Category Archives: Spirit Stuff

The Sacrifice of Praise

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I said the Thanksgiving prayer this year, though I don’t remember much of what came out.  The BF encouragingly and knowingly squeezed my shaky, sweaty hand, the product of a nervousness that recognizes how family can be the best and worst audience because they remember everything.  Like when you forget your music during your fourth-grade piano recital. Though I don’t know if I conveyed it, the focus of my prayer was on thanking God for all that happened in the past year, the things we call good and even the things we call bad.  Because bad is a word we give to stories we don’t know the ending of yet.  And yet is a place where misunderstanding and resentment can build long-term housing, if we let them.

Thanking him for only the things we deem positive is like making a recipe using only the ingredients that taste good raw.

On Sunday, the BF and I were in Atlanta so we couldn’t go to Redeemer.  We visited another church and I sat in the pew and realized my heart was slowly sinking to my feet.  Visions danced before my eyes…and not of sugar plums.  Rather, a world of Tim Keller-less Sundays.  A return to the church of my youth, with its pithy, alliteratively-bullet-pointed sermons.  The last point of which was just another word that started with R or P, not The Cross. Not Christ and him crucified.  And NOT ONE MENTION OF BILBO BAGGINS.

Good Lord, I thought.  This is hopeless.

You rang? He replied.

My heart began to be counseled with the irony and arrogance of my thoughts:  I was afraid of never finding a church where I feel him like I do at Redeemer, all while sitting in a church and professing hopelessness with him right there.  Taking raw materials into my hands without accounting for the Master Chef’s artistry.  With materials I can and can’t see.

Thanking him can feel insincere, can hurt even, when there’s so much we see that appears to suck:  sickness, job loss, war, hunger.  Or maybe it’s more about what we can’t see and secretly fear will never happen:  healing, provision, redemption, restoration.  We make a commitment when we claim to believe him–to take him at his word that he is actually good despite any evidence we could gather to the contrary.  For better or worse, as far as we can judge either.  And then we hit the downhill slope and look for a tree to hang on to, just so we can stop for a minute and think. Instead of hanging on, we need to be held.  Our shaky, sweaty hands covered and surrounded by the scarred, knowing one.

Be My Vampire

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I used to always want things to be hard.  Complex and unattainable.  So that once I attained them (and them was usually a him) I would…win a trophy?  Get a merit badge?  Or have a sense of accomplishment that only accompanies great effort and struggle and gives one a sense of justification.  And as previously discussed, the more untouched by grace I am, the more I need that.

I watch this Twilight craze unfold now, a craze I have bought into at least to the extent of reading the series and seeing both movies.  But there’s an extension of it beyond consumerism that taps into the identity of each participant–especially those who slept outside Rockefeller Center last week to catch a glimpse or even share a brief interaction with the human who gets paid to play the role of a vampire. Meanwhile, the one who wrote this story and created this world gives one interview on Oprah and goes largely unnoticed on any set or red carpet visits.  We sure do love our idols, don’t we?

I know I have.  Like most girls, I’ve always longed to be a Juliet.  The recipient of intense, complicated, rule-defying love.  “Star-crossed” always sounded so romantic to me–the idea that a love story could be so powerful as to surpass earthly description and involve the heavens.  Then I found out that it meant that both lovers are doomed.  Due to their love.  I watched as Romeo drank the poison then seconds later Juliet stabbed herself and no matter how many times I yelled at them to STOP and JUST WAIT FIVE SECONDS!, it always ended the same.  And I began to wonder if such a love could be…overrated.

It became so for me.  Wanting to be the one who changed the jerk into a sweetheart, the rebel into a saint, the Speaker’s erratic son into…well, if not reliable, then at least Republican.  Eventually, gracefully, I learned that the change I was trying to inspire had to happen somewhere else.

So I jumped out of a boat, literally and figuratively, and lost my footing and my control and the water started to close in.  And the strength that carried me to shore was not my own.  Which was what opened my eyes and stirred my soul and made me uncomfortable enough with what I saw, my comfort so far, to leave it a thousand miles behind me.

