I lugged my broken laptop to the electronics store yesterday, hoping for an easy fix. The man behind the counter plugged it in, pressed the power button, and, within a matter of seconds said very solemnly, "It's the motherboard."
This sounded very serious. It also sounded very basic, as if it was something I should know about, so I did the only thing that seemed logical at the time: I pretended to know.
"Oh no, not tha-at..."
He was not amused. "Do you have an external hard drive?"
I figured that if I couldn't remember what an external hard drive was, I probably did not have it. So I confidently said that I did not.
"Here," he said, plunking down one of those incomprehensibly-difficult-to-open electronic packages on the counter. "I'll transfer the data onto an external hard drive." I nodded.
"Do you want to recycle your computer?"
Oh. So that's what a broken motherboard means. I was frustrated. Now I would have to buy a new computer -- and I thought momentarily of the past five years that that computer had seen of my life. What next?
Around the same time, my mom told me her adventures of taking the grandchildren bowling. Because both of my nieces became sick in the car, they didn't make it to the bowling center and didn't get to spend the day as planned. She spent the next day cleaning up the car, cleaning up the house, and helping take care of them.
As I grow older, I can't help but notice how easily these little things come to my mom -- one setback here, one fix there, one step at a time. "Kids throw up," I've heard her say matter-of-factly and with a laugh. "That's just what they do."
These are the messy parts of life: messy cars, messy houses, broken computers, broken motherboards. They feel like interruptions, but sooner or later, you realize that these messy interruptions make up a good deal of life, and the way you handle them determines a lot about your character and your future.
These are the messy parts of life, maybe the "Ordinary Time" that we hurry through, embarrassed at the pettiness of these setbacks.
But they make a lot more sense when you realize that life is less about reaching a specific destination (not to disparage destinations, of course) and more about loving: it's more about treating the person behind the counter delivering the bad news or the child in the backseat throwing up as more than an interruption.
Then love becomes action, interrupting our very messy, ordinary time and giving it meaning and hope and plenty of reasons to laugh at ourselves.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Things I Learn Only When I Am Sick
I love life. I love pure existence. I love the seeing snowflakes fall gently on the ground and the sound of raindrops and the smell of fresh-cut grass and the feel of ocean sand. I love music and dancing and reading and learning and feeling.
And then I get sick. Suddenly the only thing I love is a warm blanket and a bed. It can be just a cold, or a particularly low-energy week brought on by my low-thyroid, but either way, suddenly existence doesn't seem so great.
But sickness is part of life, and so I've decided to embrace it and write about it because we all get sick. It's so human. We might as well find some meaning in it, maybe even a little joy in it.
Mostly, I would say that sickness has been a school of humility for me. It usually happens when I've been doing too much, or not taking care of myself, and my body reminds me, "You have your limits." Also, I find that all of the things I might be tempted to take pride in -- being a patient person, being a good listener, being a good worker -- well, they don't come so easily when I am sick. Any credit that I was giving myself for being a good person usually has to go out the window when I'm sick; the slightest bit of a cold always reminds me, rather comically, that all it takes is some congestion and I am not really that pleasant to be around.
And I do think that there is a joy to be found in humility and in limitations. Humility, at its core, is freedom. There's an old-school prayer called the Litany of Humility that says as much. It's a beautiful prayer, although when you first read it, it sounds a little bit harsh. It is all about how humility is deliverance from a desire to be more than what we are. That desire to be more than what we are, to rely on ourselves completely, to control our lives and what others think of our lives completely -- that desire is ultimately not going to bring us to true freedom. True freedom is a freedom to be small and rely entirely on God and give ourselves completely to him and to others. And it gives levity to life, too, forcing us to learn to laugh at our smallness, to take ourselves less seriously.
Nothing reminds us that we are not what we want to be, we are not without our limits, more than sickness. The truth, the core of our existence, is we are entirely reliant on God's love. And that realization is ultimately freeing and liberating, even though I wish it came with fewer sneezes.
And then I get sick. Suddenly the only thing I love is a warm blanket and a bed. It can be just a cold, or a particularly low-energy week brought on by my low-thyroid, but either way, suddenly existence doesn't seem so great.
But sickness is part of life, and so I've decided to embrace it and write about it because we all get sick. It's so human. We might as well find some meaning in it, maybe even a little joy in it.
Mostly, I would say that sickness has been a school of humility for me. It usually happens when I've been doing too much, or not taking care of myself, and my body reminds me, "You have your limits." Also, I find that all of the things I might be tempted to take pride in -- being a patient person, being a good listener, being a good worker -- well, they don't come so easily when I am sick. Any credit that I was giving myself for being a good person usually has to go out the window when I'm sick; the slightest bit of a cold always reminds me, rather comically, that all it takes is some congestion and I am not really that pleasant to be around.
And I do think that there is a joy to be found in humility and in limitations. Humility, at its core, is freedom. There's an old-school prayer called the Litany of Humility that says as much. It's a beautiful prayer, although when you first read it, it sounds a little bit harsh. It is all about how humility is deliverance from a desire to be more than what we are. That desire to be more than what we are, to rely on ourselves completely, to control our lives and what others think of our lives completely -- that desire is ultimately not going to bring us to true freedom. True freedom is a freedom to be small and rely entirely on God and give ourselves completely to him and to others. And it gives levity to life, too, forcing us to learn to laugh at our smallness, to take ourselves less seriously.
Nothing reminds us that we are not what we want to be, we are not without our limits, more than sickness. The truth, the core of our existence, is we are entirely reliant on God's love. And that realization is ultimately freeing and liberating, even though I wish it came with fewer sneezes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)