I'm OK.

I'm OK.

No, really, I'm OK.

I'm more melancholy than most people, but that's OK, too. I've been melancholy for as long as I can remember, I've never been the happiest baby on the planet. There are worse things.

One of things I've finally put words to is how content I am to be discontent, uncomfortable, lonely, and melancholy. At least, I define it as "contentment", but it could also be defined as "my career is worth the suck." It's my cross to bear. It's also a finite amount of minor suck, in the face of an infinite reward.

Seriously, I may not enjoy life, but I wasn't born under a contract that Life owed me 100 years of relaxation and pleasure. At least I have a cause, I meet people all the time that don't even have that. They're working a job because everyone needs a job, so why not take over their father's business, and they just drift around, taking the path of least resistance until they die.

Disliking my existence is hardly the same thing as having a Bad Day. A year ago, a combination of an existential meltdown, a severe lack of Faith, and being used by two friends resulted in a very bad day. In the past year, I've sorted through the first two, and realized that the third is their fault, not mine.

So now I'm OK. If you want someone to love life, and thorough enjoy everything, never hand them a Bible and tell them it's the Word of God. Jesus was not on this planet to make us happy and fill our lives with puppies, flowers, and Grandma's cookies. The Book says that if we love this life, we'll die, but if we hate this life, we'll live eternally. (John 12:25) Paul echoed that and said that given the choice, he'd rather be dead and in Heaven, but that he has work to do, so he'll put off dying until he gets the job done. (Phil 1:21)

So, I'm OK, but I forget that we've added to the list of sins in 2012. Being unhappy is now a sign of being sinful and not trusting God. For that matter so is being lonely. Because God totally said it was good for Adam to be alone in the Garden, right? Or that having brothers was good enough, so God created Jim, Bob, and Steve, and they got together once a week for pizza and a Bible study, right?

Nope. God created a WIFE for Adam.

I'm melancholy because I'm lonely. It's been the single constant thread throughout the past two years of being melancholy. I left Idaho, and while I kept in touch with folks, but nobody came with me to share life. Then I left Spokane, and kept in touch with people, but I was still alone. When I leave Tulsa, I'll keep in touch with people, but I will still be alone. Everywhere I go, I make good friends, people I want to keep in touch with, but I leave them all behind when I leave.

I do not like that. I want to have someone in my life that doesn't leave. Someone I don't have to leave.

Tolkien said that "not all who wander are lost." I'm not lost, God knows exactly where He's sending me. And if Home is where the Heart is, than I can't go there yet anyways. I'm OK with all of this, it's a good life, but I would rather not live it alone.

I'm OK with it, if I have to be, I have Faith enough to cover my discontent, but the best and most beautiful things in life should be shared, not seen alone.

The Charlie Brown Method of Livng Through Painful Shit.

So, it seems that Life has once again given me hope, then taken it away. I charged right up to that ball, and was going to smash it through the uprights, but life pulled it away right before my foot hit it, and now I'm flat on my back, and it hurts like hell.

My form was perfect. I wasn't lagging back, fearful of what might happen if I kicked it. I wasn't hesitant. I'd practiced kicking that ball hundreds of times on my own, and it would have been a beautiful field goal. But life, like Lucy in Peanuts, is rather fond of pulling things away at the last second.

In life, I've discovered that the vast majority of my responsibility simply comes down to doing what must be done, in the manner in which it must be done. That 90% of things go horribly wrong hardly matters, that remaining 10% demands that I *always* kick as hard as I can, because occasionally, and eventually, I'm going to hit the ball, and score the field goal.

Right now, shit hurts. I really want to get bitter, because that would allow me to foist the pain onto someone else. Because it's not my fault, this time, but it's also not their fault. There isn't fault or blame to spread around, it simply didn't work.

So, in order to deal with the pain, I need to just pull a Charlie Brown. Had the ball not been pulled out of the way, it would have been the most beautiful field goal ever. So why would I deal with self-recrimination and other pointless agony? It's not my fault that the ball got pulled away.

But it's not the fault of the other party. If I choose to blame the other party, and invite bitterness, I'll just be fearful of kicking the next ball that life sets up for me to kick. If I let that happen, I'll never kick the ball, and I'll never score that field goal. Then the game will always be a lost one, because I won't be brave enough to attempt to kick the ball.

