A Freight Train Through the Abyss

"There is something beautiful about the billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz."

-Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz

My boat cuts through the water of Lake Wallenpaupak and I melt into the seat beneath my blanket as the wind filters itself through my hair.  The stars swirl in the blue like jazz above me and I embrace this moment I share with my family.  

I'm in Limbo.

Limbo is a place that I visit when concern escapes my mind.  It's like there are absolute value bars around brief periods of time where I don't have to think about anything at all.  Right now the bars are up because I just finished at my summer job, I don't have classes for a week, and I am at peace. It's like I'm in that infinite Limbo land from Leo's latest movie, Inception. 

Beyond my immediate state of being, I am also in a four-year long limbo between worlds.  The first is a world of comfortable familiarity, and the second is an exhilarating abyss.

I'm in college.  

In other words, I'm on a four year vacation from responsible reality.  The daunting truth about limbo is that you eventually need to come out of it. And that scares the pants off most people.  

Starring into the majestic night sky from my boat, I am reminded of the exhilarating abyss of adulthood that approaches like a hungry freight train.  I remember that all my life, I have associated darkness with unpredictability and excitement.

As Kenny Chesney puts it, "Everything gets hotter when the sun goes down."  The sun goes down and people dance.  They paradoxically wake up and live more intensely, because the darkness dares them not to sleep and do something more exciting before the mother sun comes back to check up on things.  

There are plenty of reasons for me to remain attached to pre-limbo childhood.  I am very lucky to have had a wonderful relationship with the first two decades of my life.  But as I creep closer to post-limbo independence and responsibility, I think about darkness, and how I'd rather skip through the dark than sleep through it.  

I'm not afraid to surface from my limbo.  I'm coming at adulthood like a hungry freight train, instead of letting the train threaten to crush me.  Adulthood is an exhilarating abyss - unpredictable, energizing, and pretty freaking cool.  

Shalom!

A woman touched my arm, a friend whipped me up a smoothie, and a professor invited me to dinner on Thursday.

The pages of Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz have convinced me to strip myself of self-absorption. Clearly I'm really good at it, considering that the three thoughts I listed above were the only memories that came to mind when I reflected upon my week.  (Not).  I've already used personal pronouns (I, me, myself) over seven times since I started writing this. Super.

"If we could fix our self-absorption, we could end a lot of pain the world," Says Miller.

Truth. Imagine what kind of world we could create if everyone became literally others-centered? It would resemble something like the description of the hebrew word "Shalom:" a harmonious interdependence and joy among all parts of creation in absolute wholeness. It's a wonderful theory, but it's also damn near impossible to actually execute.

Most people would consider themselves the main characters of their own life stories. Most think that they are the static protagonist around whom everyone and everything else is meant to orbit.   Innate good conscience tells me there are probably better things to orbit our lives around.  Like other people, perhaps. Or God. Or both.

It is excruciatingly difficult to maintain an others-regarding ethic. As much as I've been trying to master putting other's needs above my own, I think about myself a whole heck of a lot.  I figure only practice can salvage me.   Being others-centered means putting other people's interests above your own because it makes their life better in some way.  It's hard to be altruistic, but it's even harder to do nice things for other people without expecting anything in return. Frustration!

Here are some of the ways that I'm trying to fix this in baby steps. When I enter into a conversation with someone, I try my best to glorify them and find out their life story without interrupting them to announce my own personal agenda. Furthermore, I don't waitress for tips.  I try instead to make the customer's dining adventure an enjoyable experience (this is an excellent strategy for tip-making actually). When I want to buy shiny lipgloss, I don't do it.  I actually started a "God Fund" just like Donald Miller did, into which I throw a few dollars occasionally to save up for some higher cause.

Why did the memories that I mentioned earlier resonate so much with me?  I think I was touched by the others-regarding ethic that motivated those people's actions. While waitressing, the woman I referred to inspired me to join her at a nearby Church in Bethlehem and patted my arm as I hander her the check. I marveled at the positive effect that brief physical contact can sometimes have on human interaction and how kind she was to insist that I join all her friends at church. My smoothie-making friend had begged my younger sister to come hang out with us, and proceeded to provide exceptional hospitality for us as we gulped down delicious homemade beverages. My English professor was thoughtful enough to consider my diet habits when she asked me to join her family for dinner this week by promising to create a savory vegetarian meal for us to enjoy.

When you become the spotlight who shines a light on someone else, the impact of this gesture can be tremendous. Hopefully soon I'll get to the point where I can recall all of the wonderful things I did for other people throughout my week when I reminisce, instead of recalling only nice things that were done for me.

Shalom!