Do years have legacies? Or are they forgotten in time once they calendar flips? Years are not like people, they are not conscious entities that make choices, they are merely man-designated, semi-arbitrary groupings of days that allow us to orient ourselves in the world. To be honest, the events of years passed do tend to blend together, and it often seems like years only have legacies if we decide to give it to them. However, I think that 2017 will leave a legacy to this world, and unfortunately I believe that it will be one of tumult in the world. 2017 featured one of the worst fires in California history, some of the most fearsome hurricanes that absolutely devastated parts of the country, terrible mass shootings that just seemed to come one after another in a string of death, was a year of intense political and cultural divisiveness, and even featured a debacle at the Oscars about which movie won best picture (thankfully, it was Moonlight that ended up winning). These chaotic events were not limited to where I lived, but echoed across the country and even, I suspect, through the world. 2017 will be remembered for these things and they will undoubtedly define the legacy that it leaves.
However, if the public sphere in 2017 was marked by chaos and tumult, my personal life was marked by a welcomed level of stability. 2017 was the first year that I didn't have to move residences (except for in the past two weeks, but more on that later), and while the roster of the place where I did live shuffled around a bit, being able to come home to the same place everyday for the first time since high school provided a level of comfort and stability that I have not had in some time.
At work, although I started off the year in a bit of tumult, working in digital marketing in what many would consider a great job with a decent pay. And while the job itself was good, the department was toxic and I made it a goal of mine to get a new job by the time March rolled around. In browsing for a new job, I found a new position at my company to work in the IT department as a Salesforce Administrator. I applied, and after some delays, moved to the new department in July with a 20% pay increase. My now boss taking a chance on me has motivated me to want to be the best I can be, and in the first several months in the position I could not be happier - the actual job is enjoyable, my boss trusts and supports me, and overall I have more energy at work and outside of it. I am incredibly grateful whenever anybody takes a chance on me, and this is no exception. The second half of 2017 has been the best period professionally of my life.
I got to attend my personal record of five weddings this year, a mix of college friends and current roommates. The trend in my life of 3-5 weddings a year has been one of the bright spots in my life, and I already have received a save-the-date for March of 2018. These five brings my adult total to twenty-one weddings since college.
Socially, in 2017 I continued to try to successfully traverse what post-college, young adult life looks like. I'm realizing more and more how difficult it is to make quality friends after college, to really get into the meat of people's lives and to be there as a resource for them. I have learned ways to do this, and learned that it requires really narrowing focus. Although I am there for everyone, really trying to invest in fewer people with quality time is important.
Creatively I challenged myself in two new ways in 2017, getting more into writing poetry in 2017, and trying my hand at writing some short screen plays. I actually even got to see the start of one screen play that I wrote with a friend, Justin, come to life as we cast it, directed it, and shot it. This was one of the things that required the most work of anything that I have ever done, including long nights, skipped meals, and cold shot set-ups. Overall, we did not get to finish The Instructor, as Justin moved and our lead actress quit, but it was an activity that taught me a lot and that I really sparked my interest in film making.
Additionally, I tried to host some events, utilizing the large house that I lived in. I hosted a potluck in July, which I cleverly titled 'A midsummer night's potluck'. We also BBQd several times over the course of the summer, which really helped to give those months a real 'summer feel'. More recently, I hosted a live amateur stand-up comedy night at my house, leading off with a set of my own. The prevailing notion is that the night went exceptionally well, and most were asking me when the next one would be.
Although 2017 was personally a year of relative stability, it ended with one of the most chaotic months in recent memory. December seemed to be just a conglomeration of several different factors: the Thomas Fire, which created a terrible air quality and put lots of people on displaced, burning hundreds of thousands of acres and causing intermittent blackouts. I am also moving with a few of my roommates (4 of us total), after several others moved out and we found ourselves in need of a place less expensive. These two combined have caused a general sense of chaos as stuff is spread between two different houses, neither of which really feels liveable at the moment. Many other people left for the holidays, with some coming back, and it almost felt like there was a rotating cast. Add to that that I found no fewer than four different friends are going through really serious breakups. Most of these things will be at least semi-cleared up by mid-January, and it has helped remind me of life's occasional propensity for chaos.
There were some other highlights from the year: I got to try two escape rooms, go to universal studios horror nights with my sister, visited San Diego for the first time, and got to take a nice long weekend trip to San Francisco in May. I had a nephew born (perhaps this should have gotten its own section, as in terms of importance it is paramount), which is exciting.
Overall, I got to think a fair amount about my life this year, understand more about who I am and what God is doing with me. It is never easy trying to traverse personal desires, being a quality man of character, leading others to know God the way that I do and even beyond that, and still dream. And that is what I am ending this year thinking about - dreaming. It is so important to dream and aspire, to set my sights incredibly high, as even if I never get there, it encourages me to continue to pursue more and deeper, and keeps the humdrum of life from overwhelming me.
