Golden Days

In retrospect, we fawn over the golden seasons of our lives. They are the stories we love to tell and reflect on. The places we want to get back to.

I call the summer after I graduated high school the golden summer. Friends of mine had a huge house (aka the cabin) that everyone hung out at literally almost every night. You could go there at night and find people just sitting on the couches on the wrap around porch simultaneously talking theology/philosophy & the best youtube videos. We'd have impromptu sit down family dinners with 25 people (only a few of us were actually related). We drove around Corvallis in my friend's shag carpet van (no seats) with about the same number of people --sometimes playing jokes on frat party-goers, sometimes just all going to get burritos. We'd get out on the roof and smoke and talk til all hours of the night. You could come back in the morning and find people trying to barbecue pancakes on the charcoal grill (only succeeded once). Most days a good crew would eventually make it out to play frisbee golf (as long as you weren't stuck working) and a lot of the time you could stick around til the evening and do it all over again the next day. It wasn't uncommon that summer for my abs to literally being sore from laughing so much.

Karol Zielinski

For many of us, the golden days are scenes from childhood or adolescence. Although these seasons still happen as we get older, I wonder if they're becoming harder to spot. By this, I don't mean to say that seasons of gut-wrenching pain & hardship (which we all face) aren't without worth. On the contrary, I've seen that those who dig into their pain-- facing it bravely, and with God's help pulling wisdom from it like seeds, can plant the same in hope and eventually reap the most beautiful golden harvests.

I no longer have the luxury of structuring my day around frisbee golf and barbecued pancakes. With age, I find that my capacity for joy, as with ambition, compassion, and meekness among others are becoming more sophisticated. I'm able to accomplish bigger & better feats. I still appreciate simple games, but I can also drink more deeply of fruit I see in family, friends and work.

Do I recognize the golden days while I'm in them? I don't think they look as simple, or always as obvious as the great games I played as a child. I can let myself be complicated-not every area or moment is golden, but some are. For me, now, I find great joy in my work. A lot of that comes from having wonderful leadership--which does a lot to cover and bring peace and direction to my life and the lives of others under their leadership.

The good things in life are not just ideas, nor should they be allowed to only be emphasized in past tense as memories. They have real world consequences. They are producing tangible, pragmatic fruit today. Look for them. Speak of them. Relish their sweetness. What is golden for you today?

Holding Back Accomplishment

Maybe it's this city. We value accomplishment. We praise proficient multi-taskers. We're high achievers. Friends my age are drafting federal policies, flying multiple times to multiple continents to do really revolutionary work in the developing world, spearheading really useful and creative local skill sharing forums, or just about singlehandedly lobbying congress to turn waste heat emission into pure energy. Seriously, we are knocking it out of the park. We're doing so much good. That's just who we are and we love it. It's really really fun to be good at your job.

Hopper. Nighthawks. 1942.

But with that, many of our identities are tethered tightly to our resume. And if not, then it's easy to get lost trying to relate to others within a culture of people flirting with the achievement trap (seriously, even the people working at fragers and peregrine have smart phones). I think I've often chosen to invest in my accomplishments and work over people often because I find it's easier to control. When I accomplish something substantial, I can step back, and say, "Here's something to put my weight on. Here's something measurable that shows my value."  Relationships are harder to predict. Even having truly great friends in this city, if I'm not super busy, then everyone else is, so we often miss each other. I literally have to schedule time with my super-close friends who live blocks away two weeks ahead of time. Apart from living in a culture of demanding jobs, maybe having saved the world a time or two makes us idolize that feeling. Even when we're not working on some heroic project, we act like we are, but really it holds us back. I'm there. I think I've forgotten how to really let go and rest. When I have spare time, I often don't know what to do with it, so I start another project. It's like voluntarily acting like a paraplegic. I might have really great arms if that's all I use, but it's pretty dumb not to use my legs just as often if they aren't actually impaired.

I have a beautiful community of friends. Really, it's life changing to belong to a local family that you love and respect. Show me your friends and I'll show you your future. However, I often think to myself that I'd enjoy the people in my life a lot more if we all lived somewhere else. When do we just linger and enjoy each other? Time together is joyful, but always neatly punctuated. I have long, lovely glimpses at their hearts, and it's enough to survive, but we lack consistency and depth in that. Why aren't we so resourceful in casting our nets wide for simple time spent on friendships, even if they may not represent any concrete gains for us other than the love and joy of the person themselves within those moments?

Hopper. The Sheridan Theatre. 1937. 

It's hard to do every day. For example, even just waiting in line for salad at lunchtime, I can barely stand to tear myself away from email or twitter on my phone for the 10 seconds it takes the girl behind the counter to ask me how much dressing I want, do I want bread, and is it for here or to go. It seems a small thing to give her my attention, so I skip over it. She has to raise her voice to get me to answer. I reply, not really looking up. What about courtesy? Why does it seem less significant to show patience and discipline in dignifying our interactions with other people as showing the same in our life's work?  In interactions like these, I make people an object to my goal, and innately reduce myself of dignity by not dignifying them. I sincerely love and am very proud of what I'm able to accomplish in my daily work and continuing education. It is good and right to expend oneself in such a way. But, for all the genius solutions, all the glorious essays & books, and all the huge, admirable accomplishments we all have made, loneliness still creeps in. Especially in the city, because of the fast pace, I think. It does for me, even often sitting in a room full of people I know and love. I have to connect with them. I can't go without it, and I'm one of the most task oriented people I know. Living jointly at this tempo often means cutting people out, not making more room for them. Loneliness should be a sign to us.

To have produced beautiful fruit from your labor is very satisfying, but it's not even close to enough. There comes a point when to continue working without sweet, long lingering pauses to enjoy the fruit and the hearts of those laboring around you, you subtract from yourself instead of adding.