Becoming something…

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Here we are again, the re-run. Jesus up on the cross and Easter plays out again. I am Catholic, but this day is of mixed meaning. Recent revelations have me feeling like the most religious in my family. This is odd. I spent my middle school years collapsing under the pressure of my false understandings of my religion, rejecting it soon thereafter. Much of this pressure coming from the understandings and faith taught to me by my parents.

Today, my partner and I sat and watched a History Channel account of Jesus and his life. He wanted to do something “Jesusy.” This was followed by a viewing of the first Austin Powers movie, International Man of Mystery. A traditional Easter celebration.

Turns out Jesus had a fro and the 90’s brought an end to shagging freely. Seemingly eyeballed by my ancient feeling religiosity and present idealism of sexual freedom, I’ve spent too long crucified by my own belief in others ability to support me. Esteem through sexuality, err sex, and guidance. False guidance that has me feeling much about my sexual history in way that I used to criticize the faithful.

As I watch this re-run and it’s earlier than expected this year, the story is repeated and unchanged, for a reason. The collision of religion that had become overly institutionalized full of wrongdoings with its people. The equality of both, brings the collapse of both.

Refreshed in belief, I am infant. Restrained in sexual self-exploitation, I am immature.

With all my faults in deconstruction, I now understand the power of something greater. The power of something to support me and finding the power to be that something.

Does our society make it hard to feel humbled? Can we feel humbled to something other than money and power? How?

“You emerge victoriously from the maze you’ve been traveling in.”

Life sure does feel like a maze, does it not? Wandering looking for the right direction, knowing at any moment we might walk right into a wall. The worst part is that we are often doomed to back-track. At best, we find ourselves busting through the wall but only to find ourselves lost again, with little frame of reference. It is part pre-determined and part under your control.

There is no alternative to being yourself. I think mostly it has to do with your attitude along the way.

You have experienced parts of the maze behind you, but not all of it. Has it shaped you? A product of our experiences or not, we have got to start listening to the scale to which we define ourselves. The confusing reality is, often the walls are miles apart and filled with millions of people. Life isn’t long enough to assume you can deduce the way out through guess and check. The cheese might not be as close or as far as you think. Without tangible walls to give a sense of direction or a map to the maze ahead (or the one being built), why are we full of this concern. You can define ‘this’ how you like, but even if the concern is not to have one, what is it in context to?

We often look to our most local of mazes through which we see ourselves traveling, forgetting the immensity of the one we are actually in.

Leave your home, find your car (or the nearest bus stop), and think about how well you seem to navigate the most local of mazes. You are probably doing just fine along life’s maze. Stop looking for the walls, looking for the end, and fearing the retracing of steps. Otherwise, the cheese won’t have a smell anymore and your sense of direction will be localized to the smaller of life’s mazes. Because the local maze you might be stuck in, is the one inside your head.

“You emerge victoriously from the maze you’ve been traveling in.”

Don’t create context, walls to define yourself against. Self, defined, is limited to the scale of what you define it against. There is no alternative to being yourself, amidst walls you can’t see and contexts you can’t begin to define.

This entry is coming from an interesting experience I had yesterday. Shedding light on my cultural background and growth I realized that your environment can really influence impulses. I found myself wondering why I picked oranges over minorities.

I’d just enjoyed some nice gulps of water, post workout. I was waiting for my fair weather friend to change. I say fair weather because she ditched driving me home because the roads were getting poor and I was left to wait for a fair weather bus that was a cycle late. I digress. While waiting, I looked at a photo representing the writing/academic center for the campus I work on. I noticed something peculiar. What do you notice?

I saw oranges. I was so tickled by my discovery that I asked the same question of miss fair weather. Turns out everyone is white in the photo, this being what she noticed. Stumped, I asked her to look harder. By time the oranges were of mutual discovery, she was antsy to leave and I was fumbling for my own explanation of our differing perspectives.

Was it that I came from a college with beyond Caucasian diversity around 15% (not to mention other missing groups)? Was it that I don’t remember seeing much color in my suburban environment? Why did I choose oranges over minorities?

It hit me though, in one of those I got it before but now I really understand it kind of ways, that our life experiences are unique. Not only unique, but they are the molders of how you see the world. It was important to realize that all the education in the world hadn’t taught me to see, instead I was blind. We will see things differently, all of us. Your boss or supervisor that just doesn’t seem to make sense, probably isn’t doing it on purpose. This experiential intelligence is hard to measure because it has as much to do with how much you experience as it does with the quality and variety of an experience. In the work setting, the ability to recognize this is the biggest step in being able to manage up (7 ways to manage up or Managing Up: An Overlooked Factor in Career Success). In your personal life it can help relationships grow and drama dwindle.

