"to cope"

When I looked up "cope" in the dictionary, I found two definitions - the one I expected, and this:

"to meet in combat."

It's so interesting that this word, with roots in Greek and Latin, used to mean (depending on the language) "buffet," "blow," "strike," and "cut," when we now use it to mean "deal with and attempt to overcome problems and difficulties."

Isn't that just like our world today, though? We're less likely to need help buffeting the advances of swordsmen and more likely to need help dealing with hard emotional things. It's like the stress and anxiety and depression have become those swordsmen.

The first thing I thought of when decided what to write for this week was a phrase I've uttered more than once over the last few weeks: "I'm not coping well." I'm to the point in an over-booked semester (please, someone, remind me I can't teach five sections at a time ever again) when I feel overwhelmed by stress. I'm the one valiant knight in the middle of forty opponents at a time, and every time I fight them off forty more appear. And the more than I have to fight, the less able I am to cope - to buffet, to strike, to blow, to cut - effectively. The less able I am to maintain a fighting spirit.

Because that's really what we have to do when we cope, right? Whether it's anxiety, depression, the stress of 90 students, dealing with it all is a fight. Sometimes we're more equipped. Sometimes we even have squires or other knights who have our backs. But it's always a combat of one sort or another. I mean I'm glad, overall, that I'm combating argumentation papers instead of armored warriors, but sometimes I feel like those papers had better training than I in dealing serious blows.

I know I'll be victorious eventually, if not only because the semester has to end at some point. But until then, I'll continue to fight, even if I feel more like the Black Knight by the end.