I step outside, I take a pause; not a meaningless, lazy one but rather one to observe, to look, feel and get me thinking about something, anything. I attempt to push away the monotony of my schedule.
I stand there outside my dorm, my lecture hall or wherever I paused and look at people who pass by. They rush to classes which they have not prepared for, primarily because they couldn't care less about what happens in them. As long as they manage to wiggle through at the end- get over with them with the result being sufficiently non-reflective of the complete lack of bother towards what the class symbolically stood for, life goes on as usual.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying they don't try, but frankly, even if one does try, what exactly does he try for? I am studying Cellular, Molecular and Developmental Biology because I like it. I am inexplicably fascinated by how these little molecules can interact, function as a complete system and have outcomes of, miraculously, life. And somewhere, at some point of time, everyone does. Everyone appreciates an aspect of the otherwise distastefully blandly portrayed academia; a moment, perhaps, often and hopefully lasting longer than merely momentarily, of absolute clarity such that the repetitious plug-ins of mathematical theorems, the mechanized equations of physics principles, the horribly dry figures of history, the meaninglessly microscopic processes of biology and the inexorably complexified principles of economics anthropomorphize into a very absolute form of beauty; this sublime, intellectual orgasm.
I can imagine a smile on my face radiating a serene joy, only I realize it is actually there, as I stand there on the stairs aloof and goofy. I snap back into reality and trudge on to my next class. I have to be at a lecture hall with nearly 700 students and watch as the professor takes the beauty of Darwin's work and does the seemingly impossible act of making it ordinary. The single story and journey of every living thing on this planet, together with mathematically sound correlations, all from observing life around us incarcerated behind the hollow grandeur of lifeless theories... Am I the only one who can vividly picture these few presentation slides plunging into Darwin's and many other 'fathers'' souls and seeing the sparkle in their eyes slowly fade away?
And every time I think of that, my mind adds a few miles between me and the light at the end of the tunnel. Angry, frustrated, stripped of the pride I had in seeing the beauty of Biology and confounded helpless, I, like so many others, hurriedly attempt to complete the paper in front of me.
I can imagine a smile on my face radiating a serene joy, only I realize it is actually there, as I stand there on the stairs aloof and goofy. I snap back into reality and trudge on to my next class. I have to be at a lecture hall with nearly 700 students and watch as the professor takes the beauty of Darwin's work and does the seemingly impossible act of making it ordinary. The single story and journey of every living thing on this planet, together with mathematically sound correlations, all from observing life around us incarcerated behind the hollow grandeur of lifeless theories... Am I the only one who can vividly picture these few presentation slides plunging into Darwin's and many other 'fathers'' souls and seeing the sparkle in their eyes slowly fade away?
And every time I think of that, my mind adds a few miles between me and the light at the end of the tunnel. Angry, frustrated, stripped of the pride I had in seeing the beauty of Biology and confounded helpless, I, like so many others, hurriedly attempt to complete the paper in front of me.
