Our world has become so fast paced that we, in our constant movement, have begun mistaking contentment for a life not lived. I won’t argue that our life is but a breath on earth, but our breathing has somehow turned to panting and a slow inhale now feels like our last inhale. So slow down friends. I know when you’ve been driving at 90mph and slow down to 75 it feels like a crawl, but we’ll still get there. Take in the scenery. Let the trip be most of what concerns you, not the destination. Because the faster we go and the more we do, the less we see and the less we remember. Life can be beautiful if you live it instead of get through it.

In a pathetic panic, the boy runs from his nurse clenching his gown like it was his only hope. As she stood bewildered, arms by her side, she looked down at the needle that held his salvation thinking “I hope he trips on his gown.” The boy fled the scene of his own murder in hopes of escaping the reaper with his agile, bare-foot-on-tile running skills. This was obviously a mistake. You see, the grim nurse, as he saw her, did bring him the news of his demise. But it wasn’t lacking in hope. She spoke the words no one can hear from another without being immediately sobered to the point of disillusion: “I’m incredibly sorry, but we got the test back and you have…” But with the words of sobriety came a vile of intoxicating cure. All she had to do was get the scary words out of the way, then squeeze the words of hope and that needle into his arm and life. But he was too scared, too fast. Leaping from his bed and running down the hall like a naked idiot, he found a more painful but equally sobering solution in a food cart as he rounded the corner. After the crash, he turned over trying to narrow his vision of his three hands to just two. And just as he did, the nurse was next to him reaching for one of those hands. As she pulled him up she opened her free hand, showed it to him, and said “can I finish telling you my story now?” A bit embarrassed and half naked, he shook his head and held her arm back to the room. 

If you’ve never had a moment, no matter how severe the diagnosis is, where a doctor gives you negative news, then you may not understand this. But today I found out I have sleep apnea. I suspected this was true, but hearing my doctor say it out loud was a pretty sobering moment. It’s going to mean a lot of change in my life. Nothing that isn’t doable, but still, change. And my first reaction to that change was to deny that it needed to happen, and run from the diagnosis. But here’s the thing: I have a sleep disorder that has been affecting me for the worse my entire life, and now the cure is in front of me, and I don’t want to hear it. I feel a bit like the Israelites who begged God to send them back to Egypt to become slaves of Pharaoh again because they were thirsty. I hope that over time I can better recognize the freedom that will come from this diagnosis and that my prognosis of a boring life will quickly fade into the real prognosis of health and happiness. Your prayers are welcome and appreciated. 

To put words on the love I’ve been shown on this tour would never do it justice. I’ve been shown kindness by strangers, loved ones, and new friends like I’ve never seen before. And just in a single week. I set out on this short journey to get away from the normal life in Austin, escape the insanity that was SXSW, and to just spend time in quiet reflection. All of those things have happened, for which I’m extremely grateful; but so much more has happened because of the amazing people I’ve encountered on my trip. From strangers opening their homes to me to play my music, to good friends taking me in like family, I’ve just been blown away by all the goodness that has come my way. I am completely humbled. So in my 21st century, hipster blogger attempt to communicate this to each of you I want to say:

Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I cannot tell you how much all of your kindness has meant to me. 

Oh I was sent to find the lonesome place

Where I was lost but left to trace

By carving riddles on the lonesome vine.

Oh but rumor has it that I wasn’t born,

I just walked in one frosty morn.

Into the vision of some vacant mind.

Oh once I held a pony by its flying mane,

And once I called the shadow in the turning game

But I will fight this stranger that you should fear

So I won’t be a burden of tomorrow dear

Aww Xavier’s on the border of the sun

swings on the chambers of your guns.

And tries to shoot the chord and light the path.

Aww but hell I’m just a blind man on the plains,

I drink my water when it rains,

and live by chance among the lightning strikes.

Oh once I held a glacier to an open flame

and once I felt like wildcat in the fallen game.

But I will fight this stranger that you should fear

so I won’t be a burden of tomorrow dear.

Oh the singers on the edge to feed the canyons mouth

they will go on forever til they sing you out of time.

But I will fight this stranger that you should fear

so I won’t be a burden of tomorrow dear.

-Tallest Man On Earth

Oh I was sent to find the lonesome place

Where I was lost but left to trace

By carving riddles on the lonesome vine.

Oh but rumor has it that I wasn’t born,

I just walked in one frosty morn.

Into the vision of some vacant mind.

