A Drifter Among Us

 "Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others."
-Plato

No one knows what's wrong with them but everyone else can see it. 

I must confess, I'm a man with guilty pleasures. I got to discussing them with friends tonight and wonder why it's something we feel the need to be ashamed of. Wikipedia defines a guilty pleasure as "something one enjoys and considers pleasurable despite feeling guilt for enjoying it. Often, the "guilt" involved is simply fear of others discovering one's lowbrow or otherwise embarrassing tastes, rather than actual moral guilt. Fashion, music, and food (especially unhealthier foods high in sugar and/or fat) can be examples of guilty pleasures."

I've been reading through a new book recently, Through Painted Deserts, that is about a man's road trip in a beat up VW van with a friend. I came to an interesting point in the story where the author writes a note to his future self as he is sitting at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. After being struck by the honesty of what he said, I tweeted a question that I would now like for you to carefully consider. If you could write a letter to your future self, what reminder would you give about who you are now?

"Dear James,

I don't know where you are at in your life when you're reading this but if I know you like I think I do, then you've weathered quite a few seasons in your journey. I'm hopeful you've remained true to who you really are through them all. In case you forgot, you weren't so bad of a dude but you had become critical of friends, circumstances, and  expectations. You had placed an importance on money, and stuff, and people's admiration. Wherever you are right now, just remember that that stuff doesn't really matter and that a critical spirit can wound you in ways you don't even realize. It's better to just let go. You felt free and alive when you went sky-diving. Sometimes it takes facing death to show you how alive you really are. Even when you feel slightly paralyzed with fear, facing it is the only option of conquering it. The rush of adrenaline made you realize there's still a lot of living left to do. I hope you still feel that way. Do you remember that before you jumped out of that airplane, you had a beautiful conversation with God? The 20 minute ascent was spent reflecting on what led you to that point: family, traveling, music, girls, friendships, passions, heartaches, regrets, and lessons learned. During the free fall, everything disappeared and your only reaction was to laugh at yourself for being crazy enough to jump. When you finally reached the ground nothing from the past mattered. Money didn't matter. Stuff didn't matter. What people thought of you didn't matter. You were speechless. You were captivated by the adventure. Whoever you are right now, and whoever you are with, find the adventure and keep talking with God. If you have found a woman or have a child or two, the only thing that matters is the love you have for them. Go into your living room and dance with your wife. Visit your kid in his room and give them a kiss on the head and sit down and spend time with them. There is all kinds of beauty in this world that doesn't have a damn thing to do with your social standing. I just want to remind you that if you're feeling paralyzed by the heights of your problems, the faster you face them the quicker they disappear. If you're not where you want to be in life, if the job sucks, or the car keeps breaking down, or the house isn't big enough...don't worry about it. Lose your worries...life is going to be ok. Enjoy it while you can. If something seems too big to handle, you always have a little brother to go through it with you. He's the best friend God built for you so be good to him. That's really all I have to say right now. You really do have a good heart; I know sometimes it may seem cold but fight through it. I wish you nothing but the best. "

"Spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison"           -C.S. Lewis

Over the past few weeks, I've noticed something creeping into my life. It was slow and subtle at first, the way you often find habits or feelings forming. I felt it in my thoughts with coworkers, feelings with friends, conversations with loved ones, and actions with those close to me. The deliberateness of it soon took control.

Have you ever heard the old saying that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death? Well that's where I'm at right now. I've let the toxins swell within me to a boil. I'm suffering from a critical spirit and it's poisoning me.

I'm not going to try to hammer out why, or where it comes from. That would be to exhausting to uncover and certainly to read. I sat through a sermon several weeks ago and something was said that I found enlightening and I think is an answer for how to deal with my criticism. We all pray. All of us. Even those with doubts of a deity.

Darrin, my pastor, reasoned that we've engaged in an idolatry of some degree in our life. Most of us, in our relationships. When we bitch and complain to our friends, it is taking the frustrations that we should be taking to God (vertically) and dispatching them instead to those we value above God (horizontally).

This is why my prayer life sucks. I treat God like most North-American Evangelical Christians treat one another; act like life is great on Sunday with people you have shallow connections with and then "get real" with the drinking buddies or sororiety sisters or high school best friends during the week.

It's just a thought for an idle Monday, but instead of letting the cynicism take control, take your frustrations vertical before you think of taking it horizontal.

Recently, I went kayaking through part of the Ozarks with my brother and some friends. I've kayaked before and fell in love with rush of manning a fragile one man craft through the waters.  Outdoor activities like that have a way of speaking to my soul that goes unmatched. I'll be honest; I needed this. I've felt for awhile that I've reached a dry season in my pursuit of finishing this list. It was a great trip to quiet down, get away, and reflect on how I got to this point where the adventures have slowed to a crawl and the expectations and responsibilities of my day to day life have consumed me.

We got in the water just past the Table Rock Dam. The water was frigid enough to numb your hand if left in long enough. The water from the bottom of the dam was being systematically released causing a current to flow into Lake Taneycomo. The current was steady enough to take us on our way. And with that, we paddled our way through Taneycomo. The coolness of the water kept our brows dry from sweat as the heat that day was imposing. Along the way we witnessed the breathtaking views of the Ozark hill country, sights of fisherman, and incredible architecture that lined the river banks.

I decided early on to find my rhythm within the current and ride it out much like a good groove in song. With the paddle as my dance partner, I started a slow dance that gave way to some time of reflection. At one point I looked up, took in the view, and felt a peace I haven't felt in awhile. For some reason this phrase came to my head in that moment, "Let the river take you," and for the remainder of the trip the river, and my thoughts, took me.

