I did it, I made it home safe, at 4:30AM last night. And I woke up, went outside and watched my brothers/moms concert with her old band. They were great. Aaron enlisted me to do sound at the last minute, which was OK, but I didn’t have time to make any adjustments before hand, so it was all board stuff, no re-arranging mics or anything. After that I went out with the old friends from the band and a friend from Melvin who came to see the concert. That was fun.
On the way home last night I listened to a CD Mark Egli gave me that is a recording of a talk a guy gave on margins in your life. That means the space you save for you, or the events that pop up in your life. All I could think about is how I feel like I haven’t been doing that much at all in college, and even less lately. I felt so worn down, so broken, because I feel that I’ve been chasing this dream or vision of the future. But it really isn’t worth very much at all. Sure I can get a job, I might even like that job, but what good is it going to do. I can get a job anywhere, I’ve never been unemployed for more then a couple weeks that I was looking for a job. And I’ve got good jobs before, and made money, and lived off that money,…yadda yadda…etc, etc.
But what good is that. I lead a cowardly at best ministry when I’m in charge of anything, I don’t have time to do much other than be pissed at my current friends, let alone make new ones and expand relationships with friends on the edge of my circles. I haven’t lead anyone into a relationship with God, and I’m always forgetting to pray for people, or I get scared and don’t want to look like a jackass, so I just don’t pray for people. So basically I figure I pretty much suck, I hate engineering, school sapped me of my will to succeed and I feel like the only thing driving me to succeed before was a desire to look and sound smart or “educated”. Which is totally stupid. I don’t feel like I’m better than I was when I came in. At least I was optimistic when I came to school.
Why is that school does that to you. Why is it that in life you feel like your clawing your way up a smooth rockface. You scramble and grasp at anything you can to get an inch higher. Your fingers bleed, your heart turns into a burning engine of desire for success, pumping nothing but the worthless crude oil of disillusionment through your veins. Until finally you reach where you thought you wanted to be, the peak of whatever you were climbing. Only to see that it was a ledge blocking the peak of where you want to be next. Nothing more than a brief resting point at best, until you start clambering for the next peak, higher and higher. And it is all meaningless in the end. Nothing more than a piece of paper to puff up your resume so you can get a well paying job so we can all afford crap we don’t need, so we can play with that crap and ignore the people in our lives to make more money….it goes on and on.
So here I stand, a man who is broken of what he dreamt when we left this house, cured of his obsession with getting better through education. No more do I dream of creating the next big thing to propel society into the next age, or to better us through my genius designs. Instead I admit I cannot do that, I’m not smart enough, so I’m going to take whatever factory job I can get, and make a living. A grunt engineer at best, a peon under a big-wigs kid at worst.
So tired, so broken, so worthless.
I have hope right now. It may not sound like it, but this feeling of worthlessness is more than a little different than the past. I may be broken, but I can be fixed. I won’t just be fixed, but like the bionic man, I’ll be made better. Because I’m giving up (as best I can) this worthless pursuit to try to make myself better, and I’m going to let someone smarter than me do it. I felt yesterday. I felt. I don’t feel anything besides angry or depressed in my life. Broken is new, something sad, but something. Something that tears down until the only thing left is hope. I have hope in more than my action-agenda, I have faith in more than my day planner. My plans for the future aren’t worth hoping for. Having faith in myself to get me there is nothing more than a modern myth our society perpetuates to drive us harder at our jobs so we an ignore our relationships.
My hope starts again today, starts from the beginning. Not the new beginning of finishing school, the new beginning of a clean slate, trying to not write on myself so God can fill the space with what he wants. Broken, but expectant, sad, but hopeful, tired and weary, but finally ready to truly rest.
I told myself last night that I had caught the fish, and fought the bull, but I had to ask “Did I win the War?”
But I realize, it isn’t my war to win.
Goodnight.
