Thinking Out Loud: The Place that Built Me & Where I Go from Here

Bill Griffin on TrekEarth.com (actually a photo of Jellico. wow.)

Growing up in a small town in the south came with all of the pros and cons of any other small town you've ever heard of or lived in, for example:

PROS:
Same friends since birth.
Everyone knows everyone.
You felt safe being out after dark.

CONS:
Same friends since birth.
Everyone knows everyone.
You felt safe being out after dark.

I'm not going to bore you with a recant of my young life. Whatever you have heard about growing up in the south is true: you go to Sunday School and get baptized or you're going to hell, old men still use the "N word" a lot, backwoods crazies are everywhere, and if your life isn't a soap opera you must make it one, otherwise someone else will do it for you... and all of the goings-on can be attributed some how to being a part of "god's plan", per the god-fearing locals that can't think for themselves, bless their hearts.  

Looking into the woods.

This blog will, with any hope, help me in ways I cannot even conceive of at the moment.

I am fulfilled by many things: My friends and family that I love so dearly, my home and the fact that I have never been jobless or ill, my ability to make others happy in some way. I feel as if I have been blessed with a very special and wonderful life, with more happiness to come, just over the horizon. Yet, I have felt for the longest time that there is something missing.

I feel like it is a part of myself that I try - and fail - to fill with the inconsequential. For everything I juggle, my life could be so much more balanced & full if I could only re-connect with the thing(s) that have left me. 

I've always considered myself a spiritual person. For a long time now, religion has left a bad taste in my mouth. I am no longer one for dogma, for the "this way is the only way" path. There are too many things that we do not know as living human beings to say that. There is too much out there still for us to learn... and here we think that we have it all figured out.

I am not here to say that anyone is wrong... because I don't know. But that's the point, right? What we don't know frees us to create our path through the universe. It has taken me a while to figure this out on my own, but I feel as if I am traveling down an old trail that many have taken. I am alone and yet I am not... and that thought brings me peace in my solitude. 

"Nothing is more practical than finding 'God', that is,

than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.

What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination

will affect everything. It will decide what will get you

out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings,

how you spend your weekends, what you read, 

who you know, what breaks your heart, &

what amazes you with both joy & great gratitude.

Fall in love, stay in love, & it will decide everything."

- Pedro Arrupe