Indecisiveness, passivity and assorted coping mechanisms of the self-deluded sea anenome

This is Part One of a series around David Benner’s The Gift of Being Yourself, a book I am reading with a number of my students. Since I am discussing the book anywhere from 5-6 times a week with different students, I figured I might as well document the fruit of some of my reflections and conversations.

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” — Matthew 14:28

“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.” — William James

I am convinced Peter was an extrovert. I am convinced the distance between the birth of a thought in his brain and sound out of his mouth was the smallest nanometer of a nanometer. Perhaps I’m projecting a bit of myself onto the well-knowing story of Peter walking-ish on water depicted in Matthew 14. But how else could you explain the ridiculous utterances that came out of his terrified mouth in verse 28? It doesn’t seem to be very well thought-through on a number of levels.

First of all, he doesn’t recognize Jesus… so maybe you’d ask this ghost-like aqua man to come a little closer to get a better a look at his face. If you don’t trust him, why would you even ask him to invite you out onto the water? And secondly, what’s with the weird request for an invitation anyways? It would be like if you walked into a kitchen and the guy at the stove told you he was Gordon Ramsey, you wouldn’t reply to him, “If you really are Gordon Ramsey, invite me to cook a soufflé.”

Attack of the killer Tasmanians!!! Can we think about that?

Read this and subsequent entries on this topic because its discusses one of the most significant shifts in my life.

– Anonymous

MULL

Pronunciation: ˈməl

Function: verb

Etymology: Middle English, from mul, mol dust, probably from Middle Dutch; akin to Old English melu meal — more at meal

Date: 15th century

transitive verb

1 : to grind or mix thoroughly : pulverize

2 : to consider at length : ponder —often used with over

intransitive verb

: meditate, ponder

Main Entry: 1mull Pronunciation: ˈməlFunction: verbEtymology: Middle English, from mul, mol dust, probably from Middle Dutch; akin to Old English melu meal — more at mealDate: 15th centurytransitive verb1 : to grind or mix thoroughly : pulverize2 : to consider at length : ponder —often used with overintransitive verb: meditate, ponder

Pronunciation: ˈməlFunction: verbEtymology: Middle English, from mul, mol dust, probably from Middle Dutch; akin to Old English melu meal — more at mealDate: 15th centurytransitive verb1 : to grind or mix thoroughly : pulverize2 : to consider at length : ponder —often used with overintransitive verb: meditate, ponder

Do you mull? How often do you mull? Can you describe what happens when you mull? How effective is your mulling?

Here’s how I describe mulling: when there’s something in your mind that you need to work out — a tension, a bad emotion, a difficult problem a complex circumstance… and you have to work it out by thinking about it, wondering about it. You replay conversations in your head. You fantasize. You think about all the things you COULD have said, COULD have done to improve your fortunes. This makes sense, right?

Do you want to know something absolutely freaking crazy?

I don’t think I ever did much mulling until I left college. Does that not sound earth shattering to you?

If not, you need to understand the mind of a flaming extrovert.

Learning to talk to myself in the sardine can: A journey to discover the inner monologue

By all means use sometimes to be alone.  Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear. – George Herbert

Its 9am on southwest airlines flight 575 to Denver. I’m sitting in the first row wedged like a sardine between two men a younger fellow in a crisp business suit and a friendly-looking grandpa. I’m in the midst of my usual flight routine: a rotation between reading the paper, doing the crossword, listening to my iPod, reading a book , feasting my face with 100-calorie cheesenips and ginger ale. While this seems like a bit much, a lot to bite off in a 5 hour flight, its become the norm for me as I get used to traveling for my job.

Perhaps because I can’t physically move around cooped up in a tight space, doing a lot of little tasks keeps me alert– at least until I fall asleep. Business Suit man was doing a similar but more high class routine– replace my Sun Times with his Wall Street Journal, my scratched up iPod with his glistening iPhone, replace the sweaty armpit section on my raggedy Obama T-shirt with his tailor-made threads.

