journal: 3.9.09

and for years,
a little girl thought her favorite color was blue.
mainly because it was her 엄마's favorite color.
her 엄마 revealed her fondness for blue in the days where the little girl was still learning some of those basic things.
like how to run
or how to strategically wash a sink full of dirty dishes
and how to bow properly to her elders
her favorite color
Crayola midnight blue

everything races past at blurring speeds, and you settle into a normal. this pattern of doing things, thinking in a certain way. sure, there are those who are "spontaneous"--into the spice and adventure and the mysteries of making the atypical choice, but we've all got our favorite cereals for breakfast, or we prefer toast or oatmeal or some random snack from the convenience store. or we prefer nothing at all.

either way, we have the things we know and like and we know what we think we Know. we have confidence in things like the concrete sidewalk, so we step on it. we trust the elevator will get us to floor five if we hit the right button. we get on planes, we fill out paperwork, we exercise, we hug someone 'hello', we play a certain song, mostly with a kind of confidence that all of our actions will result in a certain something, right?

but then there are the mysteries that we don't really know or understand. we try to make sense of it as best as we can, but usually we just shrug our shoulders and coast into whatever the next thing is.
our wheels following those same tire treads.
the wind in our hair, the sun on our faces, the delicious prospects of adventure, or sometimes just the humdrum of the everday.
no matter where we go, when we stop questioning, our treads maintain that same pattern as we coast. those grooves keep solidifying and pressing downward into the muddy trail--so much so, that we can't see over the lip of the chasm we've created. we don't even realize we're in a chasm anymore. we just move East because we've always been moving East along these ever deepening self-perpetuated channels of thought.
(ugh. excuse the language, but this is what i really mean.)

but Queen Esther questioned things. she stood up in the face of a potentially awful and painful death in order to preserve the lives of her fellow countrymen. she could have made the choice to just anxiously twist her hands in her silken robes and sumptuous surroundings. she could have just paced back and forth in her little glass cage, hoping that genocide wouldn't happen.
but it was all too calculated. the venom with which the law was written and was being passed was too poisonous. people would die. her people.
her response was immediate. she called people to pray, to fast, to plead for mercy.

it's this immediacy that makes me think. there's so much that i want to do, have a passion for, and want to learn. i've had many of these cycling aspirations for years. and some of those things have come into fruition. some of these other things may be delusions of grandeur and some of them are real possibilities.
in particular, the smaller, more personal items are certainly achievable: finally saying 'no' to certain habits, showing a little more love to certain people, reading and writing more, working out so my skinny jeans don't feel so tight, learning Korean, being more intentional to stay connected to people, seeing Australia/New Zealand and Europe and more of Asia and Africa. then maybe Israel and eventually South America.
duh. all these things are duh--easy. easy to conceive, definitely all in the realm of just a little bit of time and effort. i know these things--we all know these things, but i fall into normal. the ease of the pattern.

but here's the problematic part.
the scary part.
*
Mr. Boyd spoke this into my ears while i rode buses back home yesterday:
if you don't act on what you know, you may lose the capacity to know. and further, you may lose the capacity to act on the truths you've been afforded.
then, as we gently move along, we will convince ourselves that its not not clear anymore. we convince ourselves that we don't know what we really knew to begin with.
"oh! the ambiguities are amazing!"

[is this getting too convoluted? is anyone following?]

the more we just live without examining and acting--without moving towards these bursts of light, the lights will fade with time and circumstance. the more difficult it will become to clearly see.
*
we deceive ourselves in our inaction.
we deceive ourselves when we ignore that quickening.
how hideous.

i don't want to lose my capacity to act, all bloated on knowledge.
i feel frightened at the possibility that another month, nine and a half months, five years will pass with nothing produced but philosophical musings and dreamy meditations.

all of this meandering rambling.

even though this little girl's favorite color is still blue, i've thought carefully about it and have made deliberate choices.
there are sharp glimmers of light.
though my vision has many swirling mists that make things very unclear, in the darkest of the deepest black, i have a certain stirring of Peace.

why am i so blessed?
i promise to run hard when i catch sight of a ray.
Lord help me.