(To Be Edited)
Dancing. It's something I do. Tonight, I met lots of new people, and enjoyed the old - avoided the less experienced dancers, and appreciated the admiration of the elders present. Most of whom fear knocking out their titanium hips if we dance too close to them. (A bunch of us young-uns carpool, and it's ballroom and 50/60s but we throw in a lot of swing, if you care.)
On the ride home I talked to a girl, N, who confirmed to me from her experience something I've been suspicious of a while. Something that makes more sense of the picture of reality after college than the one painted for me and swallowed by me. Something closer to practice than theory. Something...a lot less pretty. That thing is that graduating from college is not easy.
A friend of mine (D) recently realized that it's not going to be about getting into the career D wants to the rest of D's life, but finding some way to get by, and ideally be in a pleasant location.
If I lower my standard of expectation for life post-college, lower in a sense at least - by not expecting everything to work out the way I want it to, and in the time I want it to - I run a chance of being happy. Being free to be happy.
There's a lot of adjustment, which naturally includes pain and struggle. The first challenge is looking for a way to sustain yourself, the second eliminates existential crisis no. 1, that is, by realizing you don't have to find the one rut - excuse me, path - you'll forever continue in, but that anything will do.
Up til now it's been you following others' decisions for the large percentage of what comes your way. Even if it's not a conscious obedience to direction, you hark back to what someone told you is a good idea to do when such and such comes up. Not that we haven't learned to think for ourselves - sure, sure, but I haven't learned to think for myself that I can be content in just any given situation. And that's what (according to N) is about to present itself to me. In contrast to what 'they' say, and 'in yo face' to the American dream: you CAN'T do whatever you want, the world is NOT at your fingertips. I suppose it's an optimistic mentality. Duly appreciated. But it's not the final say.
So learn to enjoy the process. The getting there. That's what I'm hearing from all directions. Biggest post-Cartesian lie no. 1: only product matters. (Extrapolate that.)
Du. Das Leben ist schwer. Life is hard. Like playing all 7 verses of Jesus Loves Me for a baby's funeral. But then it's glorious. Like teaching autodidactic 7-yr-olds introductory piano, like pushing yourself and your partner to dance the last 5 exhausted minutes of an evening. Hauptsache du lebst - the main point is, you're alive.
Hey - if i can eat lychee, and dance my soul out some weekends with people who are super - even if I end up getting my money by making male and female corn plant parts to make love, - that could work, for now.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Shelf Life of the Inner Life
Writing my current thoughts for you to see is counter to the very idea I want to explain tonight. But I think I can do it in such a way as to provide thought without giving myself away. A smattering (spattering, splattering):
Henri Nouwen first introduced me to what he calls keeping your drawbridge closed (Inner Voice of Love).
In a conversation late one night my cousin KED tried to help us explain it by comparing your insides to a jug, or anything with volume. The inner life can develop: it can get larger, and one can add shelves to it. Shelves, obviously, are for placing your wonderbread on so you can use its preservation to the max - no fear of degradatory chemical reactions here. With the talent we now have for keeping things 'edible', some cans or boxes could remain unopened until the next millennia. *
That's what a shelf does. You can put stuff on it and take it off when you want it. (Or not take it off like my grandparents who forgot some raw meat in the freezer for more years than you want to know.)
You could think of a clever facebook status post ... and tape it to a secret place inside your closet, where only you will ever see it, where only you will care about it's meaning... and feel glad about it! Your thoughts might come to seem legitimate to you even if they don't have the supporting legs of others' comments!
You could hear something about someone else and not have to say it to anyone. Which, according to LK, is always a good policy. THIS IS BIG. Hurtful comments. I think about the ways I would NOT burden people (though don't take this as advocating anti-sharing-real-life-with-each-other!!) It's not a matter of what is shared, but the expectations that go along with it; can I tell you the truth about hard things only so you feel weighed, or can I have dealt with them in my Inner Life, and have a peace in me about them?
You wouldn't have to be dependent on PEOPLE. (Again, the expectations are what let me down)
You could have a place to process what previously has been impossible to deal with, and only via suppression.
You'd have a place to disagree from.
Just think of the shelf life of some of those items!
The point being, you might actually meet God if you had a place for it to happen. I'm speaking for myself, not in a critical way, but in recognition of my culture's drivenness by schooling that tends to eliminate privacy and eventually desire for privacy (thoughts from Dumbing us Down - Gatto), which upon required graduation moves on in the same direction, praising most highly success, that ultimately desirable jewel, which is defined by giving up as much private-life-time as possible (except the odd affair or embezzlement deal).
Yes, the point being, instead of
Imagining,
Ignoring,
or being enraged against, you might actually
meet (the real) God.
It makes sense, so I'm jus' sayin'.
