Moving Day

Just a reminder that I've moved to my new site jasonropp.com. I'll still leave old posts up for reference, but no new material will be on this site.

Enjoy!

Moving Day

It has been 218 posts since I started this blog, which my mother compiled for me in paperback form as a graduation present. If you'd like a copy let me know and I can get you one. Otherwise I'll be leaving this sight up for reference in case you want to find an old post. 

I will now be blogging at www.jasonropp.com.

Learning From Each Other

Last post I talked about my own failure, (Click the link to check it out). Now I'm curious.

How do you deal with failure (big or small) in your own life?
Have you failed in a way that produced something beautiful?

I'd love to hear your comments.

Learning to Love Failure.

Perfectionism takes various animal shapes, some more deadly than others. Mine would be a sloth, or maybe an Eeyore; I can't do things as good as I'd like so I don't bother doing them. In school, I typically finished projects by staring at the computer screen for an hour, reassuring myself that if I just turn in the paper, the worst that could happen is that I'd get a low B. It's a bit depressing when you consider almost everything to be failure before you're even finished.

In my world, everything is in some sense failure, it's never perfectly what it should be. Our faith, art, play, and relationships are all typically mediocre. Even the best at anything find critics.

I set a goal recently, to write 2,000 words a day. I'm 0 for 4. Day 1 I got in a solid 1,700. Day 2-3 I was recording guitar all day and didn't write at all. Today I've done about 800, plus however long this blog is. This is all failure to my perfectionist mind.

But even my failure is getting me closer to where I want to be. Failure means I'm trying, it means I'm one step closer to where I want to be.

Digging in the Sand

The house was too noisy.
The children were relentless tornado sirens.
 But you can't be the uncle Who tells children to shut up,
So I slipped away to sandy shores to dig.

 I found a log, near the embankment,
Next to a pile of charred wood.
It had been talked, and laughed, and sung over,
Inscribed with life,
Then seared by flame into ornate patterns.

 But I'm not here to share,
I'm here, alone, to dig,
To find a little rock to polish by throwing it to the waves.
They smash the stone against the sandy shore,
Over and over,
Until it yields something to share with the noisy children.

Pictures of Buffalo

It's easy to live life through a two inch screen.

I heard a story about a couple who banned the use of phones and cameras at their wedding. They wanted people to take in the experience with them, rather than re-view it through a pixelated portal. I'm sure the photographer was excluded from the ordinance.

It's tempting to try and capture every significant moment digitally. We want to be able to relive something in a way that our imagination won't let us, so we are in a state of constant cell phone preparedness.

The irony is, that in trying to preserve the moment, we miss it altogether. Courtney and I are in Oregon this week. My parents came out for my graduation, so we drove back with them, making stops along the way. As we took a northern route home from Indiana, it only made sense to drive through Yellowstone and get our first glimpse of Old Faithful. Standing in front of the steaming spout with two or so minutes left before the fireworks began, we heard my Dad yell from near the lodge. Two Bison were sauntering in our direction, seemingly ignorant of the mostly Asian and European mass that had worked itself into a frenzy over its casual presence. I snapped into action, literally. Before you could say Kodak is bankrupt I was capturing the experience with high-resolution clarity. Then it hit me, put down the camera. Instead of worrying about a good shot, or missing something fantastic, I decided just to breath it in.

The Buffalo mozied toward us. I sware, if I ever saw anything mozy, it was this buffalo, and it was beautiful. I've never been that close to an unleashed beast and felt the awe of its strength; at any moment he could have run down my wife, myself, or any of the other greenhorn tourists. This was a taste of raw nature, and in trying to preserve the moment, I almost missed it.

Moments of wonder can't be forced, captured, or preserved. We can only stop, listen, and accept them for what they are, when they come and when they leave. If this weren't the case, Courtney and I wouldn't have to work on our marriage; we could just watch our wedding video and relive the idealized passion. But instead we try to make space for great moments, put down the camera, and breath them in like life.

Mother's Week: Dancing in the Pain

Mom Danced --once or twice. Both times with medical consequences. One dance sessions happened as she walked toward her car as us boys played basketball on the concrete. I don't remember why she started dancing, but the next thing we knew, she was flat on gravel laughing --or crying, I'm still not sure which.

On another occasion mom filleted the back of her hand with a Miracle Blade knife while talking on the phone, which was also the cause of both pain and laughter. She was millimeters from severing a tendon.

My mother never gave me the impression that life was easy, or even all that pleasant, but she found reasons to laugh. I'm thankful to have caught that trait; life is far too serious and severe to go through it without a healthy dose of laughter mixed with the pain. Sometimes you just gotta dance, even if it costs you an ankle.