The Hypothetical Shedding Light On Yourself

What if I took you to a place you've been before.
An office? The street? A grocery store? The DMV?

What if I hypnotized you.
But, instead of telling you what to do,
what if I set you free?

To do exactly what you long to do,
but have learned not to.
Your inner child unleashed.

What would you do?
Who are you really?

Would you dance?
Would you explore?
Would you destroy?
Would you rearrange things?
Build?
Hide?
Create?
Stockpile?
Clean?
Embrace?
Would you paint everything blue?

Would you hurt people?
Burn everything?

Would you do anything at all?

Confidence

A MacDonald's drive through. I roll down my window and hand over the money.

"Umm, I-I think that's enough?" I stammer.

The twenty-something with greasy hair stuffed under a rumpled cap gazes back at me.

She seems equally unsure about the existence of the money.

After a moments pause, she cautiously lifts it from my hand.

She avoids my eyes, just as I avoid hers. She counts the money and puts it in the drawer.

I shift uneasily in my seat. I reach up to scratch my head, but change my mind and put my hand back in my lap.

Announcing the amount of change I've earned, she holds it out.

With a start, I realize that she wants me to take the money from her. I rush to cut the awkward silence short and almost knock the change from her hand.

"Have a nice day." She says. She attempts a nervous smile.

She glances at me for a millisecond, uneasy, then spins back to her register.


Trust me friend, I speak with experience when I say:

People feel more comfortable around you if you act with confidence.



The reason for this has eluded me for most of my life. However, after the experience conveyed above, I have a hypothesis which I believe is logical.

Every person on earth knows, deep in their subconscious, that someday, the world will end.

That's right.

And this knowledge creates a tiny anxiety in the back of their minds. Like an itch on the back of their neck. Or a dog barking incessantly four houses down while they are trying to do their taxes. The anxiety bothers them, but not quite enough for them to know it's there.

When they converse with someone who behaves with confidence, they get the impression that this person knows that the world won't be ending just yet. They gather that this person must have somehow come upon knowledge of the inner workings of the universe. Therefore, that nagging anxiety about the end of the world is momentarily put to rest.

However, when they speak to someone like me, who acts uneasy and confused, that nagging anxiety is confirmed. They begin to worry that this person might know something they don't.

Fear builds up inside them. Perhaps the world will end now... or now! Goodness!

They long to speak to that confident person again so they can stop imagining the parking lot opening up and swallowing the entire restaurant.




So that's how it happens. I'm pretty much positive. Maybe.

Self-Disciplined

This happens almost every workday morning.

I do my paperwork at home. In the living room. On the couch.
My wife is usually still quietly dozing in the bedroom, happy and unaware of my activities.

I sit at my computer. I open the correct program. The work program. The boring.

In the corner of my desktop, the tiny Firefox icon winks at me.

"Hey man." The little orange fox whispers. "What's up? Hey, you've got plenty of time. That boring work stuff will take care of itself. Let's have some fun!"

I'm supposed to be responsible, I work with kids after all.

But I am powerless to resist. "Okay." I say to the fox. "We can have a little fun. But then, I will do the work!"

"Sure you will..." Whispers the orange fox wryly as I click on him.

Happiness and joy dance across the screen. Fun. Laughter. Unicorns.

I look at the clock over and over, but the time just doesn't register in my mind. I have been sucked in and my brain can conceive of nothing but colorful pictures and funny blogs.

After several hours, a sudden, cold realization overwhelms me.

I glance at the clock, but this time, the clock has had enough. It leaps out at me and grabs me by the ears. It looks me straight in the eyes with its shining digits and big 'PM'. It shakes me like a rag doll, screaming "You are a horrible person!"

I awake from my blissful stupor in panic. The things I should have been doing trample over me like a stampede of failure. Somewhere, the little orange fox snickers.

