My Restless Heart: An Elegy to Valentines Day

Valentine’s Day is a day I do not and have not ever cared for.  I propose it is the commercialism that mostly drives me away, or perhaps the fact I have been single most of my existence. Nonetheless, it is not a day on my iCalendar or radar in general. 

Yet, with all the buzz building up to this day, I still find myself dragging out the word “love” and examining it once again. It is not like I haven’t been examining it my entire life, but this 4-letter word (take that how you will) is extremely complex and undefinable. 

Love is a boggling word. 

Love is a sensational word.

Love is a moving word. 

Love is an enticing word. 

Love is a word that is consistently calling me. 

My heart is restless. It has been for as long as I can remember. It resides in this place between “I wish” and “almost” but not any further extreme. It always sits inside of me perpetually talking. It never shuts up. It can’t. It’s teleological. It is always functioning with a forward purpose. It is permanently in drive.

Isn’t that what being restless is though, that I am in constant unsettled motion? But my restlessness and the true intention of my heart’s movement are not in parallel, because I feel conflict. Conflict leaves no peace, but a continual examination of friction and an inclination to honestly say that something just ain’t right. 

But how do we get our restlessness true north, like our hearts are naturally true north? How do we align the compass? It feels as though it is a theme of human versus spiritual. And why does Romans so precisely address this?

    “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do.”

At the heart of both you and I is a great desire to love. Not just to love, but love well. There is even a greater desire to be loved, but on earth, this has to come at the price of imperfection. You and I are not perfect, and in this present lifetime, we will never be perfect. So, we have to relinquish to the universal fact that imperfection will be with us until death. 

Imperfection is so difficult! We have to face the fact that we don’t get things right. 

I’ve suffered imperfection as both a giver and receiver. 

Others have loved me well, and others have loved me horribly.  

I’ve loved others well, and I’ve loved others horribly. 

All with a root of imperfection. 

In the imperfection, restlessness is born. There is this vast canyon of “not quite.”  It is like watching a sunset. You are moved into this transcendent state that you can’t capture with words or feelings—but are transported beyond words. That is love. Love is this concept that is so far beyond my capacity of discernment, that I am not remotely capable to capture what its precise meaning is. Love is this untouchable part of creation, that even in the midst of not understanding it, creates peace. It is only when I begin to attempt to walk in it, capture and copy it, the restlessness invades. 

I still despise Valentine’s day. Perhaps the blame isn't all due to the commercialism, but maybe it’s because I greatly sense love, but can’t capture it. Not how I want to. Not how I desperately try to.  Maybe it is because of the “how I want/try to” that leaves me parched and restless. 

While I sit in the friction, I have to accept the restlessness, because I am imperfect. It will not be until the restlessness discovers true north that my conflict will be no longer. Perhaps true north is relinquishing my control? Perhaps it is moving beyond the “I wish?” Maybe it just that my true north isn’t here on earth, but something beyond the natural and part of the supernatural?  

My heart is restless, but it is alive. I know it is alive because something keeps calling it. 

The Overflow

I’m ok with crying. I really am.  I’m a man and I say that with such confidence because I’m at a place in life where I know a tear has such reason, decision and compassion to it, that I want it to be seen. Well, I don’t want it to be seen, but it’s the only symbol to affectively communicate things unsaid.  It’s honoring.  It’s a way to say more than words can formulate.  It’s a way to communicate without putting letters and words and sentences together.  Tears say “I’m sorry," “Goodbye," “Not again," “I can’t handle this," “I can’t return to this situation," “You have to stop," “Please leave," and the list goes on and on.  It’s a way of showing there is connection with something deeper in you that you can even speak to. Up from that well comes cleansing and catharsis. Many times you can’t even put wording to the reason of the overflow that comes out of our eyes. 

