father's day
(part two)
((jesus christ! can't you just talk about the braves?))


i've touched on the idea of "how well do you ever really know someone" on this site before. the conclusion that i've always come to is pretty simple. you don't. maybe with a couple exceptions, you don't really know anybody. what you know and who you know of someone is nothing more than what any person decides to share with the rest of the world. snippets here. a couple "secrets" there. but nothing too personal. nothing too private. nothing too scary. nothing more than you need to know. it's obviously easier to digest that way. how's the weather? what did you have for lunch? what are you doing this weekend? did you hear chipper hurt himself running too hard again? who gives a shit? really? what does any of it matter? nothing, of course. and everything all at the same time.

for it's the slips from this norm when they happen that enlighten us to someone's true character. i can only imagine the first time a portion of the youth group at huffman heard me unleash my very blue tongue. "what did he just say???" "i think he said motherfucker." "can a youth director say that?" um. i don't know. let's go ask l12." but from that moment, from that slip, everything changed, right? no longer would i play the role of the closest example these young persons had to christ. i would just be kevin. human just like them. walking in the same direction. maybe a little further down the road. but we'd be working with each other along the way. i wouldn't be any better than them. they wouldn't be any worse for wear. it was what it was. now, this is just one example. the longer i was at huffman, the more slips there were. and the more the young people got to know me, the farther the cat got out of the bag that maybe this guy wasn't the best influence our money could buy. maybe we shouldn't really condone halo nights and family guy. that arc of my story ran it's course, and, as you all know, i moved on to something else. failing (depending on your definition of fail) fabulously with chris perry in huntsville.

which brings us back to today's main and surely elementary conflict. we are incredibly complex individuals, every one of us. each of us has incredibly varied experiences and adventures that define who we are on any given day. our lives make for good stories, sure, but each of our lives contain a complex metanarrative, a story about a story, that will never allow another human being to accurately define us. we, as fallible people, may have gone through similar situations, but every metanarrative is different. just like a snowflake. and this is why the "you don't know me" defense is so hard to crack. to one end, if you have offended a person to the point where they have to play the "you don't know me" card, technically, you should stop. because they are right. you are wrong. they played the ace up their sleeve. game over. it's infuriating, but it's true.

so now comes the tricky part. because some relationships carry such emotional weight and impact, certain things are bound to happen even if a particular character's arc has run it's course in your story. for example, let's pretend (remember, this is just pretend.) my father and i stopped talking for some reason unbeknownst to the both of us. a decision is made. a line is drawn. his character is pulled away from having an active role in the story of my life. in a perfect world, i would move on. find some other relationship to fill the void that remains from the energy i used to pour into actively loving and relating to him. in a perfect world, i would move on and find someone else. or several people. however many it takes to fill those shoes. in my metanarrative, though, i don't replace the void with something tangible. i replace it with a new story. one that i am making up in my head as i go along. in my complex and parallel life that is tangential to my real world, my father is still a character that is very real and very impactful in how i think about the world and how i react to real life situations.

do i know my (pretend) father anymore? well, no. of course not. i don't even talk to him. how could i know him? but knowing him in reality doesn't stop me from defining him. and the same goes for a number of people in my life that aren't really there but are still located in the synapses of my brain that make me feel something for them. even if, from the outside looking in, it seems completely retarded to do so. if we are still pretending to talk about my father, we might as well understand that the things i say about him here could just as well be written as a fictional story by someone that never knew the man. my and my brother's experiences have helped to shape the character in my head. but let's be honest. nowadays, it's just a character.

the fact of the matter is that i never really knew the man. his own story got in the way. scratch that. his own metanarrative got in the way. to make his real life better, some players that tried out for his story didn't make the cut. others did. once those roles were defined, the real-life story moved on from there and there was nothing i could do to stop it. i didn't get it at the time. and i don't want to get it now. i don't want to get my feelings hurt when "fictional" people throw themselves back into my real life in a way that is contrary to how i've romanticized them in my head. they don't know any better. they can't see the "big picture", because it's not their big picture.

i am no philosopher. i don't want to be. the more i think about stuff like this, the more i can totally see why we just talk about the weather. our head would explode if we started to talk about things that were worth half a shit.

it doesn't make me feel any better about what happened on this site wednesday. one "fictional" character getting bent out of shape because i was hard on another "fictional" character. the metanarrative butted heads with real life and edits were made because of it. seems kind of silly. i guess it's ok, though. it's another lesson that i hope i'll be able to articulate better as a father than i have as a son or a brother.

your goals in life, hannah and caroline? be true to yourself, whatever that ends up meaning to the both of you. be as honest as you goddamn possibly can with everyone, beginning at a very young age. love others as god loves you. and try to live the real story of your life and your metanarrative on as close to the same line as you possibly can.

good luck.