Good luck exploring the infinite abyss...
"For the first time in our lives, lets just let ourselves be whoever we are - and that will be better."Why do we hide as humans? Why do we live our lives as thespians pretending to be somebody who we don't understand? Why do we wear these masks of happiness or neutrality regardless of what emotion our visage is currently portraying? What went wrong in our culture that made it not okay to be real?
We have been told a lie. We have been deceived into believing that we are in fact normal and there really is not anything special about us. We idolize those precious few individuals in the world who look like they have it all together. We see the people in our lives and we try to be like them so much that we forget the all important matter of being who we ourselves are. Why? Why do we do this to ourselves?
I don't know. I do it to myself.
When my father left in September of 1997 I became numb. I was put through a time that no individual should ever be put through and I didn't even know it. The only way that I could possibly respond was by becoming numb to everything around me. So when he committed suicide on August 10th, 1998, it really didn't matter to me. My dad had died when he abandoned my family. I lost my ability to feel. Numb not only to the pain, but I dulled my senses to the point that I disallowed myself to experience any of the joys of life either. I never let myself get close in any relationship. I bounced around from group to group to group in college. I had many friends, but nobody has ever known me. I simply wouldn't let them. I didn't want to be vulnerable to the kind of hurt that I endured again, and thus I closed myself off to living life.
How much do we do this as human beings? Have you ever noticed that when somebody begins talking about something so deep and personal to their heart that the conversation dies? Nobody knows what to say! When we really experience life and relationships and love and closeness and intimacy in a community nobody knows what to do. In some aspects we actually shun the vulnerability. These statements are dismissed with comments like, "Wow, that's crazy," or, "Guard your heart, man." Where did we go wrong?
Life is an adventure. Every single precious human life is an adventure. Sometimes when I am driving I will see somebody in the car next to me and wonder what their story is. I bet it is amazing. I drive by a house with a sign that says "For Sale" and a new sign above it that says "Sold!" What is their story? Why did they sell their house? Is it a family? Are the moving somewhere to embark on a new chapter in their life? Is it a single man, 42 years old, brought down by the struggles in life, numbed by the pain of living to the point that he looks back wondering what happened to it all? Every story is amazing. Every individual has a story so unique that no person in the world can truly understand where they've been and what they have experienced. How much different would our communities be if we stopped hiding behind the walls built around our hearts, brick by brick after heartache after heartache added to the mortar until the shadows cast upon our faces hide us in the darkness of isolation? What if we broke down those walls, bore our hearts to people recklessly to that we could experience not only the pains of life but the beautiful moments that come along that make our toes wiggle with gladness?
In the past two months my life has changed. I have met somebody that loves me absolutely unconditionally. Shay is the only person in the world that knows all my ghosts - and she still stands beside me and says "I love you." I don't understand why. But through her I have experienced a taste of what the love of God must be like. The love of a perfect father. The love that we can do nothing to add to or subtract from. This is the start of something big - this is the start of something that transcends my understanding to the point of tears. I don't get it - but there is not a moment that goes by anymore that I am not thankful for this change.
Yet, why when I share things like this, why when any of us share experiences like this are people sometimes skeptical? What if I am wrong? What does it matter? But the walls around my heart are broken down. I pray that out of this scrap lumber and brick and mortar that once made up a protective barrier around my heart built so high that I no longer saw the sunshine of life, something beautiful may come. Not a tavern, but a temple. A home for the core of my being. A home for my soul - my heart.
Our lives are an infinite abyss of adventure. We never really know what will happen in the next moment - and that is the beauty of it all. Let's tear down the walls that guard our hearts. Lets allow ourselves to experience both the highs and lows of life once again. Lets live like Adam and Eve did before they knew right and wrong - completely naked, bare, exposed, and vulnerable. Lets change this world one heart at a time, starting with our own.
All these thoughts came from the movie that I watched tonight: Garden State. You must rent it. It is a story about life - about hearts - about people being real.
Toward the end of the movie, in the middle of their scavenger hunt adventure, they meet a man named Arthur. He lives in an old boat at the mouth of an unexplored chasm with his wife. He has been hired to protect this vastness and make sure that nobody enters. He said, "I like to believe it has an infinite depth." But he says that no matter what happens, as long as he is with his wife and his daughter, life will be okay.
That is what I want. I want my life to be about love - about the other people and hearts that we come in contact with in the various wrinkles of our lives. I want the walls around my heart to come down. I want people to see me. I want to, for the first time, let myself be whoever it is that I am - and I hope that they see a temple built around a heart that contains the love of something bigger than anything on this Earth - the love of a God that surpasses our understanding.
I want to live.
posted by Devo @ 1:58 AM
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