Dissatisfaction

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

- Ecclesiastes 1:18

To borrow a line from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, "The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it."

Some days I hate knowing things. I hate knowing that there are problems in this world that can't be fixed. I hate that there are paradoxes with no solutions. 

I've been feeling this way a lot lately...

So of course I found it ironic when today in class one of my professors addressed this type of feeling. It's an upper-level psychology class and lately we've been talking about some pretty dark mental problems. The kind that can't really by fixed and that usually affect more than just the person who has them. 

I have hated this part of the class more than I've hated any other thing I've learned in school (including my math and science classes, which is really saying something). I've never dreaded going to class so much as I have during this section of Abnormal Psychology.

So today the professor read us the above verse out of Ecclesiastes and then he said he had a question for us. But he prefaced his question by telling us that he wanted us to consider our answers not just in light of the class, but also in the grand scheme of learning in general.

He asked us, "Would you go back? If you could, would you unlearn all of the things that you hate knowing about? Would you trade being wise for nice feelings?"

Food for thought...

English-y Thoughts...Kind Of

The other night I was bored so I pulled out the textbook from my very first literature class. It was a two credit class that surveyed world literature. The book weighs seven pounds and it christened my birth into the world of, "Excuse me young lady but I'm afraid you're much too small to be carrying a book that big." 

I'll never forget how intimidating that class was. I'll never forget how much time I spent trying to understand what the heck was going on. Mostly I'll never forget the feeling that I would never in a million years be able to figure out what these archaic authors were trying to tell me.

Five giant literature books later I still find myself fighting the same feelings. But it's funny because with each new semester I find that I understand things in a different way. The difficult classes I've had these past few years make so much more sense now that I'm not in them!

It's strange how hindsight seems to give me the clearest insight into things. 

In a few days my blog will be two years old. It's strange to look at some of the things I've posted over those two years. So many memories live in between the thousands of lines I've written. It's funny to look back at things and think about how now I would approach them in a completely different way. And it's refreshing to look back at other things and know that I did the right thing. 

Anyways, it's almost one in the morning and I can't sleep...hence the thoughts that lead to post-writage. Why do I always seem to start my major thinking after 11 pm?

Un-Learning Helplessness

So I have this really awkward "I haven't posted on here in forever and this feels really familiar and yet really strange" feeling. It's weird, but I've felt like I needed to write on here for a few days now...to the point that I would log in, type a line, delete it, and then log out (this happened four times). I'll honestly be surprised if I actually end up posting this. (One of my professors always says, "How about dishonestly?" when he hears someone preface a statement with the word honestly. And now whenever I say it I get this Holden Caufield-like feeling that I'm just a phony.)

Things right now are weird. Everything is weird - on a macro-level and a micro-level. I'm about to give up on reading the news because it just depresses me. But it feels like everything is weird on a personal level too. For everyone.

A few months ago I was talking with a friend about prayer and she said something that I had always felt but had never quite had the courage to vocalize: "Prayer just doesn't seem to work fast enough."

I feel that now, more than ever. This morning in church as I prayed for a family friend who had lost her son in a car accident last night, I found myself getting a defeatist attitude. I just want to feel like my prayers are actually doing something - like they're actually worth the breath required to speak them.

I'm taking Abnormal Psychology this semester and it's screwing with my mind (for that matter, all of my classes are doing that this semester, but that's a story for another place and time). A few classes ago we talked about the principle of learned helplessness. Some guy (whose name I should remember but don't) did an experiment with dogs where he tied them up (or caged them or something) and he shocked them. At first the dogs tried to get away, but eventually they learned to be helpless. So when the guy untied (or uncaged or whatevered) them, they didn't run away when he shocked them, even though they could have.

As I studied for that class tonight and remembered that principle, I realized that even though prayer doesn't seem to work fast enough, that doesn't mean that it doesn't work. And that also doesn't mean that it always works more slowly than I want it to. Maybe the answers to my prayers come at times and in ways that I don't realize or recognize. 

Also I'm going to actually post this because I ended up with some half decent thoughts that are far less confusing than they were when they were in my head.