Panic
After scrounging around in the tea collection I found a little packet of instant coffee.
Saved.
It's amazing how the day could be ruined within the first 5 minutes of waking up.
It's still summer, but after a few days of gloom here in Seattle, it's actually looking like summer. Blue skies, not a cloud in the horizon. I'm still waking up, so I feel that I am in rawest form or maybe just a groggy stupor.
Insomnia has been relentless still, but I've decided to bring in the big guns-- sleeping pills. I just couldn't handle one more night of seeing a 3 in the first digit holder of my clock. I was on the edge of my already tipping insanity.
So this morning feels unusually bright and unusually cheery. Kate is coming home today, which means home cooked meals, movie nights, more laughter, and someone to talk with. I've been living by myself for a bit here and there this summer-- it's forced solitude. Which by all means is no crime, but it does feel like a unearned punishment.
When you are by your self, you're not really alone. You have you. You have your own thoughts as company. Thoughts keep the mind busy or distracted from the stillness of physical aloneness or the emptiness of the house. Which really is a blessing because stillness for large quantities can be a bit unnerving (although good as well).
But I mean, imagine that we are only creatures that react from stimulus, similar to a sea urchin. Only talk when spoken too, only think when given something to think about. No good. But I guess some people do live this way... but who can blame them? It's the easy way.
In my little bit of solitude that I wanted to have this weekend, I haven't really been alone for the entirety of it... I have been going non-stop between meetings for Schools for Salone (Click Here) and miscellaneous little commitments. But when I come home, I'm alone. When I drive, I'm alone. When I make dinner, I am alone. When I go to sleep, I am alone. When I wake up, I am still alone.
Solitude, its funny, I don't think our day and age even knows what solitude is or can recognize it when they have it. If I can be so lofty in assuming and generalizing, I think my generation confuses the silence of Solitude as laziness (an idea pushed by their parents) or think its boring (pushed by their peers) or what I relate with most, makes them feel simply uncomfortable.
When you are left alone with just you, weird and strange things happen. Thoughts and feelings you long ago pushed aside and rendered done with or promised to never return to ever again, manage their way through all the walls you have built to surface on your emotional tabula rasa. They pry their little spiny fingers into your crevices ripping open a bubbling fissure of pain, confusion, and heartbreak.
No wonder people hate solitude. We are our own worst enemies. We inflict more pain on our selves than we do on anyone else.
And say, you have a loved one near by to talk through the cavern of unrequited thought, you have some one to save you from your enemy. It is when you are alone you are completely defenseless.
I had a small goal for my weekend alone, it was to fight this head on, to welcome the enemy's troops heart first and challenge and beckon them to do your worse! I recognize a good fight when I see one and I recognize what's at stake (especially the winnings) But looking back I feel that I have completely failed. I unconsciously found ways to fill my time with distracting thoughts that weren't my own (i.e. reading, music, movies, phone calls, meetings) I never sat in my own quietness--until last night.
I spent the entire day driving from place to place, turning in papers, getting more papers, talking with the team at SFS, talking with church leaders and answering emails. I got home right after dinner and become so restless. Confused by this, I didnt know how to react and in my anxious state I ended up eating the entire 5 cookies Cindy sent home with me.
It took five cookies for me to realize that I needed to get off the couch and get out (my usual cure to restless). I drove until I reached one of my favorite places-- Green Lake. I wore my running shoes but as soon as I arrived I laughed at the fact that I actually thought I was going to run after consuming so many cookies and so many plates of rice at Cindy's. I retired myself to a bench a good 5 minutes into my walk. Sitting is always so much more appealing. I'm only human.
But even though I was physically sitting, my mind was still running, actually, it was sprinting. It hasnt stopped since Africa. My mind is somewhere between utter exhaustion of thought and zombie. It needs a water break. I wish I could say staring out at the sunset over the lake completely gave me peace and that I had a metaphysical moment of transcendent thought... but it never happened. I just sat and stared trying to (unsuccessfully) empty my mind of the clutter
I sat there for awhile, hugging my knees. Trying to figure out why my thoughts havent stopped scurrying through the same circles of thought, the same circles I have ran for the last few months. It was not only causing anxiety, it was getting BORING. It was like I knew the drill... and I was just showing up to do the routine.
It must have been several minutes before I noticed the absolute mobs of mosquitos hovering around the lake. I'm serious when I say that there were clouds of bugs flying so close together that they looked one giant bug the size of a basketball. I watched them for a bit and noticed how chaotic they were at times, bumping into each other, scattering frantically but after somehow become synchronized in a beautiful whirling cloud.
Oh yes, there is symbolism in that whirling cloud.
So often I feel that I am a mosquito in life. I have my little body, my little mind, my little life and my little area I call home and become completely blind to the vastness of the lake even though it is literally right there. I am the buzzing mosquito letting my buzzing mind control my buzzing body... I sat and watched the mosquitos praying that my life would not be a mosquitos life, one full of petty buzzing and circling.
What a common and recurring theme surrendering has been in my life. I found that when I surrender the buzzing stops and the circles turn straight. It's amazing what God does with the lives of those who are willing to give up. From chaos to synchronized.
At that moment I saw the sunset and it was beautiful.
