Elsewhere in Dreams

I have this thing, and I call it being badly adjusted. It’s like trying to wrap my mind around life and failing, but also like trying to pick between polar opposites and not understanding which one to grab ahold of.

I think the choices you and I face are often quite easy and hard at the same time; I would like to be both an advertising executive and an automobile mechanic. Easy to say neither is a particularly bad choice, hard to pick which one. I want to have sex with my girlfriend, but I don’t at the same time. Easy to pick which one is right, hard to do what you choose.

But at the same time, it’s easy to idealise choices irrationally: if it’s hard then it must be right. The honest truth is, I think, that the easy way is not always the out, and the hard way doesn’t always build up something within you. Escape from situations may sometimes be easy, but it’s also sometimes right. Not having sex with your wife may be difficult, but it’s probably wrong.

Wouldn’t it be better if everything were on straight lines and coloured black and white? Ironically, you can’t even say in black and white which things are written on straight lines. You can’t say that all ecumenical activity is wrong, for instance, and you can’t say every emotional experience is good.

But one beast I’ve never met is the easy choice that’s easy to both choose and impliment. Maybe it exists, just not for me. But mostly it’s between hard/easy, easy/hard, and hard/hard.

Kind of points me to a place where all the choices are on a straight line. You can call this escapist fantasy if you will. But even the escapist fantasy is the hard and easy choice. Easy to say that you want heaven. Hard to get there. Or, easy to type the words, and hard on the shoulders because the posture is bad. Either way.

Think of a plant. A tree. What tree chooses where it’s planted? None that I can think of. Think of a tree growing in a place where it was impossible not to, no matter where you landed there was water and there were nutrients. I grow weary of the choice, of the illusion that I have control and landing in grooves beside the wall where there is no water. This evening, for a moment, it was glory. But I opened my eyes and I am still here.

Don’t fear: this is no death threat or wish for oblivion. But sometimes the lap of Abraham seems preferable to even the sweetest things I can find here. You, love, you are not enough to complete me. You aren’t enough to bear me up for the long or the short that we do or do not have: does that break you? Or does it cause you to fall on everlasting arms?

Yahwilling I will see you soon: in this moment I speak to both love and Love.

Tags: ruminations

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