Arrest My Attention

And now is when I settle in for the winter. Italy is over, the year has turned over, a quick trip to the city is over, and school starts Monday.

Winter is for dreaming. I will do school; I will attempt to be social; I will try to be a part of the local church; but you know me. My mind will always be elsewhere, climbing in the Alps, or swimming in the Mediterranean, or twirling under a starry sky, or running through a field, or trying to figure out how to be at peace and let life go on when there are babies dying from kwashiokor, and Parisian murders that become hashtags. There's nothing I can do about that so I have to go on. Live and love for them because they can't. Never forget the sun, and live well.

Is living well spending half the day just trying to get warm, though?

I'm discontent.

I honestly just laughed out loud at myself for writing that. Of course I'm discontent! I was discontent with life before I ever traveled out of the States, and now it's even worse. Of course. I like the feeling of my brain on fire with new experiences - so set me back in a small town in New York on a busy street in a cold, old, tiny house, and... the panic sets in. The panic that life will always be small and cold.

The key is to not make rash decisions in reaction to fear, like grad school or lack-there-of. I like the opening verse of this Awolnation song: I met an old man dying on the train/no more destination no more pain/he said 'one more thing before I graduate/never let your fear decide your fate.'

Jesus has a lot to say about not being fearful, too.

But what if your greatest fear is boredom? Meaninglessness? Insignificance? Worthlessness? It's funny, I'm terrified of the future, but because I fear all those things more, I'm running headlong for it.

When fear challenges me, I think it's good. If it's so large it's crippling, that's another story.

It'd be nice if fear weren't really in the picture much at all, though, you know? To make choices based on a blend of desire and logic - Desire on its own just leaves me spinning around under the stars again... Logic will put me in school for longer, with no social life but rather good academic standing.

So I'll spend these long winter nights thinking of what it means to be a balanced human. If I can arrest my attention away from the stars, that is.