Family relationships take on the life of water. There are times of calm stillness and then there are times of hectic swells. For a better part of my adolescence, my relationship with my brother could be described in that way. Brotherhood, much like the flow I was on, can run a course that ends in a different place than that in which it began. However, the chemical identity it started with remains largely unchanged; water remains water and brothers remain brothers.

Growing up with a house on a lake, we would spend countless hours swimming, jumping, diving, fishing, and boating. Our summers were spent in the backyard of our house as our mother would look on while sunbathing at the edge of the lake. On one occasion a trip to the emergency room arose and several stitches were required after Matt stepped on an old, broken glass bottle. Despite the hidden dangers, the lake was our playground. Our youthful energy was exhausted by the waters during the day, and by night we would let its calmness lull us to sleep through the windows.

Where we often butted heads, we found agreement in the splashes of carelessness the lake brought out in us.

For a majority of the float, I lagged behind my brother. In some ways, I've always let Matt run out and explore in front of me, looking on with worry as only a big brother can do. Growing up I didn't understand the boy who had a sense of wonder that couldn't be contained. He had a thirst for knowledge of the world and a penchant for attaining it that must have skipped me when being passed down from my parents.

As the first born, it must have been prescribed that I would become a people pleaser. Therefore, I mostly made safe decisions growing up. Because of that, Matt was always a step ahead of me in flirting with adventure. (His numerous broken bones to my unscathed marrows can alone testify to that.)  And in that sense, my brother has largely remained a mystery to me. I have heard it said that middle children are more difficult to define because their identity growing up changed from last born to middle child. This affects their personality and environment in unpredictable ways. In what I was ignorant of, Matt was a lessoned trailblazer in the rough and tough things that make most boys men.

While Matt was off being wild at heart, I felt expectations of perfection that weighed heavily on me through my teens. I tried, often for not, to be an example, but it created a wedge that caused tension between us. Because of that, a large part of wanting to leave the nest of home was to leave behind the cautiousness that most first-born children have. And for awhile I was successful.

In the period of five years I had moved halfway across the country, played music in three bands in front of countless people, experienced my first drink and smoke and a number of other "firsts," met friends that would challenge me and shape me, went through heartbreak with women (both given and received), went through school after school (4 different schools in 4 consecutive semesters!), took chances with an internship away from family, left school in my last semester for the promise of a music showcase in NYC, traveled, at times drank to excess, partied and partied hard, and formed opinions that differentiated from what I was taught during my upbringing.

The funny part about all of this is that while I was off doing these things, my brother and I saw a role reversal in our personalities. It was almost as if we were guaranteed to be opposites of each other for eternity. He became more reformed and cautious. He looked after my younger sister and became the achiever that I always strove to be. He would give warnings to me when I would come home from school about the dangers of drinking and worried about me like a father.

Eventually, I learned to tame certain desires and settle back into a comfort zone that looks less dangerous, less wild, and more predictable. The regression back to the norm is partly what's driving me to see this list of mine through to completion.

After all our collective experiences, it took some settling for both of us to find the water again. The boy I didn't understand growing up, is now the man I admire. I can see us back in our youth running down the hill to the lake and splashing the other with our cannonball jumps. By necessity, those days we were each others only friend. We've since grown up, but today we're each others friend by choice. It's weird to think that the bond of brotherhood could go unknown to some. I look at my dad, and I wish he had a brother so that he could have the adventures I've had with mine.

Let the river take you. Enjoy the slow dance. Embrace the adventure. Entertain the mystery. Be aware of where you are heading, but look back from time to time and see where you've drifted from.

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters." -A River Runs Through It

I sent my last tweet out Monday morning  at 7:24 a.m. and immediately felt anxiety over how I was going to make it through the week with no fb,twitter, or text messaging. I was bombarded with an array of thoughts such as: "Will anyone even text me?" "How will I know what's going on?" "How will I spend my downtime?" "Am I going to get sick of being productive?"

I spent the first few hours picking up and then putting down my phone as if I had some "phantom" message awaiting me. I could tell the habit was going to die hard.
**Monday: Read 3 chapters of a book, watched Cardinals game, didn't interact with anyone outside of work.
**Tuesday: Created a Budget, Read, Had family over for dinner where we discussed a variety of topics including social media's impact on family relations, problems with one another, frustrations, jobs, trips, further schooling, and caring for one another.
**Wednesday: Listed and sold household items on Craigslist. Read.
**Thursday: Did proofreading for the Journey, Worked on invitations for Mom's party, Called an old friend, Emailed from my computer Kristen while she is in Europe.
**Friday: Dinner with my parents, Made mojito's from home, watched "A River Runs Through It"
**Saturday: Read on the back deck, Went to my cousins graduation party, bookshopping at a Goodwill, home for the evening
**Sunday: Church in the morning, finished up a book and got a nice lobster tan, Afternoon drink with Josh, Self-analyzation in the evening.

I feel refreshed after a time of quieting all the noise in my life. To be honest I didn't miss what I gave up too terribly much. It took a little adjusting at first to stop picking up my phone and point the curser to my twitter app, but in the end I hardly touched my phone unless it rang or I called a friend. I've given thought to downgrading my phone plan. There is something troublesome to me that I'm so easily accessible to people. I guess that goes both ways.

I highly recommend others taking a week off and trying this. Some of you need it.