I have a few goals for 2018 - I'd like to get back to processing through things, as life seems to fly at me too fast these days (part of the reason that I sat down to write this), I plan to finish my second novel (and probably still not get either published), and there are a few people in my periphery that I intend to invest in, all the while trying hard to keep in contact with those that God has placed in my life. I'm excited for this new year.
Monday, December 25, 2017
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Nobody Asked Me, But...
Everybody seems to have an opinion this election season, and seeing as how I sometimes process things through writing, I figured that it would be a good idea to write down what mine are. Nobody asked, and if you do not care, that it totally fine. I am writing this to understand if I have a healthy attitude about things. That being said, if you disagree, I would be fine with having a civilized, informed discussion about it where we start with love and move from there.
That out of the way, I did not vote. To be honest, I merely forgot. However, had I remembered, I cannot say which presidential candidate I would have voted for. I do not know either of their politics particularly well, partially as a consequence of an election season filled with rhetoric and mudslinging. I cannot on the one hand justify voting for a racist bully who treats people, especially women, as objects to be used. That being said, I am very tired of the system, and I have hang-ups about voting for someone who just represents more of the same. That's where I stood. Morally, I couldn't justify voting for either.
However, I have more thoughts about the post-election reactions. Our democracy works a specific way, and that is the way that was set up years and years ago, a way that nobody seems to have a problem with until their candidate loses. Protesting is not a healthy way to deal with your anger at your candidate losing and the other candidate winning (tell me when protests don't turn violent and actually peacefully accomplish their goal. Shot of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose protests really did turn violent just with the violence directed towards him, you will be hard-pressed to find that). Instead, go out and make the world a better place. Go adopt a child in need, volunteer at an animal or homeless shelter, tutor underprivileged children. That is what is going to help fix America, not this...creative whining.
I do not want you to think that I am insensitive. I understand the fear that minorities, women, LGBTQ, and others hold at their autonomy and freedoms being attacked. I do. But nothing has happened yet. Nobody has rounded anybody up. No dictator was elected; last I checked we still have checks and balances and separation of powers for these very reasons. One man does not make all of the decisions. If and when anything resembling unspeakable evils do happen, I will be the first to welcome people into my home, offer my resources and time to try to prevent the atrocities. But Donald Trump was elected; he earned the presidency.
As well, this vehement hatred towards Trump supporters has got to stop! Comparing them to Nazis is not ok; physical violence of any kind toward them is not ok; and grossly overstating that all trump supporters are stupid, racist, hate women, etc. is not ok! Not associating with people who have different thoughts is never going to allow your thinking and opinions to be refined. No change will happen. When George Washington was elected president, his top two advisers were from opposing political parties. He welcomed the chance to hear differing opinions. Get to know people at a personal level if you want to make judgments about them. Try and understand their perspective and where they're coming from rather than just making a blanket statement about an entire group of people, 99% of whom you have never met. Again, process your anger by making the world around you better; channeling it into hate helps nobody. I say this not as someone who supported or voted for Donald Trump, but as somebody who firmly believes that it is right to love those different than you and accept the company of those with differing view points, as well as offering them hospitality.
Some of you will write this off, and I don't mind (even though you are proving me correct.). I am not, after all, interested in being right, I am interested in being righteous. There are many problems with politics in the US, and I do believe that the two-party system separates far more than it unifies. It allows people to ignorantly vote merely along party lines regardless of whether their candidate stands for something right or good or not, and takes away the impetus for critical thinking. But it isn't through protests and exclusion of those who think differently than us that this gets accomplish. It is by open discourse and loving those that have less, actively being a part of setting right the evils that we see in the world, that this gets accomplished. If you are too weak or lazy to put that into practice, than you have only yourself to blame.
That out of the way, I did not vote. To be honest, I merely forgot. However, had I remembered, I cannot say which presidential candidate I would have voted for. I do not know either of their politics particularly well, partially as a consequence of an election season filled with rhetoric and mudslinging. I cannot on the one hand justify voting for a racist bully who treats people, especially women, as objects to be used. That being said, I am very tired of the system, and I have hang-ups about voting for someone who just represents more of the same. That's where I stood. Morally, I couldn't justify voting for either.
However, I have more thoughts about the post-election reactions. Our democracy works a specific way, and that is the way that was set up years and years ago, a way that nobody seems to have a problem with until their candidate loses. Protesting is not a healthy way to deal with your anger at your candidate losing and the other candidate winning (tell me when protests don't turn violent and actually peacefully accomplish their goal. Shot of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose protests really did turn violent just with the violence directed towards him, you will be hard-pressed to find that). Instead, go out and make the world a better place. Go adopt a child in need, volunteer at an animal or homeless shelter, tutor underprivileged children. That is what is going to help fix America, not this...creative whining.
I do not want you to think that I am insensitive. I understand the fear that minorities, women, LGBTQ, and others hold at their autonomy and freedoms being attacked. I do. But nothing has happened yet. Nobody has rounded anybody up. No dictator was elected; last I checked we still have checks and balances and separation of powers for these very reasons. One man does not make all of the decisions. If and when anything resembling unspeakable evils do happen, I will be the first to welcome people into my home, offer my resources and time to try to prevent the atrocities. But Donald Trump was elected; he earned the presidency.
