A Twist in the Plot Line

I love spontaneity. I remember one time when I was in elementary school, I was playing with one of my friends at church, and we decided it would be fun if she came home with me to spend the night so we could keep playing. We asked my mom, and she was fine with it. We asked my friend's mom, and she got a condescending sneer on her face and said something to the effect of, "Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but we just don't do spontaneous things." 

Even at that young age, hardly knowing what the word spontaneous meant, I remember thinking "What a ridiculously boring way to live!" Sure there's something to be said for having a plan, to keep things from getting all hectic and confused, but when everything is kept inside such rigid lines and you know exactly where everything is going, how do you find any excitment to keep yourself going?

One of my friends, whom I hadn't spent time with in a very long time (close to two years), randomly asked me to a movie. There was a bit of nervous tension, but it was a lot of fun.

A couple of my other friends decided today that they want to come visit me this weekend, just to hang out and maybe do some shopping. They apologized for the idea being so last minute, but I hadn't even considered being put off by it. I was just excited that they were coming to visit. 

It's like getting surprises all the time, and it puts interesting twists and turns in the plot. How can we really live when we try and set up our entire futures, leaving no wiggle room? How can that even be desirable? "We'll live tonight, tomorrow never knows where we'll be..."

Who Needs Air?

I've been working out more lately. I've never been particularly happy with the way I look, but I've always had various excuses for why I couldn't change. I knew that running is immensly good for you, but it always hurt. Honestly, one of the happiest days of my adolescence was when I got a mole removed on my ankle and the dermatologist said I ought not to run the mile in the upcoming fitness test. 

I've realized that in elementary school, they didn't have us stretch properly, and that was why my legs would hurt when I ran. After I learned to stretch, I just hated running because I'm rather fond of being able to breathe, and as much as I thought I was, I apparently was unable to do both at the same time. 

I actually managed to go to the gym each day this week, Monday through Friday, and I realized today (Friday), that sometime during this week of spending 30 minutes on the eliptical each day, I've learned how to breathe. Maybe I just wasn't breathing deeply enough before. Maybe I was just too distracted to remember to breathe. But as I plowed through my first mile, I realized, "Hey! I'm a little tired, but I'm not breathless! This is amazing!"

I still wouldn't say I actively like running, but I'm amazed that I finally am not 110% averse to the idea. I'm also astonished that it's taken me 20 years to learn to do something as simple and basic as breathing. I guess I'm not such a quick learner after all. But at least I made it.

Isn't It Nice to Know

Sometimes you have to search for awesome stuff to blow your mind. Sometimes it punches you in the face with how awesome it is, and it would be almost impossible not to see it.

Several years ago, I went to this concert with a couple of my friends, and after the show we were waiting behind the venue to meet the band. The wind kept blowing some trash around which kept psyching me out, thinking that someone was there. I decided it would be more productive if I spent my time waiting by picking up some trash. Besides, being the star-struck teenybopper I was, I could get closer to the bus by picking up trash without looking as much like a creeper. I spent a good 10 minutes picking up trash while my friends laughed at me and the one security guard rolled her eyes. And then I realized I had two handsful of trash and nowhere to put it. The security guard said I couldn't go inside to throw it away, but that I could put it in that dumpster in the far corner of the parking lot. As I started to walk over to the dumpster, the drummer walked out. I was so excited that I, embarrassingly, threw the trash in the air and ran up to him. He talked to my friends and me for quite a while and afterwards I did regather the trash and throw it away. 

I'm taking Biblical Hebrew this semester, which is both really cool and and rather insane. We've gotten to the point where we can translate bits and pieces, and yesterday we were trying to translate the creation story from Genesis 1:1 as it appears in the Torah. I've known the Genesis 1 creation story basically as long as I can remember. We have a video of my first birthday where I'm sitting on my grandma's lap and she's reading me a children's version of it. But for some reason, translating it from the Hebrew makes it so much more powerful of a story. Maybe because you have to think about the words more than just letting them hit your eyes and moving on. It really made me think how incomprehensibly old God is and how unbelievably powerful and how insanely big and complicated the entirety of the world is.

