Absurdity

I am sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for a flight to take me back to Ohio and my other life. Earlier today I was driving to an airport in Kansas with my spouse and youngest son and I made the remark that I felt schizophrenic. It was probably an improper use of the word, but it effectively communicated my feelings of having two different lives. I had just finished two weeks of being reunited with my family and I was trying to prepare myself for six weeks or so of being separated from them once again. 

The trip to the airport was generating feelings of being disconcerted as my emotions were in once place and my physical being was on the way to another place with a separate place of residence, a different time zone, with different sets of routines and responsibilities. My mind needed to be refocused on my life as a professor and researcher who is on a tenure clock, who is facing a lot of grading as the end of the semester approaches as well as articles that need to be written. But doing so was painful and something I wanted to avoid as long as possible.

As I sit here in the midst of this parade of humanity that is a busy airport on a Sunday afternoon, inundated with a head-splitting cacophony of sound, I am struck with the realization of this absurd aspect of my life. It is in the time I spend with my family that I am able to create a life with clarity and meaning that is emotionally fulfilling and comforting. However, to provide for the economic security and well being of my family, I live another life that separates me from them by 900 miles. My other life is a time of working for clarity and meaning in the midst of uncertainty as a new professor and researcher. It is an adventure which a part of me wants to liken to the explorers of long ago who set forth into the unknown, wondering if they would ever see home and loved ones again, but I know that my adventure is much safer and certain than was theirs.

I look forward to the time when this geographical and chronological split in my life is bridged, but there is also a part of me that realizes that this emotional turmoil is somewhat healthy in the search for intellectual clarity and meaning. Holding too tightly to the emotional clarity and meaning would require foregoing the opportunity for intellectual adventure.

Like Kierkegaard’s Absurd Man, I choose to embrace the absurd and create my own meaning and clarity. I am thankful that my family seems to be coping with this absurdity as well. It was great to spend a couple of weeks with them and summer vacation will be here soon.