What We Want

February 29th: The Real Valentines Day

2012-02-14T15:27:00.000-05:00

It seems like peoples' feelings concerning Valentines Day are largely conditional upon whether or not they're single. I think that's sad because you don't need to own a cute boy or a pretty girl to appreciate or celebrate romance. I mean, hell, millions of people world round celebrate Christmas every December 25th who don't believe in God. Most non-believers I know don't lounge around, pouting, "Oh my Tom Cruise. I wish I believed Jesus Christ was the Messiah so I could buy a Christmas tree and give this wicked remote control helicopter to my friend." They still do those things because they believe in something deeper, something equally beautiful about the season. Giving. Selflessness. Treating others better than we treat ourselves. You don't have to be a Christian to find those ideas sentimental or crucial to our own happiness. Likewise, you don't need someone to cuddle with or enough sweets to poop a chocolate squirrel on our beloved February 14th to acknowledge the grandeur and amenity of romantic love.

I'm not saying that if your single then you should light candles around your room, shroud yourself in rose petals, turn on Barry White, and practice making-out with a hand mirror. But I do not feel like the classic singleness angst, suppressed jealousy, or bitterness is necessary either. If you're single, there's probably a really good reason for it. You probably haven't met anyone worth fighting for or there is probably a scary list of attributes you need dire improvement at before you're ready to plunge into the chaos of a new relationship. And despite what cultural influences may incline you to believe, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I think people feel like if they don't have someone to love on Valentine's Day, then the whole day is a total crock like they haphazardly missed out on a holiday they were meant to be a part of. They somehow liken the Valentine's blues to a year that mysteriously skipped their birthday. I wish Valentine's Day fell on the 29th so that people would celebrate love regardless of the digits on the calendar. A 16-year-old boy with a Feb. 29 birthday doesn't consider himself 4 years old because he's only had 4 legitimate birthdays throughout his life. He still has 16 years of life to celebrate despite what the date reflects. You weren't left out. Your year hasn't been skipped. You were meant to be apart of today's celebration of romance.

The truth is, if you're single, you do have someone to love. Yourself. I know that sounds like a copout or like some farfetched optimism but relationships take two people and you are one of the people involved. I mean that. Ask your parents, or a mentor, or a pastor, anyone wiser than yourself - they'll tell you that you can only love someone else to the extent that you love yourself. It's hard to receive flowers and heart-candy when we don't think we're worth them. If you're in a relationship this pink and red colored day, enjoy your partner and let your generosity become an icon of what it should aways be despite what the date on the calendar is labeled. If you're single, treat yourself to something that will fulfill you and make you come alive inside. You will never comprehend the merit in receiving until you can understand the significance of giving. Practice loving yourself so that when the time is right, you may be prepared to better love and have romance in abundance. Love.

- Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

The Comical Misconception About My Blog

2012-02-10T17:51:00.000-05:00

If you're in the What We Want group on Facebook a few things are probably true:

1. You're probably a friend of Chase Parks or if you're a female (any age, really) you've probably had a crush on him. Hell, I do.

2. You probably have no idea who Adam Evancho is.

3. You've probably noticed a mass amount of people posting what they want from life and followed suit because you've never read the "About this Group" section.

The What We Want Facebook Group is for the promotion of a blog. This blog. It's called What We Want. I've gotten away with never explaining the title of the blog for some time, but today I was replaced at work for coughing all over everyone's drinks so I figured I'd come home and oblige my readers.

A few years ago my ex-girlfriend broke up with me and bless my heart, I was a victim of the infamous God-card. When she carefully explained to me on the porch that day that she felt God was telling her to break up with me I was really torn up for two reasons. A. The girl I loved was breaking up with me and that unlimitedly sucks. B. Dear sweet Jesus Christ was the instigator - a real, divine Benedict Arnold. I won't go into detail about my supreme discords with pulling the God-card in Christian relationships but mention they leave absolutely no closure. And that's a problem because we humans are awfully inquisitive creatures and when someone you love has been striped out of your life, well, you wanna know why. I mean that, go up to a friend or your boyfriend and tell them that you no longer want to see or communicate with them. I bet you their expression drops and the first thing they ask is, "w-why?" If you don't contribute something reasonable like, "Because my parents hate you" or "because you cheated on me" they'll be subject to concocting self-created rationale in feeble attempts to label their misery.

A few months after the tragedy I was sitting on the back of my truck bed with a childhood friend. He took a long crackling drag of his Djarum menthol cigarette and simultaneously exhaled smoke and inquiry,

"So why'd she break up with you man? We're y'all having problems?"

"No. I mean, I don't know, Jess. She said she felt like that was what God was telling her to do. It's not that I don't respect blind obedience. I just wish I had a little bit more to go off of. She said it was something she didn't want to do but felt like she needed to listen to her heart."

"...hunh."

"What?"

"Dude. She wanted it, man. We all want something and typically, whether we're backed into a corner or enough time passes, we'll figure out a way to get it."

I know it was a really simple conversation, nothing bursting at the seems with profundity, but it was a perspective that changed my life. What if all actions could be squeezed through the filter of asking what we want? I've tried to explain the concept countless times but to no avail. So throughout the years I've gathered metaphors that are better suited in regard to understanding.

Take homework or studying, for instance. You're 3 hours deep into 100+ notecards and 5 coffees have never seemed less helpful. You prop your arm up with your elbow and rest your chin in your open palm and imagine yourself anywhere else doing anything else but reading another line of dull, scholastic text. Strangely enough, you wanted this. Years ago when you graduated high school you decided to earn a degree via college education. You knew you'd have to attend class and you knew you'd have to cancel weekend plans in order to study or write papers and the worst part is you can't complain. Because you choose this. Because you wanted it.

This past summer my friend had growing feelings for a girl. A girl who lived 1000 miles away. Slowly his feelings were legitimizing and despite the grotesque distance his mind began to wonder to fantasy land. He eventually asked me what I thought about it one dismally rainy night while we were stranded in my car far, far away from our camping spot. I know this might not be the most encouraging advice, but I was trying to be practical. "Well friend, it could definitely work. When you take trips to see her, you'll be filled with joy and reminded why you choose what you did. But you won't be able to complain about the things you already know to be true. When you go out with your friends and all of them bring their lady friends and you watch them flirting, cuddling, and bantering you won't be able to rightly complain that you're slightly envious that their lovers are near and not far. When you have to conduct an argument or begrudgingly excavate all your emotions over the phone, you won't have the right to complain because you well knew the relationship would require management via the telephone. And when you have an important event, a birthday party, a graduation, anything that is in your name and specifically for you, you'll have to be okay with her not always being there. Now. Do you want that?"

What if we looked deeper into our actions? What if we saw the positive, but more importantly, the negative repercussions they warranted - would we be so bold as to proclaim, "I wanted this"? The haphazard misconception my Facebook group has created is that of the members posting arbitrary desires. Though it's not specifically the purpose of the group, I support the result of said confusion or illiteracy. My question is, how many of them (you) are doing something about what you want? If you're not doing anything to get what you want, would it be safe to say you don't really want it that badly? I think so.

After my ex and I broke up the second time (this time I was the instigator) I felt lonely for months after. And though I hated admitting it, I couldn't complain. I knew loneliness would ensue and thus, in a sick way, I wanted it. It's simply not enough to want that which is immediate and complain about what transpires because of our choices. It is our responsibility, our burden, to familiarize ourselves with what we want beyond face value. When we want something, by extension, we want everything that comes with it. People tell me that what we do is what defines us. Whoever those people are, I agree with them. If what we want is the precursor to what we do, then I imagine figuring out what we want is kind of important. If this explanation isn't satisfactory, I'll probably understand, because it wasn't very in-depth and I didn't really try that hard because my feet are cold and I'm sick.

*Ps- My apologies to the people who actually read my blog. I know I haven't been writing. Well, I have been writing, just not here. I've been writing somewhere else that when finished, will be much more exciting to read. Huzzah.

Seeing Spots

2012-01-10T13:44:00.000-05:00

Well, the oversized time gap between classes on Tuesdays from 10:45-2:00 and on Thursdays from 12:00-2:00 should adequately eliminate any excuse I have for not writing because Lord knows I wouldn't dare use the time for something productive like homework.

Without fail, every opportunity I have to waste time on campus I recurrently find myself sitting in "my spot". Outside the Bulldog Cafe there are two brick walls fencing the wide, gum stained, cement steps that rise toward the University Book store. I always perch myself upon the brick wall closest to the Bulldog Cafe and dally away my time writing and reading but mostly watching the thousands of students traversing the busiest square on campus. Humorously enough, I always receive these suspicious glimpses from passerby's like they're wondering how the hell did he get up there? The wood arched overhang above typically keeps the spot free from precipitation and I get a lot of reassuring stares from petite Asian girls and black dudes in search of a cigarette to bum. Besides the grotesque pop/rap mixes played in the stone floored courtyard adjacent to the steps by mangy sorority girls, the dull roar of hundreds of separate conversations and squeaking blasts from the nearby bus stop create the serene environment you typically wouldn't expect out of such a bustling location.

I know I am not the only one with admiration for particular spots, but I have to admit I have never taken the precious time to admire the psychology behind an individual's aptitude to repeatedly visit a precise location. Couples have that quaint diner they enjoyed their first date at or that remote field they laid a cruddy blanket down upon to share a sun filled Sunday afternoon in. Friends have that illegitimately owned bar booth, a certain porch, coffee shop, or those dilapidated train tracks to apprehensively spill their stories upon with each spike and step. And whether we return to these places to think, or to read, or to write, or to converse, or to pray, seethe, or cry, one thing remains constant; we feel like a small shard of the Earth is entitled to us and that we have unlimited authority to be our selves while we occupy that spot.

We say, "Home is where the heart is" and while we most readily attribute that phrase to people and relationships, it's sweet to think we can sprinkle bits of ourselves on the haphazardly discovered places that we become so beautifully smitten with, too. I know for myself, sometimes I feel like if I can return to one of my own spots, I can somehow recreate the magic that was present amidst the first time I was there or whenever the spot became so memorable to me.

By design, I'm an awfully nostalgic creature. I can easily spend hours with my eyes closed, listening to the daylight within seemingly ancient memories. What's frustrating and surprising to me is that these memories are never the one's I'd expect to stick out at the time they're happening. And that's a truly endearing aspect of life - never knowing when a memory will make the unprecedented leap to remarkableness or when a location will cease to be a just a space but instead graduate to a "spot." I'm not entirely sure what this entry was for beyond being appreciative for the places in this world that seem to have our names on them and provide a peculiar sense of home. Here's to seeing spots and creating memories we'll only later recognize to be magical.

The Last Echo

2012-01-06T14:41:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to make any excuses for not writing. Between an absurd amount of finals work and an absurd amount of sheer laziness, I effectively justified enough useless rationale to opt out of writing for the past month. Besides, I kind of hate when writers initiate some type of "I'm Back!" speech. Unless your JK Rowling or Ted Dekker, most people aren't biting their nails in anticipation for a writer's great return. I'm not sure why I neglect writing. It's such an abundant life source that is so easily tapped into, yet I end up exchanging the time for video games I suck at and dull romantic comedies. Discovering what we love is bittersweet like that, ya know? Because once we find it, we undoubtedly become certain we'll not be the great man or woman we could be without it. Yet the work is agonizing and has a greater tendency to bring explosive frustration than immediate serenity.

Truthfully, I am torn right now. Because I love writing this blog yet I cannot deny the work God has done in me over the past 2011 year. That sentence doesn't actually make sense, so let me clue you in. I asked God to make me into the man He needed me to be because I was fed up with having no clue about my future. And I guess God thought that this was a priority issue because He wasted no time throwing mines to explode and pulverize my previous life. So I spent 8 months confused, heartbroken, jealous, betrayed, stressed, angry, and ready to knock Jesus in the gonads if I ever saw Him on the street. I can't say I lost my faith, but patience was never my strong suit and it took me for all my worth. Whilst dragging my feet through the driest desert in Hell, nearly convinced God really was subject to favoritism and that I undoubtedly wasn't on that lucky list, I began to believe in myself. I started to believe all sorts of radical things about myself that typically I dismiss with sarcasm. I started to believe I could be a quiet example to my friends. I started to believe I could be a rock for my family. I started to believe there might be a girl out there who appreciates an albeit nice guy and that I don't need to pretend to mysterious when I'm clearly not. I began to believe God heard what I asked and was actually doing something about it. I began to see rhyme and reason and believe my pain was freeing me to engage in what I truly love.

