The tribe
May 11, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 20 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
It amazes me that regardless of how smart we are and how much we can do, we still know so little about the world. Only 2 percent of the ocean floor has been explored. Species thought long extinct still turn up every once in a while. And just last year, scientists stumbled upon a valley in New Guinea that had gone untouched by man since the dawn of time. There were plants and insects never seen before. And the animals never bothered hiding or running from the explorers. They didn’t have the experience to tell them humans were a potential threat.
But of course it’s not just plants and animals and hidden valleys that are being discovered. People are, too. And that can lead to all sorts of things.
Take, for instance, the tribe I mentioned above.
They were discovered in 1943 in one of the remotest parts of the Amazon jungle. Contact was carefully arranged. Easy at first, nothing too rash. That seems to be rule number one in those situations—don’t overwhelm the tribe.
It didn’t work. Here’s why.
The difference between these particular people and the others that pop up every few years was that their uniqueness was foundational to their belief system. They’d been so cut off from civilization for so long that they were convinced they were the only humans in the world. No one outside of their small tribe existed. And they liked that idea.
Finding out that not only were there other people in the world, there were billions of them, was too much. The trauma of learning they were not unique was so debilitating that the entire tribe almost died out. Even now, sixty-seven years later, only a few remain.
Sad, isn’t it?
I’ll admit the temptation was there for me to think of that tribe as backward and primitive for thinking such a thing. But then I realized they weren’t. When you get right down to it, their beliefs and the truth they couldn’t carry made them more human than a lot of people I know.
Because we all want to be unique.
We all want to think we’re special, needed by God and man for some purpose that will outlast us. We want to be known and remembered. We all know on a certain level that we will pass this way but once, and so we want whatever time we have in this world to matter.
That’s not a primitive notion. That’s a universal one.
I think at some point we’re all like members of that tribe. We have notions of greatness, of doing at most the impossible and at least the improbable. Of blazing a new trail for others to follow. It’s a fire that burns and propels our lives forward.
I will make a difference, we say. People will know I was here.
But then we have a moment like that tribe had, when we realize there are a lot of other people out there who are more talented and just as hungry. People who seem to catch the breaks we don’t and have the success that eludes us. And that notion that we were different and special fades as we’re pulled into the crowd of humanity and told to take our rightful place among the masses.
It’s tough, hanging on to a dream. Tough having to talk yourself into holding the course rather than turning back. Tough having to summon faith amidst all the doubt.
But I know this:
That tribe was right.
We are all unique.
We are all here for a purpose, and it’s a holy purpose. One that cannot be fulfilled by anyone else and depends upon us.
We are more than flesh and blood. More than DNA and RNA and genes and neurons. And this world is more than air and water and earth. Whether we know it or not, whether we accept it or not, our hearts are a battleground between the two opposing forces of light and dark.
One side claims we are extraordinary. The other claims we’re common.
It’s up to us to decide the victor.
Letting Go
May 10, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 2 Comments
- image courtesy of photobucket.com
The thing about Virginia is that it’s old. Very old. Old and with a history that is as much bloody and sad as it is inspiring and blessed.
Reunion
May 7, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 26 Comments
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It’s been sitting there on my desk for about three weeks now. Every once in a while I’ll move it from one side to the other in order to make room for books or other papers or, once, a baseball bat. Sometimes when it’s late I’ll pick it up and read over it. But I haven’t done anything about it. I’ve neither accepted nor declined.
I will say this—it took me by surprise. I’m not sure how I managed to forget that this year marks the twentieth since my high school graduation, but I did. Blame it on the busyness of my everyday, I suppose. I have so many gotta-do-this-now things to keep in my head that there isn’t much room for the it-can-waits. The thing about growing older is that time is no longer measured in days or weeks, but in years. I could once look back and see yesterday for what it truly was—the day before today. Now I look back and see that what I consider yesterday really happened ten years ago.
Yet there it is, a notice for my high school reunion.
And here I am, wondering if I will attend or not.
There were about a hundred students in my graduating class. Big, considering ours was a much smaller town then. I’d gone to school with the vast majority of them since the third grade, which means that during what many say are the most important years of a person’s life, they were my surrogate family. I fought with some of them, loved some of them, and shared my life with some of them.
And I grew up with all of them.
I suppose that’s why high school classmates continue to have such a hold on people years after they walk across a stage to take hold of that Get Out of Jail Free card known as the diploma. They were our first peers. By them we first tried to figure out who and what we were.
High school seems so important while we’re there; within those walls lays our entire world. Love and friendships are pledged to be never ending and strong enough to withstand any storm or circumstance.
Future plans are set in what we think is stone but is really sand.
Most of us have gone our separate ways, leaving this small town at the foot of the mountains to find paths that lead nowhere in particular but elsewhere in general. Most have moved on to cities. Others have moved on to other countries. Some have moved on from this life. I still see a few classmates around town every once in a while. We’ll chat and laugh and remember old times, and then we’ll part ways and return to our old lives until we both happen to get groceries or gas at the same time again.
