Becoming Monsters

I started re-reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller today. And there was a short portion where he spoke about something very…fundamental.

“I am the problem.”

I'm not what you would call a picketer or a social activists that you know....provides roadkill for tractors tearing down historical buildings. BUT like the best of them I can spew out altruistic and political comments that make me sound like I have convictions and I know where the problem lies. But really….do any of us?

Do we look in the mirror and explore

our habits,

our public speaking skill,

our ideas,

and our time management as scrupulously as we explore those in the spotlight?

Granted…most of us aren’t running for president or anything. But does that negate responsibility? If we spend more time judging the actions and movements of others than we do taking stock of our own motives and actions are we really politically or socially concerned or are we just selfish and ignorant?

“I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group thing, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything... The problem is not out there; the problem is the need beast of a thing that lives in my chest”

Not to say that every problem that exists is our fault. That’s pretty ridiculous. But I’m just saying…we sure do spend a lot of time pointing fingers. We need not live in a mirrored house to see how many problems are caused but us as individuals that make up the collective.

We may scoff at the altruist motto “be the change” but well…maybe we don’t think about it often enough. That is after all the only control we have. I cannot control what others do, but I can control me (usually, unless I’m extra ornery).

I can control what I give that others come into contact with. And if I start paying attention to what I put out there….well maybe that’s the only way I can really affect what others do and propel change.

I think if we watch others do stupid things and point our fingers instead taking a cue

-we’ll find we’ve all become the monster we scoff at:

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you” Friedrich Nietzsche

Awakenings

If you’ve never see the movie Awakenings it’s a beautiful story based on true events about a doctor who comes across a group of basically catatonic patients who respond to a drug that “wakes” them up for a period of time. I wrote the following excerpt after I watched the movie some time ago when I was going through a bit of a rough patch (not like that’s new!). It gave me just the perspective I needed to latch on to some color and dance around in it:

"I cried through much of the end. It was just what I needed I think to pull me out of my self-centered misery. Not that grieving is bad in my case...
But for someone who believes so much in the beauty of pain- I often forget to live what I write and speak about.

This story reminded me that it is possible to take my pain, and instead of hiding inside myself, I can use it as a way to touch beauty, life, and people.
I have that option.

How can I speak courage to those of a worse fate
when I cannot employ courage at the inklings of pain?

Sometimes it's good to just tell myself to snap out of it.

Stop replaying picture and words and longings. Sometimes I get lost ...and I sit down and weep like a lost little girl. Sometimes I forget to keep moving.
Grieving is not wrong or bad but at some point the tears are no longer an expression of grief but an expression of surrender to things as they are. A hopeless surrender. That is not the way of God, of his love, of his beauty. Pain can be like the silver lining in a blue sky filled with clouds. It highlights the wonder. It sharpens the picture.

The moment a red balloon, a rainstorm, or a star ceases to leave me in a childlike, speechless wonder...
someone please slap me out of it. I am not catatonic. I have a chance.
I don't want to miss it.

The brain takes charge

Gray, boring, dull, yawing, blasé, undeveloped, unintentional, melancholy, haphazard, flippant,

casual, overcast, inactive

Inspiring isn’t?

I have spent the last few months floating along in a sort of limbo (not exactly the edge of hell type though) with the only intentional actions being:

- I make sure I have clean clothes for work

- I clean once a week

- I check out more books that I could possibly read from the library

Somewhere I lost some of my fervor for life and the magic of the little things has slowly been hazed over. I think about writing, I think about art, I think about sitting with a cup of tea and staring out the window or sending a card to my friend

…but so much of that is just like a bird that jumps out of the field and flutters in front of you and then vanishes.

Certainly I am not depressed. I am active, social, do plenty of stuff, I'm happy (though not content). It’s kinda like I’m on selective Jenny auto pilot. My brain knows I like incense so it has me light it at night. But it keeps me from writing under the influence of the smell. It knows I like chocolate pudding when I am pmsing so it has me go buy it- but I don’t pay attention to its chocolate-ness like I normally would.

Perhaps I put myself through too steep a gauntlet earlier this year in trying to figure out the answer to questions that I don’t know yet. I do that. Sometimes I say to myself when I am crying about something

“tsk- you are too intense. Stop the drama”

“But I like the intensity- it’s colorful”

“well sometimes it’s too much color”

“Impossible !” I say to myself. And I go on crying and reading and asking questions.

“This is ridiculous. GET OVER IT” because some part of me realizes that a good slap in the face is more effective than writing writing writing about something over and over again sometimes. Sometimes you just need to take a break from intensity to ENJOY the color it produces. Sometimes you just need a red balloon and a peaceful mind.

So maybe my few months of induced melancholy and a numbed mind was like my brain saying

“hello? Shut up- what you’re doing is impossible. Quite trying to be like a 70 year old sage with a 27 year old brain! It’s like trying to figure out how to do quantum physics when you can barely remember how to do long division.”

And then my brain slapped me.

And I was like

“ok”

Only I didn’t know my brain was having a conversation with me and I didn’t really know I agreed with it like a little kid nodding his head in agreement because all he wanted was to get to the end of the lecture and get a red balloon.

Only I think technically- I didn’t get a red balloon cause the last few months have been a little colorless. I think my brain thought that was necessary for my mind and I should do without.

What does it know? It’s only 27?

So there you have it. Last night I went to a coffee shop and sat and read for a bit and people watched and all of a sudden my fervor returned and I thought “HEY! Where's my RED BALLOON?!”

and my mind was like "you agreed to give it up moron- your brain told you how tired it was"

and i was like "I WANT MY RED BALLOON BACK!!!" and right there in the coffee shop I slammed my book down and yelled and started pounding the table till someone brought me a red balloon and licorice tea and played some really good jazz music.

and I remembered how much I love people, and God, and reading, and learning. REALLY LOVE it.

And my brain just sighed….and was like “whatever. At least I got you to sit down for a bit.”

That’s when I concocted the whole story above -with my renewed creativity.