This post is a shout-out to a christian magazine I have been a part of led by David Lavallee and now Tristan McDonald. It's been pretty great being part of an endeavor in which my friends are actively relating to God. Below is my article that I submitted for the Spring 2009 edition. When I get the chance I will put a link to the magazine on the front page since this post is buried somewhere on the blog.
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CEASELESS STRIVING
Seeking Life in the Most Unnatural Ways By Joel Lee
One of the things I like to do the most is sit down in some open place (with electricity of course; I’m not an outdoors-type) and play music really loudly. I’m not into the really heavy stuff with loud boom-box beats or simple acoustic things. I want something that describes the state of my soul. Depending on my mood I switch between Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Muse, Piano Jazz, Miles Davis, Violin Classical, Beethoven, and Chopin. This stuff is complex; I don’t know how they composed any of it. Well, as I’m sitting in some open room with my music going, my mind wanders throughout the room, rising and falling with each broken crescendo. If anybody watches when I’m in this mode, I would just be sitting in some wistful state staring out the window. I think that’s where my mind has gone.
While I’ve been sitting around in one of these mental hot tubs, I was thinking about some of my childhood memories. It’s like looking at a photo album. You look at the picture and you start remembering who you were and how this or that experience affects you. Well, this memory goes back to when I was in first or second grade. It seems about the same after fifteen years. I remember having a pretty awful time in school.
Back in the day if you were looking for diversity, you would have to look under a rock to find any in a New England suburb. And during that time if you found any, you would find me. I was diversity. Somehow my elementary colleagues would greet me each day and pull their eyes back and tell me they were Chinese. It was awful. I don’t think my eyes are even like that. I’m pretty sure my teacher felt pretty bad for me and had me draw Chinese characters on a whiteboard to culturally educate the class. Reiterating living in a New England suburb, I don’t know how to read or write Chinese, so all I could write was the word “people.” One of my colleagues commented that it looks like a bird and now there was the word “people” written all over the place for the next week or so.
Then beyond being Chinese, if such a thing was possible, is being a small kid around the big kids. Everything older people say is pretty intimidating when you are in second grade. I was fortunate enough to encounter this everyday at a bus stop. These fifth graders constantly made fun of how pathetic I was as a second grader. There’s also competition between elementary children. My contemporaries would always compare how good they were, how much more they had, or how incredibly knowledgeable they were. Of course you feel like poop when your so-called friends tell you these things. Furthermore, my parents were going through a pretty rough patch of their marriage and it affected how I interacted with people.
You know, it’s not too hard to break the will of a youngster. I don’t think everyone deals with it the same way, but some form of self-protection begins to develop. I hated being picked on, pointed out, pitied. I feared being ostracized, being left alone for who I was. I decided the best move was to bring some book about rainbows to school and read it whenever I had the chance during free time. I would avoid these problems of being pointed out; however, it simply became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I became more and more shy and I think more depressed looking because I was assigned a counselor during those years. I couldn’t help it, but everything that I seemed to be doing was going downhill towards this very fear of being left alone. The very thing I did not want to be happening was actually happening.
Then I moved during third grade to another town. I think my parents knew something was up because my dad encouraged me that everything was beginning new again. He told me this was a fresh plate in which I could start adding new and different things to it. This was my opportunity! I knew for a fact that being all depressing-like didn’t help me out before, so I put on a different persona. I wanted to be smart and outrageous. I wanted people to like me and flock to me. Rather than live by fear, I decided to live by a new system of rules and rituals. I would do whatever it took for the sake of my happiness, my pleasure.
I wanted to draw a new picture of me, or at least how people perceived me. I wanted to be funny, smart, and popular. And I went to whatever lengths possible to fulfill this dream. I became a playground pervert at recess so that my new set of so-called friends would think I was hilarious and really bold. I made fun of classroom rejects and bullies so that I could show that I was a man’s man. I reviewed more complex math problems and studied vocabulary at home to impress anyone possible when I aced exams. I would try to be extra nice to people privately so that they would like me, then I wouldn’t mind discarding them publicly so that I could look cool and confident. All of this was for my own sake. I wanted to feel amazing and back up how I felt with my deeds. I’m pretty sure shades of this still show up in my life. I was popular; I was outrageous; people knew me. The very thing I wanted began to happen.
