May 20th, 2011

Whether tomorrow is Judgment Day or not, I’ve got a lot on my chest that I need to lay to rest.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I’m turning 24. And I feel at this moment like I already miss the world. Last night I told Max that I feel like I’m either on the cusp of enormous and thrilling movements, or I’m ready to throw in the towel and stop getting out of bed in the morning. Pretty extreme opposites, I realize, but I feel somewhere in my spine, creeping in a kind of desperate faith that describes the conflicting world views I’ve been wrestling with since I was 14 years old. 10 years now. I never thought the term ’10 years’ would ever mean anything to me.

I turned 14 at the end of 8th grade, my last year of Middle School. Centennial Middle School in north Boulder, Colorado. I have no recollection of what that summer was like, but I do know that 9th grade at Boulder High School, during the course of which I remained 14, was the hardest year of my life. It got better from there. In fact, it’s always gotten better: year after year, I feel my life gets twice as good as it’s ever been. Of course there are some exceptions, some stark low points, but in general...

It seems to me that it has always been a question of faith: a question of what do we believe in, what are we working for? In response, plenty of people would say something along the lines of ‘the joy of being alive’ or ‘the beauty of each successive day.’ No matter how great that sounds, that’s never been me. I’ve always been too dark, too heavy for that to be an apt description of my thoughts when I get out of bed in the morning.

What is an apt description, however, is the kind of bi-polarity I mentioned in the beginning: either the grand cosmic forces of unity and love created a world in which people work together to heal and to love and to celebrate the beauty of each successive day, or this is a cannibalistic environment where one has to work hard to feed himself and to create friendships based on a certain mutual lust and mutual suspicion. When I’m at my best, I’m working for true good in this world; working to foster love, create beautiful things that remind people of God without needing a single word, make people suddenly feel so rich and so full in their skin...But when I’m at my worst, I’m holding my breath to avoid the spread of malignant tumors in the heart, clawing desperately at the surface level of a pretty face, watching my bank account, and counting down the days until freedom comes at last.

I have good days and I have bad days...that’s not true. I have good moments and I have bad moments.

I’ve always felt like I was given this twisted spine by God as an everpresent reminder of the weight of the world, which is so unbearably heavy, and an awareness that no matter how I choose to get by, nothing in that essential weight has ever changed. But one day (I’ve taken consolation), one day I will do something that will free myself from everything and I will finally stand tall (I wear a juju, given to me by an Imam in the Gambia for that exact reason: it’s a prayer from God that will keep my back straight, both physically and morally, make me an upright man). Right now, on the cusp of my birthday (the day of my birth...to be born anew every year) all I can think about is strength and weakness. I’m thinking about the meaning of courage, what does it take to walk through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in order to be all that you can be? Or is that even viable? Am I weak, a coward, (mal)content to keep working jobs to keep paying rent and keeping myself fed while I get older, while the world degenerates more, while my health fails, and while the stories of indiscretions, “fuck ups”, keep piling on and on. Meanwhile the weight grows heavier. I always thought that the weight came from a certain responsibility I had to the entire world: to save it, to reform it, to do something drastic. I now realize that that weight comes only from my self-criticism at my inability to live up to my own expectations.

I feel lucky because my family has never had expectations for me. They’ve made it clear that anything I’ve ever done up to this point is enough for them and they love me for who I’ve become. I feel infinitely blessed for that. Because it means that all my expectations, all my hopes, are only to please myself, this is a battle I face only against myself, and I suppose that makes it a little easier.

There are times, though, when I don’t feel the weight. They come at all the expected moments: when I’m writing something I feel proud of, when I’m having a conversation that seems (in the moment at least) to be important or progressive, when I’m discovering something new, or when I’m doing some kind of meaningful work. So what does meaningful mean, then? Anything. Anything you’ve got faith in holds all the meaning in the world. With faith, with direction, and love and courage, all steps in the right direction feel meaningful, and there is no weight. When that faith falters, or when I’m just having a bad day, I do nothing, I flounder, I tread water, I tell people about all the great things I’ve got in the works, and then I procrastinate. This situation has led to a very all or nothing outlook on life for me. Either I find my purity, solidify my faith, and work for peace...or I can’t get out of bed in the morning.

Tomorrow on my birthday, if I don’t ascend to Heaven in the Rapture, what’s next? The line from the Tao I’ve quoted by far the most in my life, If you want to be reborn, let yourself die, once again comes to mind. It’s my day of birth. To be born tomorrow, I have to die today. What does that mean? I don’t know. I feel like it could mean that my hesitation needs to die, or my laziness, my lusts, my egoism...something. But who the fuck knows? Maybe it’s just my sense of ‘I have to...’ that needs to die.

It would be great if I ascended to Heaven in the Rapture and so could finally get some rest, but I’m not counting on it. Instead, maybe I need to take it as my 10,000th wake-up call to get born, to move forward, to stop using finances or economics as an excuse, to straighten my spine, and be whatever it is that I know I can be on those days when I feel my best, on those days when I have Faith.