Just My Imagination

Everyone has their strengths and everyone has their faults. And for the chosen ones, they could be one in the same. Since I am the protagonist and the hero of my own story, I am a chosen one. Maybe this has happened because I come from a poor family or because I started reading The Catcher in the Rye when I was in the 4th grade. Whatever the reason, I am now the victim of being struck with a curse of having an imagination that baffles Walt Disney.

I started having a conversation wtih God the other day, and I shouted to him, "You are just a figment of my imagination! You are not real! You do not exist!" I think many people have these kind of conversations (at least the crazy ones or the Christian ones...same thing), but what really begins to screw with your mind is that we begin realizing that just in the act of declaring these words, we have proven to ourselves that God does exist. Then, there lies a vicious cycle where the only thing one can do is call it a "vicious cycle" and be content that you're smart enough to come up with a term like that.

When it comes right down to it, I can imagine almost anything happening to me. I have imagined being hugged by a grandfather or holding a girl's hand. I have imagined a naked woman standing in front of me and I have imagined being naked in front of a class. I have imagined a party with tears and a funeral with laughter. I have imagined that I am American and that I am not. I have imagined that I was in love, and even worse, that a someone else had something for me because of the way her smile curved upward at a 40 degree angle instead of a 30 degree angle. Every night, my pillow is my future wife, and my stomach is a six pack. With so much practice, imagining God is not that hard to believe.

So I sit on a bench or on my knees by my bed, talking to this well...GOD. The only GOD who made like, everything - the stars, the worms, me. And apparently, GOD moved mountains and parted seas and had nature bow down to GOD, eventually dying so that I could be with GOD because GOD looked at me and thought, "GOD likes Yih." Hmmm. And it gets better, GOD wants to talk to me and I can talk to him without any cell phone plans or postage stamps or even a gmail account. I just have to...open my mouth and not even. I just have to think what I'm going to say to GOD. Yeah...right.

But put me into a room of a couple of thousand people who think they believe this, jumping up and down, willing to die or just be complete losers because they believe this so much, and this environment begins to act as a catalyst for my imagination. I mean, if billions of people throughout history could imagine this, why can't I? And I can, almost too easily. But therein lies the problem. This whole Christian thing, it just doesn't make sense. This whole prayer thing, it just doesn't make sense. The only sense I can make of it is through my imagination, but my sanity tells me that a naked woman is not in front of me, I am not at a funeral with laughter, she did not like me, and I am not holding anyone's hand. So if these things are not true, how can I believe that the God part is true too?

Maybe this sounds like I'm at the crossroads between taking Christianity 101 or Heathenism 101. But like C.S. Lewis said, sometimes the best thing for progress is to go backwards after heading in the wrong direction. And I'm going back to the basics in search of GOD or whoever the opposite of that would be. And at this stage, I'm not talking to GOD and if I am, I am mostly thinking if I am actually talking to GOD. And the easy route would be to say that I just need some faith, but call me an atheist or a New Yorker, but that word scares me like mentioning Pepsi's name in Atlanta.

Right now, I'm at a point not so much of confusion, but more of a "wow in a huh" sort of way. I'm standing in awe of this idea and of this GOD and of GOD's story, but scratching my head while doing it. That's fine, right? I think it is. I'm a little bit frigtened of people who are so sure anyway, because to tell you the truth, I'm not very sure of many things. But I'm just going to take things slow, trudging through this line between point A and point B called life in search for something more than just my imagination. And when I find it/him/her/GOD, I can fall in love all over again.