Fire in the Sky

Some streams of thought about opinions — yours and mine.

It was on this unknown stretch of I-10 west in between rest areas and before any legitimate civilization. The moment happened in about 2 and 1/2 seconds, but the image hit me for a full minute before I realized it wasn’t there anymore — and I’ll probably see it for the rest of my life.

I had been thinking, as is always a comfortable driving past time. Often times I think about life or movies or people or God, but as it so happens I spent most of this highway thinking about me.

You see, all my life I wanted to be a really great guy. I wanted to be the friend you could always count on, the compassionate accepter, the poet with the sense of humor, the cute guy who doesn’t know he’s cute, and the walking dictionary of original quotations, among other varied and interesting character possibilities. I wanted to be all those things so badly that I would torture myself when I thought I didn’t live up to my own ideal of who I was supposed to be. I would destroy myself when I wasn’t funny or when someone didn’t find me attractive or when I hadn’t said just the right thing or if I felt like I had let someone down. I thought that when it came to me, the opinions of one were the opinions of all, and it would crush me almost every night when those opinions were less than exemplary.

And for some reason, people began to attribute things to me that I couldn’t live up to. They were standards I had actually set for myself as well: like always saying and doing the right thing or always being there when they needed me or even (if I can be this broad) always being who they needed me to be. I don’t know if people just started expecting those things from me or if I expected them from myself and the rest of my world just caught up with me. Either way, I was a self-esteem nightmare.

Well, I gave all that up a couple of months ago and I got over myself. (Hooray for me, quick pat on the back) I stopped focusing so much on myself and started focusing on other people. I found when I did that I was able to listen better, understand more, and I actually got a little funnier too. (Seriously, I did) It was weird to me. It was like the more I focused on others, the better I felt about myself. And it didn’t stop after only a few days — it lasted for months.

Tiger Lily noticed the change. In fact, I had talked with her in great detail about the changes I was trying to make in my heart and the path I was taking to essentially “get over myself.” I was actually chatting with her about that very thing while I was driving down I-10 between the last rest area and God-knows-where. I was chatting with her about it when I saw the star.

The only thing I didn’t count on in my whole self-esteem journey was getting rid of the expectations of others. Oh, I can throw away the deranged opinions of strangers and of casual acquaintances, but what happens when I don’t live up to being who those that I’m close to and love want me to be? What happens when I don’t give them the response they wanted or when I don’t manage to say what they needed to hear?

I thought I was done with it all and I was. That is, until recently when I didn’t gel anymore with the image of me that had been built up in my friends’ minds. I dropped the ball on their ideals and for a moment, each of them managed to punish me for it. I guess they didn’t know what else to do, I mean after all — they were disappointed with me. But the question that haunted me was this . . . could I ever escape having to maintain friendships by living up to an imaginary ideal?

And all of this was on my mind while I was chatting about nonsense with TL, driving 80 miles an hour down I-10. It was about the time she began to read me my horoscope (which was ironically accurate for once, I must say) when I looked up and saw it.

It started as a long, thin stream of bright white light — like ruler-straight lightning. I thought to myself, “Aw, it’s a shooting star.” But then something weird happened. The beam, which was big enough as it was, suddenly became bright orange and widened to look like the size of a dime in the sky. (remember that I’m miles away, so if it’s a dime from afar — it’s frickin’ huge).

Then I thought, “Holy crap. That’s not a star, it’s a meteor!” My heart skipped a beat and my eyes widened in case the apocalypse was about to overtake us all. I didn’t want to blink. Then, the dime-thick orange beam slivered down to half its size and became light green in tint.

“Is it an alien?” I thought. Even cooler than the apocalypse! I must have just watched a flying saucer enter our atmosphere. (And where’s my brand new digitial camera? Packed behind back issues of Batman in the back seat, of course. Of all the rotten luck.)

Anyway, TL was reading or saying something, but I was lost to the sight of the cosmic chameleon miles in the distance. The green flash once more became bright white like lightning and then, as if snuffed out, blinked away like a lit match that’s just caught too much wind.

