Alone with Others {It's a Doozy}

We're talking about moral isolation in my Social Ethics class. One question the material poses is, "Why are some of us more prone to alone-ness?" So now I present to you:

Tuesday's Rabbit Trailing with Allie

The author of the book we're reading says that at every moment we're in a solitary state, and yet at every moment, even when alone, we're also with others. The others that we're alone with are the people, whether present or absent, who love, terrify, motivate or challenge us. The imagined approval and disapproval of these "watching" people end up being a measure of "true North" in our lives, guiding our decisions and opinions by proxy. Depending on how you're wired, you might be capable of more love, trust and depth of feeling for your others than for the real people in your life.

Alone-ness: I suspect that those of us who have a high level of engagement when we're out with people in new experiences will tend to feel that these experiences demand a focus and attention level from us that makes us temporarily deaf and blind to the guiding presence of the others that we've let be our "true North." It tends to make us feel like we don't know where we're going or if we're "on the right track" until we get alone again.

Everyone knows that disapproving and shaming people have a really big impact on us, so most of us try to steer clear of anyone who presents us with such blatant abuse. But in a less obvious way, a cynical city like Nashville also can have a really big impact on what kind of others we invite into our head.

He's working on his music all the time, but he's not even that good.

She's starting her own business, but it's never going to take off.

They're getting married but they don't even like each other most of the time.

Everyone wants to be around her but they don't know her like I do.

Cynicism nearly destroyed me because its piercing and merciless gaze turned around and found me standing behind it, completely vulnerable and just as worthy of mockery.

We have a vacuum within us, gasping for guidance, and it will be filled. So we look for the wisest, strongest voice in the crowd and when we find it, we put the bit in our mouths and hand the reigns over. Sometimes it's the smart-ass who has a one-liner for everything, and he becomes the person staring back at us in the mirror. Sometimes it's the ministry leader that has a loophole to explain why every good action is just a bad action in disguise, and they become the doubt that there's any point to Christian discipleship. We can jerk and dissent the idea of it, because it makes us look all too weak and fashionable. But it may also turn out to be the truth about our nature, whether we acknowledge it or not, so it behooves us to at least examine ourselves and question it.

A final note regarding the Christian hope.
The joy of the Gospel is that Christ sent His spirit into the world and from the way the apostle John tries to explain it, "Whoever keeps His commandments remains in Him, and He in him. By this we know that He remains in us, by the spirit which He gave us." Not that John was any kind of classical version of Freud or anything. But this understanding of the possibility of the work of the spirit of Christ in our lives tranquilizes that hefty psychology and stuffs it into a rental car's trunk.

If the voice in my head and the other presence that guides me, is the spirit of Christ, and is not a construct of the imagination to approve or disapprove, but an actual presence external to me that is directly acting upon me--that's a mystical wonder indeed. It is my opinion that the more the spirit of Christ becomes our other, the less alone we'll have to be, the more joyful our alone-ness will become, and the better steered our lives will also be. They'll certainly still be guided in a strong way--but we can trust that wherever we are guided will be a place of infinite possibility and hope.

"End Rabbit Trail Here"

I'm Sort of a Maverick

I'm watching the end of Top Gun on AMC right now, and no matter how many times I've seen Goose die and watched Maverick toss his dogtags into the turbulent sea...I still get all choked up every time I see it.

The sad truth is that I shouldn't be watching TV at all right now because I should be sleeping. It's Monday evening and I never went to sleep last night. I spent a few slices of my weekend formulating the perfect thesis for my ancient civilizations creation myth turned values framework essay. Unfortunately, none of my clever ruminating bore any edible or sowable or even showable fruit--I spent four hours at the library rechecking my primary sources, desperate for some spark of brilliance to light me up. After the library closed at midnight, I spent the next hour and a half walking around the campus with my notebook out, trying to distill my murky argument into two or three coherent and magnificent points. At two or later I sat in the lobby of the enormous computer and technology center, eating a bag os Snyder's pretzels. Then finally I began to create my rough draft.

I finished up the last few sentences and printed the ridiculous thing out just after seven this morning, and frankly, I felt awesome because at that hour it hasn't really occurred to you body that it's been trickd into skipping a whole night's sleep. My body thought we were headed home to bury our weary self under the blankets for a deep hibernation. Not so much.

