Because its good for you.
Man, when did life get to be so difficult?
I mean, really, I look back at my life and I wonder where where it has gone, and what happened to the simplicity is lives in my memory. Now, I am here, in the Commons, trying to write a paper, and my head is in a million different places. This may be chaos at its finest!
There are moments when I forget to breathe. You know, when the chaos has grown so large that they are like vies that wrap around your body and squeeze you sooooo tight that your breath is pushed from your lungs. Or, when you’re running and you get caught in a fit and your breathe skips out from you, and you struggle to find it. Well, the vines are less believable than running, but you get the idea. This usually happens though, the whole breathingless thing, when I eat. No joke, this happens almost every day. I eat to quickly I forget to breathe! Its frustrating because I’m caught between wanting to chew and swallow but I need to breathe. I try to both and end up spewing. Its embarrassing, really.
I digress.
The point is there are times when we are so busy that we forget to remember what’s important–this happens often for me. I forget and eventually remember something that brings me back. This time, I remembered that I should stop and be silent–
Daniel
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Come, my tan-faced children, inspire
Well, well, well. Here we are again. Its been a few weeks, er, months since my last post and I have moved into a new year and a new semester.
Life seems to be moving in definite directions and the only thing that I am able to do is to hold on. The only thing that I am able to do is to trudge through and search for the light on the other side. In the meantime, I watch videos like this encourage me:
Now, I know what you’re thinking. What does this handsome WJU Senior have to do with Kittens. The simply answer is this: there are times when the simplest moments become the most important and beautiful. Even a child is able to create and imagine–and they do it at incredible paces. I like to watch this video because it reminds me of how easy it is to forget about creating. Often times when I get busy, I place myself into a groove and live move through habit. It hurts and hinders how life should be lived. But this video offers a glimpse of how life may be lived–that is, with timber and daring.
This reminds me of a Walt Whitman poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers! The poem was written during the American expansion of the West. Despite controversies behind the American expansion, Whitman’s remains. He writes,
COME my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Imagination and creative “cannot tarry here,” Whitman charges his audience. We must push forward, it must expand more, create more, imagine more. If we place ourselves in temptation’s groove we are unable to life. Perhaps, in this next semester, I must remember to create and imagine. After all, “all the rest on us depend…”
Daniel
Uncategorized | Comment (1)I live in the corner
It really has been a different type of semester in school. The type where you don’t know what day is what or what time it is, or even, what is happening this very second. It’s the type of semester that the only judge of time is based upon what paper you have to write next or what class you did not read for. Yet, even in the midst of such chaos and imbalance, I keep on trucking—barely. This semester is the kind where you truly discover what type of person you are. Whether you are able to make it for grad school or not, whether you are really ready to be an adult, or even, if you are ready to move forward in becoming a better person.
I guess the best way to describe my current situation in school is through architecture. You have to understand, that I don’t understand anything about how buildings are built, or why they do the things they do. I worked construction for six months out of high school. It was torturous labor. Suffice it to say that I know very little about buildings. With that being said, my room on campus is perhaps the worst room possible—I have one window and it doesn’t open.
This doesn’t seem to be that big of a problem, except for the small detail that I love fresh air. This is partly because I love to feel the fresh breezes and the solemn rain and partly because I might just be the stinkiest boy alive. I need my fresh air. Whatever the case, I have one window and it doesn’t open.
I am positive that the only reason I mention my missing window is because I don’t have one. If I did, I wouldn’t even mention it. The wall adjacent to my room is the gas and water sprinkler system. This isn’t an arbitrary mistake. There is a reason for it. Life is like that; there is usually a reason for things that happen in our life. At times, we don’t have the necessary windows we would like, and we have to push through the best that we can. This is what it means to suffer—to experience something so profound that it hurts. I’m not sure what it means not to have windows, but I am certain that it means something…
Dan
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