Chocolate Adventure

Chocolate is the panacea for all mental illness.


It is important, when dealing with the bleak aspects of life, to eat chocolate. But also to remember that you are not the only one who is having a hard time. That is what I really meant to say. You are not the worst off person. That is why this chocolate adventure is important. And I don't mean the adventure of staying in my pj's all day and eating chocolate when I'm feeling down.

It's more of an investigative adventure, as I have been researching the ethics of chocolate--by eating it.

 But I have also been doing some reading.  Made in a Free World, for example, is an organization committed to ending modern slavery. They have stated on their blog that, "Unfortunately, many cocoa farms have been sites of child and forced labor. This has particularly been documented in West Africa, the source of around 70% of the world’s cocoa." That is a lot of potentially unethical chocolate.

One child named Yacou, CNN reports, says "I wish I could go to school. I want to read and write,” But, they say, he "hasn’t spent a single day in school, and he has no idea how to leave the farm." There are lots of children in his position, stuck growing chocolate with no way out. This is far too common.

When I found out about this, as a chocolate lover, I was crushed. But as someone who belongs to a religious faith that abstains from certain kinds of food, this struck me. It seemed like a food to think more deeply about. So, I had the hard, hard, very difficult, task of investigation. Clearly, a very difficult task.

 But it was something I felt I had to do. For the sake of humanity.

I started by going to my local grocery store. What I was looking for was chocolate with the fair trade logo. It looks like this.

 I was curious, for all the guilt the humanitarian organizations had instilled in me, how practical eating chocolate ethically actually was.

Sure enough, next to the organic food, I found Green and Black's dark chocolate; as well, I found Endangered Species. The latter did not have the fair trade logo but a claim that it was fairly traded. Alongside these, I bought a Hershey's bar.

What I found, predictably, is that chocolate that claims to be ethical is more expensive per ounce than Hershey's chocolate. The Hershey bar was only .57 cents per ounce. The ethical chocolate was $1.14 and $1.16 per ounce. The cost for fair chocolate then? It is fifty seven to fifty eight cents more expensive, per ounce, for more ethical labor.

That's all great and everything right? But is it edible? That's the real question.

Here is me eating fair trade chocolate.

And here is me eating a Hershey's bar.

The difference is huge, especially if you are like me and prefer milk chocolate. The fair trade chocolate was way too bitter for my sweet tooth! And good luck ever getting a child to eat this stuff. This caused me great inner turmoil. How can something so rich and savory be so unethical! It was time to go on a quest for ethical, delicious, milk chocolate.Which is why I turned to the most sage and all knowing entity I could fathom--the Internet.

I tried two more brands. I found solace in Equal Exchange and Divine Chocolate. Both of these offered milk chocolate solutions. After a few days, I received these over-sized boxes containing my chocolate bars.

This is me eating an Organic Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Candy Bar from Equal Exchange. It was a thought-provoking process.

My conclusion? Yuck! It was totally nasty. It does not taste anything like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Then I tried the Divine Chocolate.

 Ohhh, it was heavenly. Please, if you want to eat ethically, eat Divine Chocolate! It is so yummy.

Also, the company has a beautiful back story. It was started by farmers in Ghana who wanted to help their country. It began as a company named "Kuapa Kokoo." Their website says, "Kuapa Kokoo - which means good cocoa growers - has a mission to empower farmers in their efforts to gain a dignified livelihood, to increase women's participation in all of Kuapa's activities, and to develop environmentally friendly cultivation of cocoa." Check out this link for more of the story.

My quest to buy ethically, practically, and enjoyably has just begun. There are many other resources for ethical chocolate. Ben and Jerry's is turning their chocolate into Fair Trade chocolate, for instance. Every once in a while, but not always, you can even find Cadbury that is fair trade. For instance, look at this chocolate bar. As it is now, it's difficult, even formidable, to shop ethically. But every dollar we spend toward chocolate that is Fair Trade certified is a dollar that goes toward changing the world. As consumers demand fair trade, it will become easier for manufacturers to supply it. And when you are sad and munching on chocolate, that is one more thing you can feel comfortable about.

Until my next adventure,

Namaste

Graduation

It's time to embark on a real adventure. I may be shy, but not enough to keep me from wearing this robe.

