Growing Up

This summer has been such an amazing experience for me. For so long I lacked motivation and ambition, and I realize now this is because of two things. Firstly, when everything comes easy to you and you are not challenged, you don’t feel a need to get better at something. You’re just already really good at it. But secondly, I lived in fear and anxiety. I was so scared of even the thought of failing at something that I simply wouldn’t try. I wouldn’t allow myself to go outside the bubble I created for myself because going outside meant I could fall, I could get hurt, I could fail. Trapped in a hell of my own making.

I lied to myself when I said I recovered from the trauma of my childhood. In reality the confidence and ambition I had in my early years was crushed by bullying and I had never quite built it back up to where it had to be. My ego was incredibly fragile, easily knocked back by any minor inconvenience. It left me prone to anger, mainly directed at myself but shown to others. Granted, this is all part of childhood, and I am still a child relative to most of you. Every time my mother tried to push me past this phase of my life by encouraging me to try new things, I’d consider it but often wouldn’t take her advice. After all, I could possibly not be good at it. Remember guys, no matter how old you are, listening to your mother is often a good thing. How foolish I was to have not realized this sooner.

The thing is, after listening to her encouragement for once, I took up sailing lessons this summer. I also took an internship to better set up my future as a historical preservationist in architecture. Sailing taught me a lot of things: the art of patience, the peace of the water, but perhaps the most important thing I learned is that I finally accepted I am not in control of everything that goes on in my life. Ceding control to God and trusting in Him to guide me was the major breakthrough. Because I trusted in a higher power to help me, I became emboldened to try new things. My friend taught me golf lessons towards the end of the summer and now I’m starting to get pretty good. Before when I would turn down friends who wanted to go out, now I’m getting dinner and drinks with people I love just about every weekend.

Another big lesson I learned this summer is that sometimes you have to let people go in order to keep moving forward. The progress I’ve made in the last month has honestly been near light speed. My mother was right, as usual: once I figured out what I wanted to do in life, and how to get there, I’ve taken off like a rocket ship. The thing is, when you’re flying a rocket ship, you have to figure out who to take with you. Ultimately, two friends that I’ve been close with for a long time, dating back to high school, hadn’t treated me well for a while. They were hindering me from becoming more confident in myself and therefore more confident around other people. And especially when most of my friends are on a similar trajectory to me now, why should I keep bowing down to the pleasures of people who seem content to be stuck in place, stuck in a child’s mindset and views of life? My friend Zack coming to the same conclusion and acting on it gave me the confidence to accept that my gut feeling was right and also act on my judgement. I’ve been much better for it already and it’s been maybe three weeks since I came to this difficult decision.

For so long I kept myself away from the fun parts of life. I lied to myself and said it’s because I have familial responsibilities many people my age don’t have and perhaps don’t understand. But honestly it goes back to my lack of confidence in public and my anxiety around others. I realize now the best way to gain experience in something is to actually do it. You want to get better at socializing? Throw yourself into situations where you have to socialize. I’ve gotten so much better at communicating and it’s because I’ve finally taken the handbrake off and decided to live my life. I’m no longer scared to enjoy myself, I just do. My friends Colin and Tyler have asked me to go out with them for a while, and I’ve always said no. I live too far away, I can’t leave my family for that long, I don’t have experience hanging out in bars, etc. Excuses hold you back from being what you can be. Just go do it and see what happens. You’ll surprise yourself.

While I was getting drinks with my friend Cam a week ago, he showed me an article from a Christian philosopher that explained a lot of what I had gone through. There are two parts of your brain, the left and right sides. The left side is the analytical, calculating side. The right side is the creative, imaginative, instinctual side. For far too long in my life I was an overthinker, constantly finding flaws in myself and my logic until I basically created a little corner that I couldn’t think myself out of. When I opened myself up to new experiences, it’s like I awoke the right side of my brain again. And I find that when you use both sides of your brain, they work great in tandem. Now I know the chances of good or bad happening and I have the conviction to see things out anyways.