Is this the fairy tale ending I was looking for? Sure I became the total opposite of the depressing state I was in “the other town.” However, now I was trying to become someone I totally was not. I was doing things so that people would like me. I was doing these things so I could prevent my fear of being alone from actually happening. I was operating out of fear and self-satisfaction. Yet, this stuff was all fake. I lived like this all the way until I was in high school until I realized that no one around me, none of my friends really knew me for who I was. In fact I was all alone once again, only it was in a difference sense, only I knew that I was alone.
As I dig up this memory time capsule, there is one peculiar thing that stands out. Though my values may have changed, my responses to life remain the same. The decisions I make and how I interact with people are through the thought process of either protecting myself or making myself feel good. Even though I may not be the person I portray myself as, I would rather sacrifice my identity for the sake of fear and pleasure. How strange!
The question I’m wondering is, “Who am I trying to be?” I just need to DVR my conversations and see the words I choose to use, the actions I try to do, and I see that I’m trying in some shape or way trying to shape how people see my character in one way or the other. Am I alone when I share this?
Avoiding fears and pursuing pleasures run deep into every part of my life. In being afraid to be abandoned by my friends, I finagle to say the right things. If I’m dealing with some great struggle or pain, I choose to avoid the topic in our conversations. If I’m deeply hurt by one of my friends, I think bringing it up will only separate us, so I choose to ignore this pain. If I am excited by something new, inspired by something beautiful, or perplexed by something strange, I prefer to downplay my elated emotions so that I can avoid being hurt if my friends don’t feel the same way. How is suffocating our very identity a good thing?
In running away, I run towards something that is similarly disturbing. I work for my happiness even though I am willing to sacrifice my very identity. Rather than choose what I really think, I try to say nice things and do nice deeds so that people will like me. When it calls for it, I try to do mean things and say insulting things so that other people will like me. I completely ignore humanity for the sake of reputation. Furthermore, some of my habits are simply ridiculous. I lose myself for the sake of this one shot of pleasure. I gouge myself on food sometimes, I get completely addicted to video games, and I spend hours “enjoying” myself with pornography. I dwell in the fantasy and the abundance because it is better to be happy than to live in reality. When I wake up, I can’t help but ask, “Who am I?” I’ve become someone else that is unrecognizable to me. I look in the mirror I may see a familiar face, but the one who stands before me is an absolute stranger. For the sake of pleasure, I forget I am myself
Neither living on the low road of fear and isolation nor living on the high road of ecstasy and self-pleasure leads me to life. In fact, I have found that these two paths are exactly the same. They are both roads of non-life. I avoided problems when I was in second grade. I covered my life with makeup when I was older. These two actions are the same things, disregarding my very being.
I wonder if this is a common response for all of us. In running away from fears or towards pleasure, what is it that we want? I think that we are trying to shape our life into how we think it ought to be. Of all the things this world offers us such as comfort, fame, wealth, relationships, and religion, we alchemize the different ingredients in varying portions to form an identity that is great in our minds. All this hoo-ha about fear and pleasure shows us our deepest desires of having purpose and being loved. There are many different things we can do to fulfill these deep desires, yet let’s review our options: food, music, sleep, entertainment, cars, lakefront properties, promotions, resumes, net worth, sex, knowledge, being known, church attendance, hobbies, family, etc. There’s nothing really wrong with any of these things; however, if this becomes the object of our life, something seems off. Something doesn’t seem right about the fact that we are born into this world, work up some social ladder for 60+ years for one of these things, and then our life ends. At the end what do we have to show for this life we’ve worked for?
Bear with me for a moment. Imagine when we’re dead there’s this bighead platform we get to stand on. This platform is where the whole world gets to hear our crowning achievements. What would we say? What would we hear? How many 10,000 square feet homes and vice presidents would we hear about? How many picking up garbage in a park or helping old ladies cross the street stories would we hear? Here’s the thing that slays me. Not only would we hear the similar stories over and over again, but what boast would have been worth hearing? Is who we want to hear, the one we are striving after? And are they worth your life?
This is where we find ourselves. No matter where we try to go, we find these empty roads that do not lead to life. Is this the end? If there is no life in anything we do, what do we have to live for? But, Wait! There is one more way we have not yet examined.
“Look closely. Has this ever happened before, that a nation has traded in its gods for gods that aren't even close to gods? But my people have traded my Glory for empty god-dreams and silly god-schemes… My people have committed a compound sin: they've walked out on me, the fountain of fresh flowing waters, and then dug cisterns—cisterns that leak, cisterns that are no better than sieves.”
