On waiting....

Last night, my friend sent me this picture. This was the start of a long conversation about waiting for opportunities. Some of the opportunities are more long term, others are just opportunities that never present themselves despite your best efforts. Sometimes it just seems like fate never gives you a fair shot. It got me thinking though, why do we always have to wait?

If you think about it, nothing in life comes instantaneously. Waiting is just a part of the nature of the world. You wait for your next class, your new schedule, for a promotion at work, to meet that special someone, on and on the list goes. Nothing comes without a wait. Sometimes the wait is for nothing, and the events never turn out as you planned.

There is nothing more devastating than waiting for nothing. I am not a patient person, and the most difficult part of waiting is not the test of my patience, but rather hoping the end result is worth my time and effort. When it's not, it creates this downward spiral questioning why you waited and for what. It's a very counterproductive process when you think about it. To wait and wait and to reap no benefit out of waiting. The lack of benefit represents how things in life just didn't go our way.

I like to think that the waiting is worth it. I like to think that when you wait, you learn things through the trials. Maybe this is a cliche thought, but nothing in life comes easily, or without some patience. It's never easy, but if everything was just handed to you, what would you learn? Learn to ask and your requests are answered without work?

We're always waiting for something. Sometimes it's something menial in our day to day lives. Other things are long term. Often the things that we want the most seem the most impossible, and the farthest from our grasp. There's a reason we have to wait though. There are always other events that have to take place before the others can occur in the long term. It's a process that seems endless and worthless, but there's a hidden value that can only be seen when you realize the growth that has to occur in you as an individual before something greater can happen.

I hate waiting just as much as anyone else. I'm not patient. But everything is worth the wait....

On the Human Condition....

Yesterday in basic drawing, we began discussing the formal element of form. We analyzed various still lives and their artistic principles. There was one that was quite a bit more colorful and optimistic, and one that was dark and ambiguous. I found myself incredibly drawn to the darker of the two. As my teacher began discussing it, he began explaining how the still life stood for a larger metaphor about the human condition, and that we all are so close to each other, but we never touch each other.

At first, I thought it was a bit far fetched. Yeah, I am an art history major, but how can a bunch of bottles and boxes placed incredibly close to each other be a metaphor for the human condition? Literally, it's a bunch of shapes that are placed so close together you can't tell whether or not they touch until you stick your nose up on it. How do you pull out that metaphor?? Then I realized... he really has a point...

We walk through our day to day lives constantly surrounded by people. In class you're inches away from your classmate, a foot away from the nearest office cubicle, a foot away from your family member on the touch, inches behind the person you're walking near when traveling between your day, on and on. We are infinitely close to people, but we never touch them.

Touch is a basic sense and often times it is meaningless. You must touch something in order to make it move. You must touch something to use it, on and on. I guess you could say it's a basic physics principle. Touching an inanimate object doesn't mean much at all.

But what about when you touch another human being? What about when two life forces meet? There's something about the combination of two live senses meeting that is so powerful, but we underestimate. In a more figurative sense, we can touch peoples lives without physically touching them. But we don't, we stand close to each other but we never touch each other, and that is the human condition.

Why don't we touch each other, both literally or figuratively? I realize how weird the wording of that sounds, but it's such an interesting concept. Human contact in turn exchanges emotions and feelings, and conveys various different things words can't. Words can convey the figurative touch, the figurative impression one conversation can leave on your life.

It's quite an intimidating thing, to either put yourself in a vulnerable state to be in physical contact with someone, or to use the power of your words to make an impact on a person's life. I think that we all fear it, but I don't think we should fear it. We were meant to be relational with each other and make an impact. And it's possible that the impact we make could be positive or negative. If the impact is negative, we grow from it and become stronger. If the impact is positive, we feel inspired to continue to change a life just as ours has been changed.

The human condition is that simple, we are close, but we do not touch. We let fear take over. But have faith that there is more, and it can be changed. It all starts with one touch...

