The Happy Song
Something about my thinking lately has been depressing, self-defeating, and downright bitchy. It makes me tired. So I think that I will change it. I'm not sure yet whether I believe that is possible--changing my thinking--but I often hear people say that if you pretend you are something long enough you become that something. Now I don't think that works in every context, for sure. I cannot pretend to be a penguin and eventually become a penguin. But I think that I can think more happily and feel more happy. Maybe.
So I'll write a happy song to sing. It will make me happy. But I'll need to go and use Adam's or Nic's guitar--or to church/the office to use the piano. So I won't write the happy song now. (I know, you are terribly disappointed and await the Happy Song release with eager anticipation.) Now I will write a list of things that make me happy.
Sunshine makes me happy.
Mountains make me happy.
Getting mail that isn't a bill makes me happy.
Hiking makes me happy.
Beer makes me happy--but only good and yummy beer.
Dancing makes me happy.
Eating Ben and Jerry's makes me happy.
Going home for Christmas makes me happy.
Comp tickets to the Bach Choir make me happy.
Good conversation makes me happy.
Finishing my "to do" list makes me happy.
Being with my friends makes me happy.
Drawing makes me happy.
Singing makes me happy.
Working at NPBC makes me happy.
Meeting new people makes me happy.
Misty drinks make me happy.
Girls Night makes me happy.
Getting good grades makes me happy.
Remembering Hebrew vocab makes me happy.
Knowing what a first class conditional statement is makes me happy.
Being the first of my family to get my graduate degree makes me happy.
Ray makes me happy.
Chocolate makes me happy.
Baking fresh bread makes me happy.
Eating fresh bread makes me happy.
Going to La Jolla makes me happy.
Being "one of the guys" makes me happy.
Losing 20 lbs makes me happy.
When the neighbors car alarm is silent for 24 hours makes me happy.
Playing Candy Land makes me happy.
Writing poems makes me happy.
Being understood makes me happy.
Instant rebates make me happy.
Being silly makes me happy.
Being barefoot makes me happy.
Yoga makes me happy.
Meeting boys who love Heidegger and Aristotle makes me happy.
Rafting makes me happy.
Giving hugs makes me happy.
Thinking about happiness makes me happy.
Thinking about becoming a penguin makes me happy.
That is a lot of happy. I feel happier already.
Black Friday
I'm not sure where the term Black Friday came from, but it seems fitting today. While I would prefer to participate in "Buy Nothing Day", I did go out for breakfast with my neighbor boys after midnight last night, so I technically bought something already. Only one of them is a boy--the other is a few years older and can without question be called a man, but I still call him a boy most of the time. I think that term is less threatening.
Today is black because every time I turn around someone I love is depressed, confused, frustrated, or lonely. Broken hearts are abundant this week. Feelings of futility run rampant. Death has visited many. Illness plagues a few. There is much to be questioned and many of the answers we receive don't ease any pain. This day seems black.
As I sit and think on all the struggle that befalls us, I wonder how much of it we have chosen to endure. I read a page from my journal today and recognized that I admit within that page that I am purposing to destroy a relationship by my own stubbornness and refusal to accept love and extend trust. And today I find myself stuck in the very same place. Last night I finally expressed something that would have indicated a willingness to begin a relationship and start anew, but last night I had 7 "Misty drinks" (which mostly consist of Capt. Morgan) so what I finally expressed could simply be misunderstood as an intoxicated woman. It is safe to express these things when I can blame it on booze later. And I haven't gotten any smarter since the page in my journal was written a few years ago. I still can't seem to accept the one thing I most desire and to trust someone with who I am and what I feel. Is that my own damn fault? Do I cause myself to suffer perpetual broken-heartedness by my unwillingness to change the way I feel and act? Or am I unable to change those things?
I think that I will tell the boy/man that I do like him, with and without the Misty drinks. Perhaps I must force change upon myself. I suppose there are many things that those I love now suffer which cannot be avoided, and which enter their lives without warning. But I also suppose that there are some things we suffer due to our own inability or unwillingness to stop suffering such things.
I wonder if God's will is strong enough to supersede my own. In theory it is. Any systematic theologian would claim the power and strength of God over all things. But will God really choose to change that which I choose not to change? Will he bring into my life a man who is stubborn enough to stay despite my "come hither/go away complex" and my mistrusting nature and my absolute fear of being left broken-hearted and empty? Can he cause me to change those things about myself and remove all the mistrust and the fear and the complex way I relate (or fail to relate)?
