Stuff I Learn From Watching TV

Tonight I'm watching an episode of 'Firefly' (fantastic series, great stories, great characters, lots of fun & the lead in to the movie "Serenity" which I still need to watch). In tonight's episode, the engine on the ship "Serenity" breaks & the crew is stranded in space with life support failing, the temperature dropping & breathable air running out. Mal, being the good captain that he is, sends his crew out on the two shuttles hoping that they'll find help. Mal refuses to leave the ship & decides to stay there in case someone hears the distress beacon that Serenity is sending out. Odds are against any of them finding help, but Mal's chances of survival on the crippled ship are slim & none, and the crew knows it. They beg him to come with him on the shuttles, but he won't leave Serenity....

...finally, the beautiful Inarra comes to Mal, begging him to come on the shuttle with them. Again he refuses, and she looks at him, with eyes full of love & concern, and says, "Mal, you don't have to die alone".....

...and, quickly, unexpectedly, my body clenches in a sob... the tears burst out & my lungs choke out something that is half sob, half scream... the union of sorrow & pain.....

... today hasn't been the best of days. Early morning breakfast with friends, body tired & tummy hurting from being, well, just a size or two too big & being asked to put more food in this early in the morning. My friends called another friend of theirs, a guy offering a job to work on electronics (satellite communications) in Afghanistan. Job requirements: good working knowledge of communication protocols, need to be single & willing to travel on & off to Afghanistan for the next 2 years or so.... My friends, having been to Afghanistan, think it's a great fit & figure I should go for it, try to sell myself so this guy is impressed.... but I walk away from that doubly 'condemned' (for lack of a better word). One, I know that my 'career' of test engineering has left me without the technical expertise this guy needs. I feel inadequate with that. I've dabbled in a little of everything in my field. I'm a jack of all trades, master of none. I know how to take someone's design & look for flaws, possible breaking points. I know how the process of test works. Try to find repeatable ways to show the problems so that the problems can get fixed & you can prove that they're fixed. I know how to pull apart other people's stuff & help them make it better. I'm reasonably useless when it comes to building stuff of my own from scratch.... I just don't have the know how.

And secondly, I, well, I just don't want to spend two years somewhere else. Long ago I longed to go to the 'mission field', to hit some far off land & integrate myself into their culture & love the people of another land... Reading Marcello's book, those images of far off places flood my mind & I've been thinking about travelling, about discovering places & peoples... and yeah, here I have the chance to do that for real & make excellent coin while I'm doing it and, and yeah, all I can think about is that I don't want to spend 2 years somewhere else... somewhere else ir relative alone-ness.... I thought about how hard a time I have fighting loneliness here in Calgary & just how much harder, how much more dangerous, it could be to be off in Afghanistan where the language barrier gets in the way, too.... Mostly I just ended up thinking about how I'm not sure if I can handle another 2 years of life single & watch myself get further old without finding someone (though I suppose one could argue that there's maybe some nice afghan girl that I could pay 10 camels for..... though somehow that doesn't appeal so much right now... maybe after another 2 years of singleness, I'll change my mind)... I have a 'life' here. It's maybe nothing too fancy, nothing too special, but it's mine & yeah, there's this illusion that maybe I'll meet someone here in Calgary (or at least in Canada) & it'll all work out & then we can think about blazing off to far off lands (if I learn more about how to design sat-com networks).

But yeah... my confidence has been shot today.... It's normally pretty fragile at the best of times... over the past couple years it's been getting better & better - the best it's ever been, but it's still pretty fragile... women are the 'silver bullet' though... so far, no matter how strong my confidence is, you put me in a room with a woman I'm even slightly interested in & my sun rises & sets with her perceived like or dislike of me.... often I'm so expecting rejection that I invent it when it isn't there and put myself on this treadmill constantly trying to win affection, even from people that I'm not sure I really want to win them, or, at least, not sure I'd know what to do with their hearts if they did end up giving their hearts to me....

... and honestly, some times I think it'd be way easier to just stay in my life of singleness. I'm getting comfortable with it. I'm enjoying it. I'm managing well, I don't have a ton of things to worry about (though I manage to invent my share of things to fret about). I like this quirky, weird, introverted life I have. There are so many little joys to it, so many moments of good things & random encounters with beauty & grace... and yeah, even lame-o stuff like $10 Transformers Alternators at Wal-mart - silly little things that make me happy, at least for a while....