Oh once I held a pony by its flying mane,

And once I called the shadow in the turning game

But I will fight this stranger that you should fear

So I won’t be a burden of tomorrow dear

Aww Xavier’s on the border of the sun

swings on the chambers of your guns.

And tries to shoot the chord and light the path.

Aww but hell I’m just a blind man on the plains,

I drink my water when it rains,

and live by chance among the lightning strikes.

Oh once I held a glacier to an open flame

and once I felt like wildcat in the fallen game.

But I will fight this stranger that you should fear

so I won’t be a burden of tomorrow dear.

Oh the singers on the edge to feed the canyons mouth

they will go on forever til they sing you out of time.

But I will fight this stranger that you should fear

so I won’t be a burden of tomorrow dear.

And so said the schizo:

I work a job that leans me towards a quiet life. 40 hours a week with nights and weekends free. Were I to have a family to go home to, a home to make my own, or even just a dog to jump in arms, my life would be more focused. As it is, I have none of those, so my nights and weekends lean me away from that quiet life. Late hours, full glasses of libations, and songs sung as though my heart were bleeding out with every beat. These two lives I live are constantly vying for my affection. For my attention. For me. And in the midst of this heated battle, the only one who seems to be losing is me. Some might say that I have a well rounded life. One full of goodness from all sides: the opportunity to live responsibly while maintaining a free spirit. I pose another conclusion: without consistency, I grow weary to the point of wearing out all that I’ve ever hoped to become.

Once a year I get sick. And not just sick, but ill. Once every 365 days, I have to take at least 5 of those days and completely stop my life, inject myself with countless (legal) drugs, and let me body catch up to what my soul was never built to do.

So what’s the solution? Do I go find myself a wife and settle into the quiet life that 40 hours of me lives, or do I leave that and go wandering free, searching for some other thrill? What about a third option: keep going this way. I’m not sure if a week long sickness every year is worth this life that I live, but I don’t hate the life I live… neither do I love it. And maybe that’s the point. This life isn’t going to ever fulfill me, or bring me complete joy or happiness. If it did, and I find all I’ve ever wanted, then all that I say I believe in was never worth the belief. What do I have faith in, you ask? This: that the struggle I find myself in every single day is worth more than the rewards it itself could ever bring. That my life, as schizophrenic as it may be, is just a moment in an eternal expanse that is existence. That eternity is real, and God exists there. And moreover, that I have eternity set in my heart. Sometimes it speaks quietly; for me to live quietly. But sometimes it yells at me; screaming for me to go and do.

Either way, I’m alive, and I’m thankful.

And I will keep being so.

How far is too far when it comes to loving someone? Can there be a point when it becomes unhealthy for the lover to love? And if so, is it actually love anymore? I think that we as humans are limited. We all have different abilities and skills, which also means we have different limitations. I, for one, have no ability to do the splits, whereas a 5’1” gymnast may not be able to properly operate a skill saw. And so on and so forth…  So with this being understood, how then can we believe that we have endless amounts of love to give? The romancer in me longs deeply for a woman who I can treat like royalty, meeting her every need and answering her every desire. But what about the days I wake up with a headache? There’s bound to be at least a dozen of those a year and after 10 years of marriage, will I still be prone to treat her as royalty when I’ve woken up with a headache? Doubtful. And the main reason is that I’m a limited man. Such is the case for every one of our relationships. There will be times when you can’t do all you wished you could, and vice versa. This sets us up for pain and failure. 

So then the question becomes: what’s the point?

At this juncture in my life, I’m not sure. I am thankful for all the times in my life when people have been there for me, fulfilling a certain need I have, or filling a certain role that needed filling in my life, but the fact remains that I, and you, will be let down, hurt and abandoned. So then there must be a solution to this. This is a problem, and no problem can be unsolvable. Right? I’m not sure…

The good christian man in me says that God is the only one who can love fully, and without end. But the cynical flesh in me says that even if that were true, I’m still on earth, getting hurt. So what then do I.. do we do? Do we hope for a love that we can’t see or fully experience while we trudge through the mud of pain on earth? Or do we throw up our hands and just walk each step in the mud knowing that each of them could hurt? 

I don’t want to be hopeless, nor do I want to be delightfully ignorant. What I want is for what I want to be immaterial and to rest knowing that my position on the laws of the universe and of mankind and of God are but a whisper in a storm of screams. And in that storm, know that regardless of what I believe that day, the Truth is still holding onto me, because more often than not, its a day like today when I can’t even see the Truth, much less hold onto it.