A Story about a Little Dancing Monkey

Who are some of the audiences for whom we feel the pressure to perform? Given these pressures, how can students perform for an audience of one?

I’m not sure how to start this… it’s pretty melodramatic to say that I feel the pressure to perform for everyone.

But I feel the pressure to perform for everyone. I want them all to see me as good.

I want to be a good daughter. I want to be a good student. I want to be good at what I eventually decide to do. I want to be a good Christian.

I want the entire world to see me as good. I want their applause for something. And at the same time, I’m convinced that their applause, in itself, is a bad motive. In the interest of being extra good, I don’t want to have bad motives. I want their applause for doing something good AND for not needing their applause for the good thing that I did because my motives are above that kind of nonsense. And on it goes.

So, about God…

I don’t know how to perform for an audience of one, but it probably has something to do with motivation… and I’m struggling with it.

To the Most Successful Person I Know:

Dear Aunt Nell,

I almost wish you had stopped by Arkansas on your way back to North Carolina a few weeks ago, but it probably would have been too far out of the way. I’d love to introduce you to JBU.

My college experience has been wonderful. Of course, I’m still in that dreamy-eyed freshman phase. The actual school part of this new life is so different than I envisioned. Instead of being pressured to perform well academically, I’ve been encouraged to take a good long look at who I am.

I’m steadily realizing that I’m not who I thought I was. I'm just now figuring out where to start. This whole process makes me think of people who do know who they are, and you come to mind. Mostly, your love for Christ comes to mind.

You were so kind to me when I was little (and maybe I’m still little). I just remember sitting in your hotel room at that one family reunion and feeling so loved. I remember you reading devotionals to us in the car on that long drive to Florida. I remember your tenderness, your hugs, and your encouraging words.

When I look at you, I see someone content. Isn’t that what everyone is trying to be? I suppose that they, like I did for a long time and still do sometimes, thought that you had to get something to be happy. You figured out a long time ago that deep joy is the result of surrender.

Seeing the joy in your life encourages me to pursue Christ.

                                                                                                                                Love,

                                                                                                                                Meredith

Blondes

What I admire about the blondes (everyone in my Honors O. group is blonde, which doesn't really mean anything, it's just a fun coincidence):

Chloe is generous with everything from brownie mixes to hugs. Her cooking supplies and skills made Saturday more fun, and I am so, so glad she's a hugger.

Melissa is full of peace, and she chooses not to freak out about things. Her calm demeanor is relaxing to everyone else around her.

Hayley is humble. She's been a guide on canoeing trips, and she actually knows how to paddle a raft, but she didn't feel the need to lord this knowledge over us on the float trip.She didn't act superior.

Jenna is genuine. She invests herself in conversations and truly cares about other people's lives. Her smile convinces me of this!

I'm so excited to get to know all of you better!

Changing

Prompt: Reflect on yourself and describe how you have changed within the past month.

Here we go.

As far as emotions, changes, blog posts, and pretty much everything else except team sports goes, I tend to err on the side of the extreme.

In accordance with that, I lost my mind when I came to college. I was so excited, and I felt so free. If my life was a movie, the first few weeks here would have been the cheesy montage part, complete with the pop song in the background. I knew who I was and what I wanted. My mind was spinning all of the time, and I had the rest of my life planned out in detail. I was on my way to goodness, wholeness, and completeness. I felt like I had finally won the victory over myself, and was God ever lucky to have me now. I could be of so much use!

Sure, I had been a dolt for the past few years. But two weeks of college prepared me to take on the world, to conquer it, to win. Heck, I could leave. I had a universe to save.

My third weekend here, I was convicted. I received an email that wounded my pride, read a letter that made me realize just how rash I had been, and listened to a chapel session that turned all of my thinking on its head. My pride was checked as in checkmate. As in, I thought I was winning, but now it’s over, and the chess game simile doesn’t work because it’s not a game and there isn’t anything to win. But if there was, I definitely lost.

So, I’ve been on a self-imposed rollercoaster. Now I’m dizzy. I’m also frustrated, because I’ve learned this lesson before. A month ago, I needed to figure out what was best for me on my own. Now I know how poorly that pursuit ends.

To tie the story metaphor back into it, the things that I need have changed. I need another ambition and a better Narrator.

What I Want

Prompt: Answer, “What do I want, what is my ambition?” Work with ideas in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

Donald Miller’s train of thought, if I understand correctly, sounds something like: If we’re all characters, then we all have stories. The stories are about what the characters want. Each story has two possible endings: we get what we want or we don’t.

I don’t really know what I want. I think it’s changing (see blog I’ll post after this one). In the very recent past, I knew I wanted to be good. That’s a pretty vague ambition, but it’s honest. I’m not sure how to be good. I figured out when I was about eight that I was broken somehow.

 I’ve had these moments where I just get confused with myself. I’ve thought, “Other humans couldn’t possibly be as bad as me, and they aren’t this dark. They aren’t this broken.” My conclusion was that other people had it figured out (at least some of them did… others, not so much), and I was doing something wrong.

So my ambition is to fix that vague thing that isn’t right.

I suppose that vague idea that I’m pursuing could be called “wholeness.”  I’ve experimented with a bunch of things that I thought would fix my lack of something, like good grades, and boyfriends, and daily bible reading. The results are pretty scattered.

