restlessImpatience and selfishness. Two things that for whatever reason keep on being highlighted in my life in all sorts of little ways this week that make me cringe.
Example: this stupid beast of a thing in me that feels the need to have everything figured out in the realm of relationships gets exposed each time I stop reading books about relationships and actually try to engage real people, who, oddly enough, don't fit into the convenient molds a lot of Christian literature seems to think they do.
Example: my narrow-mindedness in the way I engage people who differ from me in philosophy and lifestyle comes right up to the surface once I start realizing that maybe the reason people keep thinking that I'll get offended if they curse or drink around me has less to do with some kind of bias they have and more to do with what changes on my face or comfort level when this stuff happens around me.
The more I think about these things and the further back I go over the past year or two, the more I see signs that I tend to navigate my life from a paradigm that needs to change.
I can remember Matt telling me in our evaluation that I'm probably the most book-smart person he knows, but I need to work on my common sense. Garland says I'm about as bright as a box of rocks when it comes to awareness of my surroundings.
They are totally right.
If I have any doubt, I only have to look at the disaster I almost made of my career this summer.
I am book smart, and music smart, and tech-smart, because those things are easy compared to dealing with people. Those things don't require empathy and emotional investment. This is why I was ready to bang my head into a wall after three days of being stuck in a room with Aaron after Wilma hit. I needed to get out and do manual labor because palm branches don't require conversation, or invade your personal space, or follow you around your house when you get restless.
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There are other things, too, though. My blindness has hurt people. One person in particular, and I don't know if she even really understands how badly I blew it. I've found myself a few times holding my phone, getting ready to make the call to apologize, to repent.
I want to tell her that I'm different now, that the fundamentalist stick is removed from my ass, that we ended on weird terms because I put a higher value on doctrine than on another human being, but all I've got is desire and no idea how to get there.
I want to tell her that, and I want her to know that I mean it. But it dawns on me that it's probably too late, that it probably won't do her any good now; it's been almost a year. Besides, I wonder if perhaps this isn't something I would do for selfish reasons, in order to make me feel like I accomplished some pennance, so I can dust myself off and continue living in the fantasy that I've got any real control in this world.
Maybe I need to marinate on this for a while, let the discomfort move me to change, because awareness is only the first step.
And I refuse to sink more money into another stupid book so I can get taught what to think by someone who's just going to help me to turn the people around me into characters in the play of my life, starring me.
Somehow I know I need to figure this thing out on my own. Spend some time feeding the homeless, or doing something for someone else and not telling a soul, or fasting and meditating on Scripture, you know, the things that will get me out of my own skin, things that have been done for centuries by people who "got it," who understood that all of life's answers can't be found on a bookshelf, who understood that people need to be loved where they're at rather than figured out, that life isn't some kind of a chess game, and you don't win if you reduce life to formulas.
Maybe I will call her tomorrow.
6 AM.
I'm going to sleep.