Blame It on John Mayer

Raise your hand if you love John Mayer's Room for Squares album. Ok, now keep your hand up if you would say that John Mayer's Room for Squares album is one of your favorites. Alright, I see those hands. Now, keep your hand up if you can truthfully say that there was a time when you listened to the aforementioned album so often that you could probably, even today, sing every word of it all the way from "Welcome" to "day" with no help from John. That's what I thought. Amanda, Maela, you can put your hands down, and I'm gonna put mine down too, mainly because typing the word "aforementioned" one-handed took all the fun out of that paragraph for me.

I love Room for Squares. I'm not a huge John Mayer fan, although I do think he's both a poet and a melodic genius, but that album spoke to me and made me think and opened my heart toward my generation in a way nothing else had up to that point. Unfortunately, it also ruined any hope of some memoirist or descendant digging up my past through photographs.

I am a world traveler. I've gazed into the piercing southern starscape of Zimbabwe, swam in the Indian Ocean in Kenya (on my birthday, no less), and tracked cheetahs in Botswana. I've boated through the canals of Bangkok, burned my feet on the white-hot marble of the Taj Mahal, and eaten Korean food in downtown Seoul. I've explored the ruins of Ephesus, hiked to a castle overlooking the Black Sea, and jumped over the trenches of Gallipoli. All that, not to mention climbing the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, seeing the Queen's dollhouse at Windsor, taking a nap by the Seine, and seeing the Sahara Desert, the Alps, Big Ben, and the Vatican all in one day.

But I have very few pictures of all of that. The seed was planted in college. I had a professor who talked alot about our generation's obsession with capturing life on film--whether it be video or photographs. He lamented the fact that we forego enjoying life in favor of taking pictures of it. We don't live it because we're so concerned we're going to miss it--and then we miss it because we're looking at it through a lens. He made alot of sense to me. And I stopped taking pictures almost entirely. Then John Mayer came along and said it again, stifling any desire to record my life for fear I wouldn't live it. Here's what he said:

I'm writing you to catch you up on places I've been and you have this letter, probably got excited but there's nothing else inside it. Didn't have a camera by my side this time. Hoping I would see the world through both my eyes. Maybe I will tell you all about it when I'm in the mood to lose my way with words. Today, clouds are painted colors in the cowboy cliche. And strange, how clouds that look like mountains in the sky are next to mountains anyway. Didn't have a camera by my side this time. Hoping I would see the world through both my eyes. Maybe I will tell you all about it when I'm in the mood to lose my way but let me say you should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes. It brought me back to life. You'll be with me next time I go outside. No more 3x5's. Today I finally overcame trying to fit the world inside a picture frame. Maybe I will tell you all about it when I'm in the mood to lose my way...

(And, yes, that was from memory.)

So now I'm faced with a quandary. I'm not a picture taker, and it's John Mayer's fault. I want to see the world with both my eyes. And I have. But now I'm going to Uganda. And I'm going to Uganda not to live my own life, but to live the lives of the orphans there. My purpose is not only to go and enjoy them and have new experiences, but to go and enjoy them and cause you to enjoy them too. To cause you to see them for who they really are, so that you fall in love with them the same way I fall in love with them, so that you will see them as children who need hope, and love, and opportunities to be who they long to be--just like any other child.

To do that, I have to, for one month, stifle the John Mayer in my head, and look at their world through a lens, with a pen in my hand. That's the only way you can come with me, and I desperately need you there. Your going to Uganda with me is a large part of the reason I go. I will take pictures and video not because I want to capture the events of my own life, but because I must capture the reality of theirs. You may never see them otherwise. And until you go to them yourself, I will have to try and fit their world inside a picture frame...no matter what John Mayer says.