If I Remember Anything

I woke up around 5:00am to kick off this new year. Definitely not on purpose. All I wanted was to go back to sleep. But for any reason, my first thought was to stay in bed and listen to music. So just lying in bed on a dark, cold, silent morning, the first song I listened to in 2018 was "Love's In Need Of Love Today" by Stevie Wonder. Totally unexpected and instantaneously, I started bawling my eyes out.

It's hard to explain these emotionally gigantic-yet-temporary moments that happen to each of us. Because it's as though one moment we can remember the experience vividly and romantically, then the next we can just simply forget. Heck, sometimes we not only forget these personal moments of peace and clarity, but we go into utter despair. As I type this, I'm listening to that Stevie Wonder track. And although part of me is like, "Frick, I was just feeling this earlier today and the aesthetic is already gone," I don't think this is worth stressing over. I've had plenty of moments of complete inner-joy since then, and I will probably continue to have more. I've kept some pieces of these moments with me. If I remember anything, it's that I've realized my despise for superficiality. 

I've spent a good chunk of my life holding on to the superficial. Yeah, that's kinda my word of the day. Here are some terms the Google dictionary uses to describe it:

-Lack of thoroughness

-Lacking depth of character

-Lacking serious thought

-Existing/occurring at or on surface level

It's amazing (and by amazing, I mean ridiculous) how much irrational judgment we make on our initial impressions of others. Or even toward ourselves. I mean, a guy doesn't wave back to you in the hallway, and all the sudden every small mannerism you see in him has some prideful tint to it. Holy cow, we are literally monsters. And on a self-criticizing level, I think I've felt regret for +/- half the text messages I've ever sent. Like it freaking matters!

While I don't think I'll ever crack the code for how deep genuineness can go, I'm learning a lot about just how thick the ice of superficiality truly is. Perhaps your taste in music can say a lot about you. Or the stuff you post on Facebook. But dang, what a terrible way to write someone off. We're all making the same mistakes every day here, and we are all divvying out the pain and joy within us; deciding not only what to keep with us, but how much of it. 

How much joy do you keep with you? How much pain do you carry around? What pain has meant the most to you? What joy has meant the most to you? When you put it this way, it seems obvious that we should be hopeful all the time. Yet when we hit our roadblocks, this is far from obvious.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah described Christ as a character "acquainted with grief." Due to our human condition, we will all come across some grief and pain. If we let grief become our enemy, we will crumble at its presence. If we allow grief to become our friend, we will stray from cheer. If we sustain an acquaintanceship with grief, we become like Christ. We will have a slight knowledge of it; we'll handle it when it hits us, then continue to go about our lives without it. 

Like I said before, we can never decipher the deepest depths of every person we come across. That would be too emotionally tasking. The fact that there is a surface level to all things keeps life bearable. However, clinging to the surface of things--to superficiality--leads to mere surface-level understanding. We can only assume that perhaps those who seek help truly need it. The happiness that comes from true human connection is totally worth the effort. It's a disciplinary conscious, borderline-spiritual effort to crack through the superficial and truly get to know another person; to truly get to know ourselves.

Through 2018, I have learned to care less about--well--basically anything that appears on the screen of a smart phone. I honestly think that by talking more with other people about valuable things, you learn more about them and even about yourself. You develop a stronger love for other people and oddly enough, learn to love yourself. I gotta admit, the internet is cool, but humanity is that much cooler.

I'm not saying we should all just give up on the material world and gather around a campfire singing "Kumbayah" or something, but...

Actually, yeah. I kinda am.

*This blog post is brought to you by the Bible, Stevie Wonder, and Blogger.com!