So I opened up Microsoft Word and began writing unconventional Christian thoughts on Christian relationships. And I saved it. And now I'm writing here because I'm afraid of writing there. Just like I used to write in my private Xanga journal because I was afraid to write here. I've wasted a lot of time in college doing everything but writing a book. I have dieted, committed to workout routines, procrastinated work, worked attentively, I have made friends, lost friends, made love and lost it, I have gone to numerous churches, done drugs, picked up smoking, had a few nights drunk, traveled to distant countries, explored the local frontier, switched schools, switched majors, been loving and been a dick, I have cried, I have laughed, I have been proactive, been stagnant, and my life has become a true spectacle of the erratic rise and fall pattern of the human heart. Between incalculable moments of sin and righteousness, I have sufficiently proved I carry the human condition virus.

I always wanted to wake up with a venerable and addictive story to write a book about, but ya know, that's not going so well for me. And though it's like catching the last echo of a fleeting blast of objective truth, I have begun to believe the greatness of our dreams won't be easily reached but that they are all possible. And this is nothing profound and nothing I've never heard before, but for the first time, as I am standing on the edge of growing up, I am feeling the importance of its truth.

So, yeah. Here's to that. Cheers.

What to Do When Cookies Don't Turn into Turkeys

2011-11-18T16:09:00.000-05:00

The truth about my friend Paul, is that he used to be an angry and vehement son of a gun. I know this all to well because long ago I witnessed his ex-girlfriend and him violently screaming obscenities at one another over the telephone, I watched him punch dents into his own vehicle, and I even witnessed my friend Bernard subduing Paul's thrashing outrage in my basement as he furiously screamed, "Hit me!!!! HIT MEEEEE!" in order to feel anything that would prove his depression induced numbness wrong. Fortunately for for his well-being as well as for metal car doors within his vicinity, Paul radically changed into the albeit kindest, most positive, tender friend I have ever known.

Today amidst our Friday morning Dunkin' Doughnuts tradition, Paul recalled the words of our friend Chaz whom we worked alongside with at Camp Highland this past summer. Paul recounted a discussion where Chaz noted on how cool it was that Paul and myself took principles from the Bible and after assessing our own respective shortcomings, utilized those proverbial nuggets of wisdom to act differently in order to construct a holier lifestyle rather than simply commit them to memory and continue forth like we all so frequently do. And Paul, admittedly, was rather beside himself at Chaz's comment because he thought well, how else would it work? We cannot merely read about ideas and fully understand everything Jesus was all about and magically wake up more like what we read about.

After giving Paul a few reassuring head nods and articulating an unnecessarily longwinded agreement I thought about my own vice and what helped me triumph over it. In high school I used to be terribly judgmental. I was the type of moron who looked down upon homosexuals like they were lesser beings just because I squirmed at the idea of feeling another man's grizzly whiskers graze my lips as we made-out. I was the type of idiot who scorned atheists simply because I was uncultured enough to never have actually met one and recognize they were indeed, more times than not, more sophisticated than I was/am. So when I moved to Atlanta to attend GSU, I noticed how invariably surrounded I was by all sorts of people I typically judged and two choices inevitably arose. I could either blaspheme by admitting I was in fact God Almighty and authorized to objectively judge the world around me. Or I could admit I was in dire need of a radical perspective alteration. I took the latter route and here's what cognitively and later behaviorally transpired.

The foundation of my thought lied upon the premise that God is not so shortsighted as He is understanding and that the perfect result of my development will look different than the perfect result of another. It's like Paul's testimony about choosing to act differently than he was naturally conditioned to act. He endured many complications and frustrating scenarios within his youth that uncontrollably victimized him and conditioned him to be an angry individual. I'm not saying because of a pressuring environment, all of the irrational choices made under the fiery influence of anger were then all righteously justified. I just mean that once I got into college and started to see people struggle with sin due to a long and complex history of conditions and influences, I began to wonder had I been in their shoes and underwent the same battles they did if I could honestly say I would have turned out any different.

I never struggled with the predisposition to anger. I have always been somber and too apathetic to really let most things agitate me. Yet, I'm not perfect am I? What Paul needed to liken himself closer to the image of God is different than what is needed of me. Which means despite my eventual perfection and his eventual perfection, our end results will look quite dissimilar given the fact that the ingredients to achieve such looked differently for him and I. Ultimately, to help myself overcome my overly judgmental demeanor, I began to search for ways I could understand why people turned out the way they did and identify with those reasons, rather than arrogantly judge what they did become. Because if I could understand the ingredients compulsory to produce a certain version of sinfulness, then maybe I could better understand and safeguard from judging the result. Because without proper understanding of ingredients, specific results are all to susceptible to dissatisfaction. It'd be like buying flour, butter, a dozen eggs, white sugar, and chocolate chips, churning them all together in a mixing bowl, shoving them into the oven, and being eminently disturbed that the end result wasn't a turkey.

A big hope of mine is that while you were reading this you didn't cultivate the thought Well, God's going to shove a lightning bolt down his throat because he doesn't believe people aren't responsible or have to confess for their sins because he believes those people were brought up within conditions that made their sinfulness likely. If I receive a comment like that, I will immediately know you failed the reading comprehension portion on the SAT. I believe every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. But I too believe that God is an understanding God and He and He alone knows how and what specifically to hold us accountable for because it may look differently for each of us considering the differing ingredients in our lives.

The Problem of the Cause: My Arby's Concubine

2011-11-16T17:35:00.000-05:00

Late the other night I acquired an irresistible urge for Taco Bell. There is something about a Crunch Wrap Supreme and a large Baja Blast Mountain Dew that, at the rare and right time, satisfies far beyond any other meal. Approaching the order window my buddy Bernard sarcastically says, "You know, I feel like Taco Bell cannot not screw up your order." He was absolutely correct because as it turned out their credit card machine was down and they were only accepting cash. Cash? Don't they know cash is as outdated as cassette tapes? Anyway, after I threw a turbulent fit in my car and blurted some obscenities at the dimly lit Taco Bell sign, we ventured across the street for Arby's where the next best thing awaited my eager stomach. Hence, an outlandish metaphor was born.

So far, we have discussed some key secondary causes to the problem of cheating such as intoxication, unfinished business concerning baggage, and the concept of emotional infidelity. And however rudimentary these dilemmas seem, they still stem back to an even further basal root. Discontentedness. I'm not saying discontentedness is the end-all-be-all for every single account of cheating in the history of man, but it does appear to me as the most common thread between cases.

Typically, as humans when we need something, anything we go looking for it. And when we don't find it in the place we expected or thought it ought to reside, we're usually too stubborn to give up so early and so immediately, so we search elsewhere. And you know this is precisely characteristic of you because if you've ever lost your keys, you probably didn't check merely once underneath the couch cushions and then resort to a thought like: Well, couldn't find my keys. Guess I'll never drive again. No, you probably searched in a few drawers, around the kitchen counter, or within the catastrophe of your badly disheveled room before you reluctantly admitted the keys actually vanished. Just like I found myself slobbering over a roast beef cheddar melt after Taco Bell failed to adequately provide.

Believe it or not, this same common trend of looking elsewhere for the things that failed to be provided or were poorly provided is similarly found in relationships. When a committed guy cannot bare the superficiality of his girlfriend any longer, he consequentially gravitates towards others whom seem profound and never-ending in depth. When a committed girl doesn't feel listened to or admired, she naturally draws toward others whom respect her frailties via conscientiousness. And I'm not saying if you've ever been cheated on, then it's all your fault because you sucked at being a decent girlfriend or boyfriend. Not at all. Because discipline plays as equally momentous of a roll as does character. What I think I mean, is that your partner, if you will, probably went to Taco Bell first.

I think that is the true cause of the problem of cheating. People develop wants and needs and then attempt to appease their new yearning through their partner. And when, for whatever reason, that doesn't work they become discontent and romantically famished. Then, when they can bear their lack of pacification no longer, they venture across the road to Arby's for something else that will satisfy. And then, the last and final ingredient to complete their sin only take a scarcity of self-control. The methods of avoiding this are complicated and overwhelming. Methods I wouldn't dare dive into explaining without the mention of writing a book to contain it all first. However I will say, a whole lot is easily avoided simply by communicating with our partners about what we need and what we don't need and likewise listening and putting in an honest effort to accomplish their desires within ourselves. To use "love" as a verb, to cheat is not to love. Cheating is not a loving action. And if we wish to honestly declare we're in love with another, cheating and putting ourselves in likely positions where cheating is made more possible will undo everything we think we believe about how we feel.

I hope you enjoyed "The Problem of the Cause" series. I know it's not by any means comprehensive or Biblically or psychologically backed-up but it's the best I can manage. Feel free to comment and let me know your agreements, disagreements, praises and burns. Love.

The Problem of the Cause: Emotional Cheating

2011-11-14T16:39:00.001-05:00

The prospect of emotional infidelity is an intriguing topic I don't hear discussed enough within relationship circles. It's an arduous subject that generally winds up undermined and prone to negligence for its controversial properties; which is why I'd like to present it to the forum of minds reading here. In order to avoid the dilemma of differentiating definitions I deem it best to primarily distinguish what constitutes emotional cheating. Even though 101 professors have implored me not to reference Wikipedia for credible sources I'm going to do it anyway:

An "emotional affair" is an affair, which excludes physical intimacy but includes emotional intimacy and can begin as innocently as a friendship. It may also be called an affair of the heart.

The matter of the fact is we don't have to touch somebody else to legitimize or authenticate the reality of our feelings. When I make new friends, I don't yearn for the special moment I can playfully push their nose in like a toddler curiously pressing the squeak-emitting fake horn on a Power-Wheel car so that I can finally feel like our friendship has been substantiated. In similar regard, I don't believe to call cheating cheating one must discard all the clothing they own and participate in a 40 day and night shag fest. And if you have participated in that, then you should consider writing erotic novels because you've probably acquired the mental faculty and sexual competency to do so. Our emotions and our beliefs extend to numerous entities we've never physically engaged. To music whose artist we're unaware. To philosophies we can only imagine. To Santa Clause himself. If seeing is not believing, then I dare say feeling is not believing either.

Because we've already discussed this in To Own a Wolf, let's disregard the circumstance where a member of a relationship deliberately places him/herself into a position where their chance of acting unfaithfully is more likely. I want to focus on the narrow, grey, and unwanting of speculation scenario where emotional arousal is neither controllable nor avoidable. The situations that for all intents and purposes appear innocent. When a girl sits by a handsome young man brimful with humor and mysteriousness in class or a guy who encounters a fetching girl soaked in flamboyance and flirtatiousness at a friend's birthday party. And despite this girl and this guy being committed in a relationship, they find themselves intrigued, slightly pricked by interest, subtly enamored by the newer person they've crossed paths with. This is the scenario when a committed girl settles down in earnest to confide in her male friend whose ability to tenderly listen and exhibit pristine understanding causes jealously to swell inside her in hope her true boyfriend may someday reproduce the same qualities. This is about the guy whose female friend's playfulness and lightheartedness renders him infinitesimally envious of the fact she is slightly more fun than his own girlfriend.

Are these encounters indubitably labeled emotional infidelity? Should skepticism ensue? I'll tell you why I do not think so. I feel like our personalities are but only shards, derivative fragments from one true, one whole, one complete personality. God's personality. As if we were all the sandy debris of an exploded moon scattered among an intercontinental beach. By no means is this factual, but sometimes I like to think if you combined the minds and personalities of everyone who ever has, does, or ever will live, it may resemble (at the very least) a closer resemblance to God than our individual being. Like we all hold a unique and necessary shape to create the perfect person. With that said, I don't find it likely you or I will find perfection in the people we pursue. And while that seems like common knowledge and largely cliche, we continue to find ourselves awestruck when our mates debut their inadequacies and we continue to be seated in a thrown of jealousy when we notice others more suited to our mate's needs than we can say for ourselves.

In conclusion, I think emotional cheating is a dangerous concept to get wrapped up in, for both parties really. Because if we worry about our partner's emotional dedication well knowing that a world of variables may ignite his/her emotions, then we may say it is permissible to fear the world. And if we feel guilty every time we notice in another a characteristic that is more present or more appropriately executed than that within our sweetheart, then we may be forever guilted. I think the alternative remedy is to rather recognize your sweetheart is not perfect and neither are you and that there is no shame in innocently noticing or admiring the perfections in others where you partner may lack because where imperfections lack, the will of the heart succeeds.

The Problem of the Cause: Baggage Avenue

2011-11-10T15:07:00.000-05:00

I don't really believe there's a time requirement or age policy that prerequisites falling in love. As dangerous and borderline moronic as I think it is for anxious couples to hurry into an engagement merely 6 months into their relatively recent relationships, my logic reminds me there is seldom anything logical about love. With that said, I feel similarly upon love's disregard for rhyme or reason when considering break-ups, ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, and the seemingly forlorn time spent in-between old loves and new loves. Ill-advised and worthy of skepticism as it may be, it's quite plausible to discover new love and affection relatively immediately after discontinuation of the old commitment. Because the active ingredient in break-ups require one of two elements. The presentation of a new, wildly dynamic, irresistible person who puts that pestering I wonder if I'll ever find someone as wonderful as the last person thought in its cold grave for good. Or an insurmountable lump of time spent picking up the pieces and constructing new life.

