Sitcoms Are Easy, Life Is Not: it's been awhile....

     It has come to a point here when the only times I write here are when it is late at night when I am away from school and therefore normal life--to put it another way, when I'm feeling reminiscent. You guys last heard from me last April when I wrote an extensive post about my thoughts on the How I Met Your Mother series finale. Though a slight departure from my usual ramblings, it is not without meaning. There have been several other allusions to sitcoms within my writings here, which should tell you all something about myself.
     It has often been a problem that when confronted by turmoil I do one of two things: I either run headlong into it, seeking to take it down like some kind of rabid animal (that is to say, I am too harsh/blunt), OR I turn and walk away. If I can ignore the problem, maybe it will go away. If I retreat maybe the problem will see that I mean it no harm and leave me be. I would like to add here that this is not the case for all matters, but a great deal too many.
     I will return to those issues in a moment, but before I do, I'd like to preface it with some backstory. Since you have last heard from me I have since returned to Multnomah. After my last post in April I stepped into "normal" life which for me meant a normal 5-6 day a week job, leading worship at my home church, meanwhile balancing many relationships I had left behind, as well as those that were right in front of me. It seemed simple enough, but as it would seem, I don't do "normal" life very well. I became bored very quickly. I loved leading worship and I definitely loved having the opportunity to step back into relationships that I had otherwise either not seen fully developed or had nearly left behind. Beyond that I became disillusioned and bored.
     This is an example of me running away. There were good parts, sure, but being on the other side now, I see my mistake. I became tired, relying on the wrong things to get me through. I left school, came home, got a part time job, took up a volunteer position, and had fun, but it wouldn't last. I don't know if it was that I couldn't see or if I refused, but the mistake was in front of me, it happened. I took time off that I assumed would be immensely satisfying, but it wasn't. I was completely and ridiculously exhausted after that semester, but instead of continuing to face the beast, I turned tail and walked away. They say when God closes a door He opens a window, and I'd like to think that is what happened. I left school and the door was closed, but I ended up having the opportunity to lead worship and have some fun; the window was cramped, and eventually I would get through, but it wasn't the best option if given the choice.
     There is a beauty I find in sitcoms and really just television in general that seems to envelop me. You have a small window by which you see these characters, but by the end of that episode the problem is either resolved or very close to resolution. It's so simple; so formulaic. I often claim that I like to look at problems very simply, but I position my life in the most opposite direction. I like to look at life simply, though I seem to put myself in the most complex situations. I want life to be easy, but I don't want to be bored. I want the simple answer, but I've been given the most difficult equation. As I mentioned before, I too often have two responses to my problems, crash into them or walk away. These are very easy answers to very hard problems. Life does not always present itself in simple 1+1=2-esk issues. Life deals in calculus--that is to say, life's problems are not to be dealt with lightly.
 
