the journey is the destination
"A man is what he thinks about all day long."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Call it one drink too many, call it pride of a man, when it don’t make no difference if you sit or you stand. Because they both end in trouble and start with a grin…We do it over and over and over again. I know there’s California, Oklahoma, and all of the places I ain’t ever been to, but down in the valley with whiskey rivers, these are the places you will find me hidin. These are the places I will always go…I am on my way back to where I started.” - The Head and the Heart
“Oh God, I love my vices, but they have taken me to places that I never thought I’d go, and I am ready to be home.”- The Head and the Heart
This year has brought more than its fair share of adventures, surprises, obstacles. It has been a year of intense self-discovery. I’ve stood on the precipice of huge personal change, and I’ve jumped more often than I would have liked to. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to find out who I am, try on something new, be somebody a little different. And from a personal growth standpoint, I don’t regret them. Which is a really good thing, because a couple of them I’m stuck with. Permanently. Like the scallop shell inked on my bicep. The things I will always remember. The things I really wish I could. The things I maybe wish I didn’t.
There are some things I wish I’d done differently, things I will never do again. Which is what leads me to this. I think I’ve spent a lot of time in the last couple years desperately trying to stop history from repeating itself. And perhaps stupidly, I decided the easiest way to do that was to become the kind of person who didn’t get hurt by the things that had hurt me before. If I could run fast enough, they couldn’t ever catch up with me. A rolling stone gathers no moss.
But that has gotten old. I have grown weary of running, tired of living with one foot out the door in anticipation of disappointment. A rolling stone gathers no moss. And I’d rather like some moss.
Which leads me, ironically, back to where I started. My valley with whiskey rivers. And moss. It has been a long journey home.
A little background: There’s been some pretty significant turmoil at Vanderbilt surrounding the non-discrimination policy and religious organizations. What this means, functionally, is that religious organizations have to change their constitutions to remove Bible verses and any religious requirements of its leaders. From the public outcry, you’d think people were being burned at the stake for professing a belief in God.
For instance, free mp3 players were passed out on campus yesterday with this video already loaded on them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X5bdOIaLBzI
As a practicing Christian and a leader of a religious organization on campus, I am embarrassed.
I do not agree with the university; I believe that they have overstepped and are more concerned about political correctness than anything else. I believe that if we are going to enforce a “no exceptions” non-discrimination policy, it should have no exceptions, regardless of alumni dollars shielding Greek organizations.
With that said, the Christian organizations on campus had an incredible opportunity to step forward and have a rational discussion. We had the opportunity to show the best parts of our faith. Instead, some Christian organizations have claimed that they are being persecuted. They argue that without faith-based leadership requirements, their organizations could be disbanded by deviant leadership. They argue that the non-discrimination policy disallows them from sharing their message on this campus. They pass out $32,000 worth of free mp3 players in order to disseminate a Youtube video.
First of all, we are not being persecuted. We go to the number 17 college (the fifth most expensive school) in the richest country in the world. We have been afforded more opportunities than many could even dream of. And yet, we are being persecuted? When we argue that, we do a massive disservice to the people in the world who are, in fact, being persecuted. And that is shameful, especially for Christians.
Second, to assume that someone would come into an organization, wrest leadership from those of faith in order to disband or destroy it is illogical and fear-mongering. And many of these organizations are being disbanded now, or are leaving campus, led by a group of people elected or appointed according to faith-based requirements.
Third, by leaving campus (yes, leaving; nobody is forcing you to go, evinced by the fact that many religious organizations are remaining on campus), you hinder your own ability to share the Gospel of Christ. That is not the university’s fault. You are making a choice; never forget that.
Finally, I raise a question. If a belief, a faith that does not really matter to your actions is not a belief or a faith, how can you justify spending $32,000 on mp3 players? To disseminate a Youtube video. My Christian faith calls on me to care for the poor, to shelter the homeless, to feed the hungry. Quite frankly, this melodramatic debacle is nothing short of atrocious. I am truly and deeply embarrassed.
[These views are mine and mine alone. They do not reflect the views of the religious organization to which I belong.]
“Dear, I don’t know what to say. My heart says go, my spleen says stay; my insides are in disarray. There’s no chance they’ll meet halfway, get more pushy by the day. Don’t know whom to disobey.”- Miracles of Modern Science
“I know you can’t hold out forever waiting on a diamond and a tether, from a boy who won’t jump when he falls in love; he just stands with his toes on the edge, and he waits for it to disappear again.”- Death Cab for Cutie
There’s something about having looming leadership exams that brings out inspiration for Tumblr posts (read, I’m procrastinating).
