Sometimes I feel trapped. I, as much as the next person, am a product of everything and everyone in my life. I am realizing more and more that who I am has everything to do with my family, friends, enemies, strangers, books I have read, and the society and culture that I have been a part of my entire life. The fact that I am writing a blog on a laptop computer says that I am the product of an over-communicated and wealthy culture where everybody thinks they have something important to say and that people really want to listen. Or so it is that we hope people will listen or be wooed by our [un]conventional wisdom or our witty stories of life. I do not suppose that this is a bad thing. As a matter of fact, I can not imagine a life where anyone truly is an individual. Even those persons who claim to be altogether independent and wholly self-sufficient have had help along the way. They have been nurtured by a community of people and by a culture created by communities of people, past and present, who have and are simply trying to make sense of life. I totally embrace that so many people and communities have influenced who I am. What I have a hard time with sometimes is actually knowing who I am.
As I mentioned above, I feel trapped. Even though I am grateful for people who help to tell me who I am, I am convinced that the construct in which I have come out of is insufficient in defining who I actually am; and I feel trapped in it. I feel trapped in my social status and the expectations of society. I am weary of things that are not worth being weary over. I feel privileged and cursed all at the same time. I feel tamed by it all; and while I may not know what the word natural actually means, I will say that I do not feel natural about this. I have come to a point where I am learning to step outside of my comfort of social graces and peaceful conflict management; and doing so has caused me to realize that being uncomfortable and sometimes appearing to be odd at least feels more natural. That is, it feels right. I have realized for quite some time now that life is about so much more than society has taught me. Life is about more than stuff; it is more than knowledge; there is even more to it than friends, family, and, yes, even church. But I don't know that I have ever been able to live like it is true. I do not believe that I have ever been able to live like my faith in God is real. I am plagued and restricted by the same society that I am so grateful for.
I guess the question that I am wrestling with is how I can break out of this construct that does not simply tell me who I am, but also who I should be. There is a huge tension inside of me and I feel like I am being pulled in two different directions. I need to be freed to be and do what I know is a life worth living. I have desires that I hold back, and I feel compromised because of it. I feel as though I will never begin to know who I am if I continue down the path where I am tamed. I will always be trapped by the restrictions of society, but my hope is that society cannot tame me to be something other than what I was meant to be. To those of you who feel the same way, my prayer is that God provide a way out of our boxes or open our eyes to the way he has already made. My prayer is that we come to a place of unrelinquished following of our desires as placed in us by our Creator. My prayer is that God give us something to work with when we feel trapped by ourselves and the world.
