More guilt

I began this at the end of the first month of the semester, and now it's almost the end! Boy, do my old posts sound depressing; I guess I was thinking a lot back then, or just trying to overcome my melancholia by ranting publically/privately to no one. It's all very self-indulgent, but I appreciate this forum which no one will ever stumble upon and identify as mine.

Last semester I was thinking a lot about self-improvement because I was taking that awesome course, Religious Belief and Moral Action, with Don Swearer -- the best class that I have ever taken in college. And now I am cramming through the material again for an exam in just two days. I'm amazed by how much stuff is there that I just didn't read through, understand or care about. So much of it is life-transforming, depending on how much you let it penetrate your experience and perception. I was thinking about life, and how unstructured it will be after graduation. Failure in life is so much more intangible, but with so much greater consequences. After going to teach in Nanjing for a year, I have no idea what I want to do or where I want to go. But I do know the kind of person that I want to be, but who gets external validation as a moral exemplar? :) Except posthumously. I want to be a good person; I want to be generous and compassionate and loving. What if I die and have no way of evaluating/assessing my life? It's frightening.

I was reading about the ethic of caring, as discussed by Nel Noddings. It's a really interesting and informative read, i suspect, particularly for females. I was thinking about caring, how I care, whether I think I really care or what I think caring means as to how she defines it. I think she's pretty on the mark. I pride myself on caring for my friends, generally, but with these past few weeks I've just become so much of a taker that I've had very little to give, and what I've given I've done so stingily, so that even giving, the only thing that brings joy, only brings more shame and self-disgust. From some of my friends I just keep taking, keep taking... And to this one friend in particular, one whom I will be very sad to see leave at the end of this week, I feel for him that I just can't give enough. If only he'd ask for more.

Ultimately I just fall into the same weakness as I always do. What's worse is that I pretend not to and hide it, and feel guiltier afterwards. If things were different -- if things were different, things now could be so different, but even in that alternate dimension of the universe I would not then be thinking about how things are different. But that doesn't stop the truth for me, that I will miss Ak, and I will always wonder if he misses me just the same, or a little less, or any at all.