from the anchor (III)

It's 7:00 P.M. and I'm sitting at The Anchor with a cup of coffee (decaf, of course, always decaf this late), and I'm listening to the cooks frying some eggs and sitting here with this blank page before me. A few nights ago the Wisconsinite and I got to talk on the phone, and it was great. We've been shooting emails back and forth, keeping each other up-to-date with our separate worlds as she single-handedly runs Camp Grow. We talked about lots of things, but something noteworthy we talked about is what we think is important in life. What with all the stress and drama over the past couple months that makes anything before May seem like a far-away time & place, I've had lots of time (and reason) to think about such things. I don't like being put on the spot, but she forced me into it, and I'm going to recap (with a bit more fluff and frill) what I told her holds importance to me when it comes to life (and these are in no particular order, they're not ranked or anything).

Family. Life is littered with hardships, and doing it alone makes it all the harder. Our lives are ripe with instability, and family gives us an anchor during those hard times, enables us to endure and overcome those things that would otherwise overwhelm us. The storms are hard enough, why face them alone? These last few chaotic months, my family has kept me sane in more ways than they know. When I look ahead into my future (what a joke), and when I imagine life with my future wife, I don't picture some pipe-dream where flowers bloom in the windowsills and the sun never sets. We'll both have shit we'll go through, but we won't be going through it alone. She won't go through her hard spells without me by my side, and vice versa. A quiet touch, her simple presence, these will do far more than the hollow words and sentiments of half-hearted friends. I've heard it said that marriage should be held off until we've got all our ducks in a row, until we've got everything figured out, until we've come to some sort of stable place in life. All this assumes, of course, that we can get all our ducks in a row, can figure all our shit out, can find stability in life. But I see more and more that these are things that life itself doesn't really provide. Life remains chaotic and uncertain, and I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but I'm thinking that if you find someone you want to be with, and you're confident of that, then why wait? And if you do wait, what're you waiting for? This is a tangent and I should probably delete it, but I won't, because I think the point's important: life's full of obstacles we must overcome, and we can't expect that to change. We shouldn't postpone life in the hope that things will smooth out for us. It doesn't always work like that. Life's hard, and if you're lucky, you've got someone to go through it with.

Character. At the end of the day, if the world has been made a better place because of my presence, then I'd call it a job well done. Accomplishments and victories will be overshadowed and forgotten; why focus on any of that? Over the past few months, I've really been thinking that the main thing we should focus on is who we are and who we're becoming. What matters isn't our credentials, our influence, our sphere of power, our prestige or popularity. What matters is the sort of people we are. I want to be remembered as someone who was loving, generous, kind, and (of course) pretty crazy. I'm not even kidding about that last part: I want people to remember me as the crazy guy who was actually quite all right.

Faith. As a Christian by personal and intellectual choice, of course this ranks on the list. I may not fit the cookie-cutter mold, I may have a few heresies hidden up my sleeves (you know, to keep things interesting), but when it comes to the basic tenants of Christianity, I find myself in agreement. If I were to list the first two without listing this one, I'd be doing my readers an injustice. As a Christian, I believe that one's standing before God, and his or her manner of life before him, is of utmost importance. 

My coffee's drained, my phone's ringing, and my wrist hurts.

So I'm going to call this post quits.

Good night.