When I was a junior in college, my best friend and I took a film class together. One of the films we analyzed clips from was The Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy sets out from Munchkinland to the Emerald City, she's following the yellow brick road, which starts in a spiral, along with a red brick path. We jokingly wondered where that red brick road goes. Since then, I've used that as the title of my blogs anywhere. Where does the Red Brick Road go?
You see, Oz is a fantasy world in Dorothy's mind. One that has built her up to be a heroine when, if you recall the black and white beginnings of the film, she's nothing more than a spoiled brat. She's young and immature, and it takes the journey of Oz for her to learn that it's not all about her.
There's no place like home. So, where's home?
Not here. As my pastor pointed out the other Sunday, when it was a beautiful day in Southern California, this is as close to hell as we'll ever get. Ironic to me, because moving to CA was my definition of hell nearly six years ago. I was leaving friends, family, and a faith that had grown in the safety of a college environment that was more conservative than not. I didn't mean to leave that faith behind, honest. But there was something about CALIFORNIA that loomed large and scary in my mind. I'm a country girl. Give me farmland and trees, and weather. I felt suffocated moving to CA, even to such a 'conservative part' like Orange County. I clung to the life I'd known in PA, to my friendships and tried to live with my heart separated from my body.
If home is where the heart is, my heart wasn't in me.
It took a while for me to learn to hang on tightly to the memories and the love, but to let go, lightly, of the day to day things, the parts of life I couldn't connect with anymore. My best friends, my chicas, were 3 hours behind me, timewise, and in a whole different world from me realitywise. I had to make new friends, new family, and I have. My journey wasn't on the yellow brick road. I took the red brick one, to California, and beyond that, to a place where I don't live comfortably on this earth.
I learned that lesson the hard way, not to be too comfortable where you are. I don't know all the reasons why, but I do know that as rooted as I once was in BC (Before California) my life is IC (In California), and it is as temporary as all life is. BC might have felt permanent, but it isn't. None of it is. So I'm following the Red Brick Road, wherever it leads me. It will eventually turn to gold, but that's for another life.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Like This, Like That
When I was young, my mother, in one of her new holistic health kicks, started giving us vitamins, supplements, and all sorts of weird stuff. I remember swearing to myself that when I grew up, I'd never take anything so bizarre as Kelp.
I take it every day now.
Funny, isn't it? How we are determined to not be 'like that'. I work on a college campus, so a lot of my 'like thats' center around the current fashion trends of the still-teens going to their classes. I won't dress 'like that', wearing ballet flats *looks at feet, cringes* or leggings, or multiple flimsy layers. *avoids mirror* But how often do we hold true to those things? And does it really matter, our attempts to be unique?
When I was younger, I would get my hair cut by taking a picture to the stylist and say "I want to look 'like this'." Rarely would I, though. How it looks on Jennifer Aniston isn't how it will look on me, sad to say.
Nowadays I just tell the stylist how I want to to look, but without the expectation that her scissors and comb will magically transform me from ordinary to extraordinary by a few snips.
We have a lot of 'like this' moments. And 'like that'. We know what we want to be, how we want to look, down to the nitty-gritty of what's okay and what isn't. We all know what we'd change about ourselves if given carte blanche with a plastic surgeon, right? A nip there, a tuck here, a lift or a snip. We all carry with us an image of our ideal selves. If you're anything like me, you avoid looking in the mirror so your bubble doesn't burst as you realize that yes, actually, that shirt sort of does make you look fat.
When I was in 6th grade, I was pretty much through puberty, unlike a lot of girls in my class. I remember at one point being proud that I had curves, a shape, and wasn't a twig like a lot of other girls in my jazz dance class. But then came the recital. I saw myself in comparison to everyone else on stage, and suddenly, those slender limbs were graceful, and my heft was grotesque. I felt like an elephant trying to be a gazelle.
