My Narrow Escape from the Student Health Clinic.

I am fond of snow. I have a few problems with it, of course, as with anything in life. It's cold, or it's wet. Often it's both. That can be problematic for people like me. But never mind the problems. Let's move on to its merits.

1. It's pretty. It's pretty all by itself, and almost everything else is prettier when covered with it.
2. It's soft. Falling into snow is more pleasant than falling into almost any other naturally occurring substance, excepting perhaps warm water on the occasion that one is not wearing many layers of clothing, and naturally occurring deposits of down left by geese who have died of natural causes, though these are extremely rare.
3. It's cohesive, allowing one to make snowmen, snow angels, and snowballs.
4. It's slippery. Sledding, not to mention skiing and other types of sliding around in it are super fun.
5. I could really keep going for some time, but I won't because everybody knows that snow is awesome. Right.

In January, it snowed. I played football in the snow with some people, per the urging of a certain Doug Serven, who vehemently maintained that I wouldn't injure myself. Well, he doesn't know everything. I didn't injure myself, but the next day I woke up with one of my feet swollen to a ghastly degree with severe bruising and pain and a limited range of motion. And I don't think it had anything to do with my having gotten kicked really hard in the same ankle the night before while playing snow football.

I mean, it was fine. It healed right up. The only problem was as it healed, it didn't stop hurting, the swelling didn't go down, and I didn't regain my ability to move my toes.

So I decided to seek medical attention. This isn't really important; none of the story has been so far. Really it's all just a means of arriving at the important part of the story: the radiologist. I was at Goddard and I chatted with the doctor for a bit and predictably she sent me to have my foot shot with deadly radiation. And arriving in the x-ray room, the radiologist said: "Take off your shoe and sock and lie down on the table."

Needless to say, this statement made my day. As such, I exulted and explained just how happy she'd made me by not saying "lay down on the table." And she explained that she had learned as a youngster from a particularly caring and skillful grammar teacher that "you lay an object down. You lie on the x-ray table." Needless to say, we were friends by this point, and as such, she decided against killing me with radiation, though it may have cost her her job. Of course, not many people know that Goddard is really a front for a black market organ-harvesting ring that operates upon the principle that naïve college students go in thinking they will come out again. Instead of blasting me with microwaves like she was supposed to, she gave me an x-ray. Needless to say, I was very grateful. As such, I left.

On Happiness.

Can we suppose, just for the course of this relatively insignificant blog post, that the chief end of man is to pursue happiness and to find it?

Obviously we can't because that's a lie.

Happiness is a strange animal. Elusive, beautiful, capricious, extremely dangerous, like a giant golden-egg-laying peacock with fangs and eagle talons and ivory tusks for which one is often tempted to kill the thing despite the knowledge that not only will he forfeit the steady supply of golden eggs but also probably run into some technical difficulties involving the fangs and talons. That is to say, it can be a blessing. Also it can be really, really bad.

I live in a culture that teaches me to regard happiness as the highest goal that exists, to believe that there is nothing more worth striving for. Furthermore, I am taught that I am entitled to it for reasons that are inescapably vague. I am owed happiness because I'm an American. Because I succeed academically. Because succeeding academically leads to succeeding financially, every success leading to another greater one that ultimately yields happiness. Interestingly, it didn't occur to me until fairly recently that all this is a lie. For one, the best happiness doesn't have its roots in success as we perceive it here in America. But that's really neither here nor there. People could sit around and argue about that all day, and they do, and that's fine with me, and I also don't care. The important thing is that happiness is not everything. It's just one thing, one nice thing, that sometimes God sees fit to bless us with. Just like any other good thing that he can give and take away. It's not the same as contentment, and it's not the same as joy. We are commanded to be content and to have joy, but we are not commanded to be happy. Sometimes we are commanded to mourn.

My problem is with contentment. When I'm not happy, I scream at my heavenly father with tears in my eyes and pound my insignificant fists against the unyielding walls of providence, decrying how unfair it is that he hasn't given me the happiness I saw in the shop window. How I deserve it. How he clearly is cheating me by withholding it. How I don't just want it but need it. How, as such, he is a patently hateful God. Being unhappy isn't the problem; being discontent is. Fortunately, my heavenly father is patient with me. He forgives me for my temper tantrums. He loves me in spite of my vile ingratitude. And this is not sufficient proof that having him is better than having happiness.

Not that they're mutually exclusive, or that the proof really isn't sufficient, in case anyone wants to argue. The proof is abundantly sufficient, and I (acting as the judge in this case) have the understanding of a toddler.

