14 June 2016

I think the strangest thing I've noticed in today's society is its propensity to pinpoint all the wrong things. In the Orlando shooting, the focus is now on racism and gun control, as if those were the deciding factors in the tragedy. I think the reality is that human beings are capable of infinite good and infinite evil, and in Orlando, we saw infinite evil.

The problem is not guns. The problem is not even terrorism, if this was a terrorist act. The problem is that we live in a world where people do terrible things to each other, and that is not something that we can change with a new law. You cannot legislate a mindset; you can't enforce compassion.

So often I think we get caught up in trying to force our will on other people, in trying to pass laws that go along with our point of view, when really a law is simply words on a piece of paper. In the end, it will not stop someone who has decided in their heart to do something heinous. That's not to say we shouldn't take a stand in our government, but perhaps in a world where violence and opposing views abound, we should take time to look to those around us, and to ourselves.

What would it be like if we, as Christians, were a community that left no one out? What sort of world could we create if we truly adhered to Jesus' teachings of 'love your neighbor as yourself?' Do we spend our days constantly asserting our own way, or do we look for those who have fallen by the wayside? Are we kind to strangers? Do we set an example of integrity and compassion for those watching us?

I think everyone wants to answer yes. But in the end, how do we treat the seventeenth clueless IT guy on the phone who doesn't speak good English? How do we respond to offbeat characters that spark fear in our hearts? How do we treat people who have hurt us? Even more importantly, how do we dialogue with people we disagree with? Do we hammer on theological points and miss that the person in front of us is a human being?

We live in a broken world, and nothing in this life is ever going to fix that entirely. We are flawed people constantly trying to ensure our own safety and lifestyle. We shake our heads at the way the world is turning and continue on our daily lives. Perhaps Clinton will win the election. Maybe it will be Trump. Hopefully, neither one.

But in the end, how much impact does a presidency have on what really matters? Presidents can change the surface of the world; they can start and end wars, change laws, and ruin diplomatic ties. But nothing, not a bad president, not a shooting in Orlando, can change the value that we place on human life, on compassion, and on our fellow humans.

We cannot force others to make the world a better place with rules and legislation. The hard reality is that the world becomes a better place one person at a time. There is no magic wand that makes people kind. Feminist persecution will never change the fact that immature people exist. Anti-gun laws will never change the fact that criminals with intent to kill will find a way to do it. Rules cannot fix the broken human heart. Change has to start with us, and we have to face that fact that making the world a better place is hard work, full of frustration and injustice, not some righteous crusade full of glory and sunshine.

I suppose my point is this: in our everyday lives and in our governmental choices, compassion ought to be our highest priority, and we have to understand that everyone's compassion looks different. Perhaps you have strong compassion for marriage equality, and I have strong compassion for victims of the bourgeoisie. Our focus will be different, but I think that if our hearts are focused on caring for other people, even disagreements can be civil.

13 December 2015

I think the reason that our culture is inundated with stories of death and cancer, novels that try to assign some deep value or wisdom to the words of the dying, is because we as humans inherently search for meaning. We look at death as the end of life, and we look at life as the ultimate good because to be alive is to be human, and to be human is to be infinite. And yet, to be human is to be finite, and our lives are bookended with dates inscribed into marble as if that can define a person and the life that they lived. We watch people as they slip from living, breathing lines stretching upwards into infinity like a cubic function and dwindle into silent, lifeless lines, defined by their slope and their x and y value endpoints.

I think it's this view of the infinite becoming finite that disturbs us so much. It reaches into our chest and grips our soul with cold fingers that bring forth thoughts we would rather just forget. We need it to mean something. We need it to mean something because if it means something, it's easier to accept. If we learn from it, it's not evil at all, simply another lesson in a lifetime journey of learning.

The truth is that death doesn't mean anything.

Death simply is. It's not a lesson. It doesn't care what you learn from it. It claims us all but that is a fact, not some deep piece of philosophical mumbo jumbo. The truth is that not everything in life is part of some grand plan to make us into better people. Life is. The only lessons we will learn are the ones we teach ourselves.

29 October 2015

Here's what they don't tell you about cancer. They don't tell you about the wet, gurgling sound that mucous makes in the lungs of someone who is drowning in his own body. They don't tell you about the way flesh melts away until all that remains is gray skin stretched across a skeletal frame. They don't tell you about the tubes that carry black fluid from your loved one's wasted body.

They don't tell you that watching someone die of cancer is the same as watching someone's body destroy itself.

My uncle died on the twentieth of September at 3:47 a.m., and though this is a simple fact to remember, I found myself expecting to see him rounding the corner even as we made preparations for his funeral. In a sea of people whose world had crumbled around them, I felt curiously adrift; a mute observer whose chief agony found its source in the harsh cries of my aunt and the silent grief of a cousin two years my junior.

A true tragedy is one that destroys what could have been. Loss comes at the end of a life, in the twilight of an fulfilled existence that now draws to a close. Tragedy is the summation of vitality crushed beneath the ruin of memories and stories that will never exist, of dreams destroyed at the root, and of tasks left half-finished.

Ours is a culture that sensationalizes tragedy, plying it as a sales gimmick so often that we forget its true ramifications. It is well and good to read or write about a death, but until you have lived through one, you can't truly understand the full impact.

