Life Lessons – Page 6 – Chloe J Sayers

Cereal and Salads

Cereal. Salad. Salad. Cereal. Salad. Cereal. Cereal.

With an occasional injection of coffee, that nicely sums up my diet from the past few days. I’m not complaining though, I am honestly just very happy to know where food is located and when I can get it and where I’ll be sleeping tonight.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve slept in 7 different places. I have mastered the art of living out of a trunk of a car. Looking back, it really was an adventure. During my most dramatic moments, I felt homeless and rejected. It felt like an over-privileged extension of the poverty simulation.

Confused yet? I’ll clarify my references. This summer, I am interning with HOPE International, a Christian non-profit providing financial services to the poor across the world in a Gospel-centered way. When I first arrived in south central PA, I attended the HOPE International 2014 Leadership Summit. It was a great time of getting to know the staff, the other interns, learning about HOPE and God and life, and getting thrown into a simulation where I was feverishly making paper bags and giving out hugs in order to provide for my family (a group of 5 HOPE staff partners and staff). It was an intensely emotional 30 minutes and gave me a very small dose of what it feels like to be trapped in poverty.

Needless to say, my home hopping of the last two weeks comes no where close to the kind of entrapment and powerlessness that millions of people experience worldwide every day.

This is a post of gratitude. I am so thankful to be working with such a genuine and effective organization this summer. I am also blessed with the surprise of a very good part-time job that allows me to do things I love and get paid for it. I am living with some incredible young people that are constantly giving me examples of how I want to live and view life and I even have a closet all to myself now.

So long, suitcase living! Hello, breakfast munchies and leafy greens!

Until next time,
Chloe

About Me, Change, God, Life Lessons, Maturity, Writing

I Didn’t Know

I have officially written as many drafts here as I have actual blog posts. The fact that this blog has has over 10,000 views also seems remarkable. Yet what really caught me off guard when looking back through this blog’s history, was that I started scribbling thoughts here 5 years ago.

I don’t feel like I am old enough to have been doing something for 5 years. I’m sure some hobbies can claim that longevity, but in my mind, I started blogging when I thought I had something worthwhile to say which is when I thought I had achieved some standard level of maturity and adulthood.

5 years ago, I was a freshman in high school. I knew nothing. But I also knew that I knew nothing, which helped a lot. I knew that I was the product of society and my school system and The Town and my family. I didn’t do much about it, yet I knew it.

But there were a lot of things I had no idea about.

I didn’t know that I wasn’t going to be an engineer. I didn’t know that I was much weaker in some ways than I thought. I didn’t know how many people that I would see die. I didn’t know how much brokenness there was in this world and how little I could do about it.

But I also didn’t know how much of a help I could be if I looked beyond myself. I didn’t know about the sleepless nights and tired days. I didn’t know how writing would simultaneously save me and destroy me. I didn’t know that God was truly my only Savior. I didn’t know that I would go to a Christian college, or even that I would still be a Christian at this point. I didn’t know about the incredible friends and memories I would find here. I couldn’t have anticipated the amount of mental strain I would have to learn to overcome. I didn’t know that I would see lives fall apart and God piece me together.

While I’ve never put much stock in who I am, I have an inexhaustible source of confidence of what can I can do. Even so, alone, I am nothing. With God, I am still nothing but I am with God. Being able to say that is more astounding than 5, 10, or 15 years of life-changing experiences.

Maturity

Fights with Strangers

Something I will never understand is the inflammatory comments on YouTube videos that never fail to start a fight with a stranger. Who do you think you are that people actually care about your opinion about a song? Except evidently people do care, because they respond, and re-respond, and get into entire debates about the merit of an artist that no one cares that much about in the first place.

Then I realize that I am staring at my computer, reading these absurd comments from people who have nothing better to do than write comments and I am someone who clearly has nothing better to do than read those comments. Yet I do have better things to do, like use this public platform to rant about a pet peeve that is mostly irrelevant.