So, living through painful shit like this really just comes down to figuring out two things:

1. Did I handle my end of kicking the ball properly?

2. Is the goal of kicking the ball a worthy one?

If those two answers are yes, then there's nothing to regret. Life is shit, always has been, always will be. That life is shit isn't something to regret, it's something to endure. I did my best to kick that ball properly, and the goal of kicking the ball is a worthy one, so I don't have anything to regret.

The next ball, man, the next ball is going straight through the uprights. It's going to be the most beautiful, most dead-center, most perfect field goal ever kicked. I'm going to kick it so hard, and with such perfect form, that it sails all the way to the moon.

Because that's how Charlie Brown does it.

A few loud thoughts on silence.

I want you to try something. I want you to turn off every source of noise you can control for the next five minutes. Watch a clock, so long as it doesn't tick, and turn off everything that makes a noise you can hear. Don't talk to yourself, don't tap nervously on anything, just sit there and watch the clock for five minutes, silent. Breathe as quietly as possible.

Keep reading when you're done.

Now, if you're anything like me, those first couple minutes were hard. Just sitting here, with my computer on my lap, I wanted to *do* something. I mean, five minutes, man! I could nuked a slice of pizza, or taken a drink of water, or been productive.

But by the end of the five minutes, my heart rate had gone down a bit, and my mind was a little less spun up (I generally only write when I'm amped up for some reason), and even though I wasn't really anxious, I'm a little calmer than I was five minutes ago.

Our world is very loud. It's absolutely full of noise. I heard a couple cars go past, and my computer was whirring, and my body, it turns out, creaks like a factory full of unoiled hinges. And I have some tinnitus. Yay.

But in the silence, there's a lot more than just an absence of noice. It occurs to me that in a society that doesn't sleep, in a place where the lights never go out, and the noise never stops, that I think we're losing our ability to turn ourselves off because nothing ever turns off.

Now, I'm not going to espouse taking more vacations, or longer breaks at work, or turn this into some navel-gazing quest for spirituality, but at some point, couldn't we all use a little time to just sit, for a couple minutes, in silence, and turn the world down a couple decibels?

I know people that I can talk with for hours. And that's good. And there are songs and pieces of music that I can listen to all day long. That is also good, it helps me get through my day. And I'm ok with not talking myself, there's certainly a value in listening to others.

Noise, in a philosophical sense, provides distractions from what's around us. I listen to music during shop class because it helps me pass the time, by distracting me from what's around me, and allowing me to focus on what I need done. It's a filter, and all filters have a good use at times.

But I think society has lost a certain level of comfort with a lack of noise. We need to be comfortable with silence, because when we're silent, the first thing that makes us uncomfortable is ourselves. It's hard to be alone with your thoughts.

It's also pretty hard to be silent around other people. Ever been in a group of 5-10 people and had the conversation get stpped artificially? Do you notice how quickly someone starts talking just to fill the noise?

I don't really have a stunning and cogent point to make. But this world is loud, and I think sometimes, I silence.

Maybe you do, too.

Dr. Kierkegaard, Or, How I Tried To Stop Being Faithful and Love the Mob.

Did I ever tell you the story about how I lost my faith at a Bible college? No? Well, it's not something I've ever talked much about. Much of it is hard to explain, as I would assume the inner workings of anyone's head is hard for them to explain. Nevertheless, I probably ought to try. I've recently been called "inspirational", and I want to put a quick stop to that before the word gets out.

To begin, I must start my story with a bit of history. Where else?

About 160 years ago, there was a Danish man named Soren Kierkegaard. Very much like me, he struggled with depression for most of his life. He was engaged to a pretty young Danish girl, but realized that he could never be a good husband because of his melancholy (which sounds way better than "depression"), and broke off the engagement, and spent the remaining ten years of his life writing a string of books that mark him as one of the most engaging and challenging Christians to ever put pen to paper.

About the same time, this one cat in America with a pretty bitchin' beard started a Bible college.

Then I showed up about 140 years later. That's when the shit got real. So, like Soren, who's the guy I took this pseudonym from, I've been a very depressed man for the majority of my life. It's pretty much miraculous I've survived this long, and some days I'm surprised I'm still here. And, like both Soren and the guy that started the Bible college, I'm a very devout Christian.