I have recently been convinced that life is nothing more than a neverending alternation between tension and relative resolution. Life moves constantly toward the moments of clarity or action or crisis, tension building the whole time until it is suddenly released like an earthquake. Shakes things up a bit. These moments, I’ve found, are marked by extreme potential.
Under the influence of Annie Dillard essays, I’ve become completely obsessed with the idea of headspace. The idea that thoughts can explode from the mind and fill the space around, be it physical or not. It’s why I love coffee shops with high ceilings and natural light. It’s why I love Bon Iver’s new album. Thoughts can “bump and collide and cause a flurry of confusion.” This blissful confusion filled with potential for new and reckless thoughts and revelations and insights.
I finally made it to the rock climbing gym here in Nashville on Saturday. Took me long enough considering that’s what I did for a living over the summer and I’ve been here for two years. Feeling rock under my fingertips and feeling my body and mind mold together again. Simply indescribable.
There is a moment on every route of adequate difficulty in which you have to reach for something you don’t know if you can reach, much less hold onto. And the entire time, even though you know there’s a rope there to catch you, your body is ablaze with this consuming fear, screaming at you that you’re going to die if you fail. But you have to reach, because if you don’t, your arms and legs will wear out and shake you off the wall, and your body thinks that you certainly will die if that happens. And for a moment, the part of your mind that believes your body, that doesn’t trust the rope, is held in suspense, not knowing if your heart will still be beating in a moment. It believes that in that moment, there is the very real potential that you will die.
I live for those moments.
“There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how.” - Oasis
Being home makes posting this seem appropriate. I’ve had this written since winter break, and even in this short time, some people have been added, and some have gone away. Funny that.
1. I’m sorry when I’m a tool, and I really appreciate you tolerating me and helping me, though I seldom deserve it.
2. You’re a total boss. I’m proud to call you my sister, and I hope that someday I will be half as successful and impressive as you are.
3. You guys have been my best friends for a long time. Gotten me through some of the worst shit in my life. Late nights at the Waffle House, all the jokes over time, all the dumb shit we’ve pulled. I love you guys. You mean the world to me, and I want the world for you guys (even when I ask you to start fights with your respective girlfriends…)
4. It’s tough to look at you, to see all the things you should have been for me that you’re not. That you never will be. I like you, I like hanging out with you. But that’s not what I need from you. I was 18, and you forced me to be the adult I didn’t know how to be and shouldn’t have had to be. I’ll never understand how you did what you did.
5. Words cannot express my appreciation for your presence in my life. You’ve seen me cry more than anybody besides my mother. You were support for me when you barely knew me, and I was goin through some rough shit. I really really appreciate that. Between brochats and margaritas, you’re one of the people I’m closest to, and I’m glad for that. We haven’t hung out much lately, which is my fault, and I’m sorry for that, but I still appreciate knowing you’re right down the hall. I could not have been blessed with a better bro.
6. I think you understand me better than most people, which scares me on occasion. But we are the same person, just going in different directions (swear I was sober when I wrote this). Your insight into the world is refreshing, and even though we don’t always agree on things, I enjoy talking about things that matter with you. I’m glad that we’ve gotten to be really good friends, especially considering that you wish you had real friends.
7. You’re fun :) I’ve been blessed to have you in my life. Between assaulting me with pillows when I’m being an idiot (and when I’m not) and reminding me to be honest about my brokenness, you are exactly who I needed. I love our wandering conversations and being kidnapped from Peabody. Oh, and you make a mean margarita.
8. You’re honestly one of the coolest people I’ve ever met, and I hope that I can learn from what happened and not make the same mistakes again.
9. I think it’s always weird to see the people you grew up with growing up without you. I’m glad to say that I still love you guys, and you still rock. I’m sorry that I haven’t seen or talked to you guys a whole lot lately. I hope that you all continue to grow, in whoever’s presence that is. And I hope that our friendship will not disappear as we all go forward in separate directions.
10. This is probably the hardest one to write. I really appreciate all the guidance you’ve given me. I always tell my friends that I want to grow up to be like you. You were a father figure when I didn’t have one. Not only that, you were a totally badass father figure. I don’t think you’ll ever know how much I appreciate what you did for me, even in such a short time. Best of luck with your new lady friend.
11. You guys are fantastic. I don’t know what I would do without you. Between opening your home to me and opening doors for me, I can’t ever express how thankful I am to you. You are family. But I genuinely consider you friends too.
“Nothing is as it has been, and I miss your face like hell. And I guess it’s just as well. But I miss your face like hell. Been talkin’ ‘bout the way things change, and my family lives in a different state.”- The Head and the Heart
“Mama once told me, ‘You’re already home where you feel love.’”- The Head and the Heart
I think God talks to us in the ways we’re most likely to listen to Him.