Can we challenge ourselves to see things differently? If you saw white people, begin looking for the oranges, and vice versa. I think too often we find ourselves in conversations where we are more concerned about the other person not seeing the oranges that you did. Instead, why not notice that they saw something different and wonder why you didn’t see it at all.

Life is one big learning opportunity. If you aren’t listening you might just always end up with a bunch of white people or oranges for that matter.

Another stranger

Strong teeth nibbling at the soul,
a midnight snack of attempted progress.

My feet treaded new footsteps,
from the moment I woke up.

Sore eyes for similar,
familiar lies. I’m fooling myself again.

Putting out isn’t the same, the
first time, second time, third time around.

Give me stone eyes. Eyes that find hearts
cold. Minds that build false homes in me.

Now, I’ve opened the front door, but
nothing looks familiar. Not even
his now familiar beard.

Someone else has made my bed,
and although new things feel safe,
I’ve encountered another stranger.

In one corner we have the most individual of the individual, Justin-China. In the other you have the opposite in strength, clearly more settled and definitely not alone, Justin-Committed Relationship (CR).

The rink, Beijing, is home turf for Justin-China. Yet, much of his support is missing or under pressure.

As for Justin-CR, the significant-other is right at his side for the ride. It is as though the Justin-CR’s birth mother is in the front row, eyes watching.

So enough of this metaphor speak. We are going to Beijing, China for a bit of travel. The tickets were cheap, I guess people don’t go to China for Thanksgiving! China was a life of individualism for me, the back story
of any study abroad trip. Since graduation, I’m paying rent, working, living with the guy in my life, and looking at what stability I can find in my future. This is a long way off from good ole Junior year. Sure I’ll still have a beer in the streets of Beijing and find a moment of Zen. Just this time there will be someone else in the equation, zen +1.

Rightfully so, our lives have been centered around ourselves for some portion here and there. It’s only appropriate, considering that for us, it’s where things begin. Yet here and there other people enter life. Especially after graduation, we learn that even when we are alone there are still people all around us that matter and our actions have an impact on. That “feelin’ kinda down” day doesn’t mean homework just doesn’t get done, it can fade into job and relationship performance. Now you ask, “you are right, but any advice?” I can’t say I have anything specific this time around. Just stick to your guns, usually your intuition has the best words for your ears.

We begin to learn that zen +1 can feel just as good as a solid self-centered moment. Zen +1 can also take more work. Just remember there is a context to yourself. We are all supported by a social network around us, even it if at times it feels very impersonal. You have an obligation to the most self-centered cell in your body to learn what around you makes you an individual. Go in, be an individual, and then come out. It may be a closet or it could be out of a shell, but just come out and share yourself with the world around you. We all don’t live around our own Walden Ponds for a reason.

In this battle, hopefully everyone wins.

Be an individual of many…Zen +many.

There are a lot of us who probably wish life was more of a trip. Less like the one you take to your next interview or conference but more like the one where the sky swirls above your head. Tonight I saw “Across the Universe.” It was good. It could have been a bit more polished but totally worth a big thumbs up in my book. There you go, review done.

It might make some of you go crazy, but I wouldn’t mind a bit of my life to be cartoonized, exaggerated, and stretched. This is because it feels this way everyday anyway, so it would be nice to know it’s normal.

Our life and the each characters’ lives in the movie seems to have many present-day parallels. The continuous rhythm of war, fighting, love, confusion, and passion ring as strong as the Beatles songs used in the movie. “Across the Universe” does a great job of exhibiting the tug of war between life, reality, life, and more reality. To learn that life is not only an individual experience but one that is shared with others.

So I need to ask you…do we settle? When does the fight that we each feel for freedom end?

Since school have you crossed the universe or stayed closer to your own shores? In short, since then, what have you fallen for? Interpret how you like.

Opportunity

I think I’ve been bitten.
Is that too personal?

Towers have fallen.
Is that cliche?

We think of peace. The moment.
Should we actually search for it?

Then I realize that
I’m becoming something.

It’s days like these.
That you think you should, do something.

I do. You do.
Just like we do anything.

This foundation is different.
Am I over using the metaphor?

Then I realize that
I’m becoming something.

The refrain is stronger than ever.
It feels newer each time it plays through.

Forget about everything else for just a moment, just as
a child’s eyes watch two opposite magnets slip past each other.