Four years later, I sit in a theater next to my love who is neither vampire nor werewolf.  The space once filled with drama now holds quiet confidence.  Some risks pay off big time.

Faith is what gets us to and through them.

The paradox that is my faith holds all the complexity (and, paradoxically, simplicity) that I have ever been looking for.  This faith, with its stories of strength from weakness and heroes from stutterers and life from death, has the twists and turns that every other relationship is incapable of sustaining.  The twists and turns that save me and answer me and ARE me.  My story held within the gloriously incomprehensible, graciously reachable greatest story.  A story that contains the heavens without crossing stars.

Foundation

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To the left, you can see one of the benefits of not paying rent. Usually, when I get an email from JCrew or Stila or anything retail, I immediately delete it to avoid the test of willpower that is sure to follow once I gaze upon items I cannot afford to buy.  But when I was offered $100 worth of makeup for $38, I figured that my landlord’s loss was my gain, and I snatched that deal up.  Along with a few other items from stores around the city.  I literally had not been shopping–not even stepped foot inside a store–for months.  Maybe, probably, since the last time my mom and her wallet visited.  But fall means newness, and it also means cardigans, leggings, and gold eyeshadow, at least this year.

Makeup makes girls so happy.  When I got home from work and saw that box waiting for me, I literally shrieked. And back when I could afford a subscription to InStyle and saw that waiting in my mailbox, my heart would do a little jump and I would make an afternoon out of working my way through the pages of clothes and products.  All these ways of decorating ourselves make us so giddy.  Cut to a few weeks ago, when I went clothes shopping with the BF (for the BF) and watched as he methodically checked items off a list, not once squealing or jumping up and down.  What?!

We women are taught early how to apply powder and jewelry in an attempt to accentuate beauty, or create it.  We have products that cover blemishes, redden cheeks, shine up lids, darken lashes, conceal shadows.  We get up early to tediously apply these masks while men roll out of bed, stand under some water, roll on a little deodorant, and are ready for their day.  They walk out the door and through their lives uncovered (not all of them–this post must seem strangely irrelevant to my gay friends); we can’t imagine stepping foot outside without altering ourselves.

Boys and girls are different.

And yet we all have to learn vulnerability.  Few of us are born comfortably practicing it.  Guys arrive into a relationship and are introduced to such terms as talk and share and communicate.  Girls arrive into a relationship and learn how to do all of the above…truthfully.  Without hiding behind drama or manipulation or, eventually, makeup.  And the only way any of us can succeed at any of the above is when we realize that the person across from us, though they may be The One, is not THE ONE. Not the One who gives us ultimate worth.  I found this out by looking everywhere but the right place for mine.  And after all that mess, after the mask was off and I was standing in front of the mirror like Carrie Bradshaw in Mexico and girl looked rough–then I realized I was not and never had been truly alone.  Like Quince in Meet Joe Black, a movie that creates a rare disagreement among my sister and me (I love it; she hates it because she says it takes three hours to meet Joe Black and by the end she feels like she doesn’t know him at all).  Anyway, Quince tells Joe that he is certain his wife loves him because she knows the worst thing about Quince and is still there.  Still there.  I have a few people who are still there, but only one who was there while it all happened.  Having nothing to hide, or hide behind, really makes my heart jump.

Always on Time

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About the only thing the BF and I disagree on is the concept of time.  To me, being on time means being ten minutes early.  To him, it means being no more than fifteen minutes late.  I overestimate how long it takes to get anywhere, counting in time for traffic and potential terrorist attacks.  Meanwhile, in his mind it takes the same ten minutes to get to work as it does to get to LaGuardia.  (Neither takes ten minutes.) I never get tired of the joke about how since we were friends for a year before we dated, technically he was twelve months late to the party that is our relationship.  (Sometimes his responsive laughter sounds forced.)

This morning, during my one-on-one with Jesus (I bring the coffee, he brings the grace), this idea of time came up.  A lot.  Maybe it started when I read the following verse in chapter ten of Hebrews:

37For in just a very little while,
“He who is coming will come and will not delay.”

