The problem with altruism (with soundtrack)

Altruism (n): the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others

I hear lots of people talking about altruism like it’s this elusive behavior or characteristic that people should constantly strive to embody or employ. People feel guilty for not being altruistic, like it’s something we’re supposed to naturally know how to do or be. You hear people saying things like this all the time: “I know I should be practicing altruism and everything, but I’m just really mad at her,” or “it’s so hard to be altruistic when he’s being such an ass.”

Are we supposed to just come out of the womb knowing how to battle all of the animosity, selfishness, competition, and jealousy we feel? Are we supposed to understand how to feel happy for someone when it goes against every instinct we have?

There are, like, a billion different types of altruism. They all have varying degrees of difficulty, in my opinion. It’s like playing a computer game.

The first type of altruism that I had to learn was a simple open-heartedness to the rest of the world. In theory, this is the easiest thing to envision, because it’s relatively natural to want the best for humanity. You want to know WHY it’s natural? Because WE ARE ALL PART OF HUMANITY. We don’t have to separate ourselves from the entity for which we’re doing all this well-wishing.

Ok, so it makes sense to narrow that down and wish the best for our family and friends. These people we know and care about, sure, categorically we are devoted to their welfare, right? Right. Okay, simple enough, even when we remove ourselves from the equation.

Cool, you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, aren’t you? Want to make things a little more difficult?

You and a friend both enter a competition for which there is a substantial monetary prize. You help one another enter it (you train together at the track, or you do vocal coaching together or something) and you both feel good about your entry. Finally the winners are announced… and your friend gets the prize. Even assuming this is a fair contest, and assuming you don’t need that monetary prize to, I dunno, survive, how are you supposed to feel?

Yep, you’re supposed to ignore all the training and work you put into your entry, put aside the anticipation you had that the prize might have been yours, and just be fucking happy for the friend.

Ouch, right?

Alright, but it’s easy enough. The verdict isn’t something you can fight, and you can’t go back in time. We encounter so many situations that teach us that, well, the past is the past and ‘what can ya do?’ that eventually this contest situation will just become that. And eventually, as long as your friend is tasteful and doesn’t wave a wad of cash in front of your nose or something, you will feel some degree of happiness for him/her.

Are you brainwashed yet? Did I trick you?
That’s not altruism!

Nope. Altruism would have been to wish and hope from the very beginning that your friend would win. And not just your friend– all who entered the contest! So tell me, how does that make any sense at all? That just renders the entire point of contests moot. What, you enter a contest and the whole time you’re in it you’re hoping that others will win?

I don’t get it. But I’m going to move on, because I’m not done with my altruism problems report.

Obviously it’s extremely difficult to be altruistic when you’re jealous of someone, or when someone has hurt you, or when you’re encountering the potential to get ahead in life. I assume that, especially if you adhere to any doctrines of Buddhism, this all becomes much easier with time. Needless to say, I haven’t gotten there yet.

Here I reach the original purpose of this post, my main issue with altruism, and a question that is potentially rhetorical:

How is one supposed to want the best for others or be devoted to their welfare when they don’t seem to know what is best for their own welfare?!

Buddha, please help me. I’m surrounded by people (including myself) who put themselves in negative situations, pursue people romantically who are emotionally destructive, or simply don’t do things that will help them grow or learn or be healthy, emotionally or physically. Why do we do this to ourselves, and furthermore, why do we then expect people to still be happy for us or supportive? Sometimes we don’t even know we’re making terrible decisions for ourselves– why don’t we have presence of mind to realize when our actions and choices don’t benefit anyone, least of all ourselves?

[And, unrelated to my point: why is there such a toxic flip-side? When we try to do what's best for ourselves, we feel guilty or unworthy or selfish, even when no one is being harmed.]

It’s difficult to have unselfish concern for others’ welfare when they seem to have no concern for their own welfare or when they are making decisions we find to be wrong or destructive. Why should we bother to want the best for others when we don’t see them wanting what’s best for themselves?

I’m resigned to believing (as I’m sure the Buddha would teach) that the answer to this is that it is not our responsibility to make judgements about the choices of others. We shouldn’t be concerning ourselves with the definition of “welfare” or what is “best,” because otherwise we will fall into a trap of only wanting what we think is ‘best’ for others.

That leads me to some more rhetorical questions, and then I will be done:

What happens when we really do know what is best for someone? Isn’t it important to share our insight with others?
[Pause while my mom bursts into tears and exclaims, "yeah! yeah! what then!"]
Doesn’t that fall under the category of “wanting the best for others”? Or is it categorically more important for people to learn their own lessons and create their own learning experiences?

And finally– if we can’t make judgements about what is “best” for others, how in the world are we supposed to confront our own beliefs about what is best for ourselves? How are we supposed to confront our ideas about what is “best” in general– for humanity, for the earth…

Morally and ethically speaking, how do we develop opinions about Right and Wrong if we can’t judge Right and Wrong in our own lives? Are we really supposed to completely and solely subscribe to the commandments and definitions of Right and Wrong that are laid down by law and religious doctrines?

The things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one.

“Love Love Love,” my favorite song (by a small margin) by The Mountain Goats.

Definitely the most appropriate song for tonight, EVER.

And a really great cover of it:

Heartwarming as Hell

The most recent podcast of This American Life is about breakups of all kinds. So Ira Glass includes an interview from 1987, when a 9 year old girl was interviewed about her parents’ divorce. It’s very sweet, and for me it put words in the mouths of many of the kids of divorce. I am so lucky to have no experience in this field.

This is the transcript of the interview with the little girl: http://sites.google.com/site/profenglishprofenglish/unit2

It’s really cute, but it’s also extremely heartbreaking– especially the part where she says she talked to her counselor at school. Apparently, the counselor told her that out of the 400 kids at school, about 300 were going through (or had gone through) divorces. And that was 20 years ago! So, so sad.

You can listen to the different parts here:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/339/break-up

Sai Guru Deva (or: An overdue homage to four handsome young men)

I woke up this morning staring at my “Abbey Road” album cover poster. I listened to “Good Day Sunshine” on my iPod, and I put on a Magical Mystery Tour shirt. Now, for fear of being ostracized by the Evergreen community for being too mainstream, I’ll assert my hipness: I do listen to bands you’ve never heard of, I own vinyl, and sometimes I even wear plaid. But my roots are with the Beatles, and most of the time I think I owe any of my good taste and creativity to them.

It started when I was 9. I looked over my parents’ shoulders as they read the paper and saw a picture of four very handsome young men. “Who are they?!” I asked. My poor parents must have thought they had failed as guardians and educators. “Well, they’re the Beatles!” they said. “Who are the Beatles?” I asked. Again, faces of dismay.

“They were a band when we were growing up, but they’re still very popular.”

“Were they bigger than Britney Spears?” (In retrospect, that moment may have been one of the lowest points of my life.) Their faces of dismay turned into faces of disgust. Britney Spears was pretty much the only contemporary pop star I knew about; I listened to music my parents listened to (motown, 90s adult contemporary like Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks) but didn’t ask questions about who they were or to what era they belonged.

“Yes. They were much bigger than Britney Spears. They still are. They were bigger than Jesus.” My dad probably smirked as he said that, but I would have no idea what it meant ’til years later.

“Well, were they any good?”

My dad probably hesitated a bit. He would have wanted to remain loyal to the memory of the Beatles, but he knew in fact that some of their material was mediocre at best.

“The best,” my mom said.

Someone gave me a homemade CD copy of “1,” (still a bit obscure in 1999) and it was well-loved and scratched within a week. I didn’t know what the song titles were, so I made the track list up myself. When I checked them perhaps years later, some of them, like “Yesterday,” were spot on. Others were called things like, “Blue Suburban Skies,” “Christ, You Know It Ain’t Easy,” and “Back to Where You Once Belonged.” I pinned the original picture from the paper on my wall. And I started asking questions.

