#3: Jordan J.

I know myself in the eyes of other people. That’s how I’m self aware. I know what I’m doing and I can read people so if I know they can get mad at something, I won’t do those things and be aware of myself. But what I really want or how I think about things, I don’t know.

JJ on self awareness

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STORIES

If you could eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? 

What I survived off last year was Popeye’s chicken sandwich. I would add fries to it and thai tea boba. That was literally my meal every day last year. I think I can survive off that because I never got tired of it. 

What are you most proud of?

I don’t know, I don’t really have any experience. I think I’m kind of basic but I think I’m most proud of that because I hear other people’s stories and I think “oh thank god I don’t have to do that”. Or boys, boys obsessed. I don’t see the obsession so I’m proud of not being obsessed with boys and not making them the center of my world.

What is your happiest memory?

I don’t know. Recently, I think it was when I graduated last year. That was really happy. When I got into college, going to college, I wanted to get out of here. There’s so many, I can’t think of anything from the top of my head.

When was the last time you cried? 

I don’t like showing emotions even with myself. I think it was last year, October or November, because my mom made me mad. I was so depressed last year and she was like “you’re not depressed!” and I just started crying. 

Wait, I’m sorry, I did actually shed a tear when I was sick. It was so stupid. I was bleeding to death, TMI. I felt like everything was going wrong and then we went to Arby’s to get some fries and right when we drove from the drive-thru, I spilled the fries all over the floor. I shed one single tear and I didn’t talk the rest of the way. I was so mad because it was one thing after the next and I could never catch a break and I really wanted those fries. That was a month ago. 

Why were you depressed last year? 

I graduated college, had to move back home and I was just stuck in the house and I was gaining so much weight. I wanted a  job so I could be on my feet and lose weight but I couldn’t find a job and had to go to Jacksonville a couple of times to watch my niece and I didn’t want to go. I was just stuck in the house and I wanted to be back in Orlando.

Do you think Covid triggered that? 

Oh yes, I was living my best life a couple of weeks before covid happened. I was at my skinniest, I was travelling, me and my friends were going out, I was doing really good in my classes and it was over. Just like that. Yeah, covid ruined my life, not to be dramatic. It was my last semester too so I couldn’t graduate. 

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PERSPECTIVES AND IDEAS

Would you say you’re self aware?

Oh yes, very. (You’re pretty sure that you know yourself?) I know myself in the eyes of other people. That’s how I’m self aware. I know what I’m doing and I can read people so if I know they can get mad at something, I won’t do those things and be aware of myself. But what I really want or how I think about things, I don’t know. I feel like I do know myself but I don’t. I am self aware when it comes to other people because that plays in insecurities and how I am with other people. So I have to put on a front. I know what I’m doing so I try to control it, I know when I’m being annoying or being dramatic and all of this stuff. 

Do you feel stuck in life?

Very much so yes. I don’t want to work but we are conditioned to work hard. I hate the ‘work hard, play later’ because I feel like our whole lives are just going to be working hard and I don’t want to do that for the rest of my life. Even though I’m not going to die soon and at all, I want to do whatever I want before I get old. Yeah I act like I’m stuck right now because I feel like we have to get so much done before we’re 30.

What is your deepest fear?

Dying. I’m scared of death. Everybody is like “oh my god, it’s inevitable, it’s going to happen.” I don’t care. It’s not going to happen to me. I refuse to let it happen to me. It’s just that all I do is think in my mind and when you die you just stop thinking and that’s scary. That’s all I do, think. So not being in my body, not being here no more is really scary to me.

Do you believe in something after death? 

My theory is that what happens in the afterlife is what you currently believe in. So if people don’t believe there is an afterlife then there won’t be. If people believe there is a heaven then there is. I would hope there is a heaven because I believe in it. I refuse, I need to be in my body. I need to be able to think, even if it’s in heaven.

Do you think your belief in heaven affects how you live now morally?

That’s the problem. I am religious but not really. I just think that if I believe in God I will get in. I am more cautious but I’m also like ‘whatever’ I’m going to do what I want but not really bad things. I would never kill anybody or anything like that. Everybody sins so we’ll see who gets into heaven because I am but I don’t know about the rest of y’all. (giggles)

How has your perspective changed on the world? 

My parents always instill there’s bad people in the world. As I grew up, I was like “yeah, there’s REALLY bad people.” They don’t have to kill people, they just have to be rich and they’re bad people because they don’t take care of their planet. There are billionaires who can cure world hunger and world homelessness but they choose not to. It has shifted the fact that these people can take care of the planet but they don’t.

Do you think that humanity is heading towards the right or wrong direction? 

Wrong direction! People don’t respect people’s privacy. Especially on social media. People have the nerve to post videos of people who aren’t even paying attention at their lowest point and post it for some laughs and likes. People just think they can ask or dictate how anybody feels. People don’t have respect anymore, people just don’t care and it’s sad. People hide behind the internet and think they can say or do whatever they want to. I’m like ‘No, you can’t!”. People don’t realize that things are fake. 

