Zukunft? Unf!

Folks, I have a strange hobby I picked up a few weeks ago. I've been burning hours upon hours in my bedroom with an app on my phone called Duolingo, a foreign language instructor. I've been teaching myself German, which I guess is just part of my master plan to leave college and go live in the Rhineland, but everyone I know seems a little bit disturbed by the strange words coming out of my phone. I just can't be the normal guy.

Now, some of these phrases on Duolingo that I translate are rather peculiar or out of the blue. I've seen phrases in German with meanings such as "the vegetarian does not like me" or "I am playing with both the cups," which I guess has limited context... somewhere. One phrase I came across this morning however is especially prophetic to me.

"Wir haben eine Zukunft!"

Or, we have a future. Like yesterday's post, this really fits the current events of most of my peers, especially this year's graduating class. Holy shit, the past is gone, we have a future! There's so much we can do! No ceiling! There's... still shit to worry about.

Now, I have no right to say that I can be the voice of all the doubts that this year's graduates have, and I'm not going to pretend. But I've spoken about the future before, and I think I can voice general adolescent struggles. And I'm pretty damn certain that I can speak for myself.

We fear the future. It's full of problems we don't foresee and (GASP!) change! It's hard to break our routines we have now, and we aren't all prepared to make new ones in the future. These are all universal fears of the future, and they always seem to be a counterpart to a good thing we imagine in the future. Damn parasites.


Yeah, I could keep moaning about all this. But, frankly, I've already bitched enough about how much my future isn't going to be all rainbows and glitterfarts.

I'm convinced now that the real reason we panic so damn much about the future is that we still have unfinished business in the present before we can move on. Hard to believe, I know, since the present seems to be the popular kid that everyone likes among all the other verb tenses (I mean, he's just too perfect sometimes).  But isn't there something you feel like you can't move past?

(Rhetorical question time)

Have you not gotten opportunities to pursue your passions or do new things that stand out from the rest? Got something about yourself that you rather wish you could alter but can't commit yourself to it? Have friendships gone cold? Oh, and don't get me started on separation anxiety?

(End rhetorical question time)

Those are all present issues. And if something don't get finished in the present, it's an easy reflex to worry it ain't gonna get done in the future. It's a fear that hits us bluntly in large masses when we least expect it. It's something that fogs our minds too much to fathom solutions. Really, it just sucks major balls.

After witnessing graduation yesterday, my mind was clear for a while, but I got hit by these worries pretty hard when I was sitting alone in my castle of solidarity (a nonsensical phrase that means "my bedroom" in this context). So many people I ain't gonna be seeing as much in the future, regretting all the things I didn't do, worries about all the buried relationships I have, pressure about future tasks, all that jazz, I'll save you the complaining. I've always been apprehensive about my relationships with other human beings, and I think that won't change.

So, I guess I got to offer some solution. I find that it's impossible to prevent pangs of paranoia, but the best thing you can do is find a way to air your grievances and let them slide by a bit, but I'm no counselor. I do believe, however, that it is inherently stupid to regret something you didn't do. It's like assuming that you're driving your waiter into poverty after you realize that you forgot to leave a tip.

The best thing to do is trust that shit's gonna work out and just let time carry you on. Don't pressure yourself to take action unless you have a clear head and feel like you can advance yourself. And believe me, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or whatever universal being is present to you, can make shit work out.

In the meantime, take a few words from that other Holy Trinity that is Geddy, Alex, and Neil, about flying through life.

In the words of the obscure phrases on Duolingo:

Auf eure Zukunft!

Morgen Hays, signing off.

The Fault in Our Metaphors

Now, I like to be relevant in my writing, of course, but I also try to avoid cliche topics like the plague. But, I seldom have a choice, so I often end up having to bring up what everyone else won't shut up about. Blogging is hard, waaa waaa waaa, you get the idea. Moving on.

So, it's the end of the school year for most of us adolescents. And, that means summertime and ALL THE FUN FINALLY. Today, particularly, is a significant day at my school because the Class of 2014 turned their tassels on their weird rectangular hats and finally got to kiss school goodbye and... you get the idea. I had the GPA privilege of serving as a Junior Marshal at this graduation, and I could talk all day about the pride I have for this Class of 2014, which includes many good friends of mine.

