5/16/2013. - Day 51 - Becoming Real: My love/hate relationship with the Midwest.

5/16/2013. - Day 51 - Becoming Real: My love/hate relationship with the Midwest.

Today I drove to my dear friend and vocal coach Julie Ann's house to see her new home and enjoy some lemonade on the patio. Julie Ann is an amazingly talented woman who has happened to share some of her gifts with me in the form of a few voice lessons and some lovely conversations over the years. The amount of relaxing I've learned to do on this trip is substantial. When you have nothing pressing, nothing constantly begging for your attention or calling you off to another appointment, it's amazing the room you have in your life for simple conversations in the sun on the patio at a friend's home. More to love about unemployment. Stay tuned for the chapter on its downside and the resulting poverty.

After vising Julie Ann, I decided to spend some time on the beach at Lake Calhoun. It's about the time of year that everyone gets out of school, so there are roughly a million college kids clumped onto a tiny beach area. This is no ocean. But there is sunshine and that is enough.

Lake Calhoun

I have never been to Lake Calhoun and it's still early for beach season for the Midwest. Few are brave enough to get in the water as its frigid so early into this Minnesota spring. As I relax in the cool sand, I'm vaguely disrupted by the buzz around me that is filled with drama and other superficial subjects. Perhaps I was too much in my own world of peace and quiet while I was by the ocean to hear the conversations around me, but this is more disturbing due to the quality of the conversation rather than just the disruptive noise. Negative energy abounds.

"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 the 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."

Life when you are younger feels so focused on looking and acting a certain way. I wish there was a way to know when we are kids that none of that really matters at all. It reminds me of the Velveteen Rabbit, and how to become "Real". Why should it take us until we are late in our years to figure out that the important things in life aren't things or appearances, and that learning to let go is one of life's most brilliant discoveries.

Little kids know it. But that innocence falls away quickly. I didn't seem to encounter any of this gossip filled, first world problem dominated culture when I was on the coast. No one seemed to have time to talk about others and go on about who they do and do not like, and all that they didn't have. They seemed more interested in sharing their story, and learning yours in turn. The negatively seasoned small talk is something that's quite common where I'm from, and I hadn't noticed or appreciated the absence of...gossip for lack of a better word, until now. Here, back in the Midwest, I'm aware that we spend way too much time worrying about others, and nowhere near enough time taking care of and shaping ourselves, or just enjoying the small things like sunshine  over a calm lake in the middle of a Midwestern hub. I've been guilty of both the destructive gossip and the ignorance of the world's small gifts many times in my life. There is much perspective to gain in taking the time to run wild by yourself for awhile and really ponder what you really need in life, and be thankful for all that you have.

I take a few passes up and down the beach before returning the truck. Back at the townhouse, we enjoy leftovers for dinner. The finale of "The Office" is on which means the whole family is on the couch. Afterwards, Tessie and Tyler continue with a hardware project they began previously. They disappear into the laundry room where they are fixing to hang a drying rack from the wall.

A few minutes into their absence there seems to be a discussion taking place, and I leave the couch to investigate. I enter the laundry room to find Tyler skeptically holding a drill against the wall from a distance, as though he's shooting a pistol at a far off target but needs to stay an arm's length away from the firearm. I explain that he needs to put his shoulder into it and really hold the drill firmly against the wall while he's drilling to which he responds, "We don't know how to do this stuff; we're ARTISTS!" The artists seem to be doing OK at small household fixes, they just need to learn to put their back into the drill a little more.

I marvel again at how cool it is to see my friends, married, and just doing what married people do--housework, watching TV, hanging drying racks in laundry rooms--simple things. But always with someone, with a partner in crime as they drill into their drywall or watch in suspense as Dexter drags out another sheet of plastic. What a cool thing marriage is, and what a neat gift from God to us. He invites us to offer ourselves wholly to another person, forever, taking all of their parts--completed, broken, finished, or just getting started--and love them. I've always believed we are meant to live in community, and marriage is just another form of community. It's the gateway through which you walk side by side, creating your own family to walk down life's path together with. I'm hopeful right now, reflecting on my married friends and their happiness, that perhaps there is someone for those of us who find ourselves hopeless at times, thinking no one will be able to love our brokenness, our strange or odd quirks, our off kilter sense of humor, or our strange need to compulsively check that our door is locked a dozen times. Maybe God really has tucked someone away for each of us, and we need only to walk this path alone for awhile, to experience fully the emotions which will shape us and give us time to decide just who we are, before he reveals to us our person, who will know us almost as intimately as He does. Maybe our person is a businessman, or a farmer, or a writer--or maybe he's an artist just doing his best at using a power tool.