a Prison of Glass

Often, when people ask me how I’m doing, I’m not really sure how to answer this.

That sentence probably sounds really heavy. Is Aaron depressed? you’re wondering. Is he facing some tragedy I don’t know about?

Not at all, actually. I’m feeling rather content about things these days, more or less.

But for some reason, I’ve noticed that sometimes I feel ashamed to admit that I’m in a good mood.

…yes, that sounds as weird for me to write as it probably sounds for you to read.

It's true, though. Sometimes when I’m at work texting Emily, she’ll ask how I’m doing. Sometimes I want to tell her that I’m happy or in a good mood or that my shift is going well, or any number of things along these lines.

Instead, though, I usually settle on telling her that I’m “fine” or “okay.” Or, worse yet, I try to think of a negative spin to put on it: “I’m okay. Tired, though.” “Meh. I’m alright. Work is pretty busy.”

It’s not that these things aren’t true. I’m tired a lot. And if I tell her that work is busy, this is because work is busy.

If my dominant mood is happy or content, though, why don’t I just say this? Why won’t I let myself simply tell her – or other people – that I’m in a good mood?

I freely admit: it’s a very curious thing. Why should I feel ashamed of saying something positive?

Thinking about this reminds me of something I wrote years ago. I’ll re-explain it here:

One night I had a terrible dream. When I woke up in the morning, I was in a rather foul mood. This happens to all of us, I think. I kept dwelling on the events and the negativity of the dream all morning, and it kept me in that funk.

Later that afternoon, I started feeling better/happier. As soon as I “caught” myself feeling better, though, I literally remember “reminding” myself that I was having a bad day.

For a minute there, I let myself sink again. I soon became conscious of this fact, too, and asked myself, Why am I preventing myself from being happy?

Why do I sometimes seek out different moods that I imagine I’m “supposed” to be in, rather than just let myself be in whatever mood I am actually, naturally in?

This makes sense if I’m in a bad mood, seeking out the good. It’s worth pursuing happiness in that circumstance. But why do I seek out the negative when I’m feeling positive?

These are great questions. Unfortunately, if there are great answers, I don’t know what they are.

Perhaps I am not so happy as I suppose. I have found that this is true of many people. For at least myself, though, what I hope is more likely is that perhaps I am not so unhappy as I portray.

For now, though, I will just try to work on letting myself feel what I feel, and on letting myself express positivity without justifying it or toning it down.

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say. There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality …

Temperament also enters fully into the system of illusions, and shuts us in a prison of glass which we cannot see. There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

from Experience by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kamikaze

No matter who you are, what you look like, what you believe, or how you behave, someone out there will judge you. There will always be someone who doesn’t agree with you, doesn’t like you, wants to prove you wrong or shut you down, who finds you offensive or stupid or ugly or worthless.

Don’t listen to those people.

The fact is that their judgment of you says more about their character than it says about yours.

But why do people judge each other anyway? Why do people insult each other, feel the need to prove each other wrong? Why do people actually want to hurt each other?

When I was younger, I dealt with my share of bullies. And my mom would tell me the same thing that I’m sure you’ve heard: It’s because they’re jealous of you.

I’m not so sure this is correct.

Rather, I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered on the matter, of why people actually want to hurt each other. First, a small anecdote:

My friend B has some people whom she is close to. Lately, these people have all been making drastically different life choices than they used to. For better or worse, these choices have had an impact on their personality and on their level of happiness. B, on the other hand, has stayed more or less consistent with the types of choices she’s been making.

This fact alone doesn’t make any of them right or wrong, per se. B’s consistency might mean that she’s staying true to herself and to her character. It also could mean that she’s stubborn or stuck in the past.

These other peoples’ changes might mean that they’re evolving, that they have learned better ideas about how to handle life. It also might mean that they’re screwing up their lives.

Change itself is neither inherently good nor bad. It depends on the results of the change that help us figure out whether it is ideal or unideal.

Here’s the sad fact: B’s friends are all obviously, clearly, any way you look at it, less happy than they were before these changes and choices.

What we might assume from this fact, then, is that these changes and choices may not be ideal for them, right?

You’ve changed. You’re less happy. Therefore, the change is probably not good.

Okay then.

