Spare Time

Alright already. There are a few things I've got on my ol bucket list that I really should have accomplished by now but have not. These are not things critical to existence, none of which involve great physical taxing or the rare opportunity to stare death in the face. Regardless, these are things I should do and can do and hereby pledge to do in my 30th year:

1. Paint a painting on an actual canvas with oil-based paints and nice brushes.

2. Brush up on my French that I earned a college degree in and haven't used since so I can actually go use it.

3. Travel to Salt Lake City and see my sister.

4. Submit an article inquiry to a major magazine.

It might not sound like much of an ambition to accomplish these four things, but to each their own. Without pointing out your goals, realistic or otherwise, it's far to easy to succumb to the rigors of everyday life and worrying about what to make for dinner rather than the direction you'd like to take your life. And, even though these things seem simple, they add up to greater goals: becoming a significant writer/author, being fluent in a foreign language and able to travel/work aboard with that, be a better family member, and using the right side of my brain more prevalently.

So here I go. I have 10 months and counting.

Seeing the Forest Through the Trees

Continuing to think along the lines of "it's not all about you," I was recently reading a book that spoke more eloquently to this point. The book is written by a Christian author - not the sort that tells you to do this or that and life will be blissful. Donald Miller isn't always sure about Christianity or about how to live his own life outside taking the easy route. In his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, there are a few passages I dog-earred in order to reference later. He talks about writing a good story, specifically the kind that makes an epic movie. And, he works through how that can help a person write a good story for his life. He's not talking about taking over Scotland or returning the ring to the center of the earth. He just talks about getting off the couch everyday and doing something memorable (even if it's simple) to live a good story.

In it he writes ..."I felt the way I hope God feels as he writes the world, sitting over the planets and placing tiny people into tiny wombs. If I have a hope it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you."

Much later he writes that someone once pointed out to him that in life, you need to be able to see the forest through the trees. That we, as individuals, are the trees and that what is going on in a bigger sense is the forest. We need to remember that. He also notes that what makes a story truly epic is one has to overcome conflict, and sacrifice everything to do so.

Miller writes, "The oldest book of the Bible is supposedly the book of Job. It is a book about suffering, and it reads as though God is saying to the world, Before we get started, there's this one thing I have to tell you. Things are going to get bad. ... God doesn't explain pain philosophically or even list its benefits. God says to Job, Job, I know what I am doing, and this whole thing isn't about you."

And that, right there, is what I think is the most important. It isn't about you.

I discussed that point with my dad one morning while waiting in line at Starbucks. I'm one of those annoying people who talks on my cell phone when I probably shouldn't (must work on that). Regardless, I told him that I always appreciated how forthcoming he was that life isn't fair and there is never any guarantee that it is supposed to be. His quick response was that things weren't even fair in our household, nor were they ever meant to be. He's right. We kids were treated as individuals and privileges granted to one weren't granted to all, just like experiences had by one weren't had by all.

I think this may be one of the guiding principles of my life - that it's up to us as individual people to make things happen for ourselves and it's up to us as individuals to deal with what we are dealt. It doesn't matter what anyone else has been dealt - whether that's better or worse - we are all a part of something bigger than ourselves and we each have our own roles to play within that. And, that overcoming conflict and sacrificing to do so paint the most beautiful stories for our lives. Why would we ever want to pass on that opportunity?

Caution: No One Owes You Anything

A lot of times when reading news articles, overhearing conversations or seeing things on television, I notice there is a campaign going on against personal responsibility. To me, personal responsibility is the notion that you make it or break it on your own. Your actions, your thoughts, your achievements and your failures belong to you. No one else. Obviously other people and other circumstances affect you, but your reaction to those things is entirely within your control. Therefore, others are most likely not at all responsible for your situation in life. Not whatsoever.

But like I said, there seems to be a revolt against this idea. Some examples include the following:
McDonald’s freak out

I can see how it can be “easier” to blame someone else for what’s wrong in your life or for why something happened/didn’t happen. But if you blame someone else and forget the next step of “what could be done to make this better” or “how can I prevent this from happening again” or “is this really that big of a deal that I need to get upset” then you give all the power and control in your life to others.

And, you become just some random pinball bouncing around at others’ whims.

You allow yourself to have no say in whether or not you have a good day, whether or not you reach a goal, whether or not parts of your life come together as you wish. Why would you constantly put the ball in someone else’s court?

Not to advocate control freaks, but on a limited scale, they have something going for them. They have personal responsibility. If they want something, they make it happen by hook or by crook.

But if over-exercised, control freaks can end up in the same boat as those with no personal responsibility in two ways:
1. If something doesn’t go according to plan, then a consummate control freak may believe that it must not have been their fault. Everything they control goes perfectly, so if something is bad then someone else must be at the root of that problem.

