The Home Series Part Three: Holding on to what Matters

So you decided you needed to find out where your spiritual home is, and that you needed to take the responsibility of going on a spiritual journey to find it. Good. Now what?

When I think of going anywhere or doing anything, I almost always come up with a list. Firstly, because this is the one organizational tool that keeps me from becoming a disorganized mess and an OCD's worst nightmare. (No joke, my organizational skills are so notoriously awful that my sister, the day before my first day of high school, packed my entire backpack for me, meticulously placed headings in file folders for all of my subjects and cleared out notebook space for all of my classes, only to see days later that my backpack had turned into a trash can and that I never once placed a single piece of paper inside the notebook. Sorry Kylie. Love you. :) )

More importantly, I make lists so that I know my priorities, knowing what I have to do and what I have to take with me and what I can't afford to do, and what I have to leave behind. Nowhere has that been more crucial in my life, than when I began my spiritual journey 7 years ago...the year that I became a Christian (in true belief, at least. I was actually baptized 2 years earlier...a story for another time). I haven't really shared the story on my blog (I don't think...), so I'll give you a condensed version.

I had gone on a mission trip to Minnesota with my best friend in high school's church youth group. I had just finished my sophomore year and I was your typical high school teenager riddled with insecurities. I remember at that point in my life I was so disappointed, because I wanted to get straight A's to go to an elite college, I wanted to make varsity tennis, I wanted to be president of every organization I was involved in and I didn't get any of those things, and the message that each one of those things sent to my 15-year old brain was that I wasn't good enough for anything academically, socially, physically, and it hurt that all of my efforts to gain attention, praise, and adoration faltered. So at that point, I was bored and bitter over the summer and was willing to do anything to get out of Missouri. We went to serve with the organization Youthworks! at a site in Cass Lake, Minnesota on a Native American reservation. The mission aspect of the trip was...a little less than memorable. We helped out by painting a house and babysitting some children, but my teenage mind, still reeling with the year's disappointment, wondered silently why we had driven all the way to Minnesota to do something I could have done anywhere. Of course, my mindset was all about me and not about anyone else. My motives were all pointing to what I could get out of the experience and not really about helping others.

Anyway, afterward, we went to a lake to have fun and cool down from the summer heat. We sat around a campfire and as the sun was beginning to set, we were told we were going to do an activity called Stations of the Cross. Basically, the idea was to remember Christ's journey to the cross by having different prayer stations along a forest path, praying about different situations that came up for Jesus and that could apply in our own lives. So one by one, we were sent into the forest to pray. I remember going in and being immediately irritated by the different stations. First of all, I hadn't prayed by myself in months. I didn't see the need for a God who didn't seem to care about my wants and needs. I sat down to try praying again about my own wants/needs and God was silent. It had been like that the other times I tried praying. So my thought was that if God didn't want to listen, then why should I try following Him? I felt like God had abandoned me and it made me hurt and angry that I trusted something that seemed so distant and cold. As I walked further on the path, I became more angry that God wanted me to obey when He didn't even listen to me in the first place.

And then the trees gave way to sunlight. I had left the forest. Standing before me was the hill's edge, and beyond the hill lay the lake and the setting sun in the west. And I will tell you that the beauty of the Rockies, the Lake District, Berlin at Christmas time, Sevilla and all of its grand architecture, Edinburgh and Arthur's Seat, and many more beautiful places I've been privileged to see COMBINED could not even fractionally compare to the magnitude of beauty I saw in that sunset. Reds, oranges, yellows, even a hint of green bled through the evening sky and I stood in the orange glow of the sun. And it was in that moment, that single millisecond of standing on that hill that I first felt the power of God's grace. It was overwhelming. It felt as if someone had took the strongest swing they could muster and socked me in the gut. It was the strongest feeling of love that I have ever felt and to this day I find that it would be next to impossible for me to forget it.