* (Exception: nothing with wheat or any other kind of grain. The ungrown mites we usually digest before the cheerios start flying of their own accord would certainly have developed and wormed their way out by that point.)
Henri Nouwen first introduced me to what he calls keeping your drawbridge closed (Inner Voice of Love).
In a conversation late one night my cousin KED tried to help us explain it by comparing your insides to a jug, or anything with volume. The inner life can develop: it can get larger, and one can add shelves to it. Shelves, obviously, are for placing your wonderbread on so you can use its preservation to the max - no fear of degradatory chemical reactions here. With the talent we now have for keeping things 'edible', some cans or boxes could remain unopened until the next millennia. *
That's what a shelf does. You can put stuff on it and take it off when you want it. (Or not take it off like my grandparents who forgot some raw meat in the freezer for more years than you want to know.)
You could think of a clever facebook status post ... and tape it to a secret place inside your closet, where only you will ever see it, where only you will care about it's meaning... and feel glad about it! Your thoughts might come to seem legitimate to you even if they don't have the supporting legs of others' comments!
You could hear something about someone else and not have to say it to anyone. Which, according to LK, is always a good policy. THIS IS BIG. Hurtful comments. I think about the ways I would NOT burden people (though don't take this as advocating anti-sharing-real-life-with-each-other!!) It's not a matter of what is shared, but the expectations that go along with it; can I tell you the truth about hard things only so you feel weighed, or can I have dealt with them in my Inner Life, and have a peace in me about them?
You wouldn't have to be dependent on PEOPLE. (Again, the expectations are what let me down)
You could have a place to process what previously has been impossible to deal with, and only via suppression.
You'd have a place to disagree from.
Just think of the shelf life of some of those items!
The point being, you might actually meet God if you had a place for it to happen. I'm speaking for myself, not in a critical way, but in recognition of my culture's drivenness by schooling that tends to eliminate privacy and eventually desire for privacy (thoughts from Dumbing us Down - Gatto), which upon required graduation moves on in the same direction, praising most highly success, that ultimately desirable jewel, which is defined by giving up as much private-life-time as possible (except the odd affair or embezzlement deal).
Yes, the point being, instead of
Imagining,
Ignoring,
or being enraged against, you might actually
meet (the real) God.
It makes sense, so I'm jus' sayin'.
* (Exception: nothing with wheat or any other kind of grain. The ungrown mites we usually digest before the cheerios start flying of their own accord would certainly have developed and wormed their way out by that point.)
What's the measure of your life?
"Did you understand that I loved you, and love Me in return?"
"Your sexuality. Your satisfaction. I want to provide those for you.
"Your healing. Your psychological wholeness. Your enjoyment of and fulfillment in life. Trust me, the only one who refreshes the human spirit at the highest level.
"Your relationships. The depths you need. The people who have failed you. I am.
"Your confidence. Your intelligence. The ways it's failed you, you've failed yourself. Look here.
"The financial and future concerns that plague you day and night. I give. I own all.
"Your inner life, your emotions. Things you don't even know about. Listen, I give you rest.
"Name it. I got it covered. Stop looking."
"The measure of your life: Did you understand that I loved you, and love Me in return?"
If this is all the case, wake up little heart, and goodnight big brain; time to grow into a long lesson...there are a lot of things the measure of my life is NOT.
"Your sexuality. Your satisfaction. I want to provide those for you.
"Your healing. Your psychological wholeness. Your enjoyment of and fulfillment in life. Trust me, the only one who refreshes the human spirit at the highest level.
"Your relationships. The depths you need. The people who have failed you. I am.
"Your confidence. Your intelligence. The ways it's failed you, you've failed yourself. Look here.
"The financial and future concerns that plague you day and night. I give. I own all.
"Your inner life, your emotions. Things you don't even know about. Listen, I give you rest.
"Name it. I got it covered. Stop looking."
"The measure of your life: Did you understand that I loved you, and love Me in return?"
If this is all the case, wake up little heart, and goodnight big brain; time to grow into a long lesson...there are a lot of things the measure of my life is NOT.
Post-life
They're all dying to know how I plan to go about being a responsible member of society.
They all assume that I will, but that a small glare and subtly loaded smile with a generous head tilt will provide any lacking motivation to do so.
At least that's what I read into the so frequently posed, so deeply offense-cultivating question, "so, this is your last semester? Ahhh. What will you do then?"
But finally I have found my answer: "Oh, I think I'll become a quadriplegic."
(Knock on wood.)
They all assume that I will, but that a small glare and subtly loaded smile with a generous head tilt will provide any lacking motivation to do so.
At least that's what I read into the so frequently posed, so deeply offense-cultivating question, "so, this is your last semester? Ahhh. What will you do then?"
But finally I have found my answer: "Oh, I think I'll become a quadriplegic."
(Knock on wood.)
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