I was greeted by one of the neighborhood cats while out walking this evening. It was sitting quite comfortably in an empty ground-level bird bath, watching me as I passed by. I thought to myself how wonderful a sight--it is a shame that I have not brought my camera or even my phone with me to capture it. I wished so badly to be able to take a picture of this gentle cat before me, to be able to appreciate the delight it shared with me again sometime in the future. But I couldn’t and now I can’t!
In the moment of experiencing this portrait of life I was at the same time thinking of how I would no doubt forget it, that this was the last time I would be able to cherish it. Which is a strange thought to have, I think--isn’t it much more normal to regret the fleeting nature of things after they have fleeted away? In any case, I think that I am sad that my chance to see that cat in the bird bath is gone forever. Though perhaps I might, by some good fortune, happen upon it in that spot again. If that happens, will I think back to this first time and think how silly I was to think it would never happen again, or will I have already forgotten it ever happened?
I’ve been noticing recently how dependent we are on approximation for communication. Even in that opening sentence, I’ve used “recently” as an approximation of time—a general word to denote an arbitrary time period just prior to the present. But that could be any length of time... I could have stewed over this for years, or just sometime at lunch today. The first important thing is to note that both of those possibilities are okay. There’s no rules for just how approximate an approximation can be. However, the second important thing to note is that it matters very much how we interpret approximations. If I say “My flight leaves soon,” meaning within the hour, and you interpret “soon” as sometime in the next 4 hours, we will quickly run towards different levels of urgency. Adding in our own assumptions that we understand each other, we will each think the other is either far too relaxed or far too uptight. I’d wager that most altercations are at least in some part due to these misinterpretations; even small differences in expectation can cause real, far-reaching conflict.
The whole point of using approximations, in my mind, is to make communication easier—to simplify and expediate. Sometimes, we don’t have exact information or an easy way to provide it. It can be difficult or even impossible to tell someone everything about a given subject such that you both see it the same way. Which is why being able to throw a generalization out is so useful: it covers a significant breadth of knowledge in a short span. But I think we can forget that there are error bars on these kinds of things, and that those error bars can change drastically from subject to subject. It seems to me that we have perhaps lost some of the art of approximation, of being able to identify the whole scope of possibility contained in a single word and the capability to further prepare and adapt our own expecatations. Maybe another term for this would be self-awareness. Think about it; do we ever even consider that the person we present to each other is, more or less, an approximation? They do not know what has led us to this point. Close friends know a large part of your personal story; your family may know even more; perhaps your spouse knows the most. But nobody completely, absolutely knows you. They can’t be inside your head, with you every moment. Yet we often act as if they should; we expect those around us to implicitly understand the long and short of our any given situation, and retaliate against them when they inevitably misconstrue some aspect of it. We lack the self-awareness to identify missing details that would help bridge the gap between us. What’s even worse, we lack the vigor to take the time to explain ourselves even when we are able to identify those missing links! Until we are able to properly take care of the communication we have with each other, we will continue to blunder away meaningful connection and instead create unnecessary squabble. It takes effort, humility, and time. But that is the whole point! The goal is to give each other accurate depictions without sharing every impossible detail. There’s a lovely little path between the longest way round and the shortest way home that allows me to walk with you for a moment—and that is the most important thing.
I am always reminded of the Serenity Prayer when reading through the book of Job. Job spends the whole book trying to reconcile the three truths he is caught between: that he has done nothing wrong, that God is just, and that despite that, he is still suffering. He is bounded most closely to that first truth, his righteousness, which is what eventually gets him in hot water first with Elihu and then God. He isn’t wrong to claim that he is blameless—in fact, God even confirms that he is--but the way he ends up coming at the situation by the time his three “buddies” are done with him is no longer from a place of humility. He’s become quite the misanthrope, and on top of that, he’s not interested in defending God. He’s been dealt a bad hand, but he’ll be damned if anyone believes it’s becuase he has beef with the dealer. And he’s very clearly frustrated with the situation he has ended up in. He’s mad becuase he can’t do anything about it. He has done everything as best as he could, left it all out on the court, gave 110%, and still ends up lying in a ditch covered in boils. He knows better than to curse God, but he sure seems to be asking, “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
And from there we get the beautiful series of rhetorical questions from God that defines the book of Job. Through each, God presents Job with stunning vignettes of the universe at varying scales: asking if Job can hold the Pleiades together, or if he knows how long a deer will calf its young, or if he’s ever walked the bottom of the ocean. Job’s initial response is something along the lines of, “What do you want me to say? I’m just a man.” Which is exactly God’s point. All of these things are out of Job’s hands. And not once has he worried about the stars in the sky or the deer in the field or the bottom of the ocean! This tragedy and suffering he’s experiencing, too, is not his responsibility. But because it is proximal to him, he’s decided to try and bear this onus that he can’t carry. And complain the whole time!
