SURVIVOR!

Live from Dorm Room:



These are my beautiful friends.

 

Whenever I sit down to write a new blog post, I never intend on making it heavy. My friend Chad says it's "deep" and reflects who I am. I do, however, admire Katelyn's blog for its lighthearted and hilarious content. You can brighten your day with it: http://katelynjackson.blogspot.com/.

I truly enjoyed this past weekend. I was able to finish two Stephen King novels on Friday, which I deemed my relaxing day to recuperate from the fairly awful week that preceded it. On Saturday, I spent the night at Pumpkin Hollow with Katelyn and some of our great friends. Although I was scared out of my mind (looking back on it, I acknowledge how silly it was to be so frightened at costumed people), I was able to revel in my fear with people I love. Thankfully, I had a friend I could hold onto when I was freaking out. On Sunday, I also got to see a movie/get coffee with KJack because I was soaking up as much time with her as I could.

The Bell Jar. Read it!

Today I was in Biology Lab, mindlessly taking a quiz over the past two units, and I wrote down an answer with both "survive" and "thrive" in it, referring to Joseph Priestly's experiment that concluded plants and animals use each other when placed in a bell jar under the sunlight. (The irony that I wrote about a "bell jar" is immense, seeing as The Bell Jar is one of my favorite novels of all time.)

And I started thinking about how similar "thrive" and survive" sound, even though they have completely different meanings. To survive indicates scraping by and making do with what one is given. When I hear the word survive, I always imagine a scraggly man dressed in the barest of linens, living in a cave and killing what he needs to eat to defeat hunger. And thriving...thriving is such a different story. We thrive where we feel the most comfortable, where we fit. We thrive with people who love us, we thrive in the fields we excel. I can imagine myself thriving through music, with words, on rainy days with the clouds are saturated with darkness, with people I love who make me laugh incessantly and fill the silence with a stream of rich conversation. Surviving is living, but only just. The  battle to survive in this sordid world is constant, but the battle to thrive...well, that's the real goal, I think.

I've been having quite a few bad days, but every night I tell myself that there's a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day (thank you, Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress), and God is so good, even if I don't take the time to see what He's done for me. On another note, LSU and Loyola sent me transfer packets!

Deuces (are wild),

Broe