Brigit's Flame "All Stars", Week 2
Last Wednesday, it snowed buckets. There was well over two feet on the ground.
I called in a personal day at work, then went back to bed. I slept late, saw that it was still snowing hard, and made myself breakfast. I poked around on YouTube for an hour or so.
At noon, the snow stopped, with reports that icy rain would start in at 2pm. I grabbed a snow shovel and -- in my pajama pants, coat, and t-shirt -- shoved my snow-covered door open to reveal the frigid white wilderness beyond. It wasn't until the door shut that I realized I'd locked myself out. "Well, I'm definitely committed to this now," I thought to myself. I assumed that sooner or later Roommate would see me shoveling and come to help, and I put it out of my mind.
Trudging out to the road, I figured that I might as well start where the ground was clear. The wind blew through my flannel pants -- that had been a stupid idea.
So there I was: Shovel all the snow, shovel it now. With the door locked, giving up meant admitting defeat to my roommate. Carpe' Rubbermaid, I suppose. :-)
It's been a long time since I've been in good physical shape, and I began to feel tired very quickly. The muscles in my hips, especially, began to complain. Rest, shovel, rest, shovel, rest. Only I didn't really let myself rest -- every time I stopped, there was this urgent need to go on -- to finish what I'd begun.
Why am I sharing this? Because while I was out shoveling snow, I recovered a small part of myself that I haven't seen in a long time -- the Me of Trials. The more I shoveled, the more determined I got to follow through, to power through this. Soon, I wasn't tired at all: I was clearing areas I hadn't planned on, inventing reasons to work on areas that could have gone without.
Eventually, my roommate joined me; together we piled the snow higher than our heads, cleared out around the mailbox, dug a path to our unused door, swept the porch, and shoveled a section of the driveway that we don't even use anymore. After that, I chiseled out sections of hardened, icy snow that had survived two previous snowfalls, just to be thorough.
When I was younger, this was me: I thrived on adversity, seeking out the things that no one else had the energy or willpower to do. People would tell me that I was nuts! I'd tackle meticulous tasks with glee, as if to prove to myself again and again how strong I was, how able I was to beat all hardships that the world could hurl at me. How I could overcome whatever I needed to in life.
But over the past decade, that spark has faded. My attitude towards the world has changed from "Bring it on, you bastards!" to "Thank you God for giving me challenges today that I can overcome." Either philosophy is perfectly defensible as a way of life. I'll take the former, please.
Ernest Hemingway once said, "If a man had something once, always something remains." So what's it going to take to bring that back into my life? What place must I bring myself to to transform myself from "one who survives" to "one who strives for what they believe in"? Having that within myself was once the single most important part of my identity -- and it kept me alive and thriving through many hard times.
I remember enviously the church that I attended when I was young. It had an old pastor, only a couple years from retirement, with a booming voice that could stir you to the very core. He would clench his fists and proclaim his defiance of the dark lord Satan, while shouting praises to the Lord as the congregation came to their feet, singing and moaning their worship of God.
Man, what I could do with my life if I still had their capacity to believe in something! I envy their ability to come in from the streets, blood alive with purpose, to be shaken by the low sounds of murmured prayers and tears of gratitude: gratitude that something -- anything -- was right, and invincible, and good, and true in this world.
It is because I feel no purpose, and no passion, that I cannot be moved. I have nothing to shout about, nothing to cry about, no one to murmur reverent thanks to. There is no clenched fist, no powerful, low sound, and no tears of gratitude within my potential. My heroes are dead, or their illusions have been shattered. I have no dreams. I believe in nothing. It's like I'm stuck in this video game -- only there's no purpose and no end. No direction.
And that, I believe, is the modern tragedy. The world turning gray, the food is becoming tasteless, and we are growing weaker every day. No one is held accountable. Those who sin are protected by armies of downtrodden wage slaves, walls of obscurity, and form-letter responses. The world is now built in systems: there is no room for heroes; the magnifying glass of the camera sees only scars and blemishes. The waters move slowly, and they crawl over our heads and pull us down. I live in a world full of things that I cannot make, cannot understand, and because of debt and lease, do not actually own.
