Choices

I was reading 'The Mind of Modernism' today when I came across this sentence 'Impressionism [...] suggest[s] a withdrawal from the world of stable objects and a new preoccupation with the perceiving subject, a subject in crisis, absorbed by its own dissolution, fascinated and sometimes bewitched by the flux of sensations flooding in from without'.

Isn't that such a gorgeous sentence, unexpectedly stumbled upon in the middle of a critical text? So much assonance.

There's probably not much I'd love more than working in academia and research all my life - books and criticism are intoxicating and interesting, and are a world in their own right. But when I think of the state of our rworld and the crying need of so many different people groups, and our planet, and our politics, I can't justify sitting surrounded by books like that, not remembering that outside wars rage and hurricanes rain down. I'd become preoccupied by perceiving, absorbed in information while crisis and dissolution surrounded me.

That is privilege used for myself, but I want it to be my privilege to serve others.

George Bernard Shaw put it so well:

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Right now I have obligations to fulfill - my degree and my bond, but after that - I want to pour my life into something that lifts others. Lord, lead me where my trust is without borders.