Suicide

A man in my position must inevitably consider, however briefly and abstractly, the seeming solution of suicide. It would, after all, end the enormous frustration concerning which I have written elsewhere.

Others have contemplated suicide, and perhaps this post shall be nothing but an offense to them, should they read it. Perhaps it was but a passing fancy (albeit a dark one) of mine, but I soon realized three objections which as far as I may tell, permanently rule out the possibility of my suicide:

• I like living. Death is so terribly final, while life has ever so many possibilities. It seems a shame to abandon even such life as mine. 
• A suicide for these reasons would be a fully conscious rejection of all life, an insult to every good and beautiful thing, and thus would almost certainly place me in Hell. 
• I did not choose to live: my life was a gift to me. Since my birth into this world was unfree, it seems churlish and base to reject this great gift based only on accidental circumstances. Such behavior does not become a gentleman.

Instead of a potentially attractive choice, even the word has become a great horror.

Sweat

Sweat is a remarkable substance, but it has only been made clear to me recently how remarkable. For the present I live in an exceptionally humid part of the world; my sister traveling in India says it is hotter here in the States on our parents' farm than it is in Mumbai. Annapolis is a comparable level of heat, and in both places one sweats at the slightest movement, even when one is reading.

Sooner or later this frustrated me and I felt restless. So in the hottest part of the day I went for a run. Predictably the sweat covered me entirely and when I came back I was wet indeed. For some reason I did not take a shower but sat happy as a clam in front of my bedroom fan. The sweat rolled off me, and when I dried something was different: the humidity did not affect me and I even shivered from the breeze.

Now this was something wholly unprecedented and I was unsure how to take it, aside from the sheer joy I felt. I knew a run in cold weather made tolerating the cold inside (I keep my house at fifty-five degrees in the winter) easier, but never dreamed that exercising in hot weather caused one's body to cool itself more efficiently, despite knowing, as we all do, that sweat is the method by which our body cools itself. I mean, duh. I even eventually showered and everything stayed the same. So I suppose this means I have adjusted from the desert to the humid plains, and shall have no more difficulties. Needless to say, this pleases me, and makes me turn an appreciative, benevolent eye to that once odious substance which now signals relief from the fire of the sun.

Power

I suspect that power is the fundamental human desire, not pleasure. Pain we willingly tolerate and even choose for ourselves, so long as it is at our terms, but a loss of power, even without corresponding pain, is more infuriating than anything else. 


Clumsily written. The highest pleasure lies in achieving one's way.

Fear

When Nature is angry and does something never-before-seen, one becomes a frightened pagan, realizing with horror how very small and truly insignificant one really is and always has been.

I pride myself on my fearlessness - in truth I fear little during daylight hours, and a modicum of danger I find exciting. Nature and harm to my other selves is what frightens me, and this morning with the howling, shrieking wind and sheets of driving rain caused me not a little unease.

Graduation and Other Matters

Saturday, 21 May, 10:30 AM, I walked the stage and received my diploma. Big day. Biggest day of my life. A large chapter finished that morning and a new, dark, and obscure one began. I have no idea if the author is drunk or sober, but I suspect I'm in for a wild ride.


The facts: five years ago I was in the Boundary Waters, on the way to reclaiming my faith. Several weeks later I would fall to my knees in Smith Hall and vow to spend my life in service to God no matter what I wound up doing. I shortly thereafter abandoned my military aspirations and applied to and was accepted by, St. John's College at Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over the next four years my intellect, mind, and spirit were shaped and transformed to an almost unrecognizable degree. The school year was spent in Santa Fe with a brief excursion in Annapolis; the summers at my second home, HoneyRock Camp. I met men and women there whom I hope to hold as friends for the rest of my life, and my devotion to God increased during those periods in the North. St. John's and HoneyRock; reason and revelation.


To give an overview of even only my intellectual change would be too tedious and exhausting to write, and worthless, since no one could possibly read such a thing, not even me. Suffice it to say I do not have many answers, only that I am beginning to know what the right questions are and how to ask them. I have a love for books that I did not have, and an ability to read and write that I could not have dreamed of possessing in 2007, though even there it is in dire need of improvement. I met good people there too; friends I wish to hold for the rest of my life.


But what now? I am an alumnus of St. John's College, and currently unemployed. I know what I would like to do, and I have written of it here before, but I do not quite know the next step, though I recently discovered something which intrigued me: teaching at a liberal arts charter school in Phoenix, Arizona: Great Hearts Academies. I came away from St. John's a zealot for liberal education. I know what it can do and I have seen what benefit it has provided me and my classmates. I think that teaching the liberal arts is something I would be good at doing, something I would enjoy doing, and best of all, something which would be good for me to do. Great Hearts thus would be a stepping stone; I should still like to attend grad school, and armed with a doctorate, teach at a liberal arts university like Thomas Aquinas College or something like that. Perhaps even my alma mater would be a possibility, but I doubt that.


I applied to Great Hearts (and a number of overseas English teaching positions too), but am still waiting to hear from someone...anyone. Naturally this makes me nervous, for though I have enough money saved to make about a year's worth of student loans, I should very much prefer to find work by September. The alternative career path is still open, but I am beginning to suspect that if indeed I should go there, now is not the right time.


But still - waiting, hoping, unsure.