The thing I'm trying to learn how to do is take blessing with thanks when it is given and take a lack of it with thanks when it is denied. Once I get that down, I'll move on to being grateful amid cursings and then I'll pretty much be good enough to save myself. I'll probably be happy by then, too!

Splash! Or, An Exercise in Single-Sentence Paragraphs.

I have become convinced that there are many more things in the world that need to be avoided than there are things that ought to be pursued, and meanwhile, it can become easy to get so wrapped up in avoiding things that there is nothing left to do, in which case one finds oneself doing nothing; nothing, that is, but reflecting, rather like a couple of mirrors sending goodness knows what information back and forth and back and forth until imperfection renders whatever reality there might have been utterly meaningless, sending sense and reason spiraling into a dark abyss of theoretical impossibility.

However, in such quandaries, one need only ponder the concrete, take a gander at the to-do list, consider the urgency of the mundane tasks that demand one's attention, and one will be safe and sound, back on the terra firma of overwhelming despair.

And once there, what ought a person do?

I find myself constantly in the midst of this internal debate, trying to find a balance between functioning and philosophizing, reprimanding myself ceaselessly for losing focus and letting the goal fall by the wayside, sometimes pausing to realize that I was never quite sure what the goal had been, other than perhaps to find out what the goal should be.

Invariably, such musings mature into anxiety which ferments into angst, which coupled with anger at the fact that my thoughts seem to yield only negative emotions beginning in a-, curdles regrettably into bitterness.

And only after having rehearsed this routine of alliterated afflictions do I finally find myself (maybe) in a position to ponder the stunning significance of the Gospel of grace.

I apologize for the previous sentence.

In all seriousness, however, I do not find myself able to arrive at any semblance of humility by any other means; that is, being shown in gruesome detail the futility of my own thinking and my abject inability to sanctify myself, which has been unendingly my temptation and a veritable millstone about my figurative neck in the freezing lake that is the planet Earth with all its allurements above which spans the metaphorical bridge of righteousness, off of which I daily hurl myself with reckless abandon.

Parsimoniously, (a word that here is used to indicate that the author spent time (almost undoubtedly too much) waffling over whether the initial word of this paragraph ought to be "fortunately" or "unfortunately," though in nearly every other context it would mean something entirely different) it is at the bottom of this freezing lake that sinners find grace, and it is through a figurative death of suffocation, hypothermia, or some combination of the two that they find themselves able to say perhaps with increasing frequency as they hurdle headlong into sin, "maybe this isn't a good idea..." and eventually even realize that God loves them.

Maybe that's the goal that fell out of my pocket several miles back.

No, surely not.

Maybe this isn't a good idea...

I Have No Way of Knowing.

The unprecedented magnitude of the degree to which I am currently uninspired is, I must say, so overwhelming that it almost inspires me. Of course, for that to actually happen would be impossible. A travesty. Nonetheless, I wonder if such a paradoxical sham could be redeemed - by me, that is, excluding the certainty that it will inevitably be redeemed by Christ - with the gradual clarification of ideas into something truly inane.

No, certainly not.

Today I realized that my heart is unlikely ever to be broken by a dead man. Of course, there are downsides and sacrifices one has to make. At least I would imagine so, though I have no way of knowing.

And really, I have no way of knowing almost anything. It serves me well to be asked regular questions to which the answer is, "I have no way of knowing." It aids in the preservation of what humility I've managed to scrape together (though more likely it is another travesty and also not I but another who has graciously scraped it together for me; however, I have no way of knowing) and hopefully leads to truth that can actually be known.

As for the dead men, I believe the joys afforded me by my dear Johann Sebastian are so great and so untarnished that it would not be fitting even if I had the means to find his vital company, for men are capricious until they are dead. What they leave behind is more or less imperishable and any disappointment therein can almost always be avoided due to its monolithic predictability. And so all I have to do is choose which dead man will disappoint me the least and see how miserable I can make myself.

The problem with this, of course, is that I shall be miserable, which was very near the opposite of my original goal. But naturally this is not certain, as it, being a thing, is a mystery to me and I, as usual, have no way of knowing.

But misery is my companion regardless, and my misery, if such a thing were possible, does not let me down. If I could find a way to fall in love with misery, I'm sure I would do it, except that I have a suspicion that for one thing it would be impossible (a travesty!), and furthermore that I would not cease to be miserable although I might enjoy it, or perhaps that misery would find a way to shed its steadiness and let me down.

Also, I find it unfair that when my face is downcast with sadness, the fallen acorns jeer at me from the ground. It will be good when they have all been run over, or trodden underfoot, or eaten by squirrels or carried away by greedy birds and children. Then, they will fall again and it is anyone's guess as to whether they will taunt me a second time.