Lesson of the day

"Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after the wind."

Imagine If

Imagine if everything on earth were miniature. If your bed were the perfect size for a doll house, set with minuscule pillows and sheets, and all your books were tiny, intricate masterpieces, the size of an ordinary thumbnail. Imagine if the trees outside were like the stiff green ones glued to model train scenery—but even better because they are more detailed and unique and numerous. You could peer into them and discover endless layers of intricacy. Imagine if your car were toy-sized and all roads merely little black lines that these toys rolled along on their little toy wheels. Now picture you, yourself: miniature, doll-like, a tiny person with ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes. You have eyelashes, teeth, a belly bottom—fully formed but almost too small to see.

The pencils on your desk: those are skinny as a needle. Your lamp is a fragile work of art. You are part of a Lilliputian world, and all life has been scaled down to fit. The glass jar on my nightstand suddenly becomes more astonishing. The elaborate pattern of the wallpaper seems miraculous. I marvel at the teensy pieces of jewelry on my dresser. How could they be so impossibly small and so impossibly beautiful?

Maybe the world really is like this. Maybe this is how God sees it. Doll-house-like. Everything gloriously small and detailed and perfect, enough to make him laugh with pleasure. 

My Bonsai Tree Life

The sky is overcast today, and the parking lot of this grocery store is a wet, shiny-black. It has rained nearly every day for the past week. I'm in the cafe, thinking, typing. I've been here a while, but I don't want to drive home yet because I can picture what will happen when I do. I will wander up to my cluttered bedroom and stare vacantly at my books, my bed, my laptop, trying to decide what to do with my evening. I won't feel particularly inclined to do any one thing. I may end up in the kitchen, looking for a snack I don't need or want—some hummus, perhaps, or a cookie—and I will feel aimless, because I am. The cafe is better than that, for now.

Sometimes, living at home and working a less-than-stimulating part-time job can make my life feel very small. Geographically it is small because I rarely travel beyond my triangle of necessity (work, home, the high school where I coach cross country). I spend a lot of time in my bedroom or rambling the wooded trails behind my house, kicking up fallen leaves. Socially, my life also feels small: though I have friends living all across the globe right now, I have exactly two in my own city. I can skype the day away, but that doesn't change the fact that I never leave the comfort of my own bed. I read, I write, I run, I work, I eat dinner with my parents—in short, I do little of interest. The most stimulating part of my day is the hour and a half I spend with the high school cross country team I help coach. My sphere of influence feels negligible.

I picture my life as a tiny dot, yellow, like a speck of pollen. It is small and insignificant against the grand backdrop of the world at large, floating in space, drifting.

Sometimes I wonder what it would take to make my life larger and and shinier and more important. I would need to move out of my parents' house, first of all, preferably to some exciting new city—Denver or Portland or Salt Lake. I would need a new job and a vibrant social life. I would need a Cause, something to fight for to make my existence feel purposeful. I would need to feel needed.

When I really think about it, though, I realize there is no guarantee that any of things will make my life bigger. There is no reason that moving away or getting a more important job will inherently grow my life beyond its shriveled, pollen-speck form. Even with all that space, it may well feel exactly the same size. It may still feel tightly compact, stunted, well-formed but tiny—like a sad bonsai tree.

This is because, as I'm slowly realizing, the reason my life feels small is not because I have not filled it with enough stuff—grand enough or big enough—but because most of the time when I think of my life I think of one thing: myself. My orientation has settled into the human default: inward-looking rather than outward. From this perspective, I am at the center of everything. And how much more limited of a view is it to look inward and find only myself than to turn outward and see the whole world? No wonder my reality feels diminutive.

The problem is, this stage of life—more than most, I would argue—seems designed for selfish thinking. I have no husband or children, no intricate network of nearby friends that rely on me for community or support. I live at home; I'm not passionate about my job. My primary goal is making money to pay off my student loans. There is little about my life that inherently requires me to put others' needs before my own. Of course I can always choose to do this anyway, but there are few consequences if I don't. It is easy to convince myself that no one depends on me, and therefore the only problems I need to worry about are my own.

Occasionally, for fleeting moments, I glimpse a wider, richer life. Mostly this happens when I am running with my high school girls at cross country practice or coaching them in a meet. In those moments, I am outside myself. I care deeply for their physical and spiritual well-being. I want them to run their best, but more importantly, I want them to be emotionally healthy and happy individuals. However briefly, I cease to look inward at my own paltry self and view a world unfiltered by my ego. Ironically, this is when my life feels biggest—when my self is smallest.

