Perseverance

Don't tell others, but this evening getting home, entering into my apartment door, after the pleasant weekend, having said goodbye to _____, who has been very kind to me, I am suddenly so fed up with everything - I wanted to leave, give up the entire effort.  

That's the feeling. I am imagining what I must do to go through the exit process and what would be the procedures and costs for all stakeholders.

Then I realized I can't find my phone. I am not sure if this is an epiphany or not but perhaps a metaphor. Let's keep it in prayers. Thank you. This disillusionment might just be just a passing feeling - burnout of some sort. 

Yes, I am very grateful for all the love, trust and help that ____ and ____ and ____ have shown me. 
It's just that I am tired of having to depend on people's charity for my stay and no progress with dating and no progress with my job. The very purpose of my coming here is not being fulfilled at all.

 Maybe it is just that today we had a sloppy day at work and one particular guest was such a unlikeable person.

I need to rent a car and drive around. It is not easy to go anywhere. 

But I have some new enlightenment that God has blessed me with through Jordan Peterson's talk (Lessons a Non-believer Can Learn from God -- a clip from JP's talk on Exodus - which I have just shared with you on Whatsapp and will post here. I'll explain below.

You know...I am an analytical mind and I detect patterns and can predict future by knowing well the deep rules behind facts. That ability has given me much wisdom and security yet more despair. I can't let myself hope. All is bare under my scrutinizing eye. Having traveled the world in both luxurious and desperate situations, I have seen it all. I become so clear sighted that I can see nothing new under the sun but dead dry bones. All the talk about order and hope has not registered with me - I am not to be fooled by wishful thinking.

But what JP laid out here in the clip of his dialogue pierced a crack in my well forged armor of logic and consistency. Indeed, God reveals himself through history and prophets and even donkeys. But God has not been exhausted by anyone, let alone me. He is faithful and truthful but NOT mechanical or even predicable. 

God does not run out of plots.

My clear vision had blinded me. 

Miracles do happen. Not often but they never ceased. They should serve as light posts to lighten the dark path we walk.

Exceptions should be reckoned with if not depended upon.

God has performed many miracles in my life, esp. recently. And we both know what they are.

Humbleness means I should always leave room for divine intervention. 

Faith and hope are tested and cultivated when I am promised grace and mercy but not told when and how. 

On Jordan Peterson's Interview with Artist Juliette Fogra

Juliette Fogra

EDITOR: Weizhen, the author of this blog, and a well-educated and single Chinese citizen living in Northern China, reacts to Jordan Peterson's interviewer with Juliette Fogra the illustrator of his Beyond Order:12 More Rules for Life. 

The interview can be found on YouTube here: Beyond Order: The illustrator/ Julietta Fogra - Jordan B. Peterson Podcast S4 E9. Oddly enough Fogra's name appears no where in the book except for her signature on the illustrations themselves. When books are registered for their ISBN and copyright information and illustrator is usually credited. Not here. There is no listing of Fogra's contribution on the copyright page, in the extensive alpha index, nor is she mentioned (as far as I could find) in the book's Coda where Peterson thanks dozens of people who contributed to the book's undertaking. Why is this? 

This absence of her name ironically relates to this blog post and Weizhen's comments on how her life in China and Fogra's life growing up in communist community as a Jew, compare and contrast.  

I am reading Beyond Order. I can't help but recalling some of the most intense and inspiring exchanges between JBP and Juliette Fogra in his interview of her. You asked what resonated with me? 

What a good question! One I have to answer and risk strong emotions that are to be stirred up by doing so!

First of all, Fogra was born and grew up in a communist community and felt an outcast as a Jew and she couldn't identify with her religious and social heritage. I used to lament and resent the limitedness of my own upbringing, both micro and macro—growing in a family with no education, a place no culture, a country no moral and a gender no power. I considered myself wronged and wasted. I thought I was the poorest of the poor, perhaps only women in an African cannibalist tribe have a worse fortune. But their suffering is a different kind. They have to endure hunger and fear while I am starved of beauty and meaning. 

Now, Fogra, clearly much more talented, grew up in communistic country, being a true outcast, exiled even from her own family, experienced both hunger and fear and a much severe impoverishment of beauty as an artist. 

That knowledge put me in perspective. 

Then her migration to Israel at the age of 14 would have been enviable to me since my family never had the ability to migrate outside of China. Her misery in a new country without being able to speak the language resonates with me who in my 40s tried to migrate to Germany and couldn't find a spot for myself. I could feel the harrowing loneliness and the inferiority Fogra felt. At times when I was in Germany I was like a 14 year old, defenseless and destitute. (This concerns another topic - like in the story about the modern day sleeping beauty in JP's book, too much sentimentality is infantilizing and a development malfunction that needs to be addressed. I think my mistake lies not in that I went to Germany but I went too late.)

But oh, God's way is above our way. There in the Middle East desert (literally and metaphorically), Fogra met a young man, and lost him, and was devastated. Until one day he called from New York, telling her:" Come to me. I meet people here every day but I can't see any one of them. They don't exist for me. Come, I see you."

She came to NY and was prepared to clean the toilets  in this metropolitan city for the sake of her love.  There, this shy young woman, who found it hard to survive in Israel, finds a living as an artist in the big apple.

As JP puts it there is nothing trivial about her. Although a rarely gifted artist, she is free of cynicism, conceit and condescension. Crushingly shy, she is also firm in her artistic pursuit. Her admiration and affection for JP is apparent and she genuinely wants to make him happy but she does it by being absolutely true. 

In a way, I like her better than JP in the interview. JP was a bit too eager to make his points and theories (useful and wise as they are) known, Fogra was not. She was slow in speaking, and quick to listen. She never seemed to try to impress or even aware  before her words got out of her mouth that they were going to be significant and mind blowing. She gave JP her full whole being. 

I admire her without any reservation.

And the man who sees her has very good eyes!