Today my team has the day off, so I’m sitting at a cafe on Renkai Road working through some e-mails, writing some blogs, and Face-Timing my sweet parents. I got one very fitting e-mail from The North Face, who I ambassador for, and I wanted to share my response with you all. The e-mail is about a new campaign they are launching today called #QuestionMadness. The e-mail reads as follows…
“This fall, we’re on a mission to question perceptions. What life choices are actually crazy? What truly brings us joy? Who gets to tell us what to do and when do we listen?
Many of us that live a life anchored in the outdoors, or in another niche community, have at some point faced scrutiny from the outside (or even from our own family)…why the risk? Why the obsession? When are you going to grow up? There is an ever-present tension in the mix of admiration and judgement that we all experience in different ways.
The societal inertia around expectations and “success” is often misguided (in our humble opinion) and we want to rally around humans that define their own success and pursue a unique path to understanding and joy.”
They asked us to respond with a few “heartfelt paragraphs” regarding our experience with this. As you can imagine, the topic has felt very real for me lately, as I live a life that many would consider “mad.” Why step out into the unknown, take cold bucket showers, live on less than 5 dollars a day and risk malaria or other horrors, when my life at home is so comfortable and genuinely really wonderful? Although those around me have generally been incredibly supportive, I’ve faced some of this scrutiny for stepping out into my calling in more subtle ways. People congratulate me for my “fun year off before I have to start my real life” or ask how I “funded my vacation.” It’s hard for me to articulate my purpose to them, since to many it does seem like “madness.” Sure, I won’t be out on the World Race forever (it would take a special kind of crazy to do that) but it is very much my life now, and I hope that the lessons I learn here and the lifestyle I live will follow me forever. In fact, I know they will. In farewell, a friend of mine wrote me “I’ll be praying for this crazy adventure that will soon be your new normal.” Those words were important to me. My prayer is that my everyday life here looks so mad from the outside that those watching have no choice but to question WHY I am doing what I’m doing. In Matthew 4, we read about Jesus calling his first disciples. He finds them in the routine of their careers and calls them out to follow him. Verse 20 says “at once they left their nets and followed.” I think my timing for the race has been perfect, but I wasn’t bold enough to go at once. Verse 22 tells us that James and John “immediately left the boat and their father to follow him.” Fisherman was their identity, just as careers tend to be today. Family comforts and physical provisions were the things that defined their lives before this moment. They traded those things in with immediacy. They said yes, accepted the challenge, and trusted that what Jesus had for them was better. This blog is pretty sporadic, but then again so is my life lately. I guess the point I would like to try and get across is that we should all be questioning madness. Is it crazier that my squad mates stepped out in faith into this wild adventure, or that some people never step out into their calling at all? Is it crazier to sleep on the floor for a year in order to serve, or to sleep comfortably each night not being mindful of the opportunities you are ignoring. I guess I’m just thankful that my kind of crazy gets to look like a different ministry every day, building relationships with hundreds of new friends all over the world, and diving deep with a really wonderful and terrifying God.
What do you think is maddening about our everyday culture in the USA? What does your own personal brand of madness look like?
