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I usually fall into the deepest ruts on the road of life when I ignore my instincts. So one day, I sat down and looked my instincts in the proverbial and intangible eye.
They looked straight back with a “what are you, stupid?”
No, I am not. I have been keeping them in mind. But what do I do when they send me mixed signals with an “if/when” condition?
At any rate, they remind me that a couple of weeks ago, I remarked to someone, “When I get my self-confidence back, I wonder if you’ll be able to put up with me.”
I received an answer in the negative, assuring me that it was an asset.
I trudged downstairs alone to the dining hall, brooding over the paper I had (and still have) to write by tomorrow morning (so that’s 12 hours), feeling the subdued air that a vigil for Myanmar had left me with in the last hour, and starting to wave off the irrational feeling of being decidedly alone. A phone call to a friend went unanswered, and the selection at dinner was starting to look decidedly unappetizing. My trudging took me to the salad bar, where I threw together something typical-looking and then trudged, equally as cheerfully, to the grill to ask for a piece of grilled chicken.
The dining workers know me fairly well, as I still work in the dining hall on occasion, and the man on duty at the grill said something to me that didn’t register at first. I looked up blearily. “Huh?”
As I walked back down campus today, writing on a path caught my eye, and I looked down. Scribbled in white chalk were the words
“Live like you’re gonna die tomorrow
Dream like you’re gonna live forever”
and I smiled unconsciously, an upward curl of the lips that I only noticed when it stopped.
—
There is nothing quite like getting lost in the half-underground lower levels of the largest library on campus, all sounds and even silence itself muffled by shelves and shelves and volumes and volumes and the very air infused with histories upon tomes upon — if knowledge had an oppressive weight to it, this is how its atmosphere would feel.
—
“It’s the small things,” he said, “that make life happy.” And I agreed, and knew that this probably wasn’t one of them.
Consolation, aside:
I chose to set aside my misgivings and take a risk, and so far, it has been nothing but fascinating.
—
As for exhilaration, what else? The music that I love so, which raises me above my mind, if only for six-minute spans. (I follow the winds that bring the cold / I light a fire in your soul / The lightest touch of feathers falling) The presences that I revel in, friends who I can throw my arms around and laugh full-throatedly, head tossed back to gaze at the sky as joy wells up out of my very being.
That is exhilaration. The fact that i can even attempt to quantify it is testament itself to how much the season has made me happy. This spring has been the awakening of a new stage in my mind, and with any luck, the growth that I’ve experienced will tide me through the next winter, because now I know what it truly means to love winter; not to be awestruck by snowflakes, but rather to embrace weaknesses and soar past them.
Every time one takes a step into the unknown, one will find themselves making one of a few choices; choosing to go on ahead with optimism, curious as to what the future will bring; choosing to linger on the past, fretting about mistakes made and the potential for repetition thereof; choosing to ignore or set aside misgivings and take a risk, knowing that the outcome could vary wildly; choosing to let hope spring eternal.
So what will the choice be?
—
Ten of wands. Reaching the end of an arduous journey, completing a difficult task. Being close to setting a burden down, but being left with no energy at the end. Cards can be twisted and angled to apply to anything and anyone, but I find irony in that this little one fell out of the deck on the last day of classes.
