Metamorphosis

Well today was such a great day!! I feel so much like more like myself lately; all happy and loving life and cheerful towards everyone I meet. Definately cheered a few people up with my positive attitude today, especially this one van pick-up named Marion. She works in residential life, and housing sign-ups are going on this week, with all the unhappy and uncooperative students. Somehow my attitude brought her up and she patted me on the shoulder and thanked me before leaving the van. But yeah, in general I needed this week. I really only went to my calculus and psychology classes and skipped my lab, which kinda sucks because I need to make it up tomorrow, which I could do at 1, but I smartly decided to finish all my experiement participant pool credits this day. On top of that I probably will need this very same time to finish my essay, so yeah, definately should have planned things better. But such is my life. It's better that way sometimes thought, makes one think more as to how to get out, almost like I have set a puzzle for myself that I must work out, and not only that an important one with real meaning to my life. But however you want to look at it, I'm stuck with the psych experiments, for if I cancel now I can't do any at all. And I was told there is a master make-up lab at the end of the semester for chemistry, so that is nothing to worry about. So now to get to work on the essay.....
But really that is how I've been handling this week, nice and realistically and with a placid mind, just as I should. The days of panic to the point of paralysis, depression, frustration, and all these sorts of negative feelings are behind me...at least i hope so. This is a new start for me, where I return to the state of peace and joy I glimpsed and wrapped around myself junior year and the summer after. I hope to return to the innocence, the wisdom, the faith, the hope and the joy I held at this time. But then I was an enlightened worm, full of the knowledge of truth, but still crawling around in terms of my full potential of living it out. This past year and a half I have more of less laid dormant, and in my cocoon I was the only thing I could see, blocked off from the beauty of the existence around me. But now I have finally emerged, bright and beautiful and winged. And what exactly brought about this metamorphosis; why exactly did it happen now? Simply because it was time for it. I can choose whether to accept the change or reject it, and I have probably done the latter a few times already without entirely realizing it, but nothing I did, said, thought, felt, or desired brought it into being. These things happen exactly when they are meant to. So where before I crawled, I will now fly. Where before I was joyous and at peace with things, now I will be radiant with divine energy and with all be One. I will stumble in flight, get caught in webs, often of my own design. And I will need to feed upon the nectar of God, take it in consistently as a food, and this will take more work and attention to spirituality than I have held previously. This new state will not come without effort and trial on my part, but unlike the wormly existense, these things are not optional enhancements, but are now required for my very survival.

A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature” (1836)

A Beginning

It has been a little while since I decided to start this thing, and this is my first real blog, but I'm pretty determined to consistently write in this as much as possible. The first entry was a quote from Emerson I found particularly inspiring on the day I made this thing. It's kinda ironic to use it actually, seeing that it goes against seeing the truth of things in the eyes of others rather than experiencing them first-hand, and by quoting him I'm am promoting the very thing he refutes. But it was quite appropriate anyway. This blog will be the dynamic account of my own experiences and insights. Yeah, I am hoping to make this a contemplative exercise so that for a moment each day I might sit and think of where I am in life, contemplate on it, and center on resolutions I hope to fulfill for my own person growth....So yeah, this is turning out a lot more formal than it should, probably because I rarely write anything exept for school.
But anyway, a little about myself...my name is Ryan and I am from Connecticut, and I go UConn. I have the most beautiful and wonderful and cutest and most cuddly and just overall the most gorgeous and perfect girlfriend in the ENTIRE WORLD!!!....Whom I will marry and ran off to Texas with and have a ton of children with....and we've been going out for over two years...2 years and 3 months on the 30th to be exact. She's a senior at East Catholic High School...where I went last year. I don't really know for sure what my major will be, nor do i have any real thoughts on a career, though major-wise I am considering cognitive science, an interdisciplinary mix of psychology, anthropology, math, linguistics, and philosophy dealing with the nature of the mind. Also, I work and insane 38 hours a week driving a handicap van around campus, although it isn't too bad since i can sit and do hw and relax when there aren't any "pick-ups." I am attempting to learn the banjo, though it's been a while since i have really practiced due to work and school...and of course I absolutely love any kind of music with the banjo in it!!!...especially folk music, which is my favorite with or without banjo, and anything by Bela Fleck. Plus i also enjoy the bands Guster and Josh Joplin Group, both being kinda alternative rock, though Josh Joplin cites his roots in folk music, and it is through him that i first got into this genre. And i HIGHLY recommend that everyone visit www.folkalley.com and check it out. I enjoy other bands as well...like Lifehouse, The Beatles, and other classic rock bands as well. I also have a sister named Jackie who is 14 and a freshman in High School, and my roommate is a guy named Mike whom I've "known" since i was three...our mothers and grandparents being friends and all.
So that's a little about me. It's kinda silly to put all this down since this blog is mostly for myself, and only partly for others to see and share my experiences with me, and hold them in comparison to their own, but it's a good enough start anyway for a personal assessment of what the main aspects of my life are right now, so that off of that I can start to contemplate how each aspect fits into God's plan for me, and by doing so see and make resolutions around the importance of each to me in my life in comparison to the others.

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature