still haven’t found what I’m looking for

Tags

c.s.lewis, eggs, feelings, psychology, quotes, struggle, thoughts

I’ve been back in Dublin three full days and the fourth is moving along quickly. And as much as I have been loving being home and sleeping in my own bed, I still feel a little restless, unsettled.

As I lingered over my mug of tea this morning, I pondered on what it was that was making me feel so uneasy and I can’t help but wonder if it is down to the fact that everything is exactly the way it was before I left. Somehow I just haven’t found what I was looking for, whatever that may be.

I don’t know what I was expecting to happen on my trip to Berlin, but whatever it was it obviously didn’t. Now don’t get me wrong I loved every minute of my adventure and even though I had  a few moments of loneliness, a longing to share my experience with someone, overall I would say it was a successful experiment.

So why am I not content, why am I struggling to find my feet in this reality that is my world? Maybe it is because nothing has really changed, all I did was take a step to the side while the world kept moving on in the same direction. Maybe the change I was hoping for is nothing that can happen by leaving reality behind but maybe I have to leave me behind, or at least some of me, those bits of me that keep me from being and doing what I really want. Maybe what I am looking for isn’t out there but within me.

Whatever the answer may be and however long I may have to look for it, I do hope that one day I will find what I am looking for, or be found. So hopefully this inner struggle is me breaking free from my shell, freeing myself to be able to fly… or as the great C.S.Lewis put it so wonderfully:

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: It would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg, We are like eggs at present, And cannot go on indefinitely just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

reading into it

Tags

atmosphere, c.s.lewis, friends, literature, mental-health, miscellaneous, quotes, reaing, thinking, writing

I came across a question the other day that made me stop and think. It was just five words and a question mark, but it opened up a whole world of ideas.

But what is actually reading? The answer may seem simple and straight forward, reading is the skill of seeing, understanding and interpreting written words. But is that really all it is?

The more I thought about it the more I realised that reading is so much more and doesn’t actually need the written word at all. We don’t just read words, we read people and their actions, situations, atmospheres, pictures and sometimes even clouds.

So while I enjoy the written word as a form of communication, a tool to learn and understand and as pathways into my imagination with it’s endless stream of stories I think I may possibly read a lot more unwritten things then I am aware of.

I read the the weather before I get dressed, I read my students and the atmosphere in the class room, I read strangers behaviours around me, I read between the lines of what my friends tell me, I read their feelings and even read my own moods, wants and needs.

Of course I get it wrong sometimes, just like little spelling mistakes in a word can change it’s whole meaning, so can little signs, feeling and ideas change how you view what is right i font of you. But most of the time, like that sentence in a book you misunderstood, you don’t notice your error till further down in the book or situation.

However no matter how often I misread something the lure of reading always pulls me back in, no matter if it’s books or the world around me. Like C.S. Lewis once said:

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me