Modern day convenience has accomplished the impossible job of making complicated, messy relationships convenient. Why enter an exhausting 30 min phone conversation when you could easily shoot a text? Buy a birthday gift and write a card? Phooey, send the best gift in the form of an ecstatic wall post on facebook! Worried about burdening others with your troubles and angst? Then vent on a blog entry and send if off to virtual reality, so that loved ones and acquaintances alike are updated on the happenings of your life.
The fact that I’m writing all of this on a xanga entry reveals my own ensnarement by technology. However, I can’t help but feel like all the lightning quick texting, emailing, and blogging, is just too easy to be good. Shouldn’t there be some amount of inconvenience, burden, and at times, pain to make a relationship real? In this removed, almost mechanical output of communication, I feel like I’m losing the true essence of relationships. All that I label as being “inconvenient” meaning patience, commitment, and diligence may be the missing ingredients to make my existing relationships sublime.
These days, I feel the most amount of romance when I'm alone. It could be when I'm listening to Colbie Callait in an empty classroom or when I'm snuggled in front of the TV watching Jim being so sweet to Pam. Or the best is through nature, witnessing shafts of sunlight spill in between tree branches. At times, I live in the past, reliving flawed but beautiful days. Other days I'm zipping through the future, imagining kissing the freshly shampooed head of my babies as I read them to sleep. I wonder if I'm sheltering my heart too much, but then again, I stubbornly want to hide it, preserve it.
I'm ok though, even enjoying the clarity that only comes from solitude and hopeful of the unknown. But I do wonder about what'll happen to a heart that's only fed dreams and left unchallenged.
With the bright sun of vacation slowly waning and with the arrival of my DMV registration sticker, I see that another year has definitely gone by. To show for it, I have had a plethora of good food that has passed through, oodles of new movies viewed, good number of hikes, and a pretty wicked tan.
This year, I don't feel like analyzing all that has past and what that has amounted to. Maybe I'm tired or just getting "older" but I know for a fact that tomorrow's sunrise will bring forth another day to tinker with. So taking yesterday so seriously seems a little pointless. Though I can never change my super analytical personality *sigh* it's relaxing to know that time passes so freely.
With the essential ingredients of diligence and faith, tomorrow will be mine to hold. And when the time comes, I must let go of this trickling inevitability.
"As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool comes when there are many words." – Ecclesiastes 5:3
Incessant babbling, meaningless vows, and flowery speeches…scary to know that God sees right through them. I’m taking a mental tally of such verbal crimes and the toll is embarrassingly aplenty. So instead of writing about how I think about God, why not write about God himself? His words before mine.
A month ago, my dark, handsome lover Costa Rica lured me into his arms with promises of adventures, horseback rides, and sights to behold. It was like dating with an exotic celebrity except that in lieu of glitz and glamour, there was the guarantee of nature and isolation. I remember excitedly wondering how this love affair would change me.
The verdict- zip zero nada. God knows that it's gonna more than a month to change me (literally). In terms of changes, I haven't even touched it, but I realize that I know myself better. It may not sound like much but it took grueling moments of self reflection, most of them beginning with, "Why am I like this?" All my idiosyncrasies and insecurities surfaced as I saw myself through the eyes of others. No longer armed with the defenses of work, comfortable friends, and mind numbing consumerism, I was awakened to a closer truth of who I am. And the truth hurts.
But it's also empowering as I've never known it be. Costa Rica has allowed me to see that I'm just at the starting point. I'm ready to leave Costa Rica, in the best way possible, because I can't wait to see where truth takes me.
Chatboard (0)