On Searching....

The other day in philosophy, we read through the story of Socrates and Meno. Meno asks Socrates if virtue can be taught. Socrates, in his typical manner, never answered anything with declarative sentences, but rather with questions. So Socrates asked Meno what virtue was. As the didactic continues, Meno can not give a definition of virtue. Meno then proposes that, if you do not know what something is, you must search for it, but if you do not know what you are looking for, then how will you find it?

This dialogue was written in the fifth century BC, but the question is so poignant and applicable. We spend our lives searching. Searching for a significant other, a place to live, a career, so on and so on. But we go into this search with an open mind. Now, an open mind is good. We focus on the journey of the search as something that will teach us a great amount for our later lives. However, the journey becomes abysmal once the end destination is reached.

Whenever we reach the end destination, we feel satisfied. We feel as if we have found what we have always been searching for. Like the answer has simply fallen from above into our path. This sudden finding is satisfying, and we spend the rest of our lives working through this destination. The destination becomes another journey of its own.

But Meno has a point - if we do not have it, we must search for it. But how will we find it if we do not know what it is? If we can not define the thing that we are searching for, how will we know what it is when we get to it? We can obviously make grandiose guesses that the thing we find is the right thing based on its timing and appearance in our lives. I think often times we can define what we want. We want certain qualities in a significant other, we want to live in a certain place due to the amenities that it offers, we want a certain career based on the benefits offers us.

In this search, all of the variables are not separated and distinguished. They all become one. In this conjunction, the idea of individual qualities becomes lost. The search centers in what makes you happy, which often can not be defined, by the best efforts. If there is no definition, how will you know it when you find it?

It's a rather interesting thought, that the journey we spend our entire lives on may be for nothing. That we may be missing our end result. Socrates and Meno further discussed this journey when Socrates asked why we should even bother looking. Meno and Socrates debated and eventually came to the agreement that the search is still something you should embark upon.

This isn't meant to dishearten anyone on the journey. We are all on a journey searching for something unknown, but often within that we narrow ourselves into a certain train of thought. Let that train of thought be as broad as the possibilities you will encounter on your journey. Don't limit yourself based on qualifications that supposedly make you happy. You may or may not know what it is when you find it, but save your findings. Lock them away in your box of memories. It will come in handy later....

On Personal Space....

As the semester begins, I find myself overwhelmed with homework and life in general. I'm currently taking twenty credit hours, meaning I spend an average of twenty hours a week in class (it's actually closer to twenty-four). According to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, for every hour you spend in class, you can expect to spend an average of two to three hours in homework outside of class. Therefore, per week, I can expect forty-eight to seventy-two hours of homework a week. Together, I have anywhere from seventy-two to ninety-six hours a week in academics. Newsflash, there are one hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. Basically, this breaks down to, I have no time.

Then I came to this epiphany when I was drudging through my hours of homework - I realized that I can not do homework in my room. My roommate says it's because of my depressing taste in music, but I digress. I sit in my room and I feel I can't focus and I'm unproductive, and that lack of productivity just makes me angry with myself. Then I get angry and want to do nothing but eat or sleep. Then I waste time and I become even more angry.

So I decided to go to a local coffee shop today to try and get work done. I got about ten hours of work done in three hours. No, it was not because I was hyped up on espresso. It was because I found a place where the world felt content. I had a cup of coffee, some lovely music, and I was surrounded my commotion. Despite the commotion, I felt driven to work, and not distracted, unlike with the silence of my room.

Then I realized, everyone needs their place. It could be a shared or a public place. None the less, it is a place where you go and the world is content. Nothing can distract you and no wrong can exist there. You are free. But maybe this location isn't just a geographical thing. Maybe it's a mental state too. A mental state where you allow yourself to be free of whatever troubles you. Where your happiness blooms as your thoughts travel to new levels.

Space exists in multiple dimensions. But find your space, and run free.