But first, I feel that it is important to take a quick look back at the past year that transpired, as every other student is doing right now. It's quite a bit to take in, and I, myself, can hardly absorb all the events that transpired since August of 2013. For most people, a lot of the struggles become visible, but the high moments (mountaintop experiences, if you'll recall from a previous post) are just as prominent. Ups and downs, that's really the summary of it all, almost like a...


Like a...


Sine function, of course.


Oh, I'm sorry, I forget that trying to remind people of schoolwork is a crime punishable by social exile. So, a rather preferred item of comparison is the roller coaster. I mean, that goes up and down, changes speeds a lot and can appear unstable. Hell, even in the ubiquitous teen romance story The Fault in Our Stars, male protagonist declares that despite cancer partially Lieutenant Dan-ing him, he is "on a roller coaster, that only goes up, my friend."

Unfortunately, what our favorite one-legged hunk fails to realize is that roller coasters that only go up aren't really that great. They're called "escalators," and you can find them in most shopping malls, although they aren't always that entertaining.

Truly, the overall idea of analogizing life with a roller coaster is a flawed concept. I concede that it does make sense in a very... abbreviated sense. Phases of life and roller coasters both have literal high and low points, and if done right, the end results are pretty satisfying. However, I (and most others, hopefully) have never personally experienced depression as a result of being at the bottom of a drop of a roller coaster. Nor have I thankfully gone up the next hill and expected to be at the apex for a long time, only to drop again.

Am I petty and over-analytic? Maybe. Yes, probably. But as a roller coaster enthusiast, I might take some offense at such flippant regards towards those hailed vehicles of thrill. Nevertheless, I believe that portraying time as a strict up-and-down experience is an archaic trope, and I believe that an alternative should be pursued. One that represents an actually random sequence of struggle and triumph.

I, for one, think that this past year has been like a constant search for wi-fi. Let's face it, we all are personally affected by connectivity issues. Haven't you had days ruined by discovering that you couldn't connect to the internet in your local coffee shop? (Hopefully not). Isn't it always a reflex for you to begin scoping out wi-fi when you settle in a new location?

Maybe this analogy is a bit of a stretch, but I believe it is something that teens do relate to. We have times when we feel connected and in the zone, and there are times when we just can't seem to get back in the hotspot. Sometimes it's best to disconnect, to stop forcing the issue, and to recuperate. Sometimes, we'll have others to bail us out in times of difficulty (in this metaphor, that's 4G or 3G), but we don't always accept that help in fear that it will bring us more trouble and entanglement (again: this is a very rough metaphor). But, in the end, it works out well, and you reap the benefits of your joyful connectivity through the tweets of life and the YouTube videos of triumph! Huzzah!

So, let's think about our past (and present and future) as not a strict up-and-down progression, but as an ongoing effort that takes in a variety of factors. When you're making your Instagram pic collage with all your besties, or your Instagram photo in which you feign indifference in the photo but get serious in the caption, thank your friends and family (who you should already be thanking because they took so many damn photos with you) for supporting you not through your "roller coaster" year, but your "dammit-the-wi-fi-is-not-working-oh-never-mind-it-is-back-again-now-it's-gone-shit-oh-well" year. (Feel free to shorten that title).

But really, who needs the past. The future is long and bright, and there's room for all of you in it. So, I give my best regards to the Class of 2014, and I wish the best for all of my colleagues who walk with me. Truly, I have a lot of sentimental thoughts, but I lack the words.

So long may you run.
Mornin' Hays, signing off.

Adolescent Distractive Harmony Disorder

There's a prevailing stereotype about teens like myself. Well, there's actually a lot of prevailing stereotypes about us, but most of them aren't necessary relevant to this discussion. Or appropriate for certain audiences (after all, as often as I use profanity on this blog, I still have a lot of politically correct viewers who would take offense at any further crudeness. Let me rephrase that: my mother is the self-appointed censor of this blog).

Anyway, prevailing stereotypes. There's one in particular that our elders reserve for us teens, which certainly has foundation:

We get distracted too damn much.