One day, B was at dinner with some of these people. And at this dinner, they were trying to give her advice. “You know, it’s really not so bad if you…” or “You should try this thing that I’ve been trying…”

This is ironic though, isn’t it?

Here is B who has, more or less, stayed grounded in her choices, in her attitudes, in how she handles herself. And, all throughout, she has remained at a basically-consistent level of happiness – if not getting happier.

Here are these friends of hers who have been making different choices. Those choices have made these people less happy.

And yet, they are the ones trying to give her advice? They are trying to suggest to her that she makes the same choices they are making? How on earth does that make sense?

But that’s a trick question. Of course it doesn’t make sense.

Now then.

I mentioned already that something you’ve always been told is wrong: He doesn’t like you because he’s jealous of you.

Now I’m going to dispel another myth for you. Hopefully the pieces I’m setting up here will start connecting:

There’s this idea out there of people “self-destructing.” People are going downhill; they’re backsliding; they’re hurting themselves; whatever. They’re “self-destructing,” we say. We might say that B’s friends I’ve been describing are “self-destructing.”

But that’s not entirely accurate.

People don’t self-destruct. In fact, there is no such thing as self-destructing. There is only kamikaze.

“Kamikaze,” you’ll recall, is what the Japanese called their suicide pilots in World War II. Kamikaze pilots were people who tried to destroy themselves and everyone around them.

The fact is that people do not self-destruct. They kamikaze.

People do not simply go downhill quietly, in a vacuum, in isolation. No. People go down, and they want to bring you with them.

They say that Misery loves company. (I actually agree with this phrase!) When people start to become unhappy, they want you to become unhappy with them.

When that person tried to hurt you on the school yard – or when they try to hurt you now at work or at home or in church or anywhere else you go –it’s because they are sinking. And they want you to sink with them.

Because people do not self-destruct. They kamikaze.

And when people are kamikaze-ing in your sphere, that says more about their character than it says about yours.

People will judge you and insult you and try to make you feel ugly or worthless. It’s all just a form of kamikaze.

People will try to hurt you – verbally, physically, sexually, emotionally. Kamikaze.

So please: get out of that sphere. Get away from the people that are trying to bring you down. Decide for yourself that you are beautiful and worthwhile. Decide for yourself that you are compassionate and worth the world’s time – and, for that matter, worth your own time.

Because you are. You are worth every second of yourself. If anything, it’s the world that should be in awe of you.

Yes, you. Whoever you are.

You are worth every second of yourself.

Please, please, start thinking so. 

Halfway Between Europe and Emily (or, “On Turning 30”)

When I was in my teens and early 20's, I would often say that “I knew for sure” that I wasn't going to die until I was at least 30. Somehow I just knew, I would say.

As of about five hours ago, it turns out that I was right.

I've done plenty of reckless things; this “for sure” was always my justification. Of course, now that I've actually reached 30, I see how silly the whole thing was. Surviving isn't always easy. It isn't always optional. Some people make it to 30. Many people don't.

I'm one of the lucky ones.

There was a day in my early 20's when I was having what felt like the worst day of my life. Everything was going wrong. It felt like a few of my closest friends were all betraying me simultaneously. I was being accused of a few things that were hurtful and untrue (nothing illegal or anything like that; just a few curious things that were enough to make me feel victimized and down on myself).

I was going to CNM at the time, and, that particular day, I had some business to take care of at their main campus. Some of those aforementioned things kept unraveling for me throughout the day until, at last, when it was time for me to leave the campus, I honestly hoped that I wouldn't survive the 30-minute car ride home.

 

I wasn't going to do anything dangerous myself—fundamentally, I've never considered suicide to be a viable “option”—but I remember very distinctly just hoping some other driver on the road would happen to be not paying enough attention, or driving selfishly, or just plain stupidly.

 

That drive home, of course, went by without incident. And, perhaps it's needless to say now, I'm happy that it did.

 

This day was about a month or two after my trip to Europe. You'd think that someone who just got back from—what should have been, but wasn't really—my “dream trip” wouldn't have had so much to complain about or be upset about. I went halfway around the world. What was there to be so unhappy about?

 

But, of course, that's not how life works, it's not how hurt works, and it's not how our hearts work.