----------------------------------------

     In late August I returned to Multnomah. Everything moved quickly. Within the month of August I decided to leave, put in my two weeks at work, announced I was leaving my church position, discussed the tolls my being gone would have with my then girlfriend, applied back to school, got accepted, and left. Do you know what assuming does? I claim to know, yet it always comes back to bite me in the...butt. See what I did there? Anyway, I left for school with too many assumptions. I assumed I would have a job waiting for me. For nearly a month I had been attempting to work with my current job to transfer to a Portland/Vancouver store so I might simply continue working. I assumed I would be able to transition from a working life back into a life as a student easily. I assumed I would be able to pick up where I left off with all of my friends. I assumed my finances would somehow work themselves out--though this kind of goes with me assuming to have a job. I assumed my relationship wouldn't fall apart.
     Needless to say, nothing went as planned. For nine months I had spent a great deal of time by myself, becoming isolated and introverted. I was more used to being by myself than with people, especially with people my own age, most the people I worked with being decades older than myself. I didn't take this into account. I digress however. When I arrived in Portland, it began to fall apart. Though I thought my job situation would be worked out, I was dropped from the system after only a few emails and even fewer attempts to aid me. Transitioning from simple work to being a student again was anything but easy, especially in the path I had taken. My friends, though they had kept constant contact and invited me in, had continued within their own lives. My finances began to fall apart with student loan companies claiming I owed them money, badgering myself and my great grandmother (who happens to be my loan cosigner) for money even though the error was on their side, not mine; this was not to be aided by my now unemployed status, nor the fact that I had become a commuting student as was driving significant distances every day for school. And the cherry on the top of the ice cream that was my life, after barely a month of me being away, my girlfriend and I parted ways.
     My life was in shambles. I wanted only to distract myself with tv and useless conversations about comic books, but the beast wouldn't remain sated for long. Though I could turn and ignore things like a broken relationship and finances, I couldn't ignore friends, I couldn't ignore school. I would continue to pretend like nothing was wrong, remaining emotionally distant, saying little about what was actually troubling me, only showing signs of wear on the outside.
     I spent the majority of the month of October attempting to hide the fact that though I seemed fine, on the inside I was one sentence or image away from bottoming out again. I don't have a crutch so to speak, I just like to pretend everything is okay. If you smile enough you'll actually start to smile, if you start to laugh eventually you'll actually start laughing; that's what I did. I put on the smile, I laughed at the jokes, I would convince myself I was fine, but the slightest hint of my broken relationship or problems I was having would leave me in a tailspin. The truth is that I spent the majority of the month of October and a great deal of November berating myself and breaking down panicking that things would not end well. This was new for me. Not the berating part, but the panicking. I don't really panic. I'm usually able to take things as they come and move forward, but not this time. Too much was happening all at once. It doesn't seem like much, but I had left myself in a state that did not enable my normal "fight or flight" responses. It is here that the normal lesson learning time begins.
     In retrospect I realize that my previous sentiments about my "last" semester being the hardest was total crap. That semester left me exhausted, sure, but this had left me broken. No contingency plan. No big solution to come up with like usual. There was no easy fix. It wasn't and isn't a "done and done" situation. One of the things that drove my aforementioned girlfriend crazy was that I tried to fix everything. Rather than just let things happen, rather than just sit and listen, I always tried to have a solution. It was "simple." I want to fix the problem, but some problems can't be fixed, they must be experienced. I'm going to sound so incredibly cheesy, but the quote that comes to mind when I say all of this is,

"That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt."

Yes, this is a quote straight out of The Fault in Our Stars, written by John Green who just so happens to be one of my favorite people--and no, I couldn't tell anything about the context of the quote, but that isn't important here. The point I am trying to make here is that pain doesn't have an easy cure. It will be felt; it has to be felt. This is a motto that I have fought against almost my entire life. I used to think the world was simple; all the opportunity is out there, it's your job to run to it. There is an extent to which I still believe the latter of that sentiment, though the former has been sufficiently stomped out of me. The world is hard. I get it. Really.
     Thus, I kept going. There was no easy fix, there was no walking away, so I kept pushing forward. I readjusted to life as a student. I even found a job. I have the opportunity of becoming the worship leader for a church in Vancouver. I found my place among my friends again. I stumbled through the remainder of my semester, but I made it. There was a point during which I lost excitement for anything, but even that I got back in the form of several new projects, but that's another topic for another time. I even got some closure on a broken relationship.
     No, I haven't learnt my lesson, I'm still learning. Not all problems have an easy fix. Life is an experience, not a series of math equations. Pray. I know you've all been waiting for me to say that with baited breath. I would not have gotten through any of this without God on my side. I keep saying "I" did this and "I" did that, but though I may feel some modicum of accomplishment for having made it through, I didn't do it alone. The only reason I made it is because God heard those prayers I begged out when panicking and answered them. Though not always in the way I would have liked, my prayers were answered.
     I feel as if this all seems to come from some naive person, so let me set somethings straight. I wasn't some innocent child before this all happened, nor did I think the world "honest." I knew the world to be a cruel place, I knew the problems. I understood there were things that couldn't just be solved, but in my ignorance I failed to believe that there were problems in my own life that I couldn't just fix. I hope you don't read this whole thing as if from the point of view of some sullied child, but from the point of view...of, well, just about anything/anyone else.
     For the last few weeks I have been sitting around during the Christmas break doing basically nothing, which has left me with tons of time to reflect. It's been a hard route, but it's been worth it. I hurt, still, but it'll pass with time. No easy fix. Since April I have remained silent here because I didn't believe I had anything worth saying on here. I wanted anything I posted, if I posted anything again, to have weight, I didn't want it to be something fleeting.
     With all of that said, I have some sincere thank you's to dole out, and don't worry, you most likely already know how thankful I am. First off, thank you so much to my mom for being there to talk or help me out financially, even when I didn't want it. Thank you to my friends who never gave up on me or left when I decided to be a complete a@#, you guys are really awesome. If you are a teacher I had this semester and reading this, thank you so much for passing me, it really means a lot. Really, thank you to any of you who put up with me when I wasn't ready to talk or was otherwise stubborn, thank you for sticking with me.
     So, it's with that I sum things up. Everyone acknowledges that sitcoms aren't a real depiction of life. Sitcom is literally a shortening of "situational comedy," which betrays fleeting. In sitcoms the problems are fleeting (though they can be difficult) and the solutions simple. If everyone acknowledges a fatal flaw such as that in something so popular, why is it we continue to watch them? We want an escape. Sitcoms offer to us what life does not, a complex problem with a simple answer. They are an amalgam of life's problems shoved into a half hour time slot once a week. It is what we wish life was like, but we aren't quite as lucky.
     So it is that I sit here, blasting The Hush Sound through my headphones at 3:43 in the morning on New Years Eve, writing to tell you that 2014 has chewed me up and spit me out. I've bottomed out and somehow gotten up again, but I wouldn't redo a single moment. Life is not a complex problem with a simple answer and I believe in a Savior who will always be there for me. I hope you read this and take something, no matter how small, with you into 2015. It's sure to be a good year.
     In case I don't write anything more for a long time, or ever again, thank you so much for reading and don't forget what I've written. Also, I deeply apologize if this whole thing is completely gibberish, it is almost 4:00 AM. For those of you who are crazy enough to read this so early in the morning I say, "good morning!" but for the rest of you are still sleeping or won't read this for many months to come I say Happy New Year.
     And as usual, thank you for reading :-)

