I know it has been a while since my last post. A year maybe. Or two? I don't even know. All I know is that it is 1:23 in the morning, and I want nothing more than to share a part of me with the world.
I started this piece about a year ago as a few thoughts on how I hate breaking the many promises I make. Sometimes I get so frustrated with myself that I'm tempted to ban promises from my life completely. For just a second, I thought that might solve all my problems, but I know as soon as I thought it that I couldn't believe it.
When I was on my LDS mission in Mexico, they asked us to contact ten people a day and share a brief ten- to twenty-second message about any principle of the gospel of Christ. Many missionaries refused to do it. Some would go weeks without talking to anyone, but I just couldn't let myself sit back every single day and do absolutely nothing. So instead, I gave it everything I had to talk to those random people. With time, I came to revere those sets of twenty seconds, those brief instances, because for just a moment, they stopped, looked me in the eyes, and listened. I must have talked to hundreds of people. Now, do I really believe they still remember exactly what I said to them? Of course not, but I do believe that somehow each contact, each word of hope and encouragement made a small ripple that would disturb the still seas of mediocrity and fear.
I am compelled to believe that somehow, no matter who we are, how we worship, or where we are in this world that every promise we keep can be a force for good, for trust, and for humanity.
May we keep our promises and heal the world one ribbon at a time. Enjoy.
Of Promises and
Celestial Comets
I told her I’d make them dinner. That’s all I did. You
wouldn’t think it would be a big deal. You might think it’s only a little food.
All you have to do is buy something edible at the store, and maybe turn on the
stove or even the oven if you’re feeling gutsy. I mean, what’s the worst that
could happen? Well, that’s just it. The minute those words leave your lips, “I will cook dinner for you,” something in the cosmos reacts and a simple dinner becomes so
much more complicated than that. Everything changes
because you made a promise.
A promise by itself is harmless. It’s nothing really. Just
something pretty and fun to think about like the gold watch you would
definitely buy if you had the money. But when you throw people into the
mix . . . well, it’s like I said. Complicated.
Because what happens if you change your mind? Or you
remember you don’t know how to cook anything? Or they decide they don’t want
your dinner because you only cook with SPAM and they hate SPAM. What happens if
a comet falls from the sky and into your kitchen diminishing it to a gaping
hole in the ground? It’s hard to keep promises you make with people because you
never know what’s going to happen. To them. To you. To the kitchen. There are
just too many variables. And that’s for a small promise. I mean how hard is it
really to make a dinner for someone? Not hard at all. Yeah, until you promise
you will, and then the world caves in on every food-making utensil you own.
Sometimes I wonder
why I do it. I don’t know why I promise people things I don’t know I will be
able to do. Really, what was I thinking? Dinner? I could have bailed on the
whole thing and saved the world its cosmic trouble. I could have easily fled
the country. Or maybe hijacked a space shuttle. I mean my grandparents live in
Houston, how hard could it be? Or I could have taken the less dramatic route
and told those girls I got a sudden bout of Lyme disease. I mean that stuff
gets around, right?
But the truth is that I didn’t do any of those things. I
didn’t run, commit any felonies, or contract any surprise infectious diseases.
I bought the food, cooked it on the day I said I would, and we all ended up
having an enjoyable time.
I kept my promise.
I just feel sorry for the family of four that got the stray
comet.
◊
I think I was six or so the first time I saw the ribbons. My
sisters, 4 and 8 years old, were in the other room fighting about who knows
what. Probably Barbie dolls and the unalienable right to equal room space. They
were probably dividing the room down the middle with scotch tape at that very
second. I don’t hold it against them though. It could have just as easily been
me in there duking it out.
There was something special about that moment though. I was
certainly glad not to have to worry about whatever they were yelling about. Honestly,
the only unalienable rights I was concerned with at that time were the rights
to eat food off the floor and sneak fudge cookies at night when my mom was
asleep. But that day, I had a thought I’d never had before, and it wasn’t about
sisters, fudge cookies, or even floor food. I realized that I was tired of fighting. Tired of hearing
it, seeing it, and doing it. It was somehow everywhere all the time. And I
asked myself a question: “What if no one ever fought again?”
It was a question
made out of the curiosity and naivety of a young mind. It was a foolish and
ridiculous thought, something that can never happen. But I didn’t understand that.
So I humored myself and pictured a world where my parents never fought and
comets kept to themselves in the outer realm of the universe. And then I did
something I don’t think I was really even conscious of.
I opened up the heavy screen door and walked outside to the
back porch. Sunlight probably shined through the holes in the wooden overhang
my dad made when he still lived with us. I walked out past the porch and wind
chime into the Texas sun where St. Augustine grass flowed like furry, green seas
from my feet to my childhood swing set and the fifty-foot cotton tree in the
corner of the back yard.
I knelt in the grass, dug a hole, and pulled a bright red
ribbon from the skin in my wrist. But it wasn’t the cheap stuff you get at
Walmart; it was the kind made of fine silk meant for kings. I pulled it out and
it held fast to me, like a piece of yarn pulled from a spool. I marveled at its
brilliance and workmanship, and my eyes danced at its grandeur. If my mother
would have looked outside, she would have seen nothing but her little boy
playing with invisible string and invisible dirt, and it was alright like that
because no one needed to see to make it real. As I put that ribbon in the Earth
and covered it with dirt, I made the first promise I never had to make. I told myself
that I would do what I could to make it all alright, to make the world stop
fighting forever, and I meant it somehow.
