Today’s excitement included waking up at 8:00 AM to find Aaron standing on me, Skip’s impassioned sermon on demons (including one congregation member who responded in the affirmative to the rhetorical question “have any of you ever personally met someone who was possessed?”) and a magnitude 4.2 earthquake. But what prompted a journal entry at midnight was some thinking I was doing on the long drive back from the Bay Area to LA.
Interstate 5 from the Bay Area to LA is a tedious, mind-numbing route that passes through flat farmland for a couple hundred miles. This road inspires random thoughts, and tonight I was pondering why it is that I’ve practically become a social hermit in recent years as compared with my teenage and college days. The only answer that I came up with is that as I’m discovering what I love most about life I’m failing to find others who share these loves. As an example, I live for the feeling that fills me when watching the stars in the night sky in Death Valley, or the serenity that comes from standing alone on Half Dome in late fall. It’s exciting on the rare occasions when I meet other people that enjoy these types of activities, but even with these people, whom I would think a connection would exist, there always seems to be a disconnect — almost without fail their motivation is the adventure or physical challenge which the experience presents, and while I love a challenge, the adrenaline of the experience is secondary to the sense of awe, serenity, and most importantly of simply being alive that I’m seeking. There are perfect moments when life makes sense that only seem to occur out amongst the rocks and trees, and it is for these times that I go out exploring.
While I was still working for Accenture this feeling of being different from everyone around me was at times becoming almost overwhelming — I started wondering what exactly was wrong with me. It was in this state that I met a friend of a friend who voiced a feeling about life that echoed my own. For the first time in years I had the hope that I wasn’t isolated. Shortly thereafter, during my travels in Alaska, I began meeting person after person in whom I immediately recognized something. While roaming the North I had the unique experience of understanding people and being understood almost implicitly. I would arrive in small towns and be able to easily settle into conversation with the locals, or be on a trail and stop to talk to passing hikers, knowing that instead of lessening the serenity of the moment it would only enhance the experience. Granted, there were still those who I failed to find common ground with, but they tended to be in the minority.
These days, as I walk through the Warner Brothers studio lot or do a workout in the gym I’m careful to respect the anonymous-nature of city life. However, for once I’m doing so with the knowledge that even though I’m different from those around me, I’m not alone, and that life as a social hermit doesn’t have to last forever.