Love does not automatically render the responsibility and strength needed to uphold a life commitment. Be careful who you give your life to because those days, moments and hours can never be returned... but love whomever you please.

Jada Pinkett Smith

Around Europe

Hamburg, London, Prague. 10 days. Many friends. I had been to all these cities before; this time it was more about cathcing up with friends and family I hadn't seen in a while. And trying to experience each of these places as those who live there do. I was so pleasantly surprised about Hamburg. I never imagined I would like a city in Germany this much. But I did. It's modern, organized, livable, green, half the city rides bikes, there are parks and lakes and channels and as soon as the temperature goes above 20C, everyone is outside, wine festival, beach bars, jogging by the river. One day I borrowed my friend's bike and felt like a local, riding on the many bike paths (almost all the streets I saw have bike lanes on the sidewalks, which are wide enough for bikers and pedestrians to share, without the constant danger of being run over by cars). The suburbs are lovely too: my brother lives in a little town called Buchholz. It's a 25 minute train ride from the center of Hamburg, on a train that looks like it's from a sci-fi (especially being used to New York and Budapest transportation). The town is neat, walkable, cute. From the edge of the forest, you can walk to the center in 10-15 minutes. There is a market on the main square, cute little shops and restaurants and most importantly, it's lively! It's nothing like an American suburb. You don't have to drive everywhere, shop in the mall or even worse, the strip malls! And you can be in the forest in 5 minutes (however, I have to admit that 2 days there was more than enough for me).

Hamburg

London is London. Not much more to say about that. It's as much of a metropolis as New York is. I love the pubs, the buses, the Olympics buzz! I was also busy trying to see as many people as I could fit into 3 days. One of the days I spent there started with a running race, the British 10K. This time, I was a spectator, and was cheering for Daniel (except I only cought sight of his back once as there were 30 thousand runners!). I tried to follow the route as long as I could, through Trafalgar Square and in front of the Buckingham Palace. I have to say, even though nothing can beat the NYC marathon route as it turns onto 1st Ave from the Queensboro Bridge, but this might come close. After the race, we met up with another good friend from Hungary for a wonderful lunch. Drinking cider at a pub all afternoon, while watching Wimbledon was kind of tiring. Dinner with another couple of friends in a different part of town, then off to meet yet another friend, not to waste a moment! And this pretty much repeated for 2 more days. Since when are all my friends in London??

London

Since I'll be going back for the Olympics in a couple of weeks, maybe I'll write about that later, but oh my god, the whole thing is so exciting! I guess, always having been an athlete, I feel that the Olympics have a special meaning. Being around the Olympic Park, seeing the preparations, some of the athletes who had already arrived there, it put a huge smile on my face. When I started fencing at the age of 7, it was very clear that the goal was to make olympians out of all of us. Of course, not everyone can make the Olympics, but the philosophy used to be just that. It became clear some years later that I wasn't destined for the Olympics; I was not at all heartbroken about that. Even now, being so close to the event, I never think about it as something I could have reached. Nontheless, it's super exciting to be there, just as a spectator, just to see and feel the buzz.


Prague was lovely too. I felt like it was a smaller and more sterile version of Budapest. It's beautiful but I prefer the atmosphere of Budapest. However, catching up with my friend Jana was so nice, her two little girls are so adorable!

Around Prague

What can I say?  I could see myself in either Hamburg or London. One day maybe, who knows? For now, sticking to NYC :)

New Budapest

I have been home for a little over two weeks now. I've been in no rush this time; I don't need to see everyone I know in and around Budapest in 10 or 14 days. So I've been walking slower, doing less, watching more, observing things. Here are some I found particularly striking.

In Budapest

No rush. People stop at the red lights waiting for it to turn green before crossing the street. People stand on the escalator going up and down to and nobody tries to push you to the side to get down to the arriving train. At first it drove me crazy to just stand there while I heard the train coming but then I realized that most of the time, the next train arrives within 5 minutes. For those 5 minutes, I can watch the news on the screens on the walls of some of the metro stations.

In New York

No Confrontation. In New York people will do anything to avoid direct confrontation. Sometimes I feel that everyone lives in a bubble and moves through life protecting that bubble at any cost. As soon as someone as much as grazes that bubble, they move over just enough to feel protected again. A few months ago, I was on the 6 train going downtown and there was a man sitting next to me who was trying all of his ringtones on his new phone. Very loudly. It was super frustrating. I saw several people glaring at him angrily, shaking their heads, but nobody said a thing. I kept imagining that I would come up with something witty to say to him and then he would suddenly feel really bad about what he was doing and everyone else on the train would be very thankful to me.

In Budapest

Confrontation. Earlier this week I was on the 6 tram (the only piece of public transportation that has air conditioning) when someone's phone rang. An older man next to me answered the phone and started talking rather loudly. He probably had a hard time hearing. It was pretty annoying, no doubt, but I didn't expect people to get aggressive. They did all right. Two younger man practically started screaming at the man on the phone; soon it turned into a shouting match, not a few profanities included. It went on for two whole stops. I moved to the back of the tram, then got off.

Maybe connected to this is the observation that people here - and in Europe in general I think - are warmer, easier to become friends with. Even though on average and I spend about 2 or 3 weeks a year in Budapest, in the past few years, I have made a number of new friends here. Some of them I met through friends while visiting, some I met while they were visiting in New York, but either case, I have always found it easier to make friends here. Most recently, a friend of a friend was in New York for work and the three of us met for dinner one night and had a great time. At the end of the night, the friend mentioned that we should get in touch when I am in Budapest and should go running together. When this kind of thing happens with an American, my first assumption always is that they didn't really mean that; it's sort of a curtesy, a nice (but often superficial) thing to say you want to hang out with a person again even if you have no intention of ever doing so. Not the case in Hungary. If someone doesn't like you, NO WAY they will ever tell you to let's hang out. No games. It's more simple. So, we didn't end u going running because it's been way too hot lately but we did get coffee one day and have plans to have a beer this week.

Less work, more play. In my old (weird to say that) lab, I often tried to get people to go get some drinks after work, relax, chat, eat a bite together before heading home for the night. On the rare occasion that this succeeded it always took hours to get people together to be able to leave. People work hard, I understand, but I wish that people were a little more spontaneous and social. In Budapest, there are hundreds if not more outdoor cases and pubs, scattered all over the city. On any given evening, weekday or not, people are sitting, drinking, talking, enjoying themselves. Even in this heat wave. I wish there were more places like those in New York.

PDA (public display of affection). Monday night around 9pm, at the center of the city, tram stop. A woman dressed in a very short dress with a man in a suit. Both in their 30s most likely. Not teenagers. I was standing there writing a text, not paying attention to what's going on around me. I looked up and suddenly realized that they were practically having sex right next to me. I must have stared for a while, but they didn't seem to care one bit, so I just moved a little further from them. When the tram arrived I got on and sat down. Right across from me, a young couple, teenagers this time. Girl sitting on boy's lap, I can see her panties. Mostly because his hand is practically in her panties. Nobody payes them any attention. In my youth, I remembered, I was guilty of similar displays of affection. Not something you often see in the US. I like the expression "get a room!".

AC. America is crazy about air conditioning. They cannot imagine living without it. When I first moved to Kansas 12 years ago, I probably hadn't ever experienced AC before. And we had hot summers all right. Hot summers with fencing camp. Hot summers dressed head to toe and wearing a mask. I never thought it was that bad. Then I arrived in Kansas. During my first week there it was near 100F (~40C) and we were going camping near the Ozarks in Missouri. Nearly everyone there was dying of the heat. I was all right. Everyone commented on it. I was simply used to it. Now, I am not. In NYC, and everywhere else in the US, you absolutely have to carry a sweater with you even in the biggest heat waves. Black-outs are not uncommon because people turn up their ACs so high that the electric grid can't handle it anymore. When you step into a subway car from the boiling heat of the NYC subway platforms, the temperature drops nearly 30F! That's insane! The EU actually has laws regarding how much a difference is allowed between outside and inside temperatures. It's bad for your health to go from 100F to 70F and then back to 100F within a few minutes. And it's a huge waste of energy. With that said, right now, I am craving for a freezing subway car! However, the few places in Budapest that have AC are actually at a normal temperature. You walk in in a short summer dress and suddenly, you are comfortable. Not freezing. It took me a week to remember to leave my sweater home when going out. I like this. I think it's way healthier too. Today though, I checked whether the restaurant we are going to for lunch has AC before deciding it was a go. Even with that, I am leaving my sweater home.

