After a long week’s absence, I have finally returned. It seems I needed the week to recuperate from everything that has happened in the last couple of months. When I started my out of the box experiment, I would never have imagined how far it would take me. And it’s only been two months! Anyway, I have recovered and I am ready to jump back out of that box. And now, we can return to our regularly scheduled programming. Here is my blog on peace:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1ZgtCRO-KY&ob=av3e]
That song has been running through my head almost non-stop since I went back to New York. It’s not the lyrics in particular that I’ve been focusing on as much as the chorus. I’m not who I was. That’s what this trip has really proven to me.
One of the tasks I had set myself for my week in New York was to revisit my old haunts and try to see how much of my past I can recall. Unlike some people who can remember every moment from the moment they popped out of the womb, my memories of my past are hazy at best, nonexistent at worst. I figured maybe a trip through the neighborhoods might trigger something and send memories flooding back.
My first stop early in the week was a neighborhood that brought back bad memories. I suffered one of my most humiliating moments as a kid there. Mind you, I’ve had plenty of humiliating moments as an adult, but an adult can laugh it off. For a child, humiliation can cause deep wounds. As I walked through the neighborhood, I realized that I could not remember the details of my humiliation. All I remembered was really liking a girl but being too shy to tell her. The rest of the neighborhood kids got wind of my attraction and set up a prank, leading me to believe she was into me too. The worst part, the most humiliating part, was when I found out she was in on the prank.
I walked down that street and I felt nothing. It was so long ago, and I had come so far that, while I remembered the terrible event, the scars had all healed.
Later in the week, I revisited another old neighborhood and, even though things felt vaguely familiar, I had no feelings towards anything I saw. Ditto for revisiting my old junior high school and high school. It was then that I realized that none of that was me any longer. I’m not who I was. There was pain and loneliness growing up, but I managed to grow in spite of, or maybe because of, that pain. There was never a steady, stable place I could call home, but I have since learned what home really is. I was shy, awkward and withdrawn – those of you who know me are shaking your heads in disbelief right now, but it’s true! – but I have since learned how to open up and let people in.
I have now spent more time away from New York than in it. Can I still call myself a New Yorker? I don’t think I can. I was born and raised there, true, but I don’t think I really started discovering who I was until I moved away. And, honestly, I’m still working on figuring out who I am. But I know this. I’m not who I was.
What does all this have to do with peace? To put it simply, revisiting my past made me realize how little peace I had in my early life. Constant moving, no friends to rely on, pressure at school. I tried to find peace by moving, but no matter where I moved to, my problems came with me. I tried to find peace in relationships, but, if anything, they provided more stress. I tried to find peace in many things, but any peace they may have provided was temporary. It wasn’t until I found my way to the Prince of Peace that this hole within me, this missing piece, was finally filled. And now, no matter what life throws at me, no matter what upheavals may come, I can be at peace. Not the temporary, worldly peace, but the eternal peace, knowing that my God is in control.