My head, so full of anger and frustration just went blank. I stood with my mouth open at the sight of such beauty and I literally couldn't think. And at that moment, I heard an inaudible voice, one of those strong feelings that you get from time to time that can't be explained or expressed in words (although I'll try), telling me "I made this for you." And of course after believing something so powerful, I lost it. I walked down the hill, sat at one of the log benches surrounding a large wooden cross, and sobbed, occasionally looking up at the cross and "getting it" or in other words seeing what Paul states in Ephesians 3:18 of "how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ." I was absolutely wretched to God in the seconds leading up that moment. I did everything in my power to walk away from my faith. I had no trust, no belief, no hope, and in spite of my awful, rude, terrible, and disgustingly selfish behavior, he changed everything. That is the power of my God, that he would love without us earning it. That he would love us in spite of our behaviors. That he would see through our angry defenses and see children who feel unloved. Everything I thought I wanted was secondary when i realized what I wanted all along was to feel that I belonged, that I deserved to be loved and that I earned it. But God corrected me. His love is infinite and free.

And that, that moment is the thing that is always at the top of every list that I make when I am in a right state of mind, whether I write it out or not. It is the knowledge that I am a child of God who is very much loved. I think no matter what spiritual journey that you begin, you must live each day as a child who is dearly loved.

Now, I am obsessed with sunsets, because of what they remind me of. Seeing them reassures me of His love whenever I am in doubt. I have a picture of a Monet painting in my living room entitled, "Dusk", because it reminds me of that moment. I thought (and still do think) that if I ever wrote a story or an article, or a book, I would call it, "Chasing Sunsets", because every day I want to chase after what is beautiful and what is true. And that is what I hold on to whenever everything else seems so bleak. Its what I'm holding on to now, as I go through a difficult, uncertain period in my life. And this love is what I'm holding onto as I go on my spiritual journey. I have to take it with me. I have to hold onto it or I will lose it, going back to nagging self doubt, insecurity, depression.

On this journey, the first and only absolutely necessary thing you need to bring is the belief that you are a beloved child. To me, this is what it means to hold on to what matters.

The Home Series Part Two: Owning the Journey

It seems that its been a while since I last wrote. To be honest, writing this blog is difficult.

I feel challenged to express myself with clarity whenever I write on this thing, because I want so badly for people to understand exactly what I'm saying and what I'm feeling. Sometimes its difficult because I don't like to admit that I get lost, sidetracked, off-topic. Sometimes I think too much about how I ramble, how annoying I am, about how no one can relate to the things that I am saying. I get anxious over whether what compelled me to write in the first place is even that important.

Sometimes I get so lost in presentation and construction that I forget why I write. I get nervous when I present my words to other people. I focus so much on just getting through the words that I lose the wonderful event that inspired me in the first place. I am notoriously insecure over my words.

My friend Chris pokes fun and likes to call it my "prefaces" where I clarify and explain for 15 minutes before I even get out what I'm trying to say. Much like what I'm doing now...haha.

Anyway, over the last two weeks, I'll admit that I've been insecure not only about my words, but about where I'm at with God as well. I started writing this series about the importance of God being our home, but He hasn't been my home for a while now. I haven't felt inspired to pray, I haven't opened my Bible outside of being at church, I have even questioned the sincerity of my faith, whether it still held the same meaning for me as it used to just a year ago. And it all seemed hypocritical, that I could understand this notion of God being my home, that I would attempt to explain it without really making the effort to take the journey myself. I want to take this journey, because I want to grow deeper in my faith, to take the initiative with my faith and go home to where I propose God is waiting for me. I'm tired of doing nothing with my faith. I'm tired of waiting for others to pick me up, waiting on things to happen, and most of all, I'm tired of waiting on God to do great things in my life. If I want change I have to at least make the effort to seek Him. (Luke 11: 9-10 anyone?)

