What is Real?

"By hope we live."

I live for questions. Especially existential ones. And I love questions. I love my questions. I try answering them with perfect answers. I try to solve them in my perfect way.

I was introduced to one of my greatest mentors about a year and a half ago, who wrote,

"...I want to beg you, as much as I can. dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is,to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and Pure way of living; train yourself to it--but take whatever comes with great trust..." -Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

When I first heard this, I got lost in Rilke's words, the prophecy of them; the rhythm with which my therapist read them to me felt like the revitalizing rain shower over a desert. That was his parting wisdom as I left for Haiti in June 2010. He gave me a copy of that quote and I read it every day. At first, the quote only led to more questions (How to have patience? Why can't everything in my heart be solved right now? Why can't the answers be given to me? Are they something I don't want to hear? Just how do you live questions?!). But during the 45 minute drive up to St. Etienne to rebuild houses, I meditated for 30 days on each sentence.

I had it memorized. I still do for the most part. A year later, and I can't help but ask myself, have I learned to live the questions? Have I learned patience with myself? ...and without much realization until now, I have mysteriously lived along some distant day into a few answers. I have shaped and formed a particularly happy and pure way of living. I still don't take many things with great trust, but Rilke didn't advise perfection, just patience.

But look and see...I have a job--one in which I succeed, enjoy, and allows me enough money to sign a lease to my own place. For the first time in a year and a half, I'm on my own. I can hold a job. I can hold myself up (with help of course). I can trust myself to be alone. I realized I'm capable of chasing my dream. I learned I am also capable of being loved by others, many others. And the greatest part, I love who I am, for quite possibly the first time ever.

I can't give you a formula or the answers to your questions. Different strokes for different folks. But I do want to leave you with this quote from my friend's blog post from yesterday...

Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

Horses, Divorces, and Dirt Bikes

Elizabeth enjoying the therapeutic presence of horses.

Just a quick update. I started a new job, and I'm enjoying it. Nothing life changing or grandiose, the typical way I like to do things. Just selling classy running shoes and stuff to rich customers.

Or is it life changing? It's mundane. It's routine. It's slowwww a lot of times. And when it's not, it's stressfully fast (here's my protest to get rid of tax free weekend...). And I'm typically being reminded I'm the newbie, through my coworkers' cheeky jokes or downright derogatory comments (and demands). But it pays the bills. I'm experiencing what europeans would call "working to live" versus the American idea of "living to work".

In my head I've always thought and heard that my life means nothing unless I'm doing something big or changing others' lives directly. Go big or go home. Hence the reason I'm just 26 and have been to 26 states, 7 different countries, and 3 different continents. And all of those trips were to help meet others' needs: physical, emotional, spiritual.

So my simple life of living in a small town and selling shoes confounds me most days.

It's been two weeks since I've been working. And I can see some changes, good and not so great, my small presence is making among the others I work with.

This confounds me greatly. I'm not in another country. I'm not helping build houses. I'm not washing clothes with a Haitian. I'm not "sharing God" with Slovaks. I'm just working. To pay bills. I'm not even sharing God with my coworkers. Just small talk and lots of swiping credit cards.

But it's true, what Doestoyevsky mentions in The Idiot. Not even the most skilled chess player can think more than 10 steps ahead of his next move and how it will affect the game. So it is true with us. We don't understand the simplicity and implications our presence, and with that presence, our gifts, can have on those around us. And I'm not speaking just to those of faith. But anyone.

While I'm living the simple life, a thousand miles away my family seems to be falling apart as my brothers' divorces progress, affecting my nieces and nephew. But this is the craziest part.

Nineteen years ago my mom thrust me into summer camps in hopes of helping me cope with some bad life experiences. The camp that I loved the most...horse camp. Mom thought my horse loving phase would last as long as piano did. Fast fwd to today...and I'm being asked from around North Dallas to help abused and neglected horses work through fears and anxiety. And I'm not doing it by playing the piano.

Today I got a picture on my phone of my mom and oldest niece, Elizabeth, at the horse store, shopping for riding boots and such for her next horse show. She's been riding since she was little. And we always discuss the therapeutic-ness of horses.

