Random Reflections

It's amazing how slowly time passes when riding a bike.

The Latin verb "spiro" means to breathe.  Maybe being inSPIRed is just as central to life as breathing, or in fact breathes soemthing new into life.

Why is it that the more I have to do, the harder it is to do it?

In society, everyone values someone who's sarcastic and always has something funny or witty to say, and if you're not naturally funny, you're thought to have little personality.

C.S. Lewis once said, "Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours."

Not a Stranger

I wouldn't say I'm idealistic.  I wouldn't even call myself an optimist.  However, I have always been secure in my conviction that life has meaning and coherency.  While there are aspects of existence that humans can never expect to understand, there is so much beauty in the world that I find it impossible to believe it came about by chance.  For this reason, when I read Albert Camus' decidedly nihilistic The Stranger the second semester of my junior year, I was disturbed and unsettled:  the novel essentially culminates in the protagonist's realization that life is meaningless. About to be executed, he thinks: "As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.  Finding it so much like myself -- so like a brother, really -- I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again" (122-123).  

The protagonist Meursault's contentment in the supposed purposelessness of the universe contrasted sharply with everything I'd been taught or believed.  How could anyone be happy in the absence of hope and meaning?  In my opinion, one cannot just give up faith and live a live centered around the idea that the world is indifferent.  Without hope or meaning, life would mean nothing, and who would want to live that kind of life?  A life without seeing the value in the small things; beauty and nature,  love and friendship, success and failure, excitement and tranquility, patterns, colors, joy, and disappointment; would be worthless.

This book of faithlessness did not weaken my faith.  Although I can't say Camus was wrong, that his exploration of the unanswerable question "Does life have meaning?" was entirely invalid, I make the deliberate choice to believe.  Where before I had simply assumed that I was alive for a reason, that I was destined for more than an empty life made meaningless by death, I began to look at my existence in a different light.  Yes, it's impossible to know beyond doubt that there is a God who cares, a higher power who crafted the universe and still knows my name, but if I have to make the choice between a faith I can't be sure of or a life without faith, I choose faith.

"No Restrictions"

Why is it that our society is so obsessed with independence?  Kids my age- who are making decisions about college- are encouraged to follow their hearts, do what's best for only theirselves, and not let any other factors get in the way. 

Is this representative of real life?  Does it make sense to be encouraged to not let anything restrict you, with a result of being in limbo after college because you don't have anything to tie you down?  Isn't the whole point of education and college to prepare you for life, not for some dream world where the best thing to do is always whatever suits you best?

When I tell anyone, even my parents, that I want to go to college near my boyfriend, I'm reprimanded.  I shouldn't let any other factors get in the way of my decision.  From society's point of view, it's almost unacceptable to be in a commited relationship at the age of 17.  Early adulthood is about "finding" yourself, which you can't do if you're tied down.

David Brooks, a New York Times journalist, said that "life isn't about finding yourself, it's about losing yourself."  This statement, which is so controversial to popular belief, really rings true for me.  If you focus only on yourself, cutting off all "restrictions", you don't really get anywhere.  However, if you let go of this self-centeredness and put yourself into caring for others, you might just (as C.S. Lewis might say) get "finding" yourself thrown in.