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September 30, 2007
I Love Basel
Since I first landed in Basel I have certainly liked it. After tonight, I love it.
It's been a little odd getting adjusted to having a completely open schedule. Every single night of my week back home had me scheduled to do something and I really liked it. Everything my life was filled with what I consider to be 'good' 'great' things. Sundays at Teen Cell, Monday nights with the BP crew, Tuesdays with Matty, Wednesdays with cell, Thursdays with Kayla and Fridays with beer/gin & tonics/video games/movies/Zorbas are all, in their own right, excellent things to look forward to. My only unscheduled day was Saturday and I mostly spend it doing absolutely nothing...a much needed Sabbath as the capstone to a busy week.
Here in Switzerland every day is Saturday. I am, effectively, on vacation and I'm living as such: sleeping in late, playing video games (Gotta catch em' all!™), learning about ActionScript, running the occasional errand and generally relaxing. This was good for the first few days but it has left me antsy for some kind of structure/achievement.
Kayla and I are similar in this sense and since yesterday we've been talking about goal setting and accomplishing things while we're here. The thing is, I don't want to accomplish anything. I want to sit around and waste the days away.
No wait....I don't want to do that either. Colon open-parentheses.
This whole unsettled-vague-depression-slash-no-motivation thing had been coming to a head last night into today and as the day dragged on I couldn't shake it. You know when you take a nap and you aren't even tired? Yeah, that's been me.
The thing is, I haven't felt that way for a LONG time like, since college. After I left Messiah I had this insane drive to make something with my life and it has served me pretty well. I've landed some cool jobs and developed real relationships with some amazing people. So, why here? Why now while I am on friggin' Europe on a three month trip where I don't have to (nor need to) work am I feeling depressed?
Like most big scary questions, looking for the answer often leads to more depression and self-loathing. Kayla and I ran over our options for the evening: watch a movie? Ugh. Watch a David Attenborough documentary? (Me: YES! Kayla: ugh.) Go into the center of Basel (Both: Sweet! But....it's Sunday...everything is shut down.) Take a walk? (Both: sounds good.)
And so we did.
Oh and it was the most glorious walk I have ever had in my life. We had no destination, just ambled through the back, winding and hilly streets of Basel, fully aware and hungry for something real to entertain us. Kayla had previously spent seven months here so there wasn't too big of a worry in getting lost. At first she took me up a big hill and when I turned to sit on a bench I realized we were overlooking the city.
Oof.
Nick sent me a comment over MySpace mentioning that J.R.R. Tolkien got his idea for the Misty Mountains after a trip to Switzerland. Homeboy was right.
Basel is nestled in this amazing little valley surrounded by rolling mountains that, at night, are dotted all over with little sprays of electric light. Kayla and I just sat there on that bench talking about the reasons why human beings so love to look out over vast expanses. Kayla said it's because we like to see there's something bigger than us and I agreed. She also said this -- which I thought was so beautiful and perfect and apt that I want to put it up on the internet so Google can cache this pearl of wisdom so it will be saved forever -- that every time she sees someone on the street she tries to remember that that person loves someone and is loved by someone else. It's pretty simple and, upon inspection, a pretty obvious thing really but, man, if people could get their minds around that I'm sure war would quickly become a non-issue. It also gave me some hard evidence on why I am just so in love with this woman and am going to marry her. If those sorts of revelations sit at the core of a person you know the depth of the purity of their heart.
Did I mention this was at the start of the walk?
We then left the bench and walked down innumerable side streets, stopping to peer in windows and admire the decidedly European decor and decidedly European people. In other words we were kinda creepy. At this one big house we watched a couple ballroom dancing; spinning, embracing and moving about a brightly lit, beautifully large room. Does it get any more classic than that?
The streets were quiet and safe. A cat even came up to say hello and we squatted down in the glow of a street lamp to admire it's fur and warm demeanor.
Kayla lead me down a pitch-black, straight out of a horror movie, path which held a huge stone, straight out of a horror movie, mansion and then over a moonlit field back to our neighborhood. We ambled along, drank from a bubbling brass fountain and swung on a playground love-seat, staring at the moon and feeling the crisp fall air as it freed leaves from their moorings and dusted our faces with the scent of burning wood.
It was a night of, as we call them, moments. Those periods in time where you forget who you are, what you are doing and surrender completely to what is going on around you; caught up in this big mystery of life and enjoying every nano-second of it.
This is why I now love Basel. This is why I'm not depressed anymore. I arrived at the realization that I came to Basel to be somewhere else, to be out of my comfort zone and see what living is like over an ocean and I got my first taste today. These are the sort of experiences that excite me to write, to share, to let the people I love know that I'm forming new stories to bring home and over-excitedly retell once I get full of wine and pasta.
Tomorrow: more adventure. Tonight: sleep.
Oh and you should definitely watch 'King of Kong'...who knew a documentary of competitive video gaming could be so moving?
