Found myself listening to Dalila up on the way back to my Kentucky home. I have been sorting out my soul this winter, organizing New Years resolutions in advance so I have room for course syllabuses written on the wall. I can use integrity in my daily life. I can not use integrity in my life. Highway 58 is zipping along. Somehow my Honda makes this movement when I press down on the gas pedal. Dalila has a woman on who loves her fiance. Dalila is all about match making and love. There is a small stretch here that always has organ music on NPR and Fox on the country station. An evening with Dalila is not so bad. She is charmingly bubbly. Not really the best listener sometimes - a small miscommunication earlier tonight. Tonight though this woman is lecturing on love, and I don't want to turn the radio off right now, so I listen. "Love," she says "for me and my husband is not a feeling, it is a choice. I am choosing to be with him no matter what, in sickness and in health, until death." Her words resonate with my New Years resolution. I am not going to magically become a better person. When my feeling of hope for compassion closes like a door, I need to stop, and wait it out until that metaphorical door opens again. So I turn off the radio and I am organizing my life a bit. I run through my course schedule in my mind, and think of what might happen. I often feel at odds with my classmates and or professors. Ideas and expressions of ideas can be terrible for me. I think I have been very decisive in my classes. I certainly am vocal about differences of opinion. Again and again I find myself preaching Quaker ideals, environmental ideas, and studious ideals, while living a vulgar, wasteful, and bored class life. We spend a lot of time in class. I do. And that is why class comes to mind as a good place to change my behavior as far as groups are concerned. Otherwise I have pretty much avoided groups other than occasional friend's parties. When I switch back on Dalila I hope I am ready to be the change, cause I never know what she is going to say next. All I can do is prepare myself and chose to be as kind and thoughtful as I can be. But for now, I think I will listen to the bumpy road for a bit longer.