(no subject)
Despite the cliche, I think the best way to sum up life right now would be bittersweet. I'm agonizing over somehow having meaningful conversations with people I won't be seeing very often for the next while at all, while simultaneously being excited about the change. As I Alison and I decided the other night, growing up sucks. So much of me would rather not go through with it, but it is one of the disadvantages that must be accepted to being human I guess. I was challenged tonight to consider how other perceive me, not because of a need to work for their approval but because of the need to live authentically. I really have no idea how other people perceive me, in all honesty, and in most senses I'm really afraid to know. But for this point in time, I think it is unwise to go too far down that road, because I can quickly become a people-pleaser. In fact, I often am now.
As this chapter of my life closes, I hope that the action will continue to rise. I just don't want characters that have been so critical to the plot thus far suddenly fade into nothing with no resolution nor denoument. I am ultimately not the writer, mostly the scribe I guess.
I have often chosen, usually implicitly not through any direct means, to attempt to emulate certain people. As I look at people I admire, I wonder what draws me to them. Philip Yancey, an Evangelical writer with a nonconformist bent. C.S. Lewis, an English atheist turned Christian apologist of the twentieth century. Scott Peck, an American psychiatrist who "came to Chrisianity through the trapdoor of mysticism". Dr. Paul Bran, a surgeon who operated a clinic for Untouchable lepers in India. A couple of trends I guess I notice about most of these men. Well that's one thing isn't it? They're all men. This is a problem. Anyway. None of them ended up as Christians through normal means, nor do any of them always live out their faith through "normal" means. For me, I must note that I met all of them through books, so I wonder... it seems that a lot of the things I respect and value come from two places: books and parents. Ha.
I'm tired. Goodngiht.