Attacked By Life

That's right, today I felt attacked by life. But in the way that your older brother would attack you when you walk in the door after school and wrestle you to the ground. It's a good thing if you've never experienced it.

It all began with passing up the New Found Glory concert. I have always wanted to go, but the circumstances just didn't feel right, so I decided to stay home.

After a boring review session for my New Testament exam I decided to unwind with my favorite movie. "Stranger Than Fiction" just arrived last week in the mail from Netflix and I'd been saving it for such an occasion as this. I popped the disc in my computer and was amazed at how much I still love its simplistic brilliance. During the movie I made cookies. Then I saw the unintentional connection: the tax man's first incredible experience and really the catalyst for the rest of the plot was when he took a bite of a freshly baked cookie. That was the first of many such seemingly random strings attaching things.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the movie I decided to take some cookies to my friends Ethan and Katie. I met them through Molly, so naturally on my drive to their house I was thinking about her. I usually am. I turned on the car radio and out spewed the lyrics sung by Tom Delonge of Blink 182, "Here we go, life's waiting to begin." You may not see the connection but I certainly did. It was almost eery.

I turned off the radio once the song ended and immediately I felt my phone begin to vibrate. I thought it might be a text from Molly so I pulled it out despite the obvious road hazards. It turned out to be my hometeachee (spell check says that word doesn't exist) Emily. She called with a survey question. It read: "What do you want out of life?" Having just watched my favorite movie and all of the attached oddities, I felt quite prepared to respond. My answer was concise: "I want to make myself and at least one other person happy." At the root of my answer were many things. First my love for my future wife Molly. If there's anyone I want to make happy, it's her. Second was my recent understanding that I can't please everyone. First I must be okay with what is going on and then I can worry about how that affects the people around me. I wrote a blog about that a few weeks ago when I bailed on a bonfire.

Needless to say the survey hit me like a ton of silly putty.

The call ended. I arrived at Ethan and Katie's house. I felt instantly like I was with friends who appreciated me. How could they not? I baked them cookies. Really though, I have felt lately like one of my friends has really let me down, like I'm just a friend when there's nothing better to do and nowhere better to be. So being there helped me reach a point emotionally that I needed.

What a day right? In summation the past few hours have been a sort of surreal experience in which everything is connected by an invisible bond. I would call them covalent bonds since they're more sharing than taking away from each other (thanks chem 102). My body and mind have been filled with a feeling akin to what the hippies explained as man and earth becoming one. It all fit.

Now I'm not sure if that made sense to you, but it was one of the most incredible terrestrial episodes of my life. Who would've imagined that a Tuesday night would have that in store for me?