Today was a long day. Not nearly as productive as it needed to be, and it’s going to get longer. I got an accounting project back today to find that despite using the professor’s template, I got 10 out of 30 points counted off for formatting. I was in a bad mood, and I was stressed because I still had a lot left to do. So I got in my car and drove to my favorite coffee shop in Nashville to study. When I got there, there was live folk music, and I got no work done. But I’m in a much better mood.
As I sat in the Frothy Monkey, I began to think about where I’m going in life, and where I’ve been, where I want to go back.
A funny thing has happened as a result of going off to college. I’ve spent a total of about 2 months in Snellville in the last year, and I’ve more or less lived in 4 different places in the last year. And I love that. This is not to say that I don’t like being in Atlanta or seeing the people that matter deeply to me. I do. But my conception of home has changed.
Home isn’t really a place anymore. Yeah, there’s a house in Snellville that I grew up in, that I go back to on breaks. But I’ve discovered lately that home has more to do with the people and activities than the places. For me, home is a mandolin song on a porch in Colorado and a Friday night on Love Hill with friends. It’s a conversation in a hotel bar at Union Station or a movie night in a chapel. It’s my mom and my sister, a glass of brandy with my grandpa.
You’re already home where you feel love. That’s what God reminded me of tonight.
“I heard the news today. Yeah, I know what your friends all say: that I am gonna go to Hell. They are probably right. I just wanna go to Hell my way.”- Everclear
“I picture you in the sun, wondering what went wrong. And fallin down on your knees askin for sympathy. And bein caught in between all you wish for and all you seen. And trying to find anything you can feel that you can believe in. May God’s love be with you. Always. May God’s love be with you.”- Joseph Arthur
We have the privilege of living in an amazing time. A time when people move toward more complete and accepting ways of loving people. A time when it is becoming ever easier to see people for who they are and care for them even more deeply for the scars that we see. People are amazing. California and Washington have shown this.
I was genuinely going to post something entirely about how amazing people are. And then a friend of mine showed me this gem:
http://www.insidevandy.com/opinion/article_34924a5c-52d5-11e1-becb-001a4bcf6878.html
And I felt angry. And sad. And embarrassed. And the distinct urge to scream cuss words at people.
I don’t talk about my faith often. It is something that I like to keep quiet, not because I am embarrassed by it, but because I believe that my faith should show through in the way I treat other people. Not the words I say.
I acknowledge that this is a personal choice on my part. I harbor no ill will toward the people who are so thrilled by their faith that they cannot contain it. That is wonderful. I do, however, harbor ill will toward people who make absolutist statements that carry hate thinly veiled in love. In the name of the faith that I hold dear to my life. The faith that guides my life. The faith that teaches me to love others completely and without judgment. The faith that commands me to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, visit the sick, and bury the dead.
The faith that does not instruct me to inform people of whether or not they can be Christian. The faith that does not say it’s okay to judge some people as long as they’re doing really bad things. That is not my faith.
I find it very interesting that so many of the hot topics that have to do with religion are preached on by the people they have nothing to do with. Let’s assume for a moment (in the knowledge that I disagree with this statement) that being gay is a sin and that God wants gay people to be straight. Does it say that straight people should make gay people feel like shit until they are straight? Does it say that people who haven’t had abortions or can’t, as a matter of fact, get pregnant (I’m lookin at you guys) should yell and scream until people submit to those ideas? No.
In fact, God says “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” Luke 6:41-42
Let your faith guide you. But do not allow yourself to preach your bigotries in God’s name.
Know, instead, that you are loved beyond measure, as broken as we all are.
“There will be time, there will be time. To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; there will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of a toast and tea.” - T.S. Eliot
(And just to prove my dorkitude) “The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”- The Doctor
Tonight, after giving a long analysis of the lyrics of “Skinny Love” by Bon Iver, a couple friends told me that I listen to too much sad music. Sadly enough, this is not the first time in the last week I’ve been told that. And that may be true, but God help me, I love sad music and its own odd beauty.
I should open with the fact that not all of my music is sad. There’s little I love more than cranking a happy, bouncy, dance rock song in the car and singing along at the top of my lungs. But everything has its place.
I am of the opinion that sadness is slightly more interesting than happiness. Leo Tolstoy said it in Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” To say that happiness is uninteresting would be foolish. But the how and why of sadness offers so much variety, so much pondering, and so much wandering. And I’m a fan of wandering.
