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Pull yourself together!

Five years ago, my friend Sarah and I did something we called the Legend of 75.

I was 20 and depressed and in effort to forget all the nonsense in my head, we went to a town an hour and a half’s drive south of Tampa as loudly as we could.

Really.

Windows rolled down, we yelled nonsense heading south on I-75. There is something so freeing about yelling “I definitely consistently prefer peanut butter and honey over peanut butter and jelly when it comes to sandwiches!” at 80 miles per hour. I let go of something so I could start to pull myself back together.

Being free requires letting go. (Which, luckily for other drivers, doesn’t always require yelling out the windows of moving vehicles.)

I think to some extent everybody wants and likes to be free. We feel freed from overweightness when we’re in good physical shape. A significant other makes us feel freed from loneliness. We feel freed from stress when, whatever the method, we reduce it. When we don’t have what we want or need, there’s always a little something that keeps us bound to some other thing. A need to think a lot about how to get out of a rut, if not just about the fact that we’re in one.

How does our culture respond? Certainly not by letting go.

Not in shape? Get diet pills.

No significant other? Join eHarmony.

Stressed? Buy self help books.

What a lot of us end up with is our original lack of freedom — a few extra pounds, loneliness, stress — plus another thing. And then another. And another.

We want to be free from whatever it is, and instead of letting go of what causes it, we cling to something else that we hope will negate the effects of it. I remember once, I spent a day — a whole day — cleaning out my closet because I finally couldn’t take the clutter. I had too much stuff so I sorted through it for hours. In my sorting, I found multiple self-help books, all on attaining simplicity. Not only did I have a lot of clutter, but a collection of things I thought would help me rid me of my clutter was, in fact, part of my problem.

How typical it is, with good intentions, to commit to things that, lo and behold, distract us from doing what we actually need to do.

Maybe we don’t need diet pills, but to let go of an old way of taking care of the body. Maybe there are behaviors or beliefs in our lives that need to be let go before we can successfully be a significant other to someone. Maybe we’re stressed because we’ve committed to do too many things, like read multiple self help books. Maybe we need to let go of something.

Then we can pull ourselves back together.

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Stepping away from social media.

I quit MySpace in 2006. I stopped texting in 2007. I deactivated my Facebook account in January. And in keeping with tradition and conviction, after a few years in its bonds, I quit Twitter last week.

My journey into a world sans social media seems to strike nerves, even in strangers.

“Why are you trying to shut yourself out from the world?” -an old friend.

“Facebook is an amazing application to keep in touch with old friends. (You have) some social interaction issues to deal with.” -some stranger.

“It sounds like YOU have the issues, not Facebook … you took it too seriously.” -some other stranger.

“You’re just trying to hide from modern inventions.” -guy I’ve never met.

Forgive my being blunt, but way to miss the point.

Social media is to relationships what fast food is to nutrition. It makes us feel like we’re getting what we need, but compared to what we really need, what we get is insubstantial. For the lonely, the bored, the socially awkward or the socially phobic, it — in the long run — perpetuates what it’s supposed to alleviate. It teaches us to value the reaction to what we express more than we value the opportunity to express it. It casts the vote for convenience, further supressing the ability to wait.

It enables us to avoid. It creates an illusion of busy-ness. It distracts us. And I don’t want the use of it to play a big role in my life.

I don’t disagree, though, that social media has benefits. Even I’ve reaped them. I have friends I wouldn’t have without social media. I’ve scored interviews solely because of it. But I can make friends and score interviews without it, too.

I very well may be a neo-luddite. And maybe that means my life will be only more complex for opting out of all extra ways to communicate and my friends won’t be my friends anymore because it’s too much work. Maybe I’ll never be invited to another party because Facebook will monopolize the invitation industry and I’ll be single forever because meeting people like our parents met people is officially passé. Maybe stepping away from social media is condemnation to a life inside a hermitage, a life out of the loop. Maybe the stranger is right: I am the one who takes it all too seriously.

Maybe.

But I doubt it.

One day, I realized how unimportant these loops are. Why do I need to be in them? How do they help me to more wholly live my life? Why do I need to know what TV show so-and-so is watching? How much better is my life for knowing that lead vox in a band at a bar in Ybor just spilled his beer on the stage? Why, when people spend more time uploading photos from a party than fully being present at the party and sleep with their cell phones and read and respond to text messages from behind the steering wheels of moving motor vehicles, am I the one who takes this stuff too seriously?

