Just a month til graduation.

Who am I becoming? I feel like I'm leaving a lot of the person I've been before and approaching a place I used to look at, from a distance, with contempt. I can feel my vision of who we are supposed to be and what life is supposed to look like changing, sometimes without my consent. Beth and I were talking the other day about studying theology and such, how it brings you to these moments where you realize some thought you've been dancing around has worked its way deep inside you, where you find yourself caught defending ideas you used to argue against, ways of life you used to hate. And how it's so intuitive. You realize you find a certain thing to be true, and you have to fumble around to find words and reasons to explain it, but you know that you know it, before the words come. Beth seems to be able to do this without fear, but not me. Believing something to be true when my mind is filled with arguments for its wrongness is terrifying for me. And I mourn for the passing of confidence and certainty, and of the things that used to matter so much to me. They don't anymore, and that is disorienting. It's different things now, much different things that I feel drawn to.

I don't know if this makes any sense to you, or if you can identify with it at all, since it's come, for me, mostly through theological and philosophical education. Education is such a tricky thing. You have these motivations for wanting to know more, thinking it will just make you a smarter, more impressive version of who you are, with deeper reasons for the things you already think. You don't realize that the things you learn will christen you into a world that will profoundly change you and all your thoughts, make you into a person that the former you probably would have hated, probably would have called liberal or snobby, all head and no heart. But she would have been wrong, and you know that now. But even so, she lags behind, pointing fingers, the haunting call to a simpler, safer place to which you'll never return. Sometimes, she takes the form of a dear friend you used to have so much in common with. And sometimes not.

And an isolating experience. When you inherit a culture, it happens in public, through interplay with other people, confirmed in all kinds of ways. When you come to critique it, it happens alone, reading a book or writing in a journal or sifting through your own heart. It turns out, people all across town are having these moments, alone, but you don't figure that out until later. For the first half of life, the point is to figure out what other people think, so we can think it, and what other people value, so we'll value it. We call this socialization, and it's a necessary ingredient for any functioning society, as well as for any healthy human being. Being right means being like everyone else. But once that's good and established, the point is to distinguish yourself from everyone else, and usually, that means looking different. Being mature means being different from everyone else. Being different from everyone else makes me nervous. But I am learning.

I am grateful though, for where I've come. It is a harder place, to be sure, but a truer place. One thing that's encouraging is that if there is something you really care about, and you make it a point to carry it with you through the various stages of your becoming, and if it's a something that is true, then it will remain, it will stand the grueling trial of investigation, and it will be so much more powerful and beautiful when it gets to the other side. For me, it is faith. by which, I mean a deeply held conviction that transcends justification. and also, a passion for difference and diversity and individual expression within unity and love. There's other things, obviously, lots of other things, but these are the two I'm thinking of tonight. These two just get harder and harder, but better and better, the more I go.

Ah. It is late and I am tired. Sorry if this sounds ridiculous. or boring. I'm sort of at a crossroads in my life, so I'm thinking about things like this a lot. That's not what I mean. I am always thinking these things. I don't know why that means I need to post it on the internet for all the world to see. That seems weirder and weirder to me, the more I do it. But. Why not.