changes II: reasons to be better

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In my teens I was lucky enough to have a friend/mentor who emphasized a concept of personal integrity: the idea being that who you were when no-one was watching aught to be in tandem with your life the rest of the time. It was about having depth of character. But when no-one seems to be watching at all, any time, ever, however, I have found that rational for self-improvement and self-worth can diminish substantially. Even more, I think, if we find God to be absent. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loneliness is a curse. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was reading this book on loneliness in which E. White discusses how loneliness can be something like a feedback loop. An isolated person may become even more wary of others through being isolated and instead of being drawn toward relationship, is repelled from it. White quotes from Robert Lane's thoughts on his finding that companionship levels recorded in the United States over 20 years fell. The bit I put in italics is what I found most compelling.

"I think that the data shows that you're more likely to be at home with your TV set than you are to be visiting with someone, and when we replace companionship with aloneness we lose the unconscious validation that we're all right, that what we do and think is the right thing to do. The data show that Americans are more anxious than anybody, and I think that's because they feel as though they don't belong."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the movie "Cast Away", Tom Hanks' character spends upwards of four years in solitude, with his friends believing him dead. In this vacuum of community he finds only shards of purpose to pull him against all hope- the idea that he might return to the woman he loved is one that he clings to, even against rational. Where no-one could call him to account for life, he finds a purpose to hold onto his humanity. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At the end of the film he is talking to his best friend about his experience. "I knew I had lost her" he says, speaking of the woman he left when his plane went down; "I had power over nothing."

"That's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket... I had to stay alive, somehow. I had to keep breathing, even though there was no reason to hope and all my logic said I would never see this place again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day that logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in and gave me a sail, and now here I am. And I've lost her all over again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I am so sad I don't have Kelly, but I am so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing, because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Realizing that you can't save yourself is a valuable lesson which is only taught through experience. Despair was like looking over the edge and feeling gravity pulling me over. So what can I claim? A shred of hope? A sliver of faith? God's grace through providence, clothed in guise of blind luck? The promise that a mustard seed was enough? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About this time last year I decided to lean into this remnant once more, even though I felt so damn tired. I had pretty much resolved that if I didn't find something like community by summer's end that I would be leaving town, shaking the dust off my feet as I did. I made a resolution to stop drinking and smoking- trying to do my part to turn a leaf, but in the end feeling that the catalyst could only be people who created substance. Losing Wilson was only a forgone necessity. Incredibly, it happened. I did not move out of town in September, and against my fears that what I'd begun to discover would dissipate with the pace of autumn, I instead continued with this collection of souls which began to heal my helpless self. I don't know that anything in life is as beautiful as real community. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Community. Roll that word around in your mouth. At some point in our lives some of us have decided that this is a utopian ideal which only exists on sitcoms, and not, if less perfectly in real life. But if community isn't meant for us, then why do we get so upset when a character on our sitcom leaves the show? Unless this sitcom character is going to walk out of the screen and into my world I need real people to give my life a vector- to create a storyboard with; to be colors of accent against mine on the canvas of life. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By which we find meaning. By which we find an account, and in that account our story is written, and as we read it, we determine to make it better. We lift up the heroics of others. We are simply glad to be in a good story, and by good we never mean perfect. By good we mean purposeful. And in the purpose we find hope, and in hope, a reason to have integrity, to want to become a better person.