Did I Listen to Pop Music Because I Was Unhappy, Or Was I Unhappy Because I Listened to Pop Music?

I’ve been having a tough time lately. There’s really no better way to say it than that. I’ve been discouraged, depressed at points, and really just at a loss about a whole lot of things. And, appropriately enough, I’m not very happy about it. I’ve had a bunch of “blah” days, and a few more that were much worse. I spent some time thinking about whether or not I wanted to write something up about this and post it here. Obviously I have decided to do so, largely because I think it would be dishonest not to. I’ve been trying to present a sort of broad picture of my life and work here, using mostly anecdotes and personal interactions to paint, what is hopefully, a complex and diverse picture encompassing this place and these people. Without posts like these I fear that this story would be incomplete.

I’m not really going to go into a lot of specifics about what it is that is making me feel this way right now. Instead I want to talk about the impact that these events have had on my time here. I was catching up with a friend the other day when he asked me if I was ever going to come home. It was a hard question. The truth was, I desperately wanted to go home. I desperately wanted to be in a place that was my own and with people that loved me. But my response was something like, “No, I’m not coming home for at least six more months.” The thing is, if I went home, I’m not sure I’d be able to come back.

It’s hard here. All of the people that I love, and all of the work that I believe in, and often love to do, doesn’t take away the fact that it’s hard. It’s hard for both small reasons and big, but the cumulative effect is that on really bad days, it’s almost impossible to be here. Maybe it would feel impossible to be anywhere. I can’t say for sure. But it has felt impossible here.

I think it’s especially difficult to talk about having a hard time here because in a lot of ways it feels like defeat. For some reason I want to be able to, well, to conquer this place. That’s an ugly, militaristic word, but it seems appropriate here. I want to be able to face the injustice, the cultural shocks, the lack of heat, the absence of my friends, the absence of many things that I like to do for fun, the insane working hours, the constant instability, and the strong sense of isolation out here in the desert. I want to be able to face these things and thrive. Which, after listing some of those challenges, seems like a ridiculous desire, but it’s the desire that I’ve had.

I think this desire comes in part from a sense that I am doing what God called me to do. I don’t think I’ve received a lot of calls in my young life. I’m usually more inclined to think that God gives us a lot of freedom in our lives and asks us to be faithful in making decisions. That’s not why I ended up here in Agua Prieta though. I came here through a very specific call, and because of this I had some sense that I should be “successful” at it, that it would be less difficult somehow. That’s not really a biblical reading of a call, but it’s one that I have been pursuing. And it’s clearly not working out so well.

I’m pretty sure that it’s going to keep being hard for a little while to come, and in some ways, probably as long as I stay here. There are also some things I’m wrestling with that will possibly be very difficult long after I leave. So what do I do in the face of these difficult times and discouraging thoughts? That’s a challenge to all of us that’s not unique to me or to this place. The first thing that I’ve had to change because of this period has been my own reluctance to be honest about things. My desire for this year to be a challenging but fun experience left me denying some very obvious ways that I was hurting until they all sort of came crashing down at once. That hasn’t been helpful. I’ve also got to be more pro-active in making allowances for how hard things really are. I’ve been afraid that dwelling on the difficulties would make me depressed, but the truth is that not trying to mitigate them, or to enjoy myself more, has left me in a place where I’m not really sure what I would do for fun even if I got the chance. That’s not a good scene.

Ultimately, I don’t think that enjoying this year is too much to ask, especially since this work is related to things I might do for many years to come. It’s not comforting to think that misery is in your future long-term. However, I also don’t think that Jesus was joking about that whole picking up my cross thing. Far from it. I often suspect that, for believers in Jesus, if life is very difficult then we must be doing something right. Clearly this is not always true, but I believe it is true more often than we would like to admit.

The most important thing, as always, is that God is worthy of praise. If God is worthy when my life is great, then God has got to be worthy now, or God is not worth anything at all. So, in this, as in all things, God be praised.

By the by, the title for this post comes from High Fidelity. Nobody does neurotic unhappiness like John Cusack. Not Woody Allen, not even Moz. Johnny Boy holds it down.