As well, this vehement hatred towards Trump supporters has got to stop! Comparing them to Nazis is not ok; physical violence of any kind toward them is not ok; and grossly overstating that all trump supporters are stupid, racist, hate women, etc. is not ok! Not associating with people who have different thoughts is never going to allow your thinking and opinions to be refined. No change will happen. When George Washington was elected president, his top two advisers were from opposing political parties. He welcomed the chance to hear differing opinions. Get to know people at a personal level if you want to make judgments about them. Try and understand their perspective and where they're coming from rather than just making a blanket statement about an entire group of people, 99% of whom you have never met. Again, process your anger by making the world around you better; channeling it into hate helps nobody. I say this not as someone who supported or voted for Donald Trump, but as somebody who firmly believes that it is right to love those different than you and accept the company of those with differing view points, as well as offering them hospitality.
Some of you will write this off, and I don't mind (even though you are proving me correct.). I am not, after all, interested in being right, I am interested in being righteous. There are many problems with politics in the US, and I do believe that the two-party system separates far more than it unifies. It allows people to ignorantly vote merely along party lines regardless of whether their candidate stands for something right or good or not, and takes away the impetus for critical thinking. But it isn't through protests and exclusion of those who think differently than us that this gets accomplish. It is by open discourse and loving those that have less, actively being a part of setting right the evils that we see in the world, that this gets accomplished. If you are too weak or lazy to put that into practice, than you have only yourself to blame.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
4 Months
In many ways, this is a follow-up to my (semi) recent '7 Years' post. In that post I discussed how impactful living in IV through the past 7 years has been. This post is a bit different. It all came about in a bathroom.
Recently I was in the restaurant/brewery that I used to work in and I went to the men's bathroom to poop. While on the toilet, my mind came to the sentence 'How did I get here?' It has been just four months since I was serving food there in order to make a living, walking from my house in Isla Vista, without a car or a credit card. In many respects, it still felt like I was floundering and I knew that I needed something more. Fast forward four months and so much has changed. I am now a marketing automation specialist at a company with over 600 employees, living in the hills of Goleta, commuting to work, and paying for things with essentially only my credit card. In just a summer really, all of this has changed, and it is only now, in retrospect, that I feel like I am at a place where I can really process through the way that this leaves me.
In many respects this was a long summer with different emotions than I have felt lately. June and July flew by whereas August felt like several months itself. Even when I think back to this one simple month it seems like many months of life passed by. And now September has picked up a frenetic pace. It is strange to think through the things that I care about now and how different it is. I still have good friends, friends whom I pursue and relationships that I carefully nurture. Meanwhile, I like feeling like an adult finally. Sure, having a job by no means is what makes someone an adult, but it is a plethora of different things, including the job, general pace of life, the rhythm, even feeling like my emotions have leveled out a bit. (I say that not as a negative, keep in mind that for like three years it kind of felt like I had not emotions). Now there is a girl that I have a crush on, not knowing what to do with it, I have love for fewer friends and not being as spread out feels great, I write poetry and having a healthy outlet to process through who I am is incredibly useful, I am a vital part of a team and while sometimes the vital part feels like a lie, I know that I am valued at least at one place. I guess that balance is probably one thing that is true of my life now. For the past three years I felt crooked and disjointed and while I was still doing good here and there, I largely did not know or even at times recognize myself. Now, I know who I am.
I am weird, very silly, fiercely loyal to a fault, a thinker yet not to the extent that my head gets stuck in the clouds, I am exceptionally nerdy, I sometimes do not know what to say, but I also will defend those who need defense. I am also much more honest than I used to be; I just don't have any desire to hide who I am anymore. I am far from perfect, and up front about that pretty quickly; indeed, I am not even up to my own standard, but I am growing. I desire to be better tomorrow than I was today, and better still the next day. I try to be grateful for what others do for me, and more so, for opportunities to help others. I am often selfish, lazy, and sometimes uncreative, but more often I crave creativity. I am still and always will be someone who loves Jesus and tries to do what is right by Him. I am intensely skeptical, but that often serves to make me more intense in whatever I do (thought occasionally it also leads me to not do things that I should be doing).
Honestly I did not know that this post would turn into this, but as I wrote, I need some time to process through the previous three months as the season shifts and pumpkin everything emerges. But what a four month span it has been. These days I feel my age more than before, not just less energy than I used to have, but more motivation to use the energy well, productively, and creatively. I am not perfect, but I am committed to making the world around me better. Let us pursue life together.
For the sake of nostalgia, I will end this blog like I would have in college.