...but there's always that 'chink' in the armour, that one nagging thing that won't let go... there is a reality that we are not made for solitude & isolation... we can't survive without them, all of us must have times to be alone with ourselves, otherwise the lessons we learn & live don't sink in; we never really get to understand the wonder of being ourselves unless we have time to enjoy being with just ourselves (well, maybe that's not true - maybe that's just the single introvert talking for everyone)... But we are made for relationship, made to be with others. We long to know & be known, to love & be loved... and there is something missing in us until we find fulfillment in that...

...and yeah, I know the reality is that we are never 'filled' by relationship... there is no relationship this side of heaven which will complete us, which will take away every moment of loneliness. There is no one, apart from God, who will totally understand us, or who will be able to perfectly love us... Even with God we feel pretty cut off from Him a lot of days... and so I know full well that the gnawing emptiness will not ever go away fully, but, like the craving for food, must be nurtured & satiated regularly.... without the regular in-filling of food, our bodies die, without the regular in-filling of love, our souls & spirits (and often our bodies, too) die....

...but even with knowing this, there is still the longing for closeness, for 'one'ness as good as it gets... it's the longing for eden, the longing to find eve, or at least the one who will be 'eve', the 'first' woman, to me... (in the sense of the wonder of falling in love & meeting someone who becomes to you like the first woman you've ever really 'seen' )... and yeah, this ache doesn't leave... and I sort of hate it. I've sort of tried to gear my life to be self-sufficient. To be able to give to others, but not need.... and it's this 'chink in the armour' that is definitely a need which won't leave, which I can't fix on my own (unless I do the 10 camel thing), and one that I have no control over.

Though I try to control it... I try to contort myself to 'be' someone... I don't primp & preen 'cause I figure my looks won't win me somebody. I don't flaunt money around 'cause I'm no good with that stuff & may not always have the cash... but instead I try to contort - try to find out what 'she' (whoever that may be at the time) wants & try to contort myself to fit the image of what I figure she wants... all of which ultimately fails as I try & fail to be someone who is more exciting, more adventurous, more of a risk taker, more this, more that... and I contort back & forth, all the time bending myself to the ever changing winds of what I think 'her' opinion is (which is made even more doomed to failure 'cause I, as a guy, am trying to read a woman's mind).... and in all of the contorting, the voices in my head bring the endless parade of 'not enoughs' to my ears and the hapless female that has gotten my attention slowly backs away as my insecurities run rampant & I slowly self destruct in my desire to 'impress' her, all the while losing myself to try to 'be' what she wants....

...it's pretty pathetic really. I sort of hate doing that, but yeah, haven't quite shaken it yet....

... and so Inarra's words somehow strike deep and cut through all the crap of the mind games I play with myself trying to convince myself that I am managing.... the reality is that I am afraid... I fear the aloneness, fear that it will always be 'mine', fear that I will not know what it feels like to find love & community.... and yeah, I think I fear love & community as much as I fear not having it... I'm not used to it & don't know what to do with it.... part of it is, as Mal says at the end of the show, after he's made everything right & takes a bullet in the process, "will all of you still be here when I wake up?"... I fear that, as with everything in life, relationships are transitory... I keep wanting to find 'happiness' and then camp there for the rest of my days... to stay in bliss & roast marshmallows while waiting for the world to end.... but life is full of change & love grows with the times & changes through the seasons... Love faces risks & challenges and stares bravely in the face of death which comes for us all.... No matter how 'good it gets' on planet earth, life keeps changing & there is the risk that it will all fall apart, or, to look at it another way, it will all work towards the best - to whatever brings us to healing & wholeness... happiness is a moment by moment luxury that may or may not last... Love is, as the poets say, stronger than death, unyielding as the grave....

I'm stuck here now, looking for some nice conclusion to sum this all up. I'm happier for venting. Feeling more content with the aloneness - here in a quiet room, lying on a bed for two that holds only one right now.... but there is no conclusion.. There is only the tension of being human - of longing for relationship & running from it, of needing to find one's place in community & to find one's self, of existing in need & of looking after yourself, of being broken & yet whole.... and yeah, it's life, a beautiful gift, full of joy, & yet touched by much tragedy... but all of it messy without nice clean answers or magic cures to fix it all.... no formulas, no easy fixes.... only staring into all that we fear & somehow finding the courage to love (or at least the courage to be open to love)....