Breathing again

Do you ever feel like you are drowning? Metaphorically, of course. That is how I have felt lately. I have felt like I was in some swirling pool of water being sucked into a vortex. I have wanted to stop it. I have wanted to breathe, but it hasn't happened yet. The normal load of grading and planning and teaching has been there, but it has begun to feel insurmountable (maybe I should just give everyone an A and call it a day). Add to that the sad loss of Sarah Landauer and the hospitalization of my stepfather, and I am officially in the suck zone. It has been a long, gray week.

Still, today is a new day and tomorrow starts a new week, so I am glad and the clouds overhead seem a little less gray. While I hope that you are also all feeling brighter this week, I am glad for the perspective this last week has given me. After all, I am teaching you all about the disillusionment of the Modernists, but I don't really know what that feels like. I don't know what hopelessness feels like because my life is always full of hope. I always trust in the new day and the ability of God to change my circumstances or change my heart to accept them. So I don't know that sinking feeling of hopelessness that seemed to consume so many Modernists. I don't think that I will ever know that, but feeling a bit like Eeyore this week has left me with a tiny glimpse of what happens when sadness works its way into your soul and seems to make a home there.

My tiny pattern of disheartening events stacked one on top of another is certainly no true comparison to the Great Depression and 4 wars, but I think I get it. I get what happens to you when you forget to swim up toward the light. I get what it feels like to want to camp out underneath the water in the deep, cool darkness and just wait. I am thankful that warmth and light always win in me, but I get it. Too often, bottom dwelling is just easier. It takes real effort to pull yourself up, to shake off the grays and to live. It takes effort to make yourself breathe through the heavy load and force yourself to answer the question. "Do you dare to disturb the universe?"

I feel profoundly sorry for the people, for the Prufrocks of the world, who simply let themselves sink. But I also feel sorry for the rest of us who may never know the greatness of those we easily ignore, those who will sink away into nothingness. Surely they are not without merit. Surely you, if you are one of those who feels sucked into the murk of life, are not without merit. Just like Prufrock would likely have found love and joy and purpose had he been brave enough to try, so you will find greatness when you dare disturb your universe and shake up what you have always known.

A man named George, whom I greatly respect, is fond of saying, "You can't expect a different tomorrow if you are always doing the same thing as yesterday." How true this is. We must be brave. We must shake off yesterday's funk and today's disappointments if we are going to have new, fresh, remarkable tomorrows. I want remarkable tomorrows. I hope that at least a few of you do as well.

EC - For this week, write me a one page paper in which you tell me about either a) a time when you have felt like you were sinking and were struggling to get your footing OR b) what you plan to do in your own life to "disturb your universe" Feel free to also comment on here so that our thoughts and ideas can mingle together in cyber space.