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I'm trying to concentrate, to find some fragment of the stream of thoughts floating about in my soggy mind. Ah, I've even just finished a cup of coffee and my mind is not very active. I have to write because I need to release some quandaries that invade my mind, cause me to keep questioning.

I suppose what tugs at my mind is the this phase that I've entered into: post-graduate life. It's going to be short lived in that I leave for MX in about a week, but I've probably been given to much time to think about things. To sit in Coffea and overhear some of the intense, but at times useless conversations that sitting a few inches from people affords me to have access to. I escape the world of intelligencia when I graduate, in that I'm not in classes being probed to think much. Alas, I've got the time to read what I want to and walk through my day with more ease and time. However, as I jump back into that world, sitting at this coffee shop I hear philosophies, I see professors discussing the Enlightenment, Kant... the academic talk that I know too well. 

As I type I am sitting next to two Philosophy professors. They continue to discuss, turn over, probe, question....its great, perhaps it opens my mind to the different pockets of people that exists, the different talents that God has given us, but then I search for meaning in it, the good it offers? I'm going to be a high school English teacher, well attempt to receive what the government requires teachers to have...and pay off my school loans. It's going to be what some academics would say "ordinary" and won't involve much reading other than, "How to better manage the classroom" or "How to improve student's scores under the No Child Left Behind Act" Yikes.....it's going to be frustrating.

So, I'll let the pent up feelings overflow.....

Why, within academic circles (mostly universities) is there a constant sense of competitiveness concerning one's knowledge, understanding, books one's read, grades, certain rhetoric, the floating around of ideas, the need to impress, to act fake so that you have status. Perhaps I've just felt this stagnation in these circles because I have been a victim.  I've become  aware that I am a victim and seeing the down sides to it causes me to be bothered by it; I do not want to be in bondage to it. All of this search for identity in the world through academics is so fleeting, vanishing, useful? Yes, perhaps, but easily deceptive as well. It is deceptive because it brings one into a false sense of being, it puffs one up so that there is a complete dependence one's self and mind. It is not authentic, it does not allow one to love and relate to other people outside of your academic realm where only certain individuals can understand your elite streams of thoughts. It's limiting even when you don't think it is because you are so solidly mounted up in all that you have been taught, believe, and have spent hours sorting through with reason, logic.

Hm, these are just thoughts. This is just a blog that only a few find time to read. I'd like to think on it further. It's humbling to think of being entirely declothed of all the earthly knowledge one has obtained..and to remain standing before God, helpless and dependent on Him, merely groaning inside, unspeakable before God. This is the reality of man's situation. This is the truth amid all of the hours we spend studying about this world, human theories, ideas, attempts in history, philosophies of God's existence, metaphysics, sciences..Perhaps I speak from ignorance in all this. I do. And yet I know that it is true that all humans stand as lost individuals in need of God's loving guidance, He is so gracious in that He sees are feeble attempts and still shows patience towards us. 

Don't get me wrong. Learning is not something I am bashing, but is something that should exist to build up human beings as well rounded individuals able to fully develop their potential, the gifts God has bestowed upon them.