The Ultimate Pact

Tonight, I participated in a friendly match of softball. Although the game soon panned out to be less friendly than it seemed, I still maintained good spirits nonetheless. On this night, I was also able to get in touch with a friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in days, with whom I was very concerned for after seeing her leave work in tears one morning before the day even started.

I was initially glad to know that she had come to the game tonight for I had something to give her that I knew would bring her mood into perspective. It was a daily devotional that I got from church this morning and I was able to snag another copy, before they ran out, with the intention of bestowing one upon my friend. This is when I learned of her truth.

My friend and her husband were getting a divorce.

Now as I do not know all of the gory details, I recall how just recently, they seemed so in love, so connected. As he is currently deployed, before he left, she seemed so downtrodden because he was leaving and that the entire family was going to miss him. But was it all a game, or was it a façade?

Now despite the current trend in American matrimonial patterns, it is my understanding that marriage is forever, what I see as the ultimate pact. To go through all of the pomp and circumstance to suddenly dismiss those eternal vows is like taking one's wedding band and smashing with a sledgehammer.

Although I know many examples of good marriages, it saddens me to know that just one more has taken a hit to my faith that people are competent enough to make such a life-altering decision.

My only hope is that from this, there is resolution, and not dissolution. And if the divorce is inevitable, I pray that my friend is able to find peace in all of this.

One-trick Pony

There is this song I've always liked, a lesser known Nelly Furtado hit from her sophomore masterpiece "Folklore", called "One-trick Pony." And every so often, when I would hear it, I'd want to jump onto the nearest mechanical bull and ride as long as I could, hoping that when I flew off, I would land slow-motion on the soft-ish mats below. But this song has nothing to do with the enchanted reverie of bull-riding, nor does it have anything to do with actual ponies. No, this song is about marching to the beat of your own drum, as the title implies knowing more than one simple trick. It's about being your own person and not succumbing to the demands of a world that seeks to make you into a clone. Not that I hate the world, or even the country in which I live. But many times, I am forced to feel that if I don't conform to certain standards, then I am somehow a perverse corruption, and that I must be extinguished in order to ensure and preserve perfect order. However, I realized that part of the reason why I felt as such was because I was living in a world that was not made for me.

Now this world of mine is not simply that which lies beyond my familial ties, the tangible, 9-5, working my nerves world, but includes everything; every single morsel of stimuli that influences my senses in some profound way. It's my clothing, my hair, my music and my art. It's my slight obsession for dimples and digits. But somehow, along the way, I learned that being an outlier was unattractive, uncanny and unsettling.

That I was all these things disturbed me, and I withdrew.

However, I soon learned a very valuable implication. When I cave in and retreat to what's familiar and comfortable, I lose a part of myself. But when I allow myself to press firmly against the grain, I discover things about myself that I never knew, but things that were always there, burgeoning, waiting to awaken in complete jubilation. When I stopped conforming, I became a new me.