Month: March 2005

Active Participant

Ever stop to smell the roses?

This phrase, unfortunately, has lost a lot of the magic it once had; it has become a Hallmark card, the lesson learned by a forty-something construction worker after a 90 minute after-school special. This doesn’t make it any less true or important – but it has certainly lost some of its punch.

So I have a new idea.

If we liken roses to those things in life that we enjoy, those things which are good, then the concept embodied by it only takes the idea part of the way. What about the time spent away from the roses? The hard, sad, and indifferent times? Few of us have the luxury of cultivating rose gardens. Should we pull back from life when it becomes hard?

I was discussing this with my brother the other day- he’s going to be making some difficult choices in the near future. It is easy to avoid making choices; you can let life make them for you. But in allowing things to happen – you are no longer driving – you are a passenger. For me, it is important that I be an active participant in my life – all of it. It’s not just the roses that are precious, but the thorns that draw blood and remind of how fragile life is. It is the soil we tend and the act of nurturing it so that good things come.

It is about being in front when we do things. There is a distinction between doing things and experiencing them. An obvious example is the way we tune out when driving to and from work; it is automatic, a motion we are going through. Now imagine this state pervading your whole life, without you realizing it. This is the state most of us are in, until something, amazing wonderful or devastatingly bad, wakes us up.

I want to experience life, not just pass through it. I want to be an active participant in my life.

The First Time

I was fourteen. It was the eighties and I was on a 2400 baud modem. I’d only recently discovered the excitement of being able to chat on a BBS with two or more people simultaneously. There were even rumors of Bulletin Board Systems out there that had twenty, thirty people on at once.

Outrageous.

The BBS was called Future Wave, and it was homed out of Massachusetts. I had struck up a conversation with…well I don’t recall her handle, but her real name was Jenny. She was about the same age as I and was feeling rather down about something.

So I tried to cheer her up. I was a very creative fourteen year old. Described taking her out to a nice restraunt. The snowfight afterwards. She decided she needed to shower to warm up after having snow poured down the front of her shirt.

She described the towel she wore as she stepped out of the shower.

I don’t recall what happened next – but it did not involve hot naked sex. I think I might have fled in confusion over what to do next.

But I had tasted something – and, well, I wanted more. I never did manage to get Jenny in a one-on-one chat again.

Still, she did send me a rather nice Christmas card.

Of course, I said. It is an Intro.

Neither Wikpedia, nor Webster.com, were very helpful in defining ‘introduction’.

I am neither a musical passage, nor, despite my meandering words, a novel. I am simply human and all the good, evil, and otherwise that comes with it. So this introduction will be done without guidance. I’m just going to free-style it.

Hello, nice to meet you.

Half the fun of a blog is seeing details emerge. The shape of a person. The way they craft their words, the glimpses into their life. I would not want to rob you of this by giving away too much at the beginning. Some of you already know way too much about me. But a few guideposts would be appropriate.

I’m part of the male half of the species. I live on the east coast. I read (a lot).

I am a sinner. I like being a sinner. At one point I thought I might want to be a priest; someday perhaps. I’m not quite done with the sinning.

I’ll leave a taste of my sinning in the next couple of posts. Just a feel of them.