As I walk down the hallway, I pass light after light. After each light I pass I look at the shadow that is left on the ground and hope to see a different reflection of myself. Each light that goes by is another chance, yet I see no change. As I continue down the straight hallway, I see my shadow grow and shrink, grow and shrink before me. And as I turn at the end of the hallway, it is only then that I realize that in order to see a change in their reflection, one must first change their direction and the path they walk... But the lights are already past.

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. The paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with the strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to live, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water yet drink death like wine"

-G.K. Chesterton

"In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody-
Then-ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight-
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define-
Nor Love-although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining-
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake."

-Edgar Allen Poe

When in life is it enough? when does confidence turn into false hope? at what point should one stop chasing a dream and just "settle" with the cards that are dealt him? how do we know when we should stop fighting for something better or in the other case how do we know we are strong enough to achieve that which we desire?

... When is it enough? The line between confidence and false hope is a thin one determined possibly solely on the outcome and the viewpoint from which you see the dilema. In a battle within, I hear from one side "just give up, there's plenty of other battles out there you can win" while the other half of me is yelling at me "you can do it, if you just endure a little bit longer you can claim victory and the prize that ensues". Every time that I begin to believe the side telling me to give up, the other side screams at me and tells me not to. This battle within myself of confidence versus futility is like the tide that rises and falls on the whim of the moon.

...When is it enough? at what point should one stop chasing a dream and just "settle" with the cards that are dealt him? how do we know when we should stop fighting for something better or in the other case how do we know we are strong enough to achieve that which we desire? I first would like to challenge that to settle is to die, to lose. By settling, one declares themself not good enough, not strong enough to achieve any goal they set for themself. As children many boys dream of being astronauts, cowboys, and superheroes. Somewhere in the growth to manhood, many boys settle with having a job that they dislike... but what happened to those dreams? Similarly in life, at what point do we decide that the dreams we have in life are just that, dreams, and settle for less than what we want and at one point aspired for: greatness?

Yes, i know God has a plan for each of us, but how are we to know what that plan is until it has already come to pass? How much do we, mere human beings, play a part in the design that the Lord has set for us? If we try to do something and fail, then obviously it was not in God's plans for us... but at what point do you stop trying? At what point do we stop failing? When do we just give up and declare that it just was not in God's plan for us?

...When is it enough?

not a whole lot new lately, i had half my tests last week so i have none this week. Even though i have no tests this week i feel a lot more tense about this week, cooking tonight, engineering homework due tomorrow that i just can't seem to get the numbers to work our properly but i'm hoping that solving for the external forces via torques will solve that problem, and diff eq homework due wednesday that i can't figure out... i'm thinking that i may be able to get help from the guy that sits next to me in class today... if not then i'll probly end up going to the help session either late tonight or tomorrow. Friday i have a paper that's due but i'm not overly worried about that one... just work a little each day on it and it'll get done pretty quickly... it only has to be 2 or 3 pages double spaced. I think after wednesday morning i'll be less tense. My next test i believe is next monday night in engineering; it shouldn't be THAT hard as long as i figure out the stuff that we're doing right now and also don't run out of time.

On a tangent I'm not that big of a fan of my engineering professor, when he gives an example of how something works he always uses examples that would involve us (his students) dieing... for example as an example of a compression force he told us to picture that our heads were in a vice grip and it was being tightened... or at the beginning of this semester he was saying he could make us suicidal by controlling our sleep patterns. Also he's always bragging about how much money he makes and the class average on some of the quizzes is around a 60% because he takes up the quizzes after we've only had time to finish half of it... anyway yeah that's my engineering professor... so if i tell you i hate engineering what i'm really saying is i really don't like my engineering professor. (however our orthographics (secondary engineering prof) is pretty cool).

anyway if you've read all of this then i'm sorry for rambling but it feels good to let it out :)
Dru