On Practicality

I am a theorizer through and through - which is okay if that fact is balanced with a healthy relationship to the practical parts of life. I am wondering why I have such a joy to sit around and pontificate about the nature of the human condition and make abstractions about how what we really need to do is start loving each other and how people are really good deep down if we look for it, and yet, when it comes to waking up every morning to find a job, I am painfully far from the mark of a man. Though reading a book such as Marion's The Idol and Distance is an excruciatingly complex endeavor, and mind melting one at that, it is nonetheless a true pleasure for me. When it's time to consider picking up The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, though, I begin to tremble with nervousness and a little bit of boredom.

Let's face the facts:

I am twenty-three years old. I have a Bachelor's Degree. I am a Christian. I live with my parents. And I, basically, have no job. Also, I try to ruthlessly assert myself as a man. When it comes down to it, though, my status in life is little better than a high schooler.

This is distressing to me.

I have always wanted to get married and have a family and be a good man. I want to believe in the equality of all people and their respective, objective importance in the world. These are lofty goals for someone who can't even determine to get out of personal debt - goals that I am worthy of, even in the slightest way.

I sit around, day after day, expecting my parents to take care of me and offer me good after good, maintaining that I will look for a job "when I'm ready." Wow. What is manly about that? How can I expect to be a family man, a provider, when I can't even begin to provide for myself? How, in the past, could I have dated women and asked them to take a chance on me that, in a couple years, I would get it together well enough to the point where I could make a Mrs. of them? What boldness. What arrogance. What entitlement!

I write all this from a place of great fatigue, having slept a mere hour and a half last night, so even as I am writing I am finding myself getting lost in my thoughts and my inability to express the nature of my predicament very well. It basically comes down to this: I need to get it together. I can't wait around any longer until a Job falls into my lap; I just need a job. Any job. If I were able to just begin to feed myself without my parents help, I would be making a step in the right direction - toward manhood. Toward courage.

I'm too intelligent to be in the situation that I'm in. I don't mean this to say that I'm uber-intelligent, but the facts are that I'm college educated and lack the practical experience in life to own that I can't take care of myself and that this is unacceptable. Again, how can I begin to think about being someone's husband or father when I'm still a child in my parents' house?

They are wonderful people, my parents, but I can't sit around and let them be mommy and daddy forever. I can't keep playing the constant mind game with them and myself that one of us has to be in control or have higher ground. They have provided me with a home, for now, to get my act together so I can grow up. Why have I not leapt at this opportunity? In a lot of way, I think I am more of a man than ever before, but in the area of self-actualization by the grace of God (paradoxical, perhaps unorthodox), I, again, am painfully far from the mark - sinner that I am.

No more, says I. This is where this needs to stop. I should be joyfully embracing this time instead of shying from it or thinking of it as a pain in the ass (which it is). I have an opportunity to become a man and work through things that I don't want to do. I can do something for myself. I can take care of myself in a very practical way that will most likely lead to many other things falling into place with increasing ease (or at least less resistance on my part). This is the first big hurdle, the first big step, and it's probably the scariest. Again, I find myself in a crucial place where I can either rise to glory, or I can fall to the pits of despair and become like my father who never let anyone tell him what to do and hardened his heart against his family, his life, and God. I don't want any of that. God, help me.

It's time to figure this out and make something happen.

I love deeply, and it really would be a shame if I never got to share that with someone just because I refused to grow up and get a job.