Week #1 of Spring 13

School began again this week. My last first week of the semester before graduation this spring. Homework already piled around me after the very first class.

Typically, I am the exact opposite of a procrastinator. So for me, the first few weeks of school prove more traumatic than midterms or finals. I see the work pile up and gulp at how much needs doing.

During these times of relative stress, I tend to react in existential crisis. Overwhelming situations often cause me to reel back and question the meaning of my very existence. Why am I doing this? How did I get here? What do I really want?

The problem with these questions is that they focus on me, myself and I, and such a self-focus probably only magnifies the problem.

Friday, I flew (not literally on an airplane, just walked very fast) from an internship interview to a senior project meeting with my professor. From across the desk piled in papers, my professor cocked his head at me and asked if everything was alright. Startled by the question, I rushed past it into my thesis ideas and questions about the paper.

But the truth was—and still is—that things don’t seem quite right.

Compiling research for my Pride and Prejudice project, I’ve been pouring through linguistic studies, Marxist criticism, psychoanalytical critiques, feminist analyses, Austen biographies and histories of Great Britain. Something that keeps recurring is the exercise of choice.

For Jane and Elizabeth Bennet and the other women of the time period, marriage provided the most significant choice available. Beyond the selection of a partner, marriage represented an economic and social class decision. Critics highlight marriage and courtship as the one significant choice granted to single women of the time. Of course even this can be argued because economic, family and other social pressures influenced women, not to mention that their decisions were dependent on  men asking them first. But in Pride and Prejudice, at least, we do see young women choosing: Lydia chooses to elope, Charlotte chooses Mr. Collins, Jane chooses Bingley, and Elizabeth eventually decides on Darcy.

A part of this power of choice manifests itself in the ability not to choose. The grammatical negation not appears often in the text. Elizabeth most frequently practices this form of negation when dismissing unwelcome marriage proposals. Lizzy reveals emotional intelligence, knowing when to say no as well as when to say yes.

Choices are hard. Would you like a large or small? Peach or raspberry? Paper or plastic? Sometimes I feel paralyzed by the infinity of choices. And as school winds up once more, careers loom in the near future, relationships grow, and life dynamics shift, I’m not sure when to say yes, when to say no or when to just hang on. Maybe the constant changes and decisions are just a part of this season of life. But I suspect that they are just a part of life.

So after crying about the who’s and why’s, what’s and how’s, if’s and when’s last night, I woke up this morning to Ephesians chapter 2 and the comfort that I don’t need to know everything right now. Verses 8-10 read, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Everything worth worrying about has already been done. And it is ridiculous to act as though any of my decisions can destroy what God has planned. God values choice, but he does not abandon us to make decisions alone.

So while some truly daunting decisions lie close ahead, all I need to choose today is to finish typing this blog, do more homework and keep breathing.