merton and i

to start, ever since i was in the fourth grade, i have been introspective (as of yet i'm still unaware as to why the advent of my fourth grade year brought on this introspection, but i can speculate that being home schooled beginning the following year and on through graduation -- which meant time spent in public or social settings translated into time spent alone at a desk in my bedroom -- didn't help my situation at all.) regardless, the introspective life can get carried away with itself, i have learned. ...last weekend my introspection drove me into depression for several days, much with good reason because i was dealing with some items of great weight which needed all the serious treatment i could give them. yet in order to use this time of serious introspection most beneficially, i had to know when to come out of it, so i returned to a more balanced rhythm of the [serious&lighthearted] when the time was right. i still struggle to let myself go, to relax, to get outside myself and into the world and relationships around me. merton, a contemplative, has some words that have helped me keep things in perspective as i struggle to learn what it is to be human -- to receive the great 'weight of glory' (c.s. lewise) of my own experience and yet to remain so aware of worlds beyond my own that i can put off the extreme seriousness in order to laugh and play and delight in things external to myself.

thomas merton: the person who cannot despair
despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. it is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.... Despair is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of god and thereby acknowledge that He is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny ourselves. but a person who is truly humble cannot despair, because in a humble person there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.