This is not a post about loneliness

I’m one of those people who often finds it hard to be alone, but I think this summer I’ve been learning how to appreciate myself and those I’m missing more in moments of solitude. Writing is how I’ve become friends with me.

 

Taking myself on a date

Tomorrow morning I’ll vacate my dimpled couch

turning to straighten the pillows before I leave,

lock the door with a left turn

and toss my keys into the bag on my shoulder.

When I enter the outside the first thing

I’ll do is take a breath of summer air.

The sun will already have soaked the sidewalk.

As I make my way toward my four-wheeled companion

I’ll remember

I need my keys to drive,

tug on the lanyard that holds them,

seek them out among the few bits of treasured junk,

things that carry memories with them everywhere,

even just to get groceries on a Saturday morning.

I don’t have to be reminded of you,

not in that aha! way one remembers the formula

for a circle’s circumference.

You’re there in every moment. Like the glasses on my face

that somehow get filtered out of my vision

when my brain sees more important things.

But when I think about it, as I often do,

I count myself blessed

for the miracle of seeing leaves on the trees,

so often taken for granted

My favorite place to exist

You’re never that far from the road in Grand Marais, Minnesota.

You might think this would detract from the meditative scenery of the North Shore, being so close to such a stark indicator of civilization, but in reality so few cars pass by that the road blends in to the trees around it that stand close together, like bristles on an old-fashioned hairbrush. In this setting the road becomes a reminder of the space between you and other towns, towns with no lake air and people who’ve never even heard of this place.

Not that I would boast to have discovered some hidden phenomenon in Grand Marais, as the town itself is anything but undiscovered. It’s pretty much a tourist town, a quaint gathering of shops and locally famous eateries, its one lighthouse stretching out into the cold, clear waters of Lake Superior, tethered to the rest of the world by a thin strip of algae-skirted boulders.

Venture out onto this man-made peninsula, braving the playful lake spray as it threatens to soak your ankles. Stand facing the horizon, where on a good day the shore opposite you is hidden by a bank of low-hanging clouds, and a brisk wind will flap the unzipped corners of your jacket. The air smells like the cold fog on a metal spoon just removed from the freezer. You can almost forget you’re a part of the world, so far out on the water.

My favorite place to exist is a few miles past the town’s nucleus, on a stretch of rock-strewn beach where a driftwood log sits halfway between the shoreline and the road. I close my eyes and I’m there again, the sun filtering through the clouds to gild the surface of the lake. To either side of me the corners of the beach curve inward, grass and evergreens tapering down to thin points, like the flourishing ends of a grandmother’s cursive script.

If I were blind I could be perfectly content right here, cradled by the stolidly paternal waves, almost still in their ancient rhythm, like the breath that flows in and out of your lungs whether or not you acknowledge it. It’s hard to imagine feeling dissatisfied in a place so serene.

On my desk is a small ovular stone. Its black color has a richness to it I can’t really describe, and it’s so smooth, like polished marble without all the pomp. I like to hold it in my hand and imagine I’m there on the beach I took it from, a little chilly in an overgrown sweater, watching the morning mist dissolve into sunlight. It’s like receiving a postcard from an old friend.

Wish I were there.

Forgive humans

The other day I saw a video by a Lutheran preacher whose ministry revolves around the phrase “forgive assholes.” In the video, she said that forgiveness is about cutting yourself off from whatever it is that the other person did to you, telling them, “what you did to me is so bad, I refuse to be connected to it anymore.” I see a problem with that statement. Not so much in the disconnect, but in backhanded way that it reinforces the other person’s “badness.”

The phrase “forgive assholes” is toxic (especially for Christians), and here’s why:

It perpetuates hurt on both sides by attaching the “asshole” to the behavior you choose to define them by.

You can’t forgive someone if you’re still intent on labeling them. If I say I forgive my brother for lying to me, but then insist on calling him a liar for the rest of our lives, have I really forgiven him? No. I’m holding on to the way he hurt me, refusing to let myself heal from it, and refusing to give him every opportunity to leave that mistake behind. If I “forgive” my brother yet still insist on reminding both of us of what he did to me, I haven’t forgiven at all.

Forgiveness is about letting go of your resentment, your hurt, and your anger. Letting it go. Breathing it out. Because guess what? You are just as flawed.

Maybe some find it hard to forgive others sometimes because they find it hard to forgive themselves. But I think most of us suffer from a different problem: we can’t forgive because we need something to validate ourselves by. Some measuring stick that we can hold our own behavior up to and say “this is so obviously wrong, and there’s no way I’d ever do something so horrible.” We want to believe that there’s someone out there who is worse than we are and less deserving of our forgiveness, because that makes it easier to justify our own sins. So we pretend to forgive. We say “I forgive you, but I won’t forget what you did to me.” We say “I’m cutting toxic people out of my life,” instead of realizing: we are all toxic, and therefore equally deserving of each other’s forgiveness.

