On the Bridge

This is an excerpt from my private diary. It is dated during the summer before my freshman year at Marquette University.

July 8, 2008

Dear Nate,

Today, on The Bridge connecting Raynor and Memorial Library, I saw a man sit down on a bench on the block across from me. He sat there for at least an hour – maybe three. I couldn’t think of anything he could possibly be doing except just standing still.

Sometimes I think we need that. We need to just stand in the current and feel it. You get numb when you run with it. Recover your senses.

As I continued to study, I was able to do something I’ve always wanted to do: Watch the day, specifically the evening, progress into night. It was almost depressing. The thought of “never enough time” went through my mind. I was watching time go away, and I know with every fiber of my being that I really never want to grow up. I’m in college now, man. Time keeps on moving. “Time keeps up slippin’, slippin’, slippin’. . . into the future.”

[Paragraph removed for privacy]

Love to you.

There are a few things I’d revise in this entry (you get numb by standing in the current, the somewhat embarassing Steve Miller Band/Space Jam reference), but I’m going to leave it as is. My only reflection is that I once wrote to a dear friend that the only things in life we ever want are love and time. I don’t know how true that is, or how true it will remain, but I will readily admit that I want to love, be loved, be with the ones I love (and ones that I have the opportunity to love), and do the things I love — forever. Who wouldn’t want love, in every sense of love, to last forever? Love possesses an innate quality in that the desire for it is limitless in duration. We may grow tired of what we love, but that doesn’t mean that our desire for it wanes. ((I love the Gilmore Girls, but if I watch two seasons in a day, if that is possible, I’ll get tired of the show. I still love it, but I just need a break.)) Love is unlimited, yet demands healthy moderation.

Timing and Error

Life really is a blur — at least it is for me. When I reflect and remember, I find myself lumping all of my memories into one category: The past. I turned 16 — in the past. I barely earned my driver’s license — in the past. I lived with my dad — in the past. Everything is just lumped together.

I’m really big on the whole realization of time. One of my friends at Marquette, Zhen (we call him Z), said something really profound at our program’s retreat last weekend. He suggested that most of us will live to about 100 years old. Given that, most freshmen in college have already lived 18% of their lives. Isn’t that a shocking way of looking at life? I’m sure many people say this, and I do too: There is not enough time.

Time is important. Have we established that? Especially at the university level of education, time becomes crucial. It is vital. If you can manage time, you can succeed in college. It’s that simple. But why is it so hard? Why is human nature inclined to procrastinate? ((Perhaps it isn’t human nature, but most of the people I know, including myself, tend to procrastinate.))

I’m not really sure. I don’t really have any thoughts on that. If time is so precious, it’s absurd to waste it. But then, if love is so precious, it’s absurd to toss it around. Perhaps there’s no real understanding as to why we waste time; perhaps the real substance of the issue is that we understand that it’s unproductive. Do we leave it at that? By no means! We remedy.

Plan your hours accordingly. After my math class ended at 3:00 yesterday, I went to the Library Reserves and worked through the thermochemistry practice problems in an hour. I felt so good. I was so productive. I was on a jet plane, and didn’t know when I was going to be back again. I need to start working my hours out like that.

Similarly related, I had Bible study today. We talked about quiet times with God, and how to include those quiet times in our schedule. Originally, I had always done quiet times at night; sometimes, if I was really ambitious, I would have that quiet time in the morning. But since I’ve started college, my nights have been filled with assignments, and I’ve been sheepishly tired. The trend has been skipping the devotional, skipping the Bible, and just laying in my bed and praying myself to sleep. That is unhealthy.

At Bible study, we had a chance to formulate plans for our quiet time in college. I am so excited to start using my new plan. After my first class everyday, and after I eat breakfast/brunch, I will have quiet time in my dorm. It’s going to be awesome. I’m utilizing my hours.

Here’s an entirely new subject: error. In my English class there is a traditional clock with a second-hand. I dozed off and started to count seconds. That’s when I questioned humanity’s ability to count a perfect second — I mean perfect. Perfect with an infinite amount of significant figures, and each decimal place until infinity would be 0: 1.00000 and so forth. Why aren’t we able to do that? Why isn’t perfection attainable?

Perfection is a huge part of my personal philosophy. For one of my classes, the author of the book I’m assigned to read, Let Your Life Speak, discoursed a bit on perfection. It’s an interesting view point. I’ll blog later about my perfectionist philosophy; I have a feeling it will be very in-depth.