I forgot for a second that I was dealing with the eternal God of the universe (this seems to happen often), and I let out a sarcastic, bratty little laugh.  A laugh that implied, “REALLY, Jesus.  Really?  In a very little while?  Will not delay?  What do you call two thousand years?”

A response gently whispered through my heart:  “How about the blink of an eye?”

And I realized once again that Jesus and I do not wear the same watch.

A deeper truth is that one reason being on time matters so much to me is that I am a rules-oriented person.  Abiding by them used to get me a gold star; now it affords a false sense of security and self-worth.  Propping those up is the ugliest part:  being able to judge those who don’t keep the rules.  See, here’s the thing:  I am a jerk.  Just like you.  And everyone else.  And every part of me that is not transformed by grace is out to prove itself.

This morning, The Great and Timely One showed me some serious love about all this.  I was reminded of how hard it is for me to show people grace when they mess up, even though I need it so desperately and so often myself.  I thought about how many times I’ve interpreted a time lapse as an interruption or delay when, really, it was him.  I saw an image of myself–furrowed brow and raised fists, with which I approach the world and his people in it.  And I thought of how much time he’s given me, despite the yuck that has been so much of my character and the fact that it took about thirty years for me to even begin to understand who he is.  I thought about the love shown in his never-tiring, unbreaking commitment to me.  How much patience he needs to stick with me.  How much more patience that is than he needs with some people whose only flaw appears to be chronic lateness.  How much grace there is in the fact that I am loved by both the one who is always on time and one who never is.

Itsy Bitsy Miracles…and Peace that Shatters

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IMG_1789The construction on our apartment is supposed to end today.  To that end, I am sitting here typing as a guy stands on a ladder a few feet away from me, painting over the infamous holes.  It’s a little awkward, this forced proximity to a stranger as he does his work and I do mine, but I’ll get over it.  The light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer.

But last week, when we were in the thick of it, life was one disruption after another.  Since our kitchen was more storage-oriented than functional, I decided to pick up breakfast on the way to work.  And because of the food-fest that my California trip turned out to be, I decided that breakfast would be a banana.  Then I looked into my New York-ravaged wallet and saw that I would have to make a choice:  coffee or banana, but not both.  I think you know where this is going.  I can survive for a few hours without food, but morning caffeine is non-negotiable.  I thought about considering this poverty-inflicted starvation a form of fasting but decided against it–I’m pretty sure fasting is meant to be a choice if it’s sincere.  With that silver lining disposed of, I grabbed my coffee from George and trudged to work as A Poor Person Who Can’t Afford a Banana.  Top of the morning to you, New York.

Then I got to NYU and was informed by my eighty-five-year-old friend that someone had dropped off food the day before…and there were LEFTOVERS!  A true rarity in our department, where food is immediately sniffed out and ravaged by anyone happening to pass by.  (Note:  anyone often happens to be me.)  I checked out the bagels and passed because no New Yorker with any dignity would accept a day-old bagel.  Then my eyes landed upon a golden beacon in my wilderness of hunger: an unopened bag of pretzels.  Salty and delicious and, most of all, FRESH.  So I ripped that bitch open and went to town.  Then I hid the bag on a shelf.

IMG_1788Once upon a biblical time, Elijah was waiting for God to show up.  A powerful wind blew by and Elijah looked for God, but he wasn’t in the wind.  Then an earthquake shook the earth but no God there either.  Next, a fire blazed and Elijah thought for sure this was God’s entrance, but no dice.  Then, from inside a cave, Elijah heard a whisper and went out to see what was going on.  And there was God.  I love it how he’ll show up anywhere, but especially where we least expect.  Like in a bag of pretzels.

And then there are the times when he shows up in the earth, wind, and fire.

The BF and I decided to join one of the new Bible study groups that has been formed as part of our church’s new growth campaign (www.renew.redeemer.com).  A bit of background:  thanks to the Presbyterian church’s long-standing missions work in Korea, we have a huge Asian contingent.  HUGE.  And the BF and I joked to each other that we’d probably be the only non-Asians in attendance among the group of fifteen.  We joked because we were certain that such a fluke would never really occur.  And then we showed up last Thursday night at 8 pm to a room full of our Asian brothers and sisters.

