Seriously.

I have lots of friends who are creative. A dear friend of mine from college has wanted to make movies for most of his life. Despite the fact that he is living at home and working solely to pay back college loans for a degree he didn't finish he has managed to find time to do what he loves. Watch them here:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Now, I watched these joyfully because I knew that he was doing something he loved. I also watched them because I knew to expect something worthwhile from him even on a nonexistent budget. Whenever my friend makes something he feels is ready to share with the public, it is a treat. Then there was the fact that I've been the guy in episode one and episode 2 makes me excited for future episodes.

Which brings us  back to me. I watched them after finally getting a computer that will run video (my Mac is two years older than this one but bogs down if you even pretend to watch a video. : /) and with much anticipation. Now, I am very critical of all the media I consume. It is a habit that one cannot unlearn after it has been learned. I generally know the faults even with things that I love. If I love them enough, I consume them anyway but in private so that I don't have to feel self conscious. My theory is that it may be the unpolished or embarrassing parts of such media sync up somehow with my own character and are thus very personal.

Anyway, so I was excited to watch these. I made sure that I had time to absorb them without worrying about interruption or having to keep a schedule of any sort. I even kept the cat out of the room in order to concentrate better. I invested ten minutes of my life and enjoyed every second. Plus, I got a return in the fact that I had a thought which may prove useful and is the end point of this meandering post.

With so much build up and enjoyment, do you know what the first thing I did was? Right. I went to Facebook and told my friend that he looks like Weird Al in the close shots. I feel that this is a true statement and that it is actually a very amusing one when couched in the context of the praises he had been garnering otherwise. My friend will appreciate the sentiment.

I then proceeded to analyse my reaction and the probable reactions of my friend. Would he take offense because this project means a lot to him? Probably not. What if he just pretends to be ok with my statement? What if, in reality, he has just be putting up with me and my flip attitude for so long because we are friends with the same people and I can occasionally give him some insight into his journey to Orthodoxy? Well, the latter is less likely but still!

Being this self-conscious, I went back and examined the films themselves. My reaction to the voice over had been a cringe. That is not my friend's voice. I'm not sure of all the reasons that he modified it but he would have certainly had some justified reason. I'm also sure that he knows it isn't the greatest sounding voice over in the world.

Then I thought about it some more.

Maybe he had the ability to change it and didn't want to. Maybe he likes it that way. Maybe, and this is hard to believe, my assessment of it is not accurate or at least my impressions based on the media I have consumed bias me towards thinking of that as suboptimal. Maybe the fact that I don't take things seriously has hampered my ability to assess such things.

So I flipped back to Facebook (I have to say that tabs are probably the best feature of any browser) and typed him a message. In it I told him how much I actually like what he did and how I was glad that he was doing the thing he loved.

Conscience assuaged, I moved on. My reflections continued however and I brought them onto the larger stage of my life.

My wife is constantly giving me a look that I have yet to come up with a pithy name for despite the fact that I have been receiving it ever day for the last six years or so. It is a look that says, "Why do you continue to make jokes you know I won't laugh at?" I still have no good answer to this question other than, "that's just how I am."

"That's just how I am." What a load of crap. How many people have used that to justify their terrible actions? More: how many people have used that excuse to dodge the chance to look into themselves and discover how they work so that they might change? Innumerable. And it is all because life is more convenient if we don't question our actions and attempt to live like King's Roland; a creature of pure intuition and unreflective personality who still manages to make the right decisions more than half the time.

If I am going to be honest, I keep making such jokes because I am afraid of a world that I must take seriously. I am afraid of a world in which there is actual meaning. Despite the fact that I, in theory, laud a wolrdview in which everything is intrinsically of ultimate value, I am afraid of confronting it on those terms on a daily basis. So I do what the rest of the world does and distance myself via entertainment and internal processes designed to make my experience of the world more palatable.

Further, in the face of forces that compel me to change, I continue to stay the same because I am just prideful enough to instinctively resist any and all forms of coercion and manipulation. When I have fallen pray to such tactics unwittingly, I revolt very strongly and reassert who I was (or at least how I saw myself) before said tactics as quickly as possible. It's like having a reset button on your attitudes, opinions, moods, etc.

This is quickly leading me down the path of even broader reflections on my personality. Those eventually lead to my over-dependence on my, admittedly lacking, cognitive abilities and how I am always on the God side of the fence but knowing that I good shove could flip me over it. Such a fall could break my legs, or neck, and then where would I be? Anyhow, I'll leave those for another day.

Here's to all the folks who are brave enough so be serious about something!

B