The Idea of Marquette

So, like most of my posts I have written and rewritten this post several times, each time losing focus and ranting extensively on a topic that was not my central focus when I began. As I mentioned in my last post, these last few weeks and travel and transition have given me a lot of time to think about things: broadly the past, where I am now, how I got here, and where I am going. I keep retuning to this concept that I am going to refer to as “the idea of Marquette”, and I’ll explain why I call it that in a little bit. It’s actually a theory about relationships, and this applies both to relationships between multiple people and relationships between people and non-human entities. This theory originated back in my early years at NMU when a sort-of relationship triangle exploded and many people who were “in love” with other people had their hearts broken. Some of these feelings were so strong that I would say they were bordering on obsession, and that is what interested me at the time. After thinking about it and discussing things with many of the individuals involved, it occurred to me that most people attract themselves not to other people, but to an idea of that other person. We take the partial knowledge that we are given about an individual and we form an emotional bond to it, even though this is highly irrational and many of our preconceived notions about this other person (or who we think this other person is) are often very much false. To some extent this is how most relationships work, and why most fall apart: someone thinks they know a person but eventually the other person acts outside the original person’s preconceived belief of who the second individual really is, and they feel betrayed, etc. As far as my limited experience has been, this idea still stands.

So why am I telling you this? No, Megan and I are not having problems… it is just that I have noticed a lot of similar emotional responses within myself through this most recent transition, and in hindsight, during my transition from Marquette to Oxford. Most of the time I was in Marquette I was depressed and miserable. I had a few good friends (great friends actually) but generally speaking I had high expectations of the people that I was going to meet and interact with in college, and for the most part many of them let me down (although admittedly many of them did not know they were doing so, and this is not to pass judgment on any of them… They lived their lives the way they chose to and I respect that; these issues were within me). I was so bummed out with my life at Northern that there were multiple points within my time there that I considered dropping out or moving home, and those feeling had little to do with the school itself. Yet when I moved to Oxford, OH, the only thing I wanted my first semester at Miami was to be back up north. Yeah, I hated most of the people but I missed the feel of the town, the sound and smell of Superior’s nature, and the feeling that we were removed from most of the rest of the world… or at least that is what I thought I missed. In reality I don’t remember if I felt this way while I was there. Most likely I did not and this was my romanticized love for Marquette because I was no longer there; no longer required to deal with the stuff that I didn’t like, face to face, every day. I was simply left to my ideals, and my ideals told me that I would have rather been unhappy with something I was familiar with than deal with the stress of the transition.

Eventually I got passed it and made some great friends at Miami as well. I even learned to love the quaintness of the town and somehow embraced the fact that we were culturally stranded in a Midwestern corn field. Yet it happened again when I moved from Oxford to Alexandria, and that last sentence or two should serve as a proof. Most of the time I was in Oxford I wasn’t happy about it, but it was temporary so I swallowed my discontent and worked through my 2 year sentence. Yet even being consciously aware of that fact I have still spent much of this last week wishing I could be back at Miami. I’m not really sure why I feel this way, but I believe that “the idea of Marquette” followed me again. Things have gotten better after the first week, but the first few days I hated the somewhat sprawling landscape… hated the pace… hated the traffic and the noise… and part of me wanted to justify this all like I did Miami: It’s only temporary. But this time, it’s not. Maybe this specific house, but as far into the future I can see, this town and this job will be my life. I don’t consider myself a commit-a-phoebe, but that’s kind of a scary thought for someone who has lived “in transition” for the past 6 years. I suppose all life is transition though, ever changing…

Anyway, I am not really sure where that was intended to go but those were some of the thoughts that I have been having since I got here. As before, things are already getting a little better and I am sure it is only a matter of time before I find my comfort here, but I couldn’t help but laugh at myself when I realized that I was treating my old lives like lost girlfriends: idealizing their characteristics and believing there could have been a future when everything inside told me it couldn’t last while I was there. It’s time to move forward though. As hard as it can be for me to not look into the past sometimes and ask myself “what could have been?” I suppose this opportunity, this experience, is most important now. My new goal is to try and embrace the new opportunities I get every day, even when change is not desired. Don’t sacrifice the gift of change; this is my challenge now.