Christmas night I drive through a small town. I could have taken the highway, but I don't. I drive on small, short little roads--curves impractical rather than seductive. The lampposts are lit, and there are decorations up, and it is festive. Festive, but alone. It is a celebration, but there is nobody celebrating. The celebration is inside the houses that line the small-town streets. I am the one who is alone. It's a weird feeling...
I see a couple of other cars out...and I wonder to myself why they are out. Why they are driving in Sheboygan Falls at 7.30 on Christmas night. That's when you celebrate--ya know? That's not the time when you're out driving.
As a matter of fact, that is precisely the time when you are not out driving.
I have to drive. I can't stop, really, even if it means being out and about on Christmas night at 7.30. Even if it means giving up traditional measures of comfort--even if it means defying tradition--I have to. I can't really stop. So even though I may want to go back and relax in my quiet home, I can't. because I have better things to do.
Better things. Ha.
I keep driving. The lights are looking at me judgementally. Streetlamps with their sad festoons of evergreen--either fake (which end up looking cheap) or fresh (which end up looking dead). They're saying to me, "shoulda got out when ya had the chance. Shoulda cashed in, and gone and embraced those simple pleasures that your family back there embraces--they can enjoy the little things."
Because that's what pleasure is. It's simple. When you complicate pleasure, it becomes less pleasurable, it becomes more like work. It becomes more stressful. Pleasure--what we call pleasure--can be stressful. Recreation become less about unwinding and more about fitting every last activity in.
The ability to laugh at the story of a stupid cat that loves to lick hands...there's nothing sophisticated about that, or intellectual. it's just funny. It's grotesque, and it's funny.
Is being intellectual a bad thing? Is it...does it make you more mean, lower?
Does my intellect make me less able to appreciate the wonders of life?
Just because I comprehend something doesn't mean that I understand it. Have I broken apart the rose to see what's inside--and lost the beauty of it?
This was supposed to be a poem. It started off as "My Impression Of Lights In A Little Old Down-Town Street". And look at it now. All growed up into a melancholy soul-search.
I feel stupid. I feel stupid for thinking I'm smart. I feel stupid for accepting the world's concept of "intelligence" with which it labels me. I feel stupid for being proud of that label.
Last year in my Classical and Modern Rhetoric class, we were assigned a "commonplace book". We were supposed to write down awesome quotes that we read or heard or saw on TV or in a movie or on-stage. I did this, and I recently ran across my old commonplace book.
Here are some of the quotes from it, and I apologize in advance for not citing.
When in doubt, light something on fire.
Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.
In ancient Sparta, things were decided by which side shouted the loudest. Fortunately, we are not in ancient Sparta.
History is written by those who have hanged heroes.
It's our wits that make us men.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.
Duty is ours; consequences are God's.
You're in love. Have a beer.
Satisfaction is a vice.
There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.
To speak French, punch yourself in the tongue and try to talk.
Sirs, the vessel of our State, after being tossed on wild waves, hath once more been safely steadied by the gods.
Nothing is more characteristically juvenile than a contempt for juvenility.
I may take some flak for this post, but what the heck--my 360 just died, and I'm feeling antagonistic.
Not too antagonistic, mind you, because I was the third owner of said machine. Nevertheless...ouch. I'm not a fan of things that break. It's not my idea of A Fun Time.
Okay, so I was back home for the weekend, and my esteemed father, who happens to be a pastor, preached about Matthew 28:11-15. You know, the bit right before the Great Commission where...meh, I'll just pop it into the body of the post. Can't hurt, right?
While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, "You are to say, 'His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.' If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
So...yeah. Those chief priests were bad, bad men.
And then, right after it says that "this story has been widely circulated", there's this bit. Perhaps a tad more familiar.
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Now, notice anything interesting about those two little blurbs? Right: they're kinda parallel. First you have the bad guys sending out their minions to spread their version of the truth...then you have the Good Guy sending out His...well, I won't call them minions...His disciples to spread His version of the truth. (We all know which truth is Truth.) Then you have the promise of reward (money/omnipresence) and an allusion to eternity.
Awesome, huh?
I just love it when the Bible is good literature. And as I've learned more about literature, I keep finding instances of fine craft in the Holy Scriptures. I guess there's a reason Jesus is called the Word in John 1...
Instead of waxing verbose on how delighted/scared/proud/humble that makes me feel, I'm going to look back. I feel that this year my attitude is different than in past years, and that's a good thing. But it also prompts me to consider exactly what my attitude was in the first three years, and exactly how my current attitude is different.
