Personal Response to Context
The struggle to restore honour and certainty may come in different forms, from different situations, and may have different solutions. There are times when you are faced with a problem that seems out of your reach, moving too fast for you to distinguish the details, having the potential to knock you off of your precarious balancing position. What are you going to do about it? Will you simply try to stay balanced until it has passed, letting your honour and certainty slip away, or will you take action to try to slow it down, separate the details from the blur, and restore your honour and certainty?
In the image titled 120 km/h, 1975 by Jan Saudek, a young person is balanced in a precarious position. Directly in front of them, a fast moving train flies by. The individual can barely make out what is happening in the blur, while simultaneously trying to gain some sort of balance on the level-crossing gate as the wind created by the train threatens to knock them down. Similar to the individual in the image, I struggle to find a balancing position where I will not be obliterated by the intense workload of school. There is no possible way that I can slow down the rapidly approaching unit tests, project due dates, and diploma exams in front of me. All I can do is attempt to stay balanced – to keep my head above the water – and distinguish and absorb as much of the information from the blur as I can.
As the weight of homework gets heavier, the pressure to study gets stronger, and time goes faster, I find myself falling. But then I catch myself. My honour and certainty come back into sight as I temporarily regain my balance, until another chemistry assignment gets handed out and I don’t understand it. After catching my breath I am able to slightly make out the details of the speeding train before I remember the math unit exam that is tomorrow for which I still have to study. After barely making it through that, I must focus on the multiple projects with fast-approaching due dates in humanities. I cannot let the wind from the train knock me over as my balance is becoming more unsteady and I am beginning to doubt my honour. But then I receive a mark back in math; I restored my certainty – I aced the test. I catch a glimpse of the date and a panic attack hits me like a train going 120 km/h. There are less than two weeks until I write my diploma exams; I begin to fall again.
I am doing everything I can to succeed in this time of overbearing pressure. Honour is achieving high marks, doing as well as I know I am capable of, and learning new things every day. Certainty is the feedback I get that lets me know I am doing well, and the fact that I will be able to get into university and achieve the goals I am striving towards in my life. In order to achieve this honour and certainty I must keep my balance and effectively make out the details of the train flying past me. I use what little time I have effectively, and I keep my focus on the task at hand. I am taking one step at a time to run the marathon.
As life flies by like a speeding train, we balance on the sidelines trying to make out the details before it is too late. Everyone struggles to restore honour and certainty – whatever their definition of the terms may be. As the train passes we are constantly trying to slow it down in order to discover the solutions to our problems. We may never find the cure to everything, but in the process of looking we may just find a way to stay balanced until we begin to fall again. The conflicts we deal with are always against us – the wind is always threatening to blow us down – and all we can do is struggle against it to stay up.
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