Oh, the youth of today. They just don't have an attention span. They keep shifting between 140 character "tweeters" and these strange 7 second videos. Don't count on them to start their homework anytime soon, 'cause they're just gonna spend all day texting each other about Justin Bieber and Jay-Z and their new shoes and their Playstation games.

Damn, adults sure do think we're stupid. We just can't do anything right 'cause we're too busy trying to absorb ourselves in other parts of the world. Well, to a certain extent... they're right.

Now, I'm not trying to dismiss the rest of my peers as lazy. I'll do that some other time. (Procrastination: another problem that plagues youth). What I am going to say is that the need for distractions is a big part of the adolescent's life, and there is a sort of balance we achieve with it.

I'll admit that there are a lot of problems that arise from these distractions. Distractions cause us to miss a lot of beautiful things in the world that we regret missing later on in life. I often regret that when I went to Europe, I spent too much time scouting out wi-fi locations and not enough time observing the fact that I was in freaking Europe. I suppose that a lot of these impulses of distraction are things that we can hardly help and are really more just bad habits (I mean, how many of you have to have at least four tabs open on Google Chrome in order to properly function?).

But I have come to believe that distractions can bring their benefits just as well. We, adolescents and every other person in the world, have to process a lot of information all at once, and we can't always handle it. The news, the variety of subjects in school, the web of relationships we spin around ourselves. Trying to handle it day to day is a herculean feat, and we need to provide ourselves with moments to breathe as we roll our stone up the hill.

Think about how we try to escape reality and regroup ourselves. I ask my peers: how many times have you gotten so frustrated with High School that you glanced at a possible college's website (for the 547th time) to imagine the future? How many times have you felt hurt by someone and started clinging to people on the opposite end of the spectrum? How many times have you gotten overstimulated at a big gathering of peers and forced yourself to try and find something else to focus on until you could leave?

I do that stuff day to day.

The adolescent's distraction, while it comes with baggage and shortens our ability to focus on the issues at hand, is an evolutionary skill that carries us into the next day. We can escape reality, possibly even reaching our "mountaintop" (I have another post all about that crap). It's really an amazing thing, and we should learn to value the times where we can pause time and focus less intensively on much smaller things. It allows us to go back into our own minds and organize our thoughts.

Before I go, I must emphasize that our distractions should be minimal and we shouldn't allow them to control us. We must learn to find time to see our lives as a whole when the present proves too much of a rush.

I a video where a UNC grad filmed one second of every day of her senior year for one big video. I'll be shamelessly ripping that idea off for the year to come, and I'll probably just continue it until I get tired of it. But I believe that it can be both a new distraction to focus on and a way to truly see that dull narrative of life as a whole.

I ask all of my peers reading this to ask themselves how they manage to distract themselves from the fast-moving world. What pushes you from the pressures of your life into the miniature reality of your distractions? More importantly, where does the line blur between seeing life as a whole and seeing only this miniature reality?

We'll just have to wait and see. I've got some really freaking short clips to film.

Mornin' Hays, signing off.

Don't Fear...

Before I begin, I have two brief notes:

1. I said I would do another post about Clemson after I got home. All you need to know is that it still impresses me, and it's safe to say it has the lead in the race. I won't eliminate USC, and I plan on backtracking a bit to look more into... the smaller Carolina. I might talk more about it in the future.
2. AP Exams are on everyone's mind tomorrow, and I'm starting first thing tomorrow with the AP Chemistry exam. I hate to cover a topic that everyone else is talking about, since I like going against the grain a bit, but I'll just leave with a brief pep talk for everyone else taking AP Chem tomorrow. Read on to see what it is.

So, anyway, I want to use this time to meditate a bit before I go to bed and get a lovely rest before the exam.

For starters, Lent has passed and I have since returned to Twitter, which is basically just as dumb as I remember it being. But I've gotten smarter, and I don't see it as much of a vice anymore. Now, it's really just another dumb teenage distraction that I have, just like all those of my peers. So, that's really not the focus of this discussion.

The issue at hand is something I have mentioned briefly before (maybe not explicitly in this blog, actually. I can't seem to remember). I want to talk about a fear that I have and a fear that I believe most adolescents have. Some days, I brush it off like it's nothing, acting the wise one. Other days, I'm dumb enough to let it consume me, but I'm just an everyday teenager, so there's nothing wrong with that, per se...

