One of those days...

Do you ever get the feeling like you're always trying to catch up to everyone else?

I do.



and relatively often.



I know that it is somewhat ridiculous to sit here and compare myself, my success in any given area of life, with others, but to a degree (no pun intended) I think that is somewhat ingrained in you when you graduate from a school like UNC. There, it seems like everyone has an ambition 3x the capacity of what should be expected of a normal human being, and everyone wants to hit it big when they finish...having that 4.0 GPA on your double major while magically having several years of work, humanitarian experiences, and research, a north face jacket, an intramural sports championship winner t-shirt, and several open-armed admissions letters from the top grad schools in the country (because everyone knows that's where the real success starts...sometime between your master's and your 3rd Ph.D.).

Somehow, my ambitions didn't quite pan out. I do have a great job that I enjoy but that was not necessarily due (or related really) to my double major, and I certainly didn't get my 4.0. I got plenty of good work experience but that was not the prestigious internship or the amazing research position, instead its rewards were simple things...like learning to deal with people, and paying for bills. Oddly enough, one of these odd jobs had more weight on me getting a job than my degree's subjects. I never got that cool black north face jacket, I was too busy or out of shape to attempt the intramural open swim meet, and I got 10 slaps in the face from the nation's top ranked (and not so top ranked) dental schools.

Some of these outcomes could be attributed to various decisions made, priorities chosen, and other things that I had control over. Others just seemed to happen out of some type of mysterious cosmic decree. The crazy part is that I feel like I worked two or three times harder just in striving for my planned goals. My closest friends were classmates at the top of each class...I studied with them, volunteered with them, and during the times when most people were partying, resting, or "livin' it up", I worked even harder. I always have. I had real jobs to sustain myself, poured myself into understanding my course subjects, and had more hands-on knowledge and experience in the career I was striving for than most applicants...but when I look at the results, there's times when I wonder if I would have gotten the same outcome being a couch potato with only a half-ounce of ambition...and a half-ounce, by the way, is not very much.

I struggle to understand how none of my plans really came to fruition despite my maximal efforts, and what came to be was completely unintentional. Somehow when it was all over with and the dust settled, my brilliant classmates moved on to do some truly outstanding things, and I'm back to the drawing board trying to figure out how to catch up.

Do you cease to exist when you remove your birthday from facebook?

In five days, I will be experiencing yet another birthday. The last couple of years, I've begun to look less and less forward to that day, not because I'm getting older or because life is bad...on the contrary, I am incredibly blessed and I love the wisdom that I am gaining over the years, but because it seems to get more and more disappointing and predictable with each year. It's always a million wall posts on facebook from people who only remembered because their facebook told them, and 95% are empty "happy birthdays" from people who do it out of courtesy or because they feel like they should.

Everything just feels obligatory and customary...you get a cake because it's the birthday expectation and tradition, you get presents that you already know what they are because people asked you what you want them to get for you...Hallmark writes cookie-cutter messages that go on cards so people don't have to think about what they want to say and can just default to a 3-minute trip because they feel like they should since everyone expects to get a card on your birthday.

As much of a perfectionist as I am, the one thing I wish I didn't have control over is how my own birthday will be spent...in picking out presents, selecting my cake of choice, organizing my own party, and asking people to be part of it. This fabrication of self-celebration just feels like some ego trip.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I am taking for granted the fact that live in a place where all of these things are feasible. I am very appreciative for all of that. However, sometimes I feel like in all of this abundance people replace the meaning behind the tasks with the tasks themselves, and so the tasks lose their significance and are performed almost robotically.

My point is that I can buy myself a cake, buy and wrap presents for myself, pick my favorite cards...even write wall posts to myself and recreate all of these tasks nearly effortlessly and to a perfection of what should in theory make me happy.

What I cannot recreate, is the feeling of being truly loved by another...of people choosing to remember, neither out of duty nor tradition, but because they legitimately are glad that I'm around...of receiving a gift, material or not, that is wrapped in so much love and joy that it needs no wrapping paper to be exciting...of words moving me to tears, not because they were well-written and packaged in a cute font, but because they are powerfully intentioned, raw, and genuine.

I want to remember each birthday not for what I got, but for the special people in my life that find me worth spending time with. Maybe it needs to start with me...not on my birthday, but instead by making something truly special happen on the birthdays of those who are closest to me and try to revive the spirit of celebration that seems to have fallen to the wayside of consumerism. At least for now, my rebellious revolution will begin with simply removing my birthday from facebook...hopefully, I will not vanish into thin air for doing so.

On facing the road ahead...

An analogy of how I feel, is much like that of completely wiping out while running and crashing on the ground, and being in pain, and for those minutes that you're lying there just really wishing that someone would come to your rescue. But then you realize that there's nobody around, and you're the one that has to tend your own wounds, try to get up, and limp back home. I know that the choice is mine to get back up, but by getting back up by myself means to acknowledge that there is no help coming. I think it's a part of adulthood that maybe everyone faces, but it's a bitter pill to swallow.

Home Sweet Home?

For the first time since I moved to Raleigh, I'm finally starting to get this feeling like I belong here...like I'm in the right place. Some of that has to do with the fact that I actually have a job, and another part of it is that my "talents" come in handy around here...but I think the biggest factor is that I'm beginning to realize that my church family actually loves me and is as excited about me being here as I am about being with them.

Robert Frost Revisited

One of my favorite poems ever, if not my all-time favorite, is "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. If you did not know this before, well, you do now.

Since reading it for the first time, it rang true within me. Even though I look about as straight-laced as Wally from "Leave it to Beaver," I love the idea of daring to be different from the norm and taking the unknown path in life.

Sometimes when this idea becomes reality, things can get a little scary.

In theory, being the guy that ventures on out to uncharted territory is cool...like Louis & Clark when they ventured out to the Western US, or Heisenberg when he defied Albert Einstein (let me repeat that for added emphasis: DEFIED ALBERT EINSTEIN!) and other brilliant minds with his wildly innovative (and now accepted) uncertainty principle in the first half of the 20th century.

If you're not going "OH SNAP!?!" at my previous examples, then maybe these will help illustrate the type of feeling I'm trying to convey:

- Batman standing up to Gotham corruption.
- Abe Lincoln standing up against the slavery-dependent South.
- The little kid that freed Willy.

In reality, taking the unknown path in life is a little more complicated than the cool story that comes afterwards. When you actually start to take that unworn path, doubts come from all over.

Should I really be going this way? Does the path take a right or a left turn here? Why has this path not been blazed recently? Was that a tick? Should I turn around, go back, and re-think things?

I'm sure that the possibility of getting assassinated for his stance on things had crossed through Lincoln's mind, just like Batman probably wondered if he was gonna make it through the battle against the Joker...and we all know that without the miracle of CGI, Willy would have only landed on the little kid and then died, finalizing the movie's huge emotional build up (complete with Michael Jackson theme song) with extreme disappointment and lots of traumatized little kids leaving the theater.

For me, deciding against dentistry and choosing to stay in the area with the idea of developing a career out of ministry feels like I'm continuing on the unworn path even though I've just spotted bear tracks.

...as in the type that belong to KILLER BEARS!

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"...and it has made all the difference."

Most people probably take this to mean that the character in the poem made it big...that he experienced lots of success landing him some sort of book deal, or documentary, or at least a village homecoming party.

Instead, I'm thinking that perhaps taking the unworn path makes such a huge difference because we learn just how much of a gift our lives are. First, this comes in the form of fear because a lot of times, it means leaving our comfort zones. Rather than flipping out over a mosquito orbiting your ear, we're thinking about that killer bear prowling about. We become thankful for each day.

After a while, we even start worrying a little less about the killer bear. As it turns out, a lot of the things we think we absolutely can't live without are really just extra layers of comfort.

Finally, we get to a point where we begin to see and enjoy how God provides for the things we really need, and then some. Aside from the fact that we're still alive and well while on this unknown path, we almost start preparing for the possibility that the bear might show up and juggle ping pong balls while riding on a unicycle.

For me, traveling the unknown path is about trusting in God's direction even when I have no clue where that is going. Right now, I feel like I've crossed over several sets of bear tracks. The doubt in me is just waiting for the killer claw to come out...but the faithful part of me just knows that what I'll get instead is the juggling bear act of a lifetime.

An anachronistic relation.

The other day I went through the book of Jonah. I wonder if while sitting underneath the vine outside Nineveh he related well to Hamlet's most famous soliloquy. In case you don't recognize the scene below, it's the castle at Swamp Lake from Monty Python ("What, the curtains?"), which I also associate with Hamlet's dramatic flair.

To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--

No more--and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--

To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

- Excerpt taken from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

...on music and dancing.

Before you can make any sense out of this entry, I must tell you that I will use music and dancing almost interchangeably...not because they are one and the same, but because it can be assumed that any time there is music playing, there's a 99% chance that I'm dancing.

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These days I've started to wonder exactly why is it that I love dancing. I know relatively very few guys that share this passion as I do (actually, do I know any?), and unfortunately a lot of guys that dance seem to do it with motives entirely different from mine. For me, it's not about being sleazy, or about pride, or about any sort of horizontal anything...it's about the music and I.

But why?

Well, I think it's something like this. Music within my life is like stopping to eat dinner at a nice restaurant during a long trip where the rental car is cramped and has an a/c that is about as effective as a squirrel blowing air off an ice cube. You know, the kind of dinner experience that almost makes you forget that you have another 9+ hours to go. As soon as a great song (maybe even a cheesy song) comes on, there is an instant connection between the innermost alleles of my soul and each beat, phrase, measure, rhythm, and chord. Every bitter pill of the day, or week, or month, just gets dimmed out.

For me it's better than any amount of alcohol, or even a large tub of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. I just put a song on, and whether it's a 3-minute 30-second session or an evening-long event, I forget about schedules, finances, worries, and insecurities.

Ultimately, I do end up facing the real Goliaths in my life...but at least when things seem to be at their worst, it buys me the time I need to gather my wits for the battle.