I should probably define “good.” For the past decade or so, this has been my working definition: to be good means to be kind, generous, and to possess other sorts of virtues. “Good” people talk a lot less than I do. They are also talented and admired. They are loved, and, I suspect, they feel loved all of the time.

I’ve never written that out before. It sounds ridiculous.

Genevieve

Prompt: Describe a scene from my life, exploring the idea that life is a story/movie.

I began to cry.

I was almost a teenager, and I was wearing nice clothes. The chair I sat in didn’t even feel real. She was dead. She was in a box covered in flowers, and we sat under a tent. A man was talking.

And she was dead.

The reality found me and stared at me. For the past eight years, I hadn’t known who she was. She hadn’t either, but maybe I could have tried. Could I have found her in there?  Thinking like this wouldn’t do anything. I was helpless.

So I cried harder. My cousin put her arm around me, and she cried, too. Everyone could hear me, and I knew it. I no longer wept for her only, I wept for myself. I wept for those who would be covered in flowers and lowered into the ground. Tissues were offered, and I faintly heard the kind words said.

The box descended. We stood and we left.

Later, when we were surrounded by food and light, someone told a story. When my cousins were little, she had given them vegetable crackers as an afternoon snack. She had thought that they were more nutritious than other kinds of crackers.

I didn’t really understand the joke, because I had never heard of vegetable crackers. The others were laughing, so I laughed with them. It made me feel better.

She had been a kind woman, a good woman, but she had not escaped death. Death had left its mark on her life; she had lost a husband and two sons. I wondered if these losses made her stronger. I had never asked her.

My heart had never fully realized that I would die. Now I knew. How would it change me?

Stories

Prompt: Write about what I'm passionate about. Passionate about something defined as, "something you can do for hours without feeling the time."

The other day, my roommate’s mother (who was visiting Mayfield 254 by the power of Skype) asked me, “Meredith, what idiosyncrasies does Kelsey have?”

I laughed. “She brushes her teeth longer than anyone I have ever known.”

Kelsey retorted, “Meredith reads Ernest Hemingway for fun.”

Disclaimer: reading Ernest Hemingway is hardly ever fun. It is an enriching experience, but I submit that mourning man’s helplessness while confronted by an unfeeling universe is not fun.

However, I can take courage, just like dear old Ernest taught me. I will endure anything for the sake of a good story.

It isn’t typically a question of endurance. I want to hear the story, or see the story, or read the story. I feel like a collector who will take tokens but is passionate about gems. Garbage, on the other hand, should be thrown out. I have, on a few occasions, been called a snob. If that’s what it takes to keep Horror movies and Harlequin novels away, then that’s just fine.

I’m too influenced by the lists: the Best Pictures, the Pulitzer Winners, and the 100 Greatest of All Time.  I have sought a story that others told me was good, only because I needed to impress them. Who are we to classify our stories? Our minds are more apt to enjoy them.

I love stories, maybe too much. I finished The Old Man and the Sea on Monday and woke up on Tuesday feeling heavy. “My big fish must be out there somewhere,” Santiago says.

I say it, too.

I want to tell my own stories, and I fear I never will. A gentle Hope reminds me that this life is not about the monuments I can build to myself. I wish I could say that it is always enough, but I am weak and have much to learn.  

To Quote Neil Postman,

"Indeed, as Mumford points out, with the invention of the clock, Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events. And thus, though few would have imagined the connection, the inexorable ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the weakening of God's supremacy than all the treatises produced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment; that is to say, the clock introduced a new form of conversation between man and God, in which God appears to have been the loser. Perhaps Moses should have included another Commandment: Thou shalt not make mechanical representations of time." pg. 11-12 of Amusing Ourselves to Death.

ADMIT!

A majority of the ideas developed in the previous post were borrowed from Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

In Response to Danielle Sallade's "Human Flourishing"

Prompt: Sallade talks about students feeling the need to control every aspect of their lives and future. Discuss whether or not control is a good thing. Furthermore, discuss whether the lives and lifestyles that Sallade describes (and we often live) are actually Biblical. Explore a few key concepts in the text such as busyness, accomplishment, value, success, rest, work etc., and deeply evaluate your personal position on these things.

Americans are wrong.

The ideas encountered in Sallade's essay are, to the mind of an American-raised, Christ-confessing college student, revolutionary. Because of our culture (whether it be our parents, our schools, or our religion), we trained to, as Wendell Berry says in a poem, “love the quick profit.”

Guilt rises when we are not doing something. The practice of rest is ancient and barbaric; this is the modern world, and it moves quickly.  Participate in seven extracurricular activities, or you will get left behind. To change the world, and your own life, you must plan, plan, plan, or nothing will be accomplished. Hurry, they say.

Slow down, cries the Ancient God of our fathers. I watched your ancestors build a golden cow upon which they could depend. You have erected an idol more foul. The clocks of your world are ticking, they mock Me. You wear them upon your wrists, and pencil in their language on your calendars. They stand tall in your squares. Have they the victory?

Have I lost you to them?

He has cared for us forever. He has sent manna from heaven; He has enriched the earth so it can grow food. Water falls from the sky. He has defeated our reasoning with this comfort, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matt. 6:27).

He loves us. We are who he created us to be, so there is no need to find ourselves. There is not a time limit.