How, then, can we make this giant stir? And why? And what is the giant? I have no answers.
I called in a personal day at work, then went back to bed. I slept late, saw that it was still snowing hard, and made myself breakfast. I poked around on YouTube for an hour or so.
At noon, the snow stopped, with reports that icy rain would start in at 2pm. I grabbed a snow shovel and -- in my pajama pants, coat, and t-shirt -- shoved my snow-covered door open to reveal the frigid white wilderness beyond. It wasn't until the door shut that I realized I'd locked myself out. "Well, I'm definitely committed to this now," I thought to myself. I assumed that sooner or later Roommate would see me shoveling and come to help, and I put it out of my mind.
Trudging out to the road, I figured that I might as well start where the ground was clear. The wind blew through my flannel pants -- that had been a stupid idea.
So there I was: Shovel all the snow, shovel it now. With the door locked, giving up meant admitting defeat to my roommate. Carpe' Rubbermaid, I suppose. :-)
It's been a long time since I've been in good physical shape, and I began to feel tired very quickly. The muscles in my hips, especially, began to complain. Rest, shovel, rest, shovel, rest. Only I didn't really let myself rest -- every time I stopped, there was this urgent need to go on -- to finish what I'd begun.
Why am I sharing this? Because while I was out shoveling snow, I recovered a small part of myself that I haven't seen in a long time -- the Me of Trials. The more I shoveled, the more determined I got to follow through, to power through this. Soon, I wasn't tired at all: I was clearing areas I hadn't planned on, inventing reasons to work on areas that could have gone without.
Eventually, my roommate joined me; together we piled the snow higher than our heads, cleared out around the mailbox, dug a path to our unused door, swept the porch, and shoveled a section of the driveway that we don't even use anymore. After that, I chiseled out sections of hardened, icy snow that had survived two previous snowfalls, just to be thorough.
When I was younger, this was me: I thrived on adversity, seeking out the things that no one else had the energy or willpower to do. People would tell me that I was nuts! I'd tackle meticulous tasks with glee, as if to prove to myself again and again how strong I was, how able I was to beat all hardships that the world could hurl at me. How I could overcome whatever I needed to in life.
But over the past decade, that spark has faded. My attitude towards the world has changed from "Bring it on, you bastards!" to "Thank you God for giving me challenges today that I can overcome." Either philosophy is perfectly defensible as a way of life. I'll take the former, please.
Ernest Hemingway once said, "If a man had something once, always something remains." So what's it going to take to bring that back into my life? What place must I bring myself to to transform myself from "one who survives" to "one who strives for what they believe in"? Having that within myself was once the single most important part of my identity -- and it kept me alive and thriving through many hard times.
I remember enviously the church that I attended when I was young. It had an old pastor, only a couple years from retirement, with a booming voice that could stir you to the very core. He would clench his fists and proclaim his defiance of the dark lord Satan, while shouting praises to the Lord as the congregation came to their feet, singing and moaning their worship of God.
Man, what I could do with my life if I still had their capacity to believe in something! I envy their ability to come in from the streets, blood alive with purpose, to be shaken by the low sounds of murmured prayers and tears of gratitude: gratitude that something -- anything -- was right, and invincible, and good, and true in this world.
It is because I feel no purpose, and no passion, that I cannot be moved. I have nothing to shout about, nothing to cry about, no one to murmur reverent thanks to. There is no clenched fist, no powerful, low sound, and no tears of gratitude within my potential. My heroes are dead, or their illusions have been shattered. I have no dreams. I believe in nothing. It's like I'm stuck in this video game -- only there's no purpose and no end. No direction.
And that, I believe, is the modern tragedy. The world turning gray, the food is becoming tasteless, and we are growing weaker every day. No one is held accountable. Those who sin are protected by armies of downtrodden wage slaves, walls of obscurity, and form-letter responses. The world is now built in systems: there is no room for heroes; the magnifying glass of the camera sees only scars and blemishes. The waters move slowly, and they crawl over our heads and pull us down. I live in a world full of things that I cannot make, cannot understand, and because of debt and lease, do not actually own.
How, then, can we make this giant stir? And why? And what is the giant? I have no answers.