Okay, went to church again tonight, saw Quest Girl there again but didn't do anything about it.
And I know I should just man up and talk to her, and I know it should be simple and natural, and I know it shouldn't be a big deal, and on and on and on.
But...
But it's not that I didn't want to, it's not that I was afraid to, it's not that I didn't have the chance to. It's not any of those things.
And I'm trying to put my finger on it, trying to figure out how to explain it, and the only thing I can come up with is that I didn't want to let go of my discomfort with talking to people I don't really know.
But it's more than that. That's just the surface symptom. I think the real reason goes a lot deeper. Saying I didn't want to step out of my comfort zone is just the Bondo over the rust job underneath.
Now I know that my experiences (all of them bad) with relationships is small peanuts compared to what many people go through, but they're my peanuts and they go beyond just boy meets girl who doesn't want to be with him. These issues also have to do with my "relationship with God" (and I put that in quotes because while I understand what people are trying to get at when they use that language, I think using the word "relationship" is problematic...and I've written about this before so I won't go into it here).
The story is too long and messy for a brief synopsis (you can see blog 174 if you want more of the backstory), but suffice it to say that there was a time when I was confused and angry and disappointed with God because of the way things ended between a girl and I (and God had a huge part to play in the whole affair, or at least I thought so at the time...again, see blog 174 for all the gory details).
I don't blame God anymore for what happened. I don't understand why things happened the way they did, but I don't let that lack of understanding affect they way I feel about God.
But tonight, as I was deciding between talking to Quest Girl and just digging out, I started to get upset because I knew all the reasons why I should go up and talk to her, but I just couldn't do it and I knew it had to do with more than just the fact that doing so was outside my comfort zone - that maybe I'm more screwed up than I thought when it comes to relationships.
And as I was walking out to my car and as I was driving back home, I was beating myself up inside because I knew I had made the wrong decision, but at the same time, I knew it was more than a comfort zone issue...and I hesitate to call it fear because it's not that simple.
An analogy then.
Don't know if it's true or not, but I heard a story once about circus elephants. When they're young, the trainers restrain the elephants with relatively lightweight chains - just strong enough so that their young legs can't break free. As the elephants get older, the trainers keep using the same lightweight chain because even though the elephants have grown strong enough to break them, they still see the chains the way their young minds saw them - as unbreakable.
That's kind of like me with relationships. Because I've had such rotten experiences in the past, I just assume (even before things have begun) that things are going to end badly and so why even try? The chain held fast before and so my mind, it remains unbreakable.
But I'm not an elephant and I know that my past experiences with relationships are just that: PAST experiences that have nothing to do with who and what I am today. I know I'm a great catch who has a lot to offer a woman and so I should be able to snap that chain without even trying. But maybe there's a hierarchy of brain function at work here such that the CAN'T logic overrides the CAN logic.
And I know that's a terribly unclear, pseudo-scientific explanation, but it's the closest I can get to explaining what I felt and why I didn't talk to her or ask her out.
Look, here's the bottom line. For the time being, I'm just going to enjoy my ability to enjoy being single. If I end up dating Quest Girl or any other woman, it will happen through a natural, organic process (as in getting to know her gradually in social settings) as opposed to the more common direct approach (just asking her out).
Does this mean I'm avoiding the issue and not dealing with the junk in my trunk? I don't know, maybe, but I have better things to do with myself than to twist myself into a pretzel just to shorten the distance between point A and point B. It's like the Beastie Boys say, "slow and low, that is the tempo."
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
248. on turning "liberal"
A few weeks ago, someone made a joking comment* on one of my previous posts, asking me if I was becoming liberal. I had made reference to my shifting political views in a couple other blogs (see blog 156 and 198) but never really tackled the topic in depth.
As with most things in my life, this shift is a work in progress, but here's where I'm at for the moment.
By way of background, I've leaned rightward ever since my early twenties. It started when I read The Way Things Ought To Be by Rush Limbaugh. And I suppose it's strange that I began my conservative streak in college (The University of Hawaii at Manoa) which is a time most people drift towards the Left, but that's how it happened for me.
A friend introduced me to Rush's book and it was the first political book I had ever read. Before that, I didn't know anything about politics. I had no idea what an entitlement was, didn't know the first thing about affirmative action or gun control, I didn't even know the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
And now, I don't know if it's just because that book served as my introduction to the issues or if something in my upbringing predisposed me to it, but the ideas in the book resonated with me and I was captivated. I went on to read other conservative books by people like Cal Thomas, Dennis Prager, and later Bill O'Reilly. I also started tuning to broadcasts by conservative talk show hosts.
Now I never went so far as to actually join the Republican party or write my congressperson or hand out leaflets (or anything else real or practical), but I did start paying more attention to the news around me and like any good conservative, I lamented the liberal slant to the coverage. I also started voting (I guess there was one real and practical I started doing).
Years went by and I'd say I was solidly conservative throughout my twenties. But at some point, something started to shift.
There isn't any one thing that got me to start changing my views, but I know one of the early frustrations I had was the lack of real dialogue and debate on both sides. I began to notice how so many conservative talk shows were all about name calling and ridiculing the Left and that wasn't doing anything good for the country. Now, commentators on the Left were doing the same thing, but two wrongs don't make a right - they make things twice as wrong.
Another thing that never sat well with me about most conservatives is their general disregard for environmental issues. And I suppose it was seeing how many conservatives seemed more than willing to trade a sustainable environmental policy for economic growth that led me to the next step which had to do with questioning the insatiable consumeristic culture that pours out of America and saturates every corner of the globe.
Now I still believe in the value of the free market. I believe that the competitive nature of capitalism fuels innovation. I even still believe in the American Dream - that with enough ingenuity and lots of hard work, everyone (yes, everyone) has a chance (but not a guarantee) to succeed and thrive. But I also believe that there have to be limits on how large companies can get, and unfortunately, the US government seems to have sold itself out to the interests of multi-national corporations because it seems like every other week you hear about another approval of yet another company merger or buyout.
I won't go into detail here about why this trend is bad for business, bad for us as consumers, bad for the world (especially the Third World), and ultimately bad for America, but head over to the Frontline website. Poke around the archives and you can watch a report on the retail behemoth that is Wal-Mart.
