It is strange how some things (like doors and poems) find you right when you need them.
This morning I woke up having what I’ll call a moment. I sat down at my desk to study and felt crushed by the sheer amount of content remaining with only 30 days till the exam day. By my own standards, I was agitated, something that rarely ever happens. I was frozen in a state of “how do I know where to begin?” and “what have I been doing this whole time!?”. As a kid, when I fell behind, I would often continue to fall further and further back. Usually, but not always, it took me becoming incredibly stressed and frantic for me to find a way to the finish. Sure, I finished, but with a mere breath left in me. What I couldn’t afford was falling prey to that cycle as an adult.
What it took was my door.
A year ago, with a spring cleaning bug, I found a quote I’d (years previous) ferreted away. As a post-bac, pre-med I saw so much (more) worth in it, that I immediately posted it to my door. Now, easily visible both day and night, when I wake and when I lay down to sleep, the words “Just Get Started” stare at me. Three simple words that carry so much freedom and power in them that if they were human, they’d rip my door right off its hinges. On the infrequent occasion when I lose sight of my goals when the light at the end of the tunnel begins to flicker like a bulb on its last leg, I see that quote, and I know just what to do. I start “stringing together the singles.” As if it’s a 10-0 blow-out baseball game, I stop swinging for the home run, risking the strikeout, I just get started and put enough singles together to hopefully win, but at the very least finish with dignity.
Today, moping around, I spotted those words. So I did that, I got started. I chipped away a little so that I could start the next day afresh and hopefully less stressed. That night as I laid down to sleep, I pulled out a poetry volume and happened on Ithaca. I started reading it, liked the first line, and started reading out loud. By the third line, I felt like I was ready to cry, and by the eighth line, I was choking up.
The poem meant so much to me because it put this whole process in perspective. I have spent the better part (nearly the entire part) of the last 3 years (or is it all of my adolescent and adult life) working towards my goals, putting off so much to one day find the greatest reward, the fulfillment of what I believe I can do. I realized that no matter what happens, this has been a beautiful journey, and I have learned so much about myself. I have also learned that it will happen. I will reach my goal, perhaps not in the perfect way I have planned, but in a way no less inspiring and thrilling.
Ithaca taught me to let my mind rest, knowing that life will happen and that looking so far ahead, adding so much pressure on myself, is the “cyclops” on my road. It taught me that the cyclops won’t be there unless I give him an invite. This journey will be everything that I make of it, and I won’t make it awful.
The Sean Connery Recitation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3n2Ox4Yfk