Suddenly all I wanted to know was about the music my parents listened to when they were growing up. Then all I wanted to know was each story that went with the songs. First they told me where they were when the Beatles arrived in the United States, where they were during that first Ed Sullivan TV show. That continued with every other “parent-era” icon I discovered: Hendrix, the Stones, Van Morrison, Heart, Supertramp…

But it’s with the Beatles that I’ve developed some of the best memories of my own. They’ve brought me closer to some of my best friends, and they’ve made me realize some of my worst friends. My best friend back home was Em, who was new to my school in 8th grade. Even then I think I knew that she would become a great person, but I never knew she was going to be my friend. By the end of week one, she had somehow proven her astounding knowledge of Beatles trivia, and I was not to be outdone. I swore she was my rival. That was the year my grades started to slip, and I focused on academics less. I’m not blaming the Beatles… but maybe it was the fact that I started making flash cards for their notable recording dates rather than my science class. Anyway, by the end of week two of knowing her we were best friends. I guess if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Eventually my passion led me to disassociate myself with some so-called friends. In 10th grade, this kid came up to me and said that his pastor had told him not to listen to the Beatles, and that they were un-Christian. Then he handed me a packet of quotes and song lyrics and famous musicians that his pastor (or something) had deemed sacrilegious (or something). It included some admittedly incriminating quotes by Metallica and Kurt Cobain, but there were also some lines by artists like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. James Taylor and Joni Mitchell! “The secret o’ life is enjoying the passage of time” and “bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air”?!

At the time, I vowed never to listen to or intentionally befriend someone who didn’t like the Beatles, but later I realized it was bigger than that. I vowed never to listen to or intentionally befriend someone who was so literal and narrow-minded. I think I’ve done pretty well, with a few exceptions, but that’s not the point. Some people aren’t literal or narrow minded, and they just don’t like the Beatles like I do. And I’m friends with a few of those people, and I’m ok with that. They can snigger or shake their heads at the numerous Beatles posters to which I wake up every morning, and I’m ok with that.

They can say that “All You Need Is Love” is too contrived and unimaginative, but I can still love it and deeply appreciate the fact that it begins with the French national anthem.

They can say that “Good Day Sunshine” is too simple and too cheery, but I can still listen to it every Groundhog day, especially if there isn’t 6 more weeks of winter.

They can say that “the Beatles are bigger than Jesus” is irreparable and condemning damage to the reputation of what might have otherwise been a great band, but I can know better. The character in the movie “Pirate Radio” called The Count says, “there will always be poverty and pain and war and injustice in this world but there will, thank the lord, also always be the Beatles.” I can guarantee you that more people in this world have listened to the Beatles than have read even one passage of the New Testament. That’s not sacrilegious; that’s fact. And that gives me more hope that there may not always be poverty and pain and war and injustice in the world than to know that there are approximately 2.1 billion Christians in the world. Sai guru deva.

What if Kurt was one of us?

Tonight’s procrastination is not like any other night of procrastination.

Ok, I kind of take that back. Most nights of serious procrastination end up about the same: It’s midnight, I’ve written about 300 words of a 2000-word paper, and all I can do is listen to the Beatles and cry.

I don’t know if that makes you want to feel sorry for me, but please don’t. Not only do I bring this upon myself, but I also don’t actually have any reasons to be crying.

But tonight seems different. I’ve gotten into a major Glee phase lately (maybe later we can go into details about what a “major phase” is), and I’m finally caught up on all the episodes… all except one. For some reason, the third episode of season 2 was the only video that I couldn’t find anywhere online, so that’s the one I skipped, moving on to the latest 3 episodes.

Then I downloaded all of the Glee music I could find from FrostWire.

Then I heard “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” sung by Glee’s Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer). It’s a version close to what Prudence did in “Across the Universe,” and I love it. The really strong bass line, the anguish in the progression of the lyrics… It’s all there. So I would have remembered Kurt singing it, and I didn’t. Of course it was from the one episode I missed.

I found it on YouTube, and it’s absolutely heartbreaking. It will probably be removed soon, but I’d still encourage you to look it up.

I’m really not sure why Glee strikes me so much now. It’s pretty cheesy, it doesn’t really apply to me, all it does is make me wish I was back in high school with my jazz ensemble and that I could sing better. But lately it’s kind of what gets me out of bed. I know that’s an awful thing to say, but my class feels dead-end and inserting myself into fictional musical storylines just seems like what I need.

By now I managed to find episode 3 of the second season, and it might just be my favorite episode so far. It’s almost undoubtedly the most powerful episode ever of Glee, and it also is the one that hit most home for me. One reason is because of the Beatles song, another reason is because it had me choked up the whole second half, another is because it featured Kurt, my favorite Glee clubber, heavily, and it also reminded me most of some of my experiences in high school. You can’t sum up all of life’s questions and whether or not you have answers in one episode of a tv show, but I think it’s admirable that at least those issues are being brought up on national television.

And now maybe I’ll try to tackle some of them in my school paper.

Stumble and Haiti

A couple things:

First, I StumbledUpon this story, and loved it:
One day an old Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson. He said, “There are two wolves fighting inside all of us - the wolf of fear and hate, and the wolf of love and peace.”
The grandson listened, then looked up at his grandfather and asked, “Which one will win?”
The grandfather replied, “The one we feed.”

Second, this video merits the next 7 minutes you have free. It’s called “Haiti’s Enduring Creativity.” There are some amazing quotes about music in there, plus some great live performance clips and lots of great Haitian accents and dialects! (The video opens in a new window.)

This ship: has sailed, is sinking.

Exhaust, n: the escape of steam or gases from the cylinder of an engine.

It happens when an engine is running. Running. As in, the engine doesn’t have to be “exhausted” (adj., tired or debilitated) to produce exhaust.

The actual exhaust emitted is steam from the used up fuel for the engine. It’s always dirty and useless. Sometimes it’s actually discolored, and most of the time it smells horrible. We usually try to protect ourselves from inhaling it just because it’s unpleasant, but it’s also hazardous to our health. Some people actually die from the fumes, if they’re in an enclosed space and the exhaust fills that space. Sometimes it’s actually a way to commit suicide.

Humans are prone to being exhausted. Physical or mental strain can cause it, as well as lack of sleep, poor dietary habits, or even simple actions. But (all jokes ignored), we don’t have exhaust pipes, nor do we have exhaust to emit from them.

… Right?

Wrong.

I have a playlist in my iTunes that is actually called “You SUCK.” No kidding. I have thousands, millions, of thoughts that are the byproduct of other thoughts, and which are not productive, healthy, or useful to me. They’re unpleasant and hazardous. I try to protect myself from them so they don’t taint my entire day… or life. Some are memories, some are violent, some are just negative and pessimistic.

Some are completely hopeless.

Exhaust, n: the escape of negative or hazardous practices or thoughts from the mind and soul of a person.

When you’re exhausted, it’s easy to know that you need sleep. But when you’re truly exhausted, you have to let the bad out so you can actually feel like you’re cleansed and refreshed– an alien concept to me now for so long.

“Three words that became hard to say: I and Love and You.” – The Avett Brothers

Mediatation

Some people are very invested in Jesus… or any religion, for that matter. Some people are very invested in astrology. Some people are very invested in science. Some people are very invested in, well, nothing.

