I tie my scarf tighter and shiver in the frigid air conditioning at Starbucks. Maybe a sip of steaming coffee will warm me. I lift the cardboard cup the chessboard table in front of my MacBook. After a swallow of hot liquid, I return my focus to the book in my hands.
“I have been thinking lately,” said Inglewood in a low voice, “that there’s no time for waking up.”
She did not reply, and he walked to the window and looked out on the garden.
“I don’t smoke or drink,” he said irrelevantly, “because I think they’re drugs. Yet I fancy hobbies, like my camera and bicycle, are drugs too. Getting under a black hood, getting into a dark room – getting into a hole anyhow. Drugging myself with speed and sunshine and fatigue and fresh air. Pedaling the machine so fast I turn into a machine myself. That’s the matter with us. We’re too busy to wake up.”
“Well,” said the girl stolidly, “what is there to wake up to?”
“There must be!” cried Inglewood, turning round in a singular excitement. “There must be something to wake up to! All we do is preparations … We’re always preparing for something – something that never comes off. I ventilate the house, and you sweep it; but what is going to HAPPEN in the house?”
I muse on G.K. Chesterton’s lines from “Manalive.” How might their lucidity speak to American life? In our culture, good things can become great and good places can become grand. Yet why do we feel so pushed? Apparently good is not good enough.
Politicians envision a starry future for our nation with more government programs. Collegians burn the midnight oil so their grades will get them into graduate school. Professionals carry paperwork home in their briefcases so they might earn the next promotion. And kids – do they dream of being firefighters or astronauts or teachers or mommies? No. American kids dream of money and a life in the suburbs when they grow up.
Why do we constantly look toward the future instead of celebrating the past and honoring the present? Why do we conjure up potential situations instead of putting ourselves wholly into the realities around us now? Why do we wish for brighter tomorrows when the sun is shining over our heads today? Why do we worry it might rain next week instead of noticing the clouds of yesterday gifted us with blooming poppies in the garden?
We want happiness so badly that our anticipation destroys it. We worship joy so much that our fear of it slipping by decimates even our most joyful moments. In “Surprised by Joy,” C.S. Lewis discusses such a problem from his experience: “I again tasted Joy. But far more often I frightened it away by my greedy impatience to snare it, and, even when it came, instantly destroyed it by introspection, and at all times vulgarized it by my false assumption about its nature.”
I have never spoken with someone happy to be in the “rat race” of a do-as-much-as-you-can-now-to-make-sure-you-can-be-ahead-next-year crowd. They are all miserable when they really think about it. So am I.
We prize a stress-free life so dearly we stress ourselves out trying to find ways to relax. “It is ironic when we meet what we set out to avoid,” says D.C. Muecke in “The Compass of Irony.” A good desire – love – gets twisted into emotional cannibalism. A valid hope – success – gets twisted into performance-based esteem. A proper interest – meaning – gets twisted into philosophical uncertainty.
“The truth is,” Chesterton writes, “when Man goes straight he goes crooked … There is a bias in man like the bias in the bowl; and Christianity was the discovery of how to correct the bias and therefore hit the mark.”
The way out of our dilemma is the same as the way in. The bias is overcome by a bent. It’s the upside-down value of giving your everything to those around you today. Rebekah the virgin didn’t say, “Oy, why don’t you get your own drinking pot instead of stereotyping women and asking me for a drink?” No, Rebekah said, “Drink and I will draw water for your camels also.” (Genesis 24:14). Jesus taught, “Whoever seeks to save his life shall lose it; whoever shall lose his life preserves it.” (Luke 17:33) A summary paraphrase of this basic command is, “Don’t reach for the stars. Bend to the soil.”
I don’t have to wait to be perfect before I serve Jesus. I’ll stop dreaming up situations and start watering the camels with my sole water pot.
