TheMinorThings
My girlfriend’s fridge annoys me. It makes this low-hum that’s clearly the coil whining due to overexertion.
My neighbor is setting up a bouncy castle for his kids and the drone of the air pump irritates me.
There’s a greyish piece of dust that’s caught between my laptop screen and my privacy screen that constantly draws my attention away from the “oh so-incredible work” that i’m supposed to be doing.
I find my thoughts straying so Headspace app refocuses me. However, my earbuds are louder on my right ear than my left ear so it distracts me from the slow-paced voice that’s guiding me on how to do the long-forgotten exercise of breath.
There really is this sense of wasted time. I don’t know what it is, but it feels like I’m missin’ out on my shot.
If there wasn’t a fridge, if there weren’t neighbors, if dust didn’t exist…
Sheesh.
That’s all I can say sometimes.
I’m currently 24 years old with a penchant for not following through on the things that I promise. I would like to say that I had a habit of blaming other things for my inadequacies , but honestly, I think I still do it. I tell myself that all I need is a do-over. I just need to start fresh, with no preconceptions, no ties that bind, no accountability. I’d have empty hands to catch new opportunities.
But I didn’t really set sail with empty pockets. My entire life, I was showered with privilege, and the glimmer of gold has left me wanting more on the shores of Silicon Valley. I find myself employed with a large tech company of no-small stature. Yet still, I’m hoping that the sweet winds of emptiness would billow my proverbial sails of life forward. Still, I find myself anchored to the things that I cling so dearly to.
Summer is at its mid-season. It’s July, and my birthday creeps up ever so quickly. The days drag together with shelter in place.
I find another company. It’s just “big blue.” A recruiter sets up time, enrolls me in their application system and buys me a hope and a dream with a simple few words. I began to dream of opportunities.
I remember being as passionate. It just seemed… fun. Like, there was something that could align with my goals and make me succeed. “I could move to Minnesota”, I tell my girlfriend, as we chatter into the night about our future together. She was glad to hear it, but I knew that it was up to me to figure out how to find myself.
Maybe two weeks passed and still no phone call back after the interviews. I sat there, watching our backyard tomatoes wither and die from the lack of water. From my lack of desire to walk two yards to water them. They said something like, “You’ll hear back from us after we vote.” I remember this because I was so frustrated by it. Their words were otherwise so dry, so testing, but their silence was so mean. I wondered if they could see us; how did they feel, feeling like how I felt?
So, without even a second glance, another tech company left me and walked out of my daydreams.
I cast about plaintively. Why did I dream. I need to start fresh again. I need to empty my mind and find the opportunities that lay before me.
So now I tell myself. I tell myself that this company most likely thought I was “worthless” because I didn’t perform well on their exams. I told myself that I wasn’t good-enough. That they were bad people and didn’t understand what I had to bring to the table. I was frustrated.
The biggest problem with dreams is the frustration that comes with them. When you give your best to someone, it means something much bigger than you ever expected. So we try to switch to wanting nothing. To a zen-like state that will leave us with no frustrations at all.
I think that it’s never going to be perfect. We’ll never be able to set sail with empty pockets and empty minds.
Instead, we just need to understand that we can’t go as fast as we believe. To learn how to tell ourselves that it’s okay to fail your dreams. To understand that annoying buzzing sounds and failed interviews will happen. That the world might shut down because of the actions of one man.
We need to learn about grace. How to give grace, to receive grace and to be grace.
That should be it.
Grace.
If if Grace is not good enough for you, it’s not good enough for those who yell or are angry. Giving grace is the best thing you can do, because it does more than than feed an empty mind, - it feeds the soul.