This time it encompassed so many months in my own world.  This time it was a crying out because months of my life came to a halt all on one day.  One day.  It seemed as if my life was a train moving with no destination, but one day the train just stopped and every car toppled itself at the station.  The station was transition.  Transition being the future of new things, new people, new relationships, new atmospheres, new feelings, new thoughts, new struggles, new venturings for connections.  All new. There were tears because everything that was coming was all new.  It was all the things that were unknown. And the ‘all new’ weren’t even here yet.  I had to say goodbye to the old. It wasn’t easy. And it wasn’t if the old was going away for good, the old was moving from my world. My world was becoming the new, while the old made it’s way back to it’s old and a place that starvation had overtaken.  Yet, I wanted the old to stay, because despite the hellish living I was going through, the old was comfortable and oddly sustaining.  I was dependent on the old, cared for the old, wanted the old to stay and be present, yet I knew the old had to go, and like myself I wanted to go. My deepest desire was to molt the old.  But the old was eating me, because the old was starving, and it was starving me. 

It was the tears that washed the old from the new. It was the water that pushed the dirt away from my body. It was the cleansing that let me start afresh and anew. It was the waterfall that carved a new route, a new flow to new lands.  

"I" Stagram

Instagram is hypnotizing. It really is. I have fallen deep into the your-eyes-are-getting-heavy spell of this app. Instagram is about a spectator getting to enter someone’s life through visual images that have been captured digitally and displayed through a series of  scrolling galleries.  The range of visual availability is endless, even though things get pigeon holed in the sunset, food, coffee and cloud categories, and more than not, the “selfie” category.  Yet the possibility of visual arrest is endless. Look at the world we live in, it’s vast and ever evolving. How much beauty do we rendezvous with on a daily basis…it’s unbounded. But the more and more I burrow into the personal pockets of those coupling with this puissant app: I grapple with human disregard for the things that are outwardly.

When I stumble upon, or strategically navigate, onto a profile page that makes allowance for 900 pictures of the authors face, I immediately suspect a sincere problem. Questions that quicken to and accompany my longing to problem solve: is this person missing that perfect angle to get the pièce de résistance? Or perhaps when taking their selfie breaks, their earned six pack just got more slightly chiseled than yesterdays? Or maybe it’s a brand new body oil to shine up that physical Chrysler that has to be captured under the brand new installed light bulb in the desk lamp? Perhaps there is a persistence for the greatest reward we learned to honor ourselves with, developed from our harmful junior high training programs: popularity?  I’m being vicious I know, but I’ve become so disturbed as a fellow human of these narcissistic authors because they are using brilliant technology as a way of giving allowance to peripheral prostitution.

Then it dawned on me: visual prostitution is our culture. An iPhone (or enter the phone of your choice) in our hands relieves us of having to truly connect with people, it steals our time to frolic in imagination, to sit and listen to a symphonic summer evening, it keeps us connected to the Facebook/Instagram falsified encouragement system called the “Like” button which many hunger to keep score with, but most importantly it entices us away from true perception and guttural awareness of ourselves. We squander more time marketing our mugs to other people who ping pong their marketing right back to us. If everyone is in the market place selling the same spurious projections, nothing will end up having value. It’s cheap to sell a face, it’s priceless to share a heart.

Where has the value of human gone?  Where has the influence and response of being moved by an event, piece of architecture, landscape, theatrical event, international adventure, passionate eyes of another human, or prismatic sunset gone? What has happened to our culture that we can’t look further than the red “capture” button that clones the other 899 copies of our dying mugs. Are we not cognitive of the fact that gravity is not a flawless figurine’s friend?

Move outward. Look beyond you. Turn the camera around to the widespread world that is before you. Allow life, color, words, God’s artistic handiwork to change you, to affect you, to evolve you from egoism to enveloping. Images that are captured by a snapshot share so much of the photographers physical world, but more so, their internal world. May we be avidly active to explore the latter. 

Z's and 3's

Act I finale: Zorro, with sword in hand, inflicts three violent indentations on Ramon’s chest. Triune slashes that form one symbol: a “Z”. Each evening seeing this dramatic event performed reminded me of me, a being created in 3: physical, emotional and spiritual.  Three parts that make one entity: a human.  Three indentations that are there for all the world to see. 

