I suppose the 38th year is an important milestone, just to say that anyone who’s reached it has been an ‘adult’ for 20 years. Or anyone who’s 38 has been 18 years old for 20 years now. Or something like that.
I don’t think I shared this yet, but I’ve also been notified by a certain app of reminders for, what, a couple of weeks now – to look at certain mindsets that no longer serve me or are dragging me down. These notifications have been a great influence behind what I’ve also been writing recently, especially in that topic of repentance – or, technically, making changes to the way I think.
So far, I’ve been trying to jump back into how I was thinking when I was 18 – what was built up in my mind until it was my turn to ‘come of age’. Of course, without any written records of my memories back in 2002, or without any memory of where I may have stashed any of it, I’m only speculating on what I could have been thinking back then. I suppose I could go as far as to ask people I’ve known since 2002, but I doubt I’d find any sort of satisfaction from any observations they may have had. Or I don’t know. Really, it’s been 20 years.
No I think I ought to just be thinking on my mindsets as of today, and from there, if there’s anything solid I remember from 20 years ago, then it’d follow. Yeah, I think what’s more important is to do some sort of restore point now, after almost 20 years of literal adulting (and I guess it’s pretty funny that we only came up with the word ‘adulting’ in my 30’s).
But here’s the thing – I don’t know where to start this venture of a restore point. I say this because there are certain things I don’t think I should be sharing online. Which already says a lot about my way of thinking, this far into my life. You can probably call me a very private person, even if I’d like to believe I’m a very ‘real’ sort of person, the same way the Lardizabal family – or, my Dad and his siblings, at the very least – are very ‘real’, in that if you didn’t know them and if you heard how they talked, you’d think they were mad, when really, they’re.. ‘passionate’, as I’d like to put it.
Maybe this is an underlying reason for why I’m quite insistent in maintaining these posts of a thousand words a day – they may not necessarily be intentionally geared towards curating my personality and my mental structure, but hey, at least anyone who cares has a database which comprises of at LEAST 107,000 words so far to construct a hefty, more legitimate analysis of my thoughts. It’s all in what I say, what I don’t say, what I choose to say, what I choose not to share.
And here we are again, with yet another reason to jump into data science – maybe I could do that on myself, or on my posts – set up some sort of program that would collate all these words and determine mean, median and mode, obviously among other things.
Off the bat I’m pretty sure Jesus is going to pop up a LOT in the resultant analysis. And, well, I know that there was a part of me in these recent years that didn’t necessarily want to say His name… it’s not that I no longer believe in Him, but I had – and actually, I still do have the mindset and belief that Christ will certainly make Himself known in and through the literal lives of each and every one who has given Him even the slightest consideration, ushering them to salvation (i.e. our acceptance of the absolute proclamation of Christ as our righteousness, resulting in our being brought to life, as new creations alive now and in eternity, full reconciliation accomplished by the Son of God, and Him alone). We could say our words, and we are certainly ready to testify when our faith is questioned and when people are curious, but that’s the thing – people will be made curious, not necessarily from our choice of words, but they would see how we live, and move, and have our being.
But that’s the thing – I said ‘not necessarily from our choice of words’, implying that words still have their place in our testimony. I used to say our literal lives are our message, but it does help to know the right way to listen and to speak out the Message when we are asked.
I think I can go deeper – I subscribe to these sorts of beliefs because deeper inside of me, I enjoy discoveries. I enjoy learning things those in my circle of influence haven’t learned – or, at least I haven’t SEEN learning, anyway. For some reason I remember my brothers being an influence to me, to be ahead – that is, to find things out before other people do… possibly for selfish reasons, sure, but really also for the rush of just knowing. Being ahead. I guess that’s why I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from Dad was to take one step back to bound back two, or two billion steps forward.
It’s also probably why a good part of the Gospel according to how I see it places a significant amount of focus on pointing out how Christ loved us first. Although I do know that He HAD to love us first because there was no sense in the acts of ‘love’ we were doing in a futile attempt to reach Him, I suppose part of me finds it absolutely fascinating that He made the first move. He made the pre-emptive strike, the first blow being the literal death blow for Death himself – Matt Maher sings He crushed death by (His) death, that we would ‘come awake, come awake.’
It’s also probably why – real talk – a part of me is bothered seeing anyone and everyone in my ‘friends’ lists on social media travelling again, exploring again, discovering again. I’m happy for them, but due to my own choices regarding this entire ‘pandemic’, I’m not necessarily feeling okay having to see them go forth while I’m being tied down.
So it appears I’m happy when I’m fresh, but I tend to be moody when I’m stagnant. Or something like that.
Clearly, there’s a lot for me to discover and explore… but it isn’t out there, in the snowy peaks or the tropical beaches… not yet, anyway. I’m giving myself the rest of this week to go deeper within. If there’s any travelling to be done outward, perhaps I need to take some more journeys within… and thank God, I couldn’t think of anyone better but my Creator to join me in these moments.
Happy Monday, folks. God bless us all.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
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