-- Josh

How I Met Your Mother Series Finale: A Few Thoughts....

**WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW**     

     It's over! It's finally over. We wrapped up the finale of How I Met Your Mother with Ted finally meeting the mother (or rather, Tracy McConnell) and a montage of moments from their life eventually ending in her fight and eventual loss against an unknown illness....and so on. Here, now, I just want to discuss a few things I have seen controversy over and at the end I'll give my verdict.
     The first thing I want to talk about is the rise and fall...and rise of the great Barney Stinson. Throughout the whole of season 9 we are present during the weekend of Barney and Robin's wedding. It doesn't seem believable. Barney, the thrill seeking, womanizing, sex-hound and Robin, the traveling, ambitious, emotionally detached reporter are getting married; but we roll with it, cause if How I Met Your Mother has taught us anything it's that...well, just...ok? (Imagine that in Barney's voice and it'll make much more sense) Anyway, everything is chaos through all of season 9. Things go wrong, at one point they can't find Barney, Robin worries about everything...stuff is happening. Throughout the whole episode we occasionally get glimpses of Robin's worries that are valid (as well as the worries of others). Robin realizes that Barney lies and everyone else acknowledging that both of them are very independent people, just to name two of the big ones. Though the lying is resolved in Barney vowing to Robin to always tell her the truth (which we actually get an admittedly sad example of), they are still two very independent people, which they realize; realizing that you are independent and attempting to solve it though are completely different.
     Fast forward three years. Barney and Robin are in Cancun...or Barbados...or somewhere (sorry, I forget....it's late). Once again they're arguing. Robin's career with World Wide News has taken off and they send her to the far reaches of the world to report of various things. Meanwhile, Barney is either left behind or drug along. In this instance he has made his blog a career, but he can't post anything cause he doesn't have wifi. This spurs on an argument that leads Robin to ask if Barney would take an out if one were presented to him. After getting drunk and having married sex (the good kind) and eventually waking up in a haze in someone else's room, Barney responds that because he loves her and wants to be honest he would. Now, obviously that is paraphrasing as that news isn't dropped in the same scene.
     Barney and Robin get divorced. Now, when you get out of a relationship, any relationship, two things happen: you grieve, then you move on. We don't see Barney grieve, but that doesn't mean doesn't, but I won't focus on that. The second step is to move on. When we move on we either try to find what we had again, or revert to who we were before. In this instance Barney reverts to what he knows how to do, i.e. get women. I honestly wouldn't expect any less. It's Barney. Yes, his character development has taken a LONG time to come to fruition, but that doesn't make him stone. If Barney has shown us anything over the years it's that he is broken. I think this is shown especially when Lily confronts him about not changing and he responds that who we all thought he had become just wasn't him. He couldn't, he could never be that person, he was just too far gone. I think what we all expected was that him marrying Robin was an allegory for him being healed finally, but this wasn't the case. You don't fix a broken house with a broken hammer. You don't ask a surgeon with only one arm to perform heart surgery. Robin was just as broken as Barney, and though it would have been great for it to work out, How I Met Your Mother has proven to us time and time again that they are a show that works on real world rules, this means that crap happens. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Barney made it clear, Robin couldn't fix him, he wasn't hers to fix. Ellie was.
     Enter Ellie Stinson. Ellie Stinson is the love child of Barney. She was inadvertently the after effect of his "Perfect Month." "Day 31" as Barney calls her gets pregnant and has a child while the others wait expectantly in the waiting room. When the baby is born, Barney, though very obviously reluctant to see her, goes at the forced insistence of his friends. When he sees her his life is changed forever. You see, I think the flawed premise with the Barney/Robin relationship dynamic was that they were so alike that neither felt the need to change unless absolutely forced, but they both had their own things that could not be changed, i.e. Robin's job and Barney's mentality. For instance, Barney continued to lie to Robin up until their wedding day and Robin remained emotionally cut off unless forced to talk. With Ellie it was different though. Here was this baby that would require all of Barney's attention. He couldn't deny her, he couldn't dump her off on someone else. As soon as he saw her, Barney was forced to irrevocably change. Gone were the nights of sleeping with random women. Gone were the drunken outings with friends. Barney was a single father who had finally fallen hopelessly in love with the one woman who he could not escape nor deny. His daughter.
   
