Sunday, November 01, 2009

Indecision

I'm writing this through the hazy filter of Maxalt after a sudden migraine, so if it doesn't make sense, that might be part of the cause. I probably can't blame the Maxalt for everything, though...

I'm very tired right now, tired, frustrated, and confused. I'm busy, and as long as I'm working, I'm fairly happy, but that's no great surprise. The students always make me happy. If I look away from them for five minutes, though... Everywhere things are bad, bad and, it seems, tenaciously determined to get worse....

I don't know what I'm going to do. Germany hovers in the back of my mind like something with broad wings looking for a place to land. Is this what is supposed to be next for me? Am I supposed to stay here? Do I just need to take a long vacation and sleep? What is making me feel this constant stress and pressure?

I hate the not-knowing-what-to-do. I could bull-in-the-china-shop this, but that's one shoddy approach to take to one's future, I've always thought. Maybe it just reaches a point where you have to and pray that when all the little pieces of crockery settle, you can live with the pattern they make.

On the other hand, maybe this is an exercise in patience and faith. Maybe I'm going to be shown the way if I keep looking for it. I have been before.

The thing I fear is that I AM being shown the door and that I am not realizing it, that it's going to close and that I'm going to be standing here in a situation where the water is rising all around me and there will be nothing left to do but go under. I fear that I'm really supposed to be somewhere else, and that by staying here, I'm actually doing the wrong thing because this place is home, is comfortable, is known.

I heard a song on the radio the other day from Matthew West called "The Motions" and the lyrics in part read

I don't wanna go through the motions
I don't wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don't wanna spend my whole life asking,
"What if I had given everything,
instead of going through the motions?"

This is almost pure Thoreau, of course, but it's always been a philosophy of mine. I found myself sitting in the car in a parking lot, and I had to ask myself in my current frame of mind how long it's going to be before I might wake up one morning and be just going through the motions. I couldn't bear it. I couldn't live with myself if I did.

So now the question is stay or go. Find a way to refresh this life somehow or move on to another somewhere else. And the agony is that I just can't get any clear sense of what the right thing to do right now is. Maybe that in and of itself is my answer. Maybe if it really were time to spread my wings and fly away, then I would know it with the clearness of a silver bell ringing. I just don't know.

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