My mother is very invested in a… hmmm… way of life? It’s this program called Human Design, which combines science, astrology, Chinese medicine and theories, and its own principles. It would be impossible to go into in detail, but basically she has studied it for years now and has passed on some of her wisdom to me. And today, I got a reading from a woman near Seattle who knew my chart and knew how to interpret it. I started off today listening to someone talk about me for over 2 hours. If you haven’t ever started your day like that, I highly recommend it.

I got so much valuable information that I’m really grateful for, but I’m definitely not going to impart all that here.

First of all, like any of these theories about different lenses through which one can look at life, it could easily be seen as hooey, lies, ridiculousness, hogswallop… you know. I fully understand that. I don’t believe everything I hear, I don’t live my life blind to every other philosophy, and I don’t treat this philosophy like something everyone should pay attention to.

However, what I have learned is very interesting to me, and I have found it useful to take into account in my life. I was really excited to have this reading, and I did learn a lot and take many tips away from it. One of the most valuable things I learned had to do with meditation.

The woman who had read my chart and was talking to me had told me:

1) My mind is ridiculously active. ALL. THE. TIME. There’s no way to shut it up. Ever.

2) I tend to mirror the emotions that people around me display. (It’s so true.)

3) The aforementioned points can cause me turmoil and frustration.

So, I asked her about meditation. The yogic form of meditation is designed to quiet the mind, creating a serene environment to clear away the cobwebs and think with more clarity. It’s never worked for me before. I get stressed out easily with it, beating myself up for thinking, when I’m “supposed” to be clearing my head and being quiet. People have told me that I would probably be diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. I’ve taken tests online for them and tested positive. I just can’t turn my brain off. But I was reading this book about Human Design and it said that meditation could really help all this, and I was pretty excited to find out, finally, how.

Of course, you can imagine what this woman who was doing my reading said…

“Flat-out impossible. Don’t even try it.”

I almost cried, no joke. But what she said next more than made up for that feeling of hopelessness. I think she asked if I liked listening to music or watching TV or movies, or just generally liked having background noise going on most of the time. Whatd’yaknow, I do. In fact South Park is on right now.

Ok, ok, the point. The point is that I have always felt more relaxed when watching movies or listening to music, but I always feel like crap about doing it because it seems like I’m wasting time. But I’m not. I’m actually giving my brain a break so that I can invest in other people’s ideas and emotion rather than getting more exhausted on my own. It’s excellent. I don’t think it’s for everyone, and actually I *do* think I’m capable of meditation, so it’s something to keep striving towards. But for now, I’m so happy that someone, anyone, told me that it’s ok to relax my brain with media rather than the classic methods that just make me more infuriated.

Life is good.

Love is (not) a battlefield

“You are what you love, not what loves you.” – From the movie “Adaptation.”

Love having an ulterior motive? Seriously? That’s like saying that God has an ulterior motive. In fact it is saying exactly that. God is Love. If you use God, it’s no longer an honest relationship with God. If you use Love, it is no longer honest Love. If you love someone in order to be happy in life, you don’t really love them.

Loving something or someone, it should be like having a relationship with Love itself, not with the person. That’s why people say, “I’m in love with love.” That’s why it’s possible to love more than one person in a lifetime. That’s why it’s hard to let go of, hard to define, and easy to fall in. It’s about the feeling and how it changes you, not about how it affects the world (though it does, undeniably).

And that is why they say, “All you need is love.” Over and over and over.

Yes, the bombs fall and the guns fire, all for the “love” of a country or the “love” of a god. Love doesn’t have the expectation of an outcome. It’s impossible to do something “in the name of love” (Sorry, U2… though I think they were being sort of ironic anyway…) because it expects an outcome. Love does not take sides. So, just because you fight a war “in the name of love” does not mean you will win. It does not mean that if you DO win, “God” or “Love” was on your side. Same thing if you lose.

Love is in your heart, not on a battlefield, in the weapons you fire, or in harsh words or neglect.

Clouds

In church today the pastor said that God was always a “good” God. He is not capable of being anything else. So if something happens that makes you question God’s good-ness, rest assured that the trial or crisis you are undergoing is only for your eventual growth.

Well yes, ok.

First of all, one could say that about anything. Fate is benevolent because it is supposed to happen. It is just as easy for us to believe that Fate is “good,” or that the gods are “good” or that any omniscient force that cares about humanity is “good.” In any of those cases, that belief would then come with the idea that everything happens for a reason. And if the caring, omniscient force is “good,” then that reason must also be good, because courses of events are set in motion for the purpose of achieving the “good” end result.

Some would say that this mindset is sort of uplifting. When we’re suffering, we may think, “but this is just part of a master plan that is really going to work out for the best!” However… consider the following:

So if someone is going through a crisis that makes them want to commit suicide, all we have to say is, “no, just wait– God is good! So you will come out of this stronger than ever!”

Well, um, no.

A local girl who was abducted and traumetized 5 years ago did not come out of it stronger than ever. She’s not even stronger than ever now, after five years of intense therapy and counseling. She may not even be stronger than ever 20 years from now. Sure, it all may have happened for a reason, but who’s to say whether that girl will ever know what that reason is? Or, was she traumetized to teach someone else a lesson? And in that case, why in the world would God use that child?

I am not one of those people who likes saying things like, “if we had a merciful God, this war wouldn’t be happening!” or “If our God was only benevolent, this never would have happened,” or “How could our Good God let this happen?!”

Regardless of what message God meant by handing us the trials we face, regardless of what we’re supposed to take from it, and regardless of whether God is “good” or not, I think it’s up to us to make each experience meaningful to ourselves. It’s not just about finding the “silver lining in the clouds;” it’s about realizing that there don’t even have to be clouds.

Positive thinking carries so much weight. I would not ever condone feigning ignorance (pretending the clouds aren’t there), but sometimes they do only appear to people whose perceptions are skewed.

In the movie “The Bishop’s Wife” (the old version with Cary Grant), Cary Grant’s character says to Loretta Young’s character, “you are one of the few people I’ve met who know how to make a Heaven here on Earth.”

The point is not that there aren’t any clouds– the point is that we always have the option of being above them.

Interesting.

Stereotype much?

Click on image to be directed to its original site, where you can also view the enlarged version.

How amazingly unlikely is your birth

Here, another instance of the “can I hear an amen?” thing that blogging is all about:

http://freshnessfactorfivethousand.blogspot.com/2010/02/oh-how-significant-we-are.html

And just to delightfully accompany that,

“The Galaxy Song” by Monty Python

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the ‘Milky Way’.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go ’round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.

Restless Teeth Syndrome.

“My people were fair and had sky in their hair, now they’re content to wear stars on their brow.” – Marc Bolan prophetically titles a Tyrannosaurus Rex album. [From Hippie]

What is with love and stars lately?

Why are they so inexplicably mysterious, but universal?

I watched “Helvetica” tonight. If you’re not familiar with it, you can take pride in the fact that you are not an aesthetics nerd. I am, however, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yes, it is precisely what it sounds like– a straight-faced documentary about the Helvetica font. It’s used for everything–you wouldn’t believe how often you see it and don’t realize it. Anyway, I’d wanted to watch it for a long time, and then I found it on Netflix instant (I swear, that is a Godsend) and decided on a whim to watch it.

There have been so many cool things I’ve watched recently. One was a documentary about the gospel songs of Bob Dylan, which was enlightening and inspiring (also on Netflix instant), the movie “Death in Venice” (based on the short story of the same name by Thomas Mann), and “This Is It,” about Michael Jackson’s last concert series, which never took place. All were amazing movies, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend “Death in Venice.” It’s like a Lolita story, though my professors maintain that it is NOT about pedophilia. … Yeah, sure, whatever.

I went to a leadership conference in Portland (PDX) last weekend, where I met a lot of really fantastic people and just bummed around Portland the whole time. It was so much better on foot than in a car, and I cannot wait to go back just for that!