That's right. This is the adventure I have been waiting for. As of May 11th, 2013 I am a college graduate. Can you find me in the crowd? It's like Where's Waldo.

Do you like how my hat stayed on straight during the whole ceremony until it was time to walk?

This graduation meant a great deal to me as someone who has struggled with school due to my anxiety. As I walked across the stage, I saw my favorite teacher and my mentor Dr. Ethan Lewis giving me a standing ovation. As I later emailed him to request him to be one of my references, he replied that seeing me at the ceremony made his commencement. Likewise, I believe seeing him there in the front, clapping for me, made my graduation.

There was a point in my life where I was so depressed that I thought my life had already reached its climax, and that there was nothing left for me. I felt I had no future. This was after I got suspended from BYU-Idaho for academic failure due to the fact that I was spiraling into depression. That, of course, compounded my problem.

Thanks to the help of my church, however, I was able to start living again in very minor ways. Gradually, I felt ready to attempt school and start my degree from scratch at UIS.

My second semester as an English major there, I had Dr. Lewis as my professor. On the first essay I turned in, Dr. Lewis wrote something at the bottom of the page that had a strong emotional affect on me. He wrote, "With gifts like these you have much before you."

The concept of having ANYTHING ahead of me entered my mind like some strange and foreign idea. I could not understand it. It didn't make sense, because my future had been erased. It had died. I was going through the motions of life, but I knew I had nothing to look forward to.  All of the sudden, as I looked at that statement, it was as if my future had been resurrected.

Because of this teacher's encouragement to me through the years I was able to have the drive to keep going day after day in spite of difficulties.

Thank you Dr. Lewis!

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard
Namaste

R.I.P. Eggydoo

It wasn't meant to be.

 Eggydoo never even sprouted. This shy girl, indeed, has no green thumb at all.


Do you know what this means?!  The metaphoric significance of this is catastrophic! How can an English major who starts a blog, and uses flowers for a metaphor for healing POSSIBLY cope with this? The very thing that was supposed to symbolize hope and healing has not even managed to breach the surface of life!

 However, when one door closes...

I just bought some that had already sprouted! Aren't they pretty?

Until next time,

Don't sweat the small stuff.

Namaste

Overcoming Social Anxiety Does Not Mean You Have to be an Extrovert

My old roommate from BYU-Idaho, where I earned my associate's degree, recently recommended this book to me. It's called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. 

 If you know an introvert, and everyone does, or if you care at all about understanding a large portion of the entire U.S. population, who you will interact with everyday, you must read this. I had thought it would be some kind of regular old self-help book, but true to my old roommate's intelligence, I found it to be incredibly insightful and I've only just begun.

I have lightly hinted, in past posts, on the difference between being shy and having social anxiety. There is a difference. Social anxiety is a debilitating fear that an introvert may or may not experience. For instance, people with severe social anxiety may be afraid to attend family gatherings, such as weddings, with extended family. It may sadden them that they feel unable to attend such an important event due to fear. Or, they may literally pee their pants before asking to go to the restroom in a class. My anxiety is milder than these examples, although it has greatly inhibited me. I would say that many people experience social anxiety from time to time. It's not the same, however, as being quiet or introverted.

Introversion, unlike anxiety, is not a weakness at all. As Cain points out quite remarkably, introversion has its own beauty and strength that is often overlooked in a country like the U.S., where extroversion is the golden standard.



Just look at Cain's manifesto:

Her manifesto seems to chime with a harmonious and comforting truth. Nonetheless, a stigma is plastered onto all quiet people. You hear things like the sarcastic, "It's always the quiet ones." Great. Except that I've heard this same phrase used in conjunction with psychopaths who were quiet and therefore non-suspect. As if being quiet is a sign that one will snap into insanity at any minute because of their deep seeded hatred. There is supposedly something defective about a person who is not boisterous and outgoing. It is a stigma that likely only contributes to social anxiety. Cain says, "If you're an introvert, you also know that the bias against quiet can cause deep psychic pain."I have felt this bias many times.

As someone who has dabbled in studying journalism and also struggled greatly with school, I have taken two interpersonal communications classes at two different universities. I failed both of them. I found the first class I took very disturbing. I wish this book had been in my teachers repertoire of reading material (granted, it wasn't even published yet).