So.
My freshman year was a strange one. I was nobody...but I liked being nobody. Shortly after beginning classes my first semester, I came to the very welcome conclusion that I was more intelligent that 90% of the student body--or maybe that 90% was closer to 95%. I was riding high in all of my classes, and I sort of considered myself an intellectual ninja--someone who nobody expected to excel, because they didn't know him, and then he'd STRIKE FROM THE SHADOWS and get an A in the class, and then disappear back into the woodwork.
More than that, I thought of myself as a youthful, fresh-faced savior. Nobody knew me, but they would, I told myself. I was going to be an intellectual shot in the arm here at my school.
Gosh, I was a pill.
Then came my sophomore year. This was when I began doing theatre, incidentally, and this change brought about a shift in my priorities. While previously I had been rather narrow-minded, viewing academic achievement as the only way for me to leave my mark here at school, now I realized that there were other ways to achieve "remembered" status.
During my sophomore year, I began realizing that my willingness and ability to work well with my superiors gave me an advantage over my fellow students. I had figured out by now that, while I was smarter than most of my peers, I also had to work to cultivate that advantage. I didn't particularly love work, and toadying to my superiors was a whole lot easier than striving and achieving.
As a sophomore, I didn't see myself as a fresh-faced savior; now I saw myself as something of a rising star. My potential was no longer latent; it was becoming active. In another year, I felt, I would be well-known and powerful.
Then came my junior year. By this time, I had honed my social skills to the point where people could actually bear spending time with me, and I had been elected to the executive board of a student organization. I got the lead in our Fall Musical, I had a semi-official position (unpaid, of course) within the machinery of our theatre department, and I felt that I had almost arrived. Surely by my senior year I would be king (or at least committee chairman) of all I surveyed.
Then some funny stuff happened. I lost an election I considered a foregone conclusion. I was in charge of an event that didn't live up to my expectations. I got in touch more with the world outside my school. And I saw a lot of freshmen.
This led to a shift in my perception of myself. Whereas before I thought I was all that and more, now I began to realize that my point of view was wrong. I was considering my accomplishments relatively, not absolutely. In other words, I was viewing myself as a big fish and denying the fact that I was in a tiny, tiny pond. When I have had the opportunity to experience larger arenas, like, say, the Milwaukee theatre scene, I am sharply reminded that I am nobody and I have done nothing.
Now, one might ask, "Ian, how does that differ from how you looked at things your freshman year?" The answer is that I'm in a different pond now. When I was a freshman, I was a small fish, but I was in a small pond; it takes less time to be biggest in a small pond than to be biggest in the ocean. Sure, I'd like to be influential and affect people's lives. But I now know that the chances of being "influential" are pretty small. Everything has to line up right and fall into place perfectly. And I'm starting mighty late.
And one may not neglect the spiritual side. I don't often do this, and perhaps I should do it more often...but here's a bit from one of the least-known books of the Bible, 2 Corinthians:
For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord--for we walk by faith, not by sight--we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5.1-10)
This is interesting, because it doesn't specifically say that the "mortal", the earthly, is bad. It's a "burden", and "we groan" under it, but that's not because the "mortal" is evil. It's because we yearn for our "home not made with earthly hands." I also think the repetition of "being...of good courage" is noteworthy--this earthly pond of ours here can be trying at times, and stressful, but we were "prepared...for this very purpose" by God.
But that's all incidental. What I focused on in this passage is where it talks about "our ambition". See there, where it says that our ambition should be "to be pleasing to Him"? Yeah. My #1 priority should not be building my influence or creating a legacy or even maximizing my potential. It should be pleasing my Father in heaven.
As I enter my senior year, I think I'm on a healthy path. I need to finish these two semesters, and I don't need to elevate my status here any more. I mean, I'll be gone after this year. And who cares if I'm remembered at some two-bit Lutheran school in Milwaukee? The fact that this has been the only world I've known for the last three years doesn't mean that it's the only one--or even a worthwhile one.
I have moved beyond school. I'm beginning to think like an adult.
This concludes the personal, uncomfortable, boring section of this post. Here's a video.
It's catchy, it's intriguing, and it's atmospheric. I don't know why recently I've been on such a '60s and '70s kick...but it seems like they put more thought into their music back then.
Anyway...
(Maybe sometime I'll write a blogpost about my sign-off. It's an interesting story. And don't forget, if you want to view this post with all sorts of flashy stuff, especially that video which I so kindly embedded, travel on over here to The Uninformed Opinion and get the real lowdown.)
