Approximately Adam: Pushing back against the madness

March 26, 2005
Pushing back against the madness

What a strange place to be in. Here I am, sitting in the darked lounge of the third floor in Gleason. Cat Stevens dances across my head phones. In the background, the first act of tonight's "Battlestar Galactica" encodes. After a week that has included insomnia, insanity, self-doubt, and self-affirmation, I find at last a moment of inner peace from which I can regroup, regather, and recollect.
It has been a while since my last entry. This is not because I have had nothing to report - indeed I have had all too much to report - rather, it is because I had no perspective from which to place the events of my life in context. The more time I spend in desperate loneliness, the more I begin to question my own sanity. I wonder if the increasingly numerous nueroses will someday cease fading away when I return to better places and better people. I wonder if the world is rendering me into an incarnation that is composed of such damaged goods that I might never again salvage something worthwhile. I wonder at times what the point in continuing is, even as I see the destination closer than ever to being within my grasp.
Currently, I wait to hear news on whether I'm going to switch roommates. It is perhaps the nervousness that accompanied contemplating making such a drastic jump that forced my hand. Last Sunday and Monday, my roommate was up until well past four in the morning. Perhaps this is normal; previously the combination of ear plugs and a sleep mask had ensured that I got to sleep in spite of it. It was not to be.
My life keeps coming back to a quote I read from Tom Robbins, one that I have doubtless quoted here previously in some fashion:

"You risked your life, but what else have you ever risked? Have you ever risked disapproval? Have you ever risked economic security? Have you ever risked a belief? I see nothing particularly courageous in risking one's life. So you lose it, you go to your hero's heaven and everything is milk and honey 'til the end of time. Right? You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences. That's not courage. Real courage is risking something you have to keep on living with, real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one's cliches."

It is to this ideal that I have always aspired yet never attempted to achieve. In throwing my name in the hat for a new room, I have in my own small way finally captured that. If this new roommate is terrible, I will have condemned myself to 7+ weeks of perhaps total and complete misery. And yet, if my new roommate is an improvement, I will have made the conclusion of my R.I.T. experience a little more worthwhile. Either way, I'll have finally risked something that actually matters to me. In my own small way I will have taken hold the reigns of my life and changed the direction slightly. Another author, Matthew Stover, noted that pain and suffering or the threat of them control our destiny. Freedom is liberation from running from fear, but it is scary because when you are free to choose any direction failure is constantly at your door step. This quote sums it up well:

When you always know what is right, where is freedom? No one chooses the wrong ... Uncertainty sets you free."

At this very moment, I don't know whether or not my roommate is awake right now. I don't know if I've squandered an hour I could have spent sleeping. I don't know whether my current actions will drive me to insanity. But for the moment at least, I have managed to transcend worrying about it. I choose and act. I will face the consequences as they come.

^{posted by Adam at 03:59 |}

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