 

Part of me wants to look back to that day now and think the whole thing was just plain silly. So what if some of my friends were being ridiculous? So what if people were being hurtful or selfish or un-understanding? It's how people are; this shouldn't be a surprise, and it shouldn't hurt us more than we can allow it.

 

We're so critical of our own pasts, though. It's easy to look back and think of how wrong or dumb we were at various moments or times in our lives. And sure, of course we do some wrong and some dumb things. But, when we judge our pasts like this, we belittle ourselves. We act like we should have known better, when the reality is that, at the time, we were trying to do the best we could with the pieces we had. We act ashamed of those moments, even though the fact is that they were all part of the grand narrative that brought us to where we are today.

 

We do not live in a vacuum. There is very little way to know how things will all turn out. We have to live momentarily, and I think it's unfair of us to look back on ourselves as if we knew then what we know now.

 

Who's to say on July 31, 2025, I won't be looking back on this moment, this time of my life—maybe even this very blog—and thinking how silly I was being today?

 

So please, let us not be so critical of our pasts. And let us not be so critical of people younger than us who are “just being silly” or who “just don't get it yet.” They have their own pieces they're sorting out, their own narratives that they're working through, and we have ours. “Let no one despise your youth,” and all that.

 

I said that this terrible, no good, very bad day I was describing was about a month or two after my trip to Europe.

 

It was also about a month or two before I met Emily.

 

It turns out that beauty is where you make it; it's not only in any other corner of the world besides the one you're in. And it turns out that life is always more worthwhile than our heart lets us believe sometimes.

 

When I was in my teens and early 20's, I would often say that “I knew for sure” that I wasn't going to die until I was at least 30. Somehow I just knew, I would say.

 

I was right, but this is coincidence.

 

I'm one of the lucky ones.

 

And you—whoever you are who has stumbled into this longer-than-I-intended-blog-post—please do everything you can to be one of the lucky ones, too.

 

It's worth it.

 

Cry

Maybe no one told you there is strength in your tears.
(Kelly Clarkson, If No One Will Listen)

 

I once heard a Christian pastor explaining how it is that all people have sinned, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans. Anticipating his practitioners’ questions, he also explained that even babies sin. “Have you ever heard a baby cry when it’s hungry?” he asked. He then went on to explain that, when a baby cries in this circumstance, it’s actually a lie, because…

…actually, it’s hard to say exactly why he thinks it’s a lie—maybe because the baby doesn’t actually need anything, I think was his point(?)

At the time, this struck me as odd. I didn’t necessarily have an opinion on it one way or the other, but it sounded peculiar. Could it really be a “sin” to cry?

Now that I have a son, I have a more solid opinion on this pastor’s idea.

And I think it’s bananas.

Never have I thought Emerson was trying to lie to me when he was crying. When he cries, it’s because there’s something he needs or wants, and he doesn’t have the words to communicate it in a more appropriate, agreeable, effective, concrete way.

Crying is a form of communication. In fact, it’s our first form of communication. Before we have words—before we even have smiles*—we have tears.

Tears, then, must be important.

It was then that I realized that forever is in your eyes
– the moment I saw you cry.
(Mandy Moore, Cry)

Not only is crying a form of communication for babies; it is for you and me as well. It was true then and it’s true now.

We cry when words fail, because crying is more primal. It is more intimate, and it expresses what words simply can’t.

All this to say:

Why do we tell people to stop crying when we’re trying to comfort them? Maybe they have something they need to express, and there isn’t any other way.

Why is crying considered a sign of weakness, or of being overly-sensitive? Crying is more real and more raw than language. What is “weak” about this?

Don’t apologize for all the tears you’ve cried
– you’ve been way too strong now for all your life.
(Mat Kearney, Closer to Love)

Maybe, conversely, we would do well to cry more often. Not that we need to look for opportunities to cry, of course, but…maybe we shouldn’t be so judgmental or annoyed or put-out when the people around us cry. And maybe, just as importantly, we shouldn’t be so adamant about fighting back our own tears.

Maybe crying is just a way of asking for empathy.

I saw my tears are in your eyes.
(Michael W. Smith, Everybody Free)

* * * 

*This is true—maybe I was naïve, but I didn’t realize that babies don’t know how to smile when they’re first born. I didn’t learn this until Emerson was born, and I had to ask why he wasn’t smiling.