Wednesday, 11 April 2007
Christian: One of these is not like the others
An empty bottle of Mike's, a scratched-up BlackBerry, and an Old Testament book; that's what's on my desk right now.
On one hand, a reminder that summer was briefly here before the current winter redux took hold. On another hand, a reminder that I'm on call and tethered by phone to work. On the third hand, one of the final pieces to an education whose final weeks are stretching to near endlessness.
Last week was a spring break week at the school, which opened up enough time to launch into the overdue task of handing out 60 brand new laptops to clinical people. To the question from classmates, "How was your spring break?" I offered, "Uhh..." A shiny new laptop is as unremarkable as an empty bottle when you've handled enough of them, just as bank tellers must find stacks of $100s unremarkable after a day or two.
Surprisingly, nobody has called the BlackBerry all week. I could use it as a coaster, but I worry that my glass might tip over. BlackBerries addicts must be the most banal people in the world; the damn things do nothing but buzz and chirp a Morse code melody of annoyance. That $200 would buy a lot of malt liquor lemonade.
The book is wholly different from the annoyance and the 10-cent refundable bottle. The title says "Introduction" (it's a survey book) but its employment is for a capstone. It's only a month and eight days until the stone is capped, and I think about that almost every day; what started as a journey has become a dutiful march to the finish line. Which makes it sound worse that it is. Somebody recently asked, "Are you glad you went?" and after a moment I said yes. I am glad, no matter how much the process has occasionally resembled corporal or capital punishments.
The book lives on; it has a permanance that's lacking in the others. The bottle is already empty, and the 60 laptops will be in a landfill in three years' time. Although I have no answer for the perennial question of what's next, at least the material from the book and the school have an imagination that goes beyond themselves. Imagination for the bottle ends at the bottom; the BlackBerry never had one to begin with. The book and the school keep adventuring throughout all life, annotated by experiences and punctuated by decisions.
I can think of a hundred ways the book — and the education — could have been better, but the competitors next to it don't hold a candle. The times I'd forgotten that — the times I'd doubted it... I'd forgotten what else was on the table.
What other people had to say
Beth wrote:
I'm proud of you.
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