As I sit on the floor in my childhood bedroom, staring out at the mixture of recent gifts and the things I've brought from home strewn all over my floor, I cannot find words to describe this feeling.
It's some mixture of discontent, wanderlust, and a light version of saudade, coming from a mixture of what I've been up to over the past week.
All year long, every year, I look forward to seeing all of my friends from high school around Christmas and New Year. They're solid people, which I've come to realize in my 20-somethingness is not something found very often. They're all over the country and world, for the most part - and here I am, still in the same state. There's the whole world out there, I'm young and able, and yet I've landed myself a comfortable 2 hour drive from my childhood home - while so many of my friends are out exploring elsewhere.
"You don't have to go so far to have adventures. You've had your own adventures," my dad tells me. But that hardly feels true when I look at the lives of all of these fantastic people.
So there's that.
I'm currently reading Shane Claiborne/Chris Haw's Jesus for President. They lay out this picture of how Jesus meant for Christians to act - and it's in their own community. Yes, care for the poor, provide needs, act rightfully - but Jesus specifically did not go through the government to make that happen. He called Christians to do it on their own. Now, as a committed follower of Jesus and also a political nut, this is a hard pill to swallow. But it not only makes a great deal of sense, it's Biblically truthful.
And my political ideologies and priorities are getting turned on their head a bit. So there's that.
And then I went to the mall yesterday. Bad idea. I hate malls. All malls. Because I love things, a lot, but things aren't important (which I have to convince myself of constantly). And when I walk into a mall it's a constant inner battle of "OMG THAT'S ADORABLE. Wait no, don't! Not worth it! Probably made by slaves. You don't ne...OMG now THAT'S SO CUTE! Don't do it!"
But if malls get me thinking of anything, it's my own obsession with "stuff," and the unjust economic system that produces said "stuff" for the comfortable consumption by the entire US middle class. And how I am a full participant of said middle class. As difficult as I try to make my life by buying used things, buying fair-trade, consuming less than your average middle-classer... it doesn't ultimately make a lot of difference. I'm not freeing any child slaves or rescuing poor women from sweatshops via my thrift-storing.
And then I feel like a prissy middle class girl with my needless first world inner dilemmas as I care about (but ultimately don't do much than throw money at causes about) third world problems. So there's that.
Maybe I should move to a third world country and volunteer?
