Why Rarefied?
Ethan, why did you come up with the term rarefied and why are you talking about it so much? To answer my own question and a question that many of you may be asking and have asked me, I will start with this.
I was at a concert back in October with a friend; we went to go see The Tragically Hip. A Canadian band with the social status/power in their own country surpassing that of Dave Matthews Band here in the states many times over. I learned this quickly early in my college career as I basically lived with 2 Canadians, one was my roommate and one would just never leave. We had the TV and the computers and the Nintendo 64 with
Mario Kart. They introduced me to them and I liked their sound. I was also a closet R.E.M. fan so I figured it was safe to make a relation to the 2. I was wrong. Very very wrong. The reaction I received was like I had just lit their flag and melted down Lord Stanley’s heavenly cup (NHL trophy for you non-hockey types). So we went to their show, most entertaining band ever. EVER I must reiterate. Opening for them was an unknown band to us in the US. Sam Roberts, they were one of the best opening acts I had ever seen. So I got their album on iTunes the next day and started to listen. One of their songs is called Rarefied. It opens like this…
The air tonight
is rarefied
It’s all I need
the air I breathe
So I had to figure out what rarefied means. I mean I was listening to Frank Sinatra a little later that week and he was talking about “where the air is rarefied” in his song “Come Fly with Me”. Also when looking it up on google.com, I noticed a ton of scientific results, I knew it was up my alley because my geek side came out and I got excited when I saw science was related to my new word.
So what does this mean to Ethan Otterlei and why now? Well, as a few of you know I have made some big changes in the last 6 months or so. It probably started when I was in a place where the air was rarefied. Atop of Mt. Chrysolite in Colorado for a Young Life camp. We trekked up this mountain with 400 people, all of camp goes, nobody stays back and nobody goes halfway. Everybody gets to the top. Even 360 pound “O” from Texas and 380 pound high school student from Missouri, where his 6 buddies put him on their shoulders and carried him the last 400 vertical feet.
So I have made some changes, and each week I will get into them. The first step in the process of revealing my true self has begun. It may seem as if this is a “new” Ethan to you all, but I look at is an unveiling of masks that have been added over the years. I’m still me at the core, still that same guilty 4 year old who got in trouble for not sharing his imaginary pickles with his sisters. I still think I had a valid case. I love pickles…
The first change is priority. What is my MO, my mission objective in life? For the past few years it has been work and money. I have arrived at a level of comfort living an amazing fun life thanks to some amazing blessings. The point that a change started was on that mountain. But I wouldn’t realize it for a few more months.
As some of you know I was fortunate enough to work on a project for the Minnesota Vikings. My company was selected to redesign and support a new website. This was an awesome learning experience. I mean we had sites before that shared web servers with multiple other websites. But this thing/site had so much traffic we needed to have 6 servers to host 1 site. On top of that is 2 load balancer server in which their only task is to direct which of the 6 servers your page request would go to. Very complex and a great learning experience.
So here I am in April, just celebrated 040404, which was my 24th birthday. 4! For you math geeks out there with me. That’s a little thing my sister Leah came up with! Is to yell at people, “I’M FOUR!!!â€? on your 24th birthday and see if they get it. Kind of a geek test. I love it.
Now here I am on the verge of a huge resume builder; excited to be a part of it and be able to say I worked on it and was a main part of the development process. So I figured when we launched it I would feel like I was on top of the world!
That day came. And that day went. I expected the world as outcome from this project and received nothing.
So I had poured hours upon hours and going through spans at the office where I would be there for 3 days straight except for sleeping at home from 3:00AM-7:30AM and then doing it all over again.
A few weeks later I was looking at my collection of photos from this summer Young Life camp at Frontier Ranch where I found myself atop of Mt. Chrysolite. Seeing the pictures of me and the campers and the whole group up there. (Even those who swore to us in the morning that they didn’t want to go) Seeing the smiles on their faces atop the mountain. All of these things comprise and confirm the fact that my priorities had been off kilter.
Why am I spending so much time and effort into things that aren’t rewarding me? And why can it be when I do something that is simple for me like hiking a mountain give me such an uplifting outlook on where I am at and give me a cleaner picture of things I need to fill my life with?
The next few months will tell of a journey about my challenges to paint that picture I started to see in my reflection of 2 contrasting events.
So what can we get out of this story? My challenge is to look at our lives and ask 2 questions.
1) What are the things that remind us of a “Minnesota Vikings Website� situation?
2) What are those that are like my hike to the top of Mt. Chrysolite?
How can we all begin to paint a picture of what we are chasing after? What are we pursuing? Why are we pursuing it? Who are we pursuing it for? Realistically, how will I feel when I get there?
I know I want to experience more of the joy from the little things rather than the let down when big things dont happen when you are counting on them.
So I hope that we can all come together in some sort of way that we can all learn from each others’ responses to lessons my Abba has been teaching me and revealing to me over the last few seasons of my 28000 episode sitcom called life.
-ethan
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