Death is a curious entity; true comprehension of its being drives one towards insanity, and in balancing on the edge of that precipice, one reaches adulthood. Only when one realizes the true fragility and worth of life can one truly live; only when one sees Death as something other than a storybook character can one grow up.

My childhood ended with a phone call at 3:49 on a rainy Sunday morning, and there are times when I can't remember what it was like to laugh in the face of our inevitable decay. I find that I am guilty of trivializing grief, of commercializing loss, and of romanticizing morbidity. I find that words, once clear and precise beneath my pen, cannot be combined in such a way as to convey the enormity of life's most defining trait - its end.

I have miles to go before I sleep, and many great deeds to accomplish before I set foot on the planks of that final ship. I think that adulthood comes with realizing that life is short, and means little if the legacy one leaves behind is not one of integrity, love, and kindness. And sometimes it takes a tragedy to remind us of this: that to live shall be an awfully big adventure.

28 June 2015

Sometimes resolution hangs like a death sentence, and forgiveness has a lightness that feels like a weight.

I think we put off resolving things because once they're over, they're done. There's no hope for a better outcome, and maybe that hope is worth the anxiety that waiting brings. It is hard to know that you are the last one believing in something. You wonder whether or not your hope is even valid. Whether your persistence in hoping is faith or just idiotic stubbornness.

Even worse is, when granted pardon, the mixed feelings of continued guilt and freedom. Freedom, because even if it is your fault, you aren't blamed for it; guilt because you feel as if you are betraying everyone by being free. Sometimes I think that if I could just take all the hate and hurt into myself, I could bear it for them, and they could love each other again.

I spend hours wondering whether or not any of it would have happened if I hadn't tried to claim the friends for myself. It seems to me that without my grasping presence, there would have been no conflict. And when I see the sadness that the loss causes the friends I succeeded in tearing away, I think that I would gladly give them up so that they could have their family back. I play the downfall over and over again, and I'm constantly falling on the sword of my memories until I don't know the difference between introspection and masochism.

If only it were so simple; one relationship for another. But now I realize that nothing is that simple, and that even the so called 'stable' relationships are immensely complicated. Sometimes I wonder if any of them are worth the fight, and then I remember that I have not had an honest relationship since the year I turned sixteen. That will be two years in October.

I constantly struggle with the tension between wanting to be known, and knowing that there are others who need understanding more than I. Every chance I have to tell my story and bare my soul is a time that could be used to help those who are unused to wearing sadness the way I am. I will not hurt myself over this, I will not end my life. But there are others that might, and I can't justify taking their time for myself.

I spent years of my life trying to escape from stereotypes in an attempt to make people see me, but all that I succeeded in doing was sliding into a new label: angry. I have given up now, and sometimes I think about what I would want people to know about me if I had the chance to tell them. Here it is: anger is just sad's bodyguard. I think my bones are made of mourning and my veins are filled with black ink instead of blood. I grieve the loss of finite family and friends. I endure the end of intimacy. I weather the withering of love and kindness.

But I would not call myself depressed. To me, depression is something that sucks the life out of you and deprives you of your ability to create or enjoy the things you love. But I don't know if I could write without my sadness. I don't know if my fingers could create music without its galvanizing force. I have my days of sunlight, and they are just rare enough to allow me to enjoy the haze of the gray without all the garish light of constant elation. I suppose, in the end, I like my world of purple and gray. It suits me in the same way that light and gold suit some of my friends.

Sometimes I think that sad isn't such a bad way to be.

25 June 2015

Life is a mess of interconnected webs and each tragedy bleeds into another. I once thought that October and January were separate events, but now I see how they bled into one another and how the ripples joined and swelled into the tsunami that has crashed over my life. I've cut and been cut off until the last one standing is me - and I'm not even standing, I'm just sitting here, in love with my own grief and the way it looks on paper.

I struggle to believe in a God that heals and changes when a lack of changes in those closest to that deity caused a wound in me that couldn't be healed. Or maybe it's wouldn't. I've never been good at gray, so I stay as deeply immeshed in the black as I can; I don't know the difference between mourning a loss and drowning in it. Maybe I think I deserve to drown in it.

When my parents carved out half our family and threw them to the curb, I learned that friends are only worth keeping when they don't rock the boat and that hard times tear us apart. So when my own hard times came, I vowed we'd stick together, not realizing that their hardship had also been mine and that the rough seas had cracked my hull. So it was with desperation that I tried to force two serrated beings together and got everyone hurt in the process. Sometimes I think my life is just a compilation of all the ways that I've failed - as a daughter - as a sister - as a friend.

Friend, friend...I've put too much weight on that word in the past and now I realize that the idea of 'kindred spirits' is a fairy tale. There is no one out there who will ever understand or even want to understand the dustiest corners of our mixed up souls. And even these words are missiles loaded and waiting for anyone who thinks they want to know me; trust me - you don't.

I used to want to save people, to help them. Well, I've saved two lives now, and here's what I've learned; it doesn't mean shit if they didn't want them in the first place, and I wonder if we can every truly help anyone, or if we're just springboards for those who care to help themselves.

Do I want to help myself? I don't know. I don't even know if I'm broken.

But, really, aren't we all? just a little?