life | Matt W Cook

May 28, 2010

Eating Less

I have a forty minute drive to work. Forty minutes on a good day. Which, to be honest, is most days because I work nights and only creepy vampires like myself are on the highway at 11pm on a weeknight. The drive used to seriously bother me. Inefficient, y’know? Forty minutes of doing nothing. So I started getting audiobooks and throwing them on my phone to listen to. I consumed the entire Harry Potter series (fun), a little less than half of His Dark Materials (dumb) and part two of A Song of Ice and Fire (epic). I figured so much consumption of fiction would help keep my own creative juices flowing. Clever, eh?

Not so much, it turns out.

Driving was my only moment of solitude. I live with people and tasks. When I’m at home I’m with the family. When I’m out I’m with friends. When I at the library or work, I have tasks. Only in the car am I alone and idle. And that’s a good thing.

Creative Benefits of Solitude

Your ideas can ferment. Like a fine wine, ideas are never good as soon as they are mixed. They need to sit and grow and mingle within your head. Solitude lets them do this without allowing outside pollutants in.

Your mind can rest. Sometimes you’re just too tired to think. A bit of solitude is a break from stress, worry and tasks. And when you rest, you always tend to work better.

Your stress can dissipate. Not only can you rest, but when you are alone you can see your stresses a little clearer and they usually tend to get smaller for the seeing. Stress fades when we are not continually reminded of the things to be stressed about.

You can hear the Muse. She speaks softly, after all.

March 17, 2010

Keeping Your Options Open

A while ago a great poem was posted on one of my favorite blogs. Here it is:

The small man

builds cages for everyone

knows.

While the sage,

who has to duck his head

when the moon is low,

keeps dropping keys all night long

for the

beautiful

rowdy

prisoners.

Basically, the poet is saying that small, insignificant people make it their business to disable and contain others. Maybe they do this so others won’t notice how small and useless they are. But the great man, the sage so large that he needs to duck when the moon is low, makes it his business to set these people free. Nice thoughts, eh?

You know who is a great man? Jesus. So why, then, do people assume that follow him means a limiting of freedom?

We’ve all heard people say stuff like, “I wish I had had more fun before I became a Christian.” Implying, of course, that being a Christian is no fun. And people have reason to say that, don’t they? They way many religious people talk, you get the impression that following Jesus is about refusing to do fun stuff.

But I think it’s not like that. It seems to me that following Jesus actually opens your options. Jesus frees you to do wild things. Jesus freed Ruth to get a bunch of cash, head off to Pakistan with two little kids and throw the money and love at widows and orphans. Jesus enables us to create and enjoy things in such a better light and for such a better purpose. Jesus adds depth to all our relationships and fun. Jesus frees me to be unconventional and counter-cultural as I try and figure out how to show him off in the way I live. Jesus is the ultimate great sage, dropping keys that open the cages of every single problem we have created for ourselves. Yay for Jesus!

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August 28, 2009

Bits of Flesh

var addthis_pub=”4a0af351783743a8″; It was the bits of flesh I noticed first.

The DVP was jammed almost as soon as we got on it. Sirens wailed in the distance behind us, coming quickly closer. Two police cars passed us on either shoulder.
“Car accident,” I muttered to Ruth and Jodi. We were taking Jodi to the Greyhound station downtown. She was going back to Quebec after staying with us for about a week and a half.
The traffic started to move and funnel into the left lane. I saw the police cars and looked for a sign of accident. The police were moving around quickly, putting up that yellow DO NOT CROSS tape and talking on radios. A couple cars had been pulled over to the side, but they didn’t seem damaged at all. There was no broken glass. No tire marks. I didn’t notice anything.

Until I noticed the bits of flesh.

Then it all came in quick. There was a body lying under a white sheet, bare feet exposed. I turned away quickly and felt sick. The girls gasped. It was then that I noticed where we were. Right under the Millwood bridge. Suicide.

I can’t find anything on the Internet about it. Who jumped? Why? Anyone care? What pushes someone so far? What makes a man think that non-life is better than life?

Ruth wondered aloud about what the jumper’s relatives must think now. Had they cared about him during life? Would they feel any guilt now that he was gone?

Depression is a dangerous thing. It’s too strong to fight with simple words. “Cheer up!” does nothing.

Toronto is a strange place. The highest and the lowest. The richest and the poorest. The happiest and the jumpers. What potential a large city has! What opportunity lies in dense population! What if we loved? What if we cared? What if we treated each other in a way that made it so there were no jumpers? What if we lived like Jesus told us to? What if we followed him?

Are we more than bits of flesh?

The next bridge down had a suicide net on it. I heard it cost about $2.5 million. Someone once commented that the money would be better spent on social services and suicide support lines. I doubt that would help. You know what would help? You know what would bring the suicide rate down? You know what would have stopped that nameless man from jumping?

Love. If someone loved him and knew his name. If we would just love people – all people – wouldn’t the world be better? What would it be like if Christ-love infected us all? What would it be like if we were all willing to love the unloved?

Paradise on earth?