Hype

recently i notice how often people get turned off by hype. hype is like the biggest red flag for me. what? everyone's doing it? talkin about it? blah blah blah. no thanks. never mind asking why or having just the smallest thought that there must be something to it.

some of my very favorite things were once that which i shied away from and now am all about. but hype pressures me, and if there's one thing i know i hate, it's being pressured.

i 've been swinging lately. i'm either high or low with no even keel. not myself. pretty sure it's adding a few hours of blog to the daily schedule and letting the world with all it's disturbing woe and unsolvable angst back in again. it is so tempting to shut it all out. as i fear losing my hard sought sanity.

i find there is a quiet discontent inside me, one that comes with long-suffering. a regretful acceptance that things are what they are and they will be that way for a while. it is my lot. when will this end?

my brain is wired such that if i ever want to feel really high, i don't sleep. this was a cheap thrill in college. i'd stay awake for days and float around with a surreal feeling of both peace and euphoria.

someone i respect recently told me that if i can't be myself here, then what's the point. the point is, i can't be myself anywhere. don't know how to get there. but i am closer today than i was 3 weeks ago. that's why i'm here.

i was thinking today that most people find their own and stick to them. there is comfort, family and security there. i realized that i rarely find my own. my life's choices, for good reasons, have alienated my own. they view me from their distance and dare not venture after.

wandered far across the tracks i have and settled here. but my children are at home. i learn from them.

my own gather on a soccer field and have a keen, trained love and mind for the game. it is a powerful thing when you can kick a ball with total strangers for little over an hour and feel bonded like old friends or longtime teammates. it's the magical force of a mutual love, even for a sport, that can pull strangers from across boundaries of culture and over walls of faith, politics and socio-economics, to a place of harmony and synergy. witnessing that always fills me with an inexpressible joy.

home is a music hall or concert where the songs are beloved and familiar like sunday morning making breakfast in the kitchen, or spur of the moment roadtrips with a college roommate. and the people dance and sway and mouth the words in perfect unrehearsed unison. syncronicity. elation.

witness two people locked in misunderstanding and hate. communication breakdown. clatter, shatter, noise and the violent rush of unbridled emotion. i cover my ears, hum hum humming because i just can't watch.

why don't we value our relationships as we do the sanctity of the single soul, each one with it's own birth, life and purpose in history? why don't we treasure our relationships above personal gain and arrogance? why do we spend and waste them so easily?

when all is risked and pride sacrificed on the alter of good faith and doubt's benefit, the effort is amply rewarded. manifold. enjoyed not just by those immediate parties, but all who are on the outside watching, humming, touched as well.

nothing fills me with more home than the presence of peacemakers. those who find nothing worth their fist-tight grasp, if it's forfeit might bring peace.

hype threatens those who are not at home.