~Good Luck and Good Eats
Recently I was in the restaurant/brewery that I used to work in and I went to the men's bathroom to poop. While on the toilet, my mind came to the sentence 'How did I get here?' It has been just four months since I was serving food there in order to make a living, walking from my house in Isla Vista, without a car or a credit card. In many respects, it still felt like I was floundering and I knew that I needed something more. Fast forward four months and so much has changed. I am now a marketing automation specialist at a company with over 600 employees, living in the hills of Goleta, commuting to work, and paying for things with essentially only my credit card. In just a summer really, all of this has changed, and it is only now, in retrospect, that I feel like I am at a place where I can really process through the way that this leaves me.
In many respects this was a long summer with different emotions than I have felt lately. June and July flew by whereas August felt like several months itself. Even when I think back to this one simple month it seems like many months of life passed by. And now September has picked up a frenetic pace. It is strange to think through the things that I care about now and how different it is. I still have good friends, friends whom I pursue and relationships that I carefully nurture. Meanwhile, I like feeling like an adult finally. Sure, having a job by no means is what makes someone an adult, but it is a plethora of different things, including the job, general pace of life, the rhythm, even feeling like my emotions have leveled out a bit. (I say that not as a negative, keep in mind that for like three years it kind of felt like I had not emotions). Now there is a girl that I have a crush on, not knowing what to do with it, I have love for fewer friends and not being as spread out feels great, I write poetry and having a healthy outlet to process through who I am is incredibly useful, I am a vital part of a team and while sometimes the vital part feels like a lie, I know that I am valued at least at one place. I guess that balance is probably one thing that is true of my life now. For the past three years I felt crooked and disjointed and while I was still doing good here and there, I largely did not know or even at times recognize myself. Now, I know who I am.
I am weird, very silly, fiercely loyal to a fault, a thinker yet not to the extent that my head gets stuck in the clouds, I am exceptionally nerdy, I sometimes do not know what to say, but I also will defend those who need defense. I am also much more honest than I used to be; I just don't have any desire to hide who I am anymore. I am far from perfect, and up front about that pretty quickly; indeed, I am not even up to my own standard, but I am growing. I desire to be better tomorrow than I was today, and better still the next day. I try to be grateful for what others do for me, and more so, for opportunities to help others. I am often selfish, lazy, and sometimes uncreative, but more often I crave creativity. I am still and always will be someone who loves Jesus and tries to do what is right by Him. I am intensely skeptical, but that often serves to make me more intense in whatever I do (thought occasionally it also leads me to not do things that I should be doing).
Honestly I did not know that this post would turn into this, but as I wrote, I need some time to process through the previous three months as the season shifts and pumpkin everything emerges. But what a four month span it has been. These days I feel my age more than before, not just less energy than I used to have, but more motivation to use the energy well, productively, and creatively. I am not perfect, but I am committed to making the world around me better. Let us pursue life together.
For the sake of nostalgia, I will end this blog like I would have in college.
~Good Luck and Good Eats
Saturday, June 18, 2016
7 Years
A 7-year chapter of my life has come to a close. I have moved out of Isla Vista, a place that I called home for 7 years. I have been very emotional through this experience, and I am not sure how to react. Walking through the tired, worn-down, empty Isla Vista has had its effect on me. I have lived for my entire adult live in IV, and everything that I have done as an adult, the decisions that I have made, have been in IV. IV has shaped me and as I leave it, I feel that I am leaving a part of me with it. I think that I remember the relationships that I developed, many of which have since faded, and the experiences that those relationships wrought. It is intimidating, harrowing even, to face a new, extremely unknown chapter of my life, and yet it is necessary now. I cannot stay in IV any longer; I stretched it and wrung all of the juice out of it, and now I move on. But how? IV is covered with ghosts of my past and people that I once loved. I have prayed countless words over IV, cried so many tears, laughed uncontrollably, wanted to run and hide, learned to cook, got my driver's license, saw multiple generations of students pass through, felt the deepest emotion and the entire spectrum of emotion, felt no emotion, experienced bleak loneliness, experienced the utter joy of being alone, felt deeply loved, felt deeply neglected, grew out my beard for the first time, changed my haircut for the first time, got my first real job, got a college diploma, baked wedding cakes, walked every square inch of UCSB and IV, felt heartbreak, tragedy, and loss, baptized people, mentored people, discipled people, felt the depths of failure, learned who I am so much more, developed who I am so much more, gained friends and family, lost friends and family. And through all of this, IV was there, like a constant friend.
It is hard to leave, but, like I said, necessary. The greatest thing that I take away (and there are many) is that I can wade through this next chapter of my life confidently. Going in I had no idea what to make of college, and even less idea how to traverse life after, and yet the gentle guiding hand of God was with me, leading me through the high grasses. And now here I am, examining my past, trying to make sense of who I am. Isla Vista will always be a part of me, and not because I spent four years partying and I love to party, but because I spent 7 years maturing and becoming man, growing and changing with the businesses and streets around me. That seemed to be the constant in my life those seven years: God and change. I am scared now as I experience emotions and thoughts that I have not in many years, but I am confident as well, loved deeply by an infinite creator God whom I know in very different ways than when I first met Him. But I think that Isla Vista for me will always have a place in my heart because it is the place where I first got to know that God well. Just as so many relationships in my life now, I cultivated the relationship that I have with God through long walks in IV, through seeking throughout the streets, through doing life with Him. IV enabled me to do that uniquely in a way that no other place has. I feel it. There is an emotion that I feel at times, and it would not be inappropriate for me to call that emotion 'Isla Vista.' In many ways it is a conglomeration of 7 years worth of experiences crammed into one little lightning bolt that hits my heart from time to time and leaves me as quickly as it came.