I try to think of a way to save my morality, but there is no hope. I awake and discover that I've committed the unpardonable sin. I am reduced to a pathetic mass of self-pity and disgust weeping in the corner.

Slowly I realize. I have destroyed the entire day. Due to my incompetence, the delicate balance of existence has been ruined. The time I wasted has created a vacuum in the space-time continuum which, once it implodes in on itself, will form a black hole to engulf the earth and crush everyone into tiny pebbles.

In short, the day is surely ruined.

I wander the house, in anguish and mourning, praying hundreds of apologies to God and begging for a way out of this truly hopeless situation.

Eventually, I wander into the bedroom where my wife sleeps.

I cast myself upon the bed. I cast my limp arm upon her. She rolls over.

I moan. "I've ruined everything. The world is ended. I just came to say I love you before the world is engulfed in chaos."

With her eyes still tightly closed, she mumbles something.
"But I made you an enchilada for your lunch today..."

The weight of failure and hopelessness slowly slides from my shoulders.

Truly, I have been set free.

I burst from the room with renewed vigor. I dance to my duties and effortlessly glide through all my work. I defeat the boring, and crush that sneaky little orange fox beneath my new-found chastity. In one short hour, it is finished.

My wife slowly opens the bedroom door and pads to the stove to make tea.

I embrace her and declare. "You've saved the world!"


And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why my wife is a superhero.

World Domination

I am often guilty of critiquing the behavior of those ambitious souls trying to conquer the world in cinema.

"You put them all in the same prison cell?"
"Why would you have such a deep hole in your evil lair?"
"There's no reason to go on gloating for so long!"

So now I will put my keyboard where my mouth is.


30 Rules I Will Follow When I Dominate The World


1) My evil lair will have a licensed clinical therapist on staff.

2) I will not allow any canopies, fruit stands, or hay bails to remain anywhere near my 100 story tower off doom. When I push you, you WILL hit the pavement, and I will hear that wonderful *splat* sound.

3) I will increase the morale of my minions by using a bright and cheery color palate for my barracks' interior.

4) I will never murder anyone with children. Those cute little bundles of joy have a tendency to become vengeful when they grow up.

5) Speaking of children, I will do my best not to procreate. And if I must, the little brutes will be brain-washed thoroughly to prevent them from betraying me the moment some dashing hero type comes along trying to stop me.

6) Any adviser who says "Nothing can stop us now!" will be shot.

7) I will never, under any circumstances, turn myself into a snake, dragon, or giant insect. A snow leopard is a possibility, but only after careful consideration.

8) Also, growing twenty times normal size is usually a bad idea. The bigger you are, the easier it is to ram a ship into you.

9) I will enslave entire tribes of natives *before* I rip up their forests to fuel the fires of industry.

10) Pacts or deals with demons, ghosts, witches, or anyone more evil than I are strictly off limits. Doubly so if they involve the state of my eternal soul in any way.

11) If any heroic type challenges me to a mono-e-mono duel to prove that I'm not a coward, I will command my minions to blast him into oblivion. Perhaps I AM a coward. But I'm alive and he's dead. That's got to count for something.

12) If ever I suspect that rebellion is afoot amongst my subjects, I will not become paranoid and I will not persecute those whom I mistrust. I will throw a grand party and give possible turncoats extra large pieces of cake.

13) Of course, those pieces of cake will be poisoned.

14) All of my power will never ever be vested in any animate or inanimate object that is not myself. (I don't care how pretty the blasted ring is.)

15) My enemies will never be considered dead unless I personally witness their death. Or, even better, witness their cremation.

16) No self-destruct mechanisms.

17) Evil people make bad allies. Therefore, I will ally myself only with infinitely loyal goody-two-shoes. Infinitely loyal and infinitely dense.

18) My evil lair and the vicinity thereof will have absolutely NO precipices. All windows will be shatterproof. No pits of doom. No volcanoes. Those who stand in my way will die from bullets or not at all.

