You know that feeling when you get a text or a call or a message from someone you've been waiting to hear from? It's this jump in your stomach that oscillates between dread and excitement. This could either be something really good or something really terrible. You put off answering or reading for as long as possible, because your stomach can't tell you how it's going to be.
Well, the same thing happened to me when I went to go read this post by Don Miller, What Happens When You Stop Running? I read Blue Like Jazz by this author and I follow him on Twitter, though with trepidation, because a different person read Blue Like Jazz and I'm just not sure if the two of us agree anymore. But that post really hit home, and maybe not really because I've made a mess out of someone else's life, but because I can't sit still with myself, so I've been running, too.
And you know, people don't avoid reflecting like they avoid the dishes, like it's some chore that has to be done so you can have an orderly lifestyle. They don't avoid it like taking out the recycling or organizing your bookshelf or cleaning off your desk. You avoiding reflecting the same way you avoid going to the gym or going to the doctor about that lump that you found or that pain that you've been having: you're afraid you're going to find out something bad about yourself, some weakness or illness that has to be corrected. Other people are going to have to know your problems too.
The thing that's tearing me up on the inside is that I know what I'm doing wrong. Oh, there are some things that I've been doing wrong that I'm doing my best to fix, but that's because those are things I can romanticize, things I can agonize over with a relatively clean conscience, things that give the dullness of my mental landscape some color. Vices to add to the depth of my character, if you will. But the acid that eats away at me is the idea that there is wrong in the world and I am doing nothing to fix it. There are people without jobs, people without homes, people without food, and I'm not even doing the bare minimum by donating to an organization that will help them out. Almost 4 million people a year die from water-related diseases, but I'm not helping out organizations that help them either. The fact is, it's extraordinarily simple to take some of the numbers that appear in my bank account every two weeks and send them to places that use them to help the world out, and I don't do it. No excuses, just truth.
That's not to mention the time I spend doing things that don't matter (honestly, do I need to beat Zelda: A Link to the Past or check my Twitter that often?). In high school and in college, I was always busy doing something, even if it wasn't directly helping people, because I excel in organizations. I can be thankful for all the things I learned doing all the things I did, but I don't have any of that anymore. I'm not sure where to invest my time and so I don't invest it at all. Sure, the video games and the guitar/piano playing are ways to destress, and I appreciate that, but there are enough extra hours of trying to relax that I end up stressing out about it. I'm lazy, and I need some kind of impetus to make me want to change that. (As a former physics major, I have a little difficulty using inertia in the metaphorical sense.)
That's why I run. Because instead of hearing, "When I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink," I'll hear, "When I was thirsty, you bought two new shirts." Instead of being blessed for being meek or being a peace-maker, I know I'll be thrown out for burying my talent or wearing the wrong clothes to the wedding or not having oil in my lamp, because I'm certainly not risking anything, I'm not even trying, and I'm certainly not waiting expectantly for a great good to come. Beyond that, I can't face the fact that I'm not what people expect me to be. I can't stand that I've let people down because of these faults that I've cultivated. I'm not even honestly trying to be good anymore, because I was sick of people thinking I thought I was better than everybody else.
And I guess I thought I was, since now I feel the same as everybody else. I've got something to cover up, some secrets to keep inside, closets, skeletons to shove inside. Nothing noteworthy, though. Just your typical bad habits. Just your normal human being, too afraid to face what's inside me because I know, then, that I'll have to change. I don't want to try to be anything special, because then I'd have to do something.
