a thought | Colin Brazas ’22

i often feel that i am in the peculiar position where my best qualities are those least easily expressed and that lends itself to a host of issues now if you were to ask me what those issues were what those qualities were i couldn’t tell you and that also lends itself to numerous difficulties and really makes the whole notion rather frustrating i should or at least i feel i should be able to pinpoint those things which i feel so strongly about and the regards i have already put forward yet i can’t and perhaps that in truth only adds to the frustration in when i go to express myself and my frustration in some way or simply yearn to look at what i believe these qualities are i can’t and that only becomes increasingly more frustrating with every time i strive for those answers which i believe if i could reach would greatly benefit me so perhaps this and my constant retelling of this to myself and the debates i host in my own internal dialogue are missing the point entirely and that the goal is not to know but rather to strive to know that said an entirely new issue gets opened up when the question of why is posed to this dilemma and almost certainly the addition of questions rather than the furthered attempt to answer any existing ones only perpetuates this cycle and digs its own hole deeper and deeper although at the very least i am least i am forced to question myself through these exercises and perhaps that is healthy and perhaps that is the benefit of all of this the why of all of this yet while that may be true it does not necessarily untangle the mess which i have presented myself now of course to stop these exercises would be the clearest answer but i believe that would only strip it back to the original issues of qualities easily expressed and vice versa or rather not so easily expressed and i suppose that again this raises the question of why and now i begin to fully realize the scope of the box that i have placed myself in in this exercise and the scope is discouragingly small then again to expect much more than that out of a topic initially so inconceivably deep seems oddly paradoxical and thus i am resigned to repeat this exercise ad infinitum until i reach a conclusion which will only satisfy me the next time i venture down this rabbit hole and that perhaps is the true dilemma of it all not the original issue posed but the hunger for an answer to that dilemma a solution to that dilemma rather and how impossible that is regardless of how badly it is wanted needed

rust, digital photography austin perkins ’21