Lastly, I suppose reading books by Christians like Anne Lamott, Donald Miller, and Lauren F. Winner had something to do with my "shift" in political views, because I really do believe they're on to something when they say that many of the policies of the Republican party and the Religious Right are NOT in line with the kingdom of God. And I won't site specifics issues here because that would just take too long, but I will say that while I believe that issues regarding the separation of church and state are currently way outside what the framers intended**, I believe there is far too cosy a relationship between evangelicals and the Republican party.
And I know there are some Christians out there who will point to this entry as an example of why Lamott, Miller, and Winner are Christian authors to avoid - because they are voices for the Christian Left, but with all due respect, the religious Right is sometimes neither religious nor right, and Jesus didn't die on the cross to endorse the platform of a political party. Christians (Left, Right, Up, Down, and Sideways) should be modeling unity and reconciliation for an increasingly divided world. Instead, we keep partitioning our ever shrinking numbers into smaller subdivisions and then wondering why we don't see more of God at work in the world.
Okay, I've been purposely vague about my views. I laid down blanket statements and painted them with a broad brush (how's that for mixing metaphors), but I did that because I merely wanted to outline a bit of why and how my political views are changing. If I could sum the whole thing up in a couple of sentences, I'd just say that I refuse to align myself with any party or persuasion. In particular, I no longer care if some Christians think I'm losing my religion because of the way I vote - and for the record, I am praying (hard) for Barack Obama to be our next president.
[footnotes]
*If you read the blogger version of my blog, you won't see the comments I referred to. I mirror my blog on MySpace and the comments are there.
**The term itself, "separation of church and state" doesn't exist in the constitution and as I understand the first amendment, the establishment clause was meant to protect churches from the government, not the other way around. The framers came from England and did not want to see a government established church like the Church of England. Seen in that way, it's hard to justify the current religio-phobic interpretation common today.
As with most things in my life, this shift is a work in progress, but here's where I'm at for the moment.
By way of background, I've leaned rightward ever since my early twenties. It started when I read The Way Things Ought To Be by Rush Limbaugh. And I suppose it's strange that I began my conservative streak in college (The University of Hawaii at Manoa) which is a time most people drift towards the Left, but that's how it happened for me.
A friend introduced me to Rush's book and it was the first political book I had ever read. Before that, I didn't know anything about politics. I had no idea what an entitlement was, didn't know the first thing about affirmative action or gun control, I didn't even know the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
And now, I don't know if it's just because that book served as my introduction to the issues or if something in my upbringing predisposed me to it, but the ideas in the book resonated with me and I was captivated. I went on to read other conservative books by people like Cal Thomas, Dennis Prager, and later Bill O'Reilly. I also started tuning to broadcasts by conservative talk show hosts.
Now I never went so far as to actually join the Republican party or write my congressperson or hand out leaflets (or anything else real or practical), but I did start paying more attention to the news around me and like any good conservative, I lamented the liberal slant to the coverage. I also started voting (I guess there was one real and practical I started doing).
Years went by and I'd say I was solidly conservative throughout my twenties. But at some point, something started to shift.
There isn't any one thing that got me to start changing my views, but I know one of the early frustrations I had was the lack of real dialogue and debate on both sides. I began to notice how so many conservative talk shows were all about name calling and ridiculing the Left and that wasn't doing anything good for the country. Now, commentators on the Left were doing the same thing, but two wrongs don't make a right - they make things twice as wrong.
Another thing that never sat well with me about most conservatives is their general disregard for environmental issues. And I suppose it was seeing how many conservatives seemed more than willing to trade a sustainable environmental policy for economic growth that led me to the next step which had to do with questioning the insatiable consumeristic culture that pours out of America and saturates every corner of the globe.
Now I still believe in the value of the free market. I believe that the competitive nature of capitalism fuels innovation. I even still believe in the American Dream - that with enough ingenuity and lots of hard work, everyone (yes, everyone) has a chance (but not a guarantee) to succeed and thrive. But I also believe that there have to be limits on how large companies can get, and unfortunately, the US government seems to have sold itself out to the interests of multi-national corporations because it seems like every other week you hear about another approval of yet another company merger or buyout.
I won't go into detail here about why this trend is bad for business, bad for us as consumers, bad for the world (especially the Third World), and ultimately bad for America, but head over to the Frontline website. Poke around the archives and you can watch a report on the retail behemoth that is Wal-Mart.
Lastly, I suppose reading books by Christians like Anne Lamott, Donald Miller, and Lauren F. Winner had something to do with my "shift" in political views, because I really do believe they're on to something when they say that many of the policies of the Republican party and the Religious Right are NOT in line with the kingdom of God. And I won't site specifics issues here because that would just take too long, but I will say that while I believe that issues regarding the separation of church and state are currently way outside what the framers intended**, I believe there is far too cosy a relationship between evangelicals and the Republican party.
And I know there are some Christians out there who will point to this entry as an example of why Lamott, Miller, and Winner are Christian authors to avoid - because they are voices for the Christian Left, but with all due respect, the religious Right is sometimes neither religious nor right, and Jesus didn't die on the cross to endorse the platform of a political party. Christians (Left, Right, Up, Down, and Sideways) should be modeling unity and reconciliation for an increasingly divided world. Instead, we keep partitioning our ever shrinking numbers into smaller subdivisions and then wondering why we don't see more of God at work in the world.
Okay, I've been purposely vague about my views. I laid down blanket statements and painted them with a broad brush (how's that for mixing metaphors), but I did that because I merely wanted to outline a bit of why and how my political views are changing. If I could sum the whole thing up in a couple of sentences, I'd just say that I refuse to align myself with any party or persuasion. In particular, I no longer care if some Christians think I'm losing my religion because of the way I vote - and for the record, I am praying (hard) for Barack Obama to be our next president.
[footnotes]
*If you read the blogger version of my blog, you won't see the comments I referred to. I mirror my blog on MySpace and the comments are there.
**The term itself, "separation of church and state" doesn't exist in the constitution and as I understand the first amendment, the establishment clause was meant to protect churches from the government, not the other way around. The framers came from England and did not want to see a government established church like the Church of England. Seen in that way, it's hard to justify the current religio-phobic interpretation common today.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
247. A Love Story In Three Acts
(based on a true story)
Act One
He graduates from high school and is full of bravado and naivete. He believes that he is God's gift to women and that he will have no trouble finding a girlfriend. He thinks his main problem will be finding someone mature enough for him because most of the women he sees seem superficial and materialistic.
