RE: Lonliness

In response to Jasons post about "Loneliness"

I agree with Bryan (Comment found here)...

Lately, inspired in part by John Ortberg's The Life You've Always Wanted, I am trying to retrain myself to "train" instead of "try." By this, I mean that I am using each experience, in the context of your post, each connection, to better my understanding of the thing, and how to improve it for the future. Case in point: I had a hard time for a long time seeing girls here in Seattle as anything other than potential girlfriends. Definite barrier to a legitimate connection as the reality was that as long as I maintained that thought process, I would never get to know any of them well enough to date them. So I trained myself to literally see them as "sisters" in Christ. That is looking at them through the same eyes that I see Amanda. There was a dramatic change in my "connection" with them, resulting in me being much more empathetic to girls in general and not saddling them with all of my problems and preconceptions. This let me really get to know them, though I am still a bit slow on letting them get to know me. Ironically now I am faced with the challenge of contextualizing my relationships as the knowledge that I have and relationship that I have formed with two of them have really exceeded what is probably appropriate for a guy-girl non-dating connection.

Back to your issue at hand. I would say that a lot of the problems with people connecting are built on what Bryan said. There is an existing preconception of what a connection/friendship/relationship is supposed to look like in completion, when in fact; there is no completion, but rather a continuum of experiences. When people fail to see the continuum and don't aquire their preconception, they assume failure and cease to try, resulting in stagnation and a feeling of a lack of connection.

I think this continuum ties in tightly with my ideas on love, but more on that later.

I would also play around with the idea of the different types of connection. Emotional, rational, spiritual, etc. I think that our interpersonal connections may reflect the balance and proclivities of our souls in that respect and the best connections are on all levels, but I have said enough on this for this arena and Jason deserves a chance to respond.

Back to the blog'o'sphere...

Hello world, its been a while...

I feel like I need to come back here and begin to share what is going on because of sunday's sermon. I need to embrace my community and push for intimacy and transparency. But as I was wondering what I should write about, I am totally at a loss. Sure I could write about something intellectual and highbrow, something funny and full of wit, or some keen observation about my experiences over the last bit of time.

The fact of the matter is that I am much more preoccupied with how I feel at the moment. So lonely, empty and cold. Half of me wants to curl up and never see the world again and the other half wants to call some girl I know to be fast and easy (the fact that I don't really know any, but yet have a depraved side that would know exactly where to go online and what to say to talking to them), trying to get into her pants, in a desperate attempt to feel truely connected to somone. The reality is, I would fail at either and am instead left in a semi-detatched limbo. I have spent so much time pouring out of myself (emphasis on the "self"), attempting to be there for people, do my job, and generally hold my life togather. I just don't have it in me and it hasn't really been God working through me, but me working under my own strength. So I drain myself for other people and develop a talent to remain visibly calm on the surface of a problem which sets me up to completely crash in private. I can sink back into myself and my single apartment, my computer games, internet and the psuedo-anonynimity they offer.