To Make a Better World

It’s really interesting how I learn things in my life. I have these stages and certain things that I learn (like I’m being taught by someone…like God), and once I really learn it and implement it into my life it moves on to something else. Recently it has been Fate - and that all we do is just Shadows and Dust. As people we are so interesting and strange at the same time. Each of us - all 7 billion of us, think from our own brains. Create our own thoughts and reality from our own minds. We each perceive the world our own way, and each of us think that WE are the most important thing and person on the planet. Because you feel yourself. You feel the hurt, the pain, everything that is of yourself, but not of anybody else, and there really is no way you can COMPLETELY know somebody else, much less what they are thinking or feeling at any given moment. But most importantly and deadly is that we are the center of our own universe. It’s kind of an obvious fact, but there are some obvious facts that need to be said - that need to be revealed to us. The best thing, the joke of it all (of life, that is) is that, really, each of us isn’t important. I am one in seven BILLION. So are you. We are so futile. So infinitesimally small, yet in our own world, in our own sphere of influence, in our group(s) of friends, we make it all about us. We make ourselves the most important thing in our own eyes. Oh, but you might say, “but I love this person and I would do anything for them -THEY are the most important thing in my life.” Wrong. Even I’m guilty of this. You don’t love somebody else. You love how they make you feel. C.S. Lewis clearly makes this point (among others that I’m going to touch) in his allegory “The Great Divorce.” It’s so true, and as I said, even I do it. That’s why people never want to let go of their boyfriend or girlfriend when they are dumped, because they want to be make feel amazing by that person. That’s why so many marriages fall through and end in divorce these days - because that “fire” or “spark” or whatever you want to call it of “love” “died out” - or to put it more clearly usually, times got hard for the couple and they didn’t make each other feel as good as they originally did. So with all the warm fuzzy feelings gone they don’t want to spend the rest of their life with that person anymore. Yep, this is me too. I’m speaking to myself as much as I am to you if you are reading this. I have to say this to myself and drill it into my own head. True love…as humans we have hardly any grasp of it. Even me. Oh yeah, then there was the other thing - another thing Lewis really draws out in The Great Divorce - that everything we do is but Shadows and Dust. This concept has really been brought out to me lately, in my school final project analyzing “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and in other readings. When we die our memories fade. The vast majority of people are not known to more than a few hundred people in their lives, much less remembered more than a decade past their deaths. It’s sad for me to be saying this, but I can hardly remember even my own grandfathers, who both passed away seven years ago. Their memories are fuzzy in my mind, hardly there at all. I hardly think of or remember them, only in passing here or there. We are Shadows and Dust. Everything we do passes away. Sure, there are a few great figures, the President of the United States - but even those are forgotten. For example, how many people can name the 17th through the 23rd presidents? I know I can’t. Finally - a question I’m still trying to solve myself (and another thing Lewis brought up in The Great Divorce) is: what the heck is this life about in the first place? Just think about it - we don’t really know all that much, everybody constantly argues about what truth really is…so in the end, once we die and are in…well, for lack of better words, the afterlife, we’re going to have to completely unlearn everything we thought we knew about life, etc., and relearn the truth - the REAL truth about everything we need to know or care about, what those are I honestly really don’t know. So what’s the point of all this? Maybe that we should stop thinking about ourselves and focusing ourselves and trying to promote ourselves and making ourselves look good and just live. JUST LIVE. I know I need to…There’s my two cents.