Zorro was ten weeks of physical exertion.  My ensemble track was a marathon and after the final curtain would fall each evening I would be utterly exhausted. Costume changes with extensive sword fights in addition to climbing what seemed like thousands of stairs added to my body being beaten. Then adding to my daily role, I understudied the role of Ramon who was required to be shirtless for a sizable amount of Act II, one of my greatest insecurities in life. Knowing that, I drastically converted my diet and work-out schedule. After several weeks I found myself 15 pounds the lesser and two pant sizes smaller, arriving at a semi-comfortable place to bare my skin. Nonetheless, I was still apprehensive and timid. 

Zorro was also ten weeks of emotional exertion. I’m a sensitive person; it’s the way I have always been and I would never want to be independent from that attribute , but when I am physically exhausted, my sensitivity heightens.  Let’s add a book to my heightened sensitivity: Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. It’s a map to treasure.  I would highly recommend it to anyone, especially theatre artists, because we hide, we numb, and we have little or no clue that we are even broken. The book pricked my skin. I’m still trying to digest major points discussed, in that it’s grueling to examine your brokenness and shake hands with the pain, heartache and dysfunctional life system we operate out of.  Ms. Brown’s key word: vulnerability, is something we all fear to participate and engage in, but the greatest requisite to connection with others-which is why we are on this earth, to connect.  I started practicing vulnerability more with a coffee-bean-sized courage. Scary and freeing congruently.  I also, with the same coffee bean, began taking more initiative to ask for help. This isn’t an easy practice for me, but a necessary one. Without fail, my faithfuls around me dove in head first for support.  

Most importantly Zorro put me back into the spiritual practices of meditation, prayer and unconditional love. Taking a truth and meditating on the words that bring life and resilience to my spirit, was the greatest of sustainers for this time period. The phrase that became my cornerstone, “Be still”  accompanied my times of silence and stillness. It’s remarkable how quietness authorizes your heart to be heard. In the silent moments I received revelation of many of my numbing distractions: Facebook, Instagram, Books, iPhones, unhealthy vulnerability-vices that steal my true connection to my God and to the beautiful creations He put around me. This lead to another disarming moment, the notion that one can’t really love God or others properly without loving oneself. I still need a flashlight in this cave. I’ve never loved myself because I’ve faithfully carried the boulder of false humility on my back, the dictated lesson of my childhood legalism teachings. Yet, loving yourself in a proper healthy way is the crux of truly connecting and loving beyond yourself. Brene Brown would call this worthiness, Brennan Manning/Henri Nouwen would call it being the Beloved, and I through frustration and disdain called it necessary to attempt. I’m now commencing that attempt. 

The environment you cultivate within you is the environment you cultivate around you. Daring greatly means that as you stand dead center in the colosseum, blood on your hands, dirt on your face, you know you are fighting to live life rightly. You’ve taken the extreme step to gird yourself with whatever courage you can muster and walk unrepentantly in front of the crowds that jeer and mock. But you have the determination to not only truly live, but to live wholly. 

I’ve stepped into the arena. I can’t exit...not now.  With indentations on my chest, scars on my body, taunting names in my ear, my triunity being challenged at ever turn, I know this is the only chance for survival, sanity and life. 

Dimly Present

     During my visits to NYC, it always seems I'm poked and prodded in ways that I'm never expecting. Partly because I get to see good theatre and partly because the older I am, the more I have released myself from personal defensiveness towards the city. In years past the city would require all of my energy and effort, but getting to know this culture of individualists it's daily rampage and the way it all cyclicly operates, it has become easy to manage, and more so, enjoy. My last two trips have rendered nothing more than excitement and an invitation for a quick return.

     I was able to see the musical “Once” based on the Irish film released several years ago. The musical was the recipient of last years Tony Award for “best musical.” It's impossible to tell you how mesmerizing this piece of theatre was. It's rare that I have found myself so emotionally invested in a theatrical piece. At it's conclusion I wanted everyone to be quiet, stay in my seat, regroup, gather my thoughts and figure out what just happened to me. Reflecting on the story from the stage, I gleaned shadows of a greater story, and in this particular evening that overarching backlit shadow was hope.