So what does any of this have to do with infidelity? One word. Baggage. Now, a wide array of baggage types exist. Girls have daddy issues, or are incapable of repressing anxiety outbursts, or handed out too many jobs in high school (pun intended). And guys are unseasoned exhibitors of feelings, have laughably short fuses, never developed confidence due being labeled a cream-puff too many times in grade school, were sexually assaulted by football coaches, or used to be bullies because mamma never taught them how to be kindhearted and tender. And that's all perfectly fine and dandy because baggage is sorta like the prerequisite for being a human. Everyone owns their respective vices and imperfections and unless you intend on dating Jesus Christ, you should probably expect characteristics in other people that are only manageable via acceptance.

We say yes to baggage because all we are, are summations of our pasts and it's virtually impossible to bring nothing from your past into you present relationship endeavors. However, the "Proceed No Further" sign on Baggage Avenue is when that road intersects with unfinished heartache from the last love. I'm not saying everyone who comes out of a relationship needs to wear a sign imprinted with bold letters around their necks declaring I'm still heartbroken over my ex. Please move along. Because like I said, unprecedentedly stumbling upon new love is quite plausible. It's when we go looking for it, when we expect whoever is next in line to rescue us from our anguish that our pursuit becomes irrational and problematic.

I only highlight baggage because I'm willing to bet half of the infidelity cases I listen to are brought about by involvement or entertainment of so-and-so's old flame. And it's honestly a crying shame because new relationships are supposed to be unique and the birth of a new adventure, not a quest to deliver someone from the past the the present. And really, all the blame for cheating doesn't fall on the person who decided to prematurely jump into a new relationship. The other person had to of either been to ignorant to ask or risk pursuing someone still badly broken. My advice to the latter would be, take your time. If you really care about the person you're pursuing, you'll put their well-being first and be conscientious of their heart's status first and foremost.

Trust me, don't say yes to this kind of baggage. Complications will ensue. No one wants to patiently wait for the next special person, only to be backstabbed. And we should never be so reckless with another's heart that we should consider them before we're absolutely sure we're ready. Love when you're ready, not when you're alone. Because even though there is no time limit on love, you can give love time.

The Problem of the Cause: To Own a Wolf

2011-11-09T12:50:00.000-05:00

Raise your hand if you think being drunk is a legitimate excuse for cheating on your partner. Okay. Keep your hands raised. Now. Go ahead and stretch your arm up towards a turbulently rotating ceiling fan. Insert hand within intersecting proximity of moving blades. Honestly, this has absolutely nothing to do with morality and everything to do with barefaced factuality. And the fact is this: Alcohol is an agent that increases the potential to act in such ways that produce unfavorable outcomes. That's not an opinion. It's a fact. An opinion would be: Alcohol always leads to undesirable circumstances. That's an opinion because it is not unceasingly valid. There are plenty of occasions when drinking, even copious amounts, is indeed harmless.

It took me all night to concoct a suitable analogy, so consider this for implied comparison. Owning a pet wolf, for instance, is similar to alcohol insofar that wolves are not required by any bestial law to always physically assault us when our presences converge. There exist plenty of opportunities in the animal kingdom where wolves and deer or lions and gazelles refrain for harming the respective prey given that the predator is not hungry or backed into a corner. However, owning a wolf does undeniably raise the risk for potential harm to take place opposed to not owning a wolf at all. The point I'm trying to illustrate is this: If I choose (this is an important word for later) to own a potentially threatening exotic animal and then old Spot decides to viciously rip my jugular from my neck one day while I'm casually reading the newspaper, then whose to blame? The wolf for proceeding to act according to the nature it is designed with? Or me for being an idiot by choosing to own a lethal wolf?

When people become intoxicated and make poor decisions, like cheating on someone they're committed to, and then blame it on the alcohol this is what they're actually saying: By Jove! I can't believe I made (insert regrettable decision here) after ingesting this central-nervous-system depressant that actually lowered my inhibitions and slowed down my reaction time just like it's supposed to! You can't blame the alcohol. It simply did precisely what it is naturally designed to do - get you drunk and inhibit healthy decision-making processes. Blaming the 10 jack-and-cokes you had Friday night for the girl/guy you "accidentally" hooked up with is like blaming the sky for being blue. It's not the alcohols fault. It's your fault. It's like becoming frustrated that the lethal wolf you own haphazardly gnawed your arm off when you beforehand realized it was completely within the realm of nature for it to do so.

I'm not saying alcohol is the devil. I'm a Christian and I enjoy getting drinks and seldom get drunk too, but shhh, don't tell anyone. I'm just saying that if we're not content with troublesome outcomes, why would we deliberately choose to abuse an agent that increases the likelihood of those possible outcomes becoming realities? Cheating cannot be justified after you have made a conscious decision to open up the possibility for cheating to occur. If you're standing idly and the opposite sex whirls you around without warning and plants a wet smack on your lips, then maybe you have a reasonable excuse, and probably a good story to tell. But if you've deliberately accepted increasing the risk of violating your commitment to the one person who loves you, who trusts you, then you might as well own a wolf.

The Problem of the Cause: Introduction

2011-11-08T16:48:00.000-05:00

"These days, nearly everyone has cheated on somebody," Lucy stamped the conclusion of her point with. I folded my arms and made an indifferent facial expression, "Actually, I've never been cheated on or cheated on somebody else." She glared at me dumbfounded like I'd just admitted I hadn't lost my v-card yet either. The sad truth though is that she's right. While I haven't had any personal experience with infidelity, I can easily estimate at least half the people I know have and I've heard all their painful stories.

I hear of a lot of couples attempting to rectify their disloyalties through these hyper sensitive come-to-Jesus trust chats or becoming immeasurably jealous and constituting all these max security boundaries concerning who and who not the other person is allowed to hang out with. And I'm not saying all of that isn't helpful or paved with good intentions. It is. I just wonder if they're aware that they're dully extinguishing the surface of the fire and not suffocating the scolding source. Mending the result of a problem by no means remedies the cause. That's like washing a car with no engine and then hoping because it's squeaky clean and you can see your reflection in the polished door, then it will fantastically run again. I don't know how more frankly to put it, but nothing in the whole universe really works like that. Got weeds? Pull up the root. Got warts? Surgically remove the core. Got a band of rebels? Terminate their leader. Get attacked by a vicious colony of bloodthirsty penguins? Well, just run.

If you slap you boyfriend/girlfriend's wrist, shake your index finger at them, throw in a few insults about how much of a pirate-hooker she is/turd-burglar he is, and truly believe you can move forward with your relationship in good conscience then your conscience needs to keep reading. Cheating, my friends, is not the cause of problems nearly as much as it is the result of problems. Consider a newly wed couple on their first honeymoon night, hot with anticipation and so enamored by their new spouse they miss each other despite being in the same room together. Now, perhaps you have, but I've never heard of a situation like this where the groom slips out of the reception to swap spit with some fetching young broad at the wedding or the bride disappearing on the way up to the hotel room to go back and shag the chauffeur. This just doesn't happen. Because when we've fallen for someone, we're hard pressed to ever position ourselves in a place that could jeopardize that love and commitment. And this may be disagreeable to some, but in my experience, when I have been in love I'm restrained from really finding anyone more physically alluring than my sweetheart.

I'm not saying everyone should envision falling in love to the same cheesy romantic depiction I've got stuck in my mind's eye, because that would involve a gargantuan increase of the discussion of fiction books and a mass destruction to all laundry rooms. But I don't feel like I'm going out on a limb by contending that couples who truly are passionate about one another, who put one another first, and are conscientious of each others' feelings don't tolerate or possess any real likelihood of executing infidelity unless there first were antecedent complications.

Now that I've demonstrated my argument I'd like to expound upon what those causes look like. I have 3 ideas floating in my head and I'll either write an entry for each of them or try to summarize them all to put into one, depending on how lazy I feel or how incapable I am of brevity. So be sure to check back a couple times this week for the continued saga: "The Problem of the Cause".

Rearranging My Porch Furniture

2011-11-06T17:26:00.000-05:00

The other night my friend Israel and I were shivering on my back deck, discussing some recently developed thoughts he's acquired. I won't spill all the details, but he mentioned the notion of waiting around for particular circumstances to present themselves as the only sufficent remedy to alleviate his troubles. And candidly admitted, I really do think certain situations may only be rectified by waiting for the result of an uncontrollable 3rd party's administration. For instance, waiting for your release date from prison is basically the only option you have to resolve the problem of confinement. And if you're lonely, there's really not much that can be done until a knock-out walks into your life and becomes the inciting incident for romantic adventure (unless you decided to look for some "strange trim" as my friend Zach puts it). But there is a "but" to all of this. Because patience doesn't necessarily permit stagnation, apathy, or behaving foolishly until whatever it is we're tapping our feet and twiddling our thumbs for arrives. In Romans, Paul allegorizes patience to a fetus in a mother's womb during pregnancy. And it really doesn't matter if you consider the Bible holy or credible to recognize this is a logical axiom of the universe and not merely a spiritual perspective. He says:

"This is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy." (Romans 8:22-25)

Rather than continually reiterate that you need to pray a lot or attend a small group with an unqualified leader, I want to illuminate two aspects of patience that are inarguably true. The first is, patience is never easy. As a human with an inescapable condition, we are designed to favor immediacy. When I am seconds from soiling my jeans and scamper up to a bathroom door only to discover it's locked or there's a freakishly lengthy line, without an untold amount of practice, my natural response will never be to smile or cherish the time I am then provided to sculpt my sphincter muscles. When I am downloading something off the internet, I am never happier to see the estimated download time be 4 hours opposed to 4 minutes. What I mean is, by definition the very essence of waiting involves some measure of inconvenience and unfailingly provokes innate disgust. However, something lovely is also woven into the natural inconvenience that pressures us in the midst of waiting. Within that pressure, our true quality is unveiled. Because waiting is never easy we are, in return, handed a challenge that measures all sorts of important stuff. "When perfect conditions arrive, none of your actions will be as impressive as they are now... when it's difficult," I elaborated. I stood up and shuffled to the nearby plastic chair to pick it up. I looked at him and sarcastically said, "See? Impressive, huh? I can lift this chair! Raaawwwrrrr!! No, of course it's not impressive because it's plastic and weighs 3 lbs. But if this chair was made of extra thick titanium and was 1000 lbs., you'd be clapping for me right now." If you can only be a man when it's easy to be a man, then you're a very small man and I'll remember you when I need my porch furniture rearranged.

The second aspect of patience is that it can be perceived negatively or positively. And I think that's what Paul was getting at about how waiting only deepens our joyful anticipations. I think if we start out everyday we are pressured by waiting for whatever it is that will return the smile to our faces with the mindset every passing second is gonna suckblow until _____ happens; chances are, every second will suckblow. However, if we imagine our desires growing, building on top of one another, and deepening further and further then we provide ourselves an immeasurable sense of unmatched, healthy expectation. Of course that mentality isn't concurrent with our human design. We may well know a full meal will be better enjoyed should we reserve our appetite and refuse the immediacy of a decent snack (I'm thinking Garden Salsa Sun Chips with red pepper humus) but that doesn't make us any less hungry. We just have to repetitiously focus on how !@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@! delightful that burger will taste by fighting the human condition that naggingly reminds us we have approximately 10,000 seconds until starvation can be eradicated.

If you don't believe in the Devil, then cool I don't really want to believe in him/her/it/but-probably-a-her either. So, for all intents and purposes, consider me an evil human being who longs to destroy all that is good and bears the potential for happiness in your life. If I knew you had to wait for something that will make you happier in the future, I really think the best thing I could do is get you to waste your time until then. I'd try to convince you all other pursuits to capture joy were worthless and since nothing can be done until, then it's okay to buckle under pressure and conduct a supremely mediocre life. Annnnnddd... if you do believe in Satan, then you should probably be cognizant that that's exactly what he's doing.

Update to Authorship

2011-11-04T17:07:00.001-04:00

A lot of you are probably wondering, why did Chase invite me and 1,500 other people to What We Want on Facebook. None of my friends are wondering that because all of mine are either imaginary or have been friends with me for over 5 years so they feel obligated to be nice to me. Anyway, right, the reason you're here - reading this. Long long ago, in 2009, Chase and I had a fantasy about writing a book together, which we may still embark upon, but for now this blog will have to suffice. During my recent October series "The 31 Days of Hollowness" I invited Sir Parks to guest-blog the last entry Your Life as Webster Sees It which went excellently.

With the addition of Chase to What We Want's content, we hope to increase frequency of posting since there are two of us now and hopefully as a byproduct construct better continuity. Also, we aim to expand our reach through my friends and now his (probably you). And finally, Chase writes differently than me. All I can seem to muster is material people have to read 3 times to comprehend or content vulgar enough to cause the Addam's Family and the Devil double take.

