It’s easy for days to blur together. I couldn’t give you a day-by-day recap of what happened last month, let alone last week, let alone this week. I couldn’t tell you what thought when I awoke with yesterday morning, or what I was thinking in the car on the way to help my aunt with her garden, or even what I was thinking about one hour ago from this very moment. I suffer from a problem, which I think many do, that causes me to go through life on autopilot. I hand over the controls to my subconscious while I float away on my thoughts, wandering aimlessly from idea to idea. My family calls it “talking to the fairies,” because when you’re on autopilot, your face goes blank and your eyes fix on nothing, as if fairies are floating next to your head and you’re lost in their incessant chatter.
For me, it’s an insufferably bad condition, perhaps worse than most. I ask people their names and don’t listen to their response, continuing to converse with them with rising horror as I realize that, at some point in the future, I will have to ask for their name again. The fairies piped up as soon as they said their name. I often shower for close to half an hour, losing track of time amidst hosting imaginary conversations and singing to sold out arenas. I only listen to lectures when things catch my immediate interest, otherwise I’m busy on a conference call with the fairies. I only hang out with people I like, because hanging out with people I’m not sure about requires a lot of work and attention. I missed every single Writer’s Retreat during my four years at Calvin, and most recently, a wonderful man’s funeral — not because I didn’t want to go, but because the fairies were talking really loud, and I listened for a little too long.
We all have our own fairies, I think. Maybe not the same ones I have, but for every different type of snowflake there is a different fairy, babbling about something you probably won’t remember and sprinkling dust on your brain, dampening the world around you. Maybe your fairies show up when you say “I love you” to a parent or sibling, letting you say the words but taking your thoughts somewhere else. Maybe they show up when you go to work at your crappy retail job. Maybe they show up when you pray. I don’t always know I’m talking to the fairies; sometimes I only know they were there because I have the subtlest sense that I just emerged from a fog. Fairies thrive on making us believe that there is such a thing as wasted time, when in truth, wasted time is just time spent talking to them. They sound like these magical little Tinkerbells, but they’re more like mosquitos. Too many fairies, and I feel drained.
I think the way to get rid of fairies is to live intentionally from moment to moment — which, I realize, is easier said than done. It’s a rather pithy thing to say these days — “living intentionally” — devoid of overt meaning and explanation. But I try to remind myself of this anyways, truly trying to grasp what it would mean to live intentionally in this very moment. Right now it means finishing this blog post without talking to the Facebook fairy, or fishing through Netflix for a movie that I’m not going to like very much. Sometimes “living intentionally” is mistaken to mean “work yourself up in an emotional frenzy.” I’m not preaching the “live, love, laugh” gospel, or telling you to dance whenever you get the chance. There are always weird people talking to the fairies on the dance floor, shutting their eyes and wobbling their arms like noodles in the wind. If we’re so focused on trying to love every moment of life, we’re talking to the fairies, and life is going to keep blurring past us. Better that we deal with it honestly than ignore the crap that’s happening. Sometimes living intentionally just means paying attention.
I’m at an integral stage in my life. I don’t want it to blur by; I want to pay attention to it, giving each moment its due. The only way to do that is to ignore the fairies.
Will Montei is currently in pursuit of a Masters in Teaching at Seattle Pacific University. He has been writing for the post calvin since it began in 2013.
I’d never heard of “talking to the fairies,” but I do it all the time. (I call it “wool gathering,” and I have nothing to show for the time but an armful of lint.) Good thoughts. I like your caution against tossing around the phrase “live intentionally,” because you’re right, what does that even mean anymore?
(By the way, I once met a woman at a funeral visitation, only to meet her again, three minutes later, on the other side of the room. I stuck my hand out to her and said, “I don’t believe we’ve met,” only for her to point across the room to where we’d stood before. “Yes we have,” she said. “Right over there.” The fairies must’ve had a good laugh at that one.)
I just came upon this, and it reminded me of your post:
“What deadens us most to God’s presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought.”
–Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets