final countdown (of dubious significance)

Gather 'round, story time.

Dig if you will, the picture: an upper-level college math course final exam awaited me to close out my semester. And lemme tell you, dear reader, it did not look good. I scored horribly on ALL previous tests -- so to pass (the class), I needed an uncommonly sterling grade on this final! Cumulative exam, of course. And yes, graduating depended upon this class.

Desperate times require desperate valor and measures. It was 'hook or crook' time.

I knew I had to dig out of a sizable hole. So in the weeks leading up, I visited that professor's office hours every day (I visited her office more in those few weeks than I had visited, in college, all other professors combined! ... in retrospect, this explains a lot). I had equations to practice, and questions to ask ... and re-ask. Surely, the professor glimpsed the desperation behind my eyes and in my new routine of dropping in on the regular. For some of these visits, she'd find me waiting outside her office for her when she arrived.

My struggle consumed these few weeks. Also on my mind was packing up my space to graduate ... landing a new job in a new city ... closing out a semester. 

On exam day, my heartbeat thudded in my ears. I made sure to get decent sleep, woke up early enough to have coffee and a decent breakfast. My calculator, a few sharpened pencils, and ample scratch paper filled my backpack. I harbored no illusions that 'doing my best' would look objectively stellar. It would be a struggle. My aim was to get myself to 'good enough' (to never have to do it again).

Daydreaming as a child, the sports I imagined playing professionally were baseball, or tennis ... but never football. Yet on that slow walk to take the final that spring morning, I visualized it like marching toward a gridiron game. This gridiron game, in particular, would test my mouthguard with the hits and tackles I'd absorb.

This exam would never, ever end up on Mom & Dad's refrigerator for display. My private, titanic, epic, galaxy-altering, soul-shaping battle of infinite proportions would never make mention in any history book worth reading. No cap. But toward the field I marched -- girded, hoping to vanquish, hoping to work the test as hard as the test was gonna work me.

Completing the test itself seemed like an oddly serene blur. I remember feeling a barely discernible level of spooked confidence. I also tried to keep from making careless mistakes by working too fast. Tried to take my time. Tried to remember the equations that'd dominated my life -- and dreams -- these past few weeks. I made sure to show my work. I turned in my test with a deep sigh, walked out, and in a daze, I wandered around campus.

Could it be all over? 

I walked back to my apartment. I waited. I prayed. And paced the floor. And waited some more. And prayed some more. I wanted to nap, but my nerves felt too jangled and frayed to attempt this.

A few hours later, an email arrived from the professor:

On this final exam, I'd scored a solid B.

Praise the Lord for how much data the short-term memory can retain! This exam grade brought my total grade up to (barely) passing the course.

                                         

Wow, I did it. 

Did my GPA take a hit? YES.

Did I care? NOT REALLY. 

I got it done. It was behind me. 

And to this day, not a single job I've ever interviewed for has asked me about that atrocious grade on my college transcript. That exam got the best I could give, which was (barely) good enough.

Point being: your best efforts (and my best efforts) will usually not be as swell as someone else's best efforts. Maybe you won't have an ideal amount of time to prepare. Maybe you won't have a natural talent for what you're doing, so nothing comes easy. Maybe your to-do list will look like a giant drug  store receipt, so you can't give all the attention you'd prefer to it.

Some stuff just needs to get done.

Some stuff needs to get done so we can move on to working on the stuff that's a higher priority to us. That's not sexy. It's an utterly pragmatic approach to life, but that's how it goes. Godly wisdom recognizes that we are finite creatures, created to need sleep, to function best on healthy food and adequate water intake. And that some stuff is more important to us than other stuff.

If you haven't learned by now, college is where a lot of us learn this universal truth: you cannot excel at everything. Sometimes just moving past (and through) something is enough. We gotta gird up, and epically fight the battle, that final countdown of dubious significance.

May the odds favor you.

And if the odds do not favor you with the battle you face, may you glean the wisdom to figure out how to tilt the odds to favor you.

Hook or crook.

over-feeling & never leaving well enough alone

"You're overthinking it." I've been told this, and have told this, countless times over. 

You have too. 

But you know what I've never, ever heard said to me? "You're over-feeling it." 

And why not?

If we can overthink, we can over-feel. Seems to make sense.

What's overthinking? 

My take: it's when we analyze a thought, relentlessly. We do this a point where it disrupts much of our day, and a disproportionate amount of life. It derails other thoughts. It overrides other stuff we want to also ponder. It stays excessively heightened in our mind's eye.

BUT here's the thing: our thoughts aren't always right. Actually, we're wrong about as often as we're right. So therefore, not every thought we have is well-thought-out.

So what's over-feeling? 

My take: It's when we analyze our feeling(s), relentlessly. We do this to a point where it disrupts much of our day, and a disproportionate amount of life. It derails other feelings. We're somehow unable, in the moment, to discern if the feeling's valid. It overrides other feelings we want to properly feel. It stays excessively heightened in our heart and mind.

BUT here's the thing: our feelings are sometimes mistaken. Actually, our feelings can be off-base as much as true. So not every feeling we have is sensibly felt.

"In my defense I have none, for never leaving well enough alone..." -T.S. (The 1)

How do we stop over-feeling?

Whoa, whoa whoa.

First, let's check expectations. 

Trying to abruptly *stop* over-feeling will likely end in failure. Might as well try to stop feeling a breeze when you're outside and it's windy. Nor can we expect to always *control* our over-feeling tendencies.

I picture it like this: I have this plate of food sitting in front of me. The only item on the plate is a food called 'over-feeling.' It tastes like plain oatmeal, which is not everyone's favorite. And somehow, I can't take it off the plate (so that option is out), nor can I push the plate off the table (that option's also out). One way or another, I've gotta eat this mush. 

So what to do?

What I can do is I can try to interrupt, to interfere with that over-feeling taste, so that it's not the only taste on the plate. I put something else on the plate with it. I can add salt. Or ketchup, or brown sugar, or butter, or popcorn, or ranch dressing, or milk, or anything. 

The point is not that it tastes great. The point is that the taste of over-feeling gets disrupted. There's no law that says 'over-feeling' gets to overwhelm us all by itself. Adding ketchup radically disrupts the taste. My goal is to add to and crowd my over-feeling, to disrupt the taste. 

This concept takes center stage in the book The Giver.

Jonas finds living with memories amidst the Sameness landscape undesirable. But he can't rid himself of the burden. So what does he do? Jonas flees to some Elsewhere so that the burden of memory isn't all he has with him.*

Make the over-feeling work for it.

Also: it's reasonable to need help when we face our over-feeling tendencies. It takes time to learn new ways. Praying to God helps. The counsel and/or silent presence of wise, loving friends can also do much good. These are some options to add to the plate, to crowd the over-feeling.

The presence of feelings is not the problem. It's the over- part of feeling (and thinking) that we can learn to spar with, to check, to push back against, and to test. Over-feeling won't go away, and won't always be controlled. But that doesn't mean there's nothing we can do.

(*If you're a reader of the Narnia book series, Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle does this in The Silver Chair. 

He can't put the enchanted-smelly fire out, so he grinds his bare foot into flames. The smell of Puddleglum's burnt foot irrevocably disrupts the enchantment.)