If you want to know what this site is all about, don't read the "About" tab above the marquee of flamboyant inspirational quotes. That section is currently under construction. Instead I'll provide 5 links to some of the top read content and you can have a peek for yourself. I know, I know, reading takes time. But we love you and we wrote it for you. Love you.

A Beautiful Burden

2011-11-02T14:33:00.000-04:00

Well, I have to admit I am extraordinarily pleased with how the 31 Days of Hollowness turned out. I track What We Want's traffic statistics using both Blogger and Google Analytics. I trust the accuracy of GA more but I still consider Blogger's stats solely because that's the interface the my blog is operated upon. So without further adieu, here are the stats for between Oct. 2nd and Nov. 2nd:

Google Analytics:

Pageviews: 1,898
Total Pageviews Before Oct. 2nd: 2,602/371 per month
Visits: 906
Total Visits Before Oct. 2nd: 1,377/197 per month
Returning Visitors: 689
New Visitors: 219
Average Visitors Per Day: 28
Absolute Unique Visits: 261
Average Time on Site: 4:25
Top 5 Countries Visited:

United States
Brazil
Turkey
Mongolia
China

Top 10 Cities Visited:

Athens (GA)
Norcross (GA)
Atlanta (GA)
Auburn (AL)
Gainesville (GA)
Brevard (NC)
Nashville (TN)
Macon (GA)
Richmond (VA)
North Metro (GA)

Total Visits Growth Proportion: +252.94%
Comments: 44
Top 10 Viewed Content:

What We Want (home page)
The Last and The First Page
All the Mingle Ladies
This Year's Understanding of Love
The Urban Outfitter Jesus
Not All Atheists Love Bagels
What I Do In the Shower
Levels of Worship
Your Life as Webster Sees It
A Mouthful of Zero-Calorie Chocolate

I want to say thank you to my readers. I don't know who all of you are but I can promise I appreciate all the times you iPhoned my blog while taking bathroom breaks. Writing is what I love and if you weren't around to see it, I'd feel like a baseball player playing in an empty stadium. The truth is, life isn't much if we're not sharing it with anybody. J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings would have never been a notable adventure series if it merely collected dust on some mantle without fresh eyes reading it every decade since. It took people like you and me reading it to make the story great. And the same goes for this blog - I needed you. I needed the fight, the challenge, I needed to be honest with somebody.

Writing everyday was a beautiful burden. Contrary to popular belief, just because authors love writing doesn't mean they constantly have ideas gushing forth or that it they don't loath sitting down for 3 hours articulating how to simultaneously be interesting and vulnerable. But that's what we do when we love something, isn't it? We sacrifice our time, our convenience, we risk our image, and throw ourselves into the mess. All because when we engage with that which we love, it changes us. We become so much more, something that we have chosen to be. We become what we want.

I implore you, don't wait to begin what you love. Finding what we love to do is less often something we seek out and are surprised by. Generally, our love is instilled inside and can be recognized simply by looking back. What I mean is, we have all probably interacted with something or someone who has made us come alive inside in the past, but we become smothered by life and recurrently justify reasons to keep us from participating in what we love not because we are afraid of failing but because we are afraid of succeeding. I don't know who you are, but I love you. And I love you enough to stress the magnitude of pursuing what you love.

ps - While I won't be writing everyday, I will be writing much more frequently (3-5 times a week). If you are interested in guest-blogging or submitting a topic you'd like to see my thoughts upon please message me (Adam Evancho) on Facebook or e-mail me @ aevancho1@gmail.com

31 Days of Hollowness: Your Life As Webster Sees It

2011-10-31T12:42:00.000-04:00

*Notice: Please welcome guest-blogger Chase Parks. While Chase's and my writing style are similar in depth of thought and inquisitiveness, he possess the aptitude to recall scripture and exhibit poetic emphasis that I simply am incapable of manufacturing. Hopefully we will be seeing more of his posts here in order to better What We Want's continuity and effective reach. Enjoy.

You know those friends that provoke you? I mean… in the good way of course. The people that make you contemplate. Think. Revise. They convince you to go back to the drawing board of “what you know” and erase. After all, I’ve heard it said that true wisdom is not so much a learning of new things, but rather an unlearning of all that is useless. I have a friend like this. In fact, you all have a friend like this - because you are reading his blog right now. Anyways, this friend of ours, Schmadam, and I were recently talking about the choices that we make. Big life choices, like—Who do I marry? Where do I go to college? What will my career be? Inevitably big questions give way to the littler question, such as -- Do I read this? Do I listen to that? Do I sit by her? Should I visit there? Etcetera. Don’t be fooled. It’s not just Schmadam and I talking about these choices. Chances are that you have, this day, talked about one or more of these choices. Just admit it.

But what people neglect to realize is the importance of the choice. It’s odd to think, isn’t it, that this very day you are constructing a piece of the person you will be tomorrow. People want the immediate. The now. The “have it all with no work”. People desire to be adventurous. Or exciting. Or charming. Or patient. Or peaceful. Or____________ <------- Insert the adjective that you think would make you happiest here. What we don’t want, and heaven forbid, is to have to choose those things.

You see, to become adventurous, or patient, or peaceful, you must choose those things. Today. Tomorrow. The day after. And the choice is endless. You and I are continuously forging who we will become. If you are discontent with your current circumstances, I implore you - Change them. If you choose not to, you are choosing discontentedness. And if you continue this choice, you will find yourself, and sadly so, a discontent person. And beware, changing unpleasant circumstance takes work, because it will likely mean breaking the mold of comfort. Do not be afraid of the work. Do not be afraid to leave behind comfortable. Take this day and choose the character that you would like to be 10 years from now. Because 10 years from now - you will be as you have practiced.

The author Annie Dillard says it this way, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

The pastor Francis Chan says it this way, “...you will have a choice: to adjust how you live daily or to stay the same.”

The Bible, in Proverbs, says it this way, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”

What do you want to be? Ask yourself. What do you want to be? Happy? Kind? Loving? Good. Then choose to be those “whats” in your life. Because slowly but surely all of those “whats” are going to determine the “who” that is who you are.

Webster will not write in the definition for your life. That is for you to do.

31 Days of Hollowness: The Little Things

2011-10-30T22:09:00.000-04:00

Generally, feelings follow thought. Once our companion spills the bad news, only then is our emotional toll is presented. Or only once we recognize a bear is eerily looming around our campsite do we begin to panic. It seems plainly natural that we are incapable of feeling upon that which we are blissfully unaware of. However, to nature's contradiction and what seems an abnormality, this is not the only direction feelings and thoughts flow is it? Somehow, though never easily explained and always worthy of skepticism, feelings tend to antecede thought. This is when we say, "I don't know. I just have this feeling about..." and go on to illustrate an emotion we cannot validly prove or legitimately provide plausible rationale for attaining.

Some call this a conscience, the Holy Spirit, women's intuition, and some chalk it up as merely the result of subliminal thought. Right now, I want to focus on number two because I feel like the Holy Spirit gravitates towards the things, big or small, that are Good for us, what we need, and are the tools for constructing a life according to His will and not ours. For myself, my feelings precede thought with insignificant things that I feel like I should be committed for deeming even slightly important. For instance, earlier this semester, with absolutely no good reason, I couldn't shake the feeling that I just needed to finish Ted Dekkar's Circle Series. And this is what I mean about never easily explained and always worthy of skepticism because there's a million and one people out there who'll tell me, "Perhaps it's nothing spiritual and you simply find enjoyment in the books" or "you only feel that way because you're bored and have nothing else to do." But like most Christians, when people cut us down to maniacal spiritualists, it's nothing new (or in some cases undeserving).

Truthfully though, I think those seemingly insignificant inclinations we receive that precede good reason are only recognizably important by the Mind of God. I don't really see how finishing the Circle Series, or how playing chess on Wednesday morning with my buddy Tyler, or how writing everyday for a month will help accomplish God's plan to mold me into the man He needs me to be. But because feelings occurring before thought seems supernatural to me and because God is a supernatural Being, I can't help but think they are inextricably linked. I can't resist believing that obedience to paying mind or accomplishing those fleeting proclivities may actually be invisible steps taken to grow me closer to my Father.

I know it all sounds silly. But rather than waive off the things we couldn't rationally believe have monumental value because they're typically simplistic tasks like writing a random sticky note and leaving it on a car, hanging out with that person you don't find wildly entertaining, or growing a tomato plant; I think these things demand our attention and our gratitude. And I don't think we should fret when somebody inquires about our seemingly arbitrary duties, because when have we ever been good or able at explaining God? That's right, never. May you find that the entirety of life is nothing grande, but rather a composition of little things woven together making each one uniquely lovely, indescribably necessary, and direly critical.

31 Days of Hollowness: Rowling Downhill

2011-10-29T15:05:00.000-04:00

I like how when I'm reading wikipedia I always begin with something relevant or newsworthy like how Steve Jobs died and then wind up with my elbows on the desk, my face 5 inches from the monitor, jaw dropped and mindlessly drooling as I'm determinedly committing to memory something wildly obscure like the theoretical physics formula for time dilation or how to hypnotize a great white shark into a tonic trance. Yesterday whilst surfing the web I came across a picture of J.K. Rowling and promptly thought: Wow, what a cougar. Not only is she a hot older woman... she wrote Harry Potter. That's Grade-A marriage material right there. So I decidedly jumped to her wikipedia page to stalk her biography and this is some of what I read:

Rowling has led a "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on welfare to multi-millionaire status within five years.
However, in December of that year, Rowling's mother died, after her ten-year battle with multiple sclerosis.^[20] Rowling commented, "I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter."^[
During this period Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression, and contemplated suicide.^[41] It was the feeling of her illness which brought her the idea of Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book.^[42]
Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling saw herself as "the biggest failure I knew."^[43] Her marriage had failed, she was jobless with a dependent child, but she described her failure as liberating.
The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript.
In 2000, Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust, which uses its annual budget of £5.1 million to combat poverty and social inequality. The fund also gives to organisations that aid children, one parent families, and multiple sclerosis research.^[143] Rowling said, "I think you have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently."

So... in summary, Rowling was broke, unemployed, recently separated from her husband, heart broken, and a mere English teacher whose Mom died during the commencement of The Sorcerer's Stone. After she wrote the primary manuscript it was rejected by 12 publishing house. And in 5 years she was enlisted on the Forbes 400 list, became the 12th richest woman in the UK, and then started handing out million dollar checks to charity organizations like they were Jolly Ranchers. Annnnddd... she's a 46-year-old cougar. Look:

At 28-years-old, in the midst of clinical depression and overwhelming defeat, she acknowledged herself as, "the biggest failure she knew." And in 2008, 15 years later, professed this to the press:

"Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

I didn't mean for this to come out like some sort of research paper. And truthfully, there are thousands of outrageously successful people scattered throughout history whom possess their own beautiful stories. I was just inclined to write on Rowling because of the information's recency, my affinity towards Harry Potter, and the fact that she's a 46-year-old blonde bombshell. I know I touched on this some in The Genius of Gangsters, but I can't help to reiterate how much I adore victims of unexpected greatness. I don't think any of it comes easy. Nothing worth having comes easy. I'm sure billions of dollars never filled the hole where Rowling's mother used to be or erased the sting of heartbreak from her and her husband's separation.

I like the quote above about not succeeding at anything else in order to find success in her heart's true desire. It reminds me of the contrast between what we want and what we need. You'd be surprised at how many Christians think if they just read their Bible a bit more, remembered to say grace before meals, and quit cursing - believe God will bless them with immediate pleasures like fortune, popularity, or a potty-trained pet bear cub that never grows out of infancy, can talk, and loves snuggling with humans. After a tragedy with my brother, my Mom concluded a prayer before dinner with, "...and let my will be done." Humorous as it was, something profound can be said about that. We are cognizant that there is a difference between our will and God's Will.

God's Will promises He'll bless us with what's best for us. He blesses us with what we need. Not what we want. Because when did humans ever have a clue about what they really wanted? Like Rowling noted, had she acclaimed the things she wanted she may have never discovered the things that she really wanted, the things that fulfilled her, the things she needed. And I don't care if she's not a Christian, or if Harry Potter is the allegorical Satan, or if Dumbledore was a homosexual - God loves her all the same and is passionate towards giving her her heart's desires like the rest of ours. I like that God holds out on giving us good stuff in order to hand us Great stuff. And usually, for that to be possible, all the stuff we think is good must be stripped away so that we may hit rock bottom - a solid foundation to begin our journey towards Greatness.