I fear incompletion.

A premature end to a task I hadn't felt ready to complete. Something I'd walk away from with regret. Time wasted, life wasted, pride wasted. (For those of you studying for the AP Language exam, that last sentence used epistrophe. Good luck).

There is the obvious interpretation of this statement: When I start something, like procrastinated homework, an ice cream cone, or a freaking blog post that I lost the train of thought on (CRAP ON A CRACKER DON'T REMIND ME), I prefer to complete it if I'm forced to walk away. But two semesters of monotonous English taught you guys that literal interpretations are always irrelevant, right? (You're getting tested on that soon, by the way).

I also fear not doing enough at home or at good ol' Dutch Fork High before going away to college. I fear that I haven't made the difference I want to make in my community or in my diocese.

I fear that as people spontaneously fade out of my life (AP Chem review tip: this means that they are increasing in entropy while releasing heat), that I will not do enough to impact them or appreciate their brief time with me. I also fear that when it's gone, baby, it's gone, and there will be no second chances once the people I know go their own ways.

This is something that really struck me close earlier this weekend. I was forced to drop a staff position on another youth retreat due to obligations with Aida. I thought nothing of it at first, especially since Aida has produced some timeless experiences and awesome people itself. But when it occurred to me that it would be my last ever retreat with a lot of the people about to graduate, I broke down. Wasted time, wasted memories. I was almost to the point where I needed a sudden day trip to God's Country (or, as the mapmakers would call it, Western North Carolina) to ease my mind.

Sometimes I think that I've set certain expectations for how I fit into the lives of these people, and all others for that matter, and I feel like I haven't done enough. I ask myself "If they're having such a damn great time without me, and if they can live without seeing me or talking to me, then can I really say I've made a difference?" (By now, I'm now specifically referring to just about every person I know, and not just the EDUSC guys, so I have no specific vendetta).

So, I do a lot of thinking, and whenever this concern comes up, it's immediately followed by the voice of reason chiming in and saying:

"Austin, you whiny shithead. Fix this your own damn self, I'm tired of you right now."

(By this point, I tell the voice of reason that I'm working on it, and that he should just piss off).

For a person who still finds himself often secluded and sometimes faces struggle even approaching the closest of friends, it's not always easy to take initiative. But I believe that before you try and screw things up over something you blame others for, you should try and fix whatever things you yourself are doing wrong. Even if you're actually doing everything right and in the best way you can, try and change yourself.

It's hard for me trying to manage connections with a lot of people, especially when I'm so fickle about who really will matter to me when all is said and done. But I want to be able to keep people close and try and make an impact, even if it means I'm wrong.

In life, I want to follow the patron saints of my church, St. Simon and St. Garfunkel Jude. Simon is the zealot, which means he really gets into shit. Jude, who many hospitals have named themselves after, is (this actually kind of depressing when you consider said hospitals) the patron saint of lost causes. In other words, even if it ain't a worthwhile cause, freakin' go for it. Repercussions are irrelevant.

So what if everyone I know forgets about me? I still am going to try to make a difference in others' lives and push myself harder to do so, even if I (*GASP* God forbid!) don't get to be in a bunch of group chats or Instagram shoutouts. GROUP CHATS AND INSTAGRAM SHOUTOUTS: OBVIOUSLY THE PINNACLE OF TEENAGE FRIENDSHIP. PLEASE TELL ME MORE.

(Sorry, I got a little carried away there).

I can't make a blanket statement for everyone I know here, but if you're reading this, know that you kick ass. And AP Chem kids, here's that pep talk.

"Don't fear the liter."

And don't fear a lack of impact either. Kick some ass on those tests, everyone.

Mornin' Hays, signing ever-so-gracefully off.

Easier Than It Looks?

Tonight's post is a unique post. I'm not typing this one in my cozy Irmo tonight. This one comes from my third-floor room at the Sleep Inn in Clemson. A hotel whose only other occupants appear to be some women's team from UCLA (softball, maybe?) staying for a match, and a room which I didn't even think would have wi-fi when I first arrived. So, being able to have The Rug--my laptop--open and connected to get a new post up before bed is like a little surprise. Well, isn't that nice?

