Time Well Spent II: A detour for perspective

The first part of this dual post treatise on how to use my time well, ended on a note of concern. I pointed to the danger of relegating great ideas to trite truisms by refusing to grapple with their implications for daily life. This is a very personal concern. I've only been posting for three weeks, yet already, I sense the pernicious temptation to abandon the posture of a curious learner for the "sage on a stage" persona. The tendency to spout out ideas as mere entertainment (if only for an audience of one), abandoning the potent call to ponder and be transformed that they give. Much like using an inherited, hand-knit scarf as a doormat, failing to truly contend with the ideas we discuss is not only improper, it is an insult - to those we are in conversation with and especially to those to whom we owe the ideas.

I Am Not Nothing. Even Without My Ideas

I've been putting off this blog for the same reason I try to avoid journaling - I have too many thoughts. I try to stop them from all coming at once, but my mind is like a poorly built reservoir next to a thirsty city, with cracks going up and down its middle. And the moment one single drip escapes through a crack, one idea, I barely have time to examine it, drink it, enjoy it before the whole thing collapses and I am pummeled by an ocean of ideas. Who? Where? Why? How? What if? They swim past me and under me and over me...so far over me that I sometimes feel I will never reach the surface. And it takes all my energy, every ounce of me, to push all the water back, to make it reverse. To make it draw out of the houses and back down the streets, to make it pull houses together rather than break them apart. To make it place cars back in driveways and families back at dinner tables and dogs back in yards. To make everything safe. Safe but dry. And that's when I realize, I am still thirsty. That's why I am, against all better judgment attempting this blog. Because I need to examine my ideas, to drink them, to enjoy them. But I also need to find a way to make sure they don't destroy me and everything I care about.