But sometime midflight, we were probably flying over a Nebraska cornfield, I looked over to grandpa on his left and was intrigued. He had no routine like me or Business Suit. He hadn’t said a word other than a warm hello when we first sat down. Yet he was wide awake, his eyes focused ahead but not really looking at anything. The back of his hands rested on his thighs and his wrinkled hands curled upwards. He was wearing a plain, mesh navy blue trucker hat with a small marine pin on the right side. But the hat like the rest of his body sat there motionless, apart from the occasional yawn.

I also noticed that he had absolutely nothing on his person. No watch, no phone, certainly no iPod. I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a Nintendo DS or PSP either. He had nothing in his pockets. And he just sat there. His facial expression wasn’t extremely happy nor sad, but he looked comfortable and content. He looked as if he were at peace. It was at that moment my intrigue turned to curiosity.

PART 1: What’s [insert preposition here] your mind?

I actually do have questions:

• So if the oil is drugs and a fried egg is your brain on drugs, the egg is your brain? If so, that means drugs allows your brain to be used in perhaps one of its most delicious purposes, sunny side up!
• What is your brain supposed to be like, a raw unused egg? Because over time an unused egg that is neither cooked nor consumes, gets rotten and stinky.

I think that commercial is royally stupid, but it serves as good starting point for my blog entry today. What is the mind? What is YOUR mind like? What happens in there? Not just when drugs are there, but in any situation.

If a fried egg is a metaphor for a brain on drugs (which I must admit makes SOME semblence of sense, even tho the quality of that commercial makes me want to do some drugs so I can have a delicious skillet), then what is an appropriate metaphor for a brain that is functioning well, as it was intended to?

Taming the Hectic Life without Being Tame

I’ve been on a brief hiatus from blogging with the roller coaster of life that is New Student Outreach. I think its safe to say that the past month has been a whirlwind and a blur, but thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as last year, where I became physically sick after overloading close to 80 hour weeks. But a lot has happened… and the rabid dogs that are the thoughts roaming in my head…. need to be tamed. So hence this entry, which may have the appearance of random musings, but I can assure you that they are not… I just don’t know exactly why I’m musing in this order.

1.) The goal line stand that is my life.

So two weeks ago, the bears defeated the Eagles in dramatic fashion. It was the end of the game, fourth and goal on the one line, and the Philly offense was looking like it was going to pull off a come frome behind win. And the bears defense put on a marvelous goal line stand where it stopped Phily from getting into the endzone and went on to win the game.

That pretty adequately describes how the past month of my life has been. My schedule and the things I have to do are like the threatening Philly offense and I’ve been forced to play defense… pinned deep in my own territory. I have a ton of things to do (even this blog entry I would say could be considered therapeutic, well-intentioned but ultimately shameless proscrastination). And my mind is filled with all the things that have to be done. I try to play some offense, but I’m like an impotent rookie quarterback trying to get the offense going, but consistently forcing to punt. My defense, isn’t that bad, but at the end of the day I gotta wonder: how long can I hold up. Get the offense going!

I would love to be like the Patriots offense of 07-08, where they were constantly on offense and Tom Brady was strategically, surgically picking apart enemy defenses and racking up points. I think to do that, I need to get on top of my schedule and increase my productivity for one, but I think also, in a supernatural way maybe I need God to help me clear the clutter or tame the dogs that swirl in my head. But then again, I don’t want my life to be tame, and I’ve in some ways enjoyed the craziness that has been my past 30 days. Anyways, if its any encouragement, Kyle Orton had a kick butt game on Sunday, throwing for 300 yards and two touchdowns. Maybe there’s hope for anybody! =P

2. The Tamagotchi that Never Had a Chance

Do you ever stay up late at night unable to sleep because you’re thinking about something? It could be something significant in your life, good or bad, you could be caught up in excitement, frustration, sadness, anger, confusion… but the result is that it completely occupies a huge space in your mind for an extended period of time. Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been lost in your thoughts or had a decision or upcoming situation that you couldn’t help but wrestle with internally? Do you mull over things a lot?

