Jess Hover

I am reading a book by Donald Miller called "Through Painted Desserts". Reading it is like being on a road trip, perhaps because it is about him going on a road trip. But I mean it in the sense that I desire to rush through it and learn all the things I can possibly learn, like driving quickly to see the important sites, but in actuality the beauty is in the journey, and it is the journey that will teach me the most.

Here is a part that spoke to my heart, it reminds me of what I am experiencing here in New York City. He is talking about Houston, but for me Houston is LA, and New York, and Colorado Springs. He also mentions Paul, his hippie friend, and my role model today.

"And it hit me that amid the screaming noise, amid the messages that said buy this or buy that and I will be complete, I could hardly know the life that was meant to be. Houston makes you feel that life is about panic, and nothing more. Nobody stops to question whether they need the house or car or better job. And because of this there doesn't seem to be any peace, any serenity. We can't see stars in Houston anymore, we can't go to the beach without stepping on a coke bottle, we can't hike in the woods because there aren't any woods. We can only panic about the clothes we wear, panic about the car we drive, sit stuck in traffic and panic about whether or not the guy who cut us off respects us. We want to kill him, for crying out loud and all the while we feel a need for new furniture, a new t.v. and a bigger house in the right neighborhood. We drive around in a trance, salivating for Starbucks while that great heaven sits above us, and that beautiful sunrise is happening in the desert, and all those mountains out west are collecting snow on the limbs of their pines, and all those leaves are changing color out east. God it is so beautiful, it is so quiet, it is so perfect. It makes you feel, perhaps for a second, that Paul gets it and we don't- that if you live in a van & cook your own food on a fire & stop caring about whether or not people do or do not like you, that you have broken through, that you have shut your ear to the bombardment of lies that never, ever stop whispering in your ear. And maybe this is why he seems so different to me, because he has become a human who no longer believes the commercials are true, which perhaps is what a human is designed to be."