Combating Reality in Grinder and Grains

Dear Reader,

I can't tell you how much I've missed writing you.  So much has been on my mind of late, and I haven't found the words or the poetry to express what this vortext is doing to my upper grey matter (yes, I did invent a new word; do you like it?  Yes, "grey" is better spelled that way.  "Gray" just looks too harsh.).  However, let the record show that, talks with fathers (mine), wonderful authors (specifically F. Scott Fitzgerald), and a surprisingly pleasant change of atmosphere do me wonders.

I had the good fortune to realize through someone (my mother, I think), that the location that my favorite coffee-shop in my hometown used to occupy was again filled, and it was taken by a mom-and-pop cafe.  I was deeply saddened when the coffee-shop had left its previous home (a 100 year old house), in exchange for a larger, warehousey building (there he goes again with the weird words...).  The coffee's quality suffered, and the atmosphere there took a change for the worse, in my opinion.  However, I am currently sitting in the very corner of Grinder and Grains Cafe (where, if I ignore the windows looking outdoors to my TN home, I feel as if I'm in a lodge in the Swiss mountains), and I am one of two patrons currently frequenting the quaint establishment.  The coffee here is satisfactory, and the chicken tortilla soup is exquisite.  I feel quite safe here, much as I do at Harmony House back on the Hill; for, as far as I know, this little cafe has yet to be found out by a large amount of people. I think I have found a treasure, and I revel in that fact.  A painting of a couple embracing under an umbrella adorns the wooden wall near me, typical coffee-shop music floats softly through the age-old house, and here I write.  Alone, but with my books, words, and thoughts to keep me company.

Lately, I have been feeling extremely...lost.  I know this sounds like the same words over a different tune (I suppose that would be an inverted form of strophicity?  For those of you wondering, I did just modify the word "strophic" to fit my needs), but I guess being at home, countless engagements of people younger than me (some of those old friends, an ex, or just people I used to consider much less mature than myself), my drawing near to the completion of my time on the Hill, and just a general lack of preparedness (or so I feel) for the future has amplified those feelings even more than normal.  For those of you who understood that previous sentence on the first try, I commend you.

At any rate, I have been wondering recently whether or not I am a child of the millennial generation, and how that will affect me in the near future.  I attribute much of the faults of that generation to a complete immersion in technology for most of their life (specifically feelings of entitlement and narcissism), and while this may not be completely accurate, from my experience it has had a large role in their upbringing.  While I generally do not think that I have been immersed in technology my entire life (I barely knew what the internet was until I was 15, and never had any type of phone or gaming system until at least my 16th year), I do feel as if I am an extremely immature person surrounded by people of a maturity unknown by most people in my generation.

I have friends in college about two years younger than me who are married and awaiting their first child.  And here I am watching/playing Pokemon (I even ordered Ash's hat), playing Legos, dressing like I'm still in my early teens, and relying on my parents for a lot of my livelihood while I'm in college.  And I can't help but ask myself if I'm somehow behind...if I've done something wrong.  Is it wrong to have the kind of fun I'm having at my age?  Should I grow up and move on to more serious things?  I have sworn most of life that I'll be wearing Converse from now on out, and I'll be a goof even when I'm old and white...but...why am I here and they are up there ahead?

I read The Great Gatsby (a MUST read...I don't care if you've seen the movie) and I read things in it like, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself…he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” and I wonder (because that is exactly how I am...constantly Romanticizing everything, just as Gatsby did) if it is indeed possible to form a Platonic version of me: to forget my past on such a level that I can become the man I've always dreamed I could be.  That vision is nothing like Gatsby's in physical grandeur.  I don't want the house, the wealth, or the people...but to be a man that is worth remembering.  I want to do that as a Christian, and I know I should be constantly tempering what I think and desire by God's Word.  And I do.  I guess I don't feel the comfort a lot of people say they have in it.  I think God requires of us the blood, sweat, and tears that worldly people shed on their own personal ambition.  I think service for Him is the end goal, but we are still required Gatsby's ambition if we want to be truly successful for Him.  I feel like I have shed quite a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, but lest you think I'm feeling entitled, I do not say I deserve anything; rather, I query to the void what those wounds, labors, and tears have accomplished.  Who am I because of my past?  Or should I shed my past and become my own man?  ...some questions that are probably best left to hindsight.  Yes, it is 20/20...but it sure takes a long time getting here.  I guess growing up takes a lifetime.

Pokemon and pranks,

But to be frank,

Immature and irresponsible?

Is growing up logical?

Combating Reality.

Here I sit, comfortably musing in a new favorite place of mine.  I am listening to Pavarotti's rendition of "Nessun Dorma" from "Turandot" for the 12th time since I've been here, and I refuse to look up the lyrics.  

Why?

"I have no idea to this day what [he is] singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think [he is] singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, [his] voice soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

I may feel like I'm institutionalized in Shawshank right now.  But regardless of the circumstances I'm in, and no matter that I feel as if I'm in a pond but pining to be in the ocean, I'll keep doing my best to be who I want to be, and who He wants me to be.  Join me?  I really could use the company.