Today I woke up.
Maybe for the first time in a long time. I really woke up.
Maybe this is hard to describe. But I shall try.
It's something I remembered, realized, began to live out, and now know with more assurance than anything else I can recall.
Today felt and saw and took in the whole big wide world around me and I realized how finite and temporary I really am.
But how did I ever forget this?
How did I let days and weeks munch up and pass by without even so much as a thought towards the external, the eternal?
How dare I become so wrapped up in myself?
I have been given this one life.
I am a human being. As strange and complex and mysterious as that is; that's what I am.
And so are you! We breathe, we think, we feel, we need.
We desire connection; we connect.
We try to live our lives. We experience love and hope and loss and pain and sorrow and joy and peace. But we are temporary.
Today I thought about all of the people that I know and what they go through. I thought about people in living in Africa without clean water or sufficient food. I don't know them, though.
But why?
They are people just like I am. How do I get to live this life of luxury, where I am mostly only concerned about phone calls or fixing my car or cleaning out my fridge full of too much food, when they must struggle each and every day just to find food? Just to live?
It isn't fair. I don't understand it. But again, this is life.
I think my soul became discontented with this temporary world a long time ago.
But again, sadly, in the past few months I have allowed the complexities and confusion and pain and frustration in my life distract me from that discontentment.
I just tried to live in a way that let me be content and satisfied with the world and who I am. I didn't try to seek anything more. I didn't try to change the world. Maybe as a habit I tried to change it, but my heart wasn't in it. I didn't really try to change it. I didn't follow God with everything that I knew, as I had for so long. It wasn't the driving force of my life.
Perhaps this is part of the reason:
Around this time last year, maybe as a way to shake off the remains from the post-high school shock that surrounded me, I began spending a large amount of time "seeking infinity," I guess you could call it. I began really soaking up the sunsets, breathing in the night sky and drinking in any and all infinite moments that I could come across.
I got into a lot of art and unusual music. I thrived on anything big and ethereal and transcendent. And while I never did any drugs, when I would dance for hours in the middle of the night with strange and stunning music blasting into my brain, you could definitely call it getting high.
Sometimes, I sought after this... this crazy, vague, definite, infinite feeling with all I had in me.
I have known God closely for most of my life, but then, my life seemed so terribly different and strange and uncertain. God needed to be found again in a new way.
I was young, I was lost. I was hopeful. I was confused. I was trying to figure it all out.
I wanted to see eternity. I still do.
But, well, as fate would have it I guess, around this time last year, I met someone.
He was unique. He was curious.
I listened to his meticulous and extravagant thoughts and I knew he was seeking this same sort of thing too.
I saw it in his eyes, I heard it in his words, I felt it and I knew it in his perfect hugs.
He was bright, but he was also broken. We all are broken.
But I think then, he knew it, and he wanted so much more than that. He wanted to be whole.
I ate up every existential, philosophical, post-modern, inquisitive word that exuded from his lips.
He had a rare spark of light and life about him. His spark met mine and we exploded in a ball of light and thought and sound and beauty.
For days and weeks and months, we stated up until 4 am (and beyond) discussing life and death and art and music and God and heaven and hell and philosophical thought processes and anything and everything that we could wrap our minds around.
We faced life with enthusiasm: asking the big questions, dreaming the big dreams. Trying to figure it all out.
And things were good.
But then things progressed, as things tend to do, and I after a while I found myself in strange and unfamiliar territory. He and I slowly, cautiously, began to walk (but then eventually fell) in love. Then, it was perfect. It was something unlike anything I had ever dreamed.
But, well, long story short: All of that is over, and this boy is now gone from my life.
I cannot adequately explain why.
He wanted it to end and so he ended it. I lost a great friend.
I do know though, that through the course of our friendship, I lost sight of the important things that originally held us together. I sometimes found myself to be someone petty and selfish and shallow. I didn't recognize myself. I would complain about the little things that I should have let go of. I would worry about the things that I once knew were in God's perfect hands.
After a while, I didn't recognize him either.
I still don't.
Living without him was strange. It still is. At first I found it to be like living without your skin; you know something's missing.
If emotions were colors, I have felt the entire kaleidoscope by now. Part of me loved him and knew that I could love him forever no matter what, and part of me never wanted to see him again. Part of me wanted to be his friend again more than anything, and part of me wished that he was dead, so at least it would fucking make sense to have him gone. Part of me still cares about him, and wants to make sure that he is doing well. This part of me took over, I think. He and I were connected in so many ways that I found it easy to "check up" on him to find out how he was doing. I was confused and frustrated by his seemingly immature behaviour. I wanted to change him. I wanted to take control of the situation and wake him up and make him be the someone that I used to know and love.
Well, it was this feeling that made me lose sight of all of those bigger, more important things.
But today, I realized: God has much more significant things to teach me from this. This isn't about him and his journey, for I am no longer in control of that (I actually never really was). This is about mine. It's about who I need to become in order to further serve others and to figure out life.
Today I knew I had to step out in faith. And so I did.
I cut off all communication with him completely and I let it all go.
I love him deeply and I wish him well, but I can no longer check up on him or see how he's doing. I no longer want to.
Whatever happens with him now is completely out of my hands and in God's perfect control.
He will probably never even read this.
Que sera, sera.
Tonight I climbed a mountain. The same mountain I have climbed many times before.
In fact, the same one I climbed with this boy at my side, once upon a time.
But today I walked alone. I looked around at everything. I admired the gorgeous trees and plants and flowers (which come in every color imaginable) that adorned the roadside. Every effort of man to recreate such pristine beauty is simply a sad counterfeit. Nature defies us all with it's beauty. I then watched the sun set beneath the hazy atmosphere of this ephemeral world that we all call home.
Well, it's not really my home.
This is what I woke up and realized, anyway.
Again.
Tonight I cheered as the sun hit the horizon. I really did. I laughed and smiled and thought, "The end of another day. March 26th, 2009. It was a good one! It was full of love and learning and disappointment and everything... just, everything."
The sunset reminded me, not just of the end of another day in my tiny life, but also of how the sun defies all human efforts. It is eternal and way beyond any of our control.
Still, it's hard not to get caught up in everything. All the small things. Your own pain, the sorrows and disappointments you experience, the people who die from lack of clean water, the neglected, the scored, the selfish, the rich and poor, everything.
Jesus reminded me of something, though. He said, "I have told you all this so that you may have peace. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world."
We so often get caught up in these small human dramas. In the tiny, fleeting things that we find important take over our whole lives.
On the grand scale of everything, what are they? Why do we let them rule us?
Really! Take heart! Jesus has overcome the world!
What I know now is that everyday when you wake up and you take a breath, you have a responsibility. Your responsibility begins right there. Right in the moment. Every single day.
You must remember this. This is your life.
All we have is now.
And all I have to say here is temporary, fleeting, ephemeral.
All I can hope to seek after is something that will outlive me.
God help me.
P.S. I realized the other day that staying at my grandma's house has been an emotional cross-section of my life. That will probably not make sense to any of you.
Also, I hopefully made this post long enough so that no one would read it except the people who really wanted to figure me out and rattle their own brains and challenge their own souls.
If that's you, then thanks for reading. I hope it at least made sense.