As cities go, there are some really great things about both New York and Budapest. If there was a way to combine all the good things and make a great New Budapest, I would move there in a heartbeat! For now, New York and Budapest will do. And lots of other cities too, some of which I am about to visit in the coming weeks. Here I come, Hamburg, London and Prague!

Some pictorial evidence:

A little bit of Moscow in Budapest - aka Die Hard 5 set

NOT politically correct

Barnes & Noble has much to learn - Budapest bookstore cafe

Small country, BIG government

Hunglish

You can sail in waist-deep water too

Evening chilling

Stories

The animation I posted the other day with the triangles and circle and box, I saw that at a really cool lecture I went to over the weekend. The Heider-Simmel study was conducted back in the 1940's; most people, when watching this animation, explain "behavior" of the geometrical objects in a way that it fits into a social situation. Most people see in it complex interpersonal information with emotions without being prompted. Simply put, they see a story.

Here is what I, and most people, saw: little triangle (man) is with circle (woman), they are in love. Big triangle (second man) comes into the picture and tries to seduce circle - he tries to break up their relationship. For a while, it seems that big triangle succeeds: he manages to get circle into the room with him, corners her, but she doesn't give in, she keeps resisting. Eventually, little triangle (I, and Jeffrey Eugenides, thought this was a third man, most others seemed to have thought this one to be the original man) appears and circle happily leaves big triangle to run off with small triangle, and they live happily ever after.

The point of the lecture wasn't actually to look at a love triangle between triangles and a circle; rather, it was about the science of story telling (or the way it was phrased, The science of narrative - if you have some time, watch the children telling their stories, they are very cute and the stories rather interesting). Besides Jeffrey Eugenides, whose Middlesex is one of my favorite novels, Joyce Carol Oates was also on the panel. I have never actually read any of her writing, but have once worked with a doctor who went to Princeton as an undergrad, studied creative writing under her mentoring, and ended up publishing a couple of novels (before deciding to take the more lucrative career path of becoming a doctor). As a side-note, she also mentored Jonathan Safran Foer during his Princeton years, who, unlike my friend, very wisely decided to chose the less lucrative path to success, and aren't we all glad he did!

So, why do we tell stories? Is it an evolutionary adaptation, or maybe a byproduct of having too large brains? Does it have something to do with language or culture? What happens in our brains when we listen to stories? Do stories change us? These were just some of the issues being discussed at the panel, by the two novelists and three psychologists. Fascinating.

I love to read, and write. I mostly read stories about imaginary people (some about real people too) and write stories about or inspired by my own day to day life. For me, I used to think that these two activities serve different purposes. But maybe not. Sometimes I read as an escape; living in a story that is not my own life can be liberating. Sometimes, I want to identify with something, or someone, in a story. Reading about a person I feel I resemble makes me feel part of something. Sometimes, what I read changes my thinking, my behavior. One of the psychologists on the panel talked about the fact that people who read a lot of fiction are generally better at inter-personal communication, at identifying social cues; better at being social animals. Perhaps because so many social situations we would never encounter in our real lives are presented to us in stories.

Writing, for me, helps sort out convoluted thoughts in my head. Before something becomes ready to be written down, it needs to be organized, digested and comprehended. The myriad of thoughts and emotions that appear seemingly out of nowhere (or as a response to circumstances) can become very disruptive if not sorted through. At least that's what I have found since starting to write this blog. Something about the process of writing it all down (or out) reduces the confusion inside. The end result: I feel better! No better proof than the fact that I have been more or less consistently writing on here for years now. It also teaches me so much about myself. For example, just a moment ago, I wrote "I often have trouble keeping up new hobbies". Then I thought about that. Why do I think I have trouble keeping up new hobbies? Of the new new things I started doing over the last few years, I actually did keep up running, volunteering and writing regularly, which is not so bad. Sure, there are a few things I didn't follow up on: after going to Spain, I got very excited about learning Spanish, bought a few books, but never made it past the first chapter; for a while, I did yoga pretty regularly, which, over the past year or so, I could not keep up (maybe in med school I will need it more!). Sure, there are other things too, but overall, not so bad. I am not the kind of person who starts something, gets bored quickly, and quits. And I would have probably never thought about that unless I was writing about it.

