Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight

Amos Lee – Title same as lyric.

Do you ever feel like the world is slowly melting into an unrecognizable sludge? There is nothing particularly wrong, but sometimes there just isnt enough right to make it worth getting up. Although even as I write this, I feel like Im just being depressing and not recognizing all the awesome stuff in my life. I mean I got free tickets to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Who can be sad when that is happening? Its not that Im sad – I think Im just running on fumes. This is the first real vacation Im taking from work. Ive had a few sick days now and then but Ive always checked in, and we are just coming off all the business of end-of-year stuff. My friend and I have been talking about this – we used to feel motivated even when things were hard. Now, things are just drab, the world is just gray. Maybe its just winter blues. Maybe its just that work isnt that interesting and sometimes, things just have to be gotten through. But its really really really not fun. Plus Im sick and just tired and while going to the gym is fantastic – truly fantastic, every time I go I feel super run down and get sick. Since last week all I want is to sleep.

Sometimes I get these flashes where Im whole. When instead of feeling like Im cowering inside my body looking out, I fully occupy my space and connect through my fingertips and eyes and heart to the rest of the world like re-engaging the power source. Like I touched a live wire that energized me again instead of the battery inside slowly grinding to a halt. I realize I just make the choices I can make. And maybe even though I can recognize what the choice I should make is – the highest good, its ok that I cant make it all the time. The color returns. Its sad that I live without color – I love it so much. My favorite color is green – its the one color I can see and immediately feel connected to the life around me. Its about not being so trapped by prisons of my own making. Its about living outloud without fear and hopelessness dictating the possibilities. If there is a God, which I know there is, then He is more powerful than this, even though I often relegate Him to the same limitations as myself. I mean if I cant do it, how can He? Its arrogant, but isnt that what fear and lack of hope is? Pure arrogance that we know better than the mysteries of the universe that never bend to our common sense. There is no way that there is a logic that makes sense to the path where most of us have ended up. And even if it did, the beauty in the connections and moments are more than can be created by our limited imaginations. It takes humanity, real people, with all of their complexity and transcendence to give life to the shadows we create. I dont want to live in the shadows. Its grey and cold and scary and lonely. The real world – the one we all can’t make sense of without His help – that only functions by His rules, well that one has got to be better than this one I made up with my own feebleness?

I know Ive jumped a bit and gotten a bit more existential than I started, but the thoughts and half-feelings are more important to me right now than perfect explanation. Thats what I want – I want to play in the stream not just stand by and observe it. Thats how you lose color and hope. Things just seem like they are going by and reaching out turns into the hardest thing you’ve ever done and there exists only reasons not to. Only in the other world is reaching out the more natural gesture. I pray that half-thought and powerful feeling of connection is not forgotten again for too long. Its too hard in the cold; Id rather not return.

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