Elizabeth's brother, Christopher, loves dirt bikes. A long, long time ago my mom fueled his father's passion for anything with wheels and or motors. Now, Christopher and his dad Chris ride bikes to get rid of stress and tension...and more importantly, to have fun. Just a few weeks ago they went on a weekend long road trip to visit Indianapolis 500 and see some airplane shows.

My mom didn't know how her actions were going to affect us twenty and thirty years ago. Neither did she suspect that her grandchildren would benefit from her willingness to let her children invest in their passions.

This isn't to stress out any of you parents to thinking, "Crap I have watch everything I do or save up for my kid's therapy in the future". And it's not to make anyone else hyperaware of every action they take. It's more to say, "Hey. I used to think my life was worthless. That anything I said or did, didn't really matter. But look. The individual does matter, each one of us."

Inner Existentialism

No longer am I one of those people who sips their frappucinomochathanksalatte and proudly pulls her Bible from her purse and reads for all to see my noble act.

But here I am, drinking a cup of sugar with some coffee and consciously grabbing my Bible from my bag.

If you're a loyal OWR reader, you know I can't stand the writer Paul. Too gregarious, too overly zealous, and he makes a lot of us look beyond lazy (as I sit here on my Macbook typing my complaints, wearing my North Face jacket to hide from the incessant AC.. instead of running naked through the humid streets of Asia yelling and blowing a shofar...).

And so when I read his comment in his letter to some foreigners saying, "I have learned to be content whatever my circumstance..." I want to scream, beat my chest with my fists, and throw my flaming hot cup o joe in his face.

Think about it. This guy has just set an impossible standard in the realm of Christianity. So now, when I want to complain about something, I hear, "Well you know, Paul learnt to be happy no matter what, so we've gotta do the same dear". efffff youuu.

But in all seriousness, it worries me when a Christian (or anyone) plasters on their smile when their best friend has just been diagnosed terminally ill, and then says something like, "Well, God just wants us to learn to be content regardless, because, you know Christ has overcome the grave..."

I totally disagree with that statement-psychologically, in case you wondered. But really, this is similar to what I've heard before. I decided to check out the Greek version of the letter and its contents, to see if I could get some better concept of what Paul really wanted to say.

Content: autarkes...ow-tar'-kace

1. sufficient for one's self, strong enough or processing enough to need no aid or support
2. independent of external circumstances
3. contented with one's lot, with one's means, though the slenderest

I like option #2. And it works within the context. I don't think the word "content" has the same weight today as it did when the Bible was translated. Nowadays, to be content suggests happiness. But I don't buy that Paul was happy with his circumstances (people hated his guts and were out to kill him).

So is it possible to be independent of external circumstances? Well, I don't think it's impossible. It may be somewhere close to that, though. An incredibly hard, hard thing to grasp. But Paul said he was independently ok without money, without food (relatively speaking), and without comfort. And by 'ok', I think that it means he wasn't thrilled to be hungry and poor and sleeping outside (although he knew how to make tents).

but. That's not all. He was independently ok with prosperity, with plenty of food, and with a warm bed.

Of course. He had all he needed. Who wouldn't be ok? But...look around at middle to upper class America. We have all we need. Are we happy? Are we satisfied? Unfortunately, my heart breaks most when I look at them (us).

And I don't think this means we need to just let everything go and be ok in whatever circumstances. I have talked to homeless men and women. I have spoken with millionaires and everyone in-between. Income may separate us, but we all have this inner existentialist who pays no regard to our socio-status. He is dying to know what we're here for, if our actions and words really matter, if we're worth this, if there is hope or if we're just another domino about to fall.

Some of us run to avoid him and these tough questions at all cost. Some of us buy more toys to satiate him for but a moment. And when he starts up again, we find something new or someone else to crowd him out.

I'm one of these people. I have a lot of questions to run from, to quiet.

But what if Paul isn't saying he knows how to smile and wear his happy voice appropriately. What if he's saying..."Yes, I've recognized my questions. They follow me whether in want or in plenty. External circumstances don't change this. But I've learned that this is ok. It doesn't change who I am or who Providence is."