So, anyway. I'm in Clemson. After taking a tour of USC on Monday, there were a lot of questions that needed to be answered if Clemson wanted to be close in the race again. I had already been to Clemson twice in 2013: I went up to see the Tar Heels play them in men's basketball (The Heels won by a moderate margin, and I was probably the loudest Carolina Blue-clad spectator in Littlejohn), and I took an official campus tour in the summer. So, I knew what the campus looked like and I'd seen all the pretty buildings and fields and water and whatnot. Today, I focused more on getting the information I needed to compare it to what South Carolina has to offer for research and job opportunities. And I'll be damned if I didn't get some answers.

The morning session started with a campus expo, with a bunch of booths set up in a ballroom to showcase all of the key services the school had to offer. There were representatives from the different colleges within Clemson (Engineering, Agriculture, Arts, etc.), some folks from the Honors College (named after the crazy secessionist John C. Calhoun, no less), and some general services like housing, dining, and recreation. Also, there was a poor old man who had to sit alone at the LGBT services booth, which you would not expect many people looking at school in backwoods SC to even glance at. I pity that poor old man representing a good cause (in my mind, at least. I can debate it later). So, if you're a bit on the left end of the political spectrum like myself, you might want to think twice before coming to Clemson (I mean, this school even has its own its own equivalent of Fox News).

I won't waste time with all the minor details. Some of you probably won't understand terminology. But I found that almost all of the key things that made USC stand out--research and internship opportunities, Honors College, studying abroad, and the like--were matched (and possibly even exceeded, sometimes) by Clemson. In that respect, the "recruitment race" should be considered a dead heat. I suppose I did jokingly say to myself "I'm sold!" when I saw the following course description of the first-year engineering requirements at a presentation:

ENGR 1020- Stuff 99.99999999% of the population can't do

CH 1010- Alchemy for the rest of us

ENGL 1030- (we know your ACT/SAT reading scores)

MTHS 1060- Really hard math

ENGR 1410- Magic and Sorcery or CHE 1300- Plumbing for dummies

MTHS 1080- Really, really hard math

PHYS 1220- Stuff Einstein couldn't do

(In case you were wondering, they did show the actual class descriptions after having this bit of amusement)

But there is one thing that might end up being the selling point for me if I end up at this school (and frankly, it might have just given Clemson the lead). Freakin' hospitality.

Now, before I go on, I want to go on record to say that I think that the concept of "Southern Hospitality" should only exist if used to create a warm and fuzzy sweet tea commercial. Hospitality is no more real in the south than in any other part of the country, and frankly, a lot of Southern people are assholes. But this is not the hospitality I am claiming that Clemson has.

As I said before, the opportunities for research and a damn good education are really about the same between Clemson and USC. But what sets Clemson apart from its garnet counterpart (at least, from what I've seen) is that Clemson goes more out of its way to make sure that its students get these opportunities and succeed. When I toured USC, I heard a lot about the research there and how I could always find an opportunity myself, but it seemed as though most of that finding had to be done on the student's part. Clemson, essentially, dumps everything in its students laps, and they would be damn fools not to follow those opportunities. That's not even mentioning all the other conveniences that Clemson has that USC doesn't: a great shuttle service that caters to its students, an on-campus Episcopal church for me to find community in (more on that later), and so much more, really. The guy in charge of recruitment for engineering even said directly to the audience that he wanted most for everyone to find the school they are comfortable with, even if it is elsewhere. And he meant it. That took some freakin' heart.

This is what is really selling me on Tigertown right now. Every person there seemed devoted to getting the best for everyone visiting. Now, I believe it's still possible that USC has similar efforts, and I welcome any Gamecocks to enlighten me about said efforts. But something just feels right about Clemson right now. Maybe it's just a sense, but even if I'm wrong about it, my next option is a damn fine school to go to just as well.

During the day, there were many times where I felt close to home. I saw a few old friends from Happening across campus, each one of them unexpected but very pleasing to see. I walked down the shops on College Street and ate at a few local restaurants (note on College Street: has a great vibe to it, kinda like Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, but I don't worry about my safety there like I do in Columbia's Five Points). In the evening, I took in Maundy Thursday service at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church (seeing a few more folks I knew in the process), and immediately after service, I was immediately invited to come as a guest to their youth gathering. I didn't stay for long, but I did get to participate in a bit of egg-dyeing while talking all about my past youth experiences with a bunch of new people. I got a little carried away, and as a way of saying goodbye, I painted this little sucker and left him with the other youth.