I had to ask TL to repeat what she’d said. Even though the entire display had only lasted 2 and 1/2 seconds, the images were still with me. Though, the metaphor wouldn’t hit me until I sat down to write this blog. And the metaphor is this . . .

People see us not for what we are, but for what they think we are. (Just as I saw that light and thought it was a shooting star.) Then, as we go on in our life’s journey, sometimes we change and don’t fit the description they thought we once fit. (Like when I was sure I was either witnessing an invasion or the end of time or both.)

But when our life blinks out, the memory that is left will not so much be a reflection of us as it will be a reflection of those who remember us. Those who inspire us only tap into what we already desired for ourselves and those who anger us only step on the nerve of our most personal fears. We forget that what we see in others begins with our own eyes.

And while we are still on our journey, before the blink takes us out, we must remember that why we do something is as important as what we do. The intentions of your heart are far more important to your growth than the reactions of your peers. We all have to understand this if we’re ever to learn what is right to do or how it is right to live.

So, in the end it does us no good to seek the approval or validation of others, even those we are close to and love. We are not made good simply because we are loved and we are not made wrong simply because we are contradicted. And we certainly aren’t made up of other people’s opinions. Ironically enough, we are often made up of our opinions of others.

All of that to say, as Bob Dylan once did, “I seen a shooting star tonight and I thought of you.”

P.S. I’m not sure what the heck I saw out there, but just in case, I didn’t forget to make a wish. What I wished for, I’ll keep for me.

Two Reeds

I love comic books. Say whatever you want, but I do. Recently a certain comic book hero gave metaphor to a big portion of my life.

I don’t know how much you readers know about Daredevil (and trust me, he’s a better character than that Affleck movie would lead you to believe). But let me give you a crash course — Matt Murdock was blinded by radioactive waste when he was a child. It took his sight but made all of his other senses superhuman (especially hearing). By day, he’s a lawyer who works within the system and puts away criminals by the book. However, by night he is the Daredevil — the man without fear — a vigilante who takes the law in his own hands in order to catch those evil-doers who slip through the cracks.

Well, in the recent issues of Daredevil, Matt Murdock has been outed as his alter ego and the authorities that be are pursuing him to put him behind bars because of it. If Murdock goes to jail for being Daredevil, then not only will he be restricted from performing his good work, but all the people he put behind bars legally will be set free because of the sacrificed integrity of the courts of law.

Quite a predicament to be in for someone who’s just doing the best he can to make the world a better place. Well I don’t have super-senses, I don’t fight crime in red spandex, and I’m certainly not risking my life in as many noble endeavors as the blind comic book hero. But in many ways, I can relate to his unfortunate plight.

You see, I’m a reverend (dedicated readers know that already), but I’m not a conventional minister by any means. I belong to the institution of the church and am therefore bound by their standards of conduct, however many of my personal beliefs about how to make the world a better place (and even how to live my own life) seem to conflict with traditional church views. I don’t have time to go into them here, but let’s just say if I were cornered on certain touchy issues, several people might be shocked or even offended to hear my response.

This places me in a tough bind because I’m constantly having to be two Reeds. Think of it like the Matt Murdock/Daredevil scenario. I’m The Rev (as Mario calls me) and I’m Reed. Now, I never lie to anybody and I’m almost honest to a fault, but I find myself hiding certain things from certain people in order to protect the integrity of the good I’m trying to do in people’s lives. Not to mention how tough it can be to even figure out where exactly I stand on certain things because I’ve been burdened with a hideously over-analytical mind.

It’s too simple to call me a hypocrite (especially since nothing I do really contradicts other things I do or say.) The issue here isn’t hypocrisy, but identity. It’s hard to reconcile yourself with a God who never changes in a world that always does. Especially when that changing world reflects the growth of your own life.

So I don’t really know what conclusion I should reach with this, but I was just kinda trying to put the problem down in words I could get my head around. Meanwhile, I bought a new red spandex outfit and I’m taking a karate class. I’m just trying to find a way to work in that infamous hat.