     In the beginning of January I was privileged to spend some long-awaited time with a dear friend of mine who carries large amounts of wisdom and discernment. Speaking to her is like having all of your words, feelings and thoughts filed correctly into a clarity filing cabinet. She has the ability to diagram, order and shape things in a way I wish I could. In speaking about certain situations in my world, she concluded with a certain thought: hope was lost. Without hope the specific situation I was living was bleak, dismal and dying. Yet to season the situation with even the slightest sprinkle of hope would refashion the entire life-concoction before me.

     One of my favorite moments of “Once” is the first scene. The character named “Girl” steps onto the stage in a dimly lit area and listens at a distance to the entirety of Guy's song. Her back is to the audience, but her spirit so present. From that moment on, Guy's life is challenged, pushed, and prodded. Girl, with her rough-edged drive, stringently stands in the midst of Guy's blurred dreams and his complacent and to him complicated hopes. Girl was presence and presence challenged Guy's vacillation. The presence of anything, no matter where it's spacing in the room, still makes it present. Presence makes it living. Living makes it active, and activity calls for movement, one way or the other.

    I was singing a beautiful song alone in a big room with no one to hear it but myself. And the song had a wonderful melody and beautiful poetic lines, but there was no honesty or reality behind the notes, the phrases, the content. I was filling the room with sound and nothing more even though I knew the song like the back of my hand, but I didn't really know the song because I was singing it just for me.

     Then across the way, quietly entering--hope, faintly seen, stood at a distance and listened. Hope heard all the notes, the words, the crescendos, the denouements, but wasn't affected by my song. Yet hope stayed and was still present. After singing the song over and over expecting a different result hope asked me to stop singing. Then hope began to sing the same song but it was different. After a moment hope asked me to join in. In harmony we sang. I invited hope to stay.  

Listening: the lost art form

"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."

                                                                                                                     --Ernest Hemingway

I’ve come to learn that listening is an art.  Like any art form, you have to practice it consistently to have any ability to do the skill well.  When I was five years old, I decided piano was a good instrument choice for me, and my parents came along side my decision by saying that if I wanted to take part in learning the piano, I had to take part in committing myself to a long term agreement of training and practice. In retrospect, I’m glad I had parents that made me follow through, because now the piano, after all those grueling childhood hours, is not only my therapy but also my joy.  The same goes for listening, it takes daily practice and longevity to train your ear for a full 100% engagement mode.  And you have to train your ear to not only hear the words that are being sent through the air, but actually hear their tone, their meaning, their depth, their purpose and their truth. 

We treat things so frivolously in our culture. We don’t question the ins and outs of our world, we just take words at face value when there are so many levels and shelves of information that we are handed daily.  Not only is that information glaring at us, but our doors are shut to hear that information, greatest reason being that we are mostly consumed with ourselves.

We’ve all talked to people that are not present in a conversation. Frustrating isn’t it?  We’ve all energetically tried to engage with that one on the other side of the receiver who is obviously disctracted. We’ve all repeated something for the 40^th time wondering where the listener was the last 39.  We’ve all become drained trying to get in a word edgewise to the one whose mouth is the only thing that functional. Truthfully, it gets exhausting.

“Be still” is a reference the Bible uses that most Americans could not comfortably exercise.  The ability to stop, be silent, sit quietly, let your mind rest, take captive your thoughts, no music, no TV, no this-activity or that-activity, no unnecessary stimuli, just stillness. In that place of utter solitude, if you listen, you begin to hear. And the greatest voice will rise up to speak to you: your heart. It will begin to tell you things that it doesn’t normally get to say…it will begin to share truths that you normally don’t pay mind to, it will begin to confide secrets that you may not know, it will finally have it’s chance to be vulnerable and honest and heard. But, you have to listen.

