Mellow

Then there’s another feeling called mellow.

You honestly can’t remember why you stayed up late last night but it had something to do with that giddy feeling, or its opposite - the feeling when you think deeply about possible outcomes and weigh them against the desires of right now.

You don’t know if it’s worth risking whatever you’ll risk but you really just want to have what you want to have.

Screw next week, you tell yourself. I want the world. I want the whole world. I want it now. For just one day can’t I be a natural, carnal, selfish devil?

But you know it doesn’t work like that.

Consequences.

Your friends give you disapproving glances and you yell at them. You say you’re sorry and that you just need to do it before you regret it. You’d rather have the “I shouldn’t have done it” than the “What if I had?” You don’t want regrets but you’ll regret either way.

But will you regret making that giddy dream a reality, just for a day, to know if it is or is not meant to be?

Even though there’s no such thing as meant to be.

“Meant to be” is what you think God has in mind for you combined with what you want for yourself.

Remember: God’s not going to push you down a miserable slide. He’ll make you climb steep steps in haunted houses holding the hand you’ve wanted in yours since spring. He’ll make you trip over your friend and bonk heads with another until you’re all bonked out and you can’t even keep your head up at dinner. He’ll give you cuts and scrapes until even the sun can’t keep you awake and you know crap sometimes gets hard. He’ll make you understand that your wish is not His command.

But He’ll fill the chasm between you and your best friend. He’ll put that hand in yours even if it isn’t the best for you right now. He’ll put your mind in a pencil sharpener until it writes clearly, and He’ll give you an extra hour of sleep every November just so you can catch up enough to make it till December, and He’ll give you a chance for adventure even though it scares the living hell out of you, and He’ll forgive you when you say living hell. And again. And He’ll make it all okay.

And just like your giddy feeling, you can’t really make people understand this feeling called mellow unless they too have an existential crisis and they too can’t discern between now and then and want and need and fate and choice and doom.

So instead of even attempting to tell someone, you just tell the story of how his hand found yours in the dark of an empty theatre and maybe, just maybe, they’ll fall into your mind and take a slice of God and understand that He has a perfect plan for every imperfect person and all it takes is a little faith and understanding and time.

And maybe they'll see that giddy always falls to mellow.

And that this is mellow.