Passion

What is passion?

To Hollywood, passion is an intense sexual affair. To humanitarians, passion is the overwhelming desire to help the hurting. To the just, passion trys to right all that is wrong.

I like to consider myself a passionate person, at least that is the term I use for my overly emotional nature. To me, passion manifests intself in tear. At times I feel so strongly about certain things that I can't stop the emotion boiling up within me and and I cry. But sometimes I feel that my passion is misguided.

The word passion conjures up images or fire, rage, and all that is extreme. For Hitler, passion meant ethic cleansing. For Mother Teresa, passion meant devouting her entire life to the lowest of low. Both of these historical figures were very passionate people, but one benefited humanity, the other destroyed it.

I cry about a lot of things. But am I crying over the right things. Does injustice make me cry, or does a sappy movie? Is it the hurts of others that bring me to tears, or is it the wounds to my own selfish desires?

Unbridled passion is beautiful, misguided passion is devastating.

Life Lessons

In my contast challenge to keep this blog updated with fascinating accounts of how I am a growing here at Prov I realized that about 90 percent of all the lessons I learn here at Prov have nothing to do with classroom. In fact, the ideas that are really valuable to me are not gleaned from lectures or studying for exams. The lessons that are most beneficial to me are from life. From my day to day conversations, from trying to love those around me, and from trying to live this experience to the fullest. So, I've decided that rather than using this blog to pinpoint experiences that cause me to grow, I will share what I am learning and hope that this process of recording what I'm learning will be evidence that I am growing.

Go

This week, my college hosted it's annual Mission's Encounter conference. It's a time when missionaries and different representatives from missions organizations come for a couple days. Classes are cancelled and students are encouraged to attend workshops and speakers to become more "missions minded"

So as I was sitting in these sessions and heard stories of suffering and joy from around the world I was struck with one idea, go. The idea that I should leave all this and just go. Sometimes it bothers me to sit in class, write papers, and socialize for thousands of dollars a year. Why am I doing this when there is so much else out there? When there is life beyond my college experience and beyond North America and beyond this lifestyle that I call reality?

Sometimes my reality feels very superficial. That by living the life I'm currently living, that I've somehow removed myself from the human condition. I don't want to be removed. I want to feel, to know, and understand reality.

I'm unsure where all this leaves me, but I do know that I want to go.

Please don't tap on the glass.

You know those smelly pet stores in the malls? Full of cute little creatures in little glass cages. And people come in, press their noses against the glass, and say things like, "ooooh, look at the little white one!"

Sometimes my life at Providence reminds me of these pet stores. No only because my dorm smells like wet dog, but because people stand on the outside of my life, look in, and then talk about what they see. Usually, it doesn't bother me so much. I knew that I would face this when I chose to attend the smallest college on my list of potentials. However, this week, I found the fact that my life is under the microscope to be completely maddening. People, who I barely know, come up and ask me about my love life. People, who I have just one class with, ask me how my big paper is going. People sit around crowded tables in the student centre and discuss whose dating whom, who broke up with whom, and how this effects the oh so delicate social structure here at Prov.

I want to know people and to have them know me. I want to get people, and I want to be "got". But it's so easy here to be in people's lives, talk about about people's friends, to know who they love, and then, never really know them. It seems to me that there is a huge difference between knowing about somebody, and really knowing them. But in my life that resembles a fish tank, I'm not sure how to get others to know me...or how I can actually know them.

Questions :Apathy

Questions produce apathy. Questions produce apathy?

A good friend told me this statement the other day and it has been on my mind lately. Mostly because my year so far at Providence has been marked by extreme apathy. I lack passion for no reason that I can see. My relationships, my studies, my everything seems to be apathetic. To make matters worse I'm apathetic about being apathetic. On top of all this, I have spent my last month searching in vain for the cause of my apathy.

But I think, thanks to my friend, I have discovered the cause of my apathy. If I question everything, life, love, God, identity, and I am unable to come up with any answers then eventually I've gotten tired. I've gotten tired of this endless questioning process. I've grown tired of not really knowing...anything. So perhaps my newfound apathetic attitude is not because I know it all and have no desire to grow, but because I know absolutely nothing and the very thought of trying to know something pushes me into complete and total exhaustion.

The cure for my apathy? ...that is yet another question.

The 'M' Word.

Marriage fever has swept the campus of Providence.

Engagement Tally for the Week: 3 couples.

When you attend a Christian college filled with a sea of twenty-somethings there is bound to be a lot of talk about relationships, love, dating, and of course, the 'M' word. That's right: marriage. We joke about attending a "bridal college" or getting our "Mrs. Degree", but deep down I think marriage is at the back of almost everyone's minds. And, occasionally, something happens that brings those thoughts and desires to the surface. This week was that something.

I've lost count of how many people I have discussed marriage or relationships with this week.
Some people joked about "my super hot future wife", others bemoaned that their "biological clock is ticking loudly." But I think that most of us, myself included, are completely clueless about love and marriage. We all have our own reasons behind wanting to get married. Some reasons are trivial, others more valid.

It seems to me that God designed marriage to draw us out of our selfishness. Instead of me, my wants, and my needs, marriage asks us to consider the good of another person before our own needs. If marriage is, according to the bible, a good thing than why is it so darn hard to "get married"? Perhaps we're scared of commitment, or maybe it's because the single life offers more personal freedom. I'm not really sure. But all this marriage talk has got me thinking, what is love? Do I even have a clue what the kind of love marriage would entail is?

And that is where I am at the moment. Completely clueless...and wanting to know how to love.

To Fit

I'm writing this post while sitting in the livingroom of my parent's house. This is my first time back home since I arrived at Providence in August. And I was stuck with a rather odd feeling, the feeling that I don't fit here anymore. It's move than not fitting in, I am completely out of the loop. I have no idea who's who among the high schoolers, or what the latest small town gossip is. I don't know the people I sat next to in my home church are, and the most frightening part was that they didn't know who I was either.

Maybe the old saying, "you can't go home again is true." I sometimes wish that my life back at home was waiting for me, exactly as I left it. Perhaps the sometimes cruel way that life does go on without us is God's way of saying, "I have something else for you. I don't intend for you to fit anymore." But I do want to fit. I want to be a piece in some great puzzle of a beautiful landscape. And if I don't fit in my home town any longer, where is it that I am supposed to fit?