So for this next section, I invite you to take the journey with me. Maybe you are already at peace with God, and you are already aware that God is your home. Or maybe you have never known Him, are at war with Him, you feel lost, you have no idea where he is or if he even exists. Well, I make no promises, but I invite you to join me as I look a the things that brought me the joy that made me energetic and passionate about God in the first place. I invite you to join me as I work on growing in my faith and my love and as I try to find my home, where I propose God is waiting for me. I invite you to own your journey as well, wherever it takes you. Even If you have no interest in finding God, at least own the journey that you are on, find what makes you passionate and as I'm learning the hard way...TAKE THE INITIATIVE.

And as I mentioned to a friend yesterday, sometimes I say things that I don't back up. Sometimes I talk a big game, I talk about change and I don't do it. But I can't afford to do nothing. With this faith journey, I know there is more life that I have yet to live.

The Home Series Part One: Where is Home?

What do you think of when you hear the word home? Do you think of your hometown? Do you think of the actual house itself? The apartment you live in at college? Do you think of your friends, your family? Is home a place in the past, a place that is defined in our here and now, or do we think of home as our destiny?

I never had to think of this question before I came to college. If someone had asked me where I consider my home to be before I came to college, that would have been easy for me to answer, because it was in St. Joseph, MO. It was at the same address that my family has lived at since I was 3. I never had been away from home for more than a week. I would never have considered the question of where my home was to be anything more than someone asking me for my address. I always knew where my home was.

But when I came to college, I realized that I had to reconsider that question. Did home change since I went to college? Was Columbia, MO my home now that I went to school there? Certainly most of my friends changed. Certainly I had a new address, a new place that I came back to more than I did in St. Joseph. It suddenly occurred to me that when you attend school or even if you work straight out of high school, you are beginning a new life. If you leave your hometown, then you are living in a new place in order to begin your own life. Gone are the preconceptions of the old life you lived, and in this new location is a place where you carve out a new life in that city either permanently, or until you move on to the next destination.

I always found the transition back home during breaks to be awkward, because I didn't know where my home was. Was it in St. Joseph in my old life with my family or was it in Columbia with my new life and new community? I felt trapped in a tug of war between the people who had loved and cared for me for almost twenty years and the new identity and the new life that I was making for myself at college. To complicate this notion further, I spent 6 months of college in Estes, Park Colorado, and another 3 months of college in London, England where I woke up daily and lived my own separate life that was vastly different in each of these unique locations. I made friends everywhere, and I had good reasons to stay in all of these places. Which left me pondering this simple question: Where is home?

Okay, so where am I going with this? Well, I wanted to talk about this topic because its a topic that haunts me. Today I realized that in the span of one year I have lived in four different cities. For a kid who grew up in the same house for 16 years, that's a lot of moving. I attended school in Columbia, went out to Colorado for my church's leadership training program, flew to London to study abroad, and then lived back with the family in St. Joseph, then finished up school in Columbia again. In the span of one year I have felt the deepest love and the greatest joy, seen the most breathtaking, beautiful sights and have had the most incredible moments of my life, while on the other hand I've never been more alone and empty, never been more challenged, never been more pushed to trust my God given instincts, trust my self, and trust those closest to me. Through all of these ups and downs, and through all of these locations, I have felt the inklings of home without being fully convinced that my home lies with any of these places. I want to believe my home lies in one of these places, but even as I say that, I'm considering even more new places to make my home now that I have my Bachelor's degree, knowing that none of these options or even these new places I'm considering are the answer.

What do I mean? Think back to the definitions of home that I mentioned at the beginning. What do you think of when you hear the word home? Last month I truly learned for the first time what it meant to be home. I learned a definition of home that I will never forget, one that stands strong through every test you put it through, one that is stronger than any bond you ever forge with any human being, stronger than any foundation you place the other ideas of "home" upon.

This idea? The radical, life-changing notion that God is our home.

To be continued...

What May or May Not Be True

So the second movie that really got me itching to blog again is the movie Secondhand Lions. (Sorry Justin, love the DPS, but wasn't what I had in mind at this point.) Again, like Reality Bites, the movie was released back in 2003 so its not exactly new. But Secondhand Lions is another movie that I love.