He also suffers from a mistaken idealization of the female gender. Bombarded by critiques of male stereotypes on television and in movies, he somehow draws the conclusion that men are all pigs and women are all angels. He doesn't see himself as a pig which is why (as stated above) he thinks he will have no problem getting a girlfriend once he finds one he wants to date.
Act Two
He's halfway through college and is nursing both a broken heart and a shattered sense of self-worth. At some point, he found someone to date but quickly learned that women are just as screwed up and prone to bouts of selfish, pig-headed behavior as men are. He also learns that love is hard and that it is more akin to a winner-take-all competition (a game, if you will) than the flowery dance of courtship portrayed in Hollywood romantic comedies (many of which, despite being a man, he enjoys).
Having lost his earlier wide-eyed optimism, he turns jaded and cynical. But he still longs to be with someone because he remembers how great it felt before things went bad.
But time and time again, he tries to pursue relationships only to find them ending before they've even begun. This batters his already damaged self-esteem and he finds himself wondering if any woman would ever want to be with him.
Act Three (anticlimax)
In his thirties now, he has regained a healthy view of himself, but he's been apart from love for so long now that he's forgotten why it is that people pursue one another. He's forgotten how it feels (the rush and the wonder and the boundless joy) and so he can't remember why it is that anyone would want to go through all the messy trouble of trying to start a relationship in the first place, not to mention all the work it takes to make it last.
The idea of love seems like a fairy tale fantasy - a good story he once thought to be true but he now categorizes it as a thing that (to reverse the old adage) isn't true because it's too good to be.
Besides, he thinks, being single ain't all that bad.
The end.
(hopefully a sequel is in the works)
Act One
He graduates from high school and is full of bravado and naivete. He believes that he is God's gift to women and that he will have no trouble finding a girlfriend. He thinks his main problem will be finding someone mature enough for him because most of the women he sees seem superficial and materialistic.
He also suffers from a mistaken idealization of the female gender. Bombarded by critiques of male stereotypes on television and in movies, he somehow draws the conclusion that men are all pigs and women are all angels. He doesn't see himself as a pig which is why (as stated above) he thinks he will have no problem getting a girlfriend once he finds one he wants to date.
Act Two
He's halfway through college and is nursing both a broken heart and a shattered sense of self-worth. At some point, he found someone to date but quickly learned that women are just as screwed up and prone to bouts of selfish, pig-headed behavior as men are. He also learns that love is hard and that it is more akin to a winner-take-all competition (a game, if you will) than the flowery dance of courtship portrayed in Hollywood romantic comedies (many of which, despite being a man, he enjoys).
Having lost his earlier wide-eyed optimism, he turns jaded and cynical. But he still longs to be with someone because he remembers how great it felt before things went bad.
But time and time again, he tries to pursue relationships only to find them ending before they've even begun. This batters his already damaged self-esteem and he finds himself wondering if any woman would ever want to be with him.
Act Three (anticlimax)
In his thirties now, he has regained a healthy view of himself, but he's been apart from love for so long now that he's forgotten why it is that people pursue one another. He's forgotten how it feels (the rush and the wonder and the boundless joy) and so he can't remember why it is that anyone would want to go through all the messy trouble of trying to start a relationship in the first place, not to mention all the work it takes to make it last.
The idea of love seems like a fairy tale fantasy - a good story he once thought to be true but he now categorizes it as a thing that (to reverse the old adage) isn't true because it's too good to be.
Besides, he thinks, being single ain't all that bad.
The end.
(hopefully a sequel is in the works)
246. far too much thinking about relationships
[preface]
Some blog entries emerge effortlessly - they almost write themselves. Some are like pulling teeth with tweezers - they don't want to come out, even if they have to. This entry is one of the latter. I started writing it Wednesday night and only a paragraph came out. Through the next few nights (and some mornings), I managed to squeeze out a few more sentences, but they didn't come easy.
But this was an entry that had to be written. I write to try and unravel and organize the thoughts stewing in my mind and I knew that this was something I had to sort out.
Unfortunately, I don't come to any conclusions or decisions, but it was a worth the effort nevertheless.
Anyway, I'm just writing this preface as an excuse as to why I haven't lived up to my at-least-one-entry-per-week rule.
My apologies.
[end preface]
Can you save me
from the ranks
of the freaks
who suspect
they could never love anyone
("Save Me" by Aimee Mann from the Magnolia Soundtrack)
I suppose that I could love you
if I wasn't so afraid.
I might go berserk if it did work
and I didn't feel betrayed.
I've been writing off love for so long now
it's all I know to do
("I Suppose" by Loudon Wainright III, from the Grown Man CD)
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about this girl I've been checking out at my church. Well, this entry isn't about her...at least not directly. This blog is (as with most of my blogs) about me.
So I've written before (see blog 162) about how 2006 was a year when I finally (somehow) found contentment in being single. And while, on the one hand, I'm glad to be free from the constant nagging ache that used to weigh me down, I'm also finding that there's a lead lining to this cloud.
So that girl I wrote about in blog 240? I actually did get to talk to her a couple weeks ago and it was nice. Never got around to asking for her number or for coffee but I did learn that she's been coming to this church for about a year now so I figured there was no need to rush.
That week, I found myself thinking about talking to her again, developing a list of places where I could take her (prime candidate: the just-opened Olympic Sculpture Park) but as the week progressed, I also started thinking about what I might have to give up if things worked out - the long, messy process of learning one another's routines and needs and sensitive spots and bad habits. And I've written before about how meeting new people stresses me out so that was there as well, but the main reservation I was having was all the freedom I've come to enjoy as a single person.
Back when I used to complain to my friends about being single, the one thing they would always say was that I should enjoy being able to do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. They all, even the ones in healthy, thriving relationships, told me about how they envied how I could just up and decide to see a movie or take up karate or move to, say, Seattle, and I wouldn't have to clear it with anybody.
So the week goes by and Sunday comes around. I went to church and I saw here there during the service (my friend and I walked in late) but once church was over, we just made a bee line for the door. He was tired and hungry and didn't feel like hanging around. As for myself, I...I don't know. Talking to her again just didn't seem al that important and now that he mentioned it, I was hungry as well. So we just dug out.