At the end of 2008, a girl I kinda liked quit her job to go on a 3-month mission trip to Africa. At some point in that trip, and I don't know exactly why, she basically stopped being my friend, and has never really cared to talk to me since. Before that had happened, though, I'd asked God to make me a man that was worthy of having a wife like her. In the history of dumb shit I've prayed for, that kinda set a high bar for dangerous prayers. God, being wise, decided to set in motion a chain of events that I think is His way of doing just that.

I'm not arrogant enough to think it's working.

In August of 2009, I was given a copy of Kierkegaard's book "Fear and Trembling", which neatly exploded the plans I had for my life. See, at the time I was being tugged by God to change the direction my life was going, but hadn't really wanted to be obedient. I would have said that I was "faithful", but in reality, I was fighting against God as hard as I could.

Then I got F&T, and it simply shattered my preconceptions of what it really meant to have faith in God. It's one of those books that I absolutely love, but often joke that it fucked my life up. In a good way, but the whirlwind that book started has yet to slow down.

There are books that one must be brave to read, F&T is one of them. Kierkegaard has a way of forcing the reader to work to understand the point he's trying to make, only to realize that point is something that the reader must face in his own life, not a solution to be understood, itemized, and placed safely on a shelf.

Anyways, I read the book. Then my girlfriend broke up with me, I'd been arguing with God over how to save the relationship, He was telling me to break it off because it was time for it to end, but I refused. It ended anyways. Then He told me to quit my second job, and in my typical dumbass fashion, I replied that I'd need a sign if I was to quit.

Actually taking things on faith was rather new to me at the time. God, however, figured He could manage something like that, and the situation at my second job went to hell so fast that I quit in disgust about a week later. Maybe two, things are kinda blurry at this point.

In any case, I was like "OK, God, now what. I'm single, which sucks, and working only one job, which means I can no longer make my bills, so now what?"

God, being a patient God, replied with "Quit your main job, too. I'll provide."

Me, being an asshole who can't take orders, started to argue with God anew.

But the whirlwind that F&T had started in my life wouldn't let me hide behind pants-wetting terror at the idea of quitting a decent job, so after increasingly-tearful nights of prayer in the laundry room of a truck stop, I waited for the store manager to show up, walked up to him, and told him that I was quitting simply because God had told me to, and gave him two days to find a replacement.

Now, at this point, I should take a moment to describe what it feels like to do something like that. Imagine, if you will, walking on the edge of a razor, several thousand feet above the ground. You feel the adrenaline rush through your body, and it's absolutely exhilarating, but at the same time, you know that if you fall, you will die. Thrown in a touch of agony, as you reject everything you know to be logical, everything you'd normally call wise and rational. Now, add to that a sense of peace so commplete that you can barely comprehend it, and paradoxically, you feel all of this, the bliss, terror, peace, agony, and exhilaration all at once.

That might start to cover it.

To borrow a phrase from Kierkegaard, I took a leap of faith. It's not really a leap of faith if you can see where you'll land, and God certainly provided a most interesting set of jobs for the next couple months.

Then, in January 2010, after being unemployed for a couple weeks after another leap, I was drving around my hometown, looking for industrial-type businesses that would give me an idea of where I could work after getting the machinist's training I was planning on getting at the time. God, however, gave me the idea of seeing what the MAF needed, so I went there. They said, basically, that they didn't need machinists, but could always use pilots, so after about 30 seconds of prayer, if even that, I accepted God's call to missions.

The MAF, when asked which school provided the best training, pointed me to the bearded man's college. I was accepted after couple months, and was, if not happy because I'm melancholy by nature, was well-pleased to finally have a Purpose.

I suppose I should mention what the folks around me thought about the events described herein. Across the spectrum, I think the phrase "What the hell are you doing?" pretty much covers it. Well, there was a little bit of "You're insane" and "You're too much of a fuck-up to succeed" thrown in, but that mostly came from my family and the local clergyman.

At the end of summer, I left for the Bible college. So, that's the history, and now it's time for philosophy.

I left for that Bible college with literally nothing to my name but a car and faith. I drove 400 miles to a school that I'd never visited to train for a career that at the time, I didn't want (Oh, didn't I mention that? At the time, I really hated the idea of being a missionary.) I had enough money in my bank account to buy groceries and pay the first month's rent, no job, no cash, and no real plan for school other than living in my car once I got evicted. I actually let another student, a total stranger, borrow my car, simply because I figured she'd bring it back with more gas than I had in it at the time.