My teacher, to me, seemed unable to decode people. Thus, she used a book called The Color Code which categorized people into personality types. Although there may be a good use for such a thing, my teacher seemed to use it as a crutch. With my own social ineptitude, it would be hypocritical of me to somehow demonize her for doing her job the best she knew how. Indeed, she had a friendly demeanor and a gusto for teaching. Yet what I experienced was deeply disconcerting to me at the time, and I would like to explain why in order to help make a connection with Cain's book to my own reality. It was as if she were unable to grasp the nuances of human behavior. At least that is the way I felt. She did not seem able to admit the code's limits when it came to understanding people.

To make a long story short, I had a yellow personality, which means I'm driven, in my core, by fun. Everyone in my group thought I would have a white personality, meaning that I'm driven by peace or feeling a lack of conflict. I emailed my teacher about how disturbed I was by this because I felt like the group was waiting to see my yellow side; waiting for me to do something entertaining or funny. This made me feel self conscious-- like something was wrong with me. 

"Why does the book have such a narrow definition of 'fun?'" I wondered. The chapters described a highly extroverted concept of a good time, although the quiz questions, which determined your personality type, didn't necessarily favor a particular flavor of fun. Why didn't it account for the fact that what is fun varies from person to person? I asked my teacher these things looking for some kind of resolution to this identity crisis of sorts. 

My teacher responded to my concerns by stating in front of the entire class that if someone in your group is a yellow personality type and the rest of the group thinks that they are actually a white personality type then said person was either sexually molested as a child, or the group is not reaching out enough to them. 
 
You want to talk self-conscious? If I wasn't already completely determined to fear my peers, this sealed the deal. I had not been sexually molested as a child, although now I was potentially labeled as a victim and could see patronizing looks of pity on my group member's faces; and I did not need my peers to keep trying to get me to act somehow entertaining in a way that I was not. 

That was the last day I attended that class because the discomfort was too great for me to deal with. In fact, that was the semester I stopped attending school as I sank into a deep depression.

In light of this experience, and others I've had, Cain's book rang true to me when it said, "We like to think that we value individuality, but all too often we admire one type of individual--the kind who's comfortable 'putting himself out there.'"

People have said to me before, "I don't know what to do with you because you're so quiet. Should I be worried?" People have informed me that it is not kind of me to be shy. They have told me they simply could not relate to me as a friend because of how quiet I was. People have said all kinds of things to me about my introversion and its sub-par value. Cain says, "Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man's world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform."

I have felt this oppression as teachers have judged my intelligence on my ability to "participate" in an extroverted manner. Truthfully, it's okay to feel more comfortable inside yourself.You just have to remember step four of the manifesto. "Sometimes it helps to pretend to be an extrovert. There's always time to be quiet later." Certain situations do call for a dose of extroversion.

The purpose of my blog is not necessarily to transform me into a full blown extrovert. Rather, I am attempting to expose myself to social scenarios in order to become comfortable around people as myself, as a (mostly) introvert. Introverts need to be able to get through the inevitable social situations that will confront them. I would like my blog to inspire me to live, at times, on the edge of my comfort zone so that I can overcome my anxiety, even while potentially being an introvert at heart.

I would suggest too that we not consider the labels of extrovert and introvert infallible and all  encompassing. Rather, many of us have both moments of introversion and extroversion. All of us have situations that bring us inside ourselves and others that bring us out. Both introspection and charisma are useful and complimentary aspects of an individual. 

Besides, another reason for my blog is simply--I love adventures.  To the left is a moment of sincere extroversion on my part, which may explain why I tend just to stick with introversion.

Thanks to my roommate for suggesting this outstanding book. I will continue to refer to it in my posts as I read.

Until next time,

Namaste (bye in Nepalese)

Dances and Dreams

I wish I could dance. I am too inhibited and uncoordinated. When I see people loosing themselves in graceful dance I'm envious. They become spirited away as their bodies transform into pure, flowing, beauty. It's often wondered what evidence exists of the soul. Now, I'm not one to claim to have solved such a monumental and sublime enigma. But when I see people dance, I feel as if their souls are made tangible through movement. Their bodies seem lost in spirit, soaring high through an iridescent glow of aether. As I watch, or shuffle awkwardly, I feel trapped in a low and dusty realm.