So no real surprise there.  We hung out for a couple of hours, doing the praise God thing, and made some small talk at the end of the night with the leader of the group, who was seated beside me.  During our conversation she whispered something to a nearby friend.  A few seconds later I watched as the friend brought her a wheelchair and she climbed into it.  Since I was mid-sentence, I struggled to maintain a lack of reaction to this development (which the BF later referred to in Liz Lemon-style as a TWIST!).  But I noticed immediately how I was already thinking of this girl differently.  As both a weaker and stronger person than before.  Then I thought about how the proper functioning of my legs (eyes, ears, brain) gives me the luxury of seeing God in a bag of pretzels while some people have to walk with him through fire just to get across the street.

And the holes continue to be patched…

Fear Factor

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IMG_0424Lately I’ve been facing a reality that I’ve never faced:  the reality of being truly happy.  For the first time in my life, I am not struggling to make something happen, or feeling incomplete because I don’t have something that I want.  I’m not trying to get rid of anything bad or secure something I deem should be mine.  I am stunningly content.  I know enough to realize that this will not last.  These times in life come and go, as they should.  But for this moment, much of what I prayed for and hoped for has materialized.  I can look back on the tears and despair and w…a…i…t…i…n…g and understand why that all had to happen.  To get me here.  To bring me to this city, to this love, to this life.  Blessings upon blessings.

It’s scary as hell.

It turns out that when you get things you hope for, the waiting disappears but something else can show up in its place.  This something is called fear.  And telling it to take a hike is a daily endeavor.  I feel affirmed by the scene in Sex and the City (the movie) where Charlotte tells Carrie that she has everything she ever dreamed of and she’s terrified.  When I first watched the movie last year, my thought was, “Shut up you dumb slut.  What are you complaining about?  Oh poor baby, are those diamond shoes hurting your prissy little feet?’  But I get her now, that Charlotte.  She couldn’t run because she was afraid of what she could lose.  I experienced something similar a few months after the BF and I got together.  I was on a plane, fastening my seat belt as we prepared to take off.  I’ve always enjoyed flying.  Probably because if anything goes wrong, there’s no way it could be my fault.  I love zooming through the air while I read a book, nap, and let the pilot do his job.

This flight was different.  As we sped across the runway and lifted up, I felt terrified.  I started wondering if this pilot was adequately trained.  I wondered if he had been hanging out at the airport bar before boarding.  I wondered what that bump was.  I wondered why I was suddenly turning into my mother (because she is afraid to fly.  Not the usual reasons).  I imagined crashing and all the things I’d miss out on now that I’d finally gotten to a good place.  I got mad at God for taking it all away from me.  This was all within two minutes of takeoff.

The great thing about having a dream come true is that your dream came true.  The not-so-great thing about it is that you now face the constant possibility of losing it.  Being a believer in God, and also being a person partial to symmetry and balance, I believe in evil in the form of a devil.  I don’t think he has a tail and a pitchfork, but I do think he’s an asshole.  And while God looks to bless me at every corner (even at corners I don’t like visiting), the father of lies would like nothing more than to take my joy.

We have a battle on our hands.

So while I frolic around in meadows and sing songs and walk in the clouds and listen to love songs without puking, I also pack some spiritual heat.  I remain aware of the fact that only truth can battle and beat evil.  So I listen to the truth.  I preach it to myself, I put it on my iPod (sermons at redeemer.com), I read it, I pray it.  Because the other option is living in the fear of loss, of a monster at every corner.  I realize that this daily battle is the tradeoff for living in a broken world.  But amidst the brokenness, the two choices remain.

DSCF0448

1) Get scared and run things       myself.  And end up looking like Fred here.

OR

IMG_0064_1

2)  Put on my seat belt                   and let the pilot do his job.  And just let go and fly.

Umm…DUH.

Getting My Learn On

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imagesAs far back as I can remember, this time of each year has meant one thing: the return to school.  My dad made up a song about it that he sang to taunt my sister and me annually; it was not so much a tune as it was just the words SCHOOL TIME!  and CHEESEWAGON! yelled over and over while we covered our ears and tried not to cry over the end of summer and our perceived freedom.  My official schooling ended right before my twenty-eighth birthday, coinciding with my move to New York and into the “real” world.  And yet here I am, thirty-two and beginning another school year.  I just can’t get away from it.