People are evil, all they care about is money. A lot of money, greed. People don’t care about the planet. It’s so hot because people don’t care.

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JJ’S BITS OF WISDOM

I learned this in my first year of Intro to government. My professor said ‘Yes, we have free speech but you also can’t say what you want.’ Violence, threatening people or causing harm verbally, that is not freedom of speech.

What do you think people should stop/start doing to make the world a better place? 

Even though I’m a hypocrite, start helping people out more. People who don’t have homes, on the side of the street. I’m guilty but, well, I’m a woman, first of all. I’m not going to be opening my window to give people money even though I should because I do feel bad. I’m about to expose myself. I can help, I can’t help that much but I know where I want to be so I choose not to help because I want to save my money. You should help if you have the resources or the money. You shouldn’t expect people in the working class or lower income class to help. If you’re the top, the 1%, they have more than money to help everyone. 

People need to do less judging. First of all, you need to mind your own business anyway. People’s lives shouldn’t affect you. If it does, it doesn’t. Whatever people do, it doesn’t affect them. It only affects the person who does it. Stop judging, stop opening their mouth and saying anything against the grain. 

What advice or words of encouragement would you give yourself? 

I have a couple. One, to stop caring what people think of me. I don’t know if anybody cares but I think they do care. But be myself. I shouldn’t care about what other people have to say. It also comes into the insecurities of my weight. I think everybody is looking at me so I don’t do what I want to do because I think people are always going to bring up ‘Oh, she’s overweight.’ 

And then, be open to making more mistakes. At work, I’m so terrified of making mistakes. It takes me so long to do dome work sometimes if I’m not working with the attorney I always work with because I don’t want to mess up at all. I’m like ‘I’m new, DUH’ So I’m going to make mistakes. It comes at the same point of caring about what others think. I don’t want them to think ‘She’s a horrible worker’ and all that. I know I’m going to be making mistakes and I shouldn’t take it so personally if somebody corrects me. The problem is I don’t want people to think I’m dumb. 

Live my life. Do what I want to do. Stop thinking about what other people think. Make mistakes. Stop being a perfectionist, when I want to be. Stop being so embarrassed all the time. I get second hand embarrassment. That goes into thinking of stop caring about what people think of me. It goes into full circle.

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REFLECTIONS

Jordan and I have been friends for 12 years. She was one of the first friends I made when I moved to America. We’ve been through middle school, high school, boy band obsessions and she was even there when I was a quiet and shy 6th grader who didn’t know how to speak English. After high school, she left for Orlando, I left to travel and we were apart for about 4 years until the pandemic forced both of us back to our hometown.

After 12 years, we are still able to pick up wherever we left off even after months or years without seeing each other. However, we never really got any deep in our friendship. We always had a good time but never connected on a level that we did during the interview. She’s had a lot of health problems that she never shared with us or would tone it down to a random hospital photo of her hooked up to machines with a peace sign.

From the interview I was able to understand her perspective a lot better. After the interview was done, she asked me what I learned the most about her and I told her that she seemed to know herself more through what other people may think of her than who she actually was. I think that difference in perspective is one of the reasons why we haven’t been able to connect deeper with each since I’m so used to the opposite. After realizing that, I can work towards better understanding that difference so that we can better understand each other.

We discussed the value of wealth in depth. From both of our current perspectives, we do not necessarily understand what the value of A LOT of wealth is. I never understood people who had millions of dollars. What do you even do with that much money? Why don’t they distribute it and help others? From our perspectives, they may seem selfish. It is definitely a concept that I can admit I lack in understanding of. It always seemed like money isn’t just the root of most problems, it’s also the solutions.

My ultimate passion in life is humanitarianism. I want to help people and seeing others suffer weighs heavy on my heart. I may be a little naive for doing so, but I always made myself believe that other people strive to help too. But, as JJ pointed out, there is hypocrisy in it. We can afford to help but sometimes we choose not to in order to secure out positions in life better. The influences of individualism is strong in our society. In addition, there are factors that limits or discourage us, like what JJ said about being a woman. Unfortunately, a part of our experiences as women is taking extra caution in everything we do, even if our intentions are good. There has been times where I’ve tried to go downtown and give food to some of the homeless population there and got some unfortuante experiences in return. That conflict between wanting to help but feeling scared or taken advantage of, leaves you so feeling so helpless. And I think that helplessness is something we all feel when we see disasters, protests or war happening around the world. In order to not be crushed by it, we’ve had to learn to filter it by thinking that there’s not as much as we think we can do.

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Some of the answers above have been praphrased very slightly to remove excessive rambles in order to provide a smoother read. If you’d like to hear their unedited responses, you can do so by listening to their audio tapes linked at the end of each answers. If you’d like to listen to all audio tapes, you can do so by clicking here. Links will redirect you to instagram reels in another tab.