My life at present is characterized by strenuous effort.  This semester has been radically demanding in nearly every way.  I am enrolled in an art class where I am genuinely struggling, again; I am preparing a senior show, writing a philosophy thesis on physicalist accounts of the soul, taking a course in philosophy of religion and one in medieval philosophy, one in philosophy of education and one in philosophies of the twentieth century, & some others: a load that totals 26 units. The coursework, pace, reading load, and output quantity is demanding.

On good days, I bike three miles in to school, largely uphill. This serves me well, as a physical image of my overall daily experience.

I am working five jobs, each slightly outside of my field and beyond my skill level.  I do what I can with what I have, and it works because there is no one else to do the task.

And then there are friends, and family, and the rest of life, that happens at the same time as work and school.  In these relationships I always feel over-matched and under-experienced, unwise, bumbling, but trying to be helpful and worthwhile.

This week--this month, really--is the climax.  Effort in every aspect of my life has reached a near fever-pitch.  I have averaged three hours of sleep per 24 elapsed hours for the whole month. I have never sustained that degree of effort for this long.

Now I am writing my thesis.  It takes time. It will be due the same day that I present my proposal for my art show.  Both events occur May 13th.  I have a number of other projects due, and events occurring, and general life things that make it such that these sleep (or non-sleep) habits must continue for another 8 or 9 days; but by then I should be able to afford rest.

Rest.
It is a thing I appreciated very little before this month.  Now... I shall be glad of it.  At least for a while.

...which I shall expound upon at some future, undesignated date.

What is the purpose of one's life?  Or, rather, how ought one to live: to change the world, or to enjoy oneself?

How much effort ought a citizen put into determining how to cast her vote?  It seems that for the presidency, a solid week spent just researching the positions of the candidates & predicting likely actions is easily justified, as the identity of the US president plays a key role in shaping the events and living conditions for at least the next four years.

When one attends a university, should one take classes to become a specialist (get better in an area where you already excel) or a generalist (take classes to improve a weakness)?

So, I've decided to start updating this again. I'm not sure how long it will last; probably just the summer.

After two days of exploring London, and an unscheduled, laid-back weekend in Oxford, I am anxious for classes to begin.  They say--and I believe them-- that they will require us to work harder than we have ever worked. But they aren’t doing it yet, and it’s driving me crazy.  There is no goal, and therefore no progress can be made toward it.  We have orientation, and free time after orientation.  But there is simply too much of it.  You cannot go explore Oxford after dark, and it gets dark at 4:30.  And we have orientation classes until 4:15.

So that leaves me with at least 5 hours each day of unscheduled, non-exploring time.  Indoor time.  Which usually translates into homework time.  However, knowing that I will do more reading and writing in the next few months than I ever felt any desire to, I am unwilling to spend those hours reading or writing unnecessarily.  So I painted.. for a little while.  That got old.  We watched movies.  That got old.  I went for short walks- which are still fun, but manage to pass no more than 20 minutes at a time.

We’re in the calm before the storm, and I just wish they would give us a way to work ahead.

Maybe that is bad of me, but I am not sure what I should improve.  I don’t like to waste time- and conversations with relative strangers only take so long, and only go so far.  And let’s face it: after a while, you get tired of talking.  At least if you’re naturally introverted.  Ah well: five days and counting ‘til the real deal begins.

There is great beauty in the world. It is the beauty that modern artists have been trying to communicate for years; it is what free verse, greeting cards, movies and tender grandparents have been asserting. It is manifested in the whispers of light at dawn, the near-silence of early morning, the close-knit bustle of a coffee shop, the tender embrace of a parent, and even the hole in your socks. A culture brings forth artists not to distract it from reality, but to alert it to the very real beauty in which it exists.

Some, it is true, need to be told to surround themselves with beauty; but the majority of us simply need to realize that we are already surrounded. The task left to us is not to seek beauty in ugly things, invent it, and project it on our surroundings- no. Our task is simply to stop denying that our lives are beautiful. As a culture, and more particularly as a generation, we have become more interested in bemoaning the sorrows of the world- whether they are our own, or someone else's- than in recognizing its beauty.

There are a plethora of possible reasons for this tendency. Cynicism may stem from a fear of disappointment, grounded in disillusionment or betrayal. Chances are you don't have to think too hard to come up with a moment of disillusionment so devastating that you felt the world must collapse. My guess is that as those moments begin to pile up, we lose hope and go on the defensive, refusing to place our trust, hope, or joy in anything that might give way. Additionally, if you are a good enough cynic, societal reinforcement kicks in: the more you mock the things we love or resent, the more we laugh and worship you.

Introspective despair most likely stems from a deep-seated desire for love. In the love-starved, sexed-up environment in which we live, compassion is the most real, tangible instantiation of love. As humans, and more particularly as humans raised in community, we (predominately) show compassion to individuals who are sorrowing or in pain. We seem to have lost the more difficult skill of showing love to people who are pulling through, keeping their chins up, and finding joy and beauty in life: those are happy people; why would they need support? The natural yearning for love thus rewards a pessimistic victim complex with love, while starving a healthier, happier worldview.

At other times, that same compassion can itself be the focus shift. With all of the world's most heartbreaking headlines at your fingertips, you have two options. Either you have to become calloused and unresponsive to some people's pain, or else you will be overwhelmed by empathy. There just isn't a way to fully understand the Darfur genocide and not have your heartbreak. I personally think that both of these responses have a place; each is bad at some point, and good at some point. If you become calloused, you can focus on solving more local problems and be more effective, or you can become a cynical jerk who mocks the world for its brokenness. If your heart breaks, you can use that empathy to motivate you towards addressing people's needs, or you can lie down and cry 'woe is me and the world' and conclude that life sucks, as does everything in it.

In any case, we end up at college and are, for the most part, calloused cynics who mock beauty as being only skin-deep, or mournful emo-kids, who, so caught up in their dark world of despair, deny that beauty exists at all. The tragic irony is that both groups are generally in the midst of beauty, interacting with it, thriving on it, contributing to it- every day. They just don't know it, and thus don't derive as much happiness as they could. This has gotten terrifically long, for which I apologize; the next installment will explore the role of beauty in an individual's life, and its relation to love and joy.