This week, I found myself thinking again about how amazing and perfect this girl seems, but I also thought about how unmotivated I am to make anything happen. And that got me thinking about the lines from the songs I quoted above. Had I become one of the "ranks of the freaks who suspect they could never love anyone?" Have I been "writing off love for so long now [that] it's all I know to do?"
I suppose for most people, this would be a no-brainer. Just ask her out anyway because you never know what might happen. Maybe she doesn't want to go out with me and she'll say no. Maybe we'll go out and we'll find that we aren't compatible. Maybe it'll be marching bands and ticker tape parades from the start and we'll live happily ever after. Maybe things will start out great but one of us will make an irreconcilable error and the whole escapade will end in a smoldering heap of burned bridges. Or maybe we'll just end up being friends.
Yeah, just-ask-her-out would be the modus operandi for most normal people, but I guess I ain't like most normal people.
So what now? What does this mean? What is God's design for life (and for me since I am, as far as I know, alive)?
This week, I've been thinking more about these questions than about this girl. See, in 2006, I did a lot of writing about the concept of the kingdom of God (see blog 161, 207, 227 and 216 for examples) and while kingdom living and dating seem unrelated, they aren't. See, living out the teachings of Christ has to do with living out a culture - the culture of the kingdom of God. And I believe that one of the core values of this kingdom is family - man, wife, child(ren).
I believe that God created people to be with one another. Any reading of the first few chapters of Genesis will make this plain. Man felt a longing for companionship before the Fall and that means we were designed from the start to pine not just for relationship with God, but also for one another. Seen in this way, a whole, Biblical life includes marriage because in learning to live with one other person, we also learn to live with larger groups of people - neighborhoods, cities, nations.
And so I wonder if all my reservations about asking this girl out are moot - that I should be asking her out anyway because it is, in part, my duty as a Christian. But I balk at that idea because it seems too utilitarian and unromantic. But what if it's true?
Now I know that there's a Biblical out to this in the form of the gift of singleness as written about in I Corinthians 7, but this gift is meant to be an exception to the rule rather than the norm. So am I in the exception camp or the rule camp?
For most of my life, my answer was that I knew beyond any shadow of any doubt that I did NOT have this gift. However, after the past year or so, I'm not as sure as I once was. I mean the idea of sharing one's life with another is appealing on a number of levels and for a multitude of reasons, but at the same time, it's not something I want badly enough to overcome my lazy contentment as a single person. I'm a victim of Newton's first law of (e)motion: a person in singleness tends to stay in singleness.
From what I've seen, people who are single for a long time tend to gravitate towards one of two opposites. Some become increasingly lonely and desperate and so they lower their standards until they meet someone, anyone. Others, become more and more comfortable in their singleness and their standards go up because a person would have to be that much more amazing for them to give up the comforts of singlehood.
I find myself squarely in the latter half of that pairing. And I wonder if my standards are far too high. In fact, I'm pretty certain that my standards are too high. But then again, I think there's a good reason for setting high standards. Maybe part of the reason for the high divorce rate has to do, in part, with people settling for less. It's been said that some people put more effort into deciding what car to buy than into which person to marry. And I don't want to end up a divorce statistic.
Maybe the bottom line is this: If God wants me in a relationship (with Quest girl, or someone else I haven't met yet) then it will happen and I don't have to worry about it. But I don't think that's how it works because God doesn't want me to sin, but I sin anyway.
I don't know. I know things would be far simpler if I didn't think about it so much, if I didn't have such impossibly high standards, if I wasn't so content as a single person, and if I wasn't so resistant to meeting new people (aka shy). But I am what I am. But maybe that's not how I'm supposed to be.
Eh, I don't know. All this writing and thinking has made me even more unmotivated to start any kind of relationship.
Blah.
Some blog entries emerge effortlessly - they almost write themselves. Some are like pulling teeth with tweezers - they don't want to come out, even if they have to. This entry is one of the latter. I started writing it Wednesday night and only a paragraph came out. Through the next few nights (and some mornings), I managed to squeeze out a few more sentences, but they didn't come easy.
But this was an entry that had to be written. I write to try and unravel and organize the thoughts stewing in my mind and I knew that this was something I had to sort out.
Unfortunately, I don't come to any conclusions or decisions, but it was a worth the effort nevertheless.
Anyway, I'm just writing this preface as an excuse as to why I haven't lived up to my at-least-one-entry-per-week rule.
My apologies.
[end preface]
Can you save me
from the ranks
of the freaks
who suspect
they could never love anyone
("Save Me" by Aimee Mann from the Magnolia Soundtrack)
I suppose that I could love you
if I wasn't so afraid.
I might go berserk if it did work
and I didn't feel betrayed.
I've been writing off love for so long now
it's all I know to do
("I Suppose" by Loudon Wainright III, from the Grown Man CD)
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about this girl I've been checking out at my church. Well, this entry isn't about her...at least not directly. This blog is (as with most of my blogs) about me.
So I've written before (see blog 162) about how 2006 was a year when I finally (somehow) found contentment in being single. And while, on the one hand, I'm glad to be free from the constant nagging ache that used to weigh me down, I'm also finding that there's a lead lining to this cloud.
So that girl I wrote about in blog 240? I actually did get to talk to her a couple weeks ago and it was nice. Never got around to asking for her number or for coffee but I did learn that she's been coming to this church for about a year now so I figured there was no need to rush.
That week, I found myself thinking about talking to her again, developing a list of places where I could take her (prime candidate: the just-opened Olympic Sculpture Park) but as the week progressed, I also started thinking about what I might have to give up if things worked out - the long, messy process of learning one another's routines and needs and sensitive spots and bad habits. And I've written before about how meeting new people stresses me out so that was there as well, but the main reservation I was having was all the freedom I've come to enjoy as a single person.
Back when I used to complain to my friends about being single, the one thing they would always say was that I should enjoy being able to do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. They all, even the ones in healthy, thriving relationships, told me about how they envied how I could just up and decide to see a movie or take up karate or move to, say, Seattle, and I wouldn't have to clear it with anybody.