G.K. Chesterton said something very similar in Orthodoxy, and my thoughts on this matter are strongly influenced by his own. “How much larger your life could be if your self could become smaller in it,” he writes. It's a catchy little phrase (which of course falls in the context of a much larger discussion—Chesterton was a long-winded individual), but it is so difficult to accomplish. Just how does the post-grad in the under-stimulating work and home environment make him or herself smaller? How do I look outward (and in which particular direction?) when I have yet to discover my “calling” or “vocation”? And what if in turning away from myself I find only emptiness in my immediate environment? What if my life presents no opportunities for acts of great selflessness? Sure, I can send encouraging notes to my friends, I can load and unload the dishwasher, I can cheer for my younger siblings at their sporting events, but those little things feel pitiful when I look at the larger scope of my life, the amount of time I spend thinking about myself.

The other night I spent the evening with friends and family talking about a recent project we had attempted to accomplish in South Africa. As we collaborated on this vision, I felt my horizon grow and expand. I felt part of something larger and aware of the complexities of a world beyond my own. But I am not in South Africa right now, nor will I return any time soon. At the moment, I do not have the means for my influence to literally cross oceans, or if I do, I have yet to discover it. My power is little; therefore I turn first to the needs I know best: my own.

Life is never straightforward, nor are the commands of God easy. Somehow I have to find a way to reorient myself, even if it feels like I will still accomplish little good. I need to redefine “life” and “self” and “small.” I need to be ok with serving in mediocre ways. I need to fight against that voice that tells me now is a time where I am allowed to be selfish and greedy. But, damn—it's hard.

The World On Time

I must begin with a disclaimer. In my employee manual, FedEx suggested that I do so, and as a new hiree, I feel obliged to respect their (its? her?) wishes. They even provided the wording for me, in case any effusions of creative inspiration on my part left a legal loophole big enough for a lawyer to jump through (which wouldn't take much, but in any case, FedEx doesn't strike me as the type which appreciates artistic liberties). So here it is, in all its corporate glory:

“This is my personal blog and only contains my own views, thoughts and opinions. It is not endorsed by FedEx nor does it constitute an official communication of FedEx.” I like it. Short, to the point, efficient.

But to clarify, and because I probably need to set my own boundaries, I shall include a self-composed disclaimer as well:

“This is my personal blog and only contains my own thoughts, stories, and details. I hope no one I work with/for actually reads this, but in case they do, I will do my best to be fair, honest, and to refrain from unnecessary bashing. It is not my desire now—or ever in the future—to offend anyone.” But I hope you will lend me some grace. I'm still figuring out this whole writing-private-thoughts-in-a-public-domain thing. It's more challenging than I thought it would be.

This week I learned how to drive a truck, or more specifically, a FedEx W700. It looks like this, except ours is older and definitely a diesel, not a hybrid electric:

I know, I know. You're impressed.

The one in which I learned to drive also had extra windows and benches behind the driver's seat, for training multiple students. For this reason, the swing courier with the blonde pigtails (I haven't caught her name yet) calls it the FedEx limo. It doesn't ride like a limo though. For one thing, it's very loud; the engine is angry sounding, and anything in the back bounces around like marbles in a tin can. It also, obviously, looks nothing like a limo, although momentary I felt very important sitting up high in the driver's seat, bumbling along down 28^th Street. Until I remembered that I was in a FedEx truck bumbling along down 28^th Street. From now on, I am that vehicle that no one wants to get stuck behind and everyone wants to avoid. I hope I don't get too many angry glances.

Still, a job is a job, and I have no right to complain about it. The other woman in my training class got laid off from an industrial job a year ago, and she seems extremely grateful to be employed at all, more grateful than I am. I can't take that for granted, especially since FedEx is such a well-respected company and the pay is nothing to scoff at. Having a four-year degree doesn't make me any better than the rest of them.

Therefore: optimism. That is the word of the week. A positive attitude. I'm not going to let myself whine about my misfortune in not landing a more intellectually stimulating job. Not yet. Yes, already I feel I have a lengthy list of possible complains about my current work, but who doesn't? Those can come out later, in other blog entries. For now: optimism.  

