How my Masters is Ruining my Life

Ooh, a big title today. 

Before we begin, no, don't worry, this is not going to be a big rant about how going back into studying has stolen all of my socialising time, and I can't do anything but work, and it's ruining my life. Definitely not, because that is categorically [untrue]. And the reason it is untrue is that my undergrad degree was so often fraught with the tension of work vs play that I knew I had to be better this time, and not let my studying stress out my entire life again. Praise the Lord, it isn't nearly so bad this time. :)

How could this guy being in your life stress you out? He couldn't. He's too lush.

No, what I mean by my masters ruining my life is more to do with how what I'm learning is affecting how I look at the world. 'Ruining' is probably also somewhat hyperbollic (maybe I exaggerate too much...?), but bear with...

There's something funny about knowledge that is un-doable. Once you know certain things you can't look at life in the same way - it's the same with people: I'm sure we've all got people that we wish we hadn't found particular things out about, because it just changes how we see them, and the attitude we approach them with. I'm finding this with my Masters, that the more I learn what things are, the more I'm encouraged to 'engage with nature', and the more skills I'm taught about how to notice particular things, the more I can't just ignore them and enjoy nature at face value any more. It's not that any of this makes me enjoy nature less, quite the opposite, in fact; but I cannot shut it off.

Flowery Fireworks

Way back at the  beginning of November (how time flies!), I went to the fireworks display at South Parks in Oxford. I say 'I went to' - I went and stood outside the gate to the park, along with the rest of Oxford's cheapskates who don't pay to go in to the fair, but freeload the fireworks from outside. 

I just love fireworks: I love the fact that they overwhelm your senses with light and sound and the feel of the explosion - they're just wonderful. It's the only thing that makes me think going to the South Bank for new years would be worthwhile. So I'm there, all snuggled up in my gloves and scarf, with my housemate Lizzie, and my brain goes 'That firework looks like an Apiaceae's umbellifer infloresence. And that next one looks like an Asteraceae...' [the one pictured to the left]. 

I couldn't believe it. 'Brain!' I said to my brain. 'Brain - what are you doing?! It's Saturday night! Chill out!' But did it listen to me? No, it did not. Similarly, as I sit on the train in the mornings watching the Oxfordshire/Berkshire countryside roll past, each day I'm spotting different things (when I'm not snoozing, that is), identifying different birds as they fly past, seeing different plant assemblages, wondering how I'd map out that piece of land if I had to survey it. My brain has been tuned into a new way of thinking that means that things I used to see passively I now see actively, and things I'd just look at before, I now study. Before, I would photograph things because I loved the way they look - now I do it because I want to know what it is too. Grass is the worst - having done some grassland surveys I now can't even walk over a patch of grass without my brain trying to categorise it into a specific type of grassland, or revising the latin names of the different species that I can see. (I can 'Achillea millifolium' at you 'til the cows come home...)

But it's how brains learn, isn't it? You become hypersensitive to the things you're learning, and can't switch off from them, can't go back, can't unlearn. It happens to medics who suddenly 'have' the diseases they're learning about, and psychologists who start to analyse themselves in terms of each new theory they learn. Life certainly isn't ruined, not in a bad way, but becomes so changed in outlook and perspective because of what you know that you almost can't remember how you managed to look at life in any other way.

I've been thinking about this a lot over the last little while, and thinking about how many times I've heard people say that becoming a Christian 'ruined' their life. It sounds crazy, especially when you're a Christian yourself, but I can totally see what they mean. You're cruising along happily with your life, doing your own happy thing in your own strength, with your own motives, and in your own abilities; and then suddenly your life is turned upside down by this revelation, or an encounter. Like a middle-aged woman who's just discovered Ocado.com, life will never be the same, in an empowering and potentially dangerous way.

You're called to live differently from how you have before: something different flows out of you, and somehow the things that seem important aren't what they were before. But it's all because you can't see things how you used to any more, everything has a new light. In the light of who Jesus is, and what relationship with him feels like, and the salvation you have that you know you don't deserve, you can't switch off and return to your old life, and can no longer just do things by yourself. It can be hard work and self-sacrificial, and a huge commitment, yet there's so much life there.

It feels like this same type of learning, where you get attuned to new things and you simply can't switch them off.

It's exciting and terrifying at the same time.