Those people are memories to me. Nothing more. Whispers of a life I once had and don’t really care to remember. I am nostalgic, but not for my teenage years.
But honestly, between you and me? That’s not why I’m waffling about going. The real reason is that even though I haven’t seen most of them in two decades and even though I hated high school, what they think of me somehow still seems to matter. A lot.
And I bet I’m not the only one.
I bet right now there are more than one of my former classmates pondering the very questions I am right now—Should I go? What does it matter? Why does it matter?
That first question is still up in the air. Those last two, though? I think I have answers to those.
It isn’t the prospect of seeing them. That doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that along the highways of my life I have run upon this signpost, one that doesn’t tell me how far I have yet to go, but how far I’ve come.
Because in our own unique ways, our high school classmates are all prodigal sons and daughters who have left and vowed not to return until they’ve made something of themselves.
And so my question is this—What have I made of myself?
It’s a subject I’ll ponder before I decide if I’ll attend and after I ponder another, more important one—Why have I waited twenty years to ask myself that question?
Gaining Through Loss
May 5, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 4 Comments
Photo by Ann Voskamp
“I don’t think I want to do this anymore, Dad.”
I knew those words would come. Knew eventually that the newness, the adventure, would wear off. That the shiny knobs and the cool television and the showering attention would begin to fade and he would finally see the truth:
All of this is cool, yes. But it’s scary, too.
We’ve spent the past fifteen minutes talking about the afterward. To him, that will be the fun part. That’s when he’ll get the endless supply of cartoons and ice cream and popsicles, and the choice seat in the recliner by the window. And the fifteen minutes prior to that were spent talking about the before, about waking up early and skipping breakfast (which I also did, sign of solidarity and all).
But now the nurse just said the anesthesiologist is on his way, which means it’s no longer afterward or before, it’s now.
And now is scary…
To read the rest of this post, please follow me over to High Calling Blogs.
The Swing
May 3, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 30 Comments
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I’m pretty free during my lunch hour at work, which is usually spent running errands or roaming the majestic aisles of wood and tools at the local Lowe’s. But sometimes my mood calls for something a bit more soul-soothing and I head to the park across town. The park is a nice place. Lots of green and trees and open spaces. Ducks and fish and the back edge of the golf course. It’s quiet there. I’m relatively unbothered too, which is a plus. The squirrels and the occasional jogger are my only company.
Also the occasional child.
Yesterday I sat at a picnic table under the shade of an ancient oak and watched a child swing. His mother sat motionless in the swing beside him immersed in a novel, pausing in her reading to utter a half-hearted “That’s great!” and “Don’t go too high.”
It struck me how often I’ve done much the same. Instead of watching my kids live life, I read books on how to do the same thing. Seems odd. Especially since when it comes to living life, my kids seemed to be experts.
In fact, as I took in the sight of his little feet kicking in and out and propelling him ever upward, I decided most kids were experts at living. Common wisdom stated that was due to their utter lack of real responsibility and knowledge of the world. I guessed that’s true. But that certainly wasn’t all.
No, I thought, they knew how to live because they knew how to have fun.
I used to swing. I thought about that. Thought about the swing set we had in the backyard and the hours I’d spend on it. There was a simple sense of magic in that act, of being tethered to the earth and yet rising above it. Of leaving and coming home. And there was the sheer joy of going as high as you possibly could and then jumping free, floating in the air where there was nothing and you felt you could go forever only to land in the soft grass and laugh.
I loved swinging. And I missed it.
Of course, things were different now. I was an adult. Responsible. I had a mortgage and bills to pay. A job and a life. And when you had all of those things, you forget about the simple pleasures of childhood. You have to. There comes a time in everyone’s life when the great traffic cop of time walks by and orders you to linger no longer. “Nothing to see here,” he says. “Move along.”
And so I did and we all do.
But I wondered then.
I wondered if there was as much wisdom in the notion of growing down as there was in growing up. I wondered if the world of florescent colors that every child sees really has to gray with time and experience.
I wondered if our joy really had to be lost along with our innocence.
I wasn’t sure. But I knew I had to find out, if only a little.
“Excuse me,” I said to the boy’s mother. “If you’re not going to swing, would you mind trading me seats?”
She put her forefinger into the page of her book and looked up at me, wondering.
“Um,” she said, “okay.”
She took my seat at the picnic table and went back to novel, which from the cover told me it was a love story set in the Dark Ages. I paused to think that maybe that’s where most of us adults were, stuck in our own Dark Age of angst and desperation, searching in vain for something we thought we never had but did all along.
I swung with her boy for about ten minutes. We laughed together and raced. We saw who could dare to go higher and who lean back further.
And when I was done, when the world called back to me, I kicked one last time.
And I jumped.
This post is part of Bridget Chumbley’s blog carnival on Joy. To read more entries, please visit her site.
Going under
May 3, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 4 Comments
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Doctors and operations are unfortunately no strangers to our family, most of which have over the years involved my daughter. But last week, it was my son’s turn.
Author of Snow Day and Paper Angels (November 2011), both by FaithWords. But don't let that fool you. I'm just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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