I would explain the movie, but I never do these things justice. Here's the synopsis I stole off of IMDB. If you ever have an intention of seeing this movie, I warn that this spoils a little bit of the plot.

Walter is a timid teenager played by Haley Joel Osment, who is dropped off at his great-uncles farm in Texas during the 1960s by his neglectful mother. The two oddball and rich uncles are played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine. Even though the uncles have never raised any children, they accept the responsibility of taking care of Walter for the summer. Since they don't have a TV or telephone in the house, the uncles entertain Walter with colorful stories from their past when they were young and fighting for the Foreign Legion and Duvall's love affair with the Sultan's daughter. The stories are so fantastic that Walter is not sure if they are true or made-up by his uncles. The uncles purchase an old lion to hunt, but Walter makes the lion his pet instead. The uncles must contend with their greedy relatives who are after their money and only Walter knows where it is. With the guidance of his uncles, Walter becomes a man when he begins to believe in the values of the stories.

Now, this story is completely ridiculous. But the uncle (Duvall) near the end of the movie explains it to Walter with this doozy of a line, in the movie called the "how to be a man speech"

"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."

I have to admit, when I first heard this line, I thought someone just shoved a spoonful of sugar in my mouth. I looked at it as just some cheesy, feel-good, warm and fuzzy speech, that lacks any definitive statement. And maybe it is cheesy, but take a closer look at what it says, more importantly what it says about how we live our lives today.

I like, first off, how the speech starts off with, "this may or may not be true". Because if you break down the rest of the speech, you get things like, "maybe people are basically good", "maybe honor, courage, and virtue mean everything" "maybe money and power mean nothing" "maybe good always triumphs over evil". The whole speech leaves the truth something that has to be discerned, and I love that it is phrased as a choice. You have to choose to believe that people are basically good. You have to choose that good always triumphs over evil. The world that we live in makes none of these things clear. There is enough problems, and enough pain and suffering in the world to make people doubt that good triumphs over evil, that people are basically good.

Basically, the uncle's speech offers the choice between light and darkness, cynicism and joy. So the story he tells is ludicrous, but the uncle chooses joy, chooses to live with honor and courage, because that's what men "should believe in".

One of my new favorite writers, Henri Nouwen puts it so beautifully, when he says, (my emphasis in bold)

"I am tempted to be so impressed by the obvious sadness of the human condition that I no longer claim joy manifesting itself in many small but very real ways. The reward of choosing joy is joy itself. There is so much rejection, pain, woundedness among us, but once you choose to claim the joy hidden in the midst of suffering, life becomes celebration. It is the same joy that comes from seeing a single child walk home amid all the destruction, devastation, and anguish of this world. I am called to enter into that type of joy."

Secondhand Lions moved me, because it reminded me that every day we make a choice between cynicism and joy. Walter could have remained bitter over his mother's limited ability to love him, he could have chosen to be angry and cynical about the world around him, the world that left him without parents. He could have told his uncles that their story is, to put it bluntly, a load of crap. But he didn't. Instead he made the choice to believe in a story. And so in the movie, when Walter returns to his uncle's house, choosing to believe that his uncles were telling the truth and that they were in fact, the only ones who could help him become the man he was meant to be, I was...crying.

I was crying because I found it so beautiful, the power of believing in a story. We believe in stories because they discuss and uphold values that we cherish. It helped me realize that I want to do this. I want to share stories that will help people choose light over darkness, choose joy over cynicism. I want to help people come home from their lost, cold, dark, sad, and angry wanderings and share the power of joy. That's why I am doing this, taking the time to dedicate to writing so people can see how much joy finding and believing in a story can bring, I don't care how overly sentimental that sounds, because I'm not a cynic. I believe this life is good. This may or may not be true, but this is what I should believe. I choose to live in joy.

