My March to the Watering Hole, Day 323

For 1 year I've been attempting to live my life in a way entirely different than what I've ever known. I've been attempting to progress forward apart from things/ stuff. I've been trying to live a "being" existence as opposed to a "having" existence. Our society is very having oriented. We crave things in order to find fulfillment. We surround our lives with stuff, with gadgets, with collectibles, with memories we can hold in our hands. We need bigger and better and more. The greater our physical treasures the greater we are as people. Our homes, our vehicles, cellular phones, televisions, and clothing define us. These things announce to the world who we are.

Going a bit further we desire to capture time, to own experiences, to "have" life. We take photographs of every little moment in order to not lose it. With souvenirs, trinkets, and gifts we can keep our travels, our journeys, and our relationships close at hand. In our free time in order to claim time, to make it our own, to HAVE it we often attempt to escape from it's grasps, to reclaim dominance by doing nothing (productive), by watching television, playing video games, by lounging, by not living, by not letting time boss us around any longer. If it's not forcing us to preform then we must be in control of it. I know that sounds a bit far fetched and possibly very confusing but I've been focusing on this issue for a year and let me tell you it's all very true.

We need to have in order to be. But there's this other lifestyle, one where the experience is what you receive from the experience. Time isn't a factor because you're living. Every moment you're increasing, moving forward, being impacted by the world around you, by life, by beauty, by processes occurring naturally everywhere. Life is about moving not about having. Life is about increasing as a living being not about increasing the things that surround your being. In this other lifestyle you find joy and pleasure in the act of living. You don't need stuff to fill your voids. In fact stuff clutters the picture and makes it difficult to notice progress. Stuff becomes a distraction. Stuff slows down the process of increasing, of growing, or changing, of every day becoming who you are. Stuff is counterproductive.

So this has been my journey for a year. I've been attempting to look beyond, to move past, and to overcome the stuff. I can very proudly say that I've almost entirely beaten the desire to consume, to acquire, to have stuff. I no longer need anything. It's a wonderfully freeing, awkward, at times even alienating feeling. I've been noticing the world that surrounds me, appreciating it AND I'm affected by it more than ever before. I love seeing the sky, seeing the trees, snowflakes and icicles, sunsets and shooting stars... really seeing them all the time and being affected by nature. As opposed to just noticing the beauty sometimes. The world that surrounds  me is greater and more fulfilling than anything I could ever hope to acquire and it's ALWAYS there. I've most certainly made progress in these aspects.

This year has brought light as never before to how strongly I "have" my own identity. This is very difficult to relay even though I've been struggling to put it to print for several months. My heart longs for freedom from confinement, from set ways, deliberate patterns, and learned acquired ideas (half-truths). I desire to be someone who loves, someone who appreciates, someone fueled by a passionate fire to live, to progress. I desire to breath deeply with strong healthy lungs the fresh air of life. I want to create. I want to learn, seek out additional truths, operate responsibly concerning living things. The more I've been attempting to BE the more this established, learned, mucky screwed up, programed me has been protesting to stay just the way she is. The little marred monster in me doesn't want to change no matter how passionately my heart beats for life.

This battle sucks. I am honestly lazy, messy, pessimistic, very secluded, generally depressed, and really REALLY stubborn. I can blame the defective annoying me on my parents, on their divorce, on my dads anger and absence, on my moms lack of self confidence and reservation, on them unknowingly asking me to forfeit childhood at age 10; asking me unknowingly to take on the role of caretaker, housekeeper, cook, peacemaker... a role I was incapable of rising to and one that pounded an overwhelming identity of failure over my life. I know food as comfort. I can rely on chocolate, sugar, pizza and pasta to soothe the pain of reality; the reality that I am not good enough, that I'll never be good enough and that it's my fault everything sucks. I can't be ok without food. That's my march to the watering hole. That's the path life has taught me to follow. I can tell my heart otherwise but it's ingrained in me and it's a tooth and nail fight to tell the little monster anything to the contrary.

For a year I've been noticing, I've been learning, I've been changing who I am. I've grown but the journey has only just begun. I'm giddy at the life, at the living that goes before me but I'm equally terrified at the work, at the toil that's destined to go along with being who I long to be.

So when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." Luke 18:22