To the well-meaning post-post-graduates:

When you ask me what I'm doing now that I'm done with college, I have no right to be angry with you. It is a natural question, and it's even possible that you are genuinely curious. (Although if you are not, I suppose it is an easy way to direct what might otherwise be an awkward conversation, so I should still cut you some slack.) In all likelihood, you mean well. In all likelihood, you do not realize the mounting frustration this question causes me, the dread I feel when I see it form on your lips. You hope I have an interesting answer. You probably assume I do.

My response may sound rehearsed, but that is only because I have delivered it about six hundred times before, to other well-meaning inquirers. Also perhaps because I have detached myself from the sound of my voice and hope to skate through this conversation on auto-pilot. Unless I deem that it will take an unpredictable turn, away from the sympathetic nods, the “what was your major again?” question, that moment of silence where you try to think of something encouraging to say—but this is unlikely.

You care about me, probably. At the very least you are being polite and do not intend to annoy me. I should thank you for your concern. Unfortunately, this is not a conversation I want to have, and I may have trouble forcing an upbeat tone. My eyes may shift to the left or right as I look for an escape route. Do not be alarmed. This is not your fault. You are not aware of the problem to which you are contributing.

The problem is this: When you ask me what I'm doing with my life and give me consoling nods or say things like “you'll figure it out eventually” or “you're still young,” I do not feel encouraged. When you say that you are praying this time of transition will be short for me, I do not feel supported. Even the friendly, reminiscing remarks about your own struggles during your post-college years—often these do not inspire me in the way I want to be inspired. Comments like these only reinforce the kind of mentality that I am currently trying to flee, trying to fend off for the sake of my sanity. I do not want to believe that the only way to be happy is to accept the fact that I am not going to find fulfillment in my current stage of life. I do not want to be reminded that this stage will soon end, as though that is something I should be looking forward to eagerly and doing my best to expedite.

Do not tell me that my life is on hold, that I am in a waiting stage, that this too will pass. I know you mean well. I know you want the best for me. But maybe that begins with reassessing the way you view “stages of life” and how and why we progress from one to the next. (Progress isn't even the right word here. Move would be more accurate; it's more neutral.) I do not want to be the kind of person—the kind of person most of us naturally are—that is always looking one or two steps ahead and never at the ground directly beneath my feet. I do not want to delude myself into thinking that once I get my “dream job” and move to the “next stage,” I will suddenly find the fulfillment I was previous lacking. I have to believe that anyone is capable of finding that at any point in their life. And from my short experience on this earth, I have discovered that the much-anticipated next turn rarely offers the amount of satisfaction I desire.

Perhaps I am being overly picky here. Perhaps I am reading too much into the subtleties of language and vocal expression. But I don't think so. I think there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we (both recent college graduates and not-so-recent) approach the months or years that comprise this post-college “phase” and the way that we talk about it. When we assume a level of barrenness in our emotional and spiritual well-being simply because we have yet to “find our way,” we sell ourselves and others short. We should not look at this time primarily as preparation for some future stage. In a way it is preparation, just as all moments are preparation for future moments, but to view it primarily in this light is to limit its possibilities.

I want to live fully now. I want to embrace my job, the people around me, the spaces I occupy now. When people give me sympathetic looks, when people tell me to hang in there, I feel like I'm not allowed to be satisfied yet. I feel like I'm not supposed to be happy until I obtain that next level. But what is that next level? And what if I am happy? What if I am content with my life as it stands, unglamorous as it may be? (Or at the very least, trying to be content.) I don't want anyone to give me an excuse not to look for joy and meaning in the present.

So I admit, I don't want to work for FedEx delivering packages forever. It's not exactly my ultimate goal in life. But I also don't want to define success so narrowly that I assume God can't use me where I am now. It's true that driving trucks doesn't require a college degree in English Writing. But I can use my writing skills in other ways (like this blog, for example), and I'm not going to accept that my identity lies in my career or even—that loaded word—vocation anyways. Those things come and go. If I want to find meaning, it has to be in the only thing that is not transient.

Perhaps you can see now why this conversation often frustrates me. As I seek to navigate the complexity of living, it does not help to be continually reminded that I have yet to “arrive” according to the world's standards. I don't want to care about that. Please don't make me feel like I should.

I can't expect you to stop asking me question about my life and plans. Like I said, I understand that this is a natural curiosity. But maybe you could show more concern for my present adventures than my future ones. Maybe we could both help each other to appreciate the gifts of this day before we look forward to those anticipated tomorrow.