Reality Bites

So yesterday I mentioned that I watched two movies that sparked my blog renaissance. I want to talk about one of them today. I think this one more than the other one is more unusual in that you wouldn't think of it as an inspirational movie on the surface. That movie?

Reality Bites

Never heard of it? Probably because it was released back in 1994, but regardless is still one of my favorite movies. (Well, it is the 90's, which is I still believe are the golden years even though i was in grade school through most of it.)

Anyway, in Reality Bites, the movie is about four college friends Lelaina, Troy, Vickie, and Sammy as they try to figure out their lives and future ambitions post college graduation. As a recent college graduate, I couldn't help but relate to a story about people whose ideals are so much bigger than their actual job prospects.

Case in point is Lelaina, played by Winona Ryder. Lelaina is an assistant to a TV producer and is struggling to realize her ambitions as a producer of her own TV show. So when she's fired from her job and has no way to showcase her talent for making movies, she feels lost and stuck. She goes through phases where she applies for jobs that she's overqualified for, she refuses to settle for less, and finds that no one will hire her. Generally, she has always been the caretaker, been the person obsessing about the details and has her whole life planned out, until she hits this point of uncertainty where, because she's thrown off, she loses all of her confidence.

I feel that I could definitely relate to Lelaina. I feel that I had a lot of high hopes coming out of college where I would just easily transition into the next phase of my life. I thought that I would find my niche or find my way to show my passions and ideals so easily. But it hasn't turned out that way. I'm frustrated, because I can't find a job. I'm frustrated because I have a lot of goals and dreams and here I am about to interview for a simple retail job. Not exactly what I expected. And I feel my worry is sometimes like Lelaina's. I am afraid that all of my ambitions and high grades, and leadership positions all are for nothing. I'm afraid of the identity I've created for myself in being successful and being a caretaker and that I am nothing without this success. That I am only as good as I am successful. And uncertainty makes everything seem confused.

But the response in this movie comes in her friend/love interest Troy. The dialogue in this scene is maybe a little cheesy, but I love it.

Leilaina: "I worked so hard, you know. I guess I just sound pathetic. All this work just meant something to me. I just don't understand why things cant go back to normal after the end of the half-hour like on Brady Bunch.

Troy: "Things don't work out like that."

Lei "I was going to be something by 23."

Troy "All you have to be is yourself."

Lei "I don't know who that is anymore."

Troy: "I know her...and I love her. She breaks my heart again...and again...but I love her."

See, there is a story told through this movie. Its a story that's rooted in the same place as all the rest of the great stories out there. Our story is not rooted in our identity, in being successful, rich, famous. There is so much time spent worrying about all of these things that don't matter. The only thing that matters is love. Unlike in Reality Bites, our story is rooted in God's love for us. Nothing else matters. Reality Bites in an unexpected way showed me how important it is to not to let our lives or "stories" get wrapped up in an identity crisis. Because for those who know Him, our identity is already secure in Christ. Its secure in an endless, unconditional love.

So me telling a story isn't about the content of the story itself, as I always feared and let myself worry about. It isn't about how successful this will be or if I'm telling a story right. As long as there is love behind it, and I mean well-intentioned, meaningful love, then any story that you live out or create is going to be successful, because the story doesn't define you. Its the love that comes from the story.

Next post, I'll talk about the other movie that got me thinking about story...

"Only connect"

So, now that I have a little more time on my hands. I decided to rectify my blog from the ashes. I made a promise to myself at the beginning of the year that I was going to blog more and that I was going to keep it up. Well I didn't. It died when I got too busy for it. But this time, I want things to be different. I want to tell a story...

See, I watched two beautiful, amazing movies today that are two total opposites in plot, character, setting, etc. but impacted me in a very unexpected way. (I'll talk about them in later posts) They both reminded me of how special and unique a single life on this Earth is. They reminded me of the importance of living out your story or life that God has given you, and living it to the fullest.