     The next thing I want to talk about is the mother's death and Ted's seeming lack of any emotion. Admittedly, I was also very sideswiped by the the whole mother dying thing. It happened so fast, I wasn't sure what was happening. Ted never explicitly says, "SHE'S DEAD," but rather that she was sick; we later find out that she had been gone for six years by the time of the story starting. This brings me to my point. She's gone and had been for six years.
     Allow me to jump over to something else for a second and then I'll come back. Last year I took a class called Bible Study Methods. It was a fantastic class that at the beginning level only focused on the book of Jonah. Four chapters. Three months. You get the point. Anyway, sometime during this class we discussed "authors intent." Authors intent refers to the ultimate intent of the author. For example, you're reading an old poem in high school english and one of the lines is "the curtains were blue." The teacher begins to go on about how the blue curtains were actually an allusion to the authors troubled and sad life living on the streets of the bronx...when in actuality the author literally meant that the curtains were blue. Authors intent means that above all else, if the author intends for something to mean how they mean it, it means that regardless of what you think. It's a tough law, but it's just so we go with it. Back to the show....
     At the end of the episode we find out that the mother has indeed died and has been gone for six years. Now, I was also disappointed with the lack of emotion displayed on screen by Ted, but ultimately this isn't the story of a broken man who hasn't yet come to grips with the death of his wife. The whole story, beginning in 2005, is told from the point of view of a Ted Mosby who has been without his wife for six years and is ready to move on. What about Robin, you ask? Ted and Robin had been on and off again for a long time before Ted met Tracy. He had come to grips with not being with her though before the wedding, which would be 16 years before the events of the story. For 16 years Ted never pined after Robin. Then his wife died. I'm sure he grieved, come on, it's Ted, but again, the story isn't told by a broken Ted, it's told by a healed Ted ready to move on with his life, which touches on a really important lesson I think this show teaches, but I'll get to that later....

     The last thing I want to talk about, though I have already touched on it, is the eventual pairing of Ted and Robin. I saw one dude comment on a post on the How I Met Your Mother Facebook page saying that Ted had ultimately just returned to the obsessive and overly compulsive guy he had once been with women, giving his heart to them right off the bat and slowly watching as they crushed it in front of him. I don't believe this to be true. Ted married her. The one. He found her. It was destiny. He left during the wedding and went to a train station where he told the story to an old woman who would not keep from pestering him until she eventually point to her and asked if she was the woman in his story. If that's not destiny, I don't know what is.
     Ted tells us in the end that as soon as he saw her he knew he had to love her as much as he could then, he couldn't wait for the future; so he loved her. Through thick and thin, through the times of joy and the times of pain and frustration, he loved her. He would have kept loving her, but she became ill and eventually passed away. You know Ted would've been sad. He knew she was the one. Ted would've cried like a baby, but in the end he would move on, just as he always does. He would've looked pain in the face and focused on what was important. It was no longer his search for a soulmate, it was the kids. Her legacy left behind for him.
     Six years pass before the story we hear is told. Some criticized the finale because they took it as the writers telling us that the whole story voids the Ted/mother search just to tell us that Ted has always loved Robin more than anything else...ever. Again, and I feel like I've said this a lot, but I don't agree. Just because Ted tells his kids the story doesn't mean that it was him asking for permission to ask Robin out, just because Penny (the daughter) says that Ted still has "the hots" for Robin doesn't mean that the story has now come to naught, stories can have dual meanings. Yes, I do believe part of it was that Ted wanted to move on and thus telling his kids the story was a way of sharing this, but I think that the telling of the story would also serve as Ted revealing to them that he has healed enough to tell it, after promising to his own parents so long ago that he would tell his kids everything. The story honors the mother by showing everything that happened that eventually led to her. Every time Ted wanted to give up. Every time he almost ended up with someone else. Every time Ted almost ended up halfway across the country. Everything eventually ended with her. Yet there it is again, she dies and Ted must move on. So I say this, it's not that everything that has happened led to Ted getting together with Robin, the show is called How I Met Your Mother, and Robin is definitely not the mother. It's more that everything that has happened has led to the mother, but when even the worst happens, Ted will always be Ted and move on. Ted will always be the one to make the big gesture (as with the blue french horn). Ted will always love. And lastly, Ted will never dwell on the past because it's the future that is the most important.

