"In the section on The Great Gatsby, Nafisi talks a lot about the loss of dreams and how that relates to Iran and her own experiences. She imagines her current self talking to her younger self about the dreams and ideals that would be shattered when they were seen too closely. In some ways and on a very small scale, this trip [the dude ranch trip] has been like that...If I could have told my younger self that a dude ranch vacation would not be pure magic but that it would involve sore muscles, sunburn, feeling a little patronized by the staff, being out of my element, etc., I highly doubt I could have convinced my younger self...I didn't need to experience going too far physically with a guy, getting drunk, or doing drugs to believe that they weren't worth it. But no one would have been able to tell me that my dreams may not be worth all I thought they were."
The dude ranch trip was a fulfillment of my dearest childhood dream and this current England trip is a fulfillment of my dearest college dream. Well, my dearest save one: to graduate with highest honors and a bunch of other academic/professional accolades. That dream was also fulfilled. And yet...the reality of living these dreams was not what I thought it would be.
I was exhausted all throughout my last week of college. Even though it was filled with awards ceremonies and fun banquets and walking down an aisle with several stupid strips of ribbon that I nearly killed myself to win, reality was always present. And what is reality filled with? The details and dirtiness of life that we forget about in our dreams. Socially awkward moments, feet aching and sweating in high heels, feeling insecure about an outfit or bad hair day, realizing your name is about to be called and then thirty seconds later it's all over.
I read a book last year called Stumbling on Happiness, and the author Daniel Gilbert says exactly that: When people imagine a particularly wonderful future, they are never as happy as they expected to be when the dream is fulfilled. Why? Because when they imagined the fulfillment of the dream, they neglected to imagine all the little annoyances that would also be occurring. But at the same time, when a particularly negative dream (a nightmare) is fulfilled, people end up being a lot less depressed and destroyed than they thought they would be. They can carry on because life also contains little moments of normalcy and joy even in the midst of the worst situations.
The whole of my England trip is, I suspect, a good dream that has been fulfilled with some unexpected problems. The internship portion of my trip, however, is more like a nightmare that has been fulfilled. However, that means that there will also be some "silver linings." I suppose the trick is to purposefully notice and remember those moments. And I don't mean I should naively focus only on those happy moments and ignore the difficulties; I don't believe in that. But in order to do an "unbiased" survey of my own life, I cannot weight the negative moments more heavily than the positive ones.
In any case, I'll move on from the philosophizing of this blog post to discuss my day today. Very briefly, since this post is already a zillion miles long. It was slightly better today, but not much. My boss couldn't believe I didn't know what Ivana Trump looked like and said that I obviously had not been keeping up with my world events. (This was a humorous part of the day, not a difficult or negative part...until a bit later, I guess.) Apparently Ivana is marrying a man about twenty years younger than she is, and apparently this has been all over TV. I would just like to add that yesterday my boss referred to Tony Blair as the current prime minister of England. :-)
Anyways, she wanted me to do this PhotoShop project, which was boring but a lot better than some of the things I was doing yesterday. I just had to do the same mind-numbing sequence to about 80 pictures that were taken at a party she attended yesterday. Ivana Trump was there, so that's why we were discussing her. I did as many as I could in the time I had left at the office (and I even stayed a half hour late!) but I only got about 30 done because the computer was U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-A-B-L-Y slow. My boss, who was out for the afternoon, called to ask me how the project was going because she needed the pictures by tonight. I told her about the computer problems, and she said, "Oh well, just do the ones with Ivana in them; those are the ones I need." So I repeated that I didn't know what she looked like, and I asked what she had been wearing that day. She said, "A white suit." I said okay and then realized that about half the women had white suits. So I asked my extremely nice co-worker Sara who Ivana was, and we finally figured it out. Unfortunately, there were 10-15 of Ivana and I hadn't done a single one! Sara graciously offered to take care of it for me since it was past time for me to leave. I felt bad, but I agreed because I REALLY wanted to get out of there. I left an apologetic note for my boss (who sometimes gets ridiculously upset if people don't finish things that they were supposed to finish). I'm actually a bit more worried that Sara won't be able to finish it and then my boss will take it out on her (because she always takes things out on her, which I think is so ridiculous).
I was feeling annoyed about my internship, once again. After dinner, however, I decided to enjoy the fact that I'm in London. Even though all the sights close between 4:30 and 6:30, I realized that they can't exactly take down the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, even if the exhibitions and tours are closed. (They do, however, feel the need to perform some construction/restoration on the Tower of London even though it has withstood battles and hundreds of years.) This visit was a lot of fun, probably the most fun I've had since arriving in London. I was so tired and jet-lagged until about yesterday that I almost didn't want to do anything. Fortunately, I have now gotten over that and I'm ready to do and see everything I can. After going to the Tower Bridge, I went to King's Cross Station to visit the sign for Platform 9 3/4 (of Harry Potter fame, for the poor deprived souls who don't know). I think that's a good picture to include, considering that this is a strangely appropriate blend of fiction (dreams) and reality. Hence, we have come full circle.
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