josh Allan

Should be the name of my new band.

Over the past couple years, I’ve been kind of depressed. And it’s not just “Oh, I think I might be a little sad today” depressed, but like “I lost my job and my dog died and my money got flushed down the stock market” depressed. It’s terribly situational and nearsighted of me and I know it, but it seems like the hopeful, faith-ful piece of me has been slowly dying of life-cancer over the past couple years.

“I’m sorry son, you’ve got cancer-of-the-life. Life is slowly eating you alive.”

I’ve been on this honesty project for the past couple years, trying to get comfortable sitting side by side on the couch with my true, honest, gut, gross emotions. You might think that is an easy task, after all, nobody is asking me to cuddle with them or anything. Just sit. Maybe look over and smile once in awhile.

But it’s not easy.

See, I’ve been subliminally taught my whole life, via “christian” indoctrination and religious osmosis, that it’s only OK to “feel” up to a point. If you “cross the line” into that dangerous, hopeless territory, then you’ve obviously lost all faith, and probably your salvation to boot, come to think of it.

So it’s been an arduous journey to get “back to me” as they say. maybe i just say that. But josh Allan & the honesty project has been ongoing for a couple years, and I almost feel like it’s coming to a close. I feel like I’m pretty much able now to be honest with what I think about any given subject: any doubts, any misgivings, failings, apprehensions, uprisings, or general lack of faith anymore.

But the trick now, I realized this morning whilst in the shower, is for me to realize how to be content within my honesty.

I’m not good at the contentment shtick anyway, and the whole “being honest” thing just kind of screws it for me. I take a good honest look at the world and I see a planet that’s going to hell. Nobody gives a shit, and we even elect leaders who simply seem to exacerbate our problems. I watch movies like “Syriana” and “The Constant Gardner” as part of my ongoing honesty project education and I leave them feeling more like dying than living. The world around me, around us, is royally fucked up. It’s shifting and crumbling under the weight of its own despair and nobody even notices, much less cares.

I am one person amongst the millions, hoping there are others like me, with their own honesty projects, willing to take a good hard look inside themselves and at the world and see things as they really are. I am one person, but I want so desperately to make a difference, to somehow help, to clean up just a little bit of the mess.

And that’s why I can’t be content. Maybe I’ll never be. Maybe that’s OK. Who knows.

NOTE:
(The concepts found in this post contributed strongly to the writing in my first book, blur: finding jesus in a fuzzy world. Download your free copy here!)