So the week goes by and Sunday comes around. I went to church and I saw here there during the service (my friend and I walked in late) but once church was over, we just made a bee line for the door. He was tired and hungry and didn't feel like hanging around. As for myself, I...I don't know. Talking to her again just didn't seem al that important and now that he mentioned it, I was hungry as well. So we just dug out.
This week, I found myself thinking again about how amazing and perfect this girl seems, but I also thought about how unmotivated I am to make anything happen. And that got me thinking about the lines from the songs I quoted above. Had I become one of the "ranks of the freaks who suspect they could never love anyone?" Have I been "writing off love for so long now [that] it's all I know to do?"
I suppose for most people, this would be a no-brainer. Just ask her out anyway because you never know what might happen. Maybe she doesn't want to go out with me and she'll say no. Maybe we'll go out and we'll find that we aren't compatible. Maybe it'll be marching bands and ticker tape parades from the start and we'll live happily ever after. Maybe things will start out great but one of us will make an irreconcilable error and the whole escapade will end in a smoldering heap of burned bridges. Or maybe we'll just end up being friends.
Yeah, just-ask-her-out would be the modus operandi for most normal people, but I guess I ain't like most normal people.
So what now? What does this mean? What is God's design for life (and for me since I am, as far as I know, alive)?
This week, I've been thinking more about these questions than about this girl. See, in 2006, I did a lot of writing about the concept of the kingdom of God (see blog 161, 207, 227 and 216 for examples) and while kingdom living and dating seem unrelated, they aren't. See, living out the teachings of Christ has to do with living out a culture - the culture of the kingdom of God. And I believe that one of the core values of this kingdom is family - man, wife, child(ren).
I believe that God created people to be with one another. Any reading of the first few chapters of Genesis will make this plain. Man felt a longing for companionship before the Fall and that means we were designed from the start to pine not just for relationship with God, but also for one another. Seen in this way, a whole, Biblical life includes marriage because in learning to live with one other person, we also learn to live with larger groups of people - neighborhoods, cities, nations.
And so I wonder if all my reservations about asking this girl out are moot - that I should be asking her out anyway because it is, in part, my duty as a Christian. But I balk at that idea because it seems too utilitarian and unromantic. But what if it's true?
Now I know that there's a Biblical out to this in the form of the gift of singleness as written about in I Corinthians 7, but this gift is meant to be an exception to the rule rather than the norm. So am I in the exception camp or the rule camp?
For most of my life, my answer was that I knew beyond any shadow of any doubt that I did NOT have this gift. However, after the past year or so, I'm not as sure as I once was. I mean the idea of sharing one's life with another is appealing on a number of levels and for a multitude of reasons, but at the same time, it's not something I want badly enough to overcome my lazy contentment as a single person. I'm a victim of Newton's first law of (e)motion: a person in singleness tends to stay in singleness.
From what I've seen, people who are single for a long time tend to gravitate towards one of two opposites. Some become increasingly lonely and desperate and so they lower their standards until they meet someone, anyone. Others, become more and more comfortable in their singleness and their standards go up because a person would have to be that much more amazing for them to give up the comforts of singlehood.
I find myself squarely in the latter half of that pairing. And I wonder if my standards are far too high. In fact, I'm pretty certain that my standards are too high. But then again, I think there's a good reason for setting high standards. Maybe part of the reason for the high divorce rate has to do, in part, with people settling for less. It's been said that some people put more effort into deciding what car to buy than into which person to marry. And I don't want to end up a divorce statistic.
Maybe the bottom line is this: If God wants me in a relationship (with Quest girl, or someone else I haven't met yet) then it will happen and I don't have to worry about it. But I don't think that's how it works because God doesn't want me to sin, but I sin anyway.
I don't know. I know things would be far simpler if I didn't think about it so much, if I didn't have such impossibly high standards, if I wasn't so content as a single person, and if I wasn't so resistant to meeting new people (aka shy). But I am what I am. But maybe that's not how I'm supposed to be.
Eh, I don't know. All this writing and thinking has made me even more unmotivated to start any kind of relationship.
Blah.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
245. the art is out there
Art should be about the things that matter, about the things that bring us together.
Although many artists would say that they are trying to use their art to make the world a better place, so much of what is popular in the art world is (intentionally or not) divisive. I think of high art and the divides it (again, intentionally or not) creates between the elite and the rest of society. I think of counter-cultural art and the divides it creates between the hip/cool/underground and the rest of society.
Worst of all, I think of art in advertising and how it divides everyone - children from parents who can't afford the right toys, women from other women who don't conform to a constantly shifting physical ideal, neighbor from neighbors who don't drive the right car or cook with the right grill or drink the right beer.
When did art become a wedge? When did art go from building bridges to burning them?
I believe that art has lost its way. It has become corrupted by the rampant individualism that pervades society today. Art has made intensely personal expression (accessibility be damned) its ideal.
Art is not the only institution with this problem. Politics is certainly divisive. Religion does the same.
But of these three, art has the opportunity to transcend, to elevate our attentions away from ourselves and towards each other.
And perhaps it seems odd that, as a Christian, I would look to art this way so let me be clear about my beliefs. I believe in the God of Moses, Abraham, Elijah, the God who humbled himself and walked among us as Jesus, who died on a cross so that we reconciled to him and to one another. I wholeheartedly subscribe to the essentials of Christian doctrine as summarized in the Nicene Creed.
I also happen to believe that the arts have been abandoned by the Christian church as a whole and the daily escalation of depravity is the inevitable result. And I purposely chose the word, "abandoned," because that's what's happened - what's happening. I know there are Christian movies now and the Christian music industry is huge and the market for Christian fiction continues to grow, but the problem is that Christians have segregated their artists away from the whole of society.
We cloister Christian artists in a parallel entertainment industry and then criticize the "secular" portion of the industry for its cynicism, its rampant violence and graphic sexuality. Well what did we expect to happen when we removed salt and light from the world at large? Yeah, so the Christian music industry is huge but when's the last time you saw a non-Christian walk into a Christian bookstore and pick up a Christian CD?
I believe art should be something that brings people together, that highlights what we have in common, that encourages community and ultimately culture.
Finally, to put all these ideas together, I believe that if/when Christians get back to supporting the arts in a way that engages the culture at large (as opposed to preaching to the choir), it can bring beauty and hope back to a lost, cynical world. And I believe it can happen through the arts because image, substance, beauty (his art, also known as the cosmos he created) is the way that God most readily and sublimely expresses himself (Romans 1:20).
