i work at a coffee shop. the false sense of authority that is found in these places surprises me. i’m amazed with middle aged women being tickled that they order “their” drinks correctly. as if ordering this expresso drink differs any from the expresso drink she ordered yesterday. Shit, at least I have a job.
Anyone whose goal is “something higher” must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
-”The Unbearable Lightness Of Being”
And that’s just it.
We can recognize certain times in our lives when we have the fear of giving in, succumbing – simply because that is the very thing, at that moment, that we long to do the most. And honestly, why not? If there is no further to fall than down to our worst fears, then does not the fight end? The struggle for the “something higher”? Then the fears become the reality, we can resign ourselves to them, thereby avoiding the future, potential disappointment of never reaching the loftier goal.
The fears become, ultimately, more of a friend than the foe. We live constantly, days on end, with our fears; they become part of our daily, habitual thoughts, they visit us in our slumber. We know them. The ambitions, dreams, and longings become more and more unfamiliar as, perhaps, they are not something we have before experienced and we have nothing to which to compare them, no jumping-off-point from which to say, ‘I know this road, I’ve walked this floor, ‘ by which we could know for certain that, at the end of that road, lay our dreams. Thus, our fears become the comfort. We don’t know how we would survive without them. After all, if not for our fears, would the ambitions and desires even exist? In the absence of our fears, would we have something from which to run, consequently giving us a goal toward which to press forward?
It’s that lump in the throat, it’s the passing of the day through the fingers, it’s the stone-cold grasp of reality on the thoughts that lends itself to nothing else but the recurring horror that this, that which is sought, does not, in fact, exist.
The wrong road has been taken, somewhere a wrong turn presented itself as more attractive than the alternative, and now, here, the only result is that of finding that, in spite of desperately seeking to leave our fears down below us, thrashing with all our might against the current carrying us downward, we have merely come to find that we have, instead, calmly walked up to Fear’s front door and knocked.
-L
It’s past midnight, and I’m looking over my seemingly insurmountable to-do list for tomorrow. College 2.0 is nothing like it was the first time around.
I can’t help but wondering what my academic breaking point is. Boasting an academic record that, at times, resembled something akin to a nerdy equivalent of a World’s Strongest Man contest track record, I feel ashamed to admit how oppressive this measly load of 7 hours feels. Two tests in two days, both of which my professors have said, “this is the easiest test you’ll face all semester.” It doesn’t feel easy this time. Not when I have a husband, a dog, a full-time job, 5 loads of laundry pending and every single dish I own sitting on the kitchen counter with the week’s food morphing itself into a solid impenetrable substance. Is this how I’m going to spend half of my year? Juggling two classes, neither of which I am interested in nor gifted in, wishing that I was doing something else? Anything else? Ironing? Doing dishes? Carrying the washing machine up and down the staircase? Anything?
“Are you excited about starting school?” A friend asked me that question today while we were sitting at lunch together–a lunch that was ill-advised in reference to my schedule, but highly recommended on the part of my sanity. I thought, “STARTING SCHOOL??? What the hell am I doing right now if I haven’t even started yet?!” She wasn’t talking about this preliminary stage I’m in, this trial run, this qualifying round. She was talking about nursing school, which is the dream, the goal of this tedious balancing act that I’m currently attempting. After I came to my senses, I told her that yes. I am excited about school. I’m excited about the idea of only having one thing to do.
Foolish, right? What about me truly believes that I am only going to have one thing to do once I start the Accelerated Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing degree program that I am working towards? The stupid part. Even when I start nursing school–the program for which they purposefully don’t admit students who have children because they (and I quote), “don’t want to be responsible for the level of neglect that the program demands”–I will still have a husband, a family, friends, a house, a dog, a cat, and dishes, all of which will still demand my attention. And I will want to give them that attention. I’ll have even less to give, though. I’d imagine that learning how to care for people in that capacity is a bit more complicated than studying for a Microbiology test and a Chemistry test in two successive days.
And so it’s nights like these. Nights when I am up after midnight, nights when I’ve made poor time management decisions all day long, nights when the total of ‘hours left in the weekend’ are noticeably smaller than ‘hours needed to accomplish what I need to accomplish’. These are the nights that leave me thinking that I’m not ready, not able, and maybe not willing to make the sacrifices that I need to make in order to achieve my goals. I’ll feel better in the morning, and maybe better still on Monday, after I have reviewed for my exams and perhaps have memorized all the Elements and Ions and Compounds that I have to memorize. Perhaps after I can differentiate between the Genus and the species and after I’ve memorized Whittaker’s 5 kingdom system I’ll come back to you and proudly declare that I once again have confidence in myself and my scientific abilities. But for now, I’m going to crawl into bed and recite to myself the 8 parts of speech and murmur under my breath in what Spanish I can remember, remembering that I must have felt this way in College 1.0, I must have, and then I’ll remind myself of how I survived.
-sarahthe
Yesterday’s three-hour summer study group should have been about grades. That’s what summer study groups are usually about: okay, Mr. Shit, am I saying that right, I got this summer reading assignment that, like, I don’t really get but is it still possible for me to get an A. Because I never got a B before except for in, like, science but that’s hard, you know? Not like English. So is this good enough?
But yesterday’s three-hour summer study group was not about grades. It was about Plato.
The two people who were on time, plus the four others who showed late, all wanted to talk about, like, you know. Plato.
Who they totally didn’t get because he was, like sort of boring but not really that it’s just not really their thing, you know, reading this because why does he have all these questions that aren’t really questions and who is he talking to anyways.
So begins the first meaningful discussion of allegory or symbolism that any of them have had in, you know, quite a while. And slowly, painfully, they read aloud one sentence, one word at a time and learn that you don’t skip over words you don’t, like, know–not when you’re reading Plato because if you miss a word then you miss everythingand, as we all learned in paragraph three, you don’t want to miss this.
“They are strange prisoners said Glaucon like ourselves I replied and”–Stop. Read that again. With the periods this time.
“They are strange prisoners said Glaucon. Like ourselves, I replied.” WAIT. Like who? Who he means.
So the people in the cave. That see just shadows. It’s like, us.
Whoa. So like, when you’ve got your ipod on and you can’t hear anything around you except that same song you’ve listened to, like, a lot already and you know all the words but never thought about them before because it’s like just a song.
Or like, when, you know, you always thought something was true because it’s like bias, you know what I’m saying? But your parents taught it to you but you never really thought about it that way? Because it’s not like you want to disrespect them? But like they’re so wrong, you know, and so are you but it’s hard to see that when that’s all you ever knew was that.
And so like there’s this one guy that goes up and sees the light is, like, what? Lightened. And he gets it but nobody else gets it cause they’re still in the cave.
Wait–like, this guy was killed or something? Socrates.
“Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to lose–”
Loose.
“another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.”
And who else do we know who was killed or threatened with death for trying to bring people into the light–or just for expressing unpopular ideas?
Wait, so it’s like Jesus Christ or something.
Yes…
And Martin Luther King.
Okay…
And Biggie?
No.
Well it’s like, I mean, there’s more?
Write down the following names (mildly amused teacher, careful to preserve his look of exasperation, writes down: Mohandas Gandhi; Theo Van Gogh; Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Salman Rushdie) and look them up on the internet tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Wait. They killed Gandhi? When?
I think it was with that suicide bomb last year, remember? In the car?
schmiddty
