As I write these words, I have my laptop on my lap, and within the past half an hour or so have had my right leg cramp up on me twice, once waking me up from my usual fitful sleep. Given the amount of activity I have scheduled for today, it looks like today is starting as a particularly struggilicious day. Yet it is impossible to talk about a day that one has not experienced yet unless one wants to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I would wish to avoid that particular fate at this point. So I will not be talking about the struggilicious day of today, but rather that of yesterday, a day that was defined from start to end with a sense of struggle, not necessarily in an unpleasant sense but certainly in a real sense that must be taken into consideration as I reflect upon the course of my life.

When I woke up yesterday, it took me a little while to remember that it was only the sixth day of the week, and that I had another day of work to finish before the Sabbath began. Then, when I got to work, I was interrupted from my usual morning reports by a phone call where I had to explain the results of the precise report I was working on, trying to make sense of the numbers, as it were. After that was done, some of my coworkers around me were a bit alarmed, thinking they had been doing something wrong as a result of hearing the phone conversation I had had without context. So, in animatedly discussing the context, I managed to spill a cup of water on myself, and thankfully managed to spare the computer, which promptly terminated that conversation and forced me to find enough paper towels to dry my desk and my khakis. I then continued on my work.

During my morning break and lunch, which were not very far apart because of the schedule I tend to follow, I spent my time talking to a couple of coworkers who I do not know particularly well but who I often see. During the course of our friendly conversation, I made a comment about someone’s hair being struggilicious today, and they all had a good laugh at me because they could not see someone like myself, so educated and cultured, knowing such a ghetto term. As I have lived a complicated life, which has included over a decade living in the ghetto areas of Tampa, Florida and Los Angeles, I am full of complicated layers that tend to surprise people and, in this case at least, delight them. As it happens, I learned about the term from a sports journalist named Bomani [1], who is rather entertaining. Still, teaching a humorous ghetto term to people who have more right to it than I do was definitely amusing, even if one of the coworkers was struggling with some relationship drama with a baby daddy, drama that I do my best to avoid.

Nor did the struggling end there. I managed to leave on my desk the book I had taken with me to read, and will have to pick it up when I return to the office next, and finish it then. I then managed to struggle for a few minutes trying to get gasoline at a station in Hillsboro that I do not go to often, as I was on the way to spend the evening with some friends from my congregation. Even that particular evening reminded me that there are times in life (and this is one) where there is a constant struggle between different sorts of tensions, between one’s loyalty to friends, between one’s determination to do the right thing, between one’s resolution to fulfill one’s responsibilities and honor one’s word, even when it is immensely inconvenient and stressful to do so, and one’s desire to flee as far away from trouble as possible, even if it always has a way of stalking some of us the way a lion stalks an antelope. There are times in life where everything one does is wrong, and where doing anything is an immense struggle. Let us hope these times do not last forever, and that the character and patience we learn from them can give us the serenity and the equilibrium we seek in life, to cope with all that it brings, even days like this.

[1] http://youtu.be/7_hYU_Bn7dk