I went to another concert last Thursday, with the same band as I mentioned in that second paragraph. It was the 10th (wow, I just had to write it down and add it up, 10...) time I've seen them. My friends and I now have a tradition of waiting to meet the bands after whatever concerts we go to, and some of the band members recognize us (well after 10 shows, it's no surprise). Anyway, this was the absolute best set I've seen them do. They pulled out some old songs that I hadn't heard them play in a while, and they played the best of the new ones. The highlight was the end though, when they played a very somber song and built it up at the end to the point where it felt more like you were breathing music than air, and every heartbeat was a prayer thanking God that I was alive. I know it sounds corny and cliché, but that’s just how it was. I felt more spiritually awake than I’ve been in a very long time, if not ever. 

After the concert, we met up with the opening band and talked to them for a while (the opening band is actually my favorite; here’s a shameless plug: Go check out House of Heroes), and then moved around to the back of the venue to try to meet up with some of the headlining band before we had to drive back home. We were hoping to see one member of the band particularly, the bass player John. The last time we had seen them in concert, we talked to John for an hour after the show, and he’s remembered me at the last four shows. After waiting for about five minutes, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the wrapper from the CD I had bought. I spotted a dumpster and jokingly said to my friends, “Hey! I’m gonna go throw this in the dumpster for good luck!” I went to ask the security guards if I could put it in the dumpster behind them and they said I could. 

I went back to my friends and Erin said, “I wish John would come out---” and then her jaw dropped, and I turned around to see John walking up to the small crowd that was waiting, and I looked at Erin and said “It worked!” (to which John looked confused and said, “What?”)

There’s no logical reason why that timing should have worked, and I know that my throwing away a bit of cellophane had no affect whatsoever on the situation. Instead, it kind of feels like an inside joke. My friends were already in on it. We would joke about throwing away garbage for good luck. But this time it was kind of like God extended the inside joke to remind me that He was a part of it, too, because He was there when it happened the first time, and when it happened again. 

And after translating the creation story and being reminded of how unfathomable God is, I’m totally in awe that He wanted to be a part of my stupid little joke, but I’m really glad He does.

It Seems We're Fearfully Made and Designed

My eyes water a lot. Aside from the fact that I'm fairly emotional and cry easily, my eyes water when no emotion is involved whatsoever.

It's getting colder outside, and I can almost guarantee that if you see me on campus, I'll have big, fat, crybaby tears rolling down my cheeks, even though I'm not sad at all. I know lots of people's eyes water when it's cold and windy, but this is insane. Mostly it just annoys me. It wears off all my make up (I worry too much about my makeup, apparently), people are probably going to start thinking I'm some weird emo kid who cries all the time, and it's just a nuisance.

But I never really considered why we humans are wired to react this way. I mean, crying really doesn't serve any purpose except to wash debris out of the eye. Crying when you're sad or angry doesn't do anything. And if you're cold, that doesn't mean there's something in your eye.

I realized the other night though that tears are salty (duh, we all know that, and have since we were small). But what do we do when the sidewalks freeze over? We sprinkle salt on them. Why isn't the ocean frozen? Because it's full of salt water. So my overactive tear ducts are really just trying to keep my eyeballs from freezing. Which I think is, in a dorky, nerdy kind of way, really pretty awesome.

A lot of people say that God and science don't go together, but I don't think that's right. I think science is us figuring out how God makes stuff happen. Like maybe God set up a machine that does the repetitive stuff so that he can go through and manually do the fun stuff. And some of that machine stuff is science. And I think it's awesome when I realize stuff like, "Our tears are salty so our eyeballs don't freeze." I know if I were designing something, I wouldn't have thought of that.

Maybe that'll help me not hate it so much when the cold and the wind make me look like I've just finished watching the Notebook. I mean, I'd rather have tear-stained cheeks than chunks of ice for eyeballs...

Rain on Everything That I Know

It rained today. Even though it makes my hair do weird things and makes a mess of my clothes, I generally like the rain. Today it wasn't even very cold rain, so I was pretty happy. Being dressed up for professional day, I was less than comfortable, but even considering that, it was alright. 

I was looking around at other people, though, while I walked to lunch. One guy, totally soaked, looked fairly miserable, but like he was taking it in stride. A couple of girls were grimacing, obviously perturbed by the weather's affect on their hair and makeup. Another girl, wrapped in a hoodie looked like she was trying to suppress an appreciation of the rain. The best reaction I saw, though, was some guy who walked out into the middle of Drury lane and turned his face up to the sky with a wide open smile. 

I wish I didn't care so much about my hair, my makeup, my clothes, and could appreciate the rain like that. It looked like fun. 

Last time I said I need to try and see the beauty in things I don't like, but I saw today that I need to more openly appreciate the things I already do enjoy. 