19) My entire ventilation system will be electrified. Any courageous rebel who's seen Mission Impossible will be fried.

20) If there are any prophecies on which my victory is contingent, I will hire a grammar and rhetoric scholar to analyze the prophecy for possible loop-holes. (For instance, if no MAN can defeat me, but I'm completely vulnerable to WOman, I need to know about that.)

21) The hero, his comic relief, his love interest, his faithful dog, his cute critter, and his great-great grandfather/mentor will not be imprisoned in the same cell. Or even the same prison.

22) I will not engage in a musical number before striking the final blow against my enemy. Shoot first, sing later.

23) If my doomsday device requires a certain period of time with which to complete its task, I will always always always LIE and tell the heroes that they have much more time than they actually have.

24) I will not allow "harmless" natives to continue living near any of my important installations. Even if they look like teddy-bears. Especially if they look like teddy-bears.

25) Overconfidence IS a weakness. I will hire someone to insult me for thirty minutes everyday.

26) Computers do not need self-awareness or the ability to make decisions on their own. If that means I have to do math in my head, so be it.

27) I will keep a healthy sense of perspective. If some goofy flying kid feeds my hand to a crocodile, maybe I'll let it go after the first few years of seeking revenge.

28) There will be railings on all my cat walks.

29) My minions will wear helmets which display their entire face. Not only will they probably live longer, but I won't have pesky heroes trotting around stealthy-like in disguise.

30) In the unfortunate event in which I fail and a hero defeats me, I will not throw my life away for one final, foolish, and probably fatal blow. I will scamper off, build up an army of mutant alligators, and try try again.

Ambitions

My brother has a bucket list the length of a constitutional amendment.
When it comes to living, I don't know what all the fuss is about.
Everyone else is doing it too.
As long as my life appeases God and myself, I'm happy with it.


I have three ambitions for my life:

1) Write a novel.

2) Learn Kung Fu.

3) ... I forgot.

The cogs of the Universe

Sometimes I approach God like a machine or a math problem.
"How does this work? What determines how it behaves?"
In many ways, God is pretty polite to me when I do this. He isn't a machine, but he is logical.
But then He'll throw me for a loop.

"It would make so much sense for God to give me this internship." I say, "It's exactly what I need. So WHY didn't He give it to me?"

He doesn't answer. And that's VERY FRUSTRATING because I want to know. I want to know.

However, let's think. What exactly am I asking? Why didn't the Creator and Sustainer of the bloody universe give it to me?

Possible Answers

*Perhaps He had a better internship planned for me.
*Perhaps another person needed it more than me.
*Perhaps it wasn't perfect for me at all.
*Perhaps the supervisor was a psychopathic serial killer who pickled his interns in huge jars.
*Perhaps He was leading to me to a totally different profession.
*Perhaps He needed me to be walking down main street at 10:16am in order to trip an Unsaved person who would then think about the eternal state of their soul.
*Perhaps He desired me to be in the administration office when it exploded, so that I could go be with Him.
*Perhaps He wanted me to accept a different, less perfect internship, with a supervisor who was considering dedicating their life to Christ but needed me to help them understand who God was.
*Perhaps this was only the beginning, and God would cause everything in my life to collapse into miserable oblivion so that I would see how much I need Him and become so much closer to Him that I wouldn't give a rip about any stupid internship.

In order to understand everything that happens to me, I need to comprehend the entire vastness of God's plan for the world.
Or, perhaps, I need remember all the times that He has proven himself faithful, understanding, and GOOD in the past.

Perhaps I will trust Him.

Dryad

There once was a young girl who lived in a house alongside a forest.

Her parents were very busy. They would always have “business” to attend to and would often forget to attend to their daughter.

