“Some days you just go through the motions,” I thought as I laid down for bed on a foam pad on the living room floor of our bunkhouse. I was four weeks into a seasonal job hanging Christmas lights in Salt Lake City, Utah. We didn't enjoy the work much, but it was fast money to live on for the winter.
My mind wandered a lot then to the Summer that had recently ended, most of which I had spent in Southeast Alaska. I thought of my friend Lauren, and how her laughter would split the conversations we'd had. I thought of my friend Ben, and the absurd imagery evoked by the vulgar jokes we cracked. I remembered Buzz, an inspiring woman with whom I had only spent a handful of hours with before she had continued on her road trip through Alaska. These memories had recently caused me to smile, or even chuckle out loud, in grocery store aisles and on top of roofs as I stapled wires to shingles. This night on the floor of the bunkhouse, they made me feel lonely.
I was thankful that a few good friends from Alaska were still there with me in Utah. Our fraternal bond eased the shock of an unfamiliar environment and an isolating schedule, and provided a brief window of companionship at the end of a long day of hanging lights on roofs and trees.
I didn't like this job. So why did I work for anything other than what I cared for? In review, I assess that I cared more about hard work in general than choosing a specific field of expertise. In my mind, there was an equation between almost any sort of work, for now, and freedom. I didn't just need money, I needed a sense of making my own way in the world. My self-reassurance was that at some point, this shallow, lesser tributary I was floating down would merge with the long, steady river of a career.
I wanted to eventually write and make environmental art for video games. Something that would let the abstraction in my head take a concrete form for others to experience, and allow me to give what I believed was my greatest gift - a fun way for others to learn. Within the easily imagined settings of games, players encounter and navigate the troubles of imagined characters. Like any good book or film, this escape is only temporary, but it is what we return with that matters. Within the games I wanted to make, players could return to their own troubled Earth with new thoughts and feelings. Whether light, dark, profound or absurd, they could return with a new lens to look through. I wanted to create simulations that would allow for discovery of the self.
But as late as I was planning on starting this career, I wondered if I would be able to reach as far and as effectively as I wanted to. I was afraid I would fall short of my own mark, to say nothing of the mark my peers had set. I worried that I was drifting too slowly towards the river. And so at length, I anxiously fell into a fatigued sleep that October evening.
~
"Maybe we all went wrong when we left our maternal Gods behind," Dad said over the phone. "When we turned our eyes to some imaginary world after life; the idea of a heaven - I think that's when we forgot to value this Earth we're on right now, and treat it with the care and respect it needs to nurture us in return."
I nodded empathetically as I drove through Salt Lake City on a cool November evening. "We didn't all forget though,” I said. “That's why we're having this conversation now - because you and I still value our connection to the Earth."
I checked my gas meter. I'd accidentally missed my turn to the Barnes and Noble, but was still driving aimlessly talking to my Dad. “Values don't necessarily save you from being a hypocrite,” I thought to myself as I pulled into a parking lot to turn around. I was wasting gas while talking to my Dad about how humans are screwing the Earth.
Man's place in nature was a recurring theme in Dad and I's conversations over the years, but this was the first time I could remember religion being thrown into the mix. Other topics we had already covered that evening included the fate of the human race, morality, and reincarnation - The sort of topics that could exhaust you if either party was too heavy-handed in their talk. Dad had been doing pretty good so far this night though. He expressed his thoughts on each topic in a concise way, and left his ideas open to interpretation - “Nobody’s got all the answers,” he’d say.
The notable exception within this long phone conversation had occurred when we discussed the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. On this topic, his spoken judgement was so imposing that I’d instinctively placed my head in my hand. Once we’d moved on from that sad subject, the talk had taken a pleasant turn.
“Well Dad, that reminds me of a recurring thought I’ve had lately.” I cleared my throat before continuing. This was gonna be a long one.
“...I was watching the remake of Cosmos on Netflix, and - anyway, I learned that Carl Sagan believed that life’s a one-and-done sort of thing. There was no coming back, to his mind. And his protégé, the host of the Cosmos remake - Neil deGrasse Tyson’s his name - he was agreeing with Sagan’s view, but added that - even if we do come back, we’re never really the same ‘us,’ as before.”
“I see,” Dad said.
“But this is what got me thinking,” I said, “that that’s the case each day of our lives. Every minute, even - we’re always growing or decaying in some physical and mental sense. Hopefully we’re growing spiritually, too - and so anyhow, I guess all we can do is try to grow for the better. And that’s easier with people who care about you and want to see you succeed, like you and the rest of my family do for me.”
Now I was the one getting heavy-handed. But my Dad sounded pleased with my outlook, and told me he loved me. I replied the same, and told him I needed to get off the phone. It was time to go inside a bookstore to use its internet connection, and look for a new job.