What keeps us going? Faith and brotherhood

I like to check out a local online forum, Knox Blab, on a regular basis.

It’s the typical Internet bulletin board — lots of snarky comments, mindless chatter about pop culture, endless debates and an electronic community of various personalities, some of whom I know in person and some of whom I don’t.

It’s entertaining and, on occasion, thought-provoking. The other day, an acquaintance/musician friend, Christopher Scum, posted a query to the rest of us — what keeps you going? What is your reason for putting one foot in front of the other every day?

I ran into Chris last weekend, before a show by his band, The Dirty Works, at Patrick Sullivan’s in Knoxville’s Old City. He’s hard to miss for anyone who’s out and about in the local scene — big guy, shaggy mane of hair, tattoos and the scars of hard-living etched into his face — literally.

But the man has the soul of a poet, and talking with him, along with his post, got me thinking. The other morning, I sat down and wrote a response to his post on Knox Blab that I wanted to share with the rest of you:

Hey, Chris — it was good to run into you the other night. My friend I introduced you to said to me when we got back downstairs, “Dude, he’s a really nice guy!” I kind of looked at him puzzled, because ... well ... you’re you. But then I realized he based his preconceptions on what he saw on the surface, and all it took was a few minutes of conversation to have those preconceptions shattered in order for him to see what’s really underneath.

I think that’s what keeps me going more than anything — waiting for the glass to shatter to find out what’s on the other side. Of life, of people, of purpose. We spend all of our time building these routines, carving out these comfortable little niches, lining and padding our metaphorical dens so that we can hunker down like threatened badgers and peer out at what passes us by in the darkness. We sit on top of what we’ve scavenged and hoarded and collected because it’s ours, and even if we despise it ... even if we’re unhappy with it and hate it and don’t know what else to do with it ... we guard it with ferocity because it’s all we have. It’s what we know. We let it define us. We sit there in the darkness, peering out at the unknown and eventually we go blind, like those cave critters who spend their whole lives in the dark. We stop seeing anything and are content to root around in the comfort of our own quagmire.

The thing is, man, guys like you (and me, if I can humbly associate myself with you) aren’t satisfied with a life in the dark. We creep out of our burrows, terrified but driven by a desire for something else — a connection, a spark, a little light to let us know we’re not alone. Chances are good we’ll end up staggering into the path of a brakeless Freightliner and watch our guts spray across the blacktop, but every once in a while, we stumble onto that little nugget of spiritual gold that provides us with some solace and elation and passion. Guys (and girls) who make that choice are both blessed and cursed — the ones who stay put in that darkness will never feel pain or depression or sadness or self-loathing or sorrow with the intensity that we do ... but they’ll also never feel love or joy or passion like we do, either. It almost makes me feel sorry for them, because I’ll take that trade-off any day.

I don’t know much, brother, but I do know what works for me.

Get to know yourself — I can B.S. with the best of them; con and manipulate and lie and pretend and do a pretty good job of never letting on to outside observers ... but I can’t do it when I look in the mirror. Being self-aware is a vastly underrated character trait, and I liken it to a pool of water way back in the woods: Most people stumble right past it without ever really seeing it ... others wade in so far, just enough to get their feet wet but pull back out of fear of going in too deep ... others splash around and swim and look pretty good doing it but have no idea what lurks a few feet beneath the surface ... while a select few of us choose to dive down, to grope along the bottom until our lungs scream for air, wanting just a few more seconds to find out what’s really down there.

Get to know your brothers and sisters — like someone else pointed out, helping each other through this thing is sometimes the only way to get out of the maelstrom that can be my head. I never feel better than when I do something for someone else and never claim credit for it or brag about it, and I never feel more connected than when someone like you asks a question that gets me ... that gets all of us ... introspective and talking about something more than just the latest band or movie or political rumor.

And finally, get to know a god. Not the god ... not your parents’ god ... not what the establishment wants you to believe in, but a god of your choosing. Maybe it’s ol’ J.C.; maybe it’s Allah; maybe it’s General Zod. All I know is that ever since I made a concerted effort to make a spiritual connection to something out there greater than myself, I feel better about everything. I’m not knocking on doors and proselytizing or trying to win converts or telling anyone else what or how they should believe ... all I know is that it works for me, and it helps me to believe that, somehow and somewhere, there are forces at work beyond my understanding, and that maybe ... just maybe ... there’s a Plan that does have the answers and the map. I may never be privy to those answers ... in fact, I’m pretty sure I’m on a need-to-know basis when it comes to that kind of stuff, and I freely admit that’s frustrating. But the power of faith can be an amazing ally in times of doubt, in the times I want to say throw up my hands and go crawling back into my burrow and hibernate.

That was a long and rambling response, I know, but those are the kinds of questions I like. Those are the kinds of questions that need to be asked — the ones that let us shine a little light on who we are and what we believe. Man has been asking such questions for centuries, and we probably always will — but that’s what makes us men (and women) and not those allegorical badgers that like to isolate, alone in the dark.

Steve Wildsmith is the Weekend editor for The Daily Times. Contact him at steve.wildsmith@thedailytimes.com or at 981-1144.