It really reinforced my desire to travel, though. I want to go to France so bad that my teeth hurt all the time and my mouth is always tense. I have senioritis, but since I’m not a senior I don’t have any of the excuses that I could normally use!

I have headaches and stomachaches all the time, my French is awful, I never do my homework, I hate my [non-] job, I never get enough sleep, I have zero love life, my room is a mess, I’m broke, and my hair is weird…

BUT I LOVE LIFE.

I’m having an absurdly amazing time being miserable! And it’s not even because I love complaining (which I try not to do outside of blogging anyway). I don’t know why life is so fantastic, but something must be going right.

I feel more creative than I have in a very long time, and most of the time I feel like I actually act on that creativity.

I have SO much to look forward to, and planning my France trip is the most amazing, independent experience I’ve ever had.

I am making decisions that help me feel guilt-free and open to new possibilities.

I have few NO regrets.

I’m learning and exploring new things all the time, and I feel like I’m actually getting something out of it.

I feel like an empty USB stick.

In my family we talk a lot about the various geniuses who have influenced and inspired us, and the source of their genius. Most of them can be considered insane (take Camille Claudel, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Van Gogh), but why?

Theory:

The truly creative geniuses of the world operate out of their unconscious, and so operate on a different plane– speaking to others on a “normal” level is beneath them, which is why they tend towards recluseness (reclusivity?).

It’s too bad, because they’re probably the ones who get to talk to the moon.

Good Night, Moon.

I was driving home today, and I saw the moon. Not just any moon, but one of those red ones that is at least twice the size of the “normal” vision we see of the moon. And though I knew I’d seen a moon like that before, this one hit me.

I mean, it really hit me.

My breath caught, and I said, “oh my god” a few times out loud to no one. It erased my thoughts, which is not a common phenomenon for me. It was so… close. Not the kind of close like I could reach out and touch it, but the kind of close like it was leaning on the horizon, with no intention of traveling to the other horizon, or even disappearing when the sun came. The kind of close like it was trying to tell me something. The kind of close like I needed to take heed.

It was an important moon.

There weren’t any other cars on my side of the highway, but a few were going the opposite direction. I wanted to hold up a sign to them that said “look in your rearview mirror!” but I wasn’t sure they would see the moon. Maybe it only showed itself to me. Maybe it was my moon.

My moon!

About a week and a half ago, I was taking the trash out and checking the mail when I looked up and saw that night’s moon. That night’s moon had a perfect orb of clouds around it that glowed as if the moon was a singular streetlight on the Milky Way. It was an important moon, but it didn’t want to be noticed. I was certain about that, because when I frantically called my mom (who always appreciates a good moon) and my dad (who might be able to tell me why it looked the way it did), they told me they couldn’t see it. It reminded me of ‘The Polar Express,” when the little boy is the only child who can hear Santa’s sleigh bell.

It was my important moon.

Both of these moons disappeared. By the time I got home tonight, the red moon was completely obscured, and not even in the same part of the sky that I remembered it.

The problem with the moon is that it’s too difficult to monitor. I can stay up all night watching it, but it will vanish during the day and take on an entirely different costume and character the next night.

What’s that they say about the inconstant moon? Shakespeare, of course. “Lest that thy love prove likewise variable” (Romeo and Juliet). The constance is in the fact that the moon is visible each night.

The moon– that’s what it’s all about. That’s what life is about, love, perception, inconstance, importance. It’s about staying awake to watch the moon. Saying “good night” as a greeting, instead of an adieu. People curse insomnia and being tired, but life is about being inspired. I’m inspired by the moon, so if I stay up to watch it, maybe it will prove constant.

Maybe it will stay my moon.

Love really is all you need.

I say it all the time, and people get tired of hearing it.

People think Love is a given, like “yeah, there’s love in the world. Whatever. I don’t have that person yet, but it’s nice that other people express it. Like through music. Music is cool.” If you’re someone who says that, STOP. You may not realize it, but it’s hurting. Apathy is what kills Love before hate even takes a bite.

Love is not a given. That’s why people express it, and why it’s so taboo. That’s why there are so many self-imposed rules around Love that are actually quite meaningless. Those rules are what make us think that Love is for “that special person.” Rules are what make us think that Love has to be expressed at a certain time or place. We think Love isn’t spontaneous, because there are so many rules that say that it needs to be reserved for… something. I don’t know what.

Same with music. Why does it make us uncomfortable when people burst into song or start whistling, randomly? When did we start thinking that music had to happen in a recording studio or in a scheduled concert?

This video doesn’t help those points at all, since this Music and Love is very planned, but it does show that we don’t have to “hold out for love.” Love is all around us. We do have to accept the responsibility to pick it up and spread it.

I mean, for God’s sake (literally), there are people singing in Afghanistan, and my first thought when I saw that was, “wow, how did the Americans making this video get those Afghani people to trust them?!”

Since when do we have to TRUST people to make music with them and SPREAD LOVE?!

Also, need I point out that technically, it was the Beatles that brought people together like this? I think it is phenomenal that there is this one group whose music (even if it’s just this one song) has stretched to so many parts of the earth. We really are united… and it feels so good!

Pleasant Surprises

I’ve said it before (but not here), but I’ll say it again: Talking about Tchaikovsky and Nietzsche makes me feel like the college student everyone wants to be. Or at least, I feel like the college student I always wanted to be. I have to listen to it and read it, respectively, to be able to talk about it, and for once that’s what I’m doing!

First, I found Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture on my iTunes (one of those moments of musical joy)… but initially that made me feel more like a budding anarchist (because I also realized that V’s symbol in V for Vendetta looks like an upside down anarchy symbol)… so I moved on to the Nutcracker Suite. But that made me feel like a stuffed mouse or a five-year-old, not a college student, so then I moved on to the Swan Lake suite, which I guess feels a little more refined.

Then, I began reading The Birth of Tragedy, and got all excited because its alternate title is “Out of the Spirit of Music,” which is what Life is. And Love. Here, Nietzsche says it best: “In song and dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying into the air, dancing. His very gestures express enchantment. … He is no longer and artist, he has become a work of art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature reveals itself to the highest gratification of the primordial unity.”

… Oh my God, why in the world didn’t I use that for my paper last year?!

This one is even better: “Now, with the gospel of universal harmony, each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, and rused with his neighbor, but as one with him, as if the veil of ‘maya’ had been torn aside and were now merely fluttering in tatters before the mysterious primordial unity.” I don’t know what “maya” is, but otherwise, that’s pretty much exactly what I was trying to say last year. AND I DIDN’T GET IT FROM NIETZSCHE!

Actually, that’s kind of depressing. I thought I had a bunch of original thoughts… but of course this philosopher said it better. Well… Maybe not better. I mean, mine DID take up 25 pages, and I am pretty damn proud of it. I spent so many hours of heartache over it, and Nietzsche probably just rattled it off in a couple minutes without much research or soul-searching. At least that means that mine was more personally interpretive and meaningful. …But alas, I am biased.

A Smile Is A Celebration.

Hopefully blogging on January 1st is a good omen.

It’s not always the first of January.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we lived EVERY day as if it were the last (or first) day of the year? What if every night at midnight we counted down and then hugged strangers and threw confetti? Or, scratch the confetti (it would get expensive).

The year is broken up by various holidays, including birthdays, anniversaries, and ones not recognized by some people of other cultures and faiths. There are bound to be at least five days out of the year that are meaningful to each of us and our loved ones–days that we are bound to celebrate. But, there are 365 days in a year, and every day there are many people who have birthdays. Not people we know, of course… the point is that every day is specifically meaningful to someone. It would be really interesting to treat every day like it was someone’s birthday. Do something meaningful each day. Then if it helps, you can tell yourself you’re doing it for a person who happens to be having a birthday today.

