On a Cramming Spree

It is this time in the school year that hope of upping one's grade is shot. Final requirements are banking the corner and all I can do is hold on and pray that the minimal effort I have put in get me through. A lack of inspiration clouds the mind, barred from rekindling the intellectual flame, where now I have only barely begun to reach.

Everyone needs a little inspiration, a lucky cricket on their shoulder, an angel to watch over. When it feels like the world is spinning the opposite direction, the clouds that parted begin to twist into a fast approaching hurricane and here you stand in its eye, the calm before the winds kick down the door.

It's the final weeks and requirements that seemed a horizon away are now at my fingertips. Tests, papers, orals and even more papers. People's advice is to take it one by one, step by step and somehow I'd get to the end; like a turtle or a snail creeping to the finish line, I push on hoping not to get trampled on. However, I got into a course that teaches development. How can I take things one at a time when development is in every class I'm taking; whether it's business statistics, theology of social liberation and the option for the poor, or project management it's all geared towards social development? Taking things sequentially now seems an impossible task, all the classes have blended together like a fruit shake gone wrong. You think of one, you think of them all. Difficulty after difficulty like a house of cards built on a pillow.

On top of this so-imagined deck of cards stand Alzheimer's. Everyday I pray for a sign of hope, however knowing that it only fades, literally. I fear for the vulnerable mind that is unaware of its state; I fear the day that my face becomes unknown and my name unheard of. Frustration sometimes gets the better of me, where visually there is a strong woman sitting in front of me and it seems as though all is well, I refuse to run on the loop with her thinking that somehow she can come back. I see how each day is a challenge, an unknown battle to be faced, but each day it is won. Here's my little inspiration: my grandmother battling this disease without even knowing its existence. This is what it means to take things day by day and moment by moment. Here she refuses assistance despite her inabilities; the mind is strong-willed and even more so when the body is worn down.

My life verse: Ecclesiastes 9:10
¹⁰ Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might,for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.