transition

It was a pivotal week. At least it seems that way now. I hope that, by the end of the semester, it still seems that way to me, because that will mean that the changes I realized I need to make in my life during this past week will have stuck. That I'll actually be putting them into action.

So many things came together this past week to bring me to this point.

I feel a certain strength that I don't remember feeling and maybe that means that this time I'll actually do something about the realizations I had this past week that weren't in fact realizations at all since I'd had them before. My life, I think, has the potential to be so incredibly fulfilling and I have the potential to do incredibly helpful things--I really honestly think that, with people's help, I can make a difference in a way that I'll find meaningful--but there are these recurring problems that keep me from reaching a more consistent state of exuberance, fulfillment. These are problems that I have had over and over again, and every time, I know what I need to do to work on them; but this time, this time, I need to actually make those things happen. I cannot allow myself to get complacent, to get distracted, to let myself feel that everything's okay just because the immediate crisis has passed. I cannot allow myself to cover up these problems, as I have covered them up before.

I need to have the courage to reorganize my life, which is going to mean doing things that are difficult. I am mixed about this. I feel a deep sadness right now, because I know that a certain way of life is passing for me--I have felt this coming for some time now, and now it's here. But I also feel a deep joy, a deep hope, because I know that a new and ultimately more fulfilling way of life lies ahead. I can picture it, I can feel it, and I am excited.

I think (I hope, in a way) that I will look back on this time, this Fall 2006 semester, as the transition between two phases in my life. I think that, since my father's death nearly five years ago (and I am stunned by how long ago five years seems, and I wonder how my life now will seem to me five years from now, who and what will still be in my life, who and what will have moved on, and who and what will have appeared), my life has been about soaking in as many different kinds of experiences as possible, without wondering so much if they were "good for me." I have met so many different kinds of people, done drugs I never would've imagined doing in college, had drunken disasters, taken road trips across the country, fallen in love a few times, been crushed a few times, shifted my academic path, and have used this constant motion, this flood of experience, to realize how complex and diverse and problematic life can be, and how so many people have such trouble locating their lives in a web of significant meaning, to find a deeper fulfillment beyond the desire-satisfaction happiness that, while important, is shallow. Now it is time to take my life a bit more seriously--to continue to flood myself with experience, but to try to dam off the things that threaten to drown me, and to channel into my being the things that will uplift me, riding the waves. I know, now, what these things are, and I am ready, now, to keep these things at the forefront, as difficult as it may be. I am sure I will come to see that some of the things that fulfill me now will not five years from now, and I am sure that things that don't fulfill me now will prove to be fulfilling five years from now; and for this reason I must continually reflect (in balance with my action) to see what these things are, to keep an eye on the flux that characterizes my life, and everyone's lives.

This has been all about me, and now it is time to shift more towards making it about the world.

Wish me luck.