Disclaimer: Nothing is wrong. Just pausing to reflect.
When I went back down to Arizona, a lot of people asked me how life is here. I kind of spouted the general, “Oh, I love it here…” stuff, plus a boilerplate response about how everyone on my floor is awesome, how I really like my job, and how glad I am to have found a good church. Those aren’t lies – they’re very true. But life isn’t all dandy.
The daily grind is as pointless as it ever was. I wake up – late – missing the first three classes of the day. (I’ve done that 2 days in a row. I am screwed.) I shower, stumble around the room, gather my stuff, turn on my iPod (sure, the new one’s nice, but is it $350 nice?) and wish that I had more time to sit down and enjoy a good breakfast. Instead, I get out the door barely before I have to be at school or work, struggle with an overcomplicated bike lock (my paranoia insists!), and slouch my way through work or class thinking about things I can do when I’m done.
I get home. I leave the door open, hoping that people will drop in to say “hi”- but they largely don’t, because my desk is out of view of the doorway. I surf the web. I listen to music. I remember something that I wanted to go to that night, but don’t end up going for some reason. I go down with everyone to dinner- every night, it’s some variant of mexican food, fried chicken, or panini. I go back upstairs, want to hang out with people, but it seems that everyone has gone out. The only way for “real fun” around here is to go get drunk (today is “Wasted Wednesday”.)
I sit around more… Play Final Fantasy…. Derek comes in from next door, and he’s just as bored as I am.
I get into some task (almost never homework). It takes me until maybe 1 A.M. to decide to stop and go to bed- and I’ll be back up at 6 the next morning. Unless it’s Saturday, in which case I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.
All of this is my daily life as I pursue degrees in college. Degrees that some future employer will hopefully appreciate and hire me for a “successful” job. Assuming that there is a demand for that job- and that that demand isn’t in India. Meanwhile, I distract myself with these classes and work, sliding by and busying myself with things that I don’t really care too much about- and distracting myself from the things that do matter to me.
This is a very exaggerated, dark, yet true view of my daily life. I feel pretty happy about what I have going for me, and college is everything that I expected it to be. I love being free of the nusciences of high school. But I remind myself occasionally of my real purpose on this earth: to be a living, breathing proclamation of God’s Glory. I have already come to the realization that this is the only pursuit worth anything in this world. I am here ultimately because I want to serve him better; I don’t know how yet, but he’s told me to keep honing my skills. That is not the goal for most people in College- and so it’s very easy for me to get lost in the routine and forget about this goal. I constantly find myself thinking about how much I want worldly things: better skills, new stuff, A GIRLFRIEND… I think about these things all day. Rarely do I find myself longing to glorify God and become more intimate with him. I don’t have a hunger for Him yet. It’s growing. He’s working in me, and I am slowly but surely surrendering more to Him. But right now it’s a process of spending 90% of my time on pointless things, and then realizing that I’ve just wasted the precious time that He has given me.