I guess deep down I want to believe that God will do those things--that his power will overcome my will in certain areas of life that I can't seem to grasp and to mold in healthy or helpful ways. I will confuse the boy/man. I will draw him near and then push him away. I will fear him and want him. I will not let him see how I want him and need him. I will make a mess out of this. In many ways I already have. But somehow I must believe that this is not the end of love and trust in my life. (And along with it friendship and intimacy and family and stability and sex--just to name a few.) Somehow I must believe that this too shall pass and that there is a transcendent power in the universe that will order things in such a way that I am someday soon capable of change. I must believe that I can be stopped from suffering the things I cause myself to suffer. While I know pain will always intrude upon my life in some ways, I know that somehow I must stop bringing pain upon myself. Then, even if this particular Friday is always considered "Black", it will not always feel black.
Defeating the Monster
Suddenly you realize you have let the darkness get too close. Suddenly you realize that the grief of the past has become a present pain. Suddenly what once was shapes what now is. And I need to escape it. No, not escape it--I need to walk through it. I cannot run from it. I must confront it. But how?
I am so good at confronting the establishment, the tradition, the injustice, the lie. But I am not skilled at confronting the mistaken identity that I built as a little child to protect innocence and beauty. I created something ugly to escape from something ugly, and now that monster which I have created must be confronted and the things that the ugliness was designed to protect must be found and embraced. They are still there--somewhere under layers and layers of defenses lies a little girl's innocence, beauty, trust and love. It is time for her to emerge. That little girl as she was before all the ugliness began. That little girl is the one that can love and trust. I need to become that little girl once more. I need to strip off the layers and find the core of that beautiful little being and to make it the core of my own.
But it is my own. What lives at the heart of her still lives at the heart of me. I am not so scarred and broken that I have become someone else. I have all the love and trust and innocence and beauty that I shall ever need within me. I was created with it. It is a part of me. I only need to accept that part of me. It is not a confrontation that is needed. What is needed is an embrace.
Is there any hope?
I am utterly depressed by the series of messages that we have been giving at Crash.
www.rhinocrash.org The world is such a flippin' mess and hearing about how much of a mess it is seems to bring me down. Consumerism, injustice, and now world poverty have been addressed. And every Sunday evening I find myself shaking my head in agreement with everything Maxie says and then, in the next moment, wondering what the hell to do with those assertions. It is so difficult to watch the statistics flash on the screen and to hear the ways in which the consumption of my country is destroying the lives of others all over the world. Is there really any way to fix this?
After I spoke about fair trade two weeks ago, I stayed after church to answer questions, etc. There was one guy who stayed after who basically never listened to a word I had to say and just kept on stating that the world is much better than it used to be. He was basically arguing against a point I had made earlier in conversation about how important it is to read and study and dialogue and become informed. I stated that people used to desire classic literature and philosophy and to read and contemplate and dialogue and that today's powerful are such because of financial gain and not because of education and understanding. Great thought still exists and great writers are still writing, but we have become a society that has little interest in gleaning insight because knowledge is no longer power--money is power. This is why there were 47 business majors in my graduating class and only two philosophy majors (okay that may not be the only reason why, but it certainly is a factor). Arguing with this ignorant guy about the possibility of changing the world made me wonder if there is any hope for the human race or the earth that we are consuming. If people are too stupid to understand that changing one's mind is key to changing one's society, and that changing one's mind is dependent upon educating one's mind, then what is the point of arguing or making any assertions in the first place?
Yet, tonight I found the hope that I have been desperately seeking as the weeks of our series have passed. A sweet young man in a tshirt full of holes spoke about the lack of healthy water in Africa and the ways that he had worked to bring clean water to an impoverished nation. The shirt he wore was given to him in trade for bottled water as he studied in Africa. He is hope. As people walked into the service tonight I handed each of them a bottle of water that was labeled with water statistics. As Maxie talked about the 1.1 million people who have less than 6 quarts of water a day (3 1/2 gallons less than the minimum threshold requirement) I saw a woman begin to stare at her little bottle of water with an expression of awe. She is hope. Several people stopped after the service to drop spare change and dollar bills into a large empty water cooler jug on the mission table so that we can dig a well for a community of 750 in Africa. Everyone who has helped to fill that jug to the halfway point is hope.
There is hope for this world. And hope, I have found, is contagious. The men and women who demonstrated hope this evening will carry their insight and their passion out beyond the walls of the church. And while the ignorant and uncaring consumers will still exist, their influence upon the whole of society lessens everytime a person sees and grasps the hope that was evident at Crash tonight.
While Drew and I were the only two in our graduating class with a philosophy degree, we are not the only two in our graduating class to have heard and understood the views that we held regarding the world as a result of studying philosophy. In the short testimony of a smiling blonde boy in a tattered shirt I have come to understand that hope is much more subversive than I had anticipated. Insight gleaned by the few can become the ethic of the masses with much less struggle than one might believe. Insight and passion travel with amazing speed. The world is still a mess, but it may be much less a mess tonight than it was this morning simply because of one small demonstration of hope.