I went from being glad I didn't look 'like that' to wanting to look 'like this'. And it never stops. We don't live in a vacuum. I'm always looking at my hair, my clothes, my shape by comparing myself, and sometimes I feel good, but I'm doing so at the cost of putting someone else down, if only in my own mind.
Beauty isn't a mountain to climb. It's not about looking better than the person beneath you, or trying to look better than the person above you. It's about looking your most you, whatever that may be. So what if my bangs looked better on Tiffani Thiessen. Or that my shirt looked better on my mother. Or my shoes looked better on someone with smaller feet. I could come up with a million 'like this, like that' moments, but I can't let them define me. My gaze has to stop being so external, and start being more internal.
I started this as a response to Sarah Markley's challenge to blog on beauty, but in thinking about it, these attitudes about beauty are only symptomatic of a larger problem. We worry about beauty, but what we really need to be worried about is pride. Wanting to be something we aren't, letting our gaze be judge, jury and executioner to all we see, that just leads to unhappiness, and ultimately, death. To see anything, anyone, as not beautiful, is to condemn them, and I don't think that's how it's meant to be.
It's certainly not how God sees us. he didn't create the world in six days and spend the seventh tinkering to make it just so. It was GOOD, just as he had made it.
I take it every day now.
Funny, isn't it? How we are determined to not be 'like that'. I work on a college campus, so a lot of my 'like thats' center around the current fashion trends of the still-teens going to their classes. I won't dress 'like that', wearing ballet flats *looks at feet, cringes* or leggings, or multiple flimsy layers. *avoids mirror* But how often do we hold true to those things? And does it really matter, our attempts to be unique?
When I was younger, I would get my hair cut by taking a picture to the stylist and say "I want to look 'like this'." Rarely would I, though. How it looks on Jennifer Aniston isn't how it will look on me, sad to say.
Nowadays I just tell the stylist how I want to to look, but without the expectation that her scissors and comb will magically transform me from ordinary to extraordinary by a few snips.
We have a lot of 'like this' moments. And 'like that'. We know what we want to be, how we want to look, down to the nitty-gritty of what's okay and what isn't. We all know what we'd change about ourselves if given carte blanche with a plastic surgeon, right? A nip there, a tuck here, a lift or a snip. We all carry with us an image of our ideal selves. If you're anything like me, you avoid looking in the mirror so your bubble doesn't burst as you realize that yes, actually, that shirt sort of does make you look fat.
When I was in 6th grade, I was pretty much through puberty, unlike a lot of girls in my class. I remember at one point being proud that I had curves, a shape, and wasn't a twig like a lot of other girls in my jazz dance class. But then came the recital. I saw myself in comparison to everyone else on stage, and suddenly, those slender limbs were graceful, and my heft was grotesque. I felt like an elephant trying to be a gazelle.
I went from being glad I didn't look 'like that' to wanting to look 'like this'. And it never stops. We don't live in a vacuum. I'm always looking at my hair, my clothes, my shape by comparing myself, and sometimes I feel good, but I'm doing so at the cost of putting someone else down, if only in my own mind.
Beauty isn't a mountain to climb. It's not about looking better than the person beneath you, or trying to look better than the person above you. It's about looking your most you, whatever that may be. So what if my bangs looked better on Tiffani Thiessen. Or that my shirt looked better on my mother. Or my shoes looked better on someone with smaller feet. I could come up with a million 'like this, like that' moments, but I can't let them define me. My gaze has to stop being so external, and start being more internal.
I started this as a response to Sarah Markley's challenge to blog on beauty, but in thinking about it, these attitudes about beauty are only symptomatic of a larger problem. We worry about beauty, but what we really need to be worried about is pride. Wanting to be something we aren't, letting our gaze be judge, jury and executioner to all we see, that just leads to unhappiness, and ultimately, death. To see anything, anyone, as not beautiful, is to condemn them, and I don't think that's how it's meant to be.
It's certainly not how God sees us. he didn't create the world in six days and spend the seventh tinkering to make it just so. It was GOOD, just as he had made it.
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