What I know About Being Alive
Tonight I went through my childhood box, which is a large plastic bin full of old photos, school projects, journals, and drawings I collected from age 0 to about 13. I love looking through that old box. I feel a happy sadness, or a sad happiness, every time I do.
I get to go back in time to different eras, like when my parents were young and married, and my aunts and uncles were teenagers. I get to see what West Jordan looked like when many of its neighborhoods were still new developments. Looking at everybody I knew dressed in ninety's clothes is so fantastic.
I have a lock of my own hair in a bag from the year 2000. I don't know why it was saved. It must have been my first "major" haircut. My hair is a dark golden blonde, and it still feels just like normal hair. It's kind of gross but kind of cool to have. Does hair go bad?
Ryan and I were watching Ellen's standup special on Netflix while I was looking at my things. She has a moment where she talks about years ago, when she was sitting down and writing what it would be like to make a phone call to God. She didn't mean for it to be funny, but it was, and she knew it that moment that she'd do the bit on the Johnny Carson Show. Specific life events lead her to sit down and write that bit, and she has brought so much light to the world since then that it just made me think; the things she went through could not have been just a coincidence.
I believe that the things we go through happen for a reason and just as they are meant to. That belief could be argued, and I have played around with that idea in my mind many times. Some people have horrific things happen to them. Were those things always "meant" to be? I guess I don't really know, but I truly believe many things do happen because they are meant to for divine reasons. We are connected to all the humans that were, are, and will be, in the most intricate web ever woven.
That would explain partly why I can feel nostalgia when I hear a song I've never even heard before, from a generation I wasn't a part of.
It's hard for me to accept change sometimes. I can feel sad looking at old photos when I realize life is not how it used to be. Even if life is actually better now it still makes me feel sad.
I am excited for the day that I won't be bound by time in the finite way I currently am. In the moments when I have felt like I have seen a glimpse of Heaven and God, I have sensed a timelessness and one-ness in all things.
I recently watched the movie It's A Wonderful Life for the first time. God was in that movie. It showed how important the actions each of us take on this Earth really are. We cause a ripple in the universe by existing. One quote that I felt summarized that whole idea really well was this: "Strange isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"