In what has become one of my favorite books of all time, C. S. Lewis (who has become one of my favorite authors of all time) writes this about joy: "[Joy] must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again … I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.” When I think of Isla Vista and the seven years that I lived there (and honestly, if I allowed myself to properly simmer in the thoughts of that place, I could easily be taken captive and wind up writing an entire book. There are far too many places and feelings associated with that chapter of my life to be able to condense or list them all) I think of joy. I think that IV may be the place that I first experienced the type of joy that Lewis talks about (and if you, reader, would like a better understanding of the joy that I am talking about, read Surprised by Joy) outside of an experience that I link it to from my childhood, and I have experienced it too many times to remember in Isla Vista. The fact is, Joy like this is not necessarily pleasurable, that is the point. I do not feel pleasure at leaving IV, I feel sadness, regret, missed opportunity, and a touch of loneliness. Yet, I cannot connote these feelings as negative; they are deeply positive and thus I declare them joy. For it is in leaving IV that I see the effect that this place had in making me who I am and of using what was already there, taking the raw materials that this boy came in with, and shaping them into a man.
And now I step boldly into uncharted waters. I will react to these waters as much as they are reacting to me, just as Isla Vista has reacted to me. I mourn for it, and it mourns for me. And yet, ultimately one of the reasons that I know that it is time for me to leave is because I have felt a feeling of completeness. I feel that I have done what was set before me to do there. I have impacted so many lives, and that is what makes it so hard to leave. And yet, it is time. This feeling of completeness accompanies a feeling of wishing that I could be back in the thick of it-4 or so years in, loving Isla Vista and the people there because I knew my purpose there so well. And yet that purpose is done, and I am thankful that it is so. I know longer could do the same things that I did there. All things are being made new, and I am content with what I have done there.
It is hard to leave, but, like I said, necessary. The greatest thing that I take away (and there are many) is that I can wade through this next chapter of my life confidently. Going in I had no idea what to make of college, and even less idea how to traverse life after, and yet the gentle guiding hand of God was with me, leading me through the high grasses. And now here I am, examining my past, trying to make sense of who I am. Isla Vista will always be a part of me, and not because I spent four years partying and I love to party, but because I spent 7 years maturing and becoming man, growing and changing with the businesses and streets around me. That seemed to be the constant in my life those seven years: God and change. I am scared now as I experience emotions and thoughts that I have not in many years, but I am confident as well, loved deeply by an infinite creator God whom I know in very different ways than when I first met Him. But I think that Isla Vista for me will always have a place in my heart because it is the place where I first got to know that God well. Just as so many relationships in my life now, I cultivated the relationship that I have with God through long walks in IV, through seeking throughout the streets, through doing life with Him. IV enabled me to do that uniquely in a way that no other place has. I feel it. There is an emotion that I feel at times, and it would not be inappropriate for me to call that emotion 'Isla Vista.' In many ways it is a conglomeration of 7 years worth of experiences crammed into one little lightning bolt that hits my heart from time to time and leaves me as quickly as it came.
In what has become one of my favorite books of all time, C. S. Lewis (who has become one of my favorite authors of all time) writes this about joy: "[Joy] must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again … I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.” When I think of Isla Vista and the seven years that I lived there (and honestly, if I allowed myself to properly simmer in the thoughts of that place, I could easily be taken captive and wind up writing an entire book. There are far too many places and feelings associated with that chapter of my life to be able to condense or list them all) I think of joy. I think that IV may be the place that I first experienced the type of joy that Lewis talks about (and if you, reader, would like a better understanding of the joy that I am talking about, read Surprised by Joy) outside of an experience that I link it to from my childhood, and I have experienced it too many times to remember in Isla Vista. The fact is, Joy like this is not necessarily pleasurable, that is the point. I do not feel pleasure at leaving IV, I feel sadness, regret, missed opportunity, and a touch of loneliness. Yet, I cannot connote these feelings as negative; they are deeply positive and thus I declare them joy. For it is in leaving IV that I see the effect that this place had in making me who I am and of using what was already there, taking the raw materials that this boy came in with, and shaping them into a man.
