Some Kind of Wonderful

1:00pm. Starbucks in Poughkeepsie.

This has been a weird week. I think it has something to do with the weather, last week it was exceptionally warm and sunny so everyone on campus used this as an excuse to skip classes, throw Frisbees and start drinking at noon. But alas, this week we’ve returned to the moderately cool weather characteristic of late March and we’ve returned to our classes and gone through our weekly motions all hoping for another random burst of heavenly summer. Life goes on though and there is no more 85 degree weather to delay writing all of those final papers and despite the fact that I am in my junior year of college, each of my professors has taken ample class time to discuss the ins and outs of paper writing (as if it were a new concept). I usually use this class time to zone out, doodle, and perhaps go on Facebook if there is a computer available. However, my philosophy professor managed to hold my ear, at least for a little while, this past Tuesday.

Most instructors will tell you to write an outline, brainstorm, do research, set down your ideas and decide on the structure of your essay, and then you can sit down and start to write. But not before. Never before. This professor told us something different, he said, “Just sit down and start to write, you often need to start writing to figure out what you actually think, so just start to write and you’ll figure it out from there.”

Now, I can’t say I believe that there are right and wrong ways of writing an essay, or of writing in general. I can say that I appreciate the variety. Also, I can say that I believe the type of process my professor was describing goes far deeper than writing a philosophy essay.

In life we don’t often get time to sit down, make a big grand plan, and then follow it gracefully to completion. I sometimes wish we did, but more frequently I find myself in this river that is life. The water is always flowing, the world is always changing, and so are we (I stole that idea from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, I hope he won’t mind). Do we ever go into an experience knowing how we are going to feel at the end of it, or knowing how it will all work out? I don’t. And this is the thought that hit me in Tuesday’s class – you don’t have to know everything from the start, you don’t have to stay the same and you shouldn’t expect others to either.  It’s about so much more than just the damn essay.

I’m not going to stare at my computer screen in this Poughkeepsie Starbucks and presume to have answers to life’s questions. I’m no different from you sitting there reading (but I so appreciate that you’re still sitting there reading). I don’t have it figured out. Perhaps though, as I write, as I live, as you read, as we all embrace the process, we might figure something out. Maybe this not knowing is not so terrible. Maybe it’s wonderful.