I pulled over early on the way home from work to record that the last song I added to my playlist is wrecking me again. This happens. The playlist is a playlist I made of songs that wreck me.
There are art works I experience on a level that breaks my own heart a little, if I think: “I may die without ever having expressed my own feelings this clearly”—this beautifully. Tonight it’s “The Road, The Rocks, and The Weeds” by John Mark McMillan.
I’ve always been bad at record keeping. I easily lose track of all kinds of things—people’s birthdays, upcoming bills, items on the grocery list, and (relevant today) how many hours I’ve spent missing Rich Mullins. I know that it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of “most of my adult life”. Which, now that I think about it, may not amount to super many hours after all. In any case.
And I wasn’t even meaning to talk about Rich Mullins. But listening to Steve Bell’s music tends to make me think of him. Today I discovered “Peace Prayer”.
That thing where you stop and stare up at the sky and think how strange and short this life is and suddenly the next life doesn’t seem so far away.
Originally written August 2, 2024
I just came across this, by Kent Beck of Extreme Programming fame:
For the first 40 years of my life I believed safety consisted of holding up a mask so I controlled how other people saw me. Heaven forbid they should see me as *I* saw me.
At 42 that mask became unbearably heavy. I had to drop it on the floor. The mask shattered.
It took a decade to become comfortable that I couldn’t control how other people saw me. That lack of control didn’t matter because I was already safe.
The remainder of my life has been spent getting used to clothes that actually fit. Apologies for the metaphor salad but I’m trying to say something that was incredibly important to me.
It might be helpful for me to learn that one now. I don’t have time, energy, or strength to even attempt to control how others see me. My pitiful attempts are in shambles and were probably poisonous to begin with.
I don’t have a ton of free time to blog lately so I’ll throw in a couple of other, possibly related lessons that I’ve been pondering recently, which I may also need to learn:
As anyone who has known me moderately well for very long in real life could tell you, I am (alas) the talkative type. I don’t do well at pausing to let others speak, or at prompting or encouraging them to speak. If not reminded, I can go on for some time about myself, what I have been doing or thinking, or other things to do with myself, or possibly with what I think of other people or happenings.
I am not a poet, so perhaps it’s partly my unmanliness. Where most guys—surely many if not most men—value time spent out golfing, or fishing or hunting or whatevering, with their friends, I value more time spent discussing: time with words, ideas, writing, reading, speaking. I have a particularly fond memory of one winter night spent with a friend in front of the fire, explicably (I’d say inexplicably, but it’s explicable: we were out West, where such things make sense) drinking coffee, and chatting of this and that. That was some free time spent together. For the poor folks I text, I tend to feel honored when they take time in their busy lives to write to me or to read what I write to them.
One companion of olden times I’ve somewhat kept in touch with. I did not know him as well as I wish I had, but when I could communicate with him he was always an incredible encouragement to me. Looking back I now wonder: was he very close to anyone hardly at all? He was a friendly and good acquaintance to many, but did he have friends?
I’ve been thinking for some while now (ironically perhaps, including a good bit of the time since I started this blog) about shutting up. How many times, regretting a particularly bad outcome or trouble I’ve caused someone else, I’ve made great resolves—“From now on, I will (or won’t) do XYZ”—and then failed to live up to them. So I won’t clearly make any such resolve here, but just ponder a bit what it might look like to shut up, and about the pros and cons.
Your words may be somewhat more valued. I don’t think there’s a guarantee here. Causation and correlation, and all that sort of thing. But for the one or two persons I can think of who simply don’t say much very often, I do think it’s a bit more noticeable to me when they do speak up. Maybe that is just me. And presumably, in order to benefit from this you would need to refrain from speaking up except when it was important that others pay attention.
You are less likely to annoy people. People are all different. It may be rude, I think, to say too explicitly to someone that they’re annoying you by constant chatter, but some people will do that. Others won’t. I expect that for most people, if anyone simply won’t leave them alone but keeps texting or calling or messaging or writing or following them around and trying to carry on a conversation, that may be trying, even if they don’t say so out loud.