Now is different, though.  Now, the student has become the teacher.

This is laughable to me for many reasons.  For one, my residency–the final two years of my education–left me feeling about as bright as the perpetually blown-out bulb in my bathroom (the reasons why are another story for another day).  For another, dental school prepares one to drill and fill holes, not teach.  Finally, I always claimed to hate school.  This hatred reached a climax during dental school and residency.  For after a lifetime of being evaluated based on my performance, I unwittingly entered a career whose training required that my evaluations were basically a list of everything I was doing wrong.  This, apparently, would be the road to improvement.

But I moved to New York and I needed to pay rent.  So I took a part-time job teaching at a dental school.  The word is…irony.

The past four years of teaching have been quite a learning experience.  (Har har.)  I look back at that first year and can only remember being a total train wreck: fresh from my own school-inflicted war wounds, I was defensive and constantly trying to prove myself.  Much like when I was a student.  I was making it about my performance and judging that from the reactions of the students.  And as usual, I was giving my evaluators too much credit.  For they were much like I had been: tired, jaded, and just wanting to get out of there.  Not to mention dishonest and sneaky in way too many cases.  And I took that personally.  Throughout each day, my blood pressure soared each time I felt taken advantage of or disrespected (being young and female didn’t help with this).  I dealt with these injustices by getting angry and, basically, being a jerk.  Or the young, female version of a jerk, what the French call le bitch. And nothing around me or within me improved.

Then something changed.  Through various influences (see: Redeemer, Tim Keller, GOD), I began to finally get what I had been taught my whole life.  No, not how to fight cavities.  The stuff I had learned outside of school.  About being utterly messed up yet loved at the same time.  About not needing to earn that love.  And I quit worrying so much about saving a face that was never mine to begin with.  I threw away my need to perform to perfection.  I started to teach in the same way I had begun to live my life: by believing the truth and telling it.  Without a need for the perfect response, because the truth speaks for itself.  And that allows me a certain amount of detachment from the results.  Which means that though the things other people do may still bother me, I am no longer at their mercy or tied to them for my worth.  My blood pressure can level out a little instead of spiking at every little eye roll from a student.  And there are plenty of other case studies in life that allow me to practice the truth:  I don’t have to play into or pass on my family’s generationally-perfected, time-tested practice of passive aggression.  I can get over my BF-associated exclusion from the girls’ daily emails.  And I can fight the pull of my middle finger on the rest of my hand after a cabbie blindly careens around a corner, nearly hitting me.  Worst case scenario, he’d be sending me Home a little early.  Which is not to say I want that, or don’t care about these things; it’s just that my cares have been reordered.  Being loved well tends to do that to a person.  It’s kind of like the best teacher there is.

So my case study this week was the orientation speech I had to give to a new group of twenty students.  Public speaking has always reduced me to a red-faced, shaky puddle of sweat.  Now I know how much of that reaction is caused by a fear of how others see me.  Demoting that fear, reordering that care, has helped–but I’m still me.  So I gave the speech and delivered the truth without any shakiness or much flushing.  I even managed to get a few laughs (intentionally).  I walked away, releasing myself from any unhealthy attachment to their response and feeling quite the expert.  Then I looked under my arms and saw two sweat stains the size of Montana.  I gasped.  Then I laughed, and was able to do so for two reasons:  one, I was wearing a jacket over my shirt, so the students couldn’t have seen the evidence.  And two, the only one besides me who could see it made me that way.  For a reason.  And he loves my sweaty ass.  Which means the evaluation is in, and I’m doing just fine.