And now I step boldly into uncharted waters. I will react to these waters as much as they are reacting to me, just as Isla Vista has reacted to me. I mourn for it, and it mourns for me. And yet, ultimately one of the reasons that I know that it is time for me to leave is because I have felt a feeling of completeness. I feel that I have done what was set before me to do there. I have impacted so many lives, and that is what makes it so hard to leave. And yet, it is time. This feeling of completeness accompanies a feeling of wishing that I could be back in the thick of it-4 or so years in, loving Isla Vista and the people there because I knew my purpose there so well. And yet that purpose is done, and I am thankful that it is so. I know longer could do the same things that I did there. All things are being made new, and I am content with what I have done there.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
How to Mourn Amidst Tragedy
I apologize in advance for the title of this post-it may lead you to believe that I have an answer to this question. I can firmly tell you that I do not. What happened last night in Orlando, FL (the worst shooting in American history, which is saying something, at a gay nightclub in which 50 people died and more were injured) is an abomination, but unfortunately and with great sadness, not uncommon. True, we have never seen anything on that scale but mass shootings in this country and this broken world happen all too frequently, and every time that they do I find myself faced with the same question-how do you mourn? If you are of the family members of those who were lost, how do you handle it? Can you possibly take the condolences and the prayers and the nice-sounding words and sentiments and internalize them and squeeze some hope out of them? It does not alleviate the reality. It does not change the fact that love has been taken away, at some level. Tragedy. How does anybody possibly deal with it.
I am not here to offer a solution. True, I have lived through a tragedy (The Isla Vista shooting of 2014 in which more than 5 were killed and more injured) and I saw a community mourn and advance from that. But even in that, I have no solace to offer because I do believe that it differs in any and every situation. As a religious man I can point to a God who has things under control despite the chaos and who will ultimately work things in this hurting world out, but that might mean nothing to you. As somebody who believes staunchly in the power of community I can point to how communities and countries come together during tragedy, but that also might not do much for you. And if they do not, that's fine. I offer nothing.
But I offer everything. I will listen to anybody who has gone through some thing of that nature. I will sit with them in silence if they need be; I will hug and not let go for as long as it takes. We need to rethink things in this country, not just gun laws, but our own hearts. What a year it has been between the biggest mockery of an election to a litany of gun violence to intense racial tension. We need to examine the values of our culture and its current trajectory and ask ourselves difficult questions about where our hearts are at. And then make necessary changes. Discussion will go on for a week or two about this and then sadly something will come along to take it all out of our minds. We cannot let them happen. But these are lofty goals that it takes lifetimes and generations to accomplish. In the meantime, it is imperative that we treat each other with humanity-that we try to understand not just the plight of those afflicted, but the plight of any who have less. We need to love each other well. If you believe in prayer, actually pray, with all of the fervency and zeal with which you pray for your most passionate requests. If you believe in the power of hope and love then hope, and love.
These all sound like concepts, and we must begin with those. But sit with each other. Do not be afraid of awkwardness or of intimacy extended to those who have lost. Empathize and take some time out of your schedule to think deeply of those around you who are suffering every day. There is no easy solution, no simple explanation of extremely complex and intricate problems and tragedies. But there are steps. There are ways to be with people in the hope that if nothing else, presence, will make pain more bearable. And that is what we have to hope for-not to take pain away, because pain of loss is permanent. But to lessen, to bring joy and laughter back, to help people move on, but at their own time. Think well and be considerate. Nobody is evil, just deeply hurting.
I am not here to offer a solution. True, I have lived through a tragedy (The Isla Vista shooting of 2014 in which more than 5 were killed and more injured) and I saw a community mourn and advance from that. But even in that, I have no solace to offer because I do believe that it differs in any and every situation. As a religious man I can point to a God who has things under control despite the chaos and who will ultimately work things in this hurting world out, but that might mean nothing to you. As somebody who believes staunchly in the power of community I can point to how communities and countries come together during tragedy, but that also might not do much for you. And if they do not, that's fine. I offer nothing.
But I offer everything. I will listen to anybody who has gone through some thing of that nature. I will sit with them in silence if they need be; I will hug and not let go for as long as it takes. We need to rethink things in this country, not just gun laws, but our own hearts. What a year it has been between the biggest mockery of an election to a litany of gun violence to intense racial tension. We need to examine the values of our culture and its current trajectory and ask ourselves difficult questions about where our hearts are at. And then make necessary changes. Discussion will go on for a week or two about this and then sadly something will come along to take it all out of our minds. We cannot let them happen. But these are lofty goals that it takes lifetimes and generations to accomplish. In the meantime, it is imperative that we treat each other with humanity-that we try to understand not just the plight of those afflicted, but the plight of any who have less. We need to love each other well. If you believe in prayer, actually pray, with all of the fervency and zeal with which you pray for your most passionate requests. If you believe in the power of hope and love then hope, and love.
These all sound like concepts, and we must begin with those. But sit with each other. Do not be afraid of awkwardness or of intimacy extended to those who have lost. Empathize and take some time out of your schedule to think deeply of those around you who are suffering every day. There is no easy solution, no simple explanation of extremely complex and intricate problems and tragedies. But there are steps. There are ways to be with people in the hope that if nothing else, presence, will make pain more bearable. And that is what we have to hope for-not to take pain away, because pain of loss is permanent. But to lessen, to bring joy and laughter back, to help people move on, but at their own time. Think well and be considerate. Nobody is evil, just deeply hurting.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Pretending to be an Adult
Last night I said to my roommate the following sentence: "Man, I have so many errands to run and I owe so many people money. Is this what being an adult feels like?"