Recently I've had a bit of an awakening of that feeling. I think at points during last term I'd slipped from going to God and doing life in his strength rather than my own. I mean, I was doing alright, all of my work was getting done and everything was ok, but there was just something missing; things felt laborious and tiring and stressful, even though they shouldn't have. God has blessed me with a good portion of capability, so I very often forget that it was him who gave it to me, and just try and power on with my own capability and little more. But once you know what living in the grace of God and in his strength feels like, you just can't settle for the old life anymore. I can't settle for stretches of time without God's input, knowing what life with God looks like. I joke about not being able to switch this new engagement with nature off, but now I'm there, if someone took my field guides away from me and told me I wasn't allowed to find any more out I'd be gutted. And there's always so much more to learn too - the more you know, the more you love it, and the more you realise there's still so much more to know. Living life awakened to God is the same - once you see it you can never settle with going back, and can never stop finding out more what he is really like.

I've been listening to Rend Collective Experiment a lot recently, and LOVE this song. Thank goodness that every time we forget, or think we've un-learnt, what it is to live life with him, he welcomes us back. Again. And again. And again. Countless second chances :)

Silent Spring

At Christmas this year, it was abundantly clear that I was back studying the environmental sciences: my presents included a swish pair of binoculars, some wellie stickers, wellie socks, wellie holders (I know, I didn't know they existed either), and the book Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson.

I'd asked for this book from my grandparents. It's one of those juggernauts of a book that was hugely influential when it was written, changing a lot of people's ideas about agriculture, ecology and conservation. It riffs on the idea of spring falling silent, as hundreds of birds die during the late 50s and early 60s, from poisining due to accumulations of pesticides in the food chain. I guess as an environmental student, not having read it is a bit like a biological sciences student not having read The Origin of Species (*gulp* I've read most of it, I promise...), or a Literature student never having read any Shakespeare. Needless to say, I hadn't read it; hence why I asked for it for Christmas. To appease the guilt. 

Owning it is, at least, a step in the right direction, right?

Rachel Carson is my kind of writer - she writes about scientific things in a wonderfully descriptive way - waffly, almost - but poetic and emotive. In the first year of my undergrad degree, my college tutor told me that I was getting the right points into my essays, but the language was too poetic for scientific writing. I know that that was true for those essays, but it's nice to see that other writers write Biology poetically and from the heart too. Thankfully, in a more recent assignment for my masters, that was self-reflective and about our personal conservation philosophy, this waffly tone found its place!

As I read the book (I have started - but I'm only a short way into it!), I stumble upon quotes that I love on almost every page. My favourite so far is thus:

"Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?"

She is speaking here of people's acceptance of the deterioration of the environment due to overexploitation and excessive pesticide use, as if it were a matter of course: as if it were the only way, just because that is how it is. Which, of course, it is not -  we are beginning to see that now, some fifty years on from the writing of this book. 

Beautiful British Countryside :)

That quote inspires me, as someone who's hoping to make a career in this sector; but also for life, in general. [What a broad statement.] Does it you? 

Are we in a state that accepts that which is inferior, having lost the will or vision to demand that which is good? It makes me sad to think of how many of us live like this, and how often I do too. We so easily accept what is in the world, the circumstances around us, regardless of what they are. 

Perhaps it's because we don't think we can do anything about them.
Perhaps we are apathetic.
Perhaps we don't think we deserve any better.
Or perhaps it's easier to accept circumstances without thought, than face up to their reality.

Recently I've been thinking about fear and anxiety. Without going into too much of a sad diary entry, I struggled with anxiety and fear in my late teens, which was triggered by one reasonably trivial incident, but exacerbated by doing too much, not having time to process life, putting too much pressure on myself, and being bathed in the anxiety of several friends who had real depressive and axious tendencies. Fear and anxiety are the kind of things that creep into life without you noticing. 'Through the back door", a wise friend of mine described it as. And before you know it, you are coping with living through anxiety. 

But life in that state is both inferior and detrimental. 

And somehow, among all that, I lost the vision to demand that which is good. Anxiety was what I saw around me in others, it was what that portion of my life looked like, I just accepted it as normal. A bugger, but normal.

Jesus had so much to say on this issue. He said that he came to give us life, and life to the fullest (John 10:10);  that we shouldn't worry because God provides for us (Matthew 6:25-34); and that when we ask from God he will give us good things (Matthew 7:9-11). 

Life, and life to the fullest.

I guess it feels to me like it's time for some people to demand life to the fullest, instead of the fear and anxiety that they live in. And time for us, like Rachel Carson, to see the world around us and realise that it is in an inferior and detrimental state. To demand better. To intercede for people and situations that fall below what they deserve. To understand that God loves us, and wants good things for us, deems us deserving of it. Because it is 'for freedom that Christ set us free'.

One person who certainly embraces life to the fullest is the current joy of my life: Miranda. Last week's episode was all about her not conforming to what other people think she should be doing, but chosing to embrace joy. Here's a trailer for next week's. I love her. 

Enjoy :)