Why do we feel such a desperate need to “connect” and “identify” with people around us. Sometimes it’s with people upon whom we have bestowed titles modern knighthood, i.e. “cool”, “interesting”, “fun”, or “Awesome” (yes, capitalized). I understand this from a playground-schoolyard level: I eat extra pickles on my Chic-Fil-A, too!! We’re best friends!
Sometimes we look for commonality where it just isn’t, though. I recently observed a conversation between my genuinely non-competitive husband and a friend of ours. This friend, much like me, loves to win. Needs to win! Neither one of us are okay with losing. We are driven by competition. If there’s a challenge involved, we will meet it. The conversation went like this:
“I’m completely non-competitive,” spake my husband.
“Seriously? So, if I said I’m going to finish reading a book before you do . . . ?” responded our friend.
“Okay,” uttered husband.
“Wow,” paused friend. “Yeah, I’m not really competitive either.”
Silence.
Expressions of befuddlement overcame all present faces. Laughter.
“Uh, yes, you are,” husband conveyed.
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
We strive to be the same. Sometimes to an unrealistic point, and it makes me wonder why? Is it rejection? Being deemed “weird” or “different” must be pretty scary stuff. We seem to spend a lot of time trying to figure out “who am I?” and answering it with pictures of other people.
I understand, really. There’s something very human about being like, liked, and alike. Fitting in feels so very good, especially when it’s people we admire.
It comforts us. We’re not Elijah. We’re not the only one left after Jezebel goes prophet hunting.
There’s someone who knows what this feels like.
I wonder if the cost is higher than we know, if compatibility requires a little bit of our uniqueness. Maybe that was a little far, a little too “piece of our soul” heavy, but we are wonderfully made! Our Creator is not like other gods! I recently read Inexpressible by Michael Card and delighted in his interpretation of the hesed mercy of God being defined and displayed by God’s infinite differentness (my word). Throughout history, God reminds people again and again that He is infinitely creative. We are born of that creativity, designed to be intricately original.
Perhaps the thing the Master Designer excluded is part of His composition, after all, negative space is often beautiful space.
I am not a poet.
The words “I am not” can rain down like damaging hail at times, breaking spirits and leaving divots on our carefully manicured personalities. How many times I’ve felt the winds of “I am not” raising a storm of discouragement that tempts me to indignantly point my finger in the face of my Creator, Job-style. Finger pointing is little more than the fruit of the Accuser; it’s me standing under the tree of knowledge and yelling, “I should be like God! Just look what a poor job He’s done!” It’s a good place to remember that there is and can only be one I AM, and it is not me. Those precious words are intended to bring peace.
I do not have to be everything. I am not supposed to do everything. I am not all-mighty, not all-powerful, not omniscient. I need. I need places in my life to be empty, to be in need, to be still. For me, at times this means to not write with the tongues of men and angels; to not be a poet.
I was at Refine: the Retreat for just a day this spring, and amid many of the wonderful conversations and refreshing walks through the location, I attended a poetry reading filled with creative wordsmiths. I love and appreciate the beauty of poetry. It has power to draw us in and calls us to explore. It can plant the emotions of the author within the soul of the reader. I love the archaeological work of digging for clues in metered word.
I delight in the meditative souls that pen and pare raw thought and feeling into flowing, gloaming “Poem”.
Some of my favorite words ever written were from the hearts of poets:
“As the rain and snow falls down . . “ Isaiah 55
“I lift my eyes unto the hills . . .” Psalm 121
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” – Robert Frost
What I discovered at that poetry reading is not an answer to who I am. I didn’t leave with a shiny new desire to write meter and rhyme. Nor was there a revelation about some deeply hidden skill or natural bent toward rhythm that I never knew was tucked away. Instead, I found something just as precious: an answer to the question who am I not?
I am not a poet.
And I am completely all right with that.