I understand, though, why it strikes a nerve. And I appreciate the reasons some choose to stay. But for me, stepping away from social media, so far, is like liberation. And I look forward to learning what life really looks like without it.

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Seek first His kingdom.

Pretty much daily, I need to remind myself that Jesus meant what he said. He didn’t speak to break an awkward silence or to draw attention to himself.

“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things,” he said. “For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

What we need: Food, drink, shelter, clothes.

Kick it up a notch.

What we think we need: Financial security. A significant other. Our way.

It boggles the mind that he told us a) what to do because b) he knows what we need and c) he will get it to us. Yet so often, we still seek first all the other stuff.

He meant what he said. Every word. Trust him.

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“It’s not me. It’s you.”

On my way to school last night, I got annoyed at a few other drivers.

When don’t I?

But last night, while I headed to school for a test in psychopathology, a couple cars ahead drove too slowly. A couple other cars hit the brakes too hard in front of me. All the way through the hour-long drive, I tried not to let it bother me. Instead, I tried to think about all the things that might be on my test.

In the class, we’re studying the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. So, personality disorders and anxiety disorders and psychotic disorders. (And I could actually go on for awhile — it’s a long list.) Here and there, we also get into theories, like attachment theory — the styles of connection between an infant and his or her mother and how they affect the grown up person the baby becomes, and attribution theory — whoa.

While I drove, attribution pushed me into a little more self awareness*. Simply, the theory says that a person attributes his or her own behavior to his or her circumstances and that a person attributes other people’s behavior to their personalities.

In other words, “It’s not me. It’s you.”

It’s why when I drive slowly, it’s not my fault but when you are a driver in front of me and you drive slowly, it’s because you are inept.

Clearly, that belief is false (most of the time) (don’t lie — some people can’t drive.). But how few among us don’t think it all the time? If I forget something, it’s because other people are pulling me in too many different directions. You forget something, and I ask, “What is wrong with you?”

What’s wrong with all of us? We want to believe that when I drop the ball, it’s your fault and when you drop the ball, it’s your fault.

And I must say. When “you” drop the ball that much, it’s really hard to love you. But it takes the blame off the one around whom the world revolves (ha! We humans. So funny.)

How different a day would be if only we’d admit that maybe, sometimes, it’s actually not you. What if I choose to believe the slow drivers are slow because of their circumstances — they’re lost, for instance — and not because their number one goal in life is to make me late?

I can empathize with being lost; I cannot empathize with rudeness. Why assume the worse when there’s no way to know which is the case?

Going with the one that doesn’t make my blood pressure go up might make my hour-long drives might be more pleasant. And if we all do it, it might make the world a better place.

*Getting a degree in mental health will do that to you. I highly recommend it!

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Through smoke.

Every year around 9/11, memories and commercials rope me into watching a show (or two) that documents the attack.

I could never forget what I saw while it unfolded on live television. I could never forget half my tiny high school huddled in silence in the boys’ locker room — the only room where we could find a TV.

But watching footage years later, and interviews with the people who were there — and even interviewing people who survived — keeps it real. It keeps it from fading into memory so distant it stops reminding me how to love.

So last weekend, when National Geographic aired a couple of documentaries, I watched. Every story moved me.

Like the wives whose husbands called from airplanes and the businessman in his young 20s who lost his life going up and down flights and flights of stairs so he could save the lives of men and women several years his senior.

And the Muslim man who hit the ground, forced into falling by the power of the smoke and ash that swiveled around street corners after each tower collapsed. From the concrete, he couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t get up. He probably thought he would die there.

The smoke near his face started to clear. He could see a man — clearly a hasidic Jewish one, with curly sideburns and a yarmulke on his head. The stranger reached toward the Muslim man, through smoke.

“Come on, brother.” he said. “Let’s get out of here!”

That, the Muslim man said, is the last thing he expected to hear. This Jewish stranger was the last person he expected might save him. But he grabbed his hand, shot up from the ground and the pair ran together. Eventually, they lost each other in the crowd. They never saw each other again.

So much of what happened between them reminds me of how we’re to love.

How tempting it is while our world crashes down around us to work our own way out, to secure our own safety, while ignoring the ones around us who need our help.

How typical in this culture to ignore the ones around us, even while our world is in completely intact.

Love your neighbor (and your enemies). Even through smoke.