I attended Mass this morning at the Abbey church on the campus of my alma mater, Saint John’s University. I put my phone on airplane mode before I went into church. The service was wonderful, as always. And I felt spiritually refreshed after heading out. That’s a great feeling. I looked at my phone once after my friend Jer and I got out, but I forgot to switch it off of airplane mode, so I thought I didn’t have any messages. It took me an hour before I realized what I had done.
It felt really great to be on the campus of Saint John’s for the weekend. It was my first homecoming and the weather was ideal. I was in the company of good friends, which included my friend Jer who had flown in from Rhode Island for the weekend.
My anxiety towards world events was exacerbated this week due to a variety of reasons. The constant refreshing of the news feed was not doing me any good. That’s why I was glad to go back to a place that, at its core, is still the same as it was. The Benedictines understand tradition. I still kept off Twitter, but I did post to Facebook and Instagram, just to show off to friends where I was.
Jer and I walked around campus. I feel like there aren’t too many other college campuses where you just want to walk around the grounds. (Walking around BU didn’t feel like anything special.) We went to the football game, even though the Johnnies ran up the score early and I spent most of the time keeping an eye of my friends’ kid who probably would have ran onto the field had he not been supervised. We had cold beverages on the tundra and also made our way to Saint Ben’s.
My favorite part of the evening came when Jer and I decided to walk back to Saint John’s from Saint Ben’s. It’s something both of us did only a handful of times. The sun was setting and we purchased some adult provisions to accompany us on the way back. We talked about our futures, our regrets, our hopes, and just about everything else. I told him that these types of things don’t happen that often anymore. People are busy with families, jobs, travel, and tons of other things. And that’s all fine, but it was nice to have a few hours where our only purpose was to get back to campus, talk, and take in cold beverages while we walked.
I’m going to go on “airplane mode” for the next few weeks till the election. I have had too much anxiety towards things I have little to no control over: elections, terrorism, global warming. I just want to focus on those essential functions in life. I don’t know exactly what those functions are, but I’m pretty sure many of them could be found in my weekend experience at Saint John’s. I’m going to take a few more breaths, call a few more people, and do more things that build myself up. All wil be well.
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