Filed under: in your words
Dorcas (or Dorc, as I’ve always called her) is definitely the friend I’ve known the longest. Growing up, Dorc, her brother, my sister, and I hung out all the time since our moms babysat for one another. I remember taking trips to the library, flashing morse code messages on the ceiling to each other with a flashlight during sleepovers, playing for hours with our Slinkies, building forts with sheets and sofa pillows, playing dim sum under my dining table, pretending to get “beamed up” under her hallway lights, assigning names to each other (like Jessica and Elizabeth, after the Sweet Valley Twins)…the list is endless.
We saw each other pretty much every day when we attended the same jr. high school, high school, through the first two years of college, and also grew up at the same church. Dorc and I didn’t hang out that much outside of school or church during our high school years, though. We hung out together with our fellow ‘95ers, but when I hung out on Friday nights after church or on weekends, it was with other friends. Yet the whole time, I still thought of Dorc as my best friend. When we started attending Cosumnes River College, we spent more time together - Monday night prayer meetings and then “study sessions” at Buckthorns with Kit, tutoring back at Valley, and then classes at CRC together (being called out as troublemakers in Dr. Jones’ History class, screaming our lungs out in the gospel choir).
It was quite a change when we transferred out of CRC and went our separate ways - Dorc to Michigan, and I to SF. But the bond was still there…and still remains. Our friendship now is pretty much like how it was back then. We are not phone talkers, and months may go by between our e-mails, but somehow, I still always feel like I’m closely connected with her. Whenever we hang out, it feels like no time has passed at all.
What I appreciate most about Dorc is that she is really mellow and easy to hang out with. I never get the sense that she’s judging me or thinking that I’m really weird (well, for the most part) when I share what’s on my mind. She’s laid-back, up for almost anything, and is someone that I could feel comfy with if we’re singing loudly in the car or just sitting side-by-side quietly. We’re very different from each other in many ways, but at the same time, we see eye to eye on a lot of issues. She’s always someone that I’ve had great respect for, who I trust as a leader and as a confidante - even if those traits aren’t always clear at first glance.
I’m sure my mind will think of a million other things to write about as soon as I hit “Publish,” so I’ll spare you all the ramblings and end here. I have much love for her, and I’m super psyched to introduce you all to my best friend, Dorc C….
1. One goal you’re striving for…Sleeping earlier. So far, I haven’t been successful at it…
2. If you had an abundance of energy and alertness, what would you spend your time doing? Playing softball or basketball, and reading through philosophy and theology books.
3. What motivates you to stay up late preparing for classes, get up super early to drive to school, and then stand in front of students who aren’t always respectful or attentive? I’m actually not really sure about that, haha… I think it’s just this unexplainable drive to do better and be better, and to walk out of a classroom feeling like I’ve succeeded. I’m a perfectionist, so it’s hard for me to be satisfied with what I do. I also usually think I’m doing something wrong, so I try to get ideas off of others as much as possible to see how can learn from others.
4. You’re stranded on an island and you have two books, two albums and two movies with you. Which ones would they be?
Books:
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha
- either the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy or the Blackwell Companion to Philosophy
Albums
- All That You Can’t Leave Behind (U2)
- something by Steven Curtis Chapman (not sure which)
Movies
- The Matrix Trilogy
- Lord of the Rings Trilogy
(I know, I’m cheating now by actually naming 6…)
5. We’ve been best friends for as long as we can remember, although we’ve lived in different cities since 1997. Why do you think we’ve been able to make it work, especially since we rarely see each other or even talk on the phone? I think a lot of why we are bonded is because we’ve been together since the most formative years of our lives (zero to five years), and because we just continued with the consistent friendship for every year of our lives until we turned 18. So much of our friendship is based on what’s been long established consciously, subconsciously, and unconsciously. Then after we both went off to college, we spent a lot of time sending massively long emails to each other. In those ways we have a long-established understanding with each other - the kind that doesn’t need words.
I also think we just never saw anything as a big enough deal to fight about. We’re both introverts, so if something bothered us about the other, we just kept it in and never brought it up, or we never thought it was so important as to bring up and risk causing a rift in our relationship. Unlike people who keep things in until there’s so much pressure that they finally explode, I think we had a tendency to keep things in, but then we fart so much that none of the pressure really lasts long, hahaha… If we had anything serious, I think we just wouldn’t bring them up until years later. By then, we’ve already had a while to think about what happened, and whatever it was, it became a memory of a time long ago. Then we would just spent the time explaining to each other how we felt and thought back then. Since we were older and hopefully wiser, we had a much better mutual understanding. So those talks were more of a reflection time than a complaining-about-each-other time.
