Patch Adams

I didn't know feel-good movies could make me feel good. Or maybe it was the company. In any case, my favorite line is, "Wow, and I thought only I could repel women with such raw efficiency!"

On the downside, I'm beginning to get that bad feeling that comes when you stop enjoying the weekend halfway through Saturday night because it means Monday is only a day and a half away. It can be worse: I remember times when I've felt like that halfway through Friday night. I hope this doesn't stick; since I got back from D.C., I've enjoyed school and life in general a lot more than in the past, and the onset of Monday hasn't been such a dread occurance - I've even relished it at times! However, when things are lousy, it sucks to be a postmodern intellectual, because escape is virtually impossible on this side of sobriety. How do you forget your worries when you know all along that you're doing what you're doing to forget them?

I appreciate the ensuing comments about turning to God; it's what I'd say if I read this drivel. And I think I honestly want to turn to Him; or at least I want escape and I hope I can get that in God. So far, however, I've been a crappy disciple, and I feel like Lee's Summit, Missouri, is a million miles away.

Intellectually, I can reason effectively that my feelings of distance from God and depression are illogical. For someone with an eternal lifespan and promise, why should temporary setbacks affect my state of mind or being? Rather, eternal truths determine my identity and destiny, and should determine my actions and attitudes. Unfortunately, it's much too easy to allow circumstance and emotion to guide thought and deed.

One way in which I have at least improved is in diagnosing imprisonment. Freedom, as the Bible defines it, is not liberty, though the two have become synonymous in our individualistic culture. Rather, it's a submitted state that offers freedom of mind and action from things that tend to enslave us, including emotions, our past, sin, others' opinions, legalism, etc. The best allegory is Gollum; he needed to be freed from the Ring, while our cultural mores would be insensed and demand that Gollum be allowed to choose the Ring if he so desires, little understanding that the decisive will itself can be enslaved and prevented from seeking freedom for the whole. Humans need a higher power to free us, because our own nature is enslaved and will not find freedom unless the enslaving agent is destroyed by another. For me, whereas I've clung to my depression (and I use this term loosely) in the past, at least I now know that joy won't come by satisfying it but rather by abandoning it and making no provision for fleshly emotional self-indulgence. Unfortunately, doing that has proven a lot more daunting than writing it, and knowledge continues to be no substitute for action.