31 Days of Hollowness: The Googenheimer Effect

2011-10-28T16:02:00.000-04:00

Fun fact about Adam Evancho. He is absolutely enthralled to discuss the topic of the human condition. He also commonly refers to himself in the 3rd person when he wishes to unveil facts about himself. Today I want to touch on physical attraction in relation to the human condition. You see, and you may not even know that you possess it, but we all have this intrinsic, uncanny superhuman ability to scrutinize and pick out one another's flaws (in many ways but I'd like to stick strictly to the physical aspect for now). Because we were made in the image of something Good, this superhuman capability's point of origination was initially well intended. It comes from the aptitude to seek for depth and beauty in the world around us. But in virtue of our this innate introspection with respect to other humans and namely their physical appearance, it is inevitable that we discover imperfections because... surprise! no one is perfect. I am convinced that everyone who enters a relationship eventually notices and shallowly obsesses over their partner's excessive arm hair, the extra dark freckle on their eyelid, their love handles, their impossibly large pores, or God save us all, that her butt is kind of big.

I'm certain there is a saucy, psychological term for this natural proficiency to examine our partner's physical idiosyncrasies over time, but I have no idea what it is. For now, let's call this The Googenheimer Effect. I am unsure why or how the Googenheimer Effect is biologically, genetically, anthropologically, or psychologically employed because the science behind it all seems evasive and mysterious to me. So rather than digging into explanations, I'd like to specifically highlight the implications of the GE.

Let's face it, regardless of how hot the person your dating is, you unavoidably will find some physical characteristic that makes them uglier to you. Which in turn are also the very same characteristics we end up loving and appreciating most, but that is a different essay. I don't care if it's Johnny Depp, Hugh Jackman, Jason Gordon Levitt, or Ryan Reynolds. I tried to pick somebody mysterious, purely manly, nerdy handsome, and with boyish good looks, respectively, for all our lady readers' varying tastes. And I don't care if it's Rachel McAdams(bring home to Mom), Olivia Wilde (worthy of a diamond framed painting), Megan Fox(trashy slut), or Katie Perry(worthy of changing your shorts) - we would all notice something, that brings them down a peg or two.

So what's to be said for the Googenheimer Effect? I'll tell you. Perhaps we shouldn't place too much value in initial physical attraction due to it's eventual degeneration. I'm not saying all true beauty resides within the inside. It doesn't. People have beautiful outsides too. What I mean is, like it or not, we all become agitated by our partner's imperfections or, if you're single like me, worried about not finding someone exceptionally sexy. But our frustration or worry is ill founded because the GE levels out our perceptions of beauty, regardless. I wouldn't say it's wise to settle on someone you find repulsive. I just think, in light of the GE, there's a tremendous amount of significance within accepting that those alleged flaws are secretly disguised perfections that represent originality and unique beauty.

31 Days of Hollowness: Challenge Accepted

2011-10-27T15:40:00.000-04:00

I remember when I was in middle school, riding with my Mom to the orthodontist to have my wisdom teeth removed. In retrospect, the whole experience was delightful because the laughing gas transformed me into a comedian and the doctors had to delay their operation for 10 minutes just to pipe down their laughing. Not to mention the whole week afterwards I got to play hooky and lay around playing computer games high on double doses of Vicodin. However, on the way there I admit I was slightly frightened. None of my fears were reasonable possibilities but my creativity found a way to convince me the surgeons might leave a pair of scissors in my gums after they've already stitched me up or that they might mischievously initiate a sex change operation while I was under. To calm my nerves my Mom placed her hand on my knee and comforted me by explaining, "Honey, you have nothing to worry about because God will never give you more pain than you can bear." Typically I was too smart to swallow anything from the Mom's Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Medication, but this indeed leveled out my anxiety and kept my pee inside my body.

And for many years I was tickled pink by my Mom's little aphorism because if God wouldn't ever exert more pain than I could handle, I had nothing to worry about. Time passed and I got into high school and decided to lose weight after my brother told me I was fat and asked, "Do you want girls to like you?" I made a nodding gesture with my triple chin and he said, "Then lose weight. It's that simple." So I broke an ab-track and starved myself to death and met these twins who used to take steroids as kids and grew up to be freakishly strong. They always told me, "Your body can handle 10x more than what your mind tells you." And I thought that was a fair deal, because then I had a valid excuse for becoming a workout-aholic and feeling like a superhero in the gym.

Eventually, I noticed the two principles were fairly synonymous. But further, I noticed a peculiar component to my Mom's encouragement. I began to reason: Wait. How much pain can I actually bear? Perhaps God doesn't overload us with more than we can manage. But if I can actually handle 10x more than what I think I could originally, then once I reach that 10x then I'll think I can handle 10x more than that or 100x more than the original. And an infinite regress digresses. Which means, I have no authority to draw lines around what I can and cannot bear! Great Scott!

I'm sure that all sounds exceedingly analyzed but I think I'm on to something. Because the truth is, I can't count how many times I was pushed to my limit only to discover my limit's boundaries extended further and that those limits also prevailed beyond my initial comprehension. Perhaps the true moral to the principle is that with God our endurance is limitless and that He is cheeky enough to accept all our challenges. Apparently God and Barney Stinson have something in common. Challenge Accepted.

31 Days of Hollowness: All the Mingle Ladies

2011-10-26T17:58:00.000-04:00

There are an absurd number of wasps buzzing around my porch currently. So if this post comes to an abrupt end it's because I scurried inside to stab myself in the thigh with my handy shot of epinephrine and take a cold shower. Anyways, you know what I can't figure out? If a girl shows up to a party or a wedding and discovers another girl wearing the same dress or shoes she's wearing, it's like Female Clause Number 1 has been unforgivably violated and the whole universe is seemingly thrown off kilter. Yet, twenty-thousand girls at UGA have absolutely no problem at all wearing the same thing to classes everyday. Oh yea. I'm going there. A solid 80% of the females on campus each day wear a semblance of the following:

Head:

unoriginal UGA ball cap
disheveled pony-tail
oversized sunglasses that actually take up so much of the face that the wearer's identity is virtually concealed

Top:

white v-neck tee
trashy hoody
North Face jacket designed for Siberian climate
some obscure sorority event tee shirt (usually an appalling color such as pea green, poop blue, or chemical spill orange)
any selection from the Pajama Collection

Bottom:

track shorts
tights
or to complete my nightmare... both (just incase it's 20 degrees outside, right ladies?)

Feet:

Nike tennis shoes
New Balance tennis shoes
eclectically and childishly designed rubber rain boots
UGG boots

Now, of course I am not dogmatic enough to blanket every girl under this stereotype. Shoot, I'm not even asserting that sometimes including these items in your wardrobe is unacceptable. But every weekday? Utterly distasteful. What happened to originality? To class? Do girls who dress like this not recognize that guys typically can sum up their entire personality solely by their hodgepodge of disappointing fashion? Just as girls can tell a lot about some dude-bro wearing tennis shoes with khaki shorts that expose his pasty white thighs and a brightly colored Polo that matches his uselessly worn croakies. In spite of my aggravation I have followed up by inquiring the reason to this madness from a few poorly dressed and well dressed girls alike. Here's what they said.

"Do you know how long it takes to get pretty in the morning? When I have 8 a.m. classes, I am NOT getting up at 6:30 to straighten my hair, cake myself with make-up, and decide on a cute outfit."

"They think they look cute. It's like their 'dressed-down' cute look."

"Why do I need to look good for class?"

"It's comfortable."

"They suspect that if guys find them pretty in a v-neck and track shorts, then they'll think they're totally gorgeous once they actually are dressed up."

I can't help but chuckle at the "dressed-down" answer. That's the most oxymoronic crock of... swiss cheese I've ever heard. Ladies, I am a guy and, according the the Gender Axioms of the Universe, apparently always wrong. So please, enlighten me. And please refrain from heated comments accusing me of looking like a bozo myself. Frankly, this isn't about me. I'm short and have pepperoni nipples so I have enough to worry about before putting on my clothes. I just want to open this up to the public and get some opinions about why girls dress the way they do on campus. And I should reiterate this because I know within the midst of judgement it has already been forgotten. I realize not ALL girls dress accordingly to my list, thank Moses. As well, I am not pointing my fingers at those who honestly did wake up late or use their running shorts for something crazy like oh say... running. Thank you and have a nice day.

31 Days of Hollowness: Dreaming

2011-10-25T16:43:00.000-04:00

I dream so frequently I swear I could be a prime candidate for neurological study. I wouldn't need any sedatives, any pills, any anything. I would just lay there and cause the electroencephalograph to overheat and combust. I used to think I had some divine gift because all sorts of fluffy Christians suggested it was the Spirit of the Lord manifesting Himself through the gift of prophesy. And that was great and all, I just couldn't see how racing go-karts on Mars with my 1st grade teacher had anything to do with God or enlarging His kingdom. Not all of my dreams are that farfetched. I'd say 50% of them are sentimental, poetic, and worthy of hopeful skepticism. But when I vividly, and many times lucidly, dream 4 - 5 times a night, decrypting a pile of subconscious films becomes a burdensome task.

I can't count how many hours of my life I've wasted staring at Google articles about why I dream or what they mean or how to stop. The short answer is that dream research is painfully inconclusive and founded largely on detective reasoning. Deductive reasoning may sound legitimate when it comes to deciding what outfits make you look chubby or how to exterminate the rat living under your refrigerator. But in science, specificity and true accuracy are indispensable. For instance, you probably wouldn't be keen of doctors preforming a triple bypass surgery on your dad if the operation was based on merely some solid guesswork.

So in virtue of science being useless, I went to the next best thing. My pastor (please excuse my oder of operations). He agreed dreams certainly mean something, but discerning just what that something is, is where lies the dilemma. He said that regardless of how significant or deeply sentimental our dreams are, we may never be infallibly accurate in our interpretations, thus making it risky to place great stake in their meaning or implications. And I think that sounds intelligent because even through I've dreamed of surreal, inhuman experiences like astral projection, omnipresence, and precognition - I am just as likely to dream about being a hungry-hungry-hippo on a life-sized board eating pineapples that look like babies or about being a Dragonball-Z character, a Pokemon trainer, and a wizard at Hogwarts all at once.

To me, I feel like dreams are the pictorial representation of feelings I typically in my waking life acquire the mental aptitude to consciously suppress but am unable to do so while asleep. I spend a lot of time in the mornings exceedingly pissed off at God for the night before. I know He's perfect and never in the red, but when I'm incapacitated from controlling my own cognitive behavior and the result is emotionally hurtful, I can't help but feel frustrated. I put such fervid effort into avoiding the catalyst of negative thoughts in my waking life, that when I fall asleep and lucidly dream of the stimulus I've worked so hard to ignore I end up abruptly waking up making this face:

God?! Why?! I don't really buy the whole, "Your dreams make you more vulnerable to attacks by The Enemy (a hip way to refer to Lucifer, supposedly) because God has a mouthful of zero-calorie chocolate when you're dreaming/is sleeping too/insert non-Biblically supported assumption here" scam. I sort of resort to the same view I have about why bad things happen to us when we're awake to cover for the same reason they happen while we're asleep. Maybe God want's our dreams to influence us, to represent opportunities to exhibit patience, strength, or love, or maybe like Bruce Nolan from "Bruce Almighty" comedically puts it, God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and we're the ants. He could fix our lives in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather burn off our feelers and watch us squirm. I don't think the last one is the case. I can only admit that if something beyond our control victimizes us, and God is the authorizer of the universe, then perhaps there is Good reason for even our most painful dreams.

31 Days of Hollowness: Bitter Convenience - Part 3

2011-10-24T20:03:00.000-04:00

I have found there to be something fundamentally backwards about life. I feel like a common goal in humanity is that we all desire for our time spent on Earth to be memorable. For us to truly believe we are more than mammals, more than another social security number. For us to believe we have real purpose and are not merely slaves to money until we die, we richly aspire each day to be something remarkable. And this is all very puzzling, because in unison with our longing for a remarkable life, after each calamity we instantaneously begin constructing convenience back into our lives. Another house of cards. Yet buried inside, we well know convenience is the arch nemesis, the antagonist, the equal opposite of remarkableness. Because nothing truly extravagant, nothing beautifully life-altering, or purposive occurs within the boundaries of our comfort zone, does it?

My perilous expedition from Dublin to London was everything but convenient. I slept under a newspaper, was legitimately afraid of contracting an STD, screamed at by a French lady, walked a dozen miles carrying 40 lbs. of luggage using an ice cream sundae and liquid bread for fuel, seasick on a boat, a victim of English racism, sat on by a Samoan, provoked by a travel agent, rejected by the Wellington, immersed in an Indian war ethics protest, and heartsick enough to require conscious focus to refrain from sporadically vomiting - and I would never, ever do it all again. I would never go back. Yet, in spite of the journey's detestableness, the memory is shrouded in gold like it was a heart wrenching movie clip I'd once watched rather than a snippet of time the actually happened to me. And the truth is, is that I miss it. I miss it so, so much.

And that's the thing about the life that has passed that we miss so terribly much. People suspect that because we smile upon our memories, because they're unavailingly replaceable, vivaciously remarkable, and painfully memorable, then assuredly we want them back, to live them again, to reap their splendor once more. And we might, but not for that reason. We miss them for the sole fact that we are alive to remember them. Because there aren't many feelings that quite match the triumphant declaration that cries, "We prevailed! We survived!"

