Q: What are the Ninja Turtles without Shredder?

A: Boring. Boring and lazy and fat and unmotivated. They sit around and eat pizza and play video games. Their weapons rust in the corner, in the sewer-damp air. Master Splinter, in his inactivity, develops arthritis and must shuffle through the tunnels on a walker. Above them the city buzzes along like normal- it is not being threatened by Evil, at least not on the scale of Be-Bop and Rocksteady (is that right?). To them, giant turtles wouldn’t be saviors, they would be menaces. So the turtles sit on their half-shells and order in.

Relevance: I don’t want to be Shredder-less Ninja Turtles. Since I’ve gotten to Seattle, I have been… lucky? blessed? fortunate? tragedy-free? Whatever you want to call it. But the truth is, such a large part of my identity is built around persevering in the face of difficulty that I’m not sure what to do otherwise, or how to feel like a good person. Because I am beginning my new job(s), I suspect most of my energy will be put into learning and work. So that’s good. Although there’s a certain rush that comes with kicking overgrown evil Rhino ass that I wll miss.

Here’s something else to consider: I was on YouTube a few minutes ago, watching videos set to Innocence Mission songs. In the comment section beneath the video for I.M.’s cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” I read the following:

“i go to sleep thinking about you jennifer, i wish i could of been honest to myself and followed my heart when life was new. i can still smell you when i hear this song.”

i go to sleep thinking about you jennifer: And something else. Before we moved here, when we were coming out of the long, cold, and difficult Boston winter trying to decide what the next step would be, I hit a low place. The low place was not “I stayed in bed and cried” low place, but rather “I had no idea how to make this decision” low place. I created massive charts that listed pros and cons of moving to various places, or staying put. I then taped the charts to the wall and stared at them. When that didn’t help, I closed my eyes and threw pieces of food at them, hoping angels would guide the food to the best option for me.

That didn’t work either, besides the catharsis that comes from throwing things when you’re frustrated.

I started to think about how my mom or members of my church growing up would say I should seek guidance from the Bible, like, pray the Spirit would guide me and then open up the Bible to a random page and put my finger on a verse and try to decipher what that verse is telling me to do. And then of course it would be something in Deuteronomy.

These days, though, I spend less time going to the Bible for answers than I do going to Google. Mostly because Google is faster. So I did something most people would consider ridiculous. I began typing in Google’s all-knowing search field, “What should I do with my life?”

Crazy, right? Except here’s the thing. Fancy-schmancy Google, trying to save us the time of actually having to type out a whopping 24 characters, now gives automatic suggestions for what you are trying to find, based on what other people in the world are searching for. Thus, when I typed in only “What should,” the following list appeared:

what should i do with my life

what should i weigh

what should i ask for for christmas

what should i read next

what should i major in

what should my weight be

what should i do

what should i be when i grow up

what should i eat for dinner

what should i get my boyfriend for valentine’s day

what should i eat

Here are some thoughts about this list:

1. I have just tried this again by typing “what should” into google, and notice that “what should I weigh” is now number one, above “what should I do with my life.” And I don’t know whether that’s a good thing (fewer people experiencing existential crises), or a bad thing (more people concerned with their weight than with, well, anything else).

2. It made me feel good to know that I was not alone in being desperate/dumb enough to type “what should i do with my life” into a search engine- not only had it been done, it was number one on the list! But upon further reflection, this was very depressing in its own right.

3. I began to think of all the other things people probably type into search engines nowadays, and this isn’t as crazy as maybe it seems at first. If someone types only “what should I do” into google, probably late at night but who knows? , then I’m sure the following is typed in as well:

i’m bored

i’m lonely

why doesn’t he love me?

a variety of things starting with “my dad,” or “my mom“

tell me what to do

Just now I typed in “I need help,” and among the prompts were “I need help losing weight” (#1), “I need help finding a job”, and “I need help paying my rent.” “I need help with math” made an appearance, as did “I need help with my math homework.” And at the very bottom of the list? “I need help from God.”

I think about the internet sometimes, what a huge wild world it is, the kind of imaginary space in which we connect with people we otherwise may never have thought of again, see photos of them taking their kids to the park, learn what they are eating for dinner tonight. We can read first-hand accounts of terrible violent happenings in countries across the world. We can find the lyrics to any song. We can tell Jennifer that we still love her, and we’re sorry.  It’s made information easy to access, and free, and made the term “search,” something that is as simple as typing a phrase into a small space and seeing what all pops up for us to read.

But searching, of course, is a complicated process. By definition, it requires effort. Without effort, it wouldn’t be searching, it would be “finding, accidentally.” It would be “stumbling upon.” It would be “being given.”

And those things are important too, and joy and answers often arrive in these ways, after we have “searched” for them earnestly in other places. But without searching, we are not human. And neither is Google. And neither are the Ninja Turtles, a point which I think ties this post together nicely, don’t you?