In So Many Ways
I also recall feeling strangely old, wistful, and, frankly, sad before and after watching the band. Okay, watching isn't exactly the right word. You have to be an active participant at a Bad Religion show. You don't simply watch them play. You sing along. You mosh if you want (I was, perhaps, one body away from the band at this show). But you don't idly watch a punk rock show. You get thrown around. It's youthful fun.
Living in Bowling Green, Ohio, at the time, I was with the girl I later married (and was actually still living in her mom's house). I had a job now for a few months. I eventually spent 16 years at that job. That feeling I had before and after the show stayed with me. I felt incredibly alone, even though I was with a girl. I felt far away from where I wanted to be, even though I was seeing a band I wanted to see for years. Something wasn't right.
I never did figure out what that feeling was. It had no name, but it stuck in me, and I can easily remember that feeling even today as I sit and write this. I should have felt very different. I was young and had a girlfriend and was having fun. But something was wrong. During times like that, I run out of words. During the best moments of my life, I often felt like that. Why? Because something isn't right. Perhaps what I felt was best summed up in one of the album's tracks, like Strange Denial. Or maybe I didn't feel like myself, like I wasn't The Same Person. Okay, that was a stretch. haha
No Substance is not considered one of Bad Religion's finest albums. But it is a sentimental favorite for me. I thought it was fantastic and fun and daring all at once. True, some tracks are stinkers. (The band was, after all, still without Brett Gurewitz, one of the principal songwriters.) But the good ones more than made up for those. In So Many Ways was one of the shining tracks, and it is fittingly the last track, as it talks about the futility of life. It talks about eternity, which lasts so long in comparison. Listening to it made me feel closer to the rest of humanity and also made me feel hopeless. And that's probably why I felt so lost and alone while sitting in that coffee shop in Ann Arbor. I was not living the life I wanted to live. I was so far away from my God and where He was leading me and had no idea how to get back. I spent the better part of the next two decades toiling and feeling the lack of Him. I knew I was missing out on something great, the replacement for which souring in my stomach. But I didn't know how to simply go back and do what I knew to do. I felt stuck. And I wasn't even 21 years old.
I don't know when I made the decision to come back to God. Maybe it happened gradually. I knew some things had to go, like how I was drinking. But I knew I had to make my way back to Him. Some very hard years followed that decision. The devil withstood me, knocked me down, kicked me around. It was ugly. But, here I am today, closer to God. I'm not where I should be, but I'm much closer than that young man in that coffee shop who felt so utterly lost and alone all those years ago.
Listening to this album removed from that era, I wish I could have sat down and talked with myself back then, told myself to go back, find a way back to the girl I clearly loved, and walk with God again. Find a better way. Cus the road I was on wasn't the right one. Would I have listened? I don't know.
What is the best thing to do once you realize you wasted your time and effort on something you'll never get back, something completely futile? The best thing, even though you realize the great waste you incurred, is to go the right way, do the right thing, be the person you are supposed to be. I can't offer any other advice for myself or anyone else (if anyone even reads here). Take the lesson, give the rest of what you have to God, and watch Him do something astounding with it. Take your regret over the past and throw it into something you will never regret. If it's not possible to go back to where you got off track, start where you are now. Amen?
Did God punish me for departing from Him? He didn't have to. The world does that. Being away from God is punishment enough, as I felt a great and horrible chasm between us. I was saved, but I was lost. The prodigal son story would not be a bad comparison. The lost sheep is another. All I know is I will never, as long as there is breath still in my lungs, depart from God again. I may fail for a while, but I will continue down this road I am on. I can live through some hard things being close to God, but I won't do life without Him again. I learned that lesson — in so many ways — and will preach it to others if they will listen. Heck, even if they won't listen.
Take care, everyone.
***
Lyrics:
Drifting as the leaves start to fall
Unfazed by rugosity, the objects yield to gravity
And depict the destiny of us all
No one really knows why we die
No one gets a break so we try
Ignoring mortality, we worship mediocrity
In so many ways we live to follow the sun
In so many ways we exalt and fail as one
In so many ways we want so bad to be done
In so many ways we show our pain in unison
Something in you is busy counting the days
Blind to virtuosity, ignorant of your sanctity,
Revealing you, in so many ways
In so many ways we live to follow the sun
In so many ways we exalt and fail as one
In so many ways we want so bad to be done
In so many ways we show our pain in unison
***
After much thought, I see how my programming and Cindy's meshed, and it wasn't necessarily good. All human beings are programmed to varying degrees by different dogmas. Though I earnestly and genuinely cared for her, I can see how the interaction of our individual programs led to unhealthy outcomes for me and possible for her. I can write more about this but have said much already. I care for her and wish her the best, and I think I always will. This goes without saying. Having said that, I did not behave according to my programming entirely in my dealings with her. She was very much the exception to the rule, which I cannot state enough. That fact reveals more about how I felt about her than anything else. I literally changed my behavior for her. That gives me hope that I don't always have to live according to my destructive, counter-productive programming. I can't stress how much of a big deal that is. Amen.
What no one saw and no one knew was how much I loved her. For me to do those things she asked me to do (as well as I did), such as leaving her alone and giving her time and space, was a miracle and testament to how much I loved her. Little did I realize she had no intention of coming back to me. I was merely assisting her in going a different direction (and, thus, ruining my chance to be with her). But that is love, too, because I helped her attain what she wanted and what would make her happy, and through a respectful ritual of distance. I learned to love a different way, and I'm grateful for that. That experience also taught me my strengths and weaknesses and other ways love presents itself. Though I did not get the girl, I gained incredible knowledge about something we all think we know — love. I'm not commending myself but simply recognizing something critical and important happened. Even though something may seem like a dead end, we can still gain clarity and understanding from it. The outcome was out of my hands and was probably foreordained, but the true value may have been what I learned. Again, amen.
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