Ah, but it's still too early to commit.

More on the rest of the Clemson visit tomorrow evening.

Mornin' Hays, signing off.

Looking Along the Via Media

Let's regain focus. Let's stop crying. Let's take a look at all the greenery growing along the road of life here. Let's admire anaphora for the preeminent syntactical device it has become.

I decided that tonight's post should focus on some less sentimental things and lead a new direction for writing on this here blog.  For some inspiration, I went over to the works of a friend of mine who has frequently blogged her travels afar. Her newest series  chronicles her journey throughout the Northeastern US, which I myself have only seen portions of (although I will be going to NYC and Philly in the summer, but more on that later).

So, there are two things about Kathryn's blog that I want to (appreciatively) rip off in the future. First of course is the commentary on locations, from the minuscule elevators in the big cities (try fitting five people in a lift at St. Ermin's Hotel in London) to the appearances of mathematical constants (she seeks out pi in all its glory, while I'm more of a tau guy myself. No, I am not a frat). That's a much more creative means of getting out opinions and observations on life than just.... I dunno, thinking really really hard?

The second thing which I want to focus on for the future AND today's post is-wait for it-the colleges. My nerdy colleague has her eyes set on much higher, out-of-state institutions (I mean, why do you think she's going Northeast), while I already mentioned in "Faith in Blue and White" that I'll have to betray my Heels and go stay in-state.

I like to ask myself why exactly I want to stay in-state when I have fallen so utterly in love with the rest of the world. After spending two weeks in Europe last winter, I have now been in six foreign countries (assuming you count the accidental turn my family took into Austria and the 20 minutes it took to get back in the right direction) and 16 US States (soon to be 17, as I'm going to Louisiana in December). It seems like I shouldn't be confined here to SC, the US state most known for not wanting to be a US state, but I admit that this Carolina has grown on me just as much as the Carolina I was born in. I can't see myself leaving quite yet, but there will be many opportunities beyond that. Oh, and the fact that these schools will give me more money. Money that could be used to teach me how to use less run-on sentences. Moving on.

Yesterday evening I was given the "jaded student" tour of the University of South Carolina. Even though the school was practically in my backyard, I never really took the opportunity in the past to truly look into it. I guess the past me wanted to at least get out of Columbia. The tour was given by a quartet of students from Engineering Without Borders at USC (an acronym which, here, doesn't refer to California), who worked with my mom to mentor the robotics team at Oak Pointe Elementary. Saw all the stuff we hoped to see: the Honors Residence Halls (blew me away), the engineering building (one of our guides mentioned how the sidewalk out front manages to cause some flooding. Great job, engineers!), and all the pretty antebellum buildings all along the way. Those antebellum buildings really make you feel like a Confederate.

As an aspiring Chemical Engineer and Honors College student (no matter what school I settle in), I wanted to know straightforward about what research and internship opportunities I could get at this school, and how beneficial the curriculum would be. I got good, sufficient answers, and I can say for certain that this school would be right for me if I decide to go here. The Honors College at SC is very renowned, of course, and this tour did even more to impress me.

After the group ate at an Arabic restaurant I hadn't been to in years (man, I missed the Damascus bread and hummus), I had to get to thinking. This was an awesome campus, but I can't forget how much I enjoyed touring Clemson back in the summer, especially since I'm going up there Thursday and Friday. One advantage that this jaded student tour at USC did have was that it was given by honors college engineers who know exactly what I need and interacted with me personally, as opposed to an overexcited sorority girl preaching about how OH MY GOSH CLEMSON IS SO... SO GREAT to a big group. There are a lot of other small factors that will go into all this, and it will take a lot of time to come to a conclusion.

But I'm enjoying every single minute of it. I don't have to worry about getting into either school, and frankly, I probably don't have to stress that much about getting into their honors colleges either. I feel like these schools want me more than I want them. I'm like a 5-star football prospect being fought over, only... more academic. I'm not letting that last part go to my head, but I'm going to enjoy every single damn minute of the decision process, and either way, I can't make a wrong decision.

