Sunday, April 29, 2007
(Paradise) Lost
The easiest way to describe what Manoa looks like is that it’s pretty much like where the Others live (on Lost), except they’ve been here for about a hundred years so they have cars and stuff. But of course that’s what it looks like, because they shoot Lost in Hawaii. Kind of a dumb analogy, I guess.
But I think my reservations about coming out here are nicely encapsulated in the tension experienced by the show’s characters. Even though pretty much every character on the show had something terrible going on in their home life, something to run away from, pretty much every character on the show wants to get the hell off of the island. But how many times while I’ve been watching the show have I thought to myself, why in the world would these people want to leave? Aside from the fact that most of them have nothing to go back to, they’re living on a beautiful tropical island eating fresh fish, fruit, and roast boar. They don’t have a real job, and they’re part of an interdependent community with a disproportionate number of hotties. What’s the problem?
Well, my problem is this. I don’t have anything to run away from. I’ve got a pretty sweet life in New York right now – I love my job, I’m close to my family, I’ve got great friends, and I live in a great neighborhood. The only real reason to move on is if I’m going towards something that I really care about. If that were simply getting another degree so I’d be closer to my doctorate, which means that I could enter the highly competitive market for a tenure track position at an institute of higher education, I’m not sure I’d do it right now. However, I’ve come to believe what I wrote in my application essay, which is that two years of studying a phenomenon in which I’m genuinely interested (new religions that do energy healing) is an end in itself. Plus I’m really into fresh papaya.
But I think my reservations about coming out here are nicely encapsulated in the tension experienced by the show’s characters. Even though pretty much every character on the show had something terrible going on in their home life, something to run away from, pretty much every character on the show wants to get the hell off of the island. But how many times while I’ve been watching the show have I thought to myself, why in the world would these people want to leave? Aside from the fact that most of them have nothing to go back to, they’re living on a beautiful tropical island eating fresh fish, fruit, and roast boar. They don’t have a real job, and they’re part of an interdependent community with a disproportionate number of hotties. What’s the problem?
Well, my problem is this. I don’t have anything to run away from. I’ve got a pretty sweet life in New York right now – I love my job, I’m close to my family, I’ve got great friends, and I live in a great neighborhood. The only real reason to move on is if I’m going towards something that I really care about. If that were simply getting another degree so I’d be closer to my doctorate, which means that I could enter the highly competitive market for a tenure track position at an institute of higher education, I’m not sure I’d do it right now. However, I’ve come to believe what I wrote in my application essay, which is that two years of studying a phenomenon in which I’m genuinely interested (new religions that do energy healing) is an end in itself. Plus I’m really into fresh papaya.
