Sparkle

I’ve been having a lot of deep conversations lately. You know, those stay up until 3:00 in the morning over a bottle of wine (or in this case a six pack of beer) exploring the mysteries of the universe and your soul.  I’m around the people who bring that out the most in me – though, to be fair it is not at all difficult to suck me into psychological, philosophical, or moral discussions that creep into the wee hours, I just love them.

As always, I’ve left most of these conversations reflecting on what others and I’ve said. Recently, I've also walked away with a salty dissatisfaction with myself. Most often I’m dissatisfied because I feel like I’ve come across as hard-hearted and cynical and certainly not the hopeful, humanitarian who sees the good in all things (as I hope to be perceived). If I were to comprise a theme to my input, it’s generally that people and the world are broken and selfish and there is little hope that whatever they do or say is going to fix it. 

And the truth is I believe that.

I have been reading the Mitch Albom book For One More Day. The first day I was reading I came across a quote I just had to write down:

Maybe you figure men like me, men who play in the World Series, can never sink as low as suicide because they always have, at the very least, the “dream come true” thing. But you’d be wrong. All that happens when your dream comes true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn’t what you thought and it won’t save you.

I believe that. I cannot underline, highlight or exclamation mark that truth enough. No wordly dream is what you thought. No person is what can fix you. Not even your inherent beauty or humanity. No, no, no. And I feel like I’ve been thrusting forth that message with such clarity and force that the only conclusion I can draw from listening to myself is that I am a hopeless cynic who doesn’t see the beauty in people, only their short-comings and failures.

But that is not true. I love people. I think people sparkle. Even the most broken soul still sparkles in the light. They can’t help it. They are created by God to sparkle.

But here’s the deal – sparkling involves two entities: the prism and the light.

See what the world tells us is that we don’t need the light to be beautiful. Which in some sense is true, I mean prisms are neat looking with or without sun shining through them. But prisms are meaningless without light (what is a prism for except to refract light?) and they certainly don’t sparkle. I see it everywhere – do this, buy into this or that ideal and you’ll be fixed. But the only way – the only real and lasting way to find meaning is to hang in the light and let it shine through you. Sparkle.  

So I think I feel cynical, because I keep incessantly shooting down every other option. 

It’s a weird juxtaposition to me. Here I am, at once and earnestly cynical about this world, yet also entirely hopeful for the hand of God to redeem, to dust off and to make us all sparkle.