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January 20, 2007
In Flux
"He wanted to be Hawaiian; he used to dream, he said, of wishing that he had brown skin - to be Hawaiian - because for him that was what was sort of beautiful and strong; because that's what was around him. He couldn't get girlfriends, didn't have a lot of friends..what did he do? He spent and put all that energy into the water." -Gabrielle Reese Hamilton speaking of her husband's, surfer Laird Hamilton, foundational experiences which ultimately lead to his future as the greatest big wave rider of all time.
The above quote is from Riding Giants, a documentary I've written about before. It's easily become my favorite, even though I've never surfed, just because of the story of living it communicates. It inspires you to throw off the shackles of expectation you put on yourself and seek out what it is that will keep in you the present, buzzing on the realization that you are alive; an almost overwhelming blessing in the metaphysical sense.
Take a step back and reflect for a moment on the vast amount of seemingly random intimate pairings of your ancestors that had to happen in order to produce you. All of your preceding line managed to avoid death long enough to pass on their genetic code and had the resources to sustain that life until you could take care of yourself.
In spite of this over the course of my life I have still had those barren flashes of insecurity like young Laird, wishing I was somebody else; longing to fit in. And the sad part is, most of us succumb to that pressure and model ourselves and pursuits after those blueprints of those we respect, envy and admire. Healthy education by observation becomes an obsessive, jealous-riddled copy-cat lifestyle where we begin to hate what it is that delineates us as individuals instead of rejoicing in our uniqueness.
In Mere Christianity Lewis talks about how faith in Christ is meant to bring attention to - and rejoice over - our differences, so that we may find our home in the body of Christ. God did not create us to look and act the same. On the contrary, we are all destined to fulfill a specific role in the ongoing drama of humanity that has stretched on since the moment of creation.
"We may be content to remain what we call 'ordinary people': but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan," Lewis says, "To shrink back from that plan is not humility; it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience."
And herein lies my biggest struggle: having the patience to wait for God's timing to see where I fit in and resist the urge to resign myself to a life that settles for that which I know rather than be shown a boundless and infinite love.
Here's a quote from George MacDonald which I think is very telling of this fear: "If there is no God, annihilation is the one thing to be longed for, with all that might of longing which is the mainspring of human action. In a word, it is not immortality the human heart cries out after, but that immortal, eternal thought whose life is its life, whose wisdom is its wisdom...Dissociate immortality from the living Immortality, and it is not a thing to be desired."
There have been so many moments in my life where I wish I would just stop changing and be tagged with a title of permanence like husband, father, designer, teacher etc. But at every turn I find myself dissatisfied and antsy so I keep moving, in search of that elusive contentment that I perceive everyone else has but me. Truth be told, I'd really like to fall in love because I think that once I do find that girl and get married to her that my life will gain stability where I can begin to put down roots and build a foundation off of which a definition of who I am can be written in permanent ink. A never ending cycle of change is what I fear, preferring to find contentment in who I am now instead of what I can become.
But, strangely, deeper than all that insecurity is the quiet knowledge that I am not finished, nor ever will be in this life. Because, as Lewis says, 'death is an important part of the process.' If lasting romantic love is to be a part of my future it has to be because God has brought it to me, not for security but, because it will better help me understand His love. And until that time I have to live with the realization constantly at the forefront of my mind that I have all I need, right now at this moment, to be happy, content and at peace. Wasting time worrying if it will ever come is what will keep me out of the present and, by extension, from understanding what is means to be alive.
And just as a surfer can only ride one wave at a time we are given reality moment by moment because it is all we can handle; anxiousness over the future is to be paralyzed by the illusory while living in the present is like being on the crest of the palpable and ever-changing waves on the ocean of life.
Posted by Jon at January 20, 2007 04:18 PM