I seriously have two of the cutest little nephews anybody has ever had. I would find a picture of them for you all, but am really feeling too lazy to try to find one. Michael is three and a half and Ryan is one and a half, and both are generally very happy, amiable, good little boys. For the first couple of years I loved them, and spending time with them so very much. But suddenly things are changing. Suddenly they’re a pain to me. Suddenly I’m groaning and rubbing my head in frustration with them more than I’m smiling or laughing or enjoying them. It’s not that I don’t like them…but something else, that I don’t exactly know how to describe. They’re my nephews. They’re inordinately cute. They’re pretty much excellent, extremely well-adjusted children, at least for their age and stage of life. They’re happy alot of the time. I should love them to pieces. Yet I don’t exactly feel like I do. It’s not that I don’t like them, but it’s not like I really love them that much either. Yes, I have practically a moral obligation to love them because I’m their uncle. And what isn’t there to love about them? Well, to me, in my mind, the things the small things they get irritated and cry about, how bipolar they are…but that’s only to be expected for children their age, and they’re REALLY GOOD AND HAPPY AND CONSISTENT FOR MOST KIDS THEIR AGE. What’s wrong with me? Well, besides EVERYTHING, I’m not sure. Perhaps I have too much on my mind and they’re a distraction - nothing more to me. Perhaps I’m just a heartless jerk that…well, I’m sure a bunch of people would tell me I’m not that…but I’m also super worried about Michael. He’s an oldest child, but even at the tender age of three and a half he seems really controlling over his little brother, which is really worrying me for both their sake and their relationship when they get older. Maybe I’m just overthinking again (like I ALWAYS do) and I’m worrying over nothing. Or maybe I’m just confused and have too many other things on my mind, causing me to react negatively towards such distracting, attention black-holes that little kids are. No, I love my nephews. It’s just kinda hard sometimes. And perhaps I just have to sit back, relax, toss all my cares and troubles away and enjoy them. Perhaps I’ll have a chance to do that this summer. Hopefully.

I scribble my initials over and over again, pausing and skipping over one of the boxes to initial, and finally flourish my signature over the bottom before going up to the one I skipped. I read it over and over again, very carefully. I already knew I was going to put my initials in…eventually. But I just couldn’t right now. I just couldn’t. It was kind of like knowing, the first day that they announced this third annual Mission Trip, that I was going to be going. But this year I have second thoughts, questions, it feels like it’s gonna hurt. I’m not expecting anything out of it. I don’t see how it’s going to benefit me right now. It’s only going to pull me away from herfor a week - a whole week. It’s gonna bring back two years’ worth of some of the best memories I have, but this time she’s not gonna be there, so each memory is just going to be like a knife to the heart. “Just promise me you’re going to have a good time?” she asks me. All I can promise is that I’m gonna do my best to lose myself - to forget her for a little bit so it doesn’t hurt as much. I already know it’s gonna hurt, I already know that there are going to be moments when I just want to cry or kill somebody. I already know…I read it yet another time: “*I understand that calling home, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc. in the middle of the mission from any phone is not allowed without express permission from the main leaders.” Oh yeah, and then there was the other one - “I understand that during this trip my focus is to be on others in the place we are going, not what is going on at home.” Or in Arizona, my mind fills in by itself. But texting “girlfriends” isn’t allowed either - or any other way of getting in touch for the whole week. Well, we’re not technically like that, but my brother, my parents, pretty much everybody calls it that, so it strikes me like it’s that way. I know I’m going. I already know I am going to put my initial in that box. I close my eyes for a moment and visualize it - Royal City, over in Eastern Washington, where we’re gonna be going. I can see everything, everywhere we’re going to be…..and then, like Loki releasing the hand of his brother in the movie, I just let go. Just like that. I can feel it - her, fall away. But like taffy, or gum, it sticks and takes a little piece of my heart with it, and it hurts. It wants to come back, I want it to come back, but it can’t if I’m going to survive this week. It just can’t. So I lock my mind in a continuous battle - to let go, to enjoy myself, to lose myself and have a good time there despite the memories and the thoughts of her and everything else.

Help me, God….I can’t do this alone.

Have I ever said how much distance freakingSUCKS???Well, it does. More than I can express. Now I’m going to go die in my bed and hopefully survive and wake up tomorrow so I can die tomorrow, and then if I wake up on Tuesday, everything will be alot better…well, school-wise.

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Why do I have to be such a freaking mess?

Back to the starvation diet…..