The idea behind the Serenity Prayer—to accept what I can’t change, and change what I can’t accept—is very central to the philosophy of the book of Job. Job ends up caught between those two actions: what is he to do if he can’t change what happened, but he also can’t accept the current circumstance in which he finds himself? There must be a space between those two options: for the things that can be changed, just not by us. But we can hope for and dream of a day when those things have been changed by something else, something more powerful and benevolent than we are. We can learn to accept a situation not for the way it is now, but for the future redemption; the kind that we cannot see or bring about ourselves.
Skyrim is one of my favorite games of all time. Though, I’m not sure I can really claim that, since I never actually finished the main story. You don’t really need to—the main draw of the game comes from the open-world exploration and innumerous side quests to get lost in. If you do follow the main storyline, however, you will eventually have a conversation with the dragon Paarthurnax. Paarthurnax was once an enemy of mankind, like all other dragons; but he chose to turn against his kind to help and protect those they were seeking to destroy. In this conversation, Paarthurnax delivers a line that has become one of the most famous pieces of in-game dialogue across all franchises: “What is better—to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?” It’s a magnificent line that drives right into the heart of much of human philosophy. Does life hold more meaning if it must be fought for? It’s challenging, because we really can’t know. The fact of the matter is that we have been given only one of the options to test. Who knows what the life of a person born good looks and feels like? If we did, we’d develop empirical evidence that could determine who won the genealogical draft and who drew the short straw. Instead, we’re all the same. Which means that it is up to us to decide what that answer is for ourselves, without clear evidence. For me, the answer is clear: I will choose to believe that the life of a person that must constantly right the course—of a person that through tremendous struggle and sacrifice is able to rise slightly above the terror and blight—is the greatest blessing that can be given. Sometimes, it’s easy to believe; other times, it’s hard. But it is always helpful.
I’ve recently finished reading a book about a jester during the Thirty Years’ War in the early 17th century, and it’s got me thinking a lot about the peculiar position that a fool must have found himself in. Beyond being an entertainer, a court jester was also responsible for their fool’s privilege: they were given the unique right to mock and dispute anyone, including nobility. They played an important role in the reputability of any royal court. No noble could be considered credible wihtout one. And to that end, I find it an incredibly righteous pursuit—to be solely burdened with the duty of being keen to others’ blindspots and weaknesses through your wit and shrewdness. Of course, the tradeoff is that you’d have to show off your own kind of weakness. They are fools for a reason.
I have been wondering if I have earned the fool’s privilege in the lives of my friends. Have a laid myself low enough, bare enough, to have gained the right to point them towards their own weakness? I think that jesters are often portrayed as conniving, wrathful sons of bitches, but I would guess that they were more often than not quite thoughtful people. They weren’t enslaved and forced to dance around to be laughed at. It was still a profession. So I’d like to think that when they were castigating the king and his court there was some real concern, some kind of kindness, woven into those words. I would like to be someone who can speak to the deficiencies of those I love in kindness and humility, because I know I am not without them myself. I would like to share those faults of mine, to be a fool, so that I may find myself firmly bound to those around me.
I continue to think about the practice of waiting—both because of the season of Advent, which is uniquely set as a Gospel of Waiting, and because I find myself in my own period of waiting. Now, I don’t mind the idea of patience; I have never found terrible difficulty in the practice of delayed gratification. But I do struggle with waiting when I have no control on the outcome. The concept of awaiting a verdict, perhaps. Even when I can be satisfied with having done all I am able to do, I can not get past the angst and the guilty feeling of wondering how it will turn out. Having sorted out my own feelings and decided what should be done, there is still the anticipation of that “final verdict.” I have a number of different feelings about what could happen. There is an emotion for every outcome: fear and grief for those less favorable, hope and joy for the ones that turn out how I’d like, and some sense of solace for the possibilities that lie in between. The trouble is, each feeling wants the lion’s share—it would be easier to let one take over and to assume that the correlating outcome will happen. But this does not, unfortunately, serve me. I would be closing myself off to the other possibilities. If I chose to accept the worst case scenario, I may not be able to treat the situation correctly if it turns out better than expected--I may close myself off to life. On the other hand, should I expect that it will all go my way, how greatly I will be crushed when it does not prove to be so! So I must hold them all at bay, hold them all in tension. Each day, I lean towards a different feeling.
It is a terrible thing to experience, the ups and downs of hope and despair. John Green discussed this idea in an interview, saying that “Despair is so powerful because it tells this complete, holistic story. It explains everything. Everything is the way it is because everything and everyone sucks.” Sometimes, it can feel easier to accept that there is no point and that every good thing is meaningless than to struggle against reality with a hope and a faith that believes that redemption is possible, but not guaranteed. He goes on to say, “[This mindset of despair] just happens to not be true. And so I have to remind myself of that every day.” For me, none of these ideas and expectations that I have imagined are true. Life never works out in a way that I can prepare for. All I can do is my best—to look with compassion and humility towards whatever I find myself facing.
It hurts. But I know, that for the sake of my heart, it is the right thing to do. And I wonder if this is how Jesus felt in the Garden, still hoping that the cup would be taken from him.
