This week begins my second residency at school. The program I am in is partial residency, so this first year I came to school in August, again this week, and will again in May. That very first one was intensely anxiety-inducing, especially leading up to it. Coming into this week I thought I had overcome that, but I realized as the first day quickly approached that I was again feeling anxious, but this time for different reasons.
I have enjoyed this break from school work. Don't get me wrong, I love learning, and synthesizing information, and writing...mostly...but the amount of work is pretty intense. That's not entirely bad, but I feel I have become a master at balancing. The process of deciding where to focus my attention and efforts depending on immediacy is a little like hunting.
Hunting is a skill with which many Americans have lost connection. The advent of mass agriculture makes acquiring proteins much simpler, and separate from historical methods. I'm going to take a step back and acknowledge that earlier in my life I resisted the idea of hunting for my meat. In fact, as a child, my siblings teased me mercilessly, pushing against my delicate sensibilities and connection to animals. I loved bologna sandwiches (go ahead, sing the bologna song..."my bologna has a first name..." you're welcome). I recall a time when my sister lovingly, ahem, stuck her lips out and made mooing sounds at me before and after telling me the various animal parts put together to create the lunch meat. If I thought about what animal I was eating I couldn't eat it. Putting that face to the food was incredibly upsetting.
Into my adult years I began to understand the need to appreciate where my food comes from and how it got to my plate. My environmental and animal connection sensibilities still exist, but I feel I've grown in accepting my role as an animal in the larger global ecosystem. The human body is made to eat both plants and meat. Our digestion system runs most efficiently with a variety of food items. Our dental structure is made to tear meat and grind plants.
It wasn't until I read an article assigned for my graduate course to Namibia two summers ago that my perspective truly shifted. The article discussed the connection of the hunter to the hunted, and that truly personal journey of searching for, killing, and preparing the kill for consumption. I don't know if I will ever have the ability to shoot an animal to eat, but I am interested in participating in the hunt someday.
Earlier I likened balancing life to hunting. Seems a stretch, but come along with me on this. The hunt begins with research. Searching for where to find the animals, taking the time to explore and think. This applies to developing topics for papers as well as looking ahead to work and other life commitments. Then comes the action. This takes various forms. It could be actually writing that paper. Or going grocery shopping. Or going to job #1. Or fulfilling tasks for job #2. Or spending time with the family. Or sleeping. These are in no particular order of priority. Finally it's preparation for consumption. Within this educational path, I consider this portion as the synthesization and integration of the information and discussion and topics. In other parts of my life, I think of this as the appreciation of the richness around me, in my family, my employment, my circle of influence. The consumption part is the changing of who I am and what I do, as whatever you take into your body truly becomes part of you, altering your very chemical composition.
I do struggle between the desire to live life with intention and the desire to accept and grow from what the universe presents to me. Drawing the connection between hunting and daily life does present a bit of that balance. Not all hunts are successful. Sometimes life isn't what we want or hope. I accept the opportunity to make change where I can, live with intention as much as possible, but am also open to the chaos of life.
Bring it.
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