As I’ve said before, I believe that the human condition is struggle, which is not as pessimistic as it sounds. I don’t believe that life is a constant Sisyphean battle against impossible odds. But nobody’s life is all ups, just as nobody’s life is all downs. The primary reason I love sad music is that I think it’s truly amazing to reach into the depths of darkness and pull out light. To look at the world through tears and still manage to see and create beauty. To stand in the face of hardship and defiantly scream (or sing as the case may be) that you will not be subdued, that life continues, and that brilliance can persist. How profoundly human. As the Doctor would say, “Humany wumany.”
To me, sad music is seldom only about sadness. Rather, it provides hope and its own unique allure. After all, rainbows wouldn’t exist without storms.
“With every sun that sets, I am feeling more like a stranger on a foreign shore, with an eroding beach disappearing from underneath…And then my mirror speaks with irreverence, like a soldier I can’t command. It sees a frightened child in the body of a full-grown man.”- Death Cab for Cutie
My room hasn’t been painted since I was 8. Blue on the top half of the wall, yellow on the bottom, and this ridiculous space wallpaper running through the middle. The funny thing is I never wanted to be an astronaut, and space only mildly fascinated me. Baseball pennants hang over my closet door, celebrating the Braves’ NL East dominance in 2000, 2002, and 2003. A picture of the Braves Hall of Fame members hangs next to them, with a shelf for all my old little league trophies and game balls. Old violin awards and certificates line the wall over my bed. Most improved, spirit, whatever it was.
Not gonna lie, it’s weird being home. I always sit at school with papers hanging over my head, and I’m dying to be in my own bed. It always feels like it’s been forever. And I imagine that when I get there, nothing’s changed. Same people. Same places. Same room.
But it’s not that way. The wallpaper is old and peeling off the wall. I haven’t been to a Braves game in 8 years. I haven’t touched my violin in 3. My dad doesn’t storm into my room anymore, yelling at me for only playing chords on my guitar. “If you’re going to live under my roof, you’re going to play real music, dammit,” he’d say.
I’m a total pro at running away from my past. For real, pretty sure Usain Bolt could take a lesson or two from me. A lot of the time, there is nothing I want more than to live my life in Nashville and simply forget everything that happened before freshman year. But the thing about the past is it always catches up with you. A text message or a song takes you back. And you find yourself sitting in a room that hasn’t been painted in 11 years, staring 8-year-old you in the face. Wondering what he would think of the man sitting on his bed who looks vaguely like him. Wanting to show him all the best things that wait for him; wanting to protect him from everything you know is looming over the horizon. Knowing you can’t. Knowing that joys and sorrows lay in your own future, inevitable. That nobody can show you the best, or protect you from the worst. And maybe that’s what you’ve been running from all along.
I should paint this room. Keep running.
But it always catches up. And 40-year-old you is going to sit here someday, and wonder the same things. You pray to God he’s got a little more perspective. Heaven knows he’ll still be uncertain about a lot of things. But he’ll sit in a room that hasn’t been painted since he was 19 or 20, and hope like hell that kid is proud of who he’s become.
“Don’t worry even if things end up a bit too heavy. We’ll all float on” -Modest Mouse
“For every stoplight I didn’t make, every chance I did or I didn’t take. All the nights I went too far, all the girls that broke my heart. All the doors that I had to close, all the things I knew but I didn’t know. Thank God for all I missed ‘cause it led me here to this.” -Darius Rucker
This is a little cliche, admittedly, and I’m about to prove how much I’ve really drunk the HOD Kool-Aid. But hell, if you’re gonna drink poison punch, you might as well enjoy it. And this is only kind of a middle finger.
So, everybody who’s a little obnoxious and overstresses personal growth (no offense intended) will tell you what I’m going to tell you now. Wēijī is the Chinese word for “crisis,” a word made famous by John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon after him, and of course, the unforgettable Brian Griffith of HOD 1000. Why? The word is made up of two symbols, the first of which signifies “danger,” the second signifies “opportunity.” The idea is that every crisis presents a crossroads: the possibility of failure, or the opportunity to grow and become something greater.
Cliche as it may be, it’s been true for me. I have never faced a tragedy that did not ultimately turn into something good for me. Nothing that tore me down didn’t eventually help me build things back a little stronger. The knowledge that very little doesn’t turn out to be a blessing is a gift that has come with stress and age. I’ve earned my scars, and they’ve taught me more than I could ever have learned without them.
People are going to disappoint you. You’ll be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and something bad will happen. A decision that seemed great at the time will come back to bite you in the ass, hard. Someday, you may even find yourself to be your own torturer. That’s life.
But with faith, and hope, and hard work, nothing is all bad. I don’t believe things happen for a reason. But I believe there is redemption in all things.
Everything turns out okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
