Choose Life

I was just standing outside in the lovely afternoon sun, taking a break from the personal essay I am writing (2.04 pm as we speak, must be in my lecturer's pidgeonhole by 5.30, and here I am writing a blog post - a very short one, methinks :)

I was throwing the ball for Lester (this is his vocation) and thinking about the conversation I've been having with Kent, and the verse "choose life" came to mind. Maybe someone's trying to tell me something. It comes to mind quite often lately.

And I thought, this, standing out in the sun, playing with my dog, is life. Writing the rest of my essay, doing the dishes, walking the dog later on, cooking, are life - and, by far, the most life that I can do this evening will be when I venture back into the playroom (this morning was the first time I went in there for several weeks; there's something different and more powerful about playing in the playroom) and I indulge in some serious play. That, summed up in a nutshell, for me, is life (that is my vocation).

Why, then, do I spend so much time sitting online, bored? Literally bored out of my skull. Sitting with my hand supporting my head because it's become bored? What is the pull of the internet that I keep being drawn back to it when the amount of time I am spending on here feels like death? Isn't it a standard pose of the human that we want to do the things that make us feel good, and we keep away from the things that make us feel bad? What emotional leprosy draws me back here? There is nothing here that won't be here if I go away and have some life, and then come back again.

This being online when I don't really want to be is the stupid habit I have of choosing death. I have noticed it a bit more lately. Ever since I stopped choosing death by smoking joints (well, I can't say definitively that when I am around it I won't indulge in just a tiny bit, but I have no desire to have it in my house anymore) I have realised how easily I choose death. We all do it. We numb ourselves in whatever way we can do it. Westerners are adept at it. Our culture, ostensibly a Christian culture, is really a death culture. We don't know how to choose life.

Choosing life scares the shit out of us.

Even though choosing life feels amazing and wondrous and I love it. Writing and creating for me feels amazing and wondrous and I love it ... but I also choose not to do it at times because it scares me.

There it is again. Love or fear. Amazing how much you can distil life down into those two things. And, it seems, I choose fear far more than a girl who lists adventurousness as one of her qualities can deal with easily. What a shock to the ego that one is.

Anyway, must go. Personal essay to write. Prayers coveted. My heart seems to be rather hard these days. Prayers for softening and learning and seeing what needs to be seen coveted much more than your donkey.