     Now for my verdict. I loved every moment. I loved the show since my friends in high school got me into the pilot and I loved it even more when it ended. True, there were problems. I wish they had shown Ted grieving over Tracy, but I know that they wouldn't because it's all being told by a Ted that is past that. Since the beginning How I Met Your Mother has been a show actually for the people. It worked on real world problems and real world solutions. Sometimes things happen, sometimes they don't, but when they do, we must continue moving forward or we're lost. We have to focus on what is really important: friends, family, having fun, love. Nothing is worth doing if you don't have anybody to share it with, which is a lesson shared with us by the most broken of the group, Barney.
     Even within the group each character provides a lesson in and of themselves. Barney is totally broken when we meet him. He's a sex crazed, egotistical, womanizing, scoundrel. Over the course of the 9 seasons we watch him rise up, and then fall, and then rise as he is slowly healed. Every time he rises though it is only temporary as it is only the result of a treated symptom, but then he see's Ellie and shows us that when that one person or moment shows up, even the worst of us can be healed. Marshal is the friend that never gives up. He never gives up on Ted no matter what. He always believes in Lily and even when it's questionable whether or not they would follow Lily to Italy, he ultimately decides to drop his own judgeship and go with her. Marshal is the friend that loves no matter what and shows Ted the whole time what never giving up on love looks like. Robin shows us that no matter what the circumstances, you should always follow your dreams. When we meet Robin she had been in the U.S. for just two months. She had been working for Metro News One as a reporter, though she really only did those "little fluff pieces at the end of the news." Through the course of the show however, she begins to rise. By the end of the series she is a world famous reporter for World Wide News, traveling the world. Yes, problems rise, but she just kept following her dreams and even though she took the solitary path for awhile, even she would end up back with her friends. Lily is kind of a conglomeration of Marshal and Robin. She is full of love and shows us the benefits of believing in people even when it comes at the expense of your own personal gain. However, she also shows us that it is possible to follow our dreams when we might feel otherwise tied down. Through the story she slowly but surely follows her artistic desires and eventually becomes and art consultant for a man known as "The Captain" which leads her, Marshal, and their two kids to Italy for a year. And lastly, Ted. Ted shows us that no matter what the situation, no matter what life throws at us, no matter how down we feel, we should always move forward. Always believe in love. Ted goes through the best and the worst of times in his search for love and eventually finds the end, but only after tripping on every root along the beaten path. He's left at the alter, dates 39 women, get's punched in the face by Barney, get's left multiple times by Robin, but he continues to believe that somewhere out there is the one girl who will solve all of his woes. And she does. Ted shows us that no matter what he must keep our sights on the present and what is to come because when we begin to focus on the past to exclusion of all else, we are lost.
     For some reason, this show has meant a lot to me, and though I'm not quite sure why yet, I feel very sad to see it go. With that said though, I am very pleased with the way it ended. The writing was more real than most sitcoms now or in the past. It worked on a real world basis. I loved every moment, every high and every low. This is a show that made us laugh but also made us think. One of my favorite episodes is still The Time Travelers from season 8 when Ted spends a whole night debating whether or not to go to Robots vs. Wrestlers, talking occasionally to the future selves of him and Barney. Though hilarious in some aspects, it leaves us with Ted talking about how if he had known about the mother sooner, he would've ran to her door and told her everything just to have that extra time with her. It's this kind of writing that we need more of on television. It makes you laugh, but at the same time it leaves you with something more. The whole of How I Met Your Mother was simply "something more." With that, it teaches us that we ought to simply love life, to the exclusion of all else. Sometimes our lives suck, but sometimes they don't and those are the moments we should live for.

-- Josh