November 22, 2011

• The Crossing

  We talked late in the night and I felt like a kid but I knew I was an adult.  And that’s when I said, you know how in high school you are still a kid?  All you have to do in high school is pull grades.  That’s the main thing you do.  Even if you do other things, there’s still the idea that there are other people out there who are making sure things go right, who are looking out for your health and what you need to do.  But then you go to college and it goes from needing to pulling grades to needing to do . . .everything.  Suddenly you realize that you own your body and the food you put into it is all it’s going to get.  You’re the one that’s responsible for it.  And for how you treat everyone and for sleeping and working and everything.  All at once, right there when you get to college.  That seems so fast.

  People say ‘you can be whatever you want to be’ but that’s not true because you have to be a human.  And humans have certain inbuilt tendencies, like how they need other people, and they want to be respected and to accomplish things, and to feel like they have a meaningful life.  Or have you ever felt envious?  Maybe you suppressed it, but it still happened inside you in that first moment.  That’s because you’re a human because you have to be.  Our free will is thus narrower than we imagine.  Our choices come as reactions to these spurts of feelings inside us, when we feel unloved or like we need to accomplish something. 

  Sometimes though our desires can be in conflict, like the need to be loved and the need to accomplish something big.  In War and Peace Nikolay loves Sonya but he also wants to see the world.  And so he must make a choice, and in that moment his freedom is still a very real thing.

  Sometimes I don’t want to write, because I think, no, if I write it down it won’t make sense, and then I’ll just be upset.  But when you write something down and it makes sense, gosh that feels good.

  Today the air felt clean and suggestive of eternity, like life is real, that my past isn’t just a figment of my imagination, but it really happened, and I’m here at the end of all of it.  The feeling that this moment is happening but has no connection to past or future is a horrible feeling.  But I smelt something that sent me back and crawled under my skin, a feeling I had forgotten I once had.  I longed for the sea, to be where the air is open and no one would think to make crass jokes.  I dreamt in a single moment of a life really lived. 

  There is so much pressure to not forget things, for forgetting things is a great evil.  When good things happen you want to hold onto them forever because they are so good.  And if later you think ‘What good has happened in my life?’ how awful it is if you can’t remember things, even though they are there to remember. 

  It’s so unfair that it’s just inside our heads, that we have to pull all the weight by ourselves.  No one can get inside to that spot and make sure I remember everything.  It’s just up to me to try really hard, and how much power do I have against the world that’s quickly passing by, as a bee vanishes from a garden?  And you have to remember things to make connections between things in life, otherwise you won’t even know what life you’re living, or even worse you won’t even be living it.  You’ll just live in this moment and that moment and that other moment, but not all those moments combined.  Maybe there’s a connection between that one girl and that one idea that that one guy said and that one paragraph in that book, and it would make you realize a great secret, one of the things Emerson says it’s impossible to teach to others.  But if you don’t remember you’ll just be floating by, and the horizons on either side of you will be inches away.

  People’s heads fall over when they sleep because that’s how heavy life is. 

  You think you’re a good person but you rate people in your head as they talk and no one can tell the difference.  Maybe you seem like a great guy, waving and smiling, and saying all the proper greetings and don’t say outright to anyone ‘You’re completely uninteresting to me’.  It’s a quiet tide, but in your mind you drift away from those who don’t entertain you, who you feel have nothing to give you.  We rate other people in our heads, and it’s so soft, it’s so secret, not even we know we’re doing it, until we listen and we realize that seeming like a good person is much different than actually being one.

  There are so many things we could say, but it’s such a specific thing we end up saying.  It’s crazy that we come out of nowhere. 

  At church I couldn’t help but realize my insignificance and my sinfulness and how there is so much ugliness in that place where I create myself, the things I freely choose to do, the place where I let my ratings of people affect what I eventually say and where I’m not hoping in the people with low ratings because I’ve learned from other people not to.  And it is an enchanting and overwhelming thing to be loved by God, and to realize that you can make other people happy, if you just choose to try. 

  It’s crazy that you only get one shot to explain yourself.  Some situation will come up and you have to explain your thoughts on it, and you get that one try.  If what you say doesn’t click, then people move on and you don’t get understood.  But if that place where you choose to say things suddenly works and you put things right, people know who you are and you feel affirmed and loved just like humans want.  But it seems so unfair how fast it all happens and how there are no do-overs and how so many people walk away from conversations with you with ideas about you that are wrong and weird almost like they are thinking about another person, and not you.  But that’s what happens when you live in such a specific place, that narrow space where you choose what to say. 

  I want to be everywhere and everyone and do everything.  But I can’t and so I just have to live with it.  But while I was driving I thought maybe there’s something that only me in my circumstance can do and I should do that thing.  But I am still sad that I can’t do everything, a life where I know everything that goes on and make all the right connections between it all, and so I don’t feel ready to lift a very specific life.  But to lift that specific life, maybe that’s what becoming deeper is.  At first, of course, you can think about how much potential value there is in the world, lives that are lead that are meaningful and great and beautiful.  But if you live your whole life wanting those other lives, and not living your own, you are not deep, you are the shallowest person there is and have not faced the very real task of life.  You must walk away from all the possibility and do something in the real world, where your body moves and breathes.

  Maybe, I thought during church, maybe you are not supposed to be some great person, a person who utilizes the ability you naturally have.  Maybe what’s beautiful is when you are only ever in situations you can’t control and couldn’t predict, that you are always being stretched and reacting to new things coming your way.  It would be a beautiful life for someone to lay down the thing they love for the sake of the people they saw in need.  It could be that other life, the one they imagined, is buried deep, deep down, and they smile at the past thought, but it’s really in being stretched, in being forced to give up that dream, that you do what’s actually important, that you become a person who is more interested in what’s good than in what you want, that you live in the world and not just your head. 

  It is a good thing to live with and be around people you couldn’t predict, people who will stretch you, who will anger you so much you are forced to become a holy person. 

  It’s only in that sort of trying situation, one where you feel such pulls between those things, that you would have the freedom to choose between love of self and love of others, that you would choose in that narrow space who you wanted to be, what you wanted to love.

  And see, all this was in my head today, occurring at different times, and I barely remembered that these thoughts happened until I was reminded of one.  And now I’ve written them down and made connections between various ones, connections I hadn’t see before.  But how many times is that not done?  How many thoughts just fly across my mind’s sky, and then vanish into the horizon?  Am I alive unless I write?  But what about when it doesn’t work?  Do I only work sometimes?  Did I fail in that one mad initial dash to live an explained and understood life, one where people give you the space you wish to have, where they say the things you want to talk about, because they somewhat see the importance of those things, because you have shown them the importance of them?  But I guess I haven’t done very well, and so I vanish every day, and the days stream into nothing, until I’m simply left alone and confused and with the feeling that I have missed something very big.  I get that feeling a lot, like I’m supposed to be remembering something but I don’t know what.  Some great thought I’m supposed to share with everyone, like that we’re all here for the first time and we only pretend that love isn’t important in public because we’ve been deceived into a false way of being.  But everyone in their private moments believes it, and why can’t we just summon those private feelings out of people whenever we talk? 

  But he’s there in that place where we choose what to say, patiently waiting, wishing and encouraging for us to grow, for me to quiet those lofty thoughts, ones that paralyze and don’t move, ones of a life that I could never live, that no one could live. 

  • 4:26 am
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