I don't know what this art will look like, but I know it's out there just waiting to be made. It's hard to imagine a new kind of art when art has run the gamut from lifelike realism of the High Renaissance to the extreme abstraction of modern art and everywhere in between. In part, I suspect that the institution of art itself will have to be wrested away from the elite, academia, and (particularly) advertising, and returned to everyday, regular people.
I don't know what it will look like, but it's out there somewhere, waiting to be fished out of the soup of the collective unconscious.
I don't know what it will look like but I know the world is waiting for it.
I don't know what it will look like but I believe it's out there, if only because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate - that we have come up against the end of our achievement as a civilization and all that's left is decline.
Although many artists would say that they are trying to use their art to make the world a better place, so much of what is popular in the art world is (intentionally or not) divisive. I think of high art and the divides it (again, intentionally or not) creates between the elite and the rest of society. I think of counter-cultural art and the divides it creates between the hip/cool/underground and the rest of society.
Worst of all, I think of art in advertising and how it divides everyone - children from parents who can't afford the right toys, women from other women who don't conform to a constantly shifting physical ideal, neighbor from neighbors who don't drive the right car or cook with the right grill or drink the right beer.
When did art become a wedge? When did art go from building bridges to burning them?
I believe that art has lost its way. It has become corrupted by the rampant individualism that pervades society today. Art has made intensely personal expression (accessibility be damned) its ideal.
Art is not the only institution with this problem. Politics is certainly divisive. Religion does the same.
But of these three, art has the opportunity to transcend, to elevate our attentions away from ourselves and towards each other.
And perhaps it seems odd that, as a Christian, I would look to art this way so let me be clear about my beliefs. I believe in the God of Moses, Abraham, Elijah, the God who humbled himself and walked among us as Jesus, who died on a cross so that we reconciled to him and to one another. I wholeheartedly subscribe to the essentials of Christian doctrine as summarized in the Nicene Creed.
I also happen to believe that the arts have been abandoned by the Christian church as a whole and the daily escalation of depravity is the inevitable result. And I purposely chose the word, "abandoned," because that's what's happened - what's happening. I know there are Christian movies now and the Christian music industry is huge and the market for Christian fiction continues to grow, but the problem is that Christians have segregated their artists away from the whole of society.
We cloister Christian artists in a parallel entertainment industry and then criticize the "secular" portion of the industry for its cynicism, its rampant violence and graphic sexuality. Well what did we expect to happen when we removed salt and light from the world at large? Yeah, so the Christian music industry is huge but when's the last time you saw a non-Christian walk into a Christian bookstore and pick up a Christian CD?
I believe art should be something that brings people together, that highlights what we have in common, that encourages community and ultimately culture.
Finally, to put all these ideas together, I believe that if/when Christians get back to supporting the arts in a way that engages the culture at large (as opposed to preaching to the choir), it can bring beauty and hope back to a lost, cynical world. And I believe it can happen through the arts because image, substance, beauty (his art, also known as the cosmos he created) is the way that God most readily and sublimely expresses himself (Romans 1:20).
I don't know what this art will look like, but I know it's out there just waiting to be made. It's hard to imagine a new kind of art when art has run the gamut from lifelike realism of the High Renaissance to the extreme abstraction of modern art and everywhere in between. In part, I suspect that the institution of art itself will have to be wrested away from the elite, academia, and (particularly) advertising, and returned to everyday, regular people.
I don't know what it will look like, but it's out there somewhere, waiting to be fished out of the soup of the collective unconscious.
I don't know what it will look like but I know the world is waiting for it.
I don't know what it will look like but I believe it's out there, if only because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate - that we have come up against the end of our achievement as a civilization and all that's left is decline.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
244. holy crap, I've been published!
Back in September, I wrote a short post about being published in a new collection of short stories called The Ankeny Briefcase. The first issue went to press and started going out in early December. As one of the contributing authors, I was supposed to get a copy, but all of December passed and nothing arrived in my mailbox.
Turns out, even though I had given them my new Seattle address, they mailed my copy to my home in Hawaii. My parents brought it with them to Vegas and gave it to me when I met them.
Even though I thought it was cool to be published, I forced myself to curb this enthusiasm because I had a lot of doubts and questions. This is the Ankeny Briefcase's first issue so I had no idea what it would look like. It's stated purpose is to promote the writing of (mostly) unpublished writers so I had to wonder how high their standards were (I mean, I made it in so how high could they be?). The project is headed by Christians and unfortunately, Christians as a whole aren't known for being at the vanguard of promoting or creating art. There are notable exceptions, and I wouldn't have submitted my work for consideration if I didn't think this was one of them, but one never knows.
So I've been reading through my copy, and some of the stories are really amazing. There are a few stories that I think needed a few more rewrites, but so far, none of the stories has sucked. I can now say that I'm honored and humbled and inspired by being a part of this collection.
Now I don't mean to pimp myself, but if you're a fan of short stories, think about picking up a copy of The Ankeny Briefcase. It's a professionally bound softcover book, it's 243 pages long and includes 28 stories. Best of all, even though it's put together by Christians, the stories are real stories, not gospel tracts disguised as stories.
Turns out, even though I had given them my new Seattle address, they mailed my copy to my home in Hawaii. My parents brought it with them to Vegas and gave it to me when I met them.
Even though I thought it was cool to be published, I forced myself to curb this enthusiasm because I had a lot of doubts and questions. This is the Ankeny Briefcase's first issue so I had no idea what it would look like. It's stated purpose is to promote the writing of (mostly) unpublished writers so I had to wonder how high their standards were (I mean, I made it in so how high could they be?). The project is headed by Christians and unfortunately, Christians as a whole aren't known for being at the vanguard of promoting or creating art. There are notable exceptions, and I wouldn't have submitted my work for consideration if I didn't think this was one of them, but one never knows.
So I've been reading through my copy, and some of the stories are really amazing. There are a few stories that I think needed a few more rewrites, but so far, none of the stories has sucked. I can now say that I'm honored and humbled and inspired by being a part of this collection.