I did learn a little swing once. I've felt so alive in the past when I danced with people who knew swing. I let my soul fly from that dark obscurity that puzzles philosophers into the soaring reality of spirit, which galvanized the very air thick into vivacity. As sure as I felt the breath in my lungs, I felt my soul was jiving headlong to the stars. And even so. My anxiety has inhibited me from enjoying such times.

I once got back from swing dancing with a friend and felt terribly upset. Nothing bad had happened. I just knew every social interaction felt wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I came home crying.

That night, I dreamed that my skin on my arms became dry on the surface and began splitting. It looked like cracked desert. A wet layer of skin, stringily attached to my bones, slid like jelly underneath the dry layer every time my arm moved. As if this wasn't uncomfortable enough, spiders began hatching and protruding from welts in my stomach. I was panicking. I didn't understand what was happening. It didn't make sense. I couldn't stop it. I tried to telephone someone to ask for answers but no one picked up. It simply made me extremely uncomfortable. When I awoke the next morning, I realized I had been dreaming of my anxiety.

I hope to escape this abnormal discomfort as much as possible. After I get a job somewhere, my dream is to swing dance. Take lessons if I can afford it. Then when I go to Nepal, I will learn a beautiful Napalese dance.

Namaste (bye in Nepalese)

Passionlessly Planting Impatiens on Easter

Thomas Fuller said, "A good garden may have some weeds."

This Easter, for me, was a weed. I felt like I was a weed. What am I doing here, thrown into the mosaic of humanity?

I did my exit counseling online the other day. That is where they try to make you feel stressed about your indentured servitude to the education system, which you will work forever to pay off. I was shown a bar graph that illustrated the impossibility of covering my finances while working at an entry level job. 

On top of this, I have recently discovered the maniacal nature of insurance. How am I going to pay for all this therapy and medicine that I just started after I get off of my school's insurance? That is, if I can even get that insurance company to cut the crud and give me money in the first place.

I don't know what kind of misanthropic people run insurance companies, but I think they look something like this.



On top of it all, the stress of school was getting to me. My social anxiety was making me feel like a schmuck, and my depression was rising.


But with the help of my nephew,Cameron, I cracked open Eggydoo.

 Eggydoo was probably dying of thirst. Cameron gave her a drink of water.

 
















 

I may have started planting Eggydoo very late for an impatien, so we'll see how it goes. This is what an impatien looks like when it is finished growing.

 I don't know if Eggydoo will grow. I don't know if I'll succeed in school this semester. I have already catastrophized my falling behind and imagined being held back from graduating. But, in my life, I am like this egg full of dirt. I don't know if I'm growing it right, but I'll just keep giving it water.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered."
Namaste

Happy Holi!

I love my blog. But unfortunately, it is putting me behind in school. So expect scanter posts for a while (except the ones I've already started on).  

Enjoying something a bit excessively is not always bad. It's  passion. When I was depressed, I always felt sad thinking about my lack of passion. I wanted so bad to feel zest for something. So it's a good thing. But unless I graduate, I can't go on the real adventure I've been waiting for. That of getting a job, living on my own, and volunteering in Nepal!

Nepal is exploding with passion. At hikenepal.com they say,"Few people in the world can celebrate as many festivals as the Nepali people." There are over 50 festivals a year in Nepal. They say Nepal is a land of festivals. 

The Festival of Colors, or Holi, was a couple days ago. To celebrate, everyone takes what I see as a major mental health day. They pelt each other with color, build bonfires, and party. It is the one day of the year where the caste system is reversed, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. This video of a Holi celebration might give you an idea.

It is supposedly a time of getting rid of evil and replacing it with good. A kind of resurrection, in its own way. But instead of painting eggs, they paint each other. Even better.

We all need to do this for ourselves. I mean feel happy, not painting ourselves.

So, I won't be posting a great deal for a while, but in the meantime forget your place on the social hierarchy and be happy. Paint smiley faces on your nails maybe

Happy Holi!
Happy Easter!

Namaste (by in Nepalese)

Haunted Theater Ghost Shoot

“Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown

I'm scared of needles, pickled pigs feet, and friendly people but I ain't afraid of ghosts. Seven ghost hunting vigilantes braved one haunted theater and made two ghost sitings.

The Legacy Theater in Springfield Illinois is purported to be haunted; ask anyone who works there. They will tell you of strange happenings-- flickering lights, falling ladders, inexplicable noises.