In my opinion, we live in a world where few people's lives are celebrated. What I mean by this, is that we live in a world where often we hardly read the news, we don't talk to our neighbors, we sit next to people on a bus or a train and we don't say a word, we walk in and out of so many people's lives daily without ever mentioning a single word. And too often there is judgment passed on whose story is worth telling and whose isn't. To use an example, Tom Cruise can get a feature in People magazine, but a single mom who spends her entire life raising a family and reaching out to high school youth in her community doesn't ever hear her story told.

I want to change that. I want to tell stories that have never been told. Can I help tell everyone's story? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. But are there stories out there that I can share that no one's ever heard that are worth telling? Of course there are. And hopefully, even if your story is never told, there is a part of you that can connect and relate

Ever since I was in high school, I realized I have had a passion for telling stories. I loved (and still do) writing poetry and short stories that involved my friends and people close to me. I like the personal feel of telling a story. I like how no story is ever told the same way twice, with the exact same words, images, emotions, feeling, perception to detail, perspective, etc. I like showing people a different way to not only see themselves, but to see the world around them. I get my greatest joy from knowing that through story I have intimately connected with a person in a way that only my words and feelings can. The great Modernist writer E.M. Forster once said, "The only thing that matters in this world, is...only...to connect." I agree with Mr. Forster. and that's why I want to write this.

I have reservations about making these claims. Every time I have thought about starting this blog, I have been met with my own fears. I've tried this before. I've made bold claims about my passion for telling stories before and never seriously lived it out. What if my head is bigger than my heart? What if I lose heart on this idea and never have another post on this blog again? Will I have failed? Will this passion for telling stories die by the wayside through my neglect?

Again, I am faced with the truth. The answer to those questions is...Of course not. If I never type another word on this blog, I will still be a storyteller by heart. I will continue to connect in whatever way that I can. But maybe this blog is the start of something. Maybe I will find a way to connect.

All I know is I'm tired of making empty promises, tired of not sharing the many beautiful things burning on my mind that I see daily, tired of the way that I so easily forget the past. And maybe people won't see these things the same way that I do. But God has given me a gift to see these connections, and to not take them for granted. I share these stories as part of a my personal joys and treasures and I hope in some way, that these stories will bring joy to you as well.

With love,

Nick

Immersion

So, one of the cities I went to during my time in Europe was Lisbon, Portugal. With beautiful coastlines and relatively untouristed sights, it was an awesome destination that I won't soon forget. While there, I found this interesting dock, and this story is my depiction of it. Enjoy!

All that was left of the ocean were the two tall, white pillars. That's what it looked like, at least, when you looked at the ocean from the Lisbon shoreline, straight through the two outposts standing like guards at the door of the thick River Tagus, water that sticks in like a thumb into Portugal and from there, out into the Pacific, water fading into the horizon. I stood on the shore and looked at my feet, raising my head slowly, looking at how the miniature shoreline faded into the water, first turning into a single stone step, and then another, each one more submerged in the depth of that endless well, each one flooded just a little more than the next.

"What are you looking at?" Kayla, my friend, travel companion, and fellow adventurer asked, puzzled. She had noticed that I was just staring at my feet and then the horizon, repeating the pattern until it went past the stage of curiosity and into that zoned out stage where awareness dims and awakens simultaneously, falling out of sync with the physical world but sparkling, scattering light on thoughts within. Sparkling...scattering light. That's why I had to leave the United States. Because my perception of my inner self had been a sparkling, scattered light at best. Going into my senior year of college, I talked myself in and out of possibilities of what the future might hold. Maybe grad school, maybe teaching, maybe social work, anything I put my mind to felt flat, lifeless, uninspiring.