So, you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, you are having a bad hair day, your schedule is crazy, and you just can’t seem to get anything done or laugh at anything. Unless you are in a coma or paralyzed (and I mean this in no offense to people who are in a coma or who are paralyzed), nothing should incapacitate your smile.

Smile at someone.

Even if it the only thing you are able to do in a day, and even if it isn’t immediately apparent to you or that person, a smile is meaningful. Tell yourself you’re doing that one meaningful thing for someone who is celebrating.

You know that exhilarating feeling when a holiday comes around or when we have birthday festivities, and the festivities give meaning to that day, so you know it’s something special. And then, we all have those days where we have cause to say, “this is not my day.”

But… when you stop to think about how many people are celebrating something on one single day of the year, and you think of them in that festive mindset, why would you pass up the opportunity to celebrate with them?!

A smile is your party favor, a gift to someone who may not have even been aware that there was a party.

Procrastinating Christian

It wasn’t with much excitement today that I accurately labeled myself a “procrastinating Christian.”

It’s that feeling where you know you have tons to do–There’s all that homework, and the messy kitchen, and the living room floor because you have people coming over, and what is the source of that awful smell?!–but there is always something to do before you can get started on all that. But, at least you’ve made the list of things to do, right? I’m not sure whether we consciously or subconsciously decide not to do all that work, but somehow it just never gets done. Am I right?

There is so much that I need to do and figure out before I could do something like devote myself to a God about whom I know relatively nothing. It would be like ordering a bride in the mail! Still, the longer I wait, the more I feel like a seamstress (in keeping with the mail-order bride analogy). I feel like I’m going to expire for God. …And now I’m resisiting the urge to go for a cheese metaphor.

Anyway, I know what I’m waiting for. I have zillions of pseudo-answers lined up for when people ask me why I haven’t accepted God into my life yet and confirmed myself as a Christian. They are all true, because there are SO many things I’m waiting for, but there is only one for which I would ignore all the others. I am torn, knowing that I will be forever waiting in vain, but knowing that I can never turn my back on the remote possibilities, and also knowing that the remote possibilities would be less remote if I was a confirmed Christian.

It all comes back to Love, which apparently I am not familiar with anyway. If I knew God, then I would know Love. If I knew Love, perhaps I would know God. Which comes first?!

The Vault.

You know that part of “The Polar Express” where they’re trying to slow the train down before it hits the lake of ice, but the piece of metal flies out of the brake lever, so they can’t stop the train? For what seems like minutes, they grasp and grasp for that piece of metal, while it slips out of their fingers, down a grate on the floor of the train, down a man’s throat, until finally it is coughed up… only to fly out of the train’s window and puncture the ice, causing gashes in the surface that nearly signal the end for every passenger.

That little tiny piece of metal, and that moment where they’re so close to losing it… that’s what Love feels like to me, too much of the time. It’s exhilarating, and it’s definitely a rush of adrenaline, and that piece of metal is so precious and valuable… but it never really feels safe. It seems like it’s always something I’m trying to grasp, something that I need to hold on to but just can’t seem to get a grip.

I can’t remember the last time I really felt safe in Love, but I do know when it all fell apart. Ironically, it’s one of my most meaningful and cherished memories. At that time, I learned what it would take to fully be able to relax into Love and let it be my life.

Why is it so difficult to take that challenge? I hate feeling like I’m missing something, or like I’m too inadequate to be able to hold on to it. That’s not the way this is supposed to work. From a Christian perspective, if God is Love, and God made man in His own image, are we Love? I know we are capable of Loving and we are meant to Love, but what in the world does it take to access that? Why do I feel like by being born, I was given the key to this secret vault and told to open it and use what is inside to create and spread Peace, but I can’t use the key or access the vault or something?

WHY do I feel like I’m missing something?!

And why is it that whenever I receive a gift from people who mean so much to me, I feel like I’ve been given a clue?!

I want to give clues! I want to be a strong person who knows how to tell people to Love!

__________________________

Trust me, I know what this allegory is about, and it’s not Harry Potter. Or the Matrix. I wish it were that simple!

A Love Letter From John And Yoko: To People Who Ask Us What, When And Why

Sunday, May 27, 1979

The past ten years we noticed everything we wished came true in its own time, good or bad, one way or the other. We kept telling each other that one of these days we would have to get organized and wish for only good things. Then our baby arrived! We were overjoyed and at the same time felt very responsible. Now our wishes would also affect him. We felt it was time for us to stop discussing and do something about our wishing process: The Spring Cleaning of our minds! It was a lot of work. We kept finding things in those old closets in our minds that we hadn’t realized were still there, things we wished we hadn’t found. As we did our cleaning, we also started to notice many wrong things in our house: there was a shelf which should never have been there in the first place, a painting we grew to dislike, and there were the two dingy rooms, which became light and breezy when we broke the walls between them. We started to love the plants, which one of us originally through were robbing the air from us! We began to enjoy the drum beat of the city which used to annoy us. We made a lot of mistakes and still do. In the past we spent lots of energy in trying to get something we thought we wanted, wondered why we didn’t get it, only to find out that one or both of us didn’t really want it. One day, we received a sudden rain of chocolates from people around the world. “Hey, what’s this! We’re not eating sugar stuff, are we?” “Who’s wishing it?” We both laughed. We discovered that when two of us wished in unison, it happened faster. As the Good Book says — Where two are gathered together — It’s true. Two is plenty. A New Clear Seed.

More and more we are starting to wish and pray. The things we have tried to achieve in the past by flashing a V sign, we try now through wishing. We are not doing this because it is simpler. Wishing is more effective than waving flags. It works. It’s like magic. Magic is simple. Magic is real. The secret of it is to know that it is simple, and not kill it with an elaborate ritual which is a sign of insecurity. When somebody is angry with us, we draw a halo around his or her head in our minds. Does the person stop being angry then? Well, we don’t know! We know, though, that when we draw a halo around a person, suddenly the person starts to look like an angel to us. This helps us feel warm towards the person, reminds us that everyone has goodness inside, and that all people who come to us are angels in disguise, carrying messages and gifts to us from the Universe. Magic is logical. Try it sometime.

We still have a long way to go. It seems the more we get into cleaning, the faster the wishing and receiving process gets. The house is getting very comfortable now. Sean is beautiful. The plants are growing. The cats are purring. The town is shining, sun, rain or snow. We live in a beautiful universe. We are thankful every day for the plentifulness of our life. This is not a euphemism. We understand that we, the city, the country, the earth are facing very hard times, and there is panic in the air. Still the sun is shining and we are here together, and there is love between us, our city, the country, the earth. If two people like us can do what we are doing with our lives, any miracle is possible! It’s true we can do with a few big miracles right now. The thing is to recognize them when they come to you and to be thankful. First they come in a small way, in every day life, then they come in rivers, and in oceans. It’s goin’ to be alright! The future of the earth is up to all of us.

Many people are sending us vibes every day in letters, telegrams, taps on the gate, or just flowers and nice thoughts. We thank them all and appreciate them for respecting our quiet space, which we need. Thank you for all the love you send us. We feel it every day. We love you, too. We know you are concerned about us. That is nice. That’s why you want to know what we are doing. That’s why everybody is asking us What, When and Why. We understand. Well, this is what we’ve been doing. We hope that you have the same quiet space in your mind to make your own wishes come true.

If you think of us next time, remember, our silence is a silence of love and not of indifference. Remember, we are writing in the sky instead of on paper — that’s our song. Lift your eyes and look up in the sky. There’s our message. Life your eyes again and look around you, and you will see that you are walking in the sky, which extends to the ground. We are all part of the sky, more so than of the ground. Remember, we love you.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono

New York City

PS. We noticed that three angels were looking over our shoulders when we wrote this!

