The other day I was reading a segment from Søren Kierkegaard's 1835 journal entry because, you know, that's just the kind of thing one does in college. The attention of my thoughts were held captive by these words:
"What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know....The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."
It's that time of the semester when I feel swamped and irritable. When my highest aspiration is to get in bed and stay there, preferably in uninterrupted sleep, for more than four hours. When I wonder if I'm retaining any information -- let alone wisdom -- from a hefty daily reading load. When many conversations seem like grating noise in my ears, and I long to be left alone to think in quiet.
It's that time when all too many of the people I pass by on campus have red-rimmed eyes from lack of sleep or from tears or from particularly debilitating colds (or some combination of these). Everyone's a bit on the oversensitive and griping edge about everything.
It's that time when I wonder if I've become a second-rate friend and second-rate Christian, when I'm unhappy with where I allocate my time, and when what I want to be doing is very different from what I am doing or what I must do.
And I daydream of hiking and sitting in the sunshine in a peaceful state of mind and knocking literature off my ever-swelling reading list and somehow producing prodigious amounts of visionary writing and traveling to fabulous places and cooking for myself and getting the ball rolling on future -- but palpable and substantive -- long-term plans (like a career?!).
An awful lot of the current tasks set before me feel like chores from which I try to distract myself, and somehow I always feel a little bit behind, and a little bit angry at myself.
And my Bible sits on my desk collecting dorm room dust. And my friend's email sits there unanswered in my inbox. And a Christian life survey I fill out sends me into a fit of insecurity about what I'm doing with my life and how I'm doing it.
I often don't understand myself in these kinds of times. I get hung up on what I don't know -- which is an awful lot -- and don't pay attention to what I'm actually doing, how I'm doing it, and Who I'm actually living for.
Why does anyone -- fellow college student, savvy adult, anyone -- ever think that "It'll get done" is an appropriate, helpful, or encouraging thing to say to a stressed out individual?! 'It' will only 'get done' when I DO it. Papers don't write themselves, attitudes of passionate learning don't complacently shape themselves, relational and spiritual disciplines don't just cultivate themselves.
As I struggle to bite back words of irritation when I feel like someone is monopolizing my time or when I'm frustrated with or smothered by another tedious task on a to-do list, I'm reminded that I'm pretty sure I could figure out what God would have my responses be in each moment, and I'm pretty sure they would be ones of graciousness and diligence. And I'm perfectly capable of these kind of responses. Maybe that should go on my to-do list.
I'm reminded that I can still keep seeking and pursuing the idea and truth for which I can live and die.
Much is asked of us because much has been given to us.
No comments:
Post a Comment