perception.

I have not really been wanting to eat these last couple days. I have been eating because I know I need to. I have had a very difficult time focusing. I can't concentrate on anything for any profitable length of time. I have been having very huge emotional swings. I am very happy, then something will happen or someone will do something and I will become enraged. Then I need to fight myself to stay calm and not verbally attack people. I want to be left alone, I've been distancing myself from the people around me. And I have been too apathetic towards my schoolwork. Honestly, few people if anyone sincerely cares about their schoolwork at my age. I want to do my best, but when I sit down to do something I can't concentrate and I find myself convincing myself that my effort is worthless, pointless, a waste of my life, no one really cares, it doesn't matter, so many excuses and lies that I begin to believe and even act on. I want my teachers to yell at me. They trust me too much. They are allowing me to just kinda float along, passing, but not the way I could be or should be. I want them to scare me into working. That's the easiest way out: being scared into action. I think it would require something more to do something out of devotion or discipline instead of fear. It is more difficult to live with myself and my choices. I can ignore other people and what they have to say. I can't shut myself out. It is more difficult to push myself into action because that would mean that I actually care about what happens to myself in the long run. I don't know if I actually do, but I should if for no other reason than the people who love me want to see me happy and reaching my potential. If I can't motivate myself for them, I am being selfish. It's that simple. Yet there is so much more to it.

I am surrounded by people who believe in a part of me that I cannot see. They believe in my abilities or a part of my personality or character. It is so scary. Again, it would be so much easier to just be totally apathetic. To care is to feel and experience. To care is to be alive. Pain is inseparable from life. Work is inseparable from truly abundant life, what life is supposed to be. Humility is inseparable from love in its truest sense.

I wanna wake up kicking and screaming
I wanna wake up kicking and screaming
I wanna live like I know what I'm leaving
I wanna know that my heart's still beating,
it's beating, it's beating, it's beating,
I'm bleeding.
~ Awakening, Switchfoot

Life is fraughtless when you're thoughtless
Those who don't try never look foolish
Dancing through life, mindless and careless
Make sure your where less trouble is rife
Woes are fleeting, blows are glancing
When you're dancing throug life.
~ Dancing Through Life, Wicked


This sort of thing has happened to me before. I would say that it has something to do with the weather, but it is very early in the season. The sun has not been too scarce. I should have enough Vitamin D in my body to last me at least into December.


I have a tendancy to pick up on people's flaws sometimes, like they become very noticeable to me. Sometimes the flaws make me angry, but there is nothing I can do. I wonder how there can still be good in people. At these times I need to remind myslef that they have value simply because they are human. Just because I, for the moment, can see no value in a person does not mean that they have none. They are still loved, and more than they or I can ever know, even if they are the worst kind of person imaginable. Maybe I need to change my perception. Maybe I need to learn to see the good in people better. I cannot altogether forget the flaws - that would be completely naiive and even suicidal. But maybe I need to see the person hiding behind the flaws.

I love being surprised by people when the last person I would expect to say something encouraging or truthful comes out with a profundity or expresses appreciation for something I may not have even noticed. To me, it is nothing short of a miracle that anyone, including myself, possess any capacity to experience, identify, or understand any part of the truth. Everyone has flaws and weaknesses and problems. Maybe these burdens somehow make us strong. Maybe we can best experience beauty in suffering, in honesty despite pain. Maybe beauty and suffering are inseparable. Maybe our burdens can somehow become our strengths. Maybe our crucifixions somehow lead to life of a more abundant kind. Maybe what we cannot see is the most real.

The most evil thing and the most beautiful thing that has ever transpired in human history are the same event.


"Just as drowning cannot be equated with swimming, neither is mere existance the same as abundant life."
~ Jon Foreman


More Than It Seems
by Kutless

Is my imagination running away,
or is all this really happening to me?
Am I a prince in a faraway land filled with fantasy?

Where is reality and
what are the actions that will define who I am?
I am holding onto the visions I've seen of what I could be.
It's what I should be.

More than it seems, these dreams inside
blur reality's line.
If I could believe the dreams aside
I am capable more than it seems.

Passing through darkness into my own world
Will I be more than when I left?
Never letting go of the lessons I learned,
this will make a change,
a change within me.

More than it seems, these dreams inside
blur reality's line.
If I could believe the dreams aside
I am capable more than it seems.

This time I won't run away.
I found the strength to face life's long days.
This time I won't run away.

More than it seems, these dreams inside (show me the way to these dreams)
blur reality's line. (till there's nothing left of me)
If I could believe the dreams aside (show me the way to these dreams)
I am capable more than it seems.

Till there's nothing left of me,
show me the way to these dreams.

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Daisy
by Switchfoot

Daisy, give yourself away
look up at the rain,
a beautiful display
of power and surrender
giving us today
when she gives herself away

Rain, another rainy day
comes up from the ocean
to give herself away
she comes down easy
on rich and debt the same
when she gives herself away

let it go
Daisy, let it go
open up your fists
this fallen world
doesn't hold your interest,
it doesn't hold your soul
Daisy, let it go

Pain, give yourself a name
call yourself contrition,
avarice of blame
giving isn't easy
neither is the rain
when she gives herself away

Daisy, why another day?
why another sunrise?
who will take the blame
for all redemptive motion
and every rainy day
when He gives Himself away?

let it go
Daisy, let it go
open up your fists
this fallen world
it doesn't hold your interest
it doesn't hold your soul
Daisy, let it go

let it go
and you let it go
let it go
let it go, go
let it go