But I had faith, righteous and pure. I had a conviction that I should be on this path so strong that I went against the advice of everyone who weighed in, against my own desires to do nothing resembling missions work, and against my own history of failing at academic activities. Having come face to face, metaphorically speaking, with God in a laundry room, I had nothing and no one to hide my desire for disobedience behind, so it was impossible for me to say anything other than "I will go."

Then again, these folks were the experts, so I reasoned that soon, I would not have to have quite so much faith in God, since other people could reassure me that I was on the right path. Soon, I reasoned, the call to missions would be logical, and I would have no need to remain on that razor's edge. I could be accepted, I could be reassured, and I could retreated from God into the mass of the crowd.

If I could just find one person who'd tell me I belonged there.

If I could just find one person who thought the way I do.

If I could just find one person to justify my actions, so I wouldn't have to say "Faith alone" in my defense.

If I could just find a reason other than "God" to do what I did.

If I could just leave faith behind for knowledge, to get off that razor.

And so, on a Bible-college campus of about 450 students, I searched high and low for a way to escape my Faith in God. It didn't really take long, either. I soon found distractions, in the form of debates, arguments, doctrine, and classmates. I found all sorts of people who were true believers, and so, I reasoned, I would soon find a justification for my actions that I could point to, instead of "Faith".

But I could never remain distracted, and never found acceptance from the Mob, so I started feeling depressed, simply wishing I wasn't so alone. As the second semester dawned, I was more alone than ever, having few classes with my friends, and fewer of those even being able to stop by and hang out.

Consider the situation! Having been contentedly face to face with God before I came, I now wished simply to not be alone! What foolishness that He was enough in a laundry room, but not at a school dedicated to serving Him!

Then, as my story goes, I got too depressed for the bearded one's college to accept, so I was cast out, and rendered homeless, and even my family would not take me in. I was truly lost, then. I had wished so hard to hide from God in the shadows of the mob, to be reassured by a collective instead of the Absolute, that when I lost them, I could not even find God. The God that had invaded my laundry room had been lost in the static of the mob.

Exactly how I'd wanted Him to be.

I often refer to the day five cops woke me from my bed as the epitome of a "wake-up call". As my life progresses, I often find new things the events of that day woke me up from. I realize now how far I'd fallen from the leap of faith I'd taken when I arrived at that school.

And I still can't quite believe how badly I fucked that up.

I wish I could point to the "friends" that did such an excellent job of abusing my friendship, but then, how many more times has God given me a second chance?

And if I could simply say "well, I should not have cared so much what they did to me", then would I not be saying at the same time "Well, I should not have loved my friends so much, despite how much I am loved"?

And if I should say "Well, I should have asked for help sooner", would I not be saying "I should have asked for help before I was ready to accept it, giving me one more thing to fight against"?

I've spent the last ten months searching for my Big Mistake that lead to the Bad Day. In the end, facing the Absolute, all I can honestly regret is wanting to be accepted by the Mob, so I would not need to be face to face with Him. The only thing in that entire seven-month period that I would change, including how it ended, was that I so earnestly desired to be accepted there.

To wish that just one person there would say I belonged, when I had not allowed myself to even slow down for a single person back home, who knew me so much better, that I regret.

To wish for just one person to take the burden of Faith from my shoulders, instead of simply continuing on the way it had begun, crying on my knees in faith. That I truly regret.

In light of the terrifying thought that people look to me as an inspiration, I will simply state that being alone with God, Loving and Absolute, is a far better fate than being accepted among humans, hateful and minute. Woe that anyone should look to me for comfort, instead of God!

The only thing that can truly be worthwhile in this world is to be close to God, and if you should find yourself kneeling before God, take care that you remember the infinite scale of that encounter should anyone ever attempt to waylay you one the path He dictates for you.

No matter what happens, there will never be anything you regret more than turning your back on God simply because the crowd hates you. Let them hate you, God Himself loves you. In the infinite scale of our minuteness to His Absoluteness, the mob is totally fucking irrelevant. Not to mention manipulative, abusive, forgetful, and totally absent on the Day we will all stand alone before God, facing all the things we've ever done.