It's strange when in my mind I know what issue I want to raise in this post, but can't easily put it into words given the nature of the context and complexity, but here goes!
I guess it concerns me and maths and life and expectations and the day to day stuff.
In retrospect, it seems like for sixth form I was always pretty sure about doing maths at uni. Yet during my gap year I had quite a few doubts about that, and various issues like motivation and fundamental identity etc. came up and I was far more focussed on who on earth I was and what on earth was worth living for at the time of my gap year oxford preparation, so I really didn't work much for that but some of the stuff I thought about and then shared with people in Uganda and beyond has changed so much about the ways I can look at life and feel and think, there's this vision of love and new creation and hope that I can really connect to and believe in, and I'd take that over Oxford or money or worldly respect or a feeling of control or whatever anyday, because all those things are only going to die and simply don't compare when it comes down to it and you catch a glimpse of what life could be.
I guess I'm a bit concerned that I can't explain this all that well, and memories of you saying 'why don't you just work until exams then ask the hard questions afterwards?', when I knew that even trying that for a second tore me apart, make me a bit worried that it could look like I'm just raising pointless issues and can't be bothered to work and don't appreciate all your support and am just distracting myself from what really matters with words and unanswerable questions. But I don't have time for that nonsense, if God is real, if love is real, if there really is a hope for us that can outlive death, then there must be so much more than this.
A few times in the last few weeks things lecturers have said have made me feel excitement similar to what I remember I felt often preparing first time round for Oxford, when it felt natural and fun and didn't raise justification questions and was just so different from the second time round and time since then.
And quite a bit recently I've also felt a bit disenchanted with maths and (please be aware that the words I use to try to describe my thoughts, feelings and opinions are usually hard to find and quite often may be misleading just because it's so hard to work out) the question which best describes it is 'why am I doing maths?', and I know a lot of people get that at the start of uni or whatever, but that doesn't necessarily make it any less real.
I find so much related to maths really interesting, like fractals and infinity and dimensions and logic and all that, but I'm really not at all that bothered about getting a 'good job' or doing anything directly related to maths in the future. And I love music and philosophy and languages and history and art and people and ideas and food and beauty and fun and I hate how it's so easy to forget all the incredible things and lose myself in the moment and the system and people forget what it means to dream, and no longer dare hope that they might somehow be free.
Clearly, any of us could die at any second, which certainly puts some things into perspective, but there's obviously the possibility of not dying for however long, so I want to take that perspective and surrender and live how we were meant to live with every breath until then. I don't want this to sound ideological and therefore irrelevant, obviously it's the extreme of the hope and the closest I've been to that future realisation is in moments, but all you need is a glimpse to know it's worth living and dying for.
Um, so I don't really know what this whole maths thing's likely to amount to, I'm quite happy for it to only last a year or 3 or 4 or a month or a day or whatever but at the moment (this is one of the most fragile parts to explain so bear with me) I don't feel inspired/motivated/a desire to do all the work and stuff and would just like to chat about how I view maths and life and me and God and my purpose overall and day to day, because I want to do it better.
Love you
Joe