About Me, Friendship, God, Life Lessons, Writing

Things Don’t Make Sense

To my rationalist mind, the worst judgement that I could pass on anything or anyone is: “That doesn’t make sense.” I’ve caught myself saying that a lot lately. For something to be good, it must be logical. Unfortunately, this rules out a lot of the best things in life.

Like love, for instance. Love doesn’t make sense. It is irrational to put someone else’s needs in front of your own. Likewise, emotions don’t make sense. They are messy and pointless, but they are what make people real.

War doesn’t make sense. Fighting with swords instead of words doesn’t make sense. Unfounded hatred doesn’t make sense. I don’t make sense.

I contradict myself daily, whether in word or in deed. I have unrealistically high expectations for myself and circumstances beyond my control and expect the world to fall into my preset categories and calendars and it never does. Some days I want to smile for no reason at all, and other nights I feel like crying into my pasta salad. And that doesn’t make sense at all, because according to my calculations, happiness is supposed to be circumstantial and pasta salad doesn’t need anymore salt and it really isn’t sad at all.

The world doesn’t make sense. It never has, and the stubborn desire of one 19 year-old girl won’t change that. The world is broken, which doesn’t help this confusion, but so am I. We must learn to live in this broken, senseless world regardless. Stomping my feet and scowling at the surrounding nonsense doesn’t help anything.

You know what also doesn’t make sense? Friends that love you when you are unlovable. Loyalty that lasts through the test of time and trials. A perfect God that loves an imperfect people. Beautiful sunsets that fall every night on a world that doesn’t deserve them.

Change, Friendship, Happiness, Life Lessons, Pain

Things To Remember

Every once in a while, I make a list of the things in life that I hold strongly to. Some of them are based on experiences and wisdom from those around me. Like many things in my life, a lot of them are rather arbitrary but I still cling to them quite tightly just to spite their lack of quantification.

I am not ultimately in control of my life or who I am.

Happiness is not our main goal here.

Life is not falling apart; it was never all together to begin with.

Life is an adventure.

It’s going to be okay.

Expectations will kill you.

So kill them first.

The times that I am the worst are the times that I am spending the most time thinking about myself.

We are never alone.

There is no point in needless sadness.

But it’s okay to be sad sometimes.

There are always decisions to be made, we just don’t take the time to realize we are making them.

There is much to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Happiness, Life Lessons

Cheap Medicine

My professor today advised us to put our ideas up against the “laugh test”. If you tell someone your brain child and they make a mockery of it, than it probably isn’t such a good idea. I just looked at my friend and choked back a laugh of my own.

Laughter is a very common response nowadays to our ideas. I definitely believe that some ideas should be released before they drag you down in impossible pursuits. Yet if my friend and I had stopped when people laughed at us, we would have missed out on a lot of wonderful experiences. Perhaps we would have a bit more sanity than we do now, but we would be having a lot less fun and a lot less laughter. I usually laugh along with those who doubt us, but I refuse to let laughter get in my way. Giving someone a good time at my expense is fine, but letting them deprive me of being absurd is not.

I think a lot can be solved through laughter. When you have a reached a point where you can laugh at yourself, you are never more than one act of mindless goofery away from a good time. When you can zoom out enough that the overwhelming pixels merge together and become a coherent picture, you can laugh at the lack of perspective you once had and enjoy the birds’ eye view. Of course, there are issues that must be dealt with and can’t be laughed away.

Still, I have determined to never let the laughter stop me, and instead never stop laughing at this marvelously quirky world we live in.

About Me, God, Life Lessons, Maturity

Role Play

A case study was done in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University where 24 mentally stable participants pretend to be prisoners or guards in a mock prison setting. The simulation was meant to last two weeks but was ended after 8 days due to concerns about the prisoners’ psychological health who lost touch with reality.

This might be an extreme example, but if there is anything we are good at, it is playing roles. Even when we know that the role is completely false, it is only a matter of time before it becomes our identity.

Your role in life is shaped by the people you grew up with, the stories you were read as a child, the dreams that inspire you, your peers who surround you, the mentors that guide you, those that try to derail you, the culture that shapes us, and hopefully, the God that created you.

