I like to keep things on the down-low. I don't like to advertise my junk. I like to work my stuff out with a few close friends (my inner circle) and once I've worked through it, perhaps I'll relay the information to some other good friends (my outer circle) if it serves a purpose. (NOTE: these circles are not planned or intentionally structured, so their labels are the result of observation, not design. Don't get all uptight if I include you with or exclude you from a given notion of relationship.) Let's call this whole process the result of my INFJ personality.
Seth and Dack are two UNC members of my inner circle. But on Friday they both went away for a Psalm 100 retreat where they would sing songs and get to know the new members of their a cappella group. But that was okay, my circle was still unbroken.
Until Sunday afternoon, when Joel and Wyatt, who I would describe as the other two UNC members of this inner circle, simultaneously decided to go back to their homes to spend the afternoon and night with their families. Well that was all well and good, and I'm glad they got to see their families, but I had just a little bit of an existential crisis. I didn't know what to. I was a little lost, and more than a little confused. I just wasn't quite sure how to function with all four of them away from the campus at the same time. But that was okay, because I found Kevin. Kevin had been planning on going out to a friend's lake house in Hickory for the night, but did not want to drive out there alone. He extended an invitation, I accepted, and off we went to meet Andy, Joseph, Noah, and Mike. We arrived, played some Smash Bros., had us a good time.
And then on Monday, we went out on the lake. Which brings me to my primary story. We went tubing, which consists of holding on very tightly to an inner tube that is being pulled behind a speedboat that Andy is steering like a madman and (I'm convinced) actually trying his hardest to throw you off the tube. And I noticed myself thinking as I observed Kevin or Joesph or Mike out there on that inner tube, occasionally lifted from the water or swung out to the side of the inner tube, barely recovering their strength in time to climb back on a keep going, that this looks like it could only be act of one lacking mental senses. It looks straight up crazy. Why would someone do this? It wasn't particularly painful, not especially unsafe, but nonetheless, surely it wasn't quite sane. Of course, it's easy to have that opinion from the boat. Once you are actually out there on the inner tube, those thoughts of insanity disappear rather quickly and as the engines rev up, you find yourself thinking instead, "Why, this is a perfectly natural form of human behavior."
Sometimes it's the action that seems least beneficial, least acceptable, least intellectually sound, that is in reality the best action to take. Maybe it's the risk, maybe it's the adrenaline, maybe it's just the company you keep. I don't know what it is, but putting yourself out there in the hands of a crazy man driving a boat, just doing your best to hang on for as long as you can, having no choice but to trust the circumstances and other people, well, that seems like the kind of exhilaration that we don't see enough of nowadays.
Thanks guys. It was a good time.
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