This next part will probably cause a stir but I’m not going to force my religion onto you, honestly I’m not even sure Christianity is a religion as much as it is a way of life. I find Christianity and the concept of God to be helpful in my life. It gives me courage and peace to know or at least think that something up there is watching over me, guiding me. I’ve found good things happen when I ask God to help me with them. I prayed yesterday that my job interview would go well, and it turns out I got the job. Whether it’s a placebo effect or God genuinely taking action in my life, the good thing happened. As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead to save humanity. Perhaps this is a lie we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better about our lives. But the knowledge or thought that I am saved gives me the confidence to live freely. The morality and virtue that we are called to live by in order to be saved guides me to live a good healthy life. Perhaps I could’ve come to all these conclusions on my own. But God, or at the very least a belief in a higher power, helped me significantly in overcoming my doubts and weaknesses.

Perhaps the biggest difference in my life since letting God back into it has been my optimism. In a way, we deny God if we are not optimistic. In being a pessimist, you imply that whatever problem you’re dealing with is so horrible that nothing can save you. However, stranger things have happened because the strangest thing did actually happen. Literally the strangest, most mystic, crazy unbelievable thing did happen. If Jesus can do the impossible, you can certainly conquer whatever problem you face if you let Him help you out. This ideology has driven me to conquer my problems and in turn it has given me the motivation and drive again to solve these problems. After all, research does show that men are inherently driven to be problem solvers.

Last paragraph on my faith, I swear. So many people try to deny God by using either science or faith arguments. I’m not going to try to convince you, just make you think about it. After all, in a society where free thinking is discouraged and ultimately taken away by our own devices, it’s good to try and think for ourselves. “If God is so great, why does bad thing happen” is an argument we see all the time. To that I say that choosing to follow God is a choice. It’s the ultimate choice in some ways. God wants to save you, impact your life positively, but we have to let him in the doorway first. Evil is inherently lesser than good, because evil itself is not a physical manifestation. Existence is inherently antithetical to evil itself, since evil’s purpose is to turn something into nothing. And when God is denied, it allows evil to manifest itself in people. Evil needs to latch onto something in order to consume it and turn it into nothing. That is evil’s base purpose. Evil consumes people because people let evil in the doorway. Bad things happen because of evil people. And evil only manifests itself in people if God is not present. As for the other argument, “science can’t prove God exists”, science can’t exactly prove God doesn’t exist either. And when science explains how so many coincidences had to occur just for life to exist on this planet, let alone human life, let alone the near perfect symbiosis between all life on the planet, supported solely because of the perfect conditions that had to happen? It makes you wonder if there is something out there.

“Great, Matthew, you’ve finally grown up and you’ve found your purpose. You’ve found faith to drive you towards your purpose. Now how the fuck does this connect to Liverpool FC?” I realize now that I let anger and my quest for external validation (because I didn’t love myself enough to validate myself) ruin the Klopp years for me. I was never as stunned at how amazing they were as I was disappointed more trophies weren’t won. I was more angry and critical of the failures than I was happy about the successes. Which is why I’m looking at this season through a different lens. I’m not going to be overly critical of Slot or the players or even FSG. They are humans after all, they aren’t perfect. They’re flawed, and there’s a beauty in their flaws. They try anyways even though they’re always fighting an uphill battle, and that’s commendable. I’m simply going to enjoy the ride this season takes us on. It’s about time I looked at sports as what they’re meant to be, entertainment, rather than something to cling to as a source of hope and validation. I don’t have control over what happens, so why should I worry so much over it? I certainly hope Salah and Virgil and Trent come back, I certainly hope the club keeps improving and Slot gets what he wants to take us back to the top, but life goes on even if those things don’t happen. It’ll suck, but a lot of life sucks. You’ve just got to look at the bright side of things and carry on. Life itself was never meant to be easy, after all it’s a proving ground for the life we hope to have beyond this world. I think more people need to embrace the challenge that’s in front of them and truly try to live well. At least try.