If you do, I’m happy for you. But I realized this month that I have no idea really what it means to do any of those above things. The idea of mulling over something is a foreign concept… like body boarding or playing the accordian. I think about all the intense decisions in my life or really tough moments I’ve had to go through, and I can’t recall a time when I’ve really mulled it over for an extended period of time. Sure I think hard and wrestle with stuff from time to time, but it never keeps me up at night… my mind is always moving somewhere back and forth.

I think that’s why I love music and not analyzing or dissecting music… but the very present-tense quality of music. When I listen to music or perform music, all that matters to me is the here and now… there’s such an immediate quality, the ups and the downs, the roller coaster ride of harmony and dynamics. And after you play or sing something, its gone… and then there’s something else to sing. That’s how my mind works. There’s something, then there’s something else. I don’t really like that, but I can’t help it.

That’s why I’m a sucky composer and not the greatest at teaching music… that requires lots of reflection, going back replaying, thinking, analyzing. But listening to beautiful music or improvising, all that matters is the here and now… there are themes and impressions you hold onto, but its never debilitating or confining, but rather a framework of going from beat to beat, measure to measure chord to chord.

I love music because when its done right, when people really feel the music, no matter what genre or style, every part fo your mind, heart and body is stimulated… you heart, your mind, your emotions, your thoughts, your heart beats faster, there’s dissonance then resolution, there’s resolution and ambiguity, your body moves to the groove. When the music is good, there’s no need to analyze, think, question… you just EXIST in the moment.

I think about the musical experiences that have rocked me to the core. I think about sitting in the front row of Pick-Staiger Auditorium listening to Von Freeman play over Cherokee with such ease. The notes just flow over you like a soft shower. I think about as a kid listening to principle french horn player from the North Shore Symphony play some concerto… I don’t remember what it was called or what his name was, but I remember what the room looked like, I remember the sound that came out of that instrument it was melted gold. I think about staying up late at night my freshman year of college listening to Jacko’s “Rock With You”… and listening to the horn riffs over and over again… it just felt RIGHT… it was perfect.  I think about Whintley Phipps singing “It is Well With My Soul” and how somehow my dirty little room became something other-worldly, something beyond reason… and somehow… I can’t even begin to explain it, but God was there with me, with Whintley….

Anyways, I could go on forever, but ultimately what does this have to do with mulling over stuff and my life? I mean, its not like what I just described is inherently bad… I think its awesome… that’s how I’ve approached my life for 24 years. But for some reason now, I feel like I need a change. To what?  OK, the best wayI can explain this is through the Tamagotchi. You remember them, right? They were those digital pets from the 90s. They were this little handheld machine key chain hwere you could feed your critter play with it and basically you wanted to grow it up and not let it die.

Well… to throw another metaphor in the mix… all the thoughts and decisions and emotions in my head are like litte Tamagotchis that need to be nurtured fed. Well not all of them, some fo them are not as important, some shoudl just be killed and disposed of. But there are some Tamagotchis that need to be fed and nurtured so they can mature. When I live my life in a whirlwind of here and now, when my life is like listening to good music… its like adding more and more tamagotchi to my collection every day… none of which are growing or nurtured, but I can just enjoy them each in their infantile state.

(This is getting confusing, I know…. how many metaphors can I mix together? My high school English teacher just fell out of her chair and doesn’t know why)

But all this is to say… I think I’m at a point in my life, where I’d LOVE to stay up all night wrestling with the important stuff that’s in my head. I’d love to mull over life’s issues in such a way that I start to really develop a deeper understanding and analysis of them.

I’m really good at asking people for advice. I’m really good at reading books, listening to podcasts. I’m really good at sharing with people how I’m doing. And all that is like listening to good music. I think for once, I need to get into the  business of composing my own music… which is can be arduous, reflective, analytic process. I need to take my Tamagotchi collection, figure out which ones I really carea bout and which ones are truly important and I need to nurture them… feed them!