I’ve spent a great deal of time and energy trying to fight this reality. In my mind, there must be some way to rise above this scenario where everyone typecasts me into a character and expects a performance that follows their script. I hope you have the complete awareness of self and external influences with the strength to view life from the clouds with your feet on the ground. I certainly don’t.

If I could be anywhere else or do anything else with my life than attend college in Western PA and run this race, I don’t think I would. I believe that we experience life in the way we perceive it be. Our location and surroundings are secondary to internal perspective. I can live life fully here, in Michigan, or across the ocean.

Even though life can easily become a game of make-believe, I am willing to live within that structure. I could waste my time trying to be completely independent from my situations and circumstances. I’d rather be aware of what is shaping the roles that I chase and make sure those sources line up with who God instructs me to be.

I’d rather know who I am becoming than fight an impossible battle.

Life Lessons, Maturity, Organization

Unquantifiable

My sixth meeting of the day found me in a professor’s office as he went over the specifics of a group project. As my professor droned, I was quickly attempting to create a mental spreadsheet and time chart to accomplish the goal at hand. Until he interrupted my flying thoughts with a simple statement:

“The way we are going to do this will be a lot more fun, but its a lot less structured.”

I couldn’t wrap my mind around it at first. Less structure means more chaos and variables, not more fun. Fun comes only when there is organization to channel it and make sure it meets all the specifications for enjoyment. As soon as I thought that, I knew I had lost sight of something very important in life.

There is not pattern to follow. Life is not defined by chores being accomplished. It can’t be quantified, thus comparison to others is pointless. The parts of life that I enjoy most aren’t the things that I completely understand, but rather, the ones that I have to work to figure out.

Life Lessons, Maturity

Fine Lines

It’s easy to picture life as a balancing act on a tightrope. Just you, two buildings, a long rope, and dizzying heights. I’ve always been partial to this analogy. There is a thrill in trying to balance, a sense of accomplishment when you manage to stay upright, and worse comes to worst, falling can be rather fun too–once you get over the initial shock of your life falling apart. And you can always pick yourself up and try again.

As comforting (or scary) as that mental image might be, I think it might be oversimplifying things a bit. Life isn’t just one tightrope, it is an intricate web of fine lines.

There is a fine line between contentment and apathy.

Between confidence and arrogance.

Insecurity and pride.
Self-awareness and self-obsession.
Optimism and misplaced hope.
Kindness and manipulation.
Patience and cowardice.
Self-protection and selfishness.
Trust and naivety.
Discernment and judgment.

There are so many fine lines weaving in and out of each other. In a way, they make it easier to stay balanced, when you have a web of ropes to walk on instead of just one. Yet it feels
impossible to maintain a healthy balance in one area of life without crossing a line in another.

I have no resolution to this post, because I don’t know how to walk on one tightrope, let along a couple dozen. You see, there is also a fine line between thinking to understand life and thinking to avoid life. I may not be able to get far without falling, but I’d rather fall than get tangled in the web.

Adventure, Time

Mesmerizing Mirages

The expanse of Lake Michigan fills my landscape. Yet my eyes are focused only on one golden spot where the setting sun has imprinted itself on the lake. It looks perfect and I have to resist the temptation to run down the 265 steps to the beach, hijack a kayak, and paddle to it.

Something more than the 265 steps deters me though. There is no way to reach the mesmerizing glimmers. By the time I get there, the sun will have set and the dancing lights will have disappeared. In the meantime, I will have missed the sunset.

It’s hard not to remember all the sunsets I’ve missed in my life, chasing after an elusive golden patch of light.

There are goals that I was never meant to reach, a person I was never supposed to be. So many mirages that I bet my life on being true only to find them not only unreachable, but non-existent. I’ve exhausted myself over and over again in this impossible pursuit.

So, for at least today, I will rest and watch the sunsets in life. It is impossible to capture it’s magnificence in words so here I will end and allow you to find your sunsets as well.