There was also discussion at the lecture about why we often make up dark stories. One of the psychologists called it "trouble": stories always have some trouble element, he said.We, as a species, love apocalypse stories, war stories, stories of all kinds of hardships, murder mysteries, stories about people who get sick and so on. While I daydream - which is very often - I most often come up with stories that involve me in some future situation that's really rough. What if I was kidnapped by some foreign government and forced to become a spy for them (just one extreme example)? Apparently, imagining these difficult future situations prepares up for possible crazy things that could come up in life. It makes sense! Imagining an apocalypse, for example, people think of all kinds of different ways to deal with it - while, most likely we would all just be dead in case of one, but it's nice to imagine ourselves to be among the few survivors - and thus, might actually be better prepared in case it does come one day in the near future (like this year maybe!). I used to think there was something wrong with me, coming up with some crazy scenarios in my head, of the most unlikely of hardships I would encounter in the future. Apparently, most people do this! It's a relief, really.

I wish I had taken some writing classes in college, when I had a chance. I wish I had done many things differently in college, but oh well, I am just glad I didn't screw up any worse. At 18, one's just way too young to realize what an amazing opportunity it is to be able to take any class, learn anything at all, even if it's completely outside one's major. But maybe back then, I would not have been captivated by it; I could have been too immature. Maybe one day, I'll take a creative writing class, maybe with Joyce Carol Oates or Jeffrey Eugenides, wouldn't that be so cool??!!

A little experiment

I would love to hear what people think about this little animation.





What do you see?
Comment, please!

Anxieties

Walking to work this morning, I ran into an old friend's Mom on the street. As with anyone you have known superficially for many years, we went through the usual formalities of how are you, what are you doing these days. Except that now, with everyone and their mothers (literally!) on Facebook, she knew exactly what I was up to: starting med school soon and all that jazz. So instead, she asked me how my love life was going. Any men around these days? I said not much going on. Maybe she sensed my unease at that point because she seemed to change her mind suddenly about the direction the conversation was headed and instead, began telling me that she knew how hard it was to meet people in this city and besides, look at how successful I am and how I got here all on my own, how she remembers me as a little girl in Hungary and how I moved here and from nothing I have made myself something. Blah blah blah... is it just me or does this sound like she was trying to convince me (or herself perhaps) that it was okay that I wasn't dating anyone, that my other qualities made up for the lack of a husband, a boyfriend? And if so, why do I care? And if not, then why am I reading things into this dialogue?

I am clearly anxious about this. I can try denying it, even to myself, but here it is. Anxiety. Maybe it’s the fact that a lot of my close friends are suddenly getting married. Maybe it’s that I am nearing that decade of life in which being a single woman often has some very negative connotations – there is even a very popular HBO series based on this fact of life, which my life so often resembles. Maybe it’s what I conceive of as social expectations. At a certain point in life, people should get married, buy a house and have children. That’s what people around me are doing. That’s what people in the movies are doing. Sure it doesn’t mean it’s what I must (or should) do, but we all want to fit in – whoever says that’s not true, I don’t believe it – and we don’t want to be judged by others. And I know that people judge, because I do. I don’t want to, but many times I have met older people who had either never married or never had children, and I often thought: are they happy, do they ever wish life turned out differently, was it their choice or circumstances created a less than ideal situation?

I think of my very good friend whose Mom often says about her daughter: her life is on track, she has a great job that she loves and that pays very well, she travels all over the world, she has amazing friends, but there is just one thing missing: a boyfriend. And sadly, I think that’s how she feels as well. And sadly, I sometimes feel like that too. What troubles me the most though is that I am not sure whether that’s because it’s what everyone else around me seems to be doing or whether that’s really how I feel. 

This brings me to the question I have been asking myself (and I suppose everyone does all the time): what is it that I really want? Looking past social conventions, expectations and judgments from others, what would be my ideal choice? The sad thing is that I am not even sure. I am too tangled up in what’s going on around me, I sometimes don’t know what’s going on inside. Here is what I do know: I am an independent and successful woman; the previous statement does not mean that I do not wish to share my life with others; I want intimacy: physically, emotionally and intellectually; I want to love and be loved; and I want to have children at some point.