And with that it hit me: I am an adult. I work a job from 8-5 everyday, I have insurance payments and bills, and by just about every other standard of adulthood (with the exception of perhaps the most obvious, being the head of a family) I am firmly entrenched in that quite odd phenomenon of post-adolescence. Although, I am only 25 and it does not always feel like I am an adult. By this I mean that although I am one by external measures, I think that the measure that is perhaps simultaneously neglected and utterly necessary is that of the process of becoming an adult. That is something that you cannot cheat-you cannot really wake up one day and realize that you have struggled and given advice and felt deep pain and exuberant joy and been controlled by rage and fitted with logic, that you have made difficult decisions and wrestled with the moral consequences of your actions. These and more are intricate parts of becoming an adult, and I think that without this struggle, part of it is lost. In other words, an essential part of adulthood is the process of becoming an adult.
So, when I say that sometimes I feel like I am merely pretending to be an adult, like somehow I was able to sneak into the club without anybody noticing in and nobody has kicked me out yet. It is a difficult feeling to explain. One day you feel like a teenager, able to rage all night and make late-night taco bell runs (not that there is a single thing wrong with those) and seemingly the next day you are going to sleep at 9:30 looking at adolescence in the rear-view mirror. Adulthood is ill-defined in our current culture leading a friend of mine recently to comment to me that he is tired of being a 'kadult'. And maybe it is that word that best describes the way that I feel-trying to understand who I am and merely directing my own trajectory in the right direction and hoping that I come out of it resembling that great men that I grew up admiring.
But I know that I am not there yet; the 'k' is still at the front of that word and as old and even at times out-dated I often feel, I do not have wrinkles or grey hair. I have not experienced the loss of a child, there are still many markers that point to the underside of adulthood for me. So, it often does feel like I am cheating. I guess that that is a part of learning how to drop the 'k'. Becoming not my parents, but hopefully greater, not privy to the same mistakes. Mistakes are a part of who I am, and necessarily so. I cannot cheat.
Sometimes it feels like I am pretending to be an adult. But the process is part of the man.
And with that it hit me: I am an adult. I work a job from 8-5 everyday, I have insurance payments and bills, and by just about every other standard of adulthood (with the exception of perhaps the most obvious, being the head of a family) I am firmly entrenched in that quite odd phenomenon of post-adolescence. Although, I am only 25 and it does not always feel like I am an adult. By this I mean that although I am one by external measures, I think that the measure that is perhaps simultaneously neglected and utterly necessary is that of the process of becoming an adult. That is something that you cannot cheat-you cannot really wake up one day and realize that you have struggled and given advice and felt deep pain and exuberant joy and been controlled by rage and fitted with logic, that you have made difficult decisions and wrestled with the moral consequences of your actions. These and more are intricate parts of becoming an adult, and I think that without this struggle, part of it is lost. In other words, an essential part of adulthood is the process of becoming an adult.
So, when I say that sometimes I feel like I am merely pretending to be an adult, like somehow I was able to sneak into the club without anybody noticing in and nobody has kicked me out yet. It is a difficult feeling to explain. One day you feel like a teenager, able to rage all night and make late-night taco bell runs (not that there is a single thing wrong with those) and seemingly the next day you are going to sleep at 9:30 looking at adolescence in the rear-view mirror. Adulthood is ill-defined in our current culture leading a friend of mine recently to comment to me that he is tired of being a 'kadult'. And maybe it is that word that best describes the way that I feel-trying to understand who I am and merely directing my own trajectory in the right direction and hoping that I come out of it resembling that great men that I grew up admiring.
But I know that I am not there yet; the 'k' is still at the front of that word and as old and even at times out-dated I often feel, I do not have wrinkles or grey hair. I have not experienced the loss of a child, there are still many markers that point to the underside of adulthood for me. So, it often does feel like I am cheating. I guess that that is a part of learning how to drop the 'k'. Becoming not my parents, but hopefully greater, not privy to the same mistakes. Mistakes are a part of who I am, and necessarily so. I cannot cheat.
Sometimes it feels like I am pretending to be an adult. But the process is part of the man.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Unpopular Opinion: Identity
Unpopular opinion: you are not 'ok' just the way you are.
