"I make a vow, right here and now"

Cages or wings
Which do you prefer?
Ask the birds.
Fear or love, baby,
Don’t say the answer
Actions speak louder than words.

--tick, tick, BOOM! by Jonathan Larson

One of the hardest lessons I’m learning right now is that everything in life must be pursued. Nothing comes easily, it’s all a fight. I guess I somehow assumed that upon graduating from college opportunities would throw themselves at me. I was hopelessly wrong.

Although I’ve never seen the show, I’ve come to realize from its soundtrack that my life has begun to resemble tick, tick, BOOM!, a musical written by the late, great Jonathan Larson about a man on the brink of age 30 who is experiencing what John Mayer so eloquently referred to as a “quarter-life crisis.” I first made this connection a little over a year ago. It’s odd how little has changed.

Still, I’m happy to report that in the past week I realized that one of the songs I relate to is “Why” in which Johnny explains how he came to understand his calling.

When I was nine,
Michael and I
Entered a talent show down at the Y

Nine A.M. went to rehearse by some stairs
Mike couldn't sing
But I said, "No one cares"

We sang "Yellow Bird" and "Let's Go Fly A Kite"
Over and over and over
Till we got it right

When we emerged from the YMCA
Three o'clock sun had made the grass hay

I thought,
Hey, what a way to spend a day
Hey, what a way to spend a day
I make a vow, right here and now
I'm gonna spend my time this way

Johnny goes on to tell of several such epiphanies throughout his 29 years. As I thought on this, I realized I had a similar moment of realization last May as I wrote my senior paper during my spring break. In the mornings, I’d work out or relax, then I’d head over to the library for a few hours of work. In seven days, I’d completed a 35-page rhetorical analysis of John Colapinto’s coverage of the David Reimer saga. I remember reading and typing and researching and typing, all the while thinking, “Hey, what a way to spend the day!”

So for the first time I’m admitting to myself that I want to spend my time that way. I want to write. I don’t exactly know what I want to write, but I want to research and I want to read and I want to write! I admire writers like John Colapinto who create narrative masterpiece while also presenting relevant scientific findings. I also respect writers like John Eldredge who incorporate narrative truth from film, poetry, literature, and art into introspective nonfiction.

Just like Jon (and John and John), I’m making a vow to chase this desire. I’m still clueless how, but at least I have somewhat of a goal for which to toil.

I’m gonna spend my time this way.

Even cats need omega-3s

Why do cats like fish so much? Do fish taste like mice?

It's not a child, it's a choice?

I recently caught an old episode of Gilmore Girls in which Rory is in her second year at Yale. Every bit the little “feminist,” she resides in her own room plastered with posters decrying the “War on Choice.” I thought this an interesting/contradictory motif for this series to propel, considering the focal point of said series is a relationship between a mother and daughter that is abnormally intimate due their proximity in ages. It makes me wonder how differently the series would have turned out if Loralei had opted for abortion when she was single, sixteen and inconveniently pregnant with Rory. Personally, I don’t believe in the legitimacy of choices that snuff out the existence of innocent human beings, whether those innocents are workers in the World Trade Center or “products of conception” with beating hearts inside their mother’s wombs. I guess it’s sweet that Rory is defending her mother’s right to choose whether she lived or died… or maybe it’s just sick.

Racing/Eating/Hoarding Free Stuff For the Cure... and Other Adventures

I used to HATE running. It was painful and tiring and required some degree of athletic prowess. While I still don't consider myself a "runner," I'm in adequate shape so when Starbucks asked local partners to consider joining their team for today's Race for the Cure, I thought I'd give it a whirl. After all, it's for a good cause.

Well, by this morning "Team Starbucks" had dwindled to Randy and me, so with a "who needs them" attitude, we took our marks behind about a 100 people and waited for the beginning of the race. The run itself went pretty smoothly. A local drumline set our pace in the mall parking lot and a chorus of cicadas kept us moving through the adjacent soybean fields that I'd somehow never noticed from my car.

At the finish line, Randy and I hit up the booths for free stuff. I love free stuff. Especially when that free stuff comes in the form of bagels from PANERA!!! I also got free deodorant and a heinously small t-shirt advertising Soft & Dri. Excellent.

However, it was what I was reading before the race that really got me moving in the furthest regions of my soul. I'd been reading Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What off and on all summer. Well, more off than on, considering I'm not even half way through. Anyway, this morning while I awaited my teammate(s), I came across this picture of Adam and Eve that rocked my spirit:

... And then I began to wonder about Eve, what the scene might have looked like when she and Adam first met. Dante paints the meeting as being more realistic than I had imagined, writing that the slow-to-love Eve did not find Adam the least bit attractive, becoming enamored, instead, with her own reflection in some water. It's true women are terribly enamored with their own reflections. You can't blame them, though. If I were good-looking, I would certainly go around looking at myself all the time, too. And it is also true women are slow to love. I used to think this was because something was wrong with them, but, over time, I wondered whether they were more deliberate than men about important decisions. Romantic decisions. And in comparison I realized they were infinitely more intelligent about relational matters than men.

But when I was reading the text the way John Sailhamer [an OT scholar] said to read the text, I noticed Adam and Eve didn't meet right away. Moses said God knew Adam was lonely or incomplete or however you want to say it, but God did not create Eve directly after He stated Adam is lonely. This struck me as funny because a lot of times when I think about life before the Fall, I don't think of people going around lonely. But that thought also comforted me because I realized loneliness in my own life doesn't mean I am a complete screwup, rather that God made me this way. You always picture the perfect human being as somebody who doesn't need anybody, like a guy on a horse out in Colorado or whatever. But here is Adam, the only perfect guy in the world, and he is going around wanting to be with somebody else, needing another person to fulfill a certain emptiness in his life. And as I said, when God saw this, He did not create Eve right away. He did not give Adam what he needed immediately. He waited. He told Adam to name the animals...

There is a reason for every season in life, even this one. The other day I found myself singing along to a Blue October song on the radio, empathetically stating, "I'm cold as cold as cold can be." I'm numb, and more than a little secluded, not because I don't have friends or anything but because I'm struggling to open up even to my own self. I guess I should make a point to remember all that is happening right now, to record these confusing emotions upon my heart so that one day when God decides to supply the needs and desires I'm not sure I have, I will truly be thankful to him for delivering me from this present state of limbo.

"Might be a quarter-life crisis"

I've decided the new John Meyer stuff is too Phil Collins-y for me. Not feeling it.