Tuesday, December 6, 2005

Anticipation

Here comes the cold... A feeling of anticipation creeps in. With nothing immediate to look forward to, I'm excited about the distant future.

If you had to die a thousand deaths along the road to Heaven, would you still want to go?? Would all that pain be worth the eventual bliss? If you did go through with it, would you choose to remember the journey? Would you sleepwalk through and skip right to the good part, only to disregard the obstacles you have just overcome? Or would you try to find an easier way through? Perhaps take the long and dangerous way around? Would you simply take your chances heading in a different direction altogether? ...

Although I already have my answers, I will not be sharing them here. They are simply irrelevant to all of yours...

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Currently I seem to be caught in the sea of life. Making my way slowly to the beautiful land I see ahead, struggling to break free of the tide that tugs me back to the past. My newest revelation is that I am winning this tug-of-war. It may take me longer than others, but I'm not going to give up that easily. Is that the best you can do, Life?

I find it interesting how much I am able to change certain aspects of my life when I want to. We all have this ability, but I rarely see it in effect it seems. Am I so far behind everyone that this is ancient news? Or am I somehow far ahead of the curve.... perhaps making up for my extreme lack of skills in the social world? For the first time in a long while, I'm excited to improve those things I never liked about myself. A long list maybe, but it's getting shorter by the hour.

I suppose in a way, this all reminds me of a Ninja Turtles video game. Don't laugh. Let me explain...

In many games, you have different characters to choose from... giving you different skills and qualities to approach the game itself with. In the TMNT arcade game for instance, deciding which turtle to play as can be a struggle in and of itself. You who have played it know this...

You have Raphael, who is the fastest character in the game. His "special" move is a roll-kick... completely unique to the other three turtles who have a "jump-slash" technique. But Raph's weapons also have the shortest reach, meaning you have to get closer to the enemies to be effective.

Then you have Donatello, who has a powerful weapon with the longest reach. He can bash foot soldiers from a few feet away. But he's the slowest turtle in the game.

Michelangelo has the most powerful weapons (with medium reach). But he too is slow, second only to Don. And that brings us to Leo, and my real point of all of this...

Leonardo is the all-around "go-to" guy. He's not the fastest, but he's not the slowest either. His weapons aren't the strongest, but they're not weak. It's the fact that he really has no obvious weakness that makes him the strongest in my mind. This is why I often find myself choosing him.

And I think of people this way. As if we are all in the "create-a-player" mode of a video game. We have a certain number of points to distribute to different areas of our lives. Just as some of us may be strong in good looks, others may be strong in intelligence. And I like to think we all began with the same amount of points. Perhaps figuring out where our own points were applied is something we need to learn for ourselves...

Well, I choose to be like Leo. I know there are ways in which I'm much more advanced than others, just as there are ways I'm far behind. But it's this mentality that allows me to distinguish the strengths from the weaknesses, and motivates me to do something about it. The only difference is, I'm refusing to sacrifice the points from my strengths. This means I have to create new points for myself to apply to the weaker parts of my character. And that's what I've been working on insistantly this past year or so. Eliminating and/or fixing- one at a time - those things that taunt me when I look in the mirror. I believe it can be done, and I'll find out how.

I feel like I'm still growing, yet everyone else has stopped and is just getting older.

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