Staying in-state won't constrain me because I will always find ways to travel. There's the glorified idea of the road trip that all college kids take, and there are the bounteous opportunities to study abroad that I will find. This is going to be tons of fun, and I'll have a bunch of stories to tell.

So, is there a favorite right now? Is it USC?

Nah. I ain't revealing a thing until I enroll.

Mornin' Hays, signing off.

Down The Mountain (Life Back in the Valley)

Mountaintop experiences. Times where everything seems to be going right and you're standing above the rest of the world. Something you just can't replicate. Bliss. Some of you might know exactly what I'm talking about here, and you should agree that coming down from a mountaintop experience sucks. It really sucks. I know because I posted about it a few weeks ago.

For those of you who lack attention spans or have issues with my usage of curse words in bold print, here's what I essentially had to say in the past: when everything is going right somewhere, but then you have to go home, you start doubting whether you can have that same happiness you had again. I talked about how much I feared all of my friends disappearing due to graduation, distance, or just a gradual falling by the wayside due to lack of interest. I had no answer to the issues I presented other than repeated profanity and one rather unhelpful statement.

"Just don't think about it."

I mean, hey, that ain't bad, right? Ignorance is bliss? Don't worry, be happy? #turnup?

Well, you are going to have to think about it at some point, and achieving ignorance is not always an easy thing to do. So, let's get some freaking answers today.

Back in the last entry on this topic, I talked about Happening, an Episcopal youth retreat designed to be a mountaintop experience to its guests. Having first gone as a guest last year and serving on staff at the next two Happenings (and hopefully at least one or two more, pending my application and the call from the rector... Claire, if you're reading this, no pressure). Anyone else who had been to Happening would get where I'm coming from, but that doesn't necessarily amount to a large number of people. This time around, I want to talk about another mountaintop that I just had to climb down this week.

A more relatable and easier-to-describe mountaintop would be in the realm of theater (or, "theatre" for the snobbier more refined person, but it's the same anyway). When you're doing a kickass play for a long time with such an awesome cast, you immediately begin to suffer withdrawals (and not "withdraws," as my peers seem more inclined to say. Please stop saying "withdraws," guys). Even those in the filthy plebeian non-acting crowd should be able to relate to this phenomenon.

I was just in one of these shows, of course, and it's pretty clear that the majority of the cast is feeling the pain of separation right now. Aida. An old Verdi opera that Elton John and Tim Rice adapted for Broadway, and that School District 5 managed to land the rights to. Man, that was a ton of fun. Everyone got into it, emotions ran high, and the crowd loved every minute of every show. There's so much I could say about it, and I'll be damned if I don't talk about it again in the future.

Now its over, and as the Edmodo group stays alive and very active, a lot of folks still haven't adapted to the change. (Side note: For those of you who aren't familiar with Edmodo, it has been championed by teachers as "Facebook for schools," obviously because they think that teens need a new gathering place after old folks like them started bogarting Facebook. Probably). No one wanted it to end.

So, how do we live in the valley after coming down from the mountain? Well, there will always be chances to reunite with people who shared the mountaintop experience. You can't see them all the time like the past, but if they had an impact, then they should remain in your heart. Focus on how your experience has shaped you as a person, and use your experiences to continue a better life. It's trite as hell to say, but all good things must come to an end. And I've found that good experiences are hard to leave at first, but once you're traveling down the highway, you don't need to look back. No fright or hindsight, leaving behind that empty feeling inside.

If you long for the past and have doubts about the future, "just don't think about it" is not a useful directive. At some point, worrying will cease, but you don't have to erase the memory from your mind. I've found that mountaintop experiences return to me in fulfilling flashbacks (and, believe me, I've been on a lot of mountaintops in the recent past). Even if you don't stay in contact with your friends from the mountain 24/7, there can still be other ways to be have a satisfied mind.

To close out, just remember to keep doing what makes you happy. And in remembering the people on the mountain, recall the "spirit is always burning though the flesh is torn apart." This may not have been the most thorough response, but it's what I got for now.

Mornin' Hays, signing off. Aida lives on.