I drank legitimate coffee. The reeeeaaaallll stuff that the big kids drink. I was hoping it would prop me up for the full day of classes. I fell asleep in my Econ class while doing price elasticity equations.

So I'm finally free to sleep and I use this precious time to watch Top Gun instead. What a goon.

I'm sitting at FIDO with an incredibly blank sheet of what the romantics might call, "Crisp, white paper" in front of me on a wooden table that is soft and worn away by the chafing of plates and mugs, and the deep etches carved by the pens and pencils of brilliant students, corrosive indie beatnuts and a host of coffee shop regulars that dot and fill the rest of the stereotype spectrum.

I used to sit in the booth closest to the bus tubs back in 2005 when I first started coming here three or four times a week. In those days, hardly anyone I knew came to the Village to socialize, so I felt as if I had discovered a parallel universe where organic relationships and authentic community lined up at around 7 o'clock each night for a cup of Bongo brew and giant piece of cake (or was that just me...).

I had it in my head that I wasn't quite the person I should have already become; I had it in my heart as well-- I was simply out of touch with myself. So I did the only logical thing a 26 year old administrative assistant who never finished school could do: I purchased a Latin textbook, escaped my Purpose Driven Brentwood enclave each night and began to teach myself Latin from a little booth here on the edge of the universe.

I did actually learn some small bits of Latin--like, "Bis das, cito das." But while I've completely forgotten the meaning of the words I tried so hard to learn in my little booth world of miracles, I've never lost the feeling that FIDO is one of the most magical, special places in this whole city--and it's still the place I escape to and the place where I challenge myself to become the person I'm most afraid to be and most afraid I'll never truly be.

The sheet of paper is still crisp and still blank at the moment.

And the Onvelope Goes To...

I lost my place in the spelling be in 5th grade. I was so nervous, as it was, and then they said my word: "on-vah-lope." At least that's what it sounded like. If they would have said "en-veh-lope," I'd be in one of those three categories today. Hopefully not the "contributing nothing of value to society" one, though.

I spelled envelope with an "o."
And that's why I didn't finish college like the rest of my peers.

Or...
I was tardy to my 8th grade Algebra class a lot.
And that's why I've always struggled to check my oil levels in my car.


Don't you just love playing games with causality?

A Day of Remembrance

This morning, my favorite morning news channel rebroadcast the Today Show's entire morning show from 9/11/01, hosted by Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. It was uninterrupted, so for almost two hours before school, instead of studying, I sat gape-mouthed and watched the events unfold.

I didn't watch the news at all when the events actually took place, eight years ago, because I was three time zones behind and woke up well after it happened, and because I left the house immediately to go to a very needed dentist appointment. I saw clips of the devastation while sitting in the dentist's chair and looking out the window over the completely calm little city of Everett, Washington.

I lived through a number of bomb scares while living in London, one-a bus bomb-actually taking out the bus I normally took home from work on a night I chose to walk. The idea of shocking terrorism was not foreign to me--just a little unreal on home turf. I repeatedly found myself pondering throughout the day if what happened in New York was just the beginning; if there was more wreckage to come, more surprises to wake up to in the coming days.

I worked that night at the Cheesecake Factory in downtown Seattle and there was a lot of talk about the important section of the city that had been closed down to traffic. Celebrities like Eve, whose flights had been grounded at the airport, found their way into our restaurant and drank and ate as if it were New Year's Eve, which gave all of the waitstaff a soapbox to stand on behind the kitchen doors, between visits to our tables. For me, although I joined the chorus of employees that protested any establishment staying open on such a tragic day, I actually felt grateful to be surrounded by my people when catastrophe was at hand; to be surrounded by friends and companions to share that mind-melting awe and wonder with.

When I visited New York a few years ago in the middle of winter, I went to the Ground Zero site to see for myself what had become of the site of the two towers in the five years since the attack. Unlike what most visitors that I've talked to about it experienced, when I walked along the parallel roads, there was nobody around--it was the most desolate place in all the world in a sense, because the sounds of the surrounding world could be heard, but only in a very muted, far away way. In contrast to the hubbub of the city--this patch of baldness was empty and void. Nobody else was in the walkway with me. Nobody else was reading the "We'll Never Forget" signs with me. It was a lonely walk.