And it is peculiar, all of this. That once we establish a convenient comfort zone, life becomes so very bitter. We become nostalgically obsessed with the times that pushed us beyond our known limits, that squeezed us to our last drop, that cut us more times than we thought we could be cut and live to talk about it. Because despite our anguish at least they weren't in vain. They were remarkable and because of their renown, intensely memorable. In lue of being hollow; removing the inside, out onto this blog, I want to share an excerpt from my journal I wrote a few months ago:

"The truth is God, I am sad to know this season will end. I know the house of cards I stack daily now will eventually grow into a fortress that I no longer need help building. And I will reside in it and forget that it was your blue prints, your tools, and your provision that saw it to be built. Recently life has grown into this bittersweet fabric. I stand in the Arkansas river and the warmth of power has begun to string itself around my ankles and the questions have silenced. I stand, and like a child discovering the world for the very first time, I notice that I'll eventually grow used to the winter melt and will have to step out before I end up standing around uselessly. Nearly a year ago now, I remember missing the passion and exuberance for life I have been granted now. And it is truly a blessing to question whether you are appreciating your life enough. Because if you're not questioning, then you're probably not noticing that it needs appreciation. As I sit here typing I am thankful that I still hurt. I am thankful that when I sleep at night and dream, that it pains me to wake up. I am thankful that it stabs me inside to think about our intimate memories. I am thankful that the mere thought of bumping into her stirs fear within me. I am thankful that when I see a movie about soul mates and never giving up, I am riddled with doubt. I am thankful I am not outside the tunnel yet. Because as bitter as my pain is, the sweetness of being taken care of by You is incomparably greater. What I have learned to appreciate isn't so much the moments of life themselves as if they were divided from Your will. I have learned to love the fight, the journey, the story."

My hope is that light of inconvenience may wither, but is never blown out. In my life and in yours. We needn't be afraid of the pain that ensues inconvenience. Because in the end, once we have rebuilt our house of cards and wear our rockers dull, only then will we remember it was our house being blown down that was so sweet. So remarkable. So memorable.

31 Days of Hollowness: Sweet Inconvenience - Part 2

2011-10-23T19:57:00.000-04:00

We sauntered into the harbor building in pursuit of a ferry ticket to England which seemed more like Heaven at this point. Apparently, Heaven only comes to those who are patient. The next ferry wouldn't be arriving for 3 more hours. Unable to sleep due to fierce depression, I passed the time by twiddling my thumbs and articulating how to denounce the existence of God. Finally, the clock struck 9 p.m. and the ferry arrived. Ireland and England are like next door neighbors. This should be a 45 minute boat ride and we'll practically be in London. Right?

Wrong. In 4 abysmal hours on what seemed like the River Styx, the only thing I accomplished was seasickness and passing out on the floor in an unlikely theater room. Paul gently shook me to acknowledge we'd unexpectedly arrived to Holyhead, England opposed to the Liverpool we had originally departed for. I sat up and nodded my head in apathetic recognition and instantly felt the train wreck of a headache sharply squealing inside my cerebrum. We climbed off the boat and on to a quaint trolly that escorted us to a nearby bus station. We flashed our passports and purchased our tickets to London from a fat english man whose vocabulary actually included ridiculous words like, "Cheerio!" and "Bollux." He mentioned we were fortunate because a 1:00 a.m. and vacant bus was shortly leaving for London. Suppressing my incalculable fatigue, I grinned at the welcoming picture of England's sweet capitol inviting us in for tea, crumpets, and a cozy and long awaited sleep. What I failed to calculate, however, was the size of England.

The lucid nightmare was indeed, far from it's anticipated conclusion. I was literally the first to enter the bus. I thoughtlessly stored my baggage and promptly upon slouching into my seat was interrupted by an obnoxious English accent. "Eh chap? Yeh con't sit thair, see?" he barked. Slowly turning around to administer my Devil stare I mutter, "What?" in a blatant American tone. "A lady was sittin' thair first and ya need the move," he demanded matter-of-factly. "I was literally the first person on this bus," I explained coldly. Turning around to ignore his muffled insults about my purely American bigheadedness, I leaned my still screeching skull on the glass and peered out onto the freshly rained-on street. The driver entered the bus and reached for his microphone. With my eyelids shut and quite positive that I was dreaming, I heard him annunciate, "Ello folks. Blah Blah blah... we should be ariving in London at 9 a.m." 9AM?! 8 HOURS?!! GOD? HAVE YOU NO MERCY?!? To make matters worse, the most gargantuan Samoan man in recorded history poured in beside and partly on top of me for the ride. So there I sat for 8 long hours; squished by fat that wasn't mine and incapable of unclenching my gaze from the digital clock at the front of the bus. 1:30... 1:41... 1:59... 2:11... 2:37... 2:38... 2:39... 2:Godislaughingatyou.

I nearly regret my first day in London because truthfully, I wasn't there to appreciate it. The operation had been long-since completed. I was 100% zombie. We scavenged a few brochures for a travel agency that might point us toward any hostel that wasn't raped by England's psychotic exchange rate. I don't necessarily remember the lady behind the desk, except for that she wasn't friendly and I wanted to bite her like any decent zombie would. From there, Zach walked before us as Paul and I lagged slowly through ancient British buildings discussing how moronic we were for actually leaving the comfort of our girlfriends. I was grateful to have him with me to empathize because it seemed profoundly irrational to miss someone as painfully as I did only after 2 days of separation, but luckily he felt the same. Our hotel, the Wellington, was a brick and ivy Taj Mahal. It rested across from a gorgeous park and the seductive scent of a fresh continental breakfast made winning the lottery sound like rubbish. At the cedar desk in the center of what looked like an old study, we appointed Zach to administer our financial affairs (he was more or less the accountant/communicator for the whole trip). Zach sighs, turns, and shuffles out the of the entrance to the steps. Concerned, Paul and I curiously follow. We spot Zack slouched over his knees on the steps with a cigarette in hand. "The good news is..." he started, "is that we made it." He drags from his clove menthol and twists a sinister smirk, "The bad news is... check-in isn't until 2:30 p.m. and it's only 10 o'clock now." I know 4 1/2 hours doesn't seem to warrant whining, but after traversing nations on bus, water, and foot - the shards of my already broken heart impossibly shattered again.

After unreservedly indulging in the free continental breakfast, we sluggishly traipsed some of the touristy sights. West Minster Abbey, Abbey Road, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and somehow even managed to wind up smack dab in the middle of an Indian ethics protest. The rest, as they say, is history. After 2 o'clock we basically ran back to the Wellington for a warm shower and a nap. An 8 hour nap.

*Visit tomorrow for the actual reason I told this lengthy story.

31 Days of Hollowness: Sweet Inconvenience - Part 1

2011-10-22T13:59:00.003-04:00

May 1st, 2009:

After crossing multiple timezones on a 10 hour plane flight, sleeping under a newspaper in a frost bitten Dublin park, witnessing homeless men blatantly pee in public, shell shocked, and missing my girlfriend so much it abdominally hurt; sleep took rank over all other desires (besides flying back to America). Our hostel room looked like a crack den. In fact, on the wall opposite of the dirty cots written in large permanent marker captioned, "This place is a Crack Den". The bathroom light was ominously dim, the water retained a brownish pigment that smelled like morning breath, and the shower looked like someone smeared the mucus-like garbage slime that accumulates at the bottom of trash cans on the tiles. Our bedroom's carpet was caked by splotches of a crusted white compound and the cots were completely rank with the unmistakable funk of pubic hair. They didn't smell musty or foul; nothing but pure, spicy European sex. I slept in my clothes that night in actual fear that I might contract an unknown STD from the sheets. Rather, attempted sleep. The drunken stares from Irishmen outside our cracked, curtain-less window and the irresistible memory of Tracey's crying eyes as I glanced back at her from the other side of Hartsfield Airport security was enough to ensure perpetual consciousness.

The next morning, we were abruptly awakened by a boisterous French woman insisting we had overslept check-out and needed to promptly leave in order to clean. I enthusiastically changed clothes so I wouldn't reek like a pile of all of Manchester United's girdles after a World Cup game for the rest of the day. Groggy and jet lagged, we found ourselves shoving banana splits into our systems at a local McDonalds. Clueless and without an itinerary, we meandered the city for a few hours, and by 11 a.m. collectively decided the Guinness Brewery would unquestionably lift our spirits. After a hazy 3 hour walk to the other side of Dublin and a lackluster tour contaminated by Zach's tearing beer farts, we sat proudly in the Brewery's highest floor, similar to Seattle's Space Needle, nourishing ourselves with the most delicious stout that's ever touched my lips. And then, after Zach, Paul, and I had successfully undergone three beer-blood transfusions... we decided it was time to see London.

Dublin is on the eastern border of Ireland. Surely it won't be but a couple of miles to the harbor. Right? Each of us geared up with sufficiently weighted camping packs and additional book bags, ready to embark on our urban hike through inner-city Dublin to the Cliffs of Dover. After two miles, I began to feel like Christopher Columbus. After five miles, I began strutting lazily, dragging my legs like a zombie. I'd lost sight of Paul and Zach hours before and lonelily roamed the streets seriously considering giving up and joining the League of Public Urinators like all the other homeless men I'd passed. Finally, seven miles down, I haphazardly discovered Paul and Zach cuddled up for warmth under a billboard smoking Djarum Menthol Cloves with limp hands and their eyes closed. Too weary to explain where I'd been, I collapsed down beside them, and joined the pity party. After hopefully discussing the likelihood of the port's near proximity, we reengaged. Twenty minutes slipped by and Paul and Zach had already hiked out of my line-of-sight. I put on "You're a Wolf" by Seawolf on repeat and remarkably slugged three more miles out of my aching legs. We'd made it. Overwhelmingly dehydrated, starving, and in serious need of a Prozac; I gleefully unzipped my fly and triumphantly peed into the Isle of Man.

*Part 2 to be continued...

31 Days of Hollowness: Goin' Steady

2011-10-21T14:51:00.000-04:00

"Stop talking about love. Every asshole in the world says he loves somebody. It means nothing. What you feel only matters to you. It's what you do to the people you say you love, that's what matters. It's the only thing that counts." - The Last Kiss

I think the number of relationship labels that have been manufactured since my parents' generation to now is astounding. To this day, if I am attempting to explain my association to a girl, my Dad is still perplexed if I say anything different than, "We're goin' steady." Seemingly, back then, if you were steaming up your Ford Pinto at the drive-in movie theater ("catching a flick") every Saturday night, then you were goin' steady. And if you weren't doing that, you were single and probably alone in your bedroom toking the giggle-bush while watching M*A*S*H, playing pong, or listening to Bob Dylan on vinyl records. But now, you only say your, "goin' steady" if you just got back from a That 70's Show convention or if you queerly desire to be a virgin until you're 40. The quantity and specificity of relationship labels now is overwhelming. In contemporary society, labels include but are not limited to:

Single.

It's complicated.

We're talking.

Bang-buddies.

Dating.

Going out.

Hittin it-N-Quittin it.

We're just friends. (when there's blatantly more to it than that)

Seriously committed.

Courting.

Non-exclusive dating.

We're texting. (I know...)

Widow/er.

We're just seeing what it's like to be more than friends.

Engaged.

Polygamous Marriage.

Married.

Life-partners. (I know... again)

These days, unless you're an asexual earthworm or sitting on someone's mantel in an antique urn, social media can probably categorize you into some relationship status. This abundance of labels isn't complete bullcrap though, because in a sense, it represents a type of standardized system that capacitates us to measure the depth of any given relationship. It's like the fahrenheit system, for instance. When our buddy says, "It's 15°F outside" we promptly understand it's pretty darn cold outside and should find some thermal underwear. The measurement allows us to interpret something about the nature of the temperature. Likewise, when someone admits they're "talking" to someone else, we can deduce that the relationship is relatively new or still in an immature stage. Opposed to the admittance of "going out", we can gather the couple assumably retains honorable intentions with respect to their future or that they may love one another. Labels also empower us to justify what is permissible inside that relationship. It's like once we acquire the satisfactory title, we don't have to be restricted to lamely hanging out in groups or playing footsie, now we can slobber on one another and co-own a pet fish named Gillbert.

However, I think there are more cons to labels than pros, especially in regard to the notion of their authority to permit or forbid our actions. Because the truth is, we don't need labels to qualify how feel about someone. If they did, I would have to accept that because I'm not a published, NYTimes Best Selling author, then I don't truly love writing. Or that because you aren't a model, you don't actually enjoy looking good. Similarly, we don't need to be married to fall in love, do we? Just because we haven't "gone steady" with someone for years, doesn't revoke the possibility of heartbreak if they walk out of our lives, does it? While labels, at best, may illuminate the time invested on someone, they fall short of properly assessing the depth of that investment. I can't stand when a girl feels like she can't snuggle up to the larger, warmer, male frame of the man she's affection for just because their not dating yet. Conversely, I can't stand when a guy feels restricted from getting lost, laying a blanket out on some obscure private property, and gazing at the cosmos with the girl he's falling for just because she's not his girlfriend yet.

