Post-college blah

I was looking through the blog of a friend of a friend, and I came across this:

"When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of conscience. When we find our vocation -- thought and life are one."
--Thomas Merton


The blogger went on to comment on this quote. His next 3 paragraphs:

I think there are 3 levels of being - existing, thinking, and truly living. Something Eddie once said (actually has said many times) sticks with me a lot, how for a long time in his life he just existed. He didn't think at all.

I think very recently I've been thinking more about vocation, but that's all it's been, just thinking. And practically, there's no real difference between that and just existing. Either way I'm just paralyzed into doing whatever I'm doing. I just feel vaguely more unsettled about things when I think about. But no change, nothing like that.

I dunno, I don't want to do that anymore. I've been saying this over and over, but I don't want to settle anymore, I want to be deliberate, I want to feel called, I want to know why I'm doing something and really do it - I want to live. To reach a point where thought and life are one I guess. That's an awesome phrase. "Thought and life are one." But what does that mean practically? No clue.


(I would have linked directly to this blog entry, but unfortunately I don't know how to get it to go specifically to that entry. The page, which has a bunch of entries all together is found here. Use Ctrl-f and "Merton" to see the original.)

Wow. That captures a lot of what I've felt, especially in the years since graduating college. And it seems to capture the state of life of a lot of college grads I know, who are simply working, and feeling that they're not living deliberatively. Waiting for something, but not knowing what it is. I think this idea of thought substituting for life is what websurfing can sometimes become: thinking other people's thoughts, but not living one's life.

To a limited extent, I feel the Merton quote still characterizes me. Being in law school definitely gives you some goals (do this reading, write these papers, prepare these arguments, graduate from school, get a job), but I don't feel like I'm really accomplishing all that much, in terms of stuff that's important.

I need to decide soon about whether to apply for a Masters in Public Health degree. On the one hand, I feel that that would be important stuff, and likely to be quite useful in the future. Without actually having learned the material, I still feel that it would be closer to my life's work. And having another degree might help. On the other hand, it's another year of time, and a good number of thousands of dollars more in debt.

Choosing not to do it now doesn't completely take it off the table--I suppose I could do it later on, but it would be harder later. Doing it later would mean that the money would be less of an issue (since I'd presumably be working), but the time would be much more of an issue.

OK, I'll write later about my trip to Washington, D.C., which was a great trip, even though it didn't provide me with the summer job leads I was hoping for. Still, a great trip. Which I'll describe later, hopefully.