I am listening to Mae, emo rock. I saw that a young friend on Facebook liked it. I previewed it, and bought it. It certainly fits my mood at the moment. I have found myself worried about lots of things lately, and subsequently I have found confidence in God and my reality that it is all going to work out even if it means that things will crash. I don’t really care whether they crash or not, or whether my plans work out or not, but it is a matter of trust that I’m not going to hurt myself on that account. I am in the middle of my doctoral research, there are very few adjunct jobs for me to teach and the economy is still souring more every day as we speak.

It seems the quick reaction of the public is to draw back and ignore the world, but I think this is a mistake. In this era of uncertainty, we should try to know more about our world. We should read more broadly, experiment with our lives in a way that permits the possibility of substantial growth. This will require unsettling the certainties and stabilities and force real work on our own selves. We should not doubt our intuitions but try them out at every moment to see if they prove true. We will need to be creative to catch up with the chaotic shifts of dramatically growing pools of knowledge. We can’t afford to be still long enough to become stagnant.

Hatefully, this means we will only have little time to refresh and renew, recreate. If we make it part of our practice to renew by learning, then the exhaustion we feel will go toward increased capacity and competence, where we will be able to rest a bit.