The Stars Lean Down

It's impossible to be two places at once, without being truly nowhere.

But that's what I want to do. Because the dual-nature of our lives, the private and the public, the professional and the social, the wished for and the real, the now and the not yet, is pressing me on all sides. And the two sides, all of them, are as far from each other as they've ever been in my life.

Physically.

But we don't really live a dual existence. I can't go to campus and become a different person than I am when I'm not there....I can act differently, I can think of myself differently, I can "have my InterVarsity hat upon my head" but no matter what, there is something, even concealed, of the rest of me, the rest of my life, of the other side, beneath or even running through it all.

But I'm living a dichotomy right now, a very real dichotomy, and it is hard to really "be" anywhere.

There's a spiritual discipline I know very little about, called "practicing the presence of God." Basically, it's spending time in acute awareness of God's presence. God's always around, of course, but so often we live, pray, act, and speak as if that's not the case. I mostly attribute that to the smallness of our minds and the parochial nature of our ability to focus. No matter what, the fact that we actually need to focus on something omnipresent shows us how small we really are, and it reminds me that I've got to focus to even be present in corporeal unity at any given time.

It's hard to separate my "work" from the rest of my life, but conversely, it's also hard to separate the rest of my life from work. It's practically impossible. That's not bad, but I often feel like I'm floating about without any clear lines as to what is what. I know time will peal away the layers as I develop a life in Hillsdale that isn't on campus, but I don't know what that looks like, when I kind of just want to be back in Ohio whenever I'm not on campus or doing InterVarsity work. I went "home" over the weekend (although I've not got anywhere there that I've ever actually lived now that my parents have moved out of Ottawa) and was reminded of how balanced our lives ought to be and mine has not been since moving to Hillsdale. But it will take time. I know that. I do fear, however, that I'll illegitimately undertake a full binarization of my life and live fully here at Zack, HCF staff, and fully in Zack, the everything else Zack is. But that just isn't true, and I hope it doesn't happen.

But I know I will continuously, increasingly, and joyously be drawn back to Ohio more than I had thought when I moved.

-Zack

"There is a light in your eyes that never goes out"
-The Lucksmiths