--Jeremiah 2:11, 13 (The Message)
We see ourselves living ‘empty god-dreams and silly god-schemes.’ And the life we desire and pursue is riddled with disappointments that lead us nowhere. However, before we pursued this life, there was a real Life that was promised to us. What was this real Life? This Life has to transcend our expectations and disappointments, our fears and failures, and certainly the pointlessness of death. For if this Life does not supersede these things that entrap us, then it is another coy disguise of death and certainly nothing that we can hope in.
At default, even before attaining this Life, we don’t even know God. We’ve already messed up by pursuing no-life things that have disappointed us. Shouldn’t our cosmic slap in the face put us in eternal shame? If God exists, even before we work out our beliefs, we’ve already rejected Him. Yet, long before you were born as a bumbling beauty, there was a man who promised to give water where no one would thirst if one drank it. This man promised to bring us to God, not as objects of shame or embarrassment, but as children. This man rejected none, healed the sick, and actively loved the social rejects. This person did not make decisions out of fear or pleasure. He did not try to find life in pointless and temporary things, but found life in loving God and loving others. Contrary to this strange splendor, people rejected him to the point of killing by crucifying him on a cross. However, this death was not the end. Jesus Christ who received the greatest injustice in all humanity died fulfilling things that had been prophesized before. And to complete all that had been prophesized, he rose from death three days later, never to die again.
This news is incredible! In the whole spectrum of time, there is a man who promised us more than the world and transcended the boundaries of death. Among the confusing and pointless roads that lead to nowhere, there is one way that leads to Life. Jesus is worth striving after. Christ did all these crazy things so that we may know Him, so that we may have a relationship with Him. Yet, instead of looking at Christ, we still choose to go elsewhere. This is what the quoted Jeremiah passage is talking about. Despite this good news, we forsake the spring of living water. Despite the fact that we can now have Life simply by believing Jesus did all these things for us, we deny the possibility that these things even happened. The ‘fountain of fresh flowing waters’ is right before us, but we can’t even admit we are thirsty. We are just too disappointed with God. We stop going to Christ; we choose to find a way out of relationship with God; Jesus did everything for nothing. It’s more comfortable and it’s much easier this way. We deny our God-given self.
This is the crossroad I believe we are all at. The way to Life is right in front of us, but at the same time we hold out in hope that everything that has failed us in the past might not in the future. In high school as the kingdom I had built for almost ten years began to crumble, I was faced with a choice, ‘do I hold out just a little bit longer to see if the funk I was going through was simply a rough patch, or do I abandon ship and start looking for something that actually has meaning?’ I definitely held out for a while up through my freshmen year of college. I believed that I just needed to change scenery, take on different responsibilities, or adjust my values a little bit differently and things would be better. I wanted to continue to still live by running away from fears and towards self-satisfying pleasure. It was all I knew.
Yet nothing I was doing, no matter what situation I manipulated or characteristic I tried to change brought any meaning to my life. Everything that I had strongly believed in up to that point was being taken away from me. I felt like the identity I had been standing on was melting into a pool of water that was beginning to drown me. It was depression, it was sickness, it was death approaching. And in this darkest time I cried out asking for a savior. “God! If it is possible, take me back!” And in this lowest time, I saw Jesus, the perfect man who received the greatest injustice, as the only way I could be saved from my self-inflicted misery. In that moment of trusting Him as the only way to Life, I was drinking deeply from the fountain of living water. At that point I knew God loved me as a person, and that was my meaning and purpose in life. Among all the people in the world, God loved me! And there was absolutely nothing, no other road I could take to lead me to this love, to this Life.
My mind has now come back to me. It’s done wandering outside the windows. It’s dark now and the album has stopped playing. I look at myself sitting here wrapping up this essay, and can’t help but ask, ‘Who am I?’ I immediately want to cling on to the things I have said about myself. I love music and I love having my mind wander around. I am still afraid of being alone. If I’m nervous, I’ll rattle off my strengths and weaknesses. Yet, this is not who I am. I am made this way, created to think, to hear, to see, to feel the world around me. I have been given a personality that is unique to me, quirks and all. But that doesn’t make me. Even if opposite day really happened, I would still be myself. Perhaps I would be a little bit more or less stranger depending on who you asked, but the quality of who I am is not determined by anything I do. For everything I will do has already been done before, and anything that I have done will probably be done again. No. What I do doesn’t determine who I am. It’s who I am that seals who I am. I am Joel. Forever Loved by God.
“Cease striving, and know that I am God” –Psalm 46:10