Whenever this girl was lonely, she would open the rusty screen door leading to her backyard and step out onto her old wooden porch. From there she could see the towering monoliths of the forest just beyond her fence. The great limbs of these trees bent over the fence and vines crept through the boards. She could play within the confines of her yard. She would make little hideouts from fallen limbs and lay in the curls of tree roots to watch the clouds. When she danced in the wind, the trees would run their slender fingers through her long dark hair. In summer, she would eat the berries from the branches that reached over the fence to her. In autumn she would wrap herself in gold and scarlet and sleep, warm in the embrace.

Many, many times, she would gaze into the thick forest beyond her fence-posts and her imagination would soar.

At night, after tucking herself in and reading herself a story, she would doze to the lullaby of the trees singing for her on the wind.

* * *

It was an unusually cold day, just near the start of autumn, when fall gusts first begin to sharpen with chill. The young girl returned home from an unusually long day at school. She had spent most of class time gazing out the window at the first brightly dressed trapeze artists flipping and twirling from their branches.

She plopped her backpack and coat on the sofa. (Her mother hated that, and she knew it.) She skipped into the kitchen and ate some crackers on the counter. (This was something else her mother hated.) Her mother was in the study working, and her father had not yet returned from the office. This was usually the case, so the girl continued on towards her goal. She left the kitchen in disrepair and turned her attention towards her backyard.

She put her coat back on. This was not the fluffy white coat which her mother had spent a great deal of money on, but her brown coat which her mother considered obscene. It was rugged and had flannel lining. Though a bit too large, it was as warm as her grandmother’s embrace. Grandmother was the one who had supplied it. It had been Grandfather’s. The girl hid it behind the snowsuits, so that her mother would not discover it and throw it away.

She held the soft lining to her face and breathed, long and slow. It forever smelled of Grandmother. Grandmother was not like the other adults that the girl knew; there was no empty look in her eyes or dry command on her lips. Grandmother listened, and when she did, her wrinkled face was smooth with understanding. She never darted away while you were speaking or interrupted to answer a call. When she spoke, her soft voice always flowed like a creek and rose and fell like a song. When she held her granddaughter, she ran her slender fingers through her beloved’s long dark hair.

It was Grandmother who had taught the girl how to deal with mean kids at school and how to carry numbers in addition and how to put her hair in a French braid. Grandmother was always there when she needed her with a knowing smile and gentle laugh. Sometimes when the girl was braiding her hair or doing homework on the floor, she would see Grandmother gazing at her with an anxious sadness in her eyes. The girl would distract Grandmother at those times. She did not like seeing Grandmother so sad.

Zipping the coat up to her chin, the girl gathered her dirty boots and red gloves. Her crocheted hat was still in her hands when she kicked open the rusty screen door and stepped into the rush of autumn.

The trees welcomed her. They reached out their tender branches to her. The girl clamored down the steps of the porch and skipped across the backyard. She wandered towards the fence that held the trees at bay. She found herself a pedestal atop a tree root which had grown up out of the soil. It seemed to lift her higher, away from the ground, the yard, and the fence. She turned her face towards the high branches of the forest, shut her eyes, and opened her arms wide.

The girl felt a tiny gust of air against her face. It was only a small breeze; hardly enough to notice. However, this breeze carried with it a banquet of delightful smells: pure water, excitement, and a hint of fear.

The girl turned her face towards this enticing breeze and opened her eyes. Straight ahead, hardly visible at the corner of the yard, was a small opening in the fence. The underbrush of the forest had pushed through this small segment of fence at its weakest point. The opening these plants had created was the perfect size for an adventurous child to crawl through.

The girl scrambled across the yard. When she reached the corner where the plants had pushed through, she stopped and breathed deeply. Yes, truly, this was the source of the breeze. The air that rushed through this opening was a delight to her senses.

She didn’t look back towards her house before she crawled through. She did not hesitate or question her actions. She pushed her way through the fence and was welcomed into the forest.

Something

Their backs are bent

Like cello players out of work

So they recite their songs

Long remembered or simply imagined

And played

Without instruments

(19 Nov 09)