Worlds Apart

I am the only one to blame for this

Somehow it all ends up the same

Soaring on the wings of selfish pride

I flew too high and like Icarus I collide

With a world I try so hard to leave behind

To rid myself of all but love

To give and die

Jars of Clay "Worlds Apart" 1995

 It is Monday morning and I have just gotten out of bed.  Already, I am contemplating a game plan to maximize the most of my free time on one of the busiest days of my week.  It is only in the dark of the morning, before I leave the safety of my bedroom, that I can just be.

I am American.  Part of that is that I have subconsciously assimilated myself into the busyness of productivity - or at least, someone else's idea of productivity.  It seems that now, with the soft glow of my computer as my only light and acoustic rock as the only noise, I am at peace with everything.

Peace is fleeting.  At the risk of using a cliched metaphor, it is a butterfly.  Why do we hunt the butterfly?  There are so many better things in this world to hunt - poverty, homelessness, social justice.  Why the butterfly?

Back to my bedroom.  The four walls are my home.  I wake up in the morning, when I actually keep hours that one would consider appropriate, and know where everything is.  I can have papers from different classes strewn about the floor, some leaflets of piano music lying behind my computer, and CDs mixed in with my stack of vinyl records, yet I know where everything is.

I leave for school within an hour.  My first class is at eight o'clock - -Survey of Management.  I took the class before, from a teacher that could not teach and with a mind that would not learn, and am now taking it again.  "With a world I try so hard to leave behind, to rid myself of all but love," I try to avoid routine, though it pervades my psyche with everything that I do.

I cannot love routine, cannot love through it.  I so desire to break free from routine yet cling to it as though my soul would break without it.  This paradox is my life.  I long to belong yet belong to those longing for more than what this world has to offer.  Is it wrong to find contentment in being discontent?  Is it wrong not to be one thing or the other but both?