From the back page of The New York Times
Sunday, May 27, 1979

Which came first?

I have a conundrum for you.

The other day in church, the pastor asked, “Did you ever think about what the world would be like if God had not made music?” I had, in fact, thought about it, but this time was different.

I wonder, do you think God made the concept of music first and then humans, so that we could create it and enjoy it, or do you think he made humans and included in us the capability of making and enjoying music?

Optimism in Vogue

I can’t decide whether “waiting on the world to change” is pessimistic or optimistic–not as a song, but as a concept. When my mom first heard the song, she did not approve. She said, “why would we just wait for the world to change? What an odd thing to promote. You’d think people would get up offa their asses and actually do something themselves.” Okay, she didn’t quite say that. Anyway I told her, in absolute defense of John Mayer, that the song was supposed to be ironic. John Mayer was trying to tell everyone that we shouldn’t just sit around all the time and wait for the world to change. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I guess I like it.

The point is, it’s an odd phrase. Pessimistic because regardless of what John Mayer might have meant by it, it sort of implies that we’re at a complete loss as to what to do or how to accomplish what we think needs to be done about our world. But it’s optimistic because at least we know something needs to be done, and we know that change is good.

That optimism is hard to find lately. I’ve been noticing with my friends that sometimes we tend to only bond when we’re complaining about the same things or bitching together. When we agree, we agree and leave it at that. I hate it. I’ve even brought this up to a couple friends, who agreed that they found it frustrating as well, and then we started bitching some more about it.

What is wrong with us, that we can’t find joy in even the lowliest sparrow, and share that joy with others?

Why is it so easy to find things to complain about, when really there is an exponentially greater number of things that we could choose to find fascinating, outstanding, awesome (in the REAL meaning of the word), or touching?

Why is it that in thinking about this problem, all I can do is blame some people (like the media, for only reporting on negative news and issues)? Current events can be depressing, but why have we trained ourselves to never look at the subtexts? For instance, The Copenhagen discussions that have been going on about global warming– for a while, we were learning the facts about what was getting done. Suddenly the conference is over, and all we can do is talk about what didn’t get done. People don’t realize that we are so lucky to have come out on the other side of the conference with even more questions and topics at hand. For one thing, we’re strengthening our international relations. But also, it is so easy to forget that science is all about asking questions! When we did science experiments in middle school, the goal was to prove our hypothesis correct through our experiment. In high school, the goal was simply to explore more about our hypothesis. If it turned out to be right, we needed to know the variables that could actually make it true or false in difference cicumstances. If it turned out to be incorrect, we learned how to ask more questions to narrow down what might have gone wrong, what we needed to improve on, and what else we could consider for the future. The latter was so much more of a learning experience than simply proving ourselves right through the same steps that had been performed countless times before.

Why are we so afraid of asking questions and being unsure of ourselves? I do not operate under the belief that ignorance is bliss, but rather, that the road to enlightenment is paved with doubt, and the only way to recover from that doubt is to be optimistic. And the only way to be optimistic is to have hope. The only way to have hope is to have faith in humanity. The way to have faith in humanity is to have faith in yourself, as a member of humanity who will make a difference. And the way to have faith in yourself is by being the change that you wish to see in the world.

Be.Love.

Talking shouldn’t be this complicated.

Sometimes I forget I’m talking to people. Like, I finish talking to them and then realize that I wasn’t really talking to them like they’re real people; I’m talking to them like I’m in a video game and the sentence I have to say to them is my challenge. I feel like I cheat them out of my real thoughts, but I don’t know if they can tell.

I don’t remember which school of thought states that maybe there aren’t actually multiple people in the world–maybe there’s just me, and God (or some external force) puts other people and situations on earth just to test me and teach me. It’s an interesting-if a little narcissistic-idea.

It also helps me think of things more linearly … as in, it helps me be more diplomatic in my approach to people. I don’t worry so much about figuring out how to please each person individually, because they exist as a learning experience for me.

But then, one has to wonder, what if they think the same thing? What if I’m simply a learning experience for them? Clearly, then, life is not this existential illusion. But that, too, is a learning experience.

A poem by Rumi: “An Awkward Comparison”

[The formatting doesn't hold. I'll try to figure that out later. Also, I chose it randomly from a book of Rumi's poems that I have. I might decode it later in another post. Enjoy]

———-

“An Awkward Comparison”

This physical world has no two things alike.

Every comparison is awkwardly rough.

You can put a lion next to a man,

but the placing is hazardous to both.

Say the body is like this lamp.

It has to have a wick and oil. Sleep and food.

If it doesn’t get those, it will die,

and it’s always burning those up, trying to die.

But where is the sun in this comparison?

It rises, and the lamp’s light

mixes with the day.

Oneness,

which is the reality, cannot be understood

with lamp and sun images. The blurring

of a plural into a unity is wrong.

No image can describe

what of our fathers and mothers,

our grandfathers and grandmothers, remains.

Language does not touch the one

who lives in each of us.

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,

as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts

from books and from what the teacher says,

collecting information from the traditional sciences

as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.

You get ranked ahead or behind others

in regard to your competence in retaining

information. You stroll with this intelligence

in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more

marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one

already completed and preserved inside you.

A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness

in the center of the chest. This other intelligence

does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,

and it doesn’t move from outside to inside

through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead

from within you, moving out.

[Something]‘s Gonna Change My World

I have about ten saved drafts of other posts I’ve started over the past couple weeks… but on this day, I feel more like starting anew.

You know how they tell you in high school that once you get into “the real world, then blah blah blah”? I never knew whether the Real World started after college, or before, or during, or at the moment of graduation from high school, or right when you became financially independent, or what. Who knows whether any of us are in the Real World at all. (I know that statement is a little too Matrix-y, but whether it’s a metaphor or not, sometimes there IS a world (or many other worlds) out there to which we are blind or deaf).

Occasionally, I know that I’m living in the world in my head. Occasionally, I know that I’m living in a fantasy world created by the media. Occasionally, I know that I’m living in the Real World.

This is what the real world is like: In college, they don’t hold a moment of silence for the lives lost during 9/11/01. I remember in middle and high school (gawd, I’m old) when we would stand with bowed heads, and I’m sure it happens still. But I’m not in an environment where that’s done, and I don’t know why. It’s not that I want that moment of silence…

I think I just want to comprehend the suffering of others. Or maybe I don’t, but I feel like I should. For instance, I have a friend who is in Ghana right now (her blog is at http://heidigroover.blogspot.com/. She updates often and her insight is really great–check it out). She’s sort of a participant observer in the third world/developing country scheme there, and she witnesses first hand the conditions in which the natives live.

It seems like things like that are really valued in our society, because we like to think we’re pretty privileged (when it’s put in perspective). On the other hand, being able to step back and have an honest, solid empathy for those who are suffering is “good.” When Hurricane Katrina happened, the rest of the United States felt sympathetic toward the victims and their loss.

When 9/11 happened, people all over the United States empathized and mourned (partly because it was a threat to everyone, not just those in NYC and the Pentagon).

But what if I can’t comprehend that?

I end up feeling completely heartless simply because I don’t understand suffering. I know what it is, of course, and I’ve experienced a tiny bit myself on a very small scale, but I just haven’t been able to look at suffering in terms of feelings. In other words, I can listen to specific stories of people’s losses around 9/11 and genuinely feel bad for them, but I can’t share their sorrow.

I look at Katrina as a mass loss of homes, pets, belongings, finances, loved ones… but not as a loss of hope or a loss of esteem.

