Monday, May 11, 2009

Entitlement vs. Contentment

I'm ambitious for Summer. A lot is happening. My little brother is getting married in June. Another one of my friends is getting married the same day as my brother. The church taking mission trips that I'm not involved with (what?!?!) and my brothers and I are trying to organize the recording of our first album over the hot, blustery afternoons and evenings. My whole family is going to Ark. later to celebrate my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, which means I must be getting up there in age. But I'm still young. I feel young! Isn't that cool?!

I feel eager and expectant about this year; as if I know somewhere inside that it's a new chapter in life; as if I've come to a point from which I can propel myself into a cyclone of accomplishment. Things are looking up. Things will never be the same. This year, this Summer, something's culminating inside, waiting to burst out of my bones. There's a fire inside me that I haven't felt for the longest time. The world felt like it was ending for a while. Now I realize that it was and still is but pair that idea with the reality that it's not over yet.

I can write songs again. I can feel them coming on every day all day long. I was conversing with my Mom and she noticed that during the conversation I would occasionally stare off into the distance and move my lips to an indiscernible pattern of words, rhymes and analogies forming in my mind. I hope I don't seem too incredibly rude when this happens. I'm not crazy, just unfocused.

Although, I am so incredibly focused on music that I don't think I shall soon be focused on much else again. That's why I'm glad college is over for the Summer and that college is over in the first two semesters. Though it was music, it was music other than the music I wanted to focus on and it was certainly needful of attention given it because of the expanding ideas and structures it built in my mind. So it was good. But it's good to be done.

There's a lot of help in this life. It's good, but there comes a point when there's too much help. All this technology and constant get-it-now mindset is exhausting to say the least. Self-help, love online, microwave ovens, etc. It's all around us. So that's exactly where we are. In the midst of all that's around us. In the middle of chaos. Easy to focus on if you aren't careful. So many people monopolize on the depression and general discontentment that they feel and are set on having their entitlements and rights recognized. 'Feel sorry for me,' is the common attitude I see. Even in Christians. I don't wanna be that. I don't wanna go down that path anymore. There's a fire alive inside me and a world that is swiftly ending, but not over yet.

Let the fire out; light up the night.

Andrew R. M. Hanson