Now I don't mean to pimp myself, but if you're a fan of short stories, think about picking up a copy of The Ankeny Briefcase. It's a professionally bound softcover book, it's 243 pages long and includes 28 stories. Best of all, even though it's put together by Christians, the stories are real stories, not gospel tracts disguised as stories.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
243. Vegas vs Seattle
I spent New Year's weekend in Vegas. I went for two reasons: 1) to hang out with my parents - they come up to Vegas for New Year's and it's my first time away from home and I promised them I'd fly up to see them. 2) To visit my friend Willie, who does photography there.
It's been cool to see Willie and I'll write in another blog about seeing my parents but what I really want to write about is Vegas itself.
I. Hate. Las. Vegas.
Biggest gripe? Everything is fake, facade, facsimile. I think the fake New York skyline is dumb. I think the fake Eiffel Tower is lame. I think the faux Italian of the Bellagio and the faux Roman of Caesar's Palace are gaudy to the extreme. The whole exercise is a masturbatory bacchanal. It's like someone mixed the worst of pop culture with the worst of consumer culture and ended up with cultural antimatter.
This assessment doesn't just apply to the buildings and the businesses. The people also seem to be shallower and ruder and more selfish. I suppose some might say this is to be expected in a place that sells itself as sin city, but just because behavior can be expected, it doesn't make it any more palatable or acceptable.
It also doesn't help that I don't like to gamble. Don't have anything against it, just don't like to do it myself.
The only thing I even remotely enjoy about Vegas is the free water show in front of The Bellagio. I think the mixture of technology and music (and the fact that it's public and free) is extraordinarily beautiful. Not always tasteful (the last water show I saw was choreographed to the Lee Greenwood song, "God Bless the USA," which I think is cheese - not because I don't like America but because I don't like kitsch), but I love how it takes an everyday substance (water) and makes it dance and jump and play.
In a way, Vegas feels like the opposite of Seattle. Seattleites are opinionated to the extreme and are able to explain (often in detail) why they like or dislike something. Vegas-folk seem to have one of three opinions about everything: I liked it, I didn't like it, or it was okay. Ask them why they didn't like something and they'll usually respond with one of three answers: it was too short, it was too long, or I don't know. Seattle seems to be all about keeping it real. Vegas, as I already mentioned, is all surface sheen. Seattle does its best to be a green city. The only thing green about Vegas is all the money that flows through there.
Oh, and Seattle rains a lot. Vegas doesn't.
The differences between the two cities really hit home for me from the moment I got off the plane yesterday at the Sea-Tac airport. While walking down the concourse to baggage claim, I was drawn to the art on display all along the walls. I mean I literally was drawn to the work. Even though I was eager to get my bag and to get home, I slowed down, walked up to the displays and really looked at what was there.
I can't explain how good it felt to see things that were original and well made, that weren't trying to compete for my attention with flashing lights or oversaturated colors, that were encouraging me to think for myself instead of doing all the thinking for me. Even though I didn't recognize any of the artists names, I felt loved and respected because their work just sat there waiting to be seen. This is in stark contrast to the visuals in Vegas whose primary mandate seems to be, "LOOK AT ME!"
Maybe this makes me somewhat elitist, I mean there are millions who do enjoy Vegas and who am I to criticize them? I'm sure lots of them enjoy Vegas because they can just turn their brains off and be entertained. They probably do too much thinking at their regular jobs so why would they want to go to some artsy-fartsy cultural event where they have to think and pay attention some more? And I'm sure they enjoy the thrill of gambling - of placing money on a table of into a machine with the prospect of striking gold.
To each his own, I suppose.
But.
But I think there's something more at stake here than varying tastes - something more essential - but I can't quite put my finger on it. I'll keep it in the back of my mind and let it stew there. We'll see if any epiphanies emerge.
It's been cool to see Willie and I'll write in another blog about seeing my parents but what I really want to write about is Vegas itself.
I. Hate. Las. Vegas.
Biggest gripe? Everything is fake, facade, facsimile. I think the fake New York skyline is dumb. I think the fake Eiffel Tower is lame. I think the faux Italian of the Bellagio and the faux Roman of Caesar's Palace are gaudy to the extreme. The whole exercise is a masturbatory bacchanal. It's like someone mixed the worst of pop culture with the worst of consumer culture and ended up with cultural antimatter.
This assessment doesn't just apply to the buildings and the businesses. The people also seem to be shallower and ruder and more selfish. I suppose some might say this is to be expected in a place that sells itself as sin city, but just because behavior can be expected, it doesn't make it any more palatable or acceptable.
It also doesn't help that I don't like to gamble. Don't have anything against it, just don't like to do it myself.
The only thing I even remotely enjoy about Vegas is the free water show in front of The Bellagio. I think the mixture of technology and music (and the fact that it's public and free) is extraordinarily beautiful. Not always tasteful (the last water show I saw was choreographed to the Lee Greenwood song, "God Bless the USA," which I think is cheese - not because I don't like America but because I don't like kitsch), but I love how it takes an everyday substance (water) and makes it dance and jump and play.
In a way, Vegas feels like the opposite of Seattle. Seattleites are opinionated to the extreme and are able to explain (often in detail) why they like or dislike something. Vegas-folk seem to have one of three opinions about everything: I liked it, I didn't like it, or it was okay. Ask them why they didn't like something and they'll usually respond with one of three answers: it was too short, it was too long, or I don't know. Seattle seems to be all about keeping it real. Vegas, as I already mentioned, is all surface sheen. Seattle does its best to be a green city. The only thing green about Vegas is all the money that flows through there.
Oh, and Seattle rains a lot. Vegas doesn't.
The differences between the two cities really hit home for me from the moment I got off the plane yesterday at the Sea-Tac airport. While walking down the concourse to baggage claim, I was drawn to the art on display all along the walls. I mean I literally was drawn to the work. Even though I was eager to get my bag and to get home, I slowed down, walked up to the displays and really looked at what was there.
I can't explain how good it felt to see things that were original and well made, that weren't trying to compete for my attention with flashing lights or oversaturated colors, that were encouraging me to think for myself instead of doing all the thinking for me. Even though I didn't recognize any of the artists names, I felt loved and respected because their work just sat there waiting to be seen. This is in stark contrast to the visuals in Vegas whose primary mandate seems to be, "LOOK AT ME!"
