Under Construction
I’ve always heard that you don’t really appreciate something until it’s gone. I used to not believe that because every time I heard it I could always come up with a list of dozens of things I appreciated that I still had and had never lost. The older I get though, the more I’m starting to understand what it means to truly appreciate what you’ve got, and not just take for granted that those things are always going to be there. 
The other day I got into a discussion with someone from work about a lot of the social issues that our country is facing today. We talked about illegal immigration, welfare, social security…all of the big ones really. We also got to talking about the cost of healthcare, and how the different presidential candidates have proposed to handle that whole situation. I don’t claim to know a whole lot about it, and certainly I haven’t paid as close attention to the debates as I could have, but I found our conversation to be very interesting nonetheless.
Last week I was playing around on the Internet when I ran across something that really caught my attention. It was a testimony from Victor Frankl who was, among other things, a Holocaust survivor. He described parts of his experiences, and one quote in particular stood out for me. He said, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.
There have been several times throughout my life when I’ve had to make tough decisions. Nothing so serious that a wrong decisions would totally ruin my life or anything, but there have definitely been times when I’ve been very torn between two choices and I’ve had to sit down and really think about what I wanted to do.
I was in line in the cafeteria at work the other day and I just happened to see what the people in line in front of me were eating for lunch. One lady had a cheeseburger and French fries, chocolate pudding, a 20 oz. bottle of Dr. Pepper and a banana. Another guy had a plate full of fried chicken strips, a baked potato, and a large Coke.
Even though I haven’t had the schoolwork this semester, it has been somewhat stressful nonetheless. True, it’s glorious to be able to come home from church on Sunday afternoon and be able to do whatever I want (as opposed to Zack and my roommates who have to study and prepare for the upcoming week). I mean, I love that. But even without the pressure of school, there’s been this underlying sense of urgency.
I realize that this will make the second column I’ve written about the subject of kids (and having kids), in the past couple weeks. Believe me, I have no intention of going down that delightful little path anytime soon—I’ve just had a lot of occasion recently to be involved in situations that made me really think about how I’m going to handle things when (and IF) I ever do. So, here it is. The list of things I’m NOT going to do when I have kids of my own:
I read in the news last week that NASA Scientists are in the process of priming two spacecraft to slam into the moon’s South Pole — on purpose. Apparently, these scientists have discovered trace amounts of hydrogen on the moon’s poles, and want to determine if it could possibly be because there’s frozen water (ice) there.
Up until about a month ago I was one of the busiest people I knew. I was taking a full class load (15 hours), working at my internship, and was involved in about a dozen different activities both on campus and off. Most days I left my house between 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. and if I got home before 10:00 or 11:00 at night it was a small miracle.
It’s safe to say that the past four years have been unquestionably, the best of my life. I have so many great memories of my time in college, that looking back, I know if given the chance I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
I found out just yesterday that the University is preparing to close Boyd Hall (the dorm where I lived) indefinitely. They say it’s at less than 90% capacity so they aren’t going to keep it open anymore. When I heard the news, I literally almost cried. It sounds silly since it’s just an old dorm and I don’t even live there anymore—in fact, that’s about what Zack said when I told him. But to those of us who actually spent a part of our lives there, it was so much more than that.