You’re far less likely to put your foot in your mouth. Could I stand to have done this a good bit less in my life!
You may sometimes find it easier to live in peace with others. It’s rare to come across a very large group of people with whom you agree on every issue and who all agree with each other, and some people deal better with disagreement than do others. If you are able to hold a view (or reject a view) and yet not express it, you have the advantage over someone who proclaims to all acquaintances what it is that he thinks.
I’ve been going through The Adventures of Sally (Wodehouse, once again). Bits describing lone thought-wrestling, in the car at night, while looking out at the passing scenery, appeal to me. Also some of her letters. “Proud! That’s the real trouble, Ginger. My pride has been battered and chopped up and broken into as many pieces as you broke Mr. Scrymgeour’s stick!”
You may unwittingly offend people. It’s not always certainly clear when someone expects you to communicate, either to respond or to initiate a conversation, or to bring up something. Again, some may not even say it aloud (at least not to you), but they may be bothered all the same. It’s hard for me to imagine, though, that this would happen as often as people would be bothered by one’s speaking too much.
You may be a bit lonely. What if you already are, though? Conversation is such a warming and helpful sort of a thing, when it involves sharing what one has in common with others. As I said before, for me it’s one of the chief pastimes that involves friends. You don’t have to speak every interesting thought you have. (For me that’s a tricky thing to remember.) But when an idea occurs to me and I’m excited to share it with others and it just doesn’t seem to excite them the same—well, after the 434th time or so of that, it does become easier to consider shutting up. It’s not their fault in any way. I still can become lonely, though.
If you were to drop off the face of the earth tomorrow, the people who call looking for you, those are your real friends.
— Noah Stokes
I’m running out of words for now.
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
— Henry Brook Adams
At long last I think I may give up on Twitter—that is, X—entirely. Earlier this year, I deleted my original account, opened in 2009: I had 30 days to log back in and the 30 days came and went, so it’s gone. I have another account, with fewer than 50 followers, but still with some nice interactions. But in addition to wasting time with that account, I’m getting worn out.
I’m worn out in multiple aspects of social life. It’s too long a story to tell, but by my late 20s and now in my early 30s, I have few close personal friends. Those I did know well—better than I knew any others, at least—I seem to be losing touch with, through geographic distance or relational coolness or loss of common interests or doctrinal difference or something else; I could not say.
But I’ve plodded along trying to be friends: online, in person, via text or X or real-life visiting. Some of my efforts seem to wear me out. I know that friendship is a two-way thing, but that’s just it, it’s a two-way thing! How long should I really continue to sink time into:
I don’t mean to attack. I don’t want to belittle the kindness of the ones who do befriend me. I don’t consider myself a good human being or very interesting and I don’t know for sure that I’d want to be friends with me, if I weren’t me. And I’m sure my failings are too many to be numbered in a stupid but sad blog post.
I guess isolation comes in multiple forms: one can be isolated in a place, far from others who would otherwise have much in common; one can be isolated theologically and know almost no one who shares certain beliefs. One may even simply be not a major contributor to parties or gatherings and thus be sometimes left alone when those occur, and that may be a form of isolation.
I think I’ll try to go ahead and accept that. I have a wonderful church family who I must get to know better, I have a wife who when I think that God brought her to me it makes me cry, and I have dear children who I must be a friend to, and who will need to face this issue some day themselves. Friendship is important, and community is necessary, but not everybody is promised a life on earth flooded with the joyous and strengthening companionship of fellow passengers to the grave. What I’m promised is by the Lord Jesus, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5 KJV). Please, God, help me to hold on to that.
Never was grief like Yours.
Sometimes I feel like art is pointless, what is the use, why even bother, why not give up even trying or wanting to try. Sometimes it all seems a waste of time and that I maybe should just leave it alone and move on—not that I know how to move on. To match my mood I turn on Rich Mullins, for the first time in a long time.
Then I wonder if Rich Mullins would have ever gotten his message to seep into my sluggish and beaten-down consciousness if he had not written and sung.
God in Heaven understands.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world;
Have mercy upon me.
Blog Of My Sojourn 