I guess these last two points are important. When I was younger, I used to think I was in love all the time. How was I supposed to know better? I think as we live more and meet more people and love more and fall out of love more, through this whole process we create our own definitions of love. It’s probably not the same for any two people. For me, it is now clear that love is respecting and caring about a person so much that I would put their happiness over mine. I can see how many times in the past I had been selfish and uncompromising. What I realized over the past few years is that love is not about what I want, and most certainly nothing to do with marriage or about being in a relationship. And yet there is a near obsession in Western and especially American culture with the idea that single people are somehow deficient in something. Then why are so many people in relationships so miserable? Is there too much external pressure? Or internal for that matter? I actually count myself lucky to have experienced something close to what I think love should feel like. But I wonder how many times in one’s life that happens. Regardless, I think that brings me to my point about wanting to have children. Beyond our evolutionary instincts to pass our genes on, I want to feel that kind of selfless love towards another human being. Maybe that desire in itself is selfish. But isn’t it the desire to create life to fulfill one’s own desires what drives our human existence?

But quickly going back to what we want versus the expectations of others. I have been thinking about this a lot because I have been trying to figure it out myself. Perhaps not coincidentally, I am reading a book titled Status Anxiety at the moment. It’s a sort of intellectual self help book: a touch of philosophy, politics, economics and questions like why we care about art. I particularly like the section about how philosophy, over the ages, has dealt with the issue of social anxiety. There is a branch of philosophy championed by Schopenhauer and Chamfort called intelligent misanthropy. One of the ways that approval of others matters to us is psychological: it is very difficult to retain confidence in ourselves if others do not accord us signs of respect. Very basically, what Schopenhauer and Chamfort suggest we should all do is not care about what others think. Of course that’s easier said than done, as most of us have experienced. They also suggest that by doing so, we will end up with few friends. “Once we have resolved only to see those who will treat us morally and virtuously, reasonably and truthfully, without treating conventions, vanities and ceremonials as anything other than props to polite society; when we have taken this resolve (and we have to do so or we will end up foolish, weak or villainous), the result is that we will have to live more or less on our own.”

So what does that all come down to? We are social animals, and even though the human condition is that we are basically on our own in the end, most of us fear loneliness and surround ourselves with people. As a consequence, we are judged by those people and the desire to fit in probably creates most of our anxieties and unhappiness in life. It seems an inescapable trap. As for my own anxieties: some of the things I wish for are somewhat outside of my control. Like meeting a man I would like to spend – if not the rest of my life with – some time with (one who is also available). Sure I can put myself in situations where meeting people would be more likely, but that hasn’t worked out so well for me in the past. And from experience, sometimes it’s better not to even try, because the majority of people out there only think of themselves. I am confident that it is so much better to be a little lonely than to fill the space with just anyone. I do not want to be defined or judged by my success or unsuccess in the world of romantic relationships. Not having a boyfriend, not getting married, not buying a house in the suburbs are not signs of failure. I want to be defined by my actions. I have chosen to pursue a career which is going to involve many more years of schooling, training, long hours, sleepless nights and many tens of thousands of dollars of debt. I have decided to take this on because it is my dream, it is my calling, I am as sure as one can be. How love and children might fit into this plan is rather uncertain. Sure, women these days often have children on their own – we have the luxury to do that even without partners. But when and how that would fit into my life, I have no idea. I sometimes say jokingly that by the time I finish my training and pay back all my student loans, all my eggs will have rotten. It’s actually not funny, but rather scary.

Wow, I can't believe how this chance meeting has put me in such an introspective mood. Perhaps it was an accelerator to get some thoughts that have been bothering me out. After all, the whole point of writing for me is to feel lighter, less anxious, less alone perhaps.

Let me just finish with a quote from Status Anxiety: it says about Flaubert’s Madame Bovary – as a reference to why we love art, read literature, how they can enrich our lives by gaining some understanding of it – that after reading it we feel “a mixture of sadness – at how we are all made to live before we can even begin to know how, at how limited is our understanding of ourselves and others, at how great and catastrophic are the consequences of our actions, and how often pitiless and uncompromising the responses of upstanding members of the community when we err.” I think that about sums up life.

Intouchables

What a delight this movie was! Something very simple and human about it. It made me cry and hysterically laugh at the same time!