Admission is no easy thing. Confessions are not written simply. Because I
struggle to separate my decisions and actions from my sense of self, admitting
my faults often feels uncomfortably close to culling myself. Maybe that’s something I need. So I have words to share with you, and I
can’t keep silent anymore.
I struggle with keeping in touch. Many of you know this firsthand. So before I left for Taiwan in late July, I
swore to myself that this time would be different. It hasn’t been. This past summer, I reasoned that I’d grown
and realized how deeply friendships and family bonds run. I guess I haven’t.
For a number of days, maybe even weeks, I had
convinced myself that new starts in life are a simple matter of choice, willpower,
and opportunity. Even if fresh starts
operate this way for others, they never have for me. This past several months have been like few
times in my life—I say that with immense joy and yet great yearning—for what, I
don’t know. I do know that I am
convinced that beginning anew is not the panacea it seems to be. Nor is it easy. I have found myself in unfamiliar places
surrounded by unfamiliar people, prompting me mistakenly to assume that amidst
new circumstances, the self can be recreated (as from a blank slate) through
sheer will. Try as I might, my foibles
remain firmly entrenched.
Among those shortcomings, my persistent incapacity
to keep in touch with loved ones once proximity’s convenience gives way weighs
heavily on my mind. A bad habit for one
living halfway around the world. I say
“habit” because I must retain liability for this deficiency. Too often, “I’m bad at keeping in touch” is
furnished as grounds to excuse oneself from doing so and to dampen others’
expectations. At least I have been
guilty of such semi-conscious moral calculus.
And I’m very sorry.
For being silent these past months.
For ignoring the efforts of those who’ve tried to keep in touch. And most of all for taking for granted the
affection, esteem, and patience of all those who I claim to love and care
for. Really, I am.
Not emailing, updating the blog, or Skyping is not
something that occurred intentionally.
Some of the faults we are slowest to see are those that occur through no
overt effort on our part, but through our busyness, our inattention, and our
remarkable tolerance for letting things adrift remain adrift. For too long, I have contented in allowing
the busyness of teaching, language study, and traveling to distract me from
sharing these joys and aches with you.
So I’ve carried these alone, sometimes even convincing myself that this
displayed a perverse sort of strength. But
that only partially explains my reluctance to speak.
More than busy, I have been afraid. I have been afraid of being unable to
articulate the experiences that I have faced in a way that you will find
relatable and engaging. I have been
afraid to practice the reflection necessary to sift through the layers of
meaning and confusion that mark too many of my days, and which rattle me more
over than I should care to admit. I have
been afraid to admit that I feel lost. And I have most feared is that after writing, I
would look at the words and see that it is not good. Not true.
It has been so much easier to lose myself in the frenzied productiveness
of my first full-time job and the host of new experiences lying just beyond my
front door. My eyes have been so fixed
on hiking Taiwan’s landscapes (both literal and cultural), that I had all but
given up on acting as cartographer for my year here.
But the time has come to resume those grapplings for
meaning and perspective. With the start
of a new year, I choose to allow the infectious optimism this day brings (with
its ‘fresh starts’) to overshadow the possibility that I will again renege on
my intention to keep in touch. So I
won’t promise anything concrete, either to myself or to you.
Yet for the time-being, I am pondering these
thoughts again, in the only way that I know—by writing. In a letter to Marcellinus of Carthage in 412
A.D., Saint Augustine writes, “For I am
the sort of man who writes because he has made progress, and who makes progress
– by writing.” On one level, these
words are convicting. Perhaps a major
reason I feel I haven’t made the progress I want to is because I haven’t
written and because I have repressed the thoughts that lead to such
writing. On a second level, Augustine
comforts me by presenting the possibility that writing may help clarify my
confused ideas of self and place.
More reassuring still, Augustine touches upon the
salve-like truth that our written words need not (and indeed will not) be
beyond reproach. Disseminating them may
indeed put our thoughts and words under heightened scrutiny. Nevertheless, Augustine quietly reminds us that
putting thoughts on paper can be a means towards further understanding, and that
such words may be as flawed in substance or presentation as the thoughts that
give rise to them or the person behind them.
And that that imperfection is okay.
So here’s to another year of imperfection, another
year of pondering, so long as it be another year of growth. In Mandarin, the word 重新開始 (chongxin kaishi) means ‘to resume’ or ‘to start again’. A fresh start. One that doesn’t hope to leave the past behind,
but to build from it. That’s what I want
for the new year. I hope you’ll join
me.
