Sometimes It's Hard to Care, Like This Evening

"I was just so frustrated," she said. And I couldn't really blame her, I've been there before. You're focussed on the task, that little task that should take 15 minutes, and three hours later you march downcastedly out of the store, defeated.

But you were shopping for a surfboard. For a vacation to Costa Rica. During which your time will be split between surfing, eating, dancing, and sleeping. If you're going to waste that much time, is three hours in the surf shop really a problem? I know, I know, it meant that you were late for evening wakeboarding, but really, c'mon.

Oh, be quiet all of you. She's hardly the only one. Like I said, I've had my "American Moments" and I bet you have too. I think I cried last time my car broke down. And when I realized I had lost one of my favorite shirts... let's just say there was a significant mourning period.

But let me teach you a little dance called the "Perspective Two Step". Start with your arms firmly around your life, then release, take a step back, and then another. When you've mastered this one try the "Comparison Spin." This one takes a lot of balance because you have to take your eyes off of your life completely for a time, but I promise you'll come back to it. Just look to your right, and let your feet follow your gaze.

What you'll find is a large, diverse world that has nothing to do with your car, surfboard, or job. In fact, you'll find plenty of people who dream of having the luxury to drive even the oldest car, or make the tenth part of your meager wages.

Now return to your life. You'll find that you hold it closer but more loosely. You appreciate its qualities more but see that they are not so valuable as you once thought.

Anyway, as I sat across the table from her and her significant other tonight, watching the little indulgence that is couples' storytelling, I couldn't help but think about how hard it can be to listen to the concerns of suburb-bred Americans. At least after doing the above steps several times.

The "Joy" of Entertainment

In a recent post I talked about the American preoccupation with entertainment. Then I came across a quote by Leonard Ravenhill on The Light Is Sweet today. It gave words to something that had been vaguely developing in my mind:

"Entertainment is the devil's substitute for Joy; the less joy of the Lord you have, the more entertainment you need."

Well said (though I think I might change that last 'need' to 'desire'). I shrink at the indictment thereby levelled against me. America, you stand jointly accused. Defend yourself if you can.

From Sea to Duller Sea

It's not so much that they all look the same, dress the same, talk about the same age and gender specific subjects - if these conventions were proper, by which I mean applicable and important, then of course they would be amiss to engage in much variety. But sadly these norms are only short sighted habits amassed unquestioningly by those who know not else, and so I am saddened. And stifled. I'm always stifled.

I should back up.

Last night I was at a coffee shop and just outside the nearest window were three twenty-something males (I use the more formal gender term to indicate the severity of my scrutiny). Garbed in the standard issue buttondown shirts and tastefully faded jeans, they sat and talked of real estate. Because that's what you talk about when you are twenty-something, male and ambitious enough to wear tastefully faded jeans on a Tuesday night in Rancho San Diego.

These were the example I needed in order to catalyze the crystallization of a thought that had lately been crackling in the shadows of my troubled mind. I lack peripheral inspiration.

I want to say 'reciprocal inspiration' instead, but the case seems more dire than that. If I were lacking only reciprocal inspiration, there would be the possibility that inspired ones are nearby, but we have as yet failed to connect. Thus far, though, I don't believe that's the case.

I live in a suburb that was spawned by suburbs. Older, lesser suburbs could no longer contain their most virile gametes, which burst forth with a flourish of two-story track homes and Cadillac Escalades to create Rancho San Diego. And here, in a melting pot of second and third generation suburbanites, the impressionable youth learned their worldview, value system, priorities.

Is it any wonder they lack that luster of soul that I call inspiration?

They learned, as I long did, that s/he who owns the most toys is the happiest. The males learned that women are attracted to cars and vocal volume; the girls learned that men are attracted to heels and shrinking seam-lengths. They absorbed the assumption that life goals have names like 'boat,' 'house,' 'fun,' 'retirement,' and 'comfort.'

Most, it would seem, have never had their paradigm challenged by something so foreign as, say, a national park, much less a different country or culture.

And so I sat alone last night, as the coffee shop neared closing, pondering dichotomies and possibilities that none else could see. But the stream of my personal creative resources could only carry me so far. For lack of adjoining flows it dried up before I reached that great river where creativity meets clarity, where sight becomes vision. I picked up my pen and paper, dropped the rest of my green tea in the trash, and drove myself to bed.