In my car, I keep two post-it notes tucked within the sun visor of the driver’s seat. While I was in college, I would often go up to the Bryan/College Station area to spend my weekend with a number of friends I had made there. It had become a place of great comfort to me whilst I was finding it difficult to find a feeling of real belonging in Austin. That being said, I also struggled to work through the insecurity that I felt when spending time in Aggieland; it was hard to picture myself as a valued part of their community, rather than a temporary guest. There were times when I would wonder if I should continue to come back—or if I was really just imposing my own needs and taking advantage of their politeness in showing up.
Twice, though, I found notes left neatly placed on my car window, stuck there early enough in the morning for me to find it when I got up to drive home. They are from separate events, months apart, written by different people. These notes have created an interminable gratitude and confidence in me—I have borne witness to the fruit of a shared connection in these near-mindless services. The care for another required to spur yourself to such minute inconveniences, in my mind, is a love I cannot fathom, but can still eagerly accept.
I have left those notes there in my car for years, so long that the ink has faded. I do not think of them often, and yet I do not cease to carry myself in a way that has undoubtedly been born from their kindness and the kindness of other small acts like them.
The idea of self has been hard for me to pin down. It’s been a commonly-occurring question for me lately--but how do you answer “who am I”? There are so many parts that make up whatever we consider to be the whole, and it seems like each of those parts is in constant motion. How can I possibly hope to track down the real me when that me is always changing--certainly growing linearly, but also subject to cycles of mood and broader seasons of life?
It’s much easier to imagine the person I’d like to be; the person I’m trying to grow into. Parts of me are already that person, but rarely do the stars align such that those parts exhibit themselves in the same moments. The person I am as I write is a much closer estimate to that ideal because I have the privilege of taking the time to pick out certain aspects or wait for them to naturally manifest. I think that I probably think of myself as that person, but there’s a bunch of caveats and hypotheticals wrapped up in there. And so it makes me wonder... can I claim to be the person that I think I am, that I want to be, if it isn’t always true?
What’s even stranger is trying to do the same for another person. If I do not quite know who I am, and they do not quite know who they are, how are we ever going to find out who the other is? The best we can do is broad approximations. I’ll take a guess, and you will have to decide if I’m right or wrong. And then, hopefully, we both learn about each other and a little about ourselves. I have found this to be tiresome work. Rarely is my best estimate right. Even rarer still is when I know the right answer to the other person’s estimate. At the end of it, you’d like to at least feel confident in the facts you have determined, but that is the rarest thing of all. It’s all a lot of fumbling around and eventually you might get a broad shape. The redeeming thing about it--that makes all this troubling effort worthwhile--is that the broad shape you find is really quite beautiful.
I think that the primary question we all come to within ourselves is this: “what are we to do with our lives in the context of tragedy?” There is no life without suffering. And while there is some enjoyment and assurance to be gained with piddling around with the ideas of how and why loss must remain one of the many constants in the auspicious gift we have all received, such thoughts provide little assistance in understanding how to face the inevitable collapse of all that is built up. No answer I have been offered or have given out myself has been able to address it fully. Nothing feels quite adequate for the broad expanse. To cavalier against it feels insufficient. To accept it as a part of life feels incomplete. Even grabbing hold of hope in patient expectance of redemption, which has been a powerful and necessary tool for me (and, I imagine, all people), does not seem to wholly sate the mumbling doubt within me that I find must be faced. It must be, I think, one of those great many things that we can not feel just one way about. One of the many topics that Jesus addressed in his “upside-down kingdom.” Love is another. It is too many things to have one opinion on it. Perhaps tragedy is only unanswerable when looked at broadly. Perhaps some tragedies can be fought against, while others can only be accepted, and others still must find a new solution entirely. Perhaps our lives are too expansive, too full and void of meaning, to be able to ever look at them as a whole. Perhaps we are not meant to know anything but forward.
It takes effort to feel happy--likely because the effort makes whatever reward worthwhile, and because if we are honest, the effort is reward enough. Even when the task is bothersome and morose (perhaps especially then) we find the satisfaction that we search for. I think we are hard-wired to give, to sacrifice, to love. We fight against it; we fight to preserve ourselves and to mitigate risk. But eventually we must cave and fight for something else, and it is then that we finally decide that we are glad to be alive.
I write this truly as a note to myself. I speak generally, but I write “we” only in reference to myself and the reflection I am writing to. I feel it necessary to remind myself, us, that the life I live is one full of pleasantness and joy. I smile and I don’t know why. I receive gift upon gift each day through the presence of my friends, family, coworkers, and strangers. So I am pressed to catalog this not for need of convincing myself that these stated axioms are indeed true, but because it remains a dire choice to choose how to respond to the existence around us. We can find a reason to hate the world should we want to. We can also choose to love each step we take, love each time we meet the gaze of another, love each moment we can muster to live through. It is the more challenging option. I do not know why, but I know that it is. And that is why I feel I must write this to myself--because the acceptance of both the joy and the effort consumed in the process give me the strength I do not have to continue.