I had a strange dream for a long time involving grey and black patterns; and one day I was flipping through news sites on the internet and came across a section of photos from a few photojournalists. I paused on a picture of people jumping out of a burning, crumbling building. Can you even imagine being in that situation? Something that only happens in nightmares and Samuel L Jackson movies.

But what stopped me was the building itself; it's cement structure. I realized that it was the image from my dream. Somewhere along the line I got these images of crumbling buildings and people jumping stored into my personal hard-drive, only showing up in anxious, confusing dreams.

This morning I listened as the names of the dead were read aloud at Ground Zero; family members of the victims covered in clear plastic rain jackets and holding photos and mementos. Losing my dad to a sudden heart attack was tragic enough--I can't imagine what these people are feeling, even all these eight years later. Because to me, eight years seems like a lifetime ago. But to them, one wonders if they woke up this morning and said to themselves, "It's only been eight years since you were here with me."

Nonsense From the Garden of Bowling Eden Green

My head is full of theories at the moment; theories about life, death, friendship, economics--about anything that has the courage to enter the romper room of my head, really, because theories are what happens when you spend large blobs of time wedged on the steps of your cement porch, disinterestedly watching the trees drop dead leaves at the end of summer in this, our American South.

One thing that pestered me yesterday was an argument between my diversity tolerance and what Brock told me last semester was called my "paternalism"--controlling or mandating behaviors and choices for the parts of the population I don't think are able to care properly for their own well-being. I wonder, mainly, if I were God {praise Him that I am not}, and I therefore loved humans much more than I, Allie, currently do, knowing that, other than providing jobs to many people, McDonald's is a wart on the index finger of society, would I have ever allowed such a business to be created in the first place? Or would I have vetoed that idea?

These are big, important thoughts that she's got in her head, you're thinking...

Plowing on...the other human enterprises that I, as God, would have vetoed: Coca-Cola, cigarettes, tanning beds.

In my favor, as an omnipotent being, I would have let chocolate manufacturing and the development of the cotton industry pass on unchecked without hesitation. But the point of contention I'm struggling with as a sentient, mildly-compassionate and halfway-reasonable human being is that some of the best economic ideas and entrepreneurial schemes are those that create enormous wealth by capitalizing on the vices of the morally weak; those too ignorant or foolish to say no (sometimes this refers to yours truly, I admit). If we want a strong and diverse economy, we must have businesses that cater to the "unlimited wants" of our society, which turn out to be increasingly specialized desires indeed. My argument, with myself and the non-sentient garden trees in my front lawn, is that offering the opportunity to satisfy our unlimited wants is the petri dish which happens to breed some of the most risky explorations of human depravity.

Plainly, for the sake of moral climate, I would turn out to be a most restrictive cosmos-governor. Because I think it's more practical and safer, in the end, than letting our good friend, Individual Vice, control the universe by way of market power. But a balanced and healthy community, as morally rich as it sounds, doesn't necessarily experience booming economic growth given the fact that nobody really wants an unlimited selection of Slinkys or an unlimited selection of the same 'ol Christian music {or do they ;)}. And given also the fact that debt and diversity of lifestyle preferences are such fuel for such an economic fire...

Proverbial Diatribe

"And all who were slain by her were strong men."
-Proverbs 7:26

A good man isn't hard to find.
I would argue that a good man is hard to see, if you don't have tastes refined by scripture.

JI Packer said {let me paraphrase} that this generation is afflicted by two diseases: firstly, the horrible feeling that all of life is really quite absurd and there's no point to it; secondly, the sense that nothing that we actually possess tastes as good as the things we dream of.

{Sounds so much like listening to women talk about relationships}

Packer also happens to say that people who know their God will not be afflicted by either of these heart diseases.

Life is not absurd, once you peel your own vanity away.

The things we actually own are more delicious than any of the things we fantasize about having, because they're a gift from God. That's the seasoning that makes them so fine and so beautiful. The blessing makes it taste good. But that's a taste one only learns to appreciate through sacrifice, I suspect.

Anyway--I'm driving back to BGKY after a lovely Labor Day with friends and sugar treats and too much Starbucks.

Only fifteen weeks to go before Winter Break. :\