You see, in 1955, good ol' Joe Neville, an actor, was overwhelmed with financial difficulties and killed himself the day before he was to perform the lead role. It is said that he still haunts the theater to this day due to his unperformed play.



We took some pictures and guess who showed up? Neville. Believe it. 

But there is more than one ghost that haunts the theater. A monk in brown with an obscured face has been sighted, for instance. In our case, we saw this scary girl ghost...she's been known to haunt the Oak Ridge Cemetery but perhaps she frequents the theater as well...She looks exactly like me, but don't think about that.

Evil lore aside, this was a challenging adventure for a shy girl. I had to organize a bunch of people together, which is a lot harder than it sounds. I felt silly having to change the date of the shoot several times because of schedule conflicts. But you can't let embarrassment get in the way of an adventure.

I had the frightening task of asking people about coming. I was at a church thing and one of my friends, who was in charge (and who would have made a great Lincoln Ghost), asked something like, "Is there anything we can do to support any of you?" 

I decided to be honest "Yeah. Come with me to shoot some ghost pictures," I said. The room was all quite-like. He didn't want me to actually have an answer to that. The stiffness got to me. I felt rude. What if they thought it was dumb?

Then the questions came. Were we actually going to go inside the theater? Someone wanted to know. "Um, no." I said. Was that lame? I kept wondering if that was lame. I wasn't sure we could get in the theater without actually watching a play. Oh great, that meant I probably had to call the theater and find out just in case.

I called the theater and left a message. I hate phone calls. Did I mention I hate phone calls? I hate them. I explained my blog and asked if it would be acceptable for us to take pictures inside.

I was at a movie theater with my brothers and sister-in-law when my cell phone rang. We were playing arcades, waiting for the show to start. I was holding a bag of quarters, watching my fast-fingers sister-in-law win a ten dollar gift card. My heart jumped when I saw the number of the haunted theater on my cell. I dropped my purse and the bag of quarters on the floor. Darting away from the jangle of sounds and lights, I fumbled to answer the phone.

Once again, I explained to the man on the phone about my blog and asked if it would be possible for us to take photos inside the theater. It was harder when someone was on the other end. I felt nervous. "Just act natural," I thought. But I began getting self-conscious and overdoing things. Why was this simple thing so hard for me?

After my long winded explanation, the man said, "We don't do that here. We have respect for our immaterial friends." Gulp. Did that make me prejudice? Against ghosts? "Um," I said, "Well could we take pictures outside?" He replied that we could and his "have fun" sounded a bit sardonic as he hung up.

There are times in my life where I would have blamed myself horribly for this seemingly insignificant experience. I would have cried, felt like a bad person-- maybe a ghost-hater or something. That overreaction is the nature of social anxiety sometimes.

As it was, I had remembered something my therapist had said about just doing whatever I'm going to do and then letting other people deal with it. Their reaction is their decision. If I'm not doing anything wrong and they have a poor reaction, that's just how they are. It doesn't say anything about me. So, I let the negativity pass through me. I did experience it but it didn't become a denizen of my thoughts, really. I told my family about what happened and we laughed about it. That helped.

The day of the ghost shoot, I was nervous all day. My heart raced and my mind reeled. At one point it dawned on me that there was going to be a tomorrow, a day after the shoot. "Huh? What am I going to do then?" I wondered. It was as if I was afraid my soul would be sieved out of my mortal frame by unnatural powers of darkness. The anticipation had been building up for weeks. 

I was met with friendly faces. We traveled to the theater. Ironically,of all the ghost hunting vigilantes, I think I felt the least self-conscious about taking photos. In fact, maybe I was a bit too into it. 

After the photoshoot, we went to Sam's apartment and watched The Woman in Black and ordered pizza. Everyone was really nice and friendly. I think they are really a great bunch of people. And I'm glad I got to hang out with them.

Overall, I know I had my socially awkward moments and my moments that I should have been more confident. I felt embarrassed a few times. But I'm glad I did it. As my therapist has said, "Practice, practice, practice!"

Unlike the harrowing tale of Young Goodman Brown, I found the souls of people to be commendable and ghosts to be merely shadows--only the reflection of my own negative thinking.

Until my next adventure,

Namaste (Bye in Nepalese)

*Special thanks to my brother for photoshopping the images to look amazingly spooky :)