lemon cheesecake

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One of my favorite pieces of advice that I received during studio is this:
“Don’t be a slave to your metaphor.” I think it applies in multiple levels, don’t you?

It is this that popped into my head as I was contemplating working on my thesis tonight (this is a procrastination isn’t it?). What also came to mind was a comment from a well-meaning person at the meditation retreat I attended this past weekend.

“But are you passionate about your thesis? You said that you like it, but are you passionate about it?”

I must admit to a certain level of irritability at that comment. What the hell? Am I passionate about my thesis? Am I passionate about my THESIS? And what I was hearing was “If you aren’t passionate about your thesis, then why are you bothering to do it at all? What a pathetic existence! Who cares about how good your idea is, if you aren’t passionate about it.” Never mind that I’d just spent two years working on the topic. No, not working, ANGST-ING over the topic, going through hundreds of concepts to find what was significant to me, what I could conceivably find and work on for hundreds of hours that I could feel was a worthwhile for my effort.

Am I passionate about my thesis? Will piped in and said “No one I know is passionate about their thesis. Thesis isn’t something you are passionate about, it is something you get through.” End of discussion. Thank you.

Am I passionate about my thesis? Now that I’m thinking about it (you know something is significant if you are thinking about it days later - just what form of significant is to be discovered), I should have responded a little differently.

Am I passionate about my thesis? If what you are saying is that I should be thinking about it every moment of the day, that I should be eager to work on it to the point of exclusion of all else, that it is the light of my day, and that I am willing and excited to stay up at all hours of the night to work on it, that it would be worth going to work exhausted in order to spend time with my thesis, that I give my thesis more time and attention than I give to my patients or partner, that I think about thesis when I am giving someone a terminal diagnosis, that I’d rather work on thesis than work in the garden, then clearly, the answer is a resounding “NO.” If you are saying that I should reconsider my thesis topic if I do not feel this way about it, then I would suggest that you have never done a thesis.

Am I passionate about my thesis? On the other hand, if being passionate about it means that it is something that I think about frequently, that it was an underlying theme in all my education these last few years, that it is something that I feel strongly enough to be investing hundreds of dollars in books and spending hundreds of hours reading said books, to have the information change the way that I conduct my life in its content rather than time requirement, that it is something that I am curious about, fascinated by, and that my mind has been putting together for years, even before the concept of thesis had been born... then yes, I am passionate about my thesis. Do I always like working on it? No. If I were, I wouldn’t be writing this would I? Do I like writing it? Formatting it? Constructing it? Feeling the weight of it bearing down on me? Excluding the rest of my interests to pursue it? Clearly no. Honestly, I'd rather be scarfing down the leftover lemon cheesecake that I made for the party last week. I realized that the reason that the question irritated me was because I know I'm not working as hard as I "should" on it. It would be nice to be "passionate" about thesis, to always be excited to work on it. But I would rather have a life than a thesis.

I don’t need to be a slave to my metaphor.




*lemon cheesecake photo from Epicurious.com. Mine had lemon curd on top and a vanilla cookie/graham cracker/toasted almond crust.