The same goes for your neighbor—the one who sits across from you in whatever circumstance.  You have to take that divine moment with that individual and create a place of stillness. To do so you will need to put yourself away, you will have to let your needs and your thoughts rest on the sideline as you welcome the words and thoughts of another.  In this place of welcoming you listen, letting grace and mercy be the landing pad of their words, letting good reason allow you to filter these formed sentences into levels of depth and meaning. As you practice this, you will soon begin to not only hear the words of another person, but you will soon begin to actually hear their heart—the trueness of who they really are…the most delicate piece of them that they most want you to know.

Listening is an art form, but you have to practice, so you can joy in the beauty of someone else's words.

Chaplin: The Unsuccessful Smile

During my whirlwind of a week in NYC, I enjoyed an evening of theatre with my newly acquired friends from New Jersey.  I sat between the couple, front and center, as we watched the story of Charlie Chaplin’s entire life funnel into a two-and-a-half hour experience accompanied by intermittent songs.  Up to this point, my knowledge of Mr. Chaplin was next to nothing except to know of his comedic movies, particularly styled moustache/hat/cane combo and composition “Smile.”  Things I didn’t know were his British roots that included a highly dysfunctional mother, his numerous marriages not to mention lovers, his business partnership with his brother in the film industry, and his desire to move into dramatic films away from comedy.

On a theatrical level, the show brought a real humanness to this man whom I’ve always considered just a caricature and not necessarily real.  But you were able to see many glimpses of the theatrically enhanced truth of Chaplin’s life: the unwillingness to deal with a very sick mother, the knock-down drag-out fights exiting his numerous divorces, his dealing with neurotic fans (not to mention gossip columnist), and his desire for fame and fortune which began to rule his life.

While watching the finale (giving no plot lines away) there was quite a celebration of Chaplin’s life that lead me to the question, are we celebrating Chaplin as a person or are we celebrating Chaplin as an artist?  Celebrating Chaplin as an artist I have no problem with, but Chaplin as a human, I struggle. 

One phrase that kept pervading my thoughts during the show: profession trumps people.  My definition is simple: it’s when a person solely chooses their career over people they claim to love, honor and value. It’s when the thought or drive of success becomes the hierarchy in one’s world, and they will sacrifice whatever it takes to attain it. Or, it’s when one chooses a career as one’s hiding place so there is no dealing with the everyday of life.

I clearly saw this effect on both Chaplin’s brother, who he eventually fired from his studio, and Chaplin’s wives who always begged for quality time but never received it.  Reason being was because Chaplin was climbing so hard to the top of the success ladder no one could even keep up. All they saw were the bottom of his shoes.

Have you ever seen a resume on a tombstone? I suppose if you paid the extra fee for the engraving of such an expensive honorarium, you could solidify your accomplishments. But when you are pushing up daisies, what does it matter?  And why are the decisions to strive to the “top” come at so great a cost? It is worth it to undermine, ignore, hide or hurt those around you for the great gold star of success?

I find it fascinating that the humans that are so damaged in their upbringings are the same humans who have the greatest ability to make you laugh. And during that laughter, we neglect to look back and see the source of where that joke and gag are arising. Making someone laugh creates peace, it calms the waters, it covers an atmosphere saying, “everything is ok.” Except that laughter doesn’t heal hurt, it only ices the wounds for a little while.

Chaplin could make me laugh. What a gift one human gives another: laughter. What he gift he gave us. Yet, Chaplin couldn’t live in his movies forever. He had to go home at night and in the morning wake up beside many people who shared his bed in rapid rotation. He had to look at his brother everyday at the studio. He daily went about his life knowing his mother was just miles away and mentally sick. What did he offer these dying connections: a joke? 

He best describes himself:

Smile though your heart is aching

Smile even though it's breaking.

When there are clouds in the sky you'll get by.

If you smile through your pain and sorrow

Smile and maybe tomorrow

You'll see the sun come shining through

For you.

Light up your face with gladness,

Hide every trace of sadness.

Although a tear may be ever so near

That's the time you must keep on trying

Smile, what's the use of crying.

You'll find that life is still worthwhile-If you just smile.

Chaplin’s life carried sadness, and he covered it with laughter and success. If only he would have learned to accept the pain and sorrow, understand the aching of his own heart and make friends with his sadness.  Then, he could have truly smiled.