a short note on the impossibility of knowing

I'm not sure if it's the experience of living in another country or it being that I'm in Oxford that has led me towards great introspection, but either way I keep finding myself constantly in thought. There's so much to learn.

I had a teacher in eighth grade who would walk into our classroom every morning, slam the tip of his chalk against the chalkboard, while exclaiming "you know this much . " I never really knew what he meant by that until now. It crossed my mind the other day while sitting in the Bodleian Library, surrounded by 117 miles of books (it grows by 3 miles each year), that depending on how hard he hit the board on any given day and the size of the miniscule mark that that chalk made, I think that some days Mr. Marcus was being overly generous when displaying to us how much we knew. I know not much, but I'm finding that just when I think I have finally pinned something down, it unravels in a whole new light. Its just as the saying goes, "all that I know for sure is that I know nothing for sure," which, I would normally say is absolutely true, however I believe in universal truths aside from just that single ones existence. Despite the revelation and possibility of knowing nothing for sure, however, I have been trying to pin something, anything stable, down these days while experiencing so many new things. Here's what I've got:

I think that it is undoubtedly within our very nature as beings to enjoy the comforts of stability, while consequentially rejecting the discomfort instilled within us by experiencing too much new.

What I have come to realize about this, though, is that the novelty in the things that we deem as being new is that it will inevitably become replaced by a newer new. It will become old. It will become comfortable.

((I'm finding comfort in this revelation in fact!))

Also, "you know this much . " never meant that we know nothing, it just means that we have a hell of a lot left to learn, about our surroundings, about the world, about other people (even those who we think that we have pinned down), and the most difficult to know of all, ourselves.

For my concluding thought, I'd like to state that this was the same teacher who told me that he didn't think I should participate in the Model United Nations debate team (which has students represent different countries while debating international policies and practices) because he was not sure if it was something that I could handle. After becoming a head delegate in high school leading debates at NYU and Harvard (I know I'm such a nerd), Now here I sit at Oxford University studying international politics with the greatest minds in the world. So, here's to you Mr. Marcus, while I have learned to appreciate your wisdom more so now than ever, I'd like to end this introspection by stating, "you know this much . " and, I could not have gotten here without having crossed paths with people like you. There's so much to learn.

Learn from someone every day.

as a post script; a year ago today I was at the Biden Home State Inaugural Ball in DC! As Dr. Suess stated so perfectly "Oh, the places you'll go!" Life and the people in my life have brought me to quite fantastic places!... Now back to studying the world!

First week in Oxford

So here I sit, a week into my Oxford experience, and what an experience it has already been. I flew into London Heathrow airport last Wednesday, the day of the "biggest snowstorm in Oxford in 30 years." On my way through JFK airport I picked up two heads-up pennies, both of which I give equal accreditation for my landing in London, since every other airport in London closed that morning, and Heathrow closed an hour after my flight landed. Since arriving here, Oxford has been one large sheet of ice covered with a full layer of snow, now more accurately noted as being slush, or as the British say, "rubbish". I have seen about 30 people fall thus far, not an exaggeration, and it has become quite easy to distinguish the British who fall from the others. Yesterday, a woman fell right in front of me and when I ran up to help her she was yelling "bloody f*cking hell, this f*cking ice..." you get the idea...The British curse like sailors. Aside from the cursing, and the obvious accent barrier, another way to distinguish the British from Americans are by their tardiness. My first day of orientation was scheduled to begin at 9:20 am (mind you I was jetlagged) and after walking over 30 minutes into the city centre at 8 am to be on time, the meeting did not start until 10:05, 45 minutes later. I thought tardiness might have been circumstantial, however, last night I had a tour of the Union Society, the world's greatest debating chambers, and my tour which was scheduled to begin at 5 pm did not start until 5:35, subsequently causing the formal dinner we were to have beginning at 7:20 PM not to start until nearly 8 PM. Anyway, I could continue with this, but you get the idea. I think tardiness is a general standard in Oxford though, things are much slower, and if I may say, a bit less serious in terms of general concerns.

Oxford seems concerned with beauty and academia above all else. The alarm clock and the tour groups can wait. The thought you are experiencing in any given moment can not. It has become no wonder to me why this is the city where Harry Potter and the Golden Compass came to life, where Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Ring series, where Carol wrote Alice and Wonderland and where Hobbes wrote the Leviathan. The heir of intellectualism is absolutely contagious. Just dining in the same hall as Albert Einstein and John Locke is enough to make anyone strive to be better, to extend oneself beyond the boundaries that we have self-imposed, unknowingly, prior to stepping into a city, or a new world, where dreams are not merely dreams any longer, they are feasible future accomplishments.

As for now, however, I sit in a McDonalds that is cleverly placed between two buildings dating back to the early thirteenth century. I find it to be refreshing though, this healthy balance that Oxford has kept between the old and the new, predominantly on the old. Being here is like nothing I have ever experienced, quite literally because our notable American history merely dates back to the 1700's or so, but even further so because I have noticed that it is an American standard to deem the "old" as being replaceable and always subject to being made more contemporary. Old is good. Whether it be old traditions, such as sending "cheers" to the Queen at dinner, old buildings such as the Bear, a pub I spent 5 hours getting to know the other day that dates back to the thirteenth century, or old thoughts, such as the original copy of the Leviathan and Darwin's notebooks which are held in this exquisite city, each remind me in their own way of just how precious the old is. Without the old, there would be no basis for the creation of something new. My goal, now, is to do something un-American, then. Instead of the American tradition of deeming everything replaceable, my goal, while here, will be to become a piece of history, to make both my own experience and my presence here, something totally and completely irreplaceable.

My favorite contemporary American author stated "The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will." This is undoubtedly the place to do so. While in the presence of so much greatness, the only thing to do is to strive to be great.

cheers!

Jess