I look at 9/11 as a mass loss of lives and loss of assets (buildings, money). I know it is symbolic, but I have some sort of emotional block from knowing what that really means for our country and for the people more directly affected by the attack.

And I won’t lie; I feel quite awful about all of this. It’s not like I’m apathetic toward everything. It’s just that I guess I have no way of translating that sorrow, so far removed from me, to something closer to home.

But how important is it, to share that burden of sorrow? I feel like it’s a duty for me as an American citizen to feel personally hurt and scared by the events of 9/11. I don’t. But is that something around which the United States really needs to rally?! Do we really need to take on some more pain, and remember it every year?

I may not be very adept [yet?] at feeling empathetic toward others’ pain, but I can sure as hell share their joy.

Heidi, my friend in Ghana, said that she witnessed a funeral procession in one Ghanian village where one of the elderly men in the town had just died. She says, “It was strange to see the way they celebrated the life of the 85-year-old man who had died instead of mourning the fact that he was gone. Even the signs posted around town announced the ‘Celebration of Life,’ not the ‘Funeral ‘or ‘Ceremony.’” (http://heidigroover.blogspot.com/2009/09/830-first-little-big-adventure.html).

I think joy is more universal than sorrow. Even with all the famine, disease, poverty, and other misfortunes ailing many parts of the world, those trials only make small things easier to appreciate, therefore creating more joy. Why don’t we rally around hope? Didn’t Barack Obama’s campaign prove that hope is a much more effective tool?

For a while, I remember plans being laid for an “uplifting” memorial to 9/11 at Ground Zero. While I do think it’s important to keep such an event in our history, I remember a line from one of my favorite movies saying something like, “the best way to forget something is by commemorating it.” Are we afraid of seeming heartless if we just move on? Are we not saving the victims still suffering from the effects of the attacks from enduring further strife?

In a way, it’s not so bad to not comprehend suffering. In fact, I think it’s pretty normal. I think confusion is a more natural and positive response than anger and hatred (but that’s not saying much).

How long did the people who started blaming others for the attacks stop to ruminate on what had actually happened? Life should not be a grand “whodunnit?” setup. Some things are mysteries, including the human brain, heart, and soul, as well as their feelings and functions.

I am not saying that we wouldn’t need to find out who was responsible for something like 9/11. I’m also not saying that anger is not part of the grieving process (i.e., anger IS part of the grieving process). But what do we need to do (personally and on a larger scale) to ensure that compassion is ALSO part of the process, enough to the point where we realize that anger and hatred are only bred from not understanding. We don’t understand death; it has always been mysterious. But we also know that to every time, there is a season. In the heat of the moment, it’s impossible to recognize something like that. I just wonder when blame has solved a problem, and whether it’s reliable enough to keep trying.

Though I may live in a bubble, and only venture into the Real World occasionally, my bubble does facilitate some self reflection. If I’m honest with myself in admitting that I don’t understand suffering and I don’t understand death, I can also realize that I share more common ground with people in joy than in sorrow. Rather than using ignorance in a way that is harmful to myself and others, I would like to exploit the similarity of joy, and breed compassion, hope, and love. Love can penetrate any personal bubble.

“Limitless, undying love which shines around me like a million suns, it calls me on and on, across the universe.” -The Beatles.

Abruptishnessment

Nearly all of my books on spirituality (especially Eastern philosophy and spirituality) have orange on their covers. Bear with me while I decode that…

Sorry for the obnoxiously short post; I’m barely at home before leaving to the cabin again :) Have an excellent day!

Savoring the Beat

My mom is leaving tomorrow for southern Idaho, so for a while we had a plan to carpool a ways down there. She would drop me off at a monastery and I would spend a couple nights down there, volunteering and just hanging out, because I’ve never been in that kind of environment before. Then I found out that their facilities aren’t really open to that right now–only to retreats. Which means it would be two nights/three days in complete devotion to God, and I don’t think I’m ready for that. That’s pretty intense, and I feel like such an amateur.

Anyway, it turns out that they’re booked up for this weekend, so I’m not able to stay there even if I had the guts. It’s sad that I would even need guts to visit a monastery, for Heaven’s sake, but it’s true. Situations like that have always intimidated me. When I got to my middle/high school, everyone was familiar with the Bible and I barely knew where Genesis was. I’ve gotten a bit better, and a little more confident, but I still freeze up every time I enter a Catholic church. When do I kneel? When do I stand? With which hand do I cross myself?

It’s odd that I have some friends to whom this is all second nature… then, I have some friends who have only memorized the moves and rituals from movies, and some who have never stepped inside a Catholic church. I love them all, of course. But I do become wary of people who don’t really step out of their box.

That’s why Caleb and I are looking into “touring” some churches in the area, just to get some variety before I leave again. And when I do leave, I’d like to keep going to a church, because I love the experience. Last Sunday, after church, my dad asked me what it was like after the sermon. “Do people leave immediately, or mill around, or dissect the sermon, or what?”

After thinking for a moment, I likened it to the moments after a Sweet Adelines rehearsal. We sing a closing song, usually with hands held, and close with a big finish. We’re all smiling at each other and praising each other for a job well done, no matter how the evening went. Then, when we release hands, there’s a “beat” (as they say in the acting community) where everyone just sort of sighs.

It’s marvelous how similar things are in the churches I’ve been to. As the congregation closes with a song or a rousing chorus, everyone feels unified and vibrantly alert of each other and the reason they are all gathered there. Then, like the end of a rehearsal, there is a moment like a sigh–it isn’t silent, and it’s not particularly reverent, but it is somewhat thoughtful.

That’s a pretty cool moment, though it’s usually unremarkable. I mean, it’s also just the moment when everyone picks up their Bible and purse, begins talking to their neighbor, and makes their way out of the pew. Life goes on. It’s ordinary. But it’s the most comfortable moment, because there’s so much to think about, and yet it’s a very tense moment, because there’s so much responsibility. I always feel pretty pressured to keep up the kind of faithfulness I’ve felt for the past hour. And even that is a pretty awesome (yes, awe-some) feeling… but it’s also near impossible.

As many a pastor has said, “life gets in the way.” Sometimes I wish I were someone like Rumi or Aristotle or the Dalai Lama, for whom life probably does not get in the way. Feeling faithful IS their life. Hopefully they know how lucky they are.

Illuminating Ruminating

[This article was originally a continuation of the post below, TwitterBurger.]

I can’t help it; I love looking at every single one of people’s Tweets. You never know what you might miss, I suppose… and some are really quite profound or inspirational. Take this, for example: I follow Deepak Chopra (if you don’t know who he is…look it up), and he has some really amazing quotes. Today he Tweeted: “We have fallen into the place where everything is music. -Rumi“

I would imagine that this has something to do with Rumi’s general teachings (I had to look this up too): He believed that he had been disconnected from his creator and had begun to think himself above it/him/her, but that he had the ultimate goal to reconnect with his primal roots and restore that relationship.

So at first, the quote that Deepak Chopra Tweeted seemed a little… derogatory, shall we say? towards music. If we have “fallen” to that place where everything is music, it doesn’t seem very positive. It makes me think of falling from grace, or “falling” as a sort of failure. So despite my unconditional love for music, my conclusion was that perhaps Rumi saw music as monotony? To say that “We have fallen into the place where everything is monotonous” would make much more sense, since monotony isn’t really something we strive for, and it could definitely be said that our world has become monotonous (despite all the Twittering).

However, even my extremely rudimentary Rumi research through Wikipedia told me that Rumi was anything but skeptical or pessimistic towards music. Apparently, he wholeheartedly believed that music was one of the best ways to get back in touch with his creator or God.