I hate to play the dictionary card on this one, but here’s the definition of toxic taken straight from the internet: adj. very bad, unpleasant, or harmful.

Hmmm. By that definition, we are all guilty of some degree of occasional toxicity.

Everyone has hurt someone—even if the person you hurt is yourself. And if you were to cut all the “toxic” people out of your life—all the people who have ever made your life worse or more difficult—you would be left with no one, not even you.

I think a more appropriate phrase would be “forgive humans.” Humanity, by definition, is flawed and generally undeserving of unconditional forgiveness—but we don’t forgive because the other person “deserves it.” We forgive because no one deserves it.

A good pain

“Good” pain? Those two words hardly seem to fit together in one sentence.

To me, though, the phrase means a pain that moves you toward something good. Pain itself may be unpleasant, but sometimes it lets you know: Hey, you’re alive. The knots are being worked out. You’re outgrowing your old wardrobe—in a good way.

You can never really understand the idea of “good pain” until you experience it.

That’s what I think nostalgia really is—when you remember something that made you happy once, and maybe you’re not less happy now, but you can’t help but feel a pang of loss for the past anyway. I’m not old enough to be full of bitter “back in my day”s, but I do get nostalgic about some things.

Like the old Spyro: the Dragon video games.

Pillow forts and sibling sleepovers.

Falling asleep (or pretending to) on the couch while The Two Towers played in the background, so my dad would carry me upstairs.

Lockers with combinations, and new binder dividers.

Winning show choir competitions.

DDR.

Losing a tooth during a school day, like a boss.

The timid footfalls of my dog Robbie, coming up the stairs to warm his tiny self under my blankets.

Fifth grade, when I thought all poetry writing had to be some seriously melancholy venture, and thoroughly hated the experience.

I laugh at my past self a lot—even at the version of me from this morning, who slept a full two and a half hours later than I usually do, just because I didn’t want to climb off of my loft bed. There are some things I might say to me, if I ever went back.

But I wouldn’t ask to go back, I don’t think. I’ve never been big on the time travel thing, unless we’re talking Back to the Future (I remember a time before I owned the DVDs when I would drop everything to watch all three movies every time there was a marathon on TV). And I would never trade my memories for the ability not to miss them.

It’s enough sometimes to just remember, even if it hurts a little. It’s a good pain.

One word at a time

I recently re-downloaded Twitter in an effort to be more connected to the world, and today I was reminded of why I had deleted it in the first place:

My Twitter feed makes me sad.

It’s hard to put into words exactly why that is, but I think it has something to do with the sheer volume of tweets that appear within a span of five minutes. You can scroll for half an hour and literally never reach a place devoid of new tweets. They’re constantly flowing, and all mixed up in a confusing jumble.

Within a minute I scrolled through a plethora of tweets including shocking human trafficking statistics, bigoted speech (from both sides of the political spectrum), quotes by famous actors that we’ll all have forgotten by tomorrow, and an atheist’s resounding declaration that we are all merely products of random chance.

Some of these things were at best thought-provoking; most, I found, were discouraging and unproductive. Discouraging because edifying words seemed so few and far between; unproductive because in the midst of such chaos I tend to shut down. I closed the Twitter app, feeling distinctly less contented than I had before and yet marginally more apathetic.

No one, it seemed, was listening; they were all just shouting words into a circular room from all different angles. Some of these words were related to each other, but most of the time it appeared accidental—and when it wasn’t accidental, it was because someone has started an argument.

Even as I write this I sense a residual sadness. And I need to do something about it. What are we to do in this world of urgency that demands our voices yet so often gives nothing in return? How can we make meaning out of all this noise?

Sometimes I think it would be better for us all if things like Twitter never existed. If all the conversations we had with each other were in-person and real and uncomfortable and insightful. But I realize that not only is that an impossible request, it also denies the amazing opportunities that social media give us to build each other up–and that’s where it starts. With individuals resolving to use their power for good.

It may not be much, but if I want to see the world change I have to be willing to change myself, to rise above, one word at a time. So, moving forward, these are my resolutions:

I resolve to say what I know and seek to understand that which I do not.

To be able to explain why I believe what I believe, but more importantly, to live out those beliefs with conviction and integrity.

To take opposition as a challenge to give others grace.

To believe in the basic goodness of other people.

To reserve judgement and reject cynicism. To recognize the power of my words, and refuse to use that power against anyone.

To listen more, talk less. To connect with people whose experiences are vastly different from my own. To prioritize justice over loyalty to any cause.

To speak the truth fearlessly, with love. To walk humbly in the light of my God, remembering that He desires for all of us to know Him.

To never give up on on faith, on truth, on conversation. Ever.

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” -Galatians 6:9