Like the Colors of Fall

I'll come right out and say it: My least favorite thing about fall is the foliage. I know everybody likes the reds and oranges and yellows of the trees, but I'd prefer just to keep the green, thank you very much. Bring on the early evenings, the cooler weather, and damp days, which are all manageable. But if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not have naked, dead trees everywhere. 

This blog isn't a critique on the autumn season, actually. I actually am realizing, as I type this, that I need to learn to live for the moment a bit more. Not so much that I am negligent of the future, but enough to appreciate what is just as much as what will be. 

When I started my rant about the trees, I was reminded of the Mitch Hedberg joke where he talked about wine: "I like to drink red wine. This girl asked me once if red wine gave me a headache. I said, 'Yeah, eventually, but the first and middle part are amazing!' I'm not going to give up on something because of what it does eventually. It's like getting an apple and going 'Woah, stop! That's going to be a core eventually!"

This fall hasn't been as depressing as I was afraid it would be. I'm finally learning to enjoy it while it's here. I've got semester-long, group projects in two different classes, as well as other ongoing projects in those same classes. I'm trying to learn two different foreign languages, and I was assigned another project to come up with a story and be ready to present it over a weekend. I've got tests and quizzes to study for, research to do, letters to mail, and Sunday School lessons to plan. And aside from these responsibilities, I feel the need to maintain my friendships and family relationships. In short, I'm swamped. But I don't really feel it. 

Last week I walked across campus with a perfect stranger. Instead of worrying about being late, or being nervous around someone I didn't know, I just enjoyed the conversation (We actually even talked about politics, which isn't something most people discuss with strangers, nor something I particularly enjoy). Everything about the situation that could have made me uncomfortable or irritated me wasn't an issue. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. 

And now that I think about it, it's not the first time I can say that. I've had a few other brushes with strangers that were profoundly awesome. 

When you talk to a stranger, you have to kind of let go of everything else that you know and that they know to really communicate, because there is so little common ground. Maybe to keep appreciating the moment, even to see the beauty in the dying trees, I need to talk to a few more strangers.

Everyone Was Beaming, Everyone, Everywhere

Even though it's my third year here at Drury, it still surprises me how friendly people are walking around campus. 

I went to a large highschool. My graduating class alone had about 600 people in it. I didn't know a lot of people, and only had a handful of close friends, but I can't name anyone who really had a problem with me. Yet, I'm hard-pressed to think of a time when someone I didn't know would even smile in passing. 

I don't think I've become any more approachable. I'm no more outgoing. I don't really know very many people around campus. Just walking across campus, though, people I've never spoken to will give a friendly smile. Sometimes we even exchange a passing "hello." 

It's not the kind of interaction one really thinks about, I don't think. Does anybody wake up and think, "Today, I'm going to smile at everyone. I'm going to say 'hi' to someone I don't know." It's a small effortless action, too. It adds a lot to the atmosphere on campus though. Even with all the "drama" Drury still has an over-all open and friendly air to it. 

I have to remember this for the coffee shop/venue (from here on out, I'm just going to call it "the coffee shop;" it's shorter and easier). "Service with a smile" is not a new idea, by any means, but I think it's easy to forget how much genuine friendliness can improve the mood and feel of a place. 

Are You Open to Suggestion?

This is my first real post on this blog, so I guess I'll make it kind of introductory. It is, as I said in the little "pre-post," an assignment, but I think I'd like to try and keep it up after the assignment is finished. I'll admit that I used to have (okay, okay, I still do have, I just don't use... often) a Xanga, and I've been looking for a place to write with a different style. So, here I'm planning on writing about... something. Hopefully it's something worthwhile.

I've recently realized what I want to do with my life, and that is to take part in running a coffee shop/concert venue/safe hangout for teens and young adults. It's sort of complicated, I suppose, I know it's what I'm supposed to do. I came to this realization when I was walking around a park with my best friend. We were talking about random nonsense, like we always do, when all the nonsense fell together into this idea. 

And that sets the background for what I'm going to be writing about in this blog. Partly (because I think it fits the expectations for the assignment better), I want to talk about ideas for and experiences I have with other establishments (and people) that inspire me. I also want to talk about other sources of Inspiration, though, and this is where I'm getting the title for this blog. There are so many things that happen all the time, everyday little things, that become transparent. We see right through them. I hope to write about these things that can have a lot more meaning when we learn to see them, rather than simply through them. 

Here we go...