Creating Community

There’s that scene in Fight Club with Brad Pitt laying in the tub with the towel over his face, smokin a cigarette and Edward Norton is listening to him talk about Pitt’s conversation with his Dad:

“Now what, Dad?”
“I don’t know, get a job”. 

The whole scene is mildly depressing in that “this is how life is meant to be lived” mentality that I am trying to throw out the window. But let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about what’s between the lines.

In his Dad’s advice, Pitt’s character is inadvertently told to do what it takes to move to the next step. Specifically in the one above, “get a job” means to do whatever it takes to get a job. That’s the “big goal.”

I’m 25, which means I’ve been out of college for a few years now. After I graduated, I had a group of friends about 5 strong. These weren’t just friends, these were a step above that. After we all graduated, we had that same conversation, although maybe not verbal:

“Now what?”
“Get a job.”

This brought us all over the country.  From the people I hung out with in college, I have friends everywhere from Rochester, MN, Twin Cities metro area, San Francisco, Ireland, Seattle, and the list goes on and on. We’ve been widdled down to at most 2 or 3 in each respective city.

The point of all this is that I feel really blessed to still feel as close as I’ve felt before to my 5 core friends. The 5 that were “a step above.” Obviously, I’ve made new friends, too. In fact, I’ve become just as close, if not closer, to my new friends I’ve made post college. If staying close to my core group of friends from college wasn’t enough of a blessing, my new “squad” of friends has met a lot of the old and I can see their relationships growing, too.

How cool is that…

I see a lot more negativity than positivity in the internet blogging world. I am thinking places like Twitter, Facebook, peoples blogs, etc. It seems like the majority (not all, by any means) of people use these venus as a way to complain very publicly about things. I am fantastically guilty of this, especially when it comes to really insignificant things. 

I have thought about this  when going through what I’ve posted on Twitter and got the feeling that I was really angry about something. I don’t feel angry about something, so why am I complaining so much.

Louis CK, a comedian who’s normally pretty crass, was on Conan and I saw the video of the interview and it was actually really interesting. It’s called, or maybe it’s just the tagline, “Everything’s amazing. Nobody’s happy.” It’s linked below.

Anyway, the point of it all is that there’s importance in positivity and staying on that uplifting side. Reveling in the negative isn’t as helpful as elating in the positive, at least personally. For the next week, I am going to write about something that I’ve bumped into that day, or something that I am thinking about that really makes me happy. I am going to fill that glass half full and see what comes of it.  

Here’s the link to that video. I tried to embed it, but YouTube made requests to those sharing the video not to allow embedding.

I’ve been attending Fellowship for about 8 months now, and it’s been a ride to say the least. Coming from the “conventional” church, Fellowship was a breath of fresh air. It seemed too good to be true, seeing the signs and wonders everywhere I looked. I knew nothing other than this intense desire to be a part of it. 

But have I done too much? Did I go wrong in there somewhere? It seems almost obvious that I have, that I picked up everything I could, immersing myself, diving headfirst into the water. Maybe I should come up for air.

I keep saying “I’m on the Rob Bell fence,” ostensibly saying that I don’t know if I like him. Despite that, I keep talking about him. There’s a Nooma video talking about the “stuff” that’s in our every day lives that we surround ourselves with. At the end (I won’t spoil too much), he warns having too much of the little “stuff” in your hands to pick up the real “stuff.” I’ve realized, and here’s the admitting, that I’ve taken up so much stuff that I’ve dropped some of the other stuff, the stuff that matters.

Without holding any of the stuff that really matters, I’ve started to feel really stiff again. Clouded vision or a complete lack there of has probably not helped. It’s as if the windshield was REALLY dirty and I just turned on the windshield wipers so there are still a lot of streaks and spots, not clean yet…

…yet.