Category Archives: Me

Today I recognized a little of what Job felt.

No, I don’t mean the “woe is me, disaster has befallen me” part. I mean the part where Job says “I put my hand over my mouth.”

I decided to look at photography, and so I went on Flickr.

There is the greatness that inspires you to greatness, and there is greatness that says, “okay, you can be quiet now; the professionals have arrived.”

I desire to look for the sake of the first; I am afraid to look for sake of the second.

So often when I get into a slump of sorts, I find myself thinking that I have nothing worth saying, nothing worth showing, nothing worth sharing. Compared to what else is out there, the words that I find are pale and weak; the experiences shallow and with few facets, the things I create childish and unimaginative, the thoughts repetitive and irrelevant. I lift my hand over my mouth.

But while I think that it can be a very appropriate response in the face of the glory and splendor and unfathomable depths of God. . .I don’t think He meant us to live our lives in silence. I think His desire is that in Him we would also find the greatness that inspires to greatness; there is the careful reminder that He alone is The Greatness, and we are but imitators. . .but that He desires us to imitate. (Only let us not get so foolish as to think we’re the real deal.)

All the flowers are different in their beauty; I don’t wish to imitate anything I have seen this world as the one perfect ideal. But I do wish I could rise to doing something–or somethings–well. The well we recognize when we hear notes ring true and strong and clear; the well we see, when something is crafted with great precision; the well of beautiful proportions, which we recognize without even being able to identify; the well of refined skill as opposed to the careless action. The well that appears effortless precisely because so much effort has been exerted.

I want it; it alludes me.

When February starts, so does my house-sitting. It will last 6 weeks.

That sounds sort of like a long time. 6 weeks?

Yes. 6 weeks. 40 days and 40 nights, I say, and then everything is all right. Good things happen in 40 days and 40 nights; hard things, but good things. Things that need to be done.

I can come back on weekends and my cousin will probably be around, so it’s not like I’m really heading out into the entirely abandoned waste-land, with no food or water. But it is appropriate, anyway. 40 days and 40 nights always happen before beginnings, and after this semester, I begin. It’s always a good time to clear the air with God (or the other way around).

Following my exhausting school trip last Friday-Saturday (see past recounting of roommates who sleep with the TV on), I didn’t really have a chance to catch up on my sleep–never mind suitably sleep following a typical week of school/work that tends to leave me with a deficit on its own. I piled another week’s deficit on top, and then this past weekend, I slept.

No, really. This past weekend I slept. I was asleep by 8 pm on Friday, and slept in till about 11:30 am on Saturday. Then I took a nap Saturday afternoon. And, yes, I did still sleep Saturday night.

Sunday morning around 6 am, I woke up suddenly with a strong urge to create. Not like “oh, look at me, I’m so original,” but like my hands needed. to. make. My mind was whirling with ideas and plans, and it was only, like, 45 seconds since I’d woken up.

Distantly, I thought over the last however-long it’s been since I’d started school. . .any time I’d ever had a few consecutive days off– enough time to sufficiently re-organize and re-boot my system–the desire to create would come rushing back. You know that little white plastic pop-up timer in those roaster birds? It pops up, and you know it’s done cooking? Creativity seems to be my pop-up timer. That’s when you know my system is somewhat back in balance. It’s a good thing.

The sad thing is how rarely over the past however-long I’ve felt the urge to create. Could I make time? Time can almost always be “made,” if one applies enough brute force. But it doesn’t matter, not when your desire, itself, to create dissipates like so much morning mist, and where it goes nobody knows.

Fight-or-flight is a coping mechanism, they say. Your body shunts away blood from many important organs in order to give your fighting/flighting muscles a better chance at actually accomplishing it’s goal. True, that. But so does your brain. Fight-or-flight, and the ability for higher thought disappears. Chronic Acute Stress Syndrome, and other things, much more silently, disappear. We might not even notice they were gone until they come back.

I recognize the usefulness of such cognitive shelving. Who could juggle stressful situations/packed schedules if they were constantly distracted by the need to set it all aside and use their hands to cause something to come into being? But I do recognize, too, that creativity was never meant to be suppressed for long amounts of time. Some would say that creativity is not a basic life function, but I wonder. The Creator created us in His image. How can we not create?

I recognize the current need for such a sacrifice. But it is hard not to yearn for the day when my urge to create is not met with self-surprise. . .and left un-fulfilled.

You are smart, they say. Well, if God has given me a measure of intelligence, then I must count myself blessed. But God is more than smart, and His gifts are diverse. He has given other measures to me, and find I hate to leave them buried in the dirt. They aren’t forsaken, just laid aside. . .or maybe even misplaced. Someday I will find them again, and maybe others besides.

When I was (much) younger, I had a good deal of mockery those claiming existential angst. In the wisdomful words of one my brothers, “I’m me.” How much more complicated can it possibly be? Self-discovery? Hello!! You are you. Who’d you think you’d be? Duh!

Also while I was much younger, I figured once you “grew-up,” you pretty much had life figured out. I mean, yes, things could be worrisome, and certainly and of course things were much more weighty. But confusion and the inability to understand was pretty much, in my mind, relegated to the time of childhood. You didn’t “get” life when you were a child, because you were still growing up. But you’d know you were a grown-up when you “got” life.

