what? i’m confused?

I’m still thinking about it.  Sigh. 

One of the worst and best things about this life is that you really have no idea what is going to happen at any given moment.  People can love you or slam your face into the ground; buildings can stand or fall.  Nothing is really certain.

I was listening to some music the other day at a friend’s house.  I didn’t choose the music, and had never heard it before.  The main lyric in the song was “my faith is like shifting sand/so I stand on grace”.  This too seemed really dichotomous to me.  I guess I’ve thought that faith is like the strongest thing one can have in life.  I mean, how many movies talk about faith (or freedom or love or such ideals) can be the only thing that no one can really take away from us!?  I don’t get how you can have weak faith and not be able to stand, and yet sing about it.  I just don’t get it.

I used to be one who stood, strongly too, on faith alone.  I’m not sure what exactly happened; I think it was a series of many things, and I feel like my faith just sort of fell out from under me.  Maybe I fell into or out of it.  I don’t really know actually.  But when you spend a lot of time in your life standing on faith, and circumstances don’t work out, you shouldn’t question your faith, should you?  Or should you?

And so continues the dichotomy.  I don’t like being confused–it’s something I ironically didn’t expect to happen a lot in my life.  (Probably because of the standing on faith thing).  I just can’t believe the things I have been considering lately!  I mean stuff I would have never let enter my radar is at the forefront of my mind–things that I knew without a doubt ‘I believe x about y,’ and now I don’t know that I’m sure.

I have heard it said that people change their beliefs when it works for them.  It would work for me in my life in some ways right now if I changed some of my beliefs.  I kinda don’t want to, though. 

And so the dichotomy remains. 

would you like to talk about it?

Isn’t it kind of people to ask you this? 

Lately I haven’t really been myself.  I have stuff on my mind.  I do.  I have stuff on my mind and it’s been pretty intense.  Not to be graphic, but I’m having a bit of a morality crisis.  Is crisis the right word?  Maybe, maybe not. 

The definition of crisis, to me, depends on where you came from in the first place.  Now me, I’ve been morally normal, ultra conservative, conservative, and slightly liberal.  To my conservative and ultra conservative friends I’ve been excessively liberal here and there, but to my liberal friends I’ve always been conservative.  It’s been….fun(?) to navigate these waters with this eclectic kind of support system. 

Okay, it hasn’t been fun.  When you’re trying to figure out your moral stance on personal economical political (or whatever) issues, you’re often going to get a slew of opinions.  

In the end, no two people actually agree on these gray areas in my life, and everyone’s opinion almost always seems right.  So people ask me, ‘is something wrong? would you like to talk about it?’  What am I supposed to say?  No, because you’re not going to want to talk about something that is just going to piss you off because it doesn’t roll with your ultra conservative/liberal mindset?  I feel trapped by the dichotomy of all of this because everyone has an opinion about some of this stuff.  At the end of the day, moral stance is simply a choice, and I have to make it.  Nobody can make it for me.  I guess that’s the hardest part. 

Something that has really impacted me in the last few weeks is a quote that I heard someone share.  I looked it up to make sure it was accurate.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (Aristotle)

I like that it doesn’t say it’s the mark of an educated man.  Anyway…  

I think this is what I’m basing things on right now.  Aristotle in some ways seems a crazy cornerstone during this season of my life, but I think it’s good for me to be able to say, hey, I can think and entertain something for a moment, but it doesn’t mean that becomes a part of me.  I’m just thinking about it. 

And that’s where it lies.  I’m just thinking about it.  I want to make a choice, but I won’t today.  I actually can say that  I have no idea what I’m going to do or what I’m going to decide to believe, and that for me is a HUGE gray area.  I have always known exactly what I’ve believed and why.  It’s crazily powerful to know that it’s my own choice regardless of what other people say.  I’ve never considered myself powerful enough to make my own decisions and have always looked for someone else’s opinion.  I feel like I’m breaking new ground all the time.  I suppose that’s why I don’t seem like myself right now and people ask me, ‘is something wrong, would you like to talk about it?’.  No, nothing’s wrong, and everything’s wrong, and part of adulthood is the plain and simple fact that I have to work this out for myself. 
 

everything is dichotomous

I have been having this experience of late where everything in my life feels kind of dichotomous.  Well, I wouldn’t say everything in my life, but a good portion of things.  I like to think that in a perfect world, where I am a famous diva and the world revolves around me, I wouldn’t have these issues. 

 Wouldn’t that be nice?

I think I’ve decided that’s the point of this blog.  I have expectations.  You have expectations.  Don’t deny it; you know you do.  They don’t get met.  I thought I would be a world famous diva by this point in my life.  I thought that practically since I was born.  However, it’s not about disappointments or standards that haven’t been met.  On the contrary.  Rather I want to explore things as they are and sincerely enjoy them.  So I will. 

But I’m a liar if I say that you always handle disappointment and confusion with grace and tact.  Obviously!  I’ll just explore it publically for all the internet to read. 

 Enjoy. 

when I write vs. when I talk

I’m not sure how I feel about being a blogger.  I am a stream of consciousness writer, which to me means I write how I think.  A lot of people also write how they talk, which has been said of me.  Truth be told, I talk A LOT.  Everyone who knows me knows this, with certainty.  I like to think, though, that in some cases, when I come to the end of myself I can still write, and write how I think rather than how I talk.  I find an odd comfort in the idea that I am a better, more efficient thinker than I am a talker.  In actuality, that’s not the case at all.  Much of this blog will not make any sense to anyone but me.  I am totally okay with that.  I’m not sure what I will use this device to comment on, I’ll wait and find out. 

I feel like everybody is in a constant process of self-discovery, and so usually that’s what I write about.  In my current field of study, we care a lot about self-discovery, so it’s a huge part of my life.  It has been for a long time, I’m sure, but it continues.

Currently I feel like I am experiencing a whole lot of things that I can’t really express.