Academia is the kind of thing that wants and tries to consume your life. It has certainly succeeded in doing that to me at various points. It's so easy to get caught up in the busyness of everything - in the work and the deadlines and the constant striving to achieve the next level of proof that you are qualified to do/say anything in your field. But personally, I find that it's these times when I let myself get caught up in academia that I hate it the most. Academia for its own sake is miserable. When I let my life become only about academia, I am miserable and unhappy and generally discontent with life...because it's supposed to be about so much more!
It's at this point that I usually question whether I should even be studying music theory, whether I should be in grad school at all, whether I actually want to pursue a career in an academic field. I still don't know the answer to these questions. But whether or not I remain in academia, these struggles have taught me something which will (hopefully) stick with me no matter what field I pursue - that earthly things, if pursued for their own sake, are unsatisfying and pointless. This isn't to say that I've realized I can't glorify God with music theory, I just have learned that there always needs to be more. That said, I'm still not sure what my future with academia is...whether I'll stick with it or find something else to do...but I do know that regardless, my life will never be all about my career (which is a pretty cool discovery for someone like me who has always thought that my career was super important).
Right now, I feel pretty okay about grad school, and music theory, and being in an academic field. This isn't to say that I don't find them stupid sometimes, but having learned that these things are pointless, I've changed my life to include things that actually mean something. Being in Bible studies and working with the youth group at my church have definitely helped. Taking time to invest in people is good, too. And taking more time to pursue things that will edify me (spiritually, mentally, and emotionally) has really changed my perspective on life. Reading books about things that matter (right now, it's Buechner), spending more time with God, blogging, talking about and studying with friends things that actually have eternal significance...it puts things into the right perspective. And thank God for that.
Speaking of Buechner, in "The Birth," he writes from the perspective of the innkeeper, a wise man, and a shepherd about the birth of Jesus. The innkeeper's perspective fits in with what I've been writing about pretty well...basically, his life is consumed with his work and everything he has to do.
"I speak to you as men of the world," said the Innkeeper. "Not as idealists, but as realists. Do you know what it is like to run an inn--to run a business, a family, to run anything in this world for that matter, even your own life? It is like being lost in a forest of a million trees," said the Innkeeper, "and each tree is a thing to be done. Is there fresh linen on all the beds? Did the children put on their coats before they went out? Has the letter been written, the book read? Is there money enough left in the bank? Today we have food in our bellies and clothes on our backs, but what can we do to make sure that we will have them still tomorrow? A million trees. A million things.
"Until finally we have eyes for nothing else, and whatever we see turns into a thing. The sparrow lying in the dust at your feet--just a thing to be kicked out of the way, not the mystery of death. The calling of children outside your window--just a distraction, an irrelevance, not life, not the wildest miracle of them all. That whispering in the air that comes sudden and soft from nowhere--only the wind, the wind..."At the end of this section, the innkeeper says,
"But this I do know. My own true love. All your life long, you wait for your own true love to come--we all of us do--our destiny, our joy, our heart's desire. So how am I to say it, gentlemen? When he came, I missed him."
People...we need to make sure we don't miss him. We need to make sure that all of the busyness, all of the million trees in the forest don't make us miss the reason for it all.
Eternal significance...it's the only kind of significance, really. But can't everything have eternal significance, because everything is a potential act of either worship or its opposite? What you describe in the first long paragraph here is an inward-looking life.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting two-edged concept that literally every part of our lives is fallen, but every part is also redeemable. Life isn't supposed to about what we do or think or say; it's about God.