I don't know much. Let's just start off there. I was resting in the sun on the back deck, skin cancer be damned, drinking in the perfect spring day. The sky has been alternating between bright blue with slight clouds and a cloudy haze with a hint of sun shining through. It is warm enough to feel the burn on my spring-skinned arms. I could hear the man next door with his power tools. He is always working, building something. Right now he is working on a deck for the pool. He just completed a two story play house with electricity and siding and windows. Last year, he made wooden steps for the pool and a wheelchair ramp all the way to the street. The ramp is gone now, just a wooden front porch remains. He is always busy though. I thought how nice it would be to make something with my hands. I can't even accurately patch a hole in the wall, let alone build a backyard extravaganza.
There was a rainbow around the sun. My ten-year-old pointed it out to me during one of the hazy phases of the day. I guess it is called a solar halo. It was lovely and I liked to pretend things are more than they are, so I looked it up. Apparently some people see them as a bad omen and others feel they are good. Some people have been known to see the Virgin Mary or even Jesus himself in the glow. I saw a pretty rainbow around a hazy sun, and thought perhaps rain is coming (which doesn't take a genius considering it is early May). I remember an author in a book I read recently, one of those famous newagey ones whose name escapes me, saying we are coming back into the age of aquarius. Things should begin to shift to a more spiritual level. We will focus more on that aspect rather than on material goods. What I actually believe and what I like to think about don't always go hand in hand, but it is a nice thought, isn't it?
I thought about how I like to occasionally think about things to remind myself I am smart, and then I think of people who are so much smarter. I remember the people who thought the things I struggled with were child's play in college, and those people were at Missouri State University. Which means there are people who are even so much smarter. Then I wonder if that isn't true-maybe all these fancy colleges have more to do with you are and who you know and what, besides a good test score, you bring to the table. Perhaps these people were just as smart, just in different situations. Then I laugh at myself and think of the guy who left Missouri University where he'd been studying Chemistry (another premed failure) to study chemistry at Missouri State, and talked about how much easier Missouri State chemistry classes were. And I thought of the overseas foreign students who just seemed so much brighter and they weren't even working in their first language. And how professors would come in and have to be told to make the work easier because we Missouri kids couldn't do physics at the level they did in college. And I was really bad at it! So I console myself with the people who struggled to get C's in psychology, who studied and studied and C's were all they could get. And I feel a little better about myself.
But then I think about how very little that stuff actually matters. And I wonder how such things got so hyper-inflated in my head. Why do I care about the things I care about?
There was a rainbow around the sun. My ten-year-old pointed it out to me during one of the hazy phases of the day. I guess it is called a solar halo. It was lovely and I liked to pretend things are more than they are, so I looked it up. Apparently some people see them as a bad omen and others feel they are good. Some people have been known to see the Virgin Mary or even Jesus himself in the glow. I saw a pretty rainbow around a hazy sun, and thought perhaps rain is coming (which doesn't take a genius considering it is early May). I remember an author in a book I read recently, one of those famous newagey ones whose name escapes me, saying we are coming back into the age of aquarius. Things should begin to shift to a more spiritual level. We will focus more on that aspect rather than on material goods. What I actually believe and what I like to think about don't always go hand in hand, but it is a nice thought, isn't it?
I thought about how I like to occasionally think about things to remind myself I am smart, and then I think of people who are so much smarter. I remember the people who thought the things I struggled with were child's play in college, and those people were at Missouri State University. Which means there are people who are even so much smarter. Then I wonder if that isn't true-maybe all these fancy colleges have more to do with you are and who you know and what, besides a good test score, you bring to the table. Perhaps these people were just as smart, just in different situations. Then I laugh at myself and think of the guy who left Missouri University where he'd been studying Chemistry (another premed failure) to study chemistry at Missouri State, and talked about how much easier Missouri State chemistry classes were. And I thought of the overseas foreign students who just seemed so much brighter and they weren't even working in their first language. And how professors would come in and have to be told to make the work easier because we Missouri kids couldn't do physics at the level they did in college. And I was really bad at it! So I console myself with the people who struggled to get C's in psychology, who studied and studied and C's were all they could get. And I feel a little better about myself.
But then I think about how very little that stuff actually matters. And I wonder how such things got so hyper-inflated in my head. Why do I care about the things I care about?
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