On the Title

Many kids in college attempt blogging to document their college experiences and their thoughts as they go through the proverbial journey of no longer a kid, yet not an adult. I've had friends that did it and subsequently gave up on it and I myself have attempted it before. A lot of times these things fail is because well, as college students, we get busy. We get busy with classes and organizations and work and trying to make friends and dating and lots and lots of binge drinking.

So once again, this is an attempt to blog. However, this blog isn't necessarily for the purpose of my college life or any specific aspect of my life or even my life. It's supposed to be about life in general. I want to keep it broad and I want to keep it that way so that I myself can be improved upon because of this blog. Now about the title: On the Plateau.

First and foremost, it can be seen at face value as a nod to where I live. I was born and raised in this lovely region called the Ozark Mountains which spans from southern Missouri to northern Arkansas to little bits of the corners of Oklahoma and Kansas. Within the Ozark Mountains is the Ozark Plateau where my town sits on. But also, I believe that plateaus can symbolize aspects of our lives both negative and positive. People often use plateaus as euphemisms for say weight loss. When you lose weight, you're essentially going uphill to greater health but eventually you'll stop going up hill and you reach the flat land. You're neither gaining nor losing weight.

The stretch of flat land can represent different times in our lives when we are not going uphill or downhill. Though often it possesses negative connotations, there is the idea that the flatness of the plateau can represent a stillness, almost. Maybe the plateau can represent us achieving normalcy in our lives where we go about our days with our families and friends and careers and it's not something we want to change. I hope to have that. I want that. But right now in my life, I face a different plateau.

I'm now on a plateau of knowledge. This has nothing to do with my college education right now, but my own journey for knowledge outside of the classroom. I used to want to discuss and deliberate all the time on life and love and books and the unanswered questions were always searching to solve but I've lost that. I no longer search for an understanding of concepts and cultures and events and people. I'm on this plateau of staying the same. I'm not becoming more ignorant (because let's face it, after you get more knowledge, you can't go back to the same level of ignorance. You can't younger after you've lived another day) and I'm certainly not becoming more knowledgeable. I want to get off this plateau and climb up. I'm not looking to be the all-knowing professor, but to be a more understanding and thoughtful person.

I need to bring more critical thinking in my life and I intend to seek it out and climb the mountain.

"Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know" - T.S. Eliot