It is all over culture-bumper stickers that read 'born ok the first time', facebook statuses that read 'just me doin' me', and things like that. The culture narrative these days has become 'you are ok just the way you are.' It is a poisonous ideology that pervades our culture and makes room for all sorts of evil. It sounds harmless, and perhaps even good. Somebody just be alright with who they are, and should not seek to change. But that is a relatively new ideology that has major consequences. It is prudent for us to constantly seek to be changing, always for the better. When we make allowances and compromises for things that are seen as evil under the guise of not offending, it distorts what is seen as normal. Even the word 'normal' has come to be seen as almost a negative in our society, when the word 'normal' has traditionally just meant what is good and right. In our society of no 'normals' there are also no 'goods' or right. Perhaps I am not explaining my point well enough. We need not think that everything that a person can be is fine, and we do not. Most people would agree that the 'radical' things like pedophilia and psychopathy are evils which are detrimental to the well being of our society and culture. However, because we have permitted so many other things that used to be seen as sexual perversions and moral ills, we have negated a culture of 'fixing' yourself and weeding out those things within oneself which are negative. Do not get me wrong, I am not advocating for a universal personality, or even necessarily a morality wherein everyone follows exactly the same criteria all of the time (indeed, different situations call for different decisions), however, I am advocating for gravitating back towards a society wherein it is permissible and even healthy to align oneself with what is good and right. I know the next step is asking what is good and right, and I get that and that is a discussion that is utterly worth having. However, not everything that a person can be is good and this idea that one needn't try and ever better oneself is simply erroneous.
I know that this will receive some push-back and perhaps some do not even agree with me that this is a prevailing culture narrative. But when you look closely at the things that our culture longs and tempts you to believe, the idea that you are perfect just the way that you are is in there. And I know I am not perfect; I have so far to go, please let me be clear about that. However, I am open to change. I admit that part of who I am in not perfect and is unacceptable. Granted, there is grace in my failings. But I implore our culture to think likewise, to be utterly at peace with admitting that not everything a person is or can be is good, it's not. Much of what we desire (and what we desire and do plays a major part in us becoming who we are) is not good for ourselves or society and culture. That's ok to say. We need to restrict parts of ourselves; that is ok to say. Most of who we are is self-centered and apathetic towards the suffering going on around us. That is ok to say. What is not ok is to persist in those beliefs and practices when we as a society and a culture could be so much greater than we are. We are meant for great things if only we would admit that we are not good. We have a long way to go. This ideology combined with the previous one that I wrote about has our society headed in dangerous and unprecedented territory. We should stop and seriously consider that social ideologies that we buy into everyday.
You are not ok the way you are. Not everything you want is good. But now that you believe that, seek to be greater.
It is all over culture-bumper stickers that read 'born ok the first time', facebook statuses that read 'just me doin' me', and things like that. The culture narrative these days has become 'you are ok just the way you are.' It is a poisonous ideology that pervades our culture and makes room for all sorts of evil. It sounds harmless, and perhaps even good. Somebody just be alright with who they are, and should not seek to change. But that is a relatively new ideology that has major consequences. It is prudent for us to constantly seek to be changing, always for the better. When we make allowances and compromises for things that are seen as evil under the guise of not offending, it distorts what is seen as normal. Even the word 'normal' has come to be seen as almost a negative in our society, when the word 'normal' has traditionally just meant what is good and right. In our society of no 'normals' there are also no 'goods' or right. Perhaps I am not explaining my point well enough. We need not think that everything that a person can be is fine, and we do not. Most people would agree that the 'radical' things like pedophilia and psychopathy are evils which are detrimental to the well being of our society and culture. However, because we have permitted so many other things that used to be seen as sexual perversions and moral ills, we have negated a culture of 'fixing' yourself and weeding out those things within oneself which are negative. Do not get me wrong, I am not advocating for a universal personality, or even necessarily a morality wherein everyone follows exactly the same criteria all of the time (indeed, different situations call for different decisions), however, I am advocating for gravitating back towards a society wherein it is permissible and even healthy to align oneself with what is good and right. I know the next step is asking what is good and right, and I get that and that is a discussion that is utterly worth having. However, not everything that a person can be is good and this idea that one needn't try and ever better oneself is simply erroneous.
I know that this will receive some push-back and perhaps some do not even agree with me that this is a prevailing culture narrative. But when you look closely at the things that our culture longs and tempts you to believe, the idea that you are perfect just the way that you are is in there. And I know I am not perfect; I have so far to go, please let me be clear about that. However, I am open to change. I admit that part of who I am in not perfect and is unacceptable. Granted, there is grace in my failings. But I implore our culture to think likewise, to be utterly at peace with admitting that not everything a person is or can be is good, it's not. Much of what we desire (and what we desire and do plays a major part in us becoming who we are) is not good for ourselves or society and culture. That's ok to say. We need to restrict parts of ourselves; that is ok to say. Most of who we are is self-centered and apathetic towards the suffering going on around us. That is ok to say. What is not ok is to persist in those beliefs and practices when we as a society and a culture could be so much greater than we are. We are meant for great things if only we would admit that we are not good. We have a long way to go. This ideology combined with the previous one that I wrote about has our society headed in dangerous and unprecedented territory. We should stop and seriously consider that social ideologies that we buy into everyday.
You are not ok the way you are. Not everything you want is good. But now that you believe that, seek to be greater.
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