Maybe this makes me somewhat elitist, I mean there are millions who do enjoy Vegas and who am I to criticize them? I'm sure lots of them enjoy Vegas because they can just turn their brains off and be entertained. They probably do too much thinking at their regular jobs so why would they want to go to some artsy-fartsy cultural event where they have to think and pay attention some more? And I'm sure they enjoy the thrill of gambling - of placing money on a table of into a machine with the prospect of striking gold.
To each his own, I suppose.
But.
But I think there's something more at stake here than varying tastes - something more essential - but I can't quite put my finger on it. I'll keep it in the back of my mind and let it stew there. We'll see if any epiphanies emerge.
Monday, January 01, 2007
242. a surreal new year's morning
It's the morning after New Year's. I'm writing from McCarran International Airport in Vegas, waiting for my flight back to Seattle. I've probably been here for about half an hour and I've already seen four very odd occurrences.
1. While waiting in line at the security checkpoint, there was a scene. A woman chased after a man in the first class security checkpoint line yelling to him that she needed her boarding pass to get through the checkpoint. A couple of guards came up and rather politely (I thought) escorted her back past the point where she should have shown her pass. At first the man just ignored her. As she continued to yell to him, he turned and said something about her using her passport and her credit card.
Eventually the couple were brought to a more secluded area where they could work out their differences. It didn't look good for her.
2. While waiting in the same line, there was a TSA agent reminding passengers about the new regulations regarding beverages, liquids, lighters, etc. It was a pretty long line and you could tell by the green faces that there were a bunch of people in line with hangovers. To lend an air of levity to his terse, formal warnings, once he was done listing the new regulations, he asked people if they were feeling the effects of the party last night.
Most people just laughed or smiled, but one lady felt it necessary to yell, "well I feel like shit." The TSA agent, caught off guard, said something about not meaning to offend, to which she replied, "well stop asking stupid questions."
3. Past the security checkpoint, I put my shoes back on and start making my way to my gate when who do I see but the same couple that caused the first scene. The man has his arm around her shoulder and she is leaning her head against his. They were walking slowly together towards who knows where.
4. I make it to my gate and I'm about half an hour away from my boarding time and behind me, a lady is having a near conniption on the phone. She's speaking to a customer service rep (henceforth, CSR) and while I'm not one to eavesdrop on others' conversations, she was speaking so loudly and the situation seemed so unbelievable that it was next to impossible to ignore her plight.
Turns out, she came to Vegas this weekend to get married. The day before the wedding, her husband died of a heart attack. She made arrangements with the funeral home to fly the body back to Seattle (I read somewhere that on average, there is at least one dead body in the container hold of every commercial air flight). She was speaking to the CSR, trying to get the price of the ticket he would have used to fly back (were he still alive) applied to the cost of shipping back his body as cargo. It was obvious that this was something that wasn't in the CSR's training manual, but the lady (understandably) wasn't taking, "I don't know" or "you need to call this other number" for an answer.
And I felt for her because not only does she have to deal with the grief of losing her fiance (who was hours away from being her husband), she also has the added headache of tying up these complicated loose ends.
Wow, what a morning.
I really hope this isn't a harbinger for the year to come. Granted, I'm not at the airport on just any day and Vegas is certainly not just any city (more on this in a blog to come) but if this year is half as odd as the past hour has been for me, I'm in for a crazy year.
It now sounds as if the lady with the dead fiance has resolved her issues and at the same time, it's was nice to see that the couple worked out their differences (at least for the minute or so that I saw them). I don't know if the "stop asking stupid questions" lady ever settled down, but I like to think that maybe she took a chill pill and is feeling better as well.
Happy New Year, everybody.
1. While waiting in line at the security checkpoint, there was a scene. A woman chased after a man in the first class security checkpoint line yelling to him that she needed her boarding pass to get through the checkpoint. A couple of guards came up and rather politely (I thought) escorted her back past the point where she should have shown her pass. At first the man just ignored her. As she continued to yell to him, he turned and said something about her using her passport and her credit card.
Eventually the couple were brought to a more secluded area where they could work out their differences. It didn't look good for her.
2. While waiting in the same line, there was a TSA agent reminding passengers about the new regulations regarding beverages, liquids, lighters, etc. It was a pretty long line and you could tell by the green faces that there were a bunch of people in line with hangovers. To lend an air of levity to his terse, formal warnings, once he was done listing the new regulations, he asked people if they were feeling the effects of the party last night.
Most people just laughed or smiled, but one lady felt it necessary to yell, "well I feel like shit." The TSA agent, caught off guard, said something about not meaning to offend, to which she replied, "well stop asking stupid questions."
3. Past the security checkpoint, I put my shoes back on and start making my way to my gate when who do I see but the same couple that caused the first scene. The man has his arm around her shoulder and she is leaning her head against his. They were walking slowly together towards who knows where.
4. I make it to my gate and I'm about half an hour away from my boarding time and behind me, a lady is having a near conniption on the phone. She's speaking to a customer service rep (henceforth, CSR) and while I'm not one to eavesdrop on others' conversations, she was speaking so loudly and the situation seemed so unbelievable that it was next to impossible to ignore her plight.
Turns out, she came to Vegas this weekend to get married. The day before the wedding, her husband died of a heart attack. She made arrangements with the funeral home to fly the body back to Seattle (I read somewhere that on average, there is at least one dead body in the container hold of every commercial air flight). She was speaking to the CSR, trying to get the price of the ticket he would have used to fly back (were he still alive) applied to the cost of shipping back his body as cargo. It was obvious that this was something that wasn't in the CSR's training manual, but the lady (understandably) wasn't taking, "I don't know" or "you need to call this other number" for an answer.
And I felt for her because not only does she have to deal with the grief of losing her fiance (who was hours away from being her husband), she also has the added headache of tying up these complicated loose ends.
Wow, what a morning.
I really hope this isn't a harbinger for the year to come. Granted, I'm not at the airport on just any day and Vegas is certainly not just any city (more on this in a blog to come) but if this year is half as odd as the past hour has been for me, I'm in for a crazy year.
It now sounds as if the lady with the dead fiance has resolved her issues and at the same time, it's was nice to see that the couple worked out their differences (at least for the minute or so that I saw them). I don't know if the "stop asking stupid questions" lady ever settled down, but I like to think that maybe she took a chill pill and is feeling better as well.
Happy New Year, everybody.
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