And I felt completely unaware of the world. I had grown tired of Missouri, where I felt trapped in a room without windows and had explored every corner. And I knew how to be an American in America, where its easy to lose yourself in all that you take for granted, but what I really wanted to know was what submergence felt like. I wanted to know how the water feels on your skin when you dive in a pool that is not your own, whether to be a foreigner was an icy shock to your nerves or if it was more like a hot spring, warm, full of wisdom, soothing to the touch. I had dreams before arriving in Europe, where I would sit on a hillside in England alone at dawn and just look at the world. No book, no phone, not even a watch, and I would just look at the hills and simply allow myself to exist. Not as a Missourian, an American, a visitor, a student, but to simply think of myself without qualification, simply to think of myself as I was created. A person who was born to live.

"Nothing...There isn't anything there." I replied from a distance. And really, I wasn't far off in my statement. The pillars seemed to have been built and forgotten, meant for a ship that had made its last voyage years ago and either never returned or departed for good. And I couldn't get out of my head how beautifully placed those steps were, how they just faded into nothingness, as if the builder had paved those steps, carving out each one until he decided the point where he would force someone to swim, where land met sea and everything stable came undone and dissolved into the sea. Kayla walked over to where I was standing and stared for a little while with me. And then she turned to me, and, noticing that I had barely registered her appearance, asked with more concern. "Are you alright?"

"Yea, I'm fine." And at that moment, I wasn't really sure. All that I thought of was how I wanted to dissolve too, to reach that edge where land became sea, where comfort turned into uncertainty, the brink of everything that is known for the opaque midnight blue of the Tagus. I almost reached down to pull off my shoes, when my conscious came into play. What would Kayla think? How would I dry off, I didn't have a towel? This wasn't exactly a beach, more like a dock in the middle of nowhere. And although the pristine, blue water gave no hint, I'm sure most of Lisbon's dirt and grime had drifted over to this dock, seeing as how pedestrians near by were few and far between. My mind continued to rattle off the reasons why taking off my socks and shoes was a stupid idea in a foreign country when not on a beach. But my resistance to my conscience only became stronger. I felt as if I was playing an inner game of tug-of-war with my free-spirit and my conscience. And for what? The freedom to take off my shoes and walk into the river?

Finally, I told myself I was being ridiculous, and I put an end to my notions of dipping my feet in. Instead, I stood there and continued staring off into the distance while Kayla fumbled with putting new batteries in her camera, nervously glancing over at me every once in a while as if to make sure I was okay and that I hadn't suddenly decided to jump in the ocean. And when I made that decision, I realized what I had lost. An opportunity to break through the barriers, the qualifications imposed on me by my conscience and to simply be. Forget Kayla. Forget the Portuguese. Forget the water and what may lie in it. I was meant to soak my feet, soiled with preconceived notions of who I was and who I needed to be in the Tagus and to frankly, not give a damn what anyone else thought. To let go and simply let one's self be.

But I did what I feel a lot of people would have done. I walked away. And out of that close encounter with the ocean water, my feet dragged me away to follow Kayla into the city, to find a place with good wine and to step once again into the shroud of Lisbon at night.

As I walked away, I thought of that ancient dock one last time. The moment had all felt so Romantic, so imaginary. I gave the dock one last Romantic thought, as I thought of a long voyage and how it must have felt a sailor to touch that first stone step and push himself up to the surface, slowly emerging from the water. Flashes of that sailor reaching for his wrinkled and soggy love letter in his pocket as he got closer to the shore, rereading it for the fiftieth time as he prepared to embrace his love. And I saw him tying his boat to the post and stepping out into the cold, dark water, climbing each step as it took him one step closer to his heart's desire. I saw the water dripping off of his clothes, releasing the weight of years upon years of a wait. I saw his face with a scraggly beard, dark eyes, and a haggard complexion. And each step grew more confident, each stone felt the weight of his purpose under his boots and more certain that he had not arrived home in vain.

His soul was heavy with his immersion, but when he reached land, he emerged tired and weary, soaked with knowledge. I knew that this sailor was within me. But compared to me, he knew what he wanted. But I walked away. I realized what I had lost. He knew what it meant to simply be.