I ought to say that I am transitioning really well after my semester, and that Lear answers my Big Question like A. B. and C.
But I still don't have answers, and so I have to speak what I feel and see what comes of it.
I guess I thought that as the end of October rolled around I'd be closer to figuring out how HMI changed me and closer to being adjusted to life back at home. But I'm not. I still miss all the people that made up my semester more than I would miss my arms and legs. I still unfairly compare food, conversations, events, weather, classes, relationships, music, everything that makes up my life now to everything that made up my life for that semester. I still haven't been able to follow what we learned in our "going home" transference classes. I still am struggling to love my life here because the things I most valued from HMI are not in it: the open communication, the culture of feedback, the poop jokes, the non-competitive nature of school work, having friends around 24/7, filling every moment with worth while activities.
And I don't know how any of this relates to my Big Question. I've certainly changed, in ways as small as what I eat to who I choose to spend the most time with, and big things like who I try to be as a friend and what attitude I look at my learning with. But it's been really hard for me to try and fit into the life that I held before I left, and I know I shouldn't expect myself to. I feel myself growing away from people and activities that were central to my life pre-January 2011, and I know it's because I am choosing to value other experiences more, but it is still hard not to feel guilty and weird about. The second part of my question "how do people cope with the transformation?" I am beginning to think that I have to embrace change and this transition, and not expect myself to be the same as I was before and forget RMS XXVI and what I learned to really value there. and it's still hard. I feel like I am intentionally breaking off from part of my life that I used to really value because it's just not quite what I want anymore, but I still feel a bit like a coward in doing it. What if I regret giving up those things? But I guess as soon as I decided to leave for a semester, I decided to let go of the past and change through this experience.
sorry for the angst, I'll get on to King Lear.
I think the only character that really lends well to answering my question is Edgar. He is the only one that goes through dramatic changes in personality as well as situation, and he is still alive to have to deal with these changes at the end. Edgar starts out as a pretty flat, gullible character. Forced to transition into a madman beggar, he leaves the life he has always known and was happy with, and through his time as Poor Tom he gains clarity on what he values (his father) and the truth of his life. Edgar does not want to return to the trick-able fool that he was before, and his transition in values/personality ends up in him killing Edmund, which because of Edmund's change of heart it is not clear that it was necessarily the best or the only course of action that Edgar could have taken. The ending is so ambiguous as to what is going to happen to the kingdom and to Edgar, which I could look at as just being where I am now, after making a choice, never forgetting the past, but having to move into an uncertain future of a life that is changing and undefined in those changes.
How I just characterized Edgar is very similar to the answer that I have started to form for myself in the first half of this post. The argument I just presented is certainly not the only answer to my big question, but it might be the only answer I can find now, because it is so very much what I need to hear. Maybe this blog is not necessarily what answers I find in literature, but in what answers I am able to justify with the words I gain from literature.
*post title: Act 5, Scene 3, line 343 of Shakespeare's King Lear