(I try very hard to remember what life was like inside the mind of a child. It has many applications to existence.)

Anyway, one can see how those two beliefs went hand in hand. (1) When you grow up, you know a lot more than I do now, and (2), I know who I am right now, even before I’ve grown up. Ergo, obviously, you must have a lot of room in your head for packing peanuts if you are a grown-up and claiming to know even less than I, an ignorant child, know.

As with many things in life that we mock, we are often doomed to become the things we mocked. Regardless of words used to describe the phenomenon, at some point one begins to become aware of “nature vs. nurture”–which is to say, you realize that you act differently in different situations and different circumstances. And it doesn’t take long to have enough imagination to wonder how you would live–who you would be–in other situations, ones you haven’t been in and likely never will be. Who would I be if I was rich? Who would I be if I was an only child? Who would I be if I was suddenly dropped into the middle of a third-world country speaking a language I did not know? How would I live if I was raised in the city instead of the country? What would I be like if I’d went to public school?

This realization–that our circumstances do affect our existence–invariably leads to other questions. What parts of my being are being dictated by my current situations? What stuff am I doing or not doing simply because “that’s the way it’s always been”—not because I honestly feel strongly about the matter myself, but just because an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion stays in motion (unless acted on by outside forces, and all that).

And therefore, if I am who I am because of my circumstances. . .is that really me? Or is that just a reflection of where I am? Who is me? This invariably (for me, anyway) loops back to imagining myself in all sorts of different situations, because somehow it seems that only the pieces of me that I would take every where are really me, and not just cultural habit. Sometimes there are fine lines that I don’t know how to split. . .I strongly suspect I would do many more sociable things if I didn’t have a bunch of people to come home to, but on the other hand, I begin to realize how deeply and strongly my introvertedness runs. Socializing is exhausting; parties make me uncomfortable. I prefer to visit one-on-one. Being the center of attention makes me break out in hives, or something very close to that.

But as difficult as it is to (for lack of better words, as horrible as they might be) to find oneself–and it is hard; one likes to be in denial about many different things, and find all sorts of things one is guilty of regardless of past mockings, and generally find one self to be a different person then one tells oneself they are. There is a harder thing, though; who are you supposed be?

And here the waters get oh so very muddy.

There is, modernly speaking, a lot of talking about “acceptance”. To “accept” who you are, to be “accepted” for who you are, etc., etc. I will be the first admit that there is a great need for self-honesty (if nothing else!), which requires not being in denial, which I suppose you could phrase as “accepting who you are”. But “accepting” also seems to imply saying everything is just peachy-okay-fine the way it is. Maybe I’m just a weird twisted sort of person, but generally speaking, anytime I find myself telling myself that everything is just peach-okay-fine, I’m generally lying to myself. Being aware of my shortfallings, and honestly titling them as such, while uncomfortable, is better. I can “spin” just as well as anyone, but “spin” isn’t helpful.

But, even supposing one can begin to find oneself, if one is willing to admit that one’s life is supposed to be a process of change rather than “accepting” ourselves as perfectly sufficient as we are–finding ourselves is only half the battle. I’m not talking about the whole “change your insides and your outside circumstances don’t matter,” which is akin to saying, “why are you complaining about the condition of the road? Just flap your arms and fly!” That’s a whole ‘nother conversation right there. I’m merely pointing out that things are not as black and white as I liked to think; it’s all muddled and confusing. You may be looking the fact squarely in the face and not know if that particular shade of gray is more white or more black. You see it, but what is it? It’s very hard to even know where one needs to be pruned or challenged, and what things are worth fighting for and what things should be let go. What things are simply parts of my personality and what things fall too far. When I need to learn to say “no” no matter how much guilt or duty is implied, and when I should say “yes” no matter how much all I want to do is crawl up in a ball and hide. And further more, which times and places are right for which battle–another uncomfortable reality being that mere mortals cannot do everything at once. “There is a time for everything under the sun” says the teacher, but not “everything should be done at the same time.”

Excuses, explanations and rationalizations all blend together into one big hairy mess. Rules, laws, regulations, guidelines and rules-of-thumb and general principles will not save you from that mess. Inward reflection is murky at best, more likely to be churning, and quite likely to be so stormy and tumultuous that you envy the guy who’s able to sleep through the whole disaster without a care in the world.

And here’s another chestnut: “Be angry and do not sin.” I suspect it may have cousins, like “Be hurt, but do not judge,” or “Be grieved, but do not be uncontent.” And if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it count? And which was the better son, the one who said “I go, sir” and stayed home, or the one who said “Forget it! Not over my dead body!” and then went anyway? Some people say “fake it till you make it” and some people say “you can’t stop trying,” and sometimes I sit there and wonder what’s the difference. Sometimes people want to know what you want out of life, and I wonder which is worse: having an answer or not having an answer? And sometimes it’s just plain easier to say what you DON’T want out of life than what you do.

Who am I? Who should I be? Who cares?