Why can we make it work? I’m not even sure myself. Maybe because we’re so familiar with each other now that we know that our relationship is much more than talking. It’s like people who can go for years without seeing their parents or siblings, but in the end, those people are still their family, and it’s always comforting to be with the familiarity of family. We don’t sweat the little stuff, but we know that we can (and have) call[ed] each other up, diving straight into the serious big stuff without the normal superficial introductions, like “how was your week?” “Oh, it was good…” We also hold similar worldviews, similiar political positions, similar fundamental beliefs, etc. Or it could be that we aren’t your average female. Maybe our relationship is more like guys’ relationships, where we can just do stuff together and we don’t need to talk in order to communicate.
6. If you could go back in time and visit yourself in a previous time, when would that be, and what would you tell yourself? I would go back to Calvin College and tell my young self some things about life. Calvin was some of the hardest and best years of my life. I wish I could give me advice on how I could have better handled the harder parts.
7. Going to school in Michigan was tough, and so was returning home to Sacramento afterward. What is the greatest lesson you learned about yourself through that experience? Probably that I’ll never live in my ideal world, and will just have to suck it up and deal with it. Michigan gives me internal peace but external isolation and other inconveniences (like bad Chinese food… and I mean, BAD Chinese food…). California gives me internal isolation but external peace & company. In Michigan, the challenge is that I am challenged. In California, the challenge is that I am not challenged.
8. Name a book or movie character that you most identify with and why? I watched the Disney version of Hunchback of Notre Dame one time and really identified with the hunchback. One of my favorite movies is also Castaway (Tom Hanks), where everything in his life is going wonderfully and as planned, but circumstances outside of his control cause him to lose everything, and he lives completely alone for 3 years. In both movies, the characters had to learn to deal with their own sufferings and insecurities, had to live with a broken heart, let go, and move on with the rest of their life, and then had to learn to take the happiness of others upon themselves joyfully with grace and peace, even as they themselves continued to suffer, and even as the happiness of others was a source of their suffering. For some reason those sorts of narratives move me the most. I think this and others are the ways in which God works through human history to heal and restore and give redemption, grace, and peace to people who are broken.
9. If you could change one aspect of your personality, what would it be? Probably to be less of an introvert. I took one of those Myers-Briggs tests and one time I took it, it said that I am 100% introverted. Another time I took it, it said I was something like 90% introverted. In any case, I’m REALLY introverted. That makes it hard for me to be social, and to get along and get to know other people better. It also makes it a little more difficult to be more personable when I teach.
10. What is one aspect of your personality that you absolutely would not want to change? Probably my easy-going-ness and my attempts to get along with anyone. I think I’m pretty easy-going and nice (or at least that’s what other people have told me). I don’t lose my temper often; though I do lose my temper sometimes. Afterwards I feel really bad about it. A downfall of this, though, is that it can be easy for people to walk over me.
11. One word you’d use to describe yourself: dry. (Dry humor, dry skin, dry personality)
12. One word that others would use to describe you: nice?
13. If you could channel the strength and spirit of any historical figure, who would it be and why? Maybe Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If not him, then Elie Wiesel. I thought about saying Soren Kierkegaard, but after thinking about it I really wouldn’t want to be him at all. Kierkegaard was a brilliant writer who helped change the lives of many people; but I think he lived a tragic life. So I think I would probably choose Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Elie Wiesel (although, probably their lives might have been even more tragic than Kierkegaard’s). Bonhoeffer because he had the strength and will to fight the injustices of his time. He also had a very strong sense of God’s calling in his life, which was a duty he did not take lightly. Wiesel, because the depth of the beauty found in his writings about ugliness are really profound… I wish I could know how he understands suffering, especially in the way it relates to God, and in the way God relates to us.
14. The thought that usually pops in your head when you first wake up is… Usually, “UGH…”
(I couldn’t resist posting more than one photo. The first one was provided by Dorc, since it was the oldest picture she could find of us - along with her brother and Auntie Konder. The other pictures are of Dorc, Na, Sam, and me. Click on the thumbnail to see the full photo.)