Posted by Jon at 07:00 PM | Comments (2)
September 23, 2007
Munich Airport Musings
I am in the Munich airport waiting for a connecting flight to Basel, Switzerland and had one of those experiential revelations that is often paired with traveling to a different country. It's the now-I-understand-'cause-I'm-in-your-shoes phenomenon.
I don't speak German -- well I speak a tiny bit of German (I know 'baum (tree) and 'Die Spricken Sie English, bitte?' (Do you speak English, please?) -- and I can't tell you how much this sucks. Since landing in the airport everyone, by default, speaks German to you and only when you look at them with profound stupidity do they realize you are an American and repeat themselves in English.
Kayla and I were talking about this just a few minutes ago and she said that we should speak more languages in the states. I mentioned that most of our population is Spanish speaking and she responded by asking the question as to why it isn't mandatory for the public at large to learn it. Now, just yesterday if she would have said that exact same thing I would have responded with, 'Well, English is the national language, if they want to come here they should learn it.'
Well, here I am in Germany, and I only know how to identify a tree and ask if anyone else can speak my native tongue as to make up for my laziness in failing to 'learn-the-language'.
It's not like I haven't experienced this before: I did spend 4 weeks in Ukraine but we went there on a missions/service trip and everyone was so thankful we came that they went out of their way to address us first (and only) in English. That coupled with the fact that we took 5 months worth of Russian/Ukrainian lessons to equip us before leaving alleviated the culture shock a bit.
Now I'm here on a leisure-oriented trip, roaming free without a service-type label and I feel down-right rude that I have come here so unprepared. I'm not going to beat myself up over it or anything, it's too late for that but I will do two things: 1) Make a concerted effort to learn and 2) have a lot more compassion to those who come here and don't know English whether they be tourists, new citizens or illegal aliens.
I think there are spiritual parallels here.
On the Thursday night before I left I went to have dinner at my parents house and, as usual, we got talking about religion, God, The Bible etc. I was expressing my view that often times we turn people off to the thought of living like Jesus by battering them over the head with the idea that the Bible is absolute truth and that they had better follow it. In my mind, at least, this seems to be the same mentality as 'If you're gonna come to America, Pedro, you had better know English.' I'm not saying the Bible isn't beneficial -- I've gleaned tons of life and soul direction from it -- but I think this idea of exclusivity really needs to go from the Christian life.
Many times in discussions like this the oft-used passage used to prove those who doubt the fundamentalist view is when Jesus said in Matthew, 'I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me.' The assumption is that this means that the Bible and the Christian faith are the only way to God. I don't think this statement is, in any way, shape or form, about religious exclusivity. Remember, Jesus was a jew and the 'Chrisitian' faith or even the word 'christian' didn't even exist yet. What He's saying is basically, 'Live like me and you will find the Father.'
That's it.
Jesus spent gobs of time railing on the religious leaders of the day, pointing out where they had stopped looking to God and had busied themselves with the particulars of their religious dogmas and practices. He pointed out their hypocrisy and reminded them that the aim is to live a life where one constantly is acknowledging God, loving Him and then loving your neighbor as yourself by treating him/her/it as you would want to be treated.
I think the church today has become too institutionalized in it's over-emphasis on theological nit-picking and creeds that it has forgotten the utter simplicity of Jesus' message: Love God, Love Others. That'd be a good mission statement for a youth group. ;)
Anyways, at one point during the conversation it got a little heated (which is par for the course in any debate my family engages in especially on the topic of faith) because I was thinking my parents were closed minded and they were thinking I was a heretic. I noticed things were headed off course into the territory of picking out one misstep the other party took and arguing over semantics. I tried to reel the conversation back in by saying, 'I'm haunted Mom & Dad, haunted by the idea that if I was alive when Jesus was around and was a Jew that I would have missed it. That I would have been the right next to the Son of God....only feet away from the most influential person in human history and, because of what I was taught and what the religious leaders were saying that I would have dismissed him as crazy. Do you guys ever wonder about that?'
Their responses were surprising.
Almost right off the cuff my Dad said, 'Oh I wouldn't have believed him for a second, I'm loyal to the end.' He then got really quiet and looked off into the middle distance with a renewed shame that accompanied hearing himself say something He'd realized in private long ago but never told anyone.
My mother just grimaced and said, 'Honestly? I probably wouldn't have believed Him.'
Whoa.
And therein lies one of the reasons I admire my parents so much: their candid honesty. So why don't they feel the need to change, re-evaluate things and question stuff in a new light? I think it's cause deep down, at their core, they've got the whole 'Love God. Love Others.' thing squared away. And on top of that they're simply following people whom they believe will lead them in the right direction. We might argue on theology, Biblical interpretation, what kind of church we'd prefer attending and what writers/preachers we most resonate with but we still agree on the basics about love and that's pretty awesome.
So yeah, Munich airport, I'll write more once we get settled in Basel.
Posted by Jon at 03:43 PM | Comments (4)