You know that Austin Powers scene where he gets unfrozen and loses his inner monologue and audibly says all the stuff that should ahve been in his head. Let me tell you something, I have hardly ANY inner monologue. My mind is thinking, feeling, moving, but its not like a singular voice… its like an orgy of voices, songs, scenes, memories, emotions, colors, everything… and when open my mouth to speak (or move my fingers to type) JESUS only knows what will come out. That’s why my friends joke about verbal diharrea. This entry was kinda like that. I didn’t really think at all about writing anything on here. I just wrote what was inside. Is that weird? I could go back an edit all the grammatical mistakes and typos (which I’m sure are plentiful), but I guess this is a taste of what goes on inside…

Anyways, I don’t think I’ll ever have an inner monologue like my introspective, introverted friends, but maybe I can start to tame the rabbid dogs, nurture some key tamaguchis and compose some thoughtful organized music  so that I can get off of defense and starting playing some offense.

And that’s all she wrote…

Real Life Memento

After all the fanfare of last nights’ inaugural blog entry, I’m back, hard at work, providing valuable content to my throngs of readers out there in cyberspace. Its interesting for me to consider what people blog about. I guess every blog has certain guidelines as to what is important enough to be published publicly. I guess everyone has their own filtering system, albeit some people’s systems are rather bizarre.

For some their blog filter basically consisted of cryptic, passive aggressive rants that were meant to draw attention and/or ire from a random host of individuals (I’m thinking bored, repressed adolescents gone wild on their xangas). Some filters are pretty specific like delicious foods that they’ve eaten. Or in more recent years, there has been a huge rise of blogs on TV, blogs on politics… and now religion and theology! Their filter is pretty clear. But I also can’t tell you how many blogs who’s filter could be described by two words: “random musings.” That doesn’t tell me anything, your musings are probably not random, you’re just too lazy to describe your filter as it truly is. (Somebody kick me if I ever use the term “random musings”… even tho I probably will)

I’m wondering what should my filter consist of? I wouldn’t want this blog to just to be about ministry or just about faith. I want the blog to be about the totality of things I experience… and certainly faith and ministry should be a core part. So I think to myself, maybe my filter should be broad… how about: things that I like in life big or small? That sounds like a good one initially, but it also poses some new problems.

You see, its 1:10 AM and I’m just about ready to go to bed after a long, mildly-productive day. I’ve just adopted my new-found filter: “Things I like in life big or small.” And so in preparation for this entree, I’m playing back the details of my life this past day trying to identify the things that happened today that i liked… and you know what? Its all fuzzy! Recalling the details of my day is pretty taxing. What I ate for each meal. Waiting for the el. Talking to the receptionist. Using the bathroom. A lot of it comes back to me, but I have to work for it.

When your sitting in bed getting ready to go to bed, what do you think to yourself? Do you have moments at night when you wonder to yourself what on earth did I do today?

When people ask me casually, “How are you? How’s your day? How are you doing?” I never stop and actually think literally how my day is going, what events has transpired. Even when I am seriously trying to entertain that question, that’s just not how my mind works. I just give a knee jerk response that expresses my emotional state. I feel like a runaway freight train motoring through life.

In that way I guess I kind of feel like Leonard Shelby in Memento… I wonder how much of my daily existence just dissolves into nothing because my memory is so fallible. I wonder how many beautiful experiences simply fade away or dilute before my very eyes. Carl Jung would diagnose me as an extroverted feeling psychological type which is all well and good and shows that not everyone is as crazy as I am.

I guess this blog is a good start. I’m forced to actually do the hard work of filtering my life and trying to put it out in an at least somewhat coherent, readable format… even tho what you get to read are the verbose ramblings whereby this confused extrovert somehow arrives at insight. So kudos to you if you’ve gotten this far and hope that you’ve gotten at least a fraction of the value your favorite extrovert has gotten from writing this entry.
Thanks, Jesus, for a great day.

Wow, those were some random musings.