◊
Well, life went on, I got older, and I completely forgot
about that ribbon, even though it stuck to me like one of those pieces of food
on your face that you can’t feel, but everyone can see. You forget about it
because you can’t see it, but no one ever says anything because, really, it’s
your face and not theirs and you have every right to have food stuck to it if
you want.
You see I didn’t understand something about promises back
when I was six. Once you say you’ll do something, you can’t undo what you said you’d do. It can’t be
reversed. Like I said before, when you make a promise to someone else, to
anyone or anything else, something changes. You connect to them. Forever. Then
you have two choices: you keep your promise or you break it. And when you break
it, it’s broken.
Broken like men
and women that work their whole lives for nothing but food and hope.
Broken like
the soft, still bodies falling from two torn towers mixed with blood and jet
fuel.
Broken like
good men who once fought for their country.
All those broken promises dangle from our arms and legs and
curl around our bodies like overgrown vines that have never been trimmed. I
think they’ll wrap around us like mummies until we can’t see or move or feel
much of anything at all—only broken ribbons and the occasional comet.
◊
We do try to avoid
the comets, though. Some people spend their entire lives looking up to see if
they can dodge a few, but you can’t dodge what you can’t see. Sometimes they
just come out of nowhere and hit you square in the face while you’re cleaning
the fish tank. Then, the next thing you know, you’re lying on your back on the
burnt remains of what was your beautiful house, and the charred corpses of your
fish are strewn about you like the glitter on a first-grade valentine. And the
only thing you can do is look up at the bright stars and wonder, “What the heck?”
“I can’t come back, Alex. I can’t until next year. I just
don’t think this is gonna work,” my girlfriend said. Her black hair wrapped
around her delicate features, and her eyes were somehow bright in the darkness.
It would be alright, I thought. We dreamed together, planned a future together,
and most of all we loved each other.
“I’ll always love you,” she told me once. I believed her
then. I believed her because people don’t say things they don’t mean. They
don’t say they’ll do things they don’t intend to do. I suppose I thought that
that one promise could bind us together, and I hoped that it would make us
something beautiful.
But always is a long time.
She lived in another country, and the travel costs and phone
bills were starting to add up. Even then, I told her I’d make it work. I had
spent at least a thousand dollars on that relationship, but for real love,
money was nothing to me for her, so what was a few thousand more? What was everything I had for her? I was willing
to do anything. I’d make it alright because I
loved her, too. So she paused and said, “Alex, I don’t love you anymore,” and time
laughed in my face as the seconds of the world thundered on.
Just like that, the comet had come and gone, and there was
nothing I could do but stare up at the sky and wonder.
◊
Sometimes I look down at the broken ribbons attached to me,
and it’s a hideous sight. I look like some hybrid freak between a Furby and
Medusa’s head. Some aren’t my fault. Others are. But together they weigh me
down and steal my freedoms so that I can’t even eat off the floor anymore. Then,
I look down at that forgotten, unbroken ribbon that is still connecting me to
the earth and to the world, and it looks the same as when I buried it in the
ground years ago. I feel shame and I wonder why it’s not like all the rest.
That’s when I see another ribbon.
This one is thick and strong and comes out of my chest and
up into the sky until it disappears among the clouds. I’ve made so many
promises to God throughout my life, but I meant that one more than any other I
have ever made. I was on my knees beside my bed that night aching with the pain
of a dying man for the most precious part of me. Some people don't believe
you can break a soul, yet mine sat cracked and crumbling between my fingertips.
I cried out to my God because I didn’t know what else to do, so he reached down
through the planets and comets and all that cosmic crap that makes our lives
miserable and he healed me.
And as tears
flowed quietly down my cheeks, I promised would serve him.
Forever.
I said it
and I meant it. No one else made me do it. So we did the unthinkable, Him and I. We made a
promise. And I witnessed the creation of immortality before my very eyes. Now,
that one promise means more to me than any other that I have ever made because
even when I break my promises with Him, I look up in incomprehensible awe at
that ribbon that still shines like a burning pillar in the night. I look up because
when I do, He helps me see hidden ribbons I made long ago. They are just as
perfect and unbroken as the one He made for me. And every time, I don’t
understand how I’ve never seen them before. He opens my eyes, and ribbons, like
the ones from that dinner I made, are shooting all over.
To the left.
To the right.
To my
friends.
To my
family.
To people
I’ve never met.
To myself.
They shoot in all
directions, and they all come from me to them. I see theirs too. And it’s
beautiful how connected we all really are.
◊
It’s in moments like this that I think maybe one day time
will turn back, back to the day when that little boy made a pact to the world
to never give up on it, on us—even though it couldn’t actually mean anything or
be more than just a boy thinking he can fix the unfixable. But maybe something
about that moment is worth looking at, not because of him, but because of all
the little boys and girls throughout all time—every movement and every step,
every piercing laughter and abrupt moment of sacred stillness.
Maybe time will remember and we’ll finally understand. We’ll
stretch out ribbons across the world and there will be so many that they will
be capable of anything. They will heal our deepest pains and wipe away our
children’s tears. They’ll encircle us all but in a new way that reaches up to
the stars, and the comets will move backward up from the ground and back into
the atmosphere.
Maybe time will slow. It will slow until the clouds are
still in reverence and the sunlight flowing through them makes paths in the
air. Just for a moment. Only for a moment.
And maybe it will look up at the sky in awe as we rise into
the air connected to a single ribbon held gently by the hand of God. We’ll
rise, but we’ll rise together interconnected forever by unbreakable threads
that will stream out behind each of us in trails of fire and ice and glory.
As we break free from the atmosphere into the infinite
confines of the universe, I wonder if to the stars, we’ll look like
comets.
For the sake of my kitchen, I sure hope so.
