Hunter Hayes and girls

"It's just weird mom. Coming home is a shot to my pride and an encouragement at the same time. My accomplishments in the world have no bearing on who I am in this family. I can be at school and have this elevated persona that my work and accomplishments earn me, and I walk through our front door and I'm Alysa, the oldest kid of five, who has crazy hair and played basketball in high school and is still ridiculed for eating too much ice cream. It doesn't matter what my GPA is, no one cares how successful I have been, and depending on whether I'm feeling prideful or inadequate, it's concurrently humbling and encouraging."

 My mom is a pretty sharp woman. She was 20 points away from scoring perfectly on the SAT and worked on the cutting edge of in vitro fertilization in a lab as a geneticist, before she got married to my dad. And she slowly nodded in understanding as our highlander lumbered down the freeway. "I know exactly how you feel. After I had you, I went from being pretty high on the totem pole to changing diapers. It was a sharp knock to my pride-a reminder that the things we accomplish and the positions we hold aren't really what's important."


It's true, you know. Value is in Whose we are, not who we are. Things don't really have value unless there is the question of belonging, right? Only in possession do things gain value, independently, objects are just objects; dirt is just dirt; diamonds are just diamonds.


There's a song that my housemates in college love by Hunter Hayes with lyrics that repeat (too many times) "I want to make you feel wanted". They are particularly fond of singing it loudly and then following it up with "Ugh that is sooooooooooooo sweet! I just want a man like that!". I have a spiel about listening to worthless lyrics with catchy tunes, but no one wants to listen to me, so I just kind've look at them and try (and fail hard) not to judge.


It is funny to me, that we don't spend as much of our lives feeling wanted as we do trying to be. We exhaust ourselves chasing after things we already have. Perhaps, the "problems" brought about by prosperity keep us preoccupied with the wrong things that never mattered much at all.


So how then do we discover what does matter? Or do we already know?


I think I mentioned Hunter Hayes only so I could be rude about my housemates. That is SO mature.