Forgot to Use a Pencil…

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In the past twenty-four hours I have covered a sizable portion of this fair city on foot.  Last night, the BF and I went with another couple on a grown-ups date to see West Side Story on Broadway.  I am sorry to say that I thought it sucked.  But not as badly as the BF thought it did.  After the 112th dancing number, I turned to look at him.  He was leaned back in his seat with his hand covering his mouth, as if to impede a vomit eruption.  “Too much dancing?” I whispered to him.  He nodded silently at me.  As soon as the intermission lights came on, he hightailed it to the bar.  To refill our revolutionary new theater glassware…wait for it…

IMG_1559A grown-up sippy cup that they let you take to your seat during the show!  (I still almost spilled my wine.  Probably because I was wearing a white dress, and that danger curve is just too high.)  Turns out the cure for too much dancing is alcohol.  So the night wasn’t a total loss!  Especially when we decided to walk home.  So there we were, cruising along 46th street, enjoying the sixties temps and perfect breeze.  There are times when this city sneaks up on you and takes your breath away.  Like when you look up to see Grand Central lit up at night, for example.  I thought about all the night-walking I did when I was single, and how the city was almost enough company and God certainly was, but I still wondered if I’d ever have someone else to share it all with.  And then someone snuck up on me and took my breath away, and here we were, holding hands and critiquing Broadway shows.

And then I looked up and had my breath taken away in an entirely different way:

IMG_1557Dear Lord.  What is wrong with that bear’s EYE?!  And I swear I saw his tiny friend pointing at me and laughing.

Anyway, isn’t life is all about the things that sneak up on you?  Yet so many of them appear undesirable at first glance.  A friend on Facebook wrote about how her kids are really sick right now and that this development caused her weekend to not be the one she had planned.  “Plans in pencil!” I thought to myself cheerily, thinking of writing her a message about how the best things happen apart from our planning, and in spite of it.  And secretly thinking how glad I was to be so mature and enlightened.  Cut to my phone ringing and a parent telling me her child had a toothache and could I please see them at the office today?  The office that is closed but that I am on call for?  Piety and platitudes are so easy to come by when life is going the way you want it to.

So I went in and took the kid’s tooth out.  The way there, walking those nearly thirty blocks, I was irritated.  So I resorted to that habit I have of taking out my anger internally, by imagining fake conversations where I tell people off.  Which is the reason I arrived at the office hot and bothered from a yelling match with Jon Gosselin over his hideous parenting and life choices.  But the mom and her son didn’t know that, and they were very appreciative of my time.  Then they left and I was there when the phone rang and it turned out to be a local magazine wanting to do a brief interview about children’s oral health.  I obliged her, even though on-the-spot questions unnerve me and it’s quite possible I suggested that parents brush their kids’ teeth with a Snickers bar.  Barring that, I got some good publicity for our office!

Between that trip uptown and my morning venture to the West Village in the hopes of stumbling onto the Sex and the City 2 film set (I did; however, they were just beginning to set up and I didn’t have time to wait for the eventual actor arrival), my New York feet are irritated with me.  And honestly, I’m irritated with myself for still so often being insistent on my own short-sighted plans.  When the toothache call came in this morning, I had just finished my daily prayer to be reminded that nothing I have–time, talents, relationships–is ultimately mine, but God’s.  And then I almost lost it over an hour-and-a-half interruption to my lazy day.  Guess I have a long way to go.  But how humbling and thankfulness-inducing is it to be led by someone who can see around the corners and know the better way to go?  Even when it does involve creepy teddy bears.

The Price of Accommodation (originally written October 4, 2006)

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Accommodation, according to Webster:

1) something supplied for convenience or to satistfy a need;

2) a public conveyance (as a train) that stops at all or nearly all points;

3) the automatic adjustment of the eye for seeing at different distances by changes in

the convexity of the crystalline lens; also, the range over which such adjustment is

possible.

The price of being open to believing anything is its natural endpoint: believing in nothing. We live in a world, and I live in a city, where open-minded tolerance is such a glorified principle that we forget what it really means, what it looks like in personal practice: a lack of commitment to any one thing; a twisting in the wind; an absence of passion about any idea accept the vilification of those who don’t operate under such “enlightenment”.

The problem lies not in accepting that other people may have viewpoints different from our own; it lies in using this acceptance as an excuse to not form and follow our own belief system. An excuse to just be along for the ride rather than preparing your own itinerary. It is adjustment to whatever the world offers. It is emptiness decorated with fancy words and placed on a pedestal in the town square. It is a train that stops at all points but has no home base. It is a reaction to the world around us, a shifting of shape, a concession for convenience. Glorified weakness.

We walk around in our indecision, in our lack of intention toward life, and wonder why we are so frustrated. Day after day of the same activities. Sitting in front of a computer screen blinding our eyes with whatever the information superhighway has to offer us today. We sit back and wait for the world to change our lives, to make something happen for us. And we wonder why we are bored. Cradled by our desk chairs, wondering when passion will show up. We approach our lives in the resignation of accommodation because commitment requires too much risk and effort. We are living out of a place where our needs must be met rather than out of a recognition that we are designed with a purpose that will not be revealed to us on our living room couch; it will only be revealed by actually LIVING. And living requires us to get up, to take chances, to make plans, to risk ourselves (hearts, comfort, rejection, disapproval) in the belief that there is a point to us, in the faith that there is more than this. We will not be motivated to live with intention (and all the uncertainty that comes with it) if our highest goal remains to believe in anything instead of in one thing. When we start to believe, when we commit to ourselves by choosing a path rather than wandering around in only the area in front of us, the world changes. We see relationships instead of people. We see opportunities instead of defeat. We see hope instead of fear. It’s the difference between making a choice and standing still. We can go on surviving, or we can actually be alive.

The Truth about People (originally written September 26, 2006)

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Here’s the thing about living in a city of eight million people: you never get away from them.
I can only speak for the South, since that’s the only other place I’ve lived (besides a brief stint in Boca Raton, but as we all know: FLORIDA DOES NOT COUNT AS THE SOUTH. Especially South Florida.) The way of life I’m used to is walking from house to car, car to work, car to grocery store, car to church, etc. When you do interact with other people, you can always make a quick getaway if necessary. Jump in said car, run across a field, slam a door behind you–plus, there is plenty of space available to put distance between yourself and other people when you just want to be alone. In New York, you walk up a few flights of stairs to your shoebox apartment and try to not hear your neighbor’s pulsating fiesta music next door when you want some “me” time–good luck. Outside the city, a person has time to relax and regroup between interactions with others. Did someone make you mad? (A post office employee, perhaps?) Did someone say the wrong thing? Was someone (gasp) RUDE? Then ride in your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned home, where you can sit at your picture window as you sip a glass of iced tea and GET OVER IT. Here, it’s a little different. You bang into people all day, and there’s really no escaping it. What it does, though, is keep things real. There’s no time or space to be fake. Human interaction is reduced to the blatant, cold, hard truth. You find out what people are like when they are stripped of all pretense. It can be both the scariest and most refreshing thing you ever experience.
The deal is, we are all such broken people. No matter how well we clean up for company, there are cracks beneath our surface veneer that we want no one to see. None of us has escaped without wounds from life thus far. Through our own mistakes and the mistakes of others, we are banged, bruised, and scarred. We deal with each other out of our own stories, out of our own wounds. Which means we deal with each other so imperfectly. We wound each other further. Our rough, broken edges collide with another’s rough, broken edges and though we both try to pretend that we’re doing OK, we’re just fine, thank you–we’re not. We’re raw. People here are a little more tired of hiding that. Their rawness lies closer to the surface. There’s an element of truth to that interaction that is unnerving and liberating.
Someone was asking me the other day if my relationships in the city were not as deep as my other relationships due to the fast pace and the transitory nature of the population here. I had to think for about two seconds before I realized why that wasn’t at all the case. Relationships in the city share an almost inexplicable bond. There is certainly the sense of not having much time, but that serves to make people take seriously what time they do have. We are like war buddies who navigate this insane place together. Plus, there is the added dimension of each person’s reason for being here: most of us are searching for something we couldn’t seem to find anywhere else. That makes us allies. There is a layer of that carefully prepared veneer that just doesn’t hold up in the city–it crumbles soon after you get here. Fake doesn’t last long when you keep crashing into people. And that’s when you realize something important…
Maybe if people quit pretending they were perfect, they would actually know each other.