2. By extending their controlling nature onto others, they create those who do not know how to control anything. See: micromanagers in the workplace and helicopter parents (lengthy, but great article: Nation of Wimps)

If there were a guidebook to life, I’m pretty sure there would be a warning printed in red, bold letters on the opening page stating: CAUTION – NO ONE OWES YOU ANYTHING AND THERE IS NO GUARANTEE YOU WILL YOU WILL FIND PEACE, HAPPINESS, LOVE, MONEY, OR ANYTHING ELSE YOU THINK YOU “NEED”. DEAL WITH IT.

From there, we would read the pages about guarding our hearts, taking risks, avoiding mob-mentality or group-think, giving our minds and bodies something to do each day, and probably something about remembering to stop and smell the roses. (Perhaps this sounds like the Bible to some of you … perhaps not to others.)

I just think that at the end of the day, if we do not take responsibility for our own actions, regardless of the circumstances around us, then why are we each here at all? We aren’t puppets in others peoples’ shows. We are the leading ladies and men of our own lives. We are not the wingmen or the best friends. It takes some gumption but why is that a bad thing?

Callings

Traveling the world. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, maybe as long as I can remember. It's not like the kind of desire one gets where some dream goes on list of things to do before one turns 50 (and then in the 11th month of the 49th year you freak about because you've only done 2 of your 20 items). It's more like a calling. Something that has chosen me more than the other way around. And no matter what, it will always be there. I can't say I'm an expert when it comes to callings, or that I've had a lot of callings in my life. The few I've had and pursued, though, have been completely fulfilling. So far these include:
1. Being a dancer. This was a non-negotiable point for me when I was younger. Dancing wasn't what I did, it was a part of who I was.
2. Learning French. There is absolutely no reason I should have been tapped to learn French vs learning Spanish (practical), Chinese (very desirable in business), or Russian (the hardest). But for whatever reason, French was it for me. It was it way before it became one of my college majors, and even before I took my first class at Nicollet Jr High. I just remember knowing somewhere in the back of my mind that I already knew the language, it was just a matter of retrieving the information from somewhere inside my brain.
3. Writing. I like to think of myself as a jack of many trades but an expert at none. Except maybe writing. And here's why I think that's possible - in writing, at least the writing I've done - I've written about people. I've been allowed inside the minds and daily activities of many types of individuals, so I've gotten to experience the life of a rock musician, a judge, an engineer, a surgeon, an opera singer, a businessman, a retiree, a student, a traveler, a parent, the list is endless. I've become an expert at writing about people who experience things as experts. I don't have to know as much as they do to take a peek inside their world and report it back to the masses. And, to boot, I've always loved words - their sounds, the way they look, the way they pair with their fellow words on a piece of paper or on the computer screen. The way a person is able to say the exact same thing in two different ways and inevitably give off many different meanings. Words give weight to the things we think and see and feel.
4. And finally, back to traveling. I've done my fair share throughout the U.S. (25 states + DC), and a little bit in Europe (England, Scotland, France, Ireland), but I can't say that's satisfied me. Maybe it has to do with growing up as an airline kid, but I have always this urge to go. Go become absorbed somewhere and get caught up in an entirely different way of living. I don't know exactly what that means - if I traveled for a summer would that do it? Do I need to put down roots somewhere else for a while or just travel there frequently for work or pleasure? I can't say as I can see the whole picture yet but it will hang over me until I take action.

And that is probably the most annoying and fantastic things about callings: They won't let go of you. No matter how inconvenient, poorly timed, expensive, demanding, or offbeat they may be, it's what you're meant to do. Continuing to swim upstream against it will only wear out your arms.

Yet, the older I get the easier it is to find road blocks. Money, time, careers, family, other life goals, or even age. The older you get, aren't things supposed to be clearer - you know, "you'll understand when you're older"? So why then do we resist things like our callings the older we get?

Lately, I've been reading some words by Don Miller, who wonders if God wrote us all like a story. Well, if we are all the leading men or ladies in our own stories, then we need goals and we need to overcome conflict to achieve those goals in order to be compelling. If our story is going to be the type of story that gets made into a movie.

So maybe these callings are like God's way of showing us what our story could be; and that even though throughout our lives we build safe cocoons that can be enticing to stay within, once we overcome our fears and struggle a little to break free, we will all be butterflies. Beautiful and mobile and certainly something of wonder.

Maybe.

Bananas and other metaphors

Why are things that are crazy called "bananas"? Bananas are not crazy - they are fruit from trees, which is an incredibly common, normal concept. If they were as crazy as we infer, then they would surely not be $0.48/lb at the grocery. They would be $1.98 like all the fancy cross-pollinated apples coming out of the U of M's ag program. Or like star fruit.

And I lied in the title. There are no other metaphors today. Maybe tomorrow.