Tag Archives: community

When I Used to Run into People

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“I hear it said of somebody that he is leading a double life. I think to myself: Just two?”  —Leon Wieseltier

We contain multitudes. Personalities are pieces of fabric sewn together with layers and layers of sometimes seemingly incongruous materials. But deep beneath that mismatch, the essence of our true nature thrives. Unwinding the knots of complexity reveals the building blocks of that Frankensteinian Voltron we call identity.

We’re able to manage striking dichotomies in our youth that become far more rare and much less tenable with age. But that’s what made each day feel like such an adventure.

I used to run into people.

As a wily teen, I spent many weekend nights cramped into poorly ventilated, overheated gyms, VFWs, and dilapidated all-ages music venues to watch punk and hardcore bands scraping together an existence by tapping into the abundant adolescent angst of mostly males looking for an outlet that didn’t live on football fields or wrestling mats.

We screamed along to PAs blasting distorted, indecipherable lyrics about clean living, distrusting the government, and animal rights. We slammed into one another, dodging haymaker fists and stomping boots. Spinning circles in some manic ballet, we were on an island of our own creation, and that independent spirit was the fuel that powered my rebellious little engine. Drenched in sweat and drained of frustration, we retreated from the battle in some state of earned euphoria, grateful to have survived another night in the trenches.

It was music specifically designed to elicit rage and defiance, and I soaked up every second.

Then, on Monday, I returned to my madrigal choir and a cappella chorus where my meticulously tuned tenor 1 voice endeavored to reach the highest of high notes. Hands clasped. Shoulders back. Wide eyes. Wider smiles. Bathing in the beauty of perfect harmonious balance. A wholly opposite community. A vastly different shared sense of accomplishment. But equal elation.

Was I a punk rocker? A chorus kid? An envelope-pusher? A strict, disciplined member of the collective? Yes. I was all of these things…and many more. They were some of the very best moments of my life, and I wouldn’t trade a second of that seemingly odd discordance to snap into some perfect mold of the typical, expected teen experience.

We do not all fit into boxes, so let’s stop building them.

Adolescence Interrupted

Scales Without Balance

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“If we think of life as a kind of Olympic games, some of life’s crises are sprints. They require maximum emotional concentration for a short time. Then they are over, and life returns to normal. But other crises are distance events. They ask us to maintain our concentration over a much longer period of time, and that can be a lot harder.”                                                                                                    —Harold S. Kushner

I am deeply troubled these days. I’m blinded by unjust suffering on a global scale and I watch the escalating pain of family and friends from a very personal perspective.

How did our calibration fall so far out of balance? Why must genuinely sweet souls be forced to endure sustained agony while those with evil, black hearts are permitted to swim free in a sea of avarice and insensitivity?

I will never understand the fundamental human hardwiring that values greed and excess over common decency and the general welfare of others. It is a pandemic virus without a cure, and it’s systematically infecting our brains with frightening speed and alarming accuracy.

So…why do bad things happen to good people? Is there really no karmic system in place to level the playing field? Is everything simply randomized chaos without even the hint of some justified cause or effect?

This nightmarish scenario certainly frames society in a context that would cause the vast majority to squirm in their seats, and that’s not even taking into account the titanic religious implications in the lives of those who truly believe there is a grand master plan at play.

As hard as it might be to wrap your head around the fact that we’ll probably not get to the roots of the “meaning of life” debate during this short post, it’s worth considering that our own backyards are the only ones we can clean, and acts of kindness and generosity can easily be distributed one day (and to one person) at a time.

Your pain is never as severe as someone else’s. Your financial situation is never as dire. But your success is never as impressive, and your status is merely an illusion devised by your artificially-inflated ego.

Take a step back and take a step down. We are forgoing a sense of community and compassion at a disturbingly breakneck pace. It might be wise to take stock of what’s truly important…before it’s all lost.

Adolescence Interrupted