living towards v. living through

Now at Starbucks, after a morning filled with oil changes and meetings about teacher workshops. Prof. P wants to try to do the first one-day workshop in early Fall 2007, and I wasn't able to tell her that I may not be here then. Here's another thing I have to make a decision about: if funding for this research project goes through, that would take me to Florida and elsewhere, do I really want to pursue it? I have this idea that I should never pass up opportunities, but I wonder if I've spent too much of the past couple of years (past five or more years?) just taking opportunities that fall in my lap and not making my own opportunities based on my interests. I think, with this coming Spring and my fourth year, I have the chance to make some decisions; and this time, I should probably try to figure out what I actually want to do, and then make my decisions about where to be based on that. Does this seem obvious to anyone else?

Today I've got to put together a paper for a conference presentation I give on Friday. It's part of a panel, and I'm responding to the other two papers. Because it's "just a response," I don't feel a whole lot of pressure, but I don't want it to be a joke, even though I have a hard time taking conferences seriously because of my fear that little of actual significance happens there...and by actual significance, I guess I mean that I fear that little happens that significantly alters educational (or other forms of) practice. But maybe that's not what they're for? NETWORKING. Blech.

I had to get a new student ID today. I think I lost mine. I'm sure now that I've dropped $20, I'll find it immediately. They make you take a new picture if you get a new ID, so I did--I look pretty joyful (though I'm not happy with how my hair looks, to be entirely honest with you). I think I'm most vain about my hair--it never looks quite right to me. Talk about something that's of little actual significance.

Did I tell you I almost saw an old man get hit by a car yesterday? I did. I was running down Illinois St., across from the performing arts center, and there was an old man tottering along the sidewalk ahead of me. To his left, maybe 40 feet away, there was a car that was clearly about to reverse. I slowed my run to wait for the car, because I wasn't entirely sure what was going to happen...then the old man paused for some reason, and the car started to reverse rather quickly towards him...I said, watch out, watch out...but I think I whispered it, maybe because I was out of breath, maybe because I was shocked? The car actually bumped the guy slightly, and he turned and looked at the car in silence, clearly frustrated but not deeply angry. The woman who was driving looked out of her window at us with what I think I was annoyance. She didn't seem sorry.

Everything turned out okay, and I kept running.

This guy just walked into Starbucks. He pulled his motorscooter onto the sidewalk, parked in front of the place, and now he's talking to the two girls sitting in front of me, who appear to be studying for some kind of health and fitness program they're in (what do they call this? exercise science? sports medicine?). He looks jovial, like he just coasts through life, you know? I'm sure he has some problems, I'm sure he's not an ignorant idiot--he's a real person after all--but I often wonder how these people do it. How do these people coast through? Now one of the girls has left with the guy and is riding with him on the scooter.

Here's the thing: I think most people who are relatively comfortable (they don't have to worry about basic needs) just live through their days most of the time. They go from one thing to the next, they talk to their friends, they study, they work, they just plow through the days. They only stop to reflect--to really reflect--when something happens that's out of the ordinary. When they get hurt (physically or emotionally), when there's a death in the family, when they've got too much work to do and they just feel overwhelmed; but these moments pass. Maybe they change, maybe they don't; but these are interruptions in the normal flow of things. I need to think more about these people, because I don't know if I entirely understand them. I wonder if it's that they're just living through something, rather than living towards something. Because I think that there are some people who are living towards something, and these are the people who stop to reflect more often, because they're consistently concerned with how well their actions are matching up with what they see themselves as living towards. If you're not living towards anything, then perhaps there's not much of a need to reflect, because it doesn't matter so much what you're doing with your time. But if you are living towards something, then it matters to you quite a bit more.

I sometimes think I'd like to be a person who just lives through. But of course I don't really want to be that kind of person. I want to be one who lives towards, even if it means I occasionally make myself distraught--because could I really be any other way? (But could the living throughers be any other way? Should they be any other way? That's an important question, I think. Should people have to be living towards something? Is everyone living towards something, whether they realize it or not? Should people be able to be explicit about what they're living towards?)