While I'm thankful for the specificity relationship labels provide us, I will never agree they legitimately authenticate our emotions or are a better expression to convey our feelings than how we choose to act. I'm not saying you're a moron if you haven't disabled the Relationship Status on Facebook. I use them too (except for "It's Complicated"... then you're a moron). I'm saying there's nothing to be ashamed for or embarrassed about just because you've got a huge crush on someone but aren't dating them yet. And I'm saying that just because you do retain a "In A Relationship" status, it shouldn't be seen as a concrete establishment that makes you any more or less secure with the well-being of your actual relationship. But really, if Facebook added "Goin' Steady", I'd be positively thrilled.

31 Days of Hollowness: The Terminator Wife

2011-10-20T20:29:00.000-04:00

"sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself." - Baz Lurman

I am fully aware that 22-years-old is relatively young in the grand scheme of life but the other day I couldn't help but feel old. It is simply hilarious that when we notice somebody we don't find attractive staring at us we immediately think, "What the hell do they want?". But if we catch somebody cute even remotely looking in our direction we're all like, "Oh yea... they want me." The other day I basically felt the eyes of a nearby cute girl unreservedly rolling all over my body. Her relentless and unflinching gaze reminded me of a terminator from the future, rapidly downloading my demographic information from an infrared, mechanical eye. She was probably just aimlessly glaring, pondering what to make for dinner, but like I said, since her area of vision included my presence I pathetically took it further. Eventually though, we exchanged introductions and began making small talk. And then, just when my hopelessly romantic nature began to coerce me into believing this was undoubtedly the beginning of the most epic love story ever embarked upon, she nonchalantly points to the other side of the room at some random Joe and cheerfully declares, "Oh! And that's my husband, Joe!" Husband!? I thought, are you freaking kidding me? As if being short, vulgar, and shamefully unskilled at throwing a football wasn't already enough to disqualify me from the dating game. Now I have to deal with eternally binding contracts that forbid even flirting. When did I become old enough to be rejected through the excuse of being married? Bah.

I cannot believe I am the groomsman at four of my best friends' weddings next summer. The tightly knit group of guys I have shared the past decade surviving life with are finally splitting off to purchase their tickets to Marriage Land. Instead of marrying the girl I dated all throughout college like everybody else, we pulled the old switch-a-roo and broke up at the last minute. I am very thankful for that decision, but nonetheless, it's easy to become flustered and frantic when all your childhood friends are marrying beautiful women when I'm still pretending girls who stare at me are the terminator.

If you have heard Baz Lurman's Sunscreen Song or read the Bible, which are basically the same thing, you are probably keen on the idea that comparison, like an untrustworthy alligator mouth, is a nasty trap to stick your foot in. In Galations (5:25-26) Paul says, "That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original." Besides only being 22, this is virtually the only sturdy perception for me to take emotional shelter under.

I really enjoy the last part about each of us being an original. It reminds me that I shouldn't kick myself for being behind in the race, feeling sorry for myself as I drool over other peoples' stories. It reminds me that I should take pleasure in knowing someday my very own original, unique story will unfold. I feel like when Paul tells us we're all originals, what he really means is that the way our lives blossom will all look differently. Which seems true because when I look at my four soon-to-be-married friends, none of their romantic lives appear even slightly similar. One met his girlfriend 5 years ago and their relationship has been on nearly as much as it's been off. Another dated his girlfriend a few years in high school, split up for three years, and got engaged 8 months after they reunited. Another met his girlfriend his freshman year and eventually proposed to his college sweetheart. And another, after what seemed like a short-lived single period after he broke up with his girlfriend of 4 years, found a new girl and proposed after a year of dating. The truth is, comparing individually original entities is moronic because, like Paul mentioned, it's all sort of a waste of time, isn't it?. It's like exhausting your whole week, melting your brain over ways to compare a dragon, an orange, and Kazakistan to one another.

I think Paul's message fits in smoothly to the overarching theme Jesus kept talking about. Because the more we get to know His Father, the more we learn about ourselves. And the more we learn about ourselves, the more original we become. And the more original we become, the more we recognize the uselessness of comparing unalike people, situations, stories, and relationships. As for me, I'm holding out for the terminator.

31 Days of Hollowness: You're Not Married

2011-10-19T18:36:00.000-04:00

"Ever hear of chaos theory, Ed? It's a science, tries to determine underlying patterns in chaotic systems. Weather, ocean currents, blood flow, that sort of thing. But it turns out that there are few things more chaotic than the beat of a human heart. Its beating up, slowing down. Pretty face, flight of stairs. It's always changing depending on what's happening out there. It's an erratic son of a bitch. But underneath all of that bump-da-bump mess, there is in fact a pattern, the truth, and it's love. Most important thing about love is that we choose to give it, and we choose to receive it. Making it the least random act in the entire universe. It transcends blood, it transcends betrayal and all the dirt that makes us human. If you can figure that out, the Jake Lees of the world got nothing on you." - Chaos Theory

This morning my new friend Patrick and I discussed trust inside romantic relationships over breakfast and chess. I prefaced my point by reiterating the argument I made in the introduction of Banana Hearts. In short, I contended human feelings are beyond human control and the only existing command we possess over our affections is by ceasing to interact with their source (i.e. avoiding the catalyst from which those feelings were first ignited). I asserted that perhaps it is inappropriate to spend time with the opposite sex alone not because your significant other doesn't trust your aptitude to make wise decisions, but because they recognize the uncontrollableness of the human heart. I reasoned that our intelligence or loyalty is not always the motive of distrust but rather the mere deplorableness of associating with an entity that retains the potential to frustrate those virtues regardless of how we choose to act.

The truth is, relationships are more than adherence to logical principles. It took me a long time to learn that. For instance, technically it's not wrong to befriend 7 drop dead sexy college girls/guys, name them Sunday through Saturday in your phone, and spend time with them according to the day of their name so long as you can keep it in your pants and resist every opportunity to verbally flirt. But in doing so, you hang out with these girls/guys at the expense of your mate's desires and emotions. I think that's why this is a grey area in dating but not in marriage. Because in dating, while ill-advised, it is permissible to adhere to logic and resolve in a strong will, so long as you don't screw up. But in marriage, we take a vow to put our spouse's needs first.

Christians usually date with the intention of getting married. I used to believe that because marriage was what I was shooting for, then naturally I should proceed to liken my dating relationship to the image of marriage besides (to my ultimate frustration) a few of the bonuses (i.e. the no-pants-dance/the horizontal polka/rinding the bologna pony... you get the point). Then one of my friends pointed out something tremendously profound. Ready? He said, "But... you're not married."

With that said, I really want to open this up to discussion rather than make a point. What do you think? If you're a Christian, besides avoiding making the beast with two backs, living together, and owning a siberian husky named Gandalf together; how much should a Christian dating relationship resemble or differ from a Christian marriage? I know this isn't a trend on my blog, but this will require you to comment. If you actually read all this, I'm assuming you have 30 seconds to articulate some sort of intelligible response. /discuss

31 Days of Hollowness: Not All Atheists Love Bagels

2011-10-18T22:14:00.000-04:00

About a year ago my life began sinking. I don't know what started it but I gradually lost every ounce of exuberance for life as if it were compressed air seeping through an unlikely hole in an oxygen tank. I quit everything that required any semblance of discipline. I quit exercising. I put on a few pounds. I started smoking more. I never attempted to find a church, a job, or facilitate new friendships. I often rejected trips and hang-out invitations with current friends. I discontinued writing and didn't pick up a book the whole semester, including the Bible. I even managed to fall asleep on God every night in the middle of praying. My girlfriend at the time coerced me into religiously watching a slue of new television series and video game playing hours reached a record high. Before I knew it, I had successfully achieved master dud status, High King of Losers. Apathy took me for all my worth.

Eventually this phase concluded, which is a story I should like to write on in the near future, but it is not this story. This story is about the discovery of a rather pertinent thought I stumbled upon during that unfortunate era, probably while I was contemplating the universe in the shower. I precariously began to ponder how much different my life would appear if I were an atheist. I don't mean I started excitedly wondering what it'd be like to own a golden Charles Darwin figurine or pray to Al Gore. Because beyond popular Christian belief, atheists are intelligible people who abide by moral standards and know what it means to put others first, demonstrate virtue, and love just as adequately as the rest of us. I just wanted to compare and contrast the alleged Christian life I was living to the hypothetical life I'd live should I not be a Christian at all. The results were staggering.

I found sanctuary in the notion that I abstained from psychedelic narcotics like LCD, refrained from sexually pursuing any remotely attractive female, and resisted the overwhelming impulse to steal Bulldog Cafe bagels - all because I was a Christian. Unfortunately my argument to convince myself I was a decent Christian was helplessly deconstructed when I recognized the stereotypical assumption it was founded upon. Not all atheists abuse hardcore drugs, are endlessly horny, or acquire an uncontrollable fetish with bagels. The truth is, I didn't really find many notable dissimilarities to strongly suggest I was not a non-believer.

And I'm not saying I figured it all out and now am capable of executing the perfect Christian life, because I still play video games too much and curse at slow drivers. My point is that I think there is something to be said for picturing ourselves as albeit non-believers and diagnosing our present Christian lifestyle doesn't look too different from what we're picturing. I don't think we should change our Facebook religions from Christian to "It's Complicated" every time we make unwholesome decisions, because we're all screwed up. However, I think if our entire lifestyle heavily resembles the same lifestyle we'd choose if we weren't believers, yet we continue to call ourselves believers, we are dangerously holding the cup of the lukewarm. If you call yourself a Christian then take a second to ask, "What would my life look like if I didn't believe in God?" If what you envision is drastically different, then congratulations, you and Saint Paul would make outstanding friends and you should probably meet up with me so I can copy everything you do. But if what you envision is strikingly similar to how you live now, then maybe you should reconsider how you should live your life or, bluntly put, whether it's appropriate to continue declaring you're a Christian at all.

31 Days of Hollowness: Levels of Worship

2011-10-17T20:07:00.000-04:00

I used to attend this ministry here on UGA's campus called Wesley. I found the speaker painfully uncharismatic but I still attended because all my friends went and they always gave away free cookies out in the lobby. The worship was interesting because it was segregated into different styles of worship depending on where you stood in the room. Level one, directly adjacent to the stage, were the mass of tightly scrunched, barefooted moshers. I'm not sure why Christians take off their shoes to worship as frequently as they do, but that's besides the point. Maybe it's the thought that church is holy ground. The level one worshippers functioned in all sorts of different positions. If they weren't swapping sweat, gyrating like a gym full of bouncy balls during an earthquake, they were kneeling, sitting indian style, bowing, or in the fettle position. Level two, the largest section, consisted of a sea of pretty girls with a few dudes mixed in. These were the type of worshipers you'd typically think of when envisioning church. They sang the songs they knew, raised their hands, and texted a whole lot when they thought God wasn't looking. In the very back, level three, you'd generally find a few dozen hipsters. They never moved around a whole lot, but always had journals stuffed with elegant hand writing and delicate designs encircling really basic inspirational quotes like, "Freely give." Finally, at level four, behind the gypsy/hippy Christians were girls dancing gracefully like ballerinas.

I liked all of this because it made me recognize the vast assortment of worship styles people use to tell God that he's the man. Truthfully, I always felt uncomfortable there because I didn't find myself fitting into one of the levels. One night I stood next to a beautiful girl erratically dancing like a candle flame in the mists of a tornado. I wondered about if an alien came to visit Earth and was being introduced to humanity and it's culture by a guide. I wondered about what they guide would say to the alien if they walked into worship that night. "These are the Christians," he'd say loudly, extending his arm out across his body. "They come here to worship their Lord and Savior by the means of singing and various movements." And then, the alien would notice me, immobile and frightened by the Christian rock concert. The alien would scratch his long green chin and poke his long E.T. finger out in there air at me and inquire, "What about that one? He's not moving. Does he not believe in God?"

I always felt insecure because despite being in a place supposedly filled by love, I couldn't shake the fact I didn't worship like everyone else. I felt like people would judge my heart out of the sheer contrast of what I wasn't doing in worship. It's like, in the game Catch Phrase. The most efficient method to get your team to guess your word isn't by describing your word. The best way is by trying to correlate people's minds to the opposite of the word you can use like, "It's not the Sun but the...." And then everyone screams, "Moon!" and you feel like a linguistic hero for the rest of the night. I always felt that if anyone knew that I felt like a moron when holding my hand up or that I consider worship lyrics too simple to actually be meaningful, then everyone would assume I was a very unfortunate Christian.