(At this point I must stress that if you know anything about Rumi, please tell me, because I’m completely at a loss and I’m a little distrustful of Wikipedia sometimes.)

Anyway, Wiki says that Rumi thought poetry, music, and dancing were the ways in which people were most spiritual and soulful. The idea of “whirling dervishes” (which I always thought were a kind of garden ornament) originated around Rumi’s time. They were so invested in the sounds that they would move in whatever way the spirit moved them, which often resulted in spinning. Pretty soon, this sort of dancing became a ritual, during which Rumi believed that the soul was damaged and repaired, and when it was repaired, there was a renewed devotion to God.

From Wiki: “In this journey, the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth, and arrives at the Perfect. The seeker then returns from this spiritual journey, with greater maturity, to love and to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination with regard to beliefs, races, classes, and nations.”

Honestly, this sounds amazing. I was never one for believing that the soul could have just one point of revelation; rather, it is always evolving and maturing. But for the alternative, it’s an amazing idea. And of course, whether you believe the soul goes through one very powerful transformation or many, I do concur with the idea that music plays a huge part of it.

“Falling into music” is a little bittersweet, and actually I think I was partially right in my analysis of it. We’ve fallen into a place where everything is monotonous, but we can choose to see it as music, because that is all we have. And because music is so powerful, we can choose to make something of it and use it to our advantage, not just in the world but for ourselves, spiritually. And once we change ourselves, we are well on our way to changing the world anyway.

A Beautiful Friendship

Wavelengths are powerful; sharing wavelengths with someone is even more so. It’s one thing to be in agreement with someone verbally; it’s another thing to share the same thoughts; it’s another thing to share feelings.

I don’t think all of that comes automatically with someone. People may talk about love at first sight, but even though the lusty feeling may be there, the synchronicity takes some work. And it’s not any different with a friendship. In fact, it’s even more difficult to develop mutuality, because you don’t have the initial lust from which to develop common ground. But when you do reach that ultimate mutuality, in any relationship, it’s the best feeling in the world–but it still demands attention and effort.

One of my criteria for having a romantic relationship is that we both have to have a mutual respect. We should share other things mutually as well, but respect is first and foremost for me.

So I often wonder if this isn’t my main problem with Christianity. If I want a relationship with God and/or with Christ, I seem to have this innate desire for it to be mutual, and that’s just not possible. The idea that we owe so much to Christ, who bled and died for our sins, is sort of a deterrent–meaning that we can never “break even” because of our sin nature and all that. But wouldn’t it be great if the phrase “what a friend we have in Jesus” was actually true, and it actually was a friendship?

“What a friend we have in Jesus,/ all our sins and griefs to bear/…/ Can we find a friend so faithful/ who will all our sorrows share?/ Jesus knows our every weakness/…/ Are we weak and heavy-laden,/ Cumbered with a load of care?/ Precious Savior, still our refuge/…/ Thou wilt find a solace there.”

Maybe it is mutual. Maybe Jesus does bear our burdens and we bear his, like friends do. Maybe he does want the best for us, and in a way, we want the best for him– for the ideals he embodied. The biggest difference is that a friendship with Jesus doesn’t involve immediate gratification. While it’s possible to have tons of fun with a best friend, it’s not really possible to have a party with Jesus… unless you dole out peyote as a party favor. But instead, the time when we get to join Jesus is at the “end” of the friendship.

“Soon in glory bright, unclouded,/ There will be no need for prayer./ Rapture, praise, and endless worship/ will be our sweet portion there.”

Or is it the beginning? Perhaps life is a long courtship with Jesus, and Heaven is the real beginning of a beautiful friendship.

[Song: "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," by Joseph M. Scriven.]

Turning Hearts Back to You, Again.

I was just talking with a friend I haven’t talked to in quite a while–months, probably. We were never extremely close (in fact I mostly felt like his acquaintance), but we talked every once in a while and he was always very upbeat, if a little cynical and more focused on getting laughter sometimes than any actual meaning in a conversation. But, that just tended to make him more fun, even if we didn’t have a friendship that was really rooted in something.

As I regained contact with him, I braced myself for his humor and the old nature I remembered. But instead of random, detached jokes, a real story greeted me: a sobering one. While he’s been staying in the east for a while, his recently divorced mother had decided to shut him out of her house upon his return, and made it impossible for my friend to see his father. My friend has no money and still has two years left of high school to manage–needless to say, he doesn’t have the resources to figure out how to negotiate his situation.

Through the conversation, the optimist inside of me tried desperately to cling to other options for my friend and possible things to distract him. Finally, I claimed that “if nothing else, there’s always the youth mission, or whatever it’s called.” Without having any idea of how he would react, I think I was kind of buffering the statement (or myself) with the “whatever it’s called” part. And sure enough, my friend would hear nothing of it.

“You know I don’t accept charity,” he said. I didn’t, in fact, know that about him, but I would soon enough. “I need to work for it somehow, and, more importantly, that people worse off than me should take that opportunity, not me.”

I guess I still don’t know what to make of that. Some of those places to make kids work for the privilege to stay there, and they’re run by volunteers who are happy to dedicate their time to the shelter or whatever place it is. I said, “it’s all relative,” but he disagreed.

You just can’t argue with some people. But that’s not the point.

The point is that sometimes, all you can do is pray. And what I’m slowly realizing is that as I and my friends grow up and start encountering things that we’ve never experienced before, we can’t always act according to “best interests” or “the right thing to do,” because we just plain don’t know what those things are. So I guess people pray that some other force can guide them. I don’t know why that’s better– either way, we feel like a situation is out of our control; sometimes we ask for help, and sometimes we don’t.

I’ve never really been very good at prayer or interested in it, but I’m starting to think that the most meaningful part is not necessarily the connection one makes with God through it, but the connection one makes with fellow humans through it. Whether we think anyone “up there” is listening, we feel good about it. If we pray for someone else, we are comforted by knowing we may be doing the only thing that’s in our power to do; if we pray for ourselves, we’re comforted knowing that even if nothing comes of it, we’ve asked for help.

Maybe that’s my gut feeling about what my friend said to me about charity. Personally, I like to be asked for help. It makes me feel capable, loving, and needed, as well as a mutual nurturer. And I know there are other people in the world like that–some of them work at youth hostels, I would bet. (As I side note, I just happened to wonder if God likes to be asked for help… interesting.) So besides the fact that hostels and other “charities” exist to be taken advantage of by anyone (just like how anyone can pray, not just those who “really need it”), the people involved might actually feel privileged to help.

I don’t want to see my friend suffer, but I also don’t want to undermine his beliefs–I have the utmost respect for his opinions about charity (and sympathize with them, to some extent). But we, his friends, would probably rather see him swallow his pride than pitch a tent on a street corner.

I rarely, if ever, pray. But whenever I do, the thought or wish that usually surfaces when I’m grappling for something to pray “about” is that most of all, I would like some guidance in prayer itself. This time is no different. Do I pray for my friend to find a roof over his head, no matter what the conditions are, as long as his beliefs are upheld? Do I pray for him to, just this once, abandon his rules and take advantage of the charities that are available to him? Do I pray for his mother, who can really be seen as the root of this problem?

As usual, I can’t decide… and luckily, I don’t think it’s for me to decide. The prayers I do come up with can usually be boiled down to one theme: peace. I know, hippieness blah blah blah. But really, is there anything more powerful that I can pray for than for my friend to be at peace? The actual events at stake here are out of my control; they’re out of my friend’s; and they’re out of the control of everyone else who is praying for him. So ultimately, I would like to pray for him to be at peace with whatever ends up happening, whether it’s his will or not. And for all of us to keep love in our hearts first and foremost. ((w&f))

Title courtesy of Jon Foreman’s, “Again”