In keeping with my recent up-down trend, i've decided to make tonight up. Very up, in fact. Tonight was filled with a few hours of listening, a few minutes of prayer, approximately a half-hour to an hour of sitting doing absolutely nothing (unless you consider waging a one-on-one war with one's own pant leg to see which of us would unravel first "something"), then several minutes of walking and talking to myself like the true schizophrenic i am.

I came to a rather interesting conclusion. I don't need all this crap. Novel idea, ain't she? Yep, i'm proud of 'er too. I don't need this crap at all. I'm sick of dealing with it, so i'm not going to. Anyone wishing to congratulate me on my rather Peter Gibbons-esque take on my life is welcome to do so. Allow me to elaborate (What? You thought i wouldn't?).

I came to realize several things that i believe i am not alone in allowing to plague my life. The rather surprising and humbling fact is that in general, in order to elicit meaningful conversation from others which i so crave (and perhaps sympathy every now and then), i feel that i must have something wrong - some pain, some struggle, some...something. The only thing i can figure out is that if i don't have something wrong, something to work out, some voice in my head tells me people won't talk to me - in any worthwhile form of conversation, at least. If i don't have something wrong, they'll spend their time talking to someone who does. So, at its heart, it all springs from a childish craving for attention. Interesting - the wise shall be made fools. (Note: After looking back over this and thinking a little, that can't always be the reason for me carrying around pain, but it seems to be a large part of it, or at least the justification i give to it.)

That is still reducible, however. The craving for attention comes from reliance on other people for self-worth or self-satisfaction - what sociologists have termed the "looking-glass self" (brownie points for me being able to apply something i learned in a class - guess i'm really not in high school anymore). So the question that lies at the heart of all of this is the rather pointed, "Why are people defining me instead of God?" I recently saw some sort of Tony Campolo seminar on a video in a class (heh - sociology) in which he stated that Jesus should fulfill all of our psychological needs - there's no need for all the rest of this crap that we put ourselves through. It's not about other people. We keep the struggles, retain the pain, and hold onto failures because we're comfortable in them and they give us sympathy-extracting leverage. We like being in pain - for whatever reason. Just like anything else that's wrong with your life, you won't be able to give it up unless you don't like it anymore. It's time we - it's time i - put the past behind us all.

That said, the hardest part is getting all of that great advice from your head to your heart. I have to believe it comes from serious soul-searching and a conscious decision - once again, like letting go of anything else. That conscious decision is probably the hardest part since we already feel so weak and defenseless against these struggles - after all, they've defeated us our whole lives until now. The thing is, God's already won this battle. Another great illustration/lesson i recently heard in a sermon (but had heard beforehand): a Japanese man was found in the jungle (or somewhere remote; i'm having trouble conceiving a jungle in Japan - maybe i'm just naive) about 20 years after World War II; when they found him, they had to convince him the war was over - he had had no outside communication and thought he was still fighting the Americans. We have to literally convince ourselves that God has not prepared us to live a powerless life but to have victory over everything that would pull us away from the joy and love that He has for us.

I may have just convinced myself of that. The buck stops here.

a brief and terribly undescriptive return - 10.28.04
- - 09.17.04
- - 08.16.04
- - 08.13.04
- - 07.30.04