Fortunately, it was Wesley that made me see that I needn't feel uncomfortable. I didn't have to take off my shoes, I didn't have to raise both my arms, or twirl around in my chair. I didn't have to do any of that stuff because God knows me and He knows that would never suffice as a sufficient way to express my gratitude for His love. Just like He knows it is a necessary means for everyone who does do those things. I love that we can all worship individually and in our own way. As for me, I'll stick to writing.

31 Days of Hollowness: The Last and The First Page

2011-10-16T21:56:00.000-04:00

It is completely astonishing how quickly and radically someone's life can change. Three years ago, after my friend Ryan split up with his high school sweetheart, got booted out of Auburn University for laughable grades, started shacking with friends between Atlanta and Athens, and haphazardly broke his hand which disabled him from attending NOLS (an outdoor education program he was really looking forward to); Ryan's life started looking like the kind you were sympathetic for yet secretly grateful that it wasn't your own. I never doubted he'd get back on track someday, but admittedly, I was just happy I wasn't in his shoes. Bizarrely enough, at that time, I felt like I was the one who had things relatively figured out because I had a steady girlfriend, was getting an education, and had three level 80 WoW characters. That's because I'm an idiot, I should add.

Today at Pisguh National Park on the border of Brevard, N.C., immersed in inarguably the most immaculate autumn scene I have ever had the blessing of encountering, I noticed the dynamism of The Great Reversal in Ryan's life. My best friend Paul halted our frisbee throwing session and inched closer to me to whisper, "Man, Ryan really hit the jackpot." I nodded my head in jealous agreement and shifted my gaze toward Ryan, his beautiful new fiancé, and both of their families scrunched around a laptop, blissfully giggling as they traversed through yesterday's engagement photos. "Yea he did, man," I enviously responded "that's his life now. That scene over there is his picture. Those are the people he'll spend the rest of his life learning to love."

I'm glad I was there for the whole process, though. Too many times I see movies with unrealistic scenes similar to the scene at the park today and throw up in my mouth a little bit at the thought of possessing nothing close to that kind of happiness. I say I'm thankful I was there the whole way through because the reality is, those scenes aren't created without a price. Most people didn't see Ryan on my porch in Atlanta, heart shattered, smoking himself to death. Most people didn't see Ryan exhausted, constantly freezing, and frightened to no end of grizzly bears out west when he eventually did attend NOLS. Most people didn't see Ryan bitting his nails, riddled with doubt as he dated girls he knew he didn't love quite like Amelia. Most people didn't see Ryan overwhelmed with homesickness and eminently alone for weeks in Brevard after he packed up his life to move to a city he literally knew no one.

I am thankful I saw all of these scenes of Ryan's life because it lets me know he doesn't attain college credit for kayaking everyday, didn't reclaim Amelia's heart after years of separation, and didn't ultimately grow into a respectable man without fighting for it all first. The bigger picture, the fuller story, rightens my desire from something jealous to something honest. What it really shifts my desire towards is the same kind of faith, the same kind of persistence, optimism, and strength Ryan exhibited for my own battles. Because the beauty of the ending scene isn't what really matters, is it?. What makes a story great is that the character at the end is someone different than they were at the beginning. I imagine a story to be rather dull and mundane should the main character on the last page be precisely as he was on the first. My desire, all of our desire, shouldn't be focused on the favorableness of the final pages. It should be on the Goodness of the fight.

dedicated to Bryan and Emily... I mean, Ryan and Amelia

31 Days of Hollowness: This Year's Understanding of Love

2011-10-15T00:22:00.001-04:00

*Notice: Greetings followers. I will be out of town today and quite incapable of accessing a computer. I have asked my dearest friend Mary Lee Jackson to guest-blog in my place. I could unquestionably ramble on about how vastly I treasure her writing style but I'll let you see for yourself. Enjoy.

when adam asked me to fill in for him today,
my immediate response was to panic.
i very well may be the most indecisive person on this planet
and here my best friend is asking me to write something
that will be shown on his own personal website
by all of his own friends and family
as well as by that strange following that have
never actually met him but enjoy his wisdom and quirks.
[no judgment. i am totally that girl.]

but. panic quickly dissipated as i decided i would just
write something that adam would have written about.
which, lucky for me, isn't hard because i know him well, and he and i
laughthinkdreamache about much of the same things.
so.
while i usually don't write for hundreds of readers
[especially for readers who didn't actually intend to read my words],
i feel confident that whatever words flow from these fingers
will speak something similar to the very words
your anticipated author would have written.
they may sound a bit different,
and they will indeed look different.
but rest assured, the message they bring won't be
far from his own.
[and if i am completely wrong about that,
i am confident he will tell you i was wrong
and explain his own point of view
in a much more humor-drenched way.]
so on to the subject that we all loveandhate to talk about.
[love.]
i've learned a lot about love over the years
and continue to learn more every day.
recently i wrote something about that romantic kind of love
that i'm beginning to realize holds true for all the other kinds too:
“at fifteen, i thought i knew what love was.
at eighteen, i was even more convinced
that i knew when i was fifteen.
at nineteen, i began to learn things about love i hadn’t known
helping me realize by twenty,
that the ‘love’ i ‘knew’ at fifteen
was a young and simplistic version of what i was
then realizing i knew so little about.
at twentyone i had a clearer idea of Who Love was
and how He intended love to look for us.”
and here i am, at twentytwo, having loved and been loved.
having chosen not to love, and having others choose not to love me.
some days i can convince myself that on this day,
at this moment, I am an expert at love.
i will have no doubts in my mind that
if the opportunity presented itself for me to live that out
with a special fellow the Lord blessed me with,
i would do it flawlessly.

then what happens?
.i screen a friend's phone call because i know she'll
ask something of me that i "don't have time to do"
when really i'm just too exhausted to leave the house.
.or i forget i made plans to meet up with someone who was having
a really hard week and push the dinner date back a month.
.or i spend a whole conversation talking about myself
and how busy and tired and heartbroken and alone i feel
and never once think to ask the person listening how they're doing.
long story short[er]...
the Lord kindly humbles me into remembering
i haven't mastered Love like He hopes for me to.
i haven't taken the opportunity to Love my friends well,
so what makes me think i'd Love a significant other well?
but. as i said at the beginning,
i have learned [and am learning] a lot about love.
and recently it's been the nonromantic kind that has taught me so much.
it seems that every day i am surrounded by more
brokenhearted friends than the day before.
and more often than not, i have experienced the aches
that my friends bring to me.
[the Lord has blessed us in such a way to
use our own pains to heal the pains of others.]
but it's through these shared achesandpains
with those i do life with daily
that i am learning how to Love like Jesus did.
i am learning that Love looks more like
walking through hell with somebody
[and all the way through it until you're both out]
than merely sending them best wishes as they struggle alone.

.Love is making the choice to never stop asking your friend how his day was,
even though you know his depression hasn't changed and you'll be
hearing about the same hardships he has shared every day that week.
.Love is having a friend over to watch a movie
so she can take her mind off of whatever her pain may be,
and letting her cry on your pillow when it doesn't work.
.Love is praying over your friend when you've spent
all day together doing incredibly fun things
but you still see the ache in her heart.
.Love is writing a blog entry for your dear friend even though
you have two papers to write that are occupying your mind.
Love is doing everything in your power
to reveal the Love our Lord has for each one of us.
[and doing that for whomever is in front of you.]

likewise, part of the process of learning what Love looks like
involves this aspect that too many of us are forgetting about...
learning how to let others Love us back.
we are all too proud and stubborn and "humble" and "modest"
to receive that same kind of revealed Love from our friends.
but by not allowing those around us to shower us
with that selfless Love that they are learning to offer,
we are stripping them of the very opportunity
to let the Lord Love through them.
and quite frankly, that is not ours for the taking.
so the next time your friend offers to buy your dinner,
let him.
or the next time she asks how your day was
[and genuinely wants to know]
tell her.
[and tell her the truth - aches and all.]
or the next time your friend offers to come over
since she knows you don't want to be alone,
let her.
we must stop convincing ourselves that by letting others Love us,
we are inconveniencing them.
otherwise, how can we justify our own offering of the same Love?
the Lord has a lot of lovin' to offer us.
and for some reason, He has blessed us with the chance
to be the vessels of that Love.
keep letting the Lord Love you.
keep letting the Lord Love through you
as you learn how to offer His Love to others.
and keep letting the Lord Love you through others
as they learn how to offer His love to you.
[that may require a couple of readings
before it makes sense, but i promise it does.]
let their next year's understanding of Love
be closer to the real thing than it was this year.
[just like yours will be.]
we will all be better because of it.
love.hope.be loved.

31 Days of Hollowness: All Goats Go To Hell

2011-10-14T20:10:00.001-04:00

I never used to give money to panhandlers. I used the excuse that because my parents provided all my money, I didn't feel like giving it away was genuine or from the heart because I didn't work for it and couldn't rightfully call it my own to give. This was just an elaborate technicality I could hide behind to fake having a good heart instead of a lump of coal, though. Like everyone else, I apathetically waived off all the Vietnam war stories and prescription receipts as fraudulent and figured they'd all just spend what I lent them on blow, malt liquor, and Black and Milds. My old Critical Rhetoric professor, who was also a youth minister in Druid Hills, didn't trust beggars either. So instead of becoming a minion of the Grinch like I did, he decided to be proactive and work out a system. He calculated how much money he would normally spend on donations throughout the year and then spent the money making care packages. The care packages were filled with necessity items like deodorant, toothpaste, afro picks, and Church's Chicken coupons. This way he was guaranteed his donations went to the betterment of a panhandler's circumstance rather than winding up as beer money. Even though I found his system admirable, I was far too lazy to make my own care packages and figured I'd be too biased towards the idea of necessity items anyways because if I was homeless I'd want magic trick paraphernalia and a diamond grill.

Fortunately, I defected from the Naughty List after I read a gripping passage from the book of Matthew (25:31-46). Basically, God splits everyone up into two groups: sheep and goats. The sheep are like His followers because even though sheep are dimwitted enough to get lost occasionally, they still pursue their shepherd. And goats are His reference to evil because goats are seriously ugly and do ignorant things like eat paper. He first address the sheep and says,

"I was hungry and you fed me,

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,

I was homeless and you gave me a room,

I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me."

The good people on the Nice List, the sheep, are immediately a bit puzzled because they've never seen God naked nor had any cordial visits with him at the Israel county jail. But God responds by illuminating that whenever they have been Good to others who are typically overlooked or ignored, it was really Him they were doing Good to. Conversely, God then turns His divine attention to the goats and proclaims,

"I was hungry and you gave me no meal,

I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,

I was homeless and you gave me no bed,

I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,

Sick and in prison, and you never visited."

The bad people on the Naughty List, the goats, are also perplexed but more so out of defense than sheer confusion. Similar to the first scenario, God clarifies that whenever they failed to help someone typically overlooked, it was really Him they ignored and failed to help out. Finally, He concluded with the master mind changer and said that all dogs go to Heaven, but all goats go to Hell. He didn't really say that but I still want my cocker spaniel, Sallie, chasing the bacon flavored tennis balls I throw, with me in Paradise.

After I read that I began to fret. I started to feel... well, not sheepish... but goatish for waiving off God so many times in Atlanta on my way to class in the mornings. I guess what changed my perception was wondering what if one of these beggars is really God, only wrapped in ectodermic flesh and an overwhelming hobo stench, and I told Him He wasn't worth 4 dollars? I started to understand that treating people with love or giving to them had nothing to do with what they ended up doing with those things. Whether they buy heroine or a basket of kittens really isn't any of my concern. What is asked of me, what is my responsibility, what I am concerned with, is treating people just as if it was Jesus himself asking me for a few bucks. That decision is on my soul, not theirs.

31 Days of Hollowness: Brain Dead

2011-10-13T20:25:00.000-04:00

Final Countdown for April

Definitely, Maybe

— MOVIECLIPS.com

I have deleted roughly 6 entries today because I thought they were all utter rubbish. I am unexplainably brain dead so give me some slack today. My favorite part of this seen is when Will (Ryan Reynolds) asks his daughter Myah why she's so concerned with his past love tragedies and she responds by saying, "because I just want you to be happy." Then Will leans over the table, scrunches his face sourly as if he can't bear the lie he's about to expel and attempts to reassure her, "Kiddo. I'm happy." And with unfounded 8 year old confidence she says, "Trust me, Dad. You're not happy."

It's a shame our problems become old news so quickly to those around us. I know my Dad would say otherwise. He'd say no one likes a nosy person and that we should keep to our own business. But I think people liked to be asked about what's going on inside of them. Maybe I'm just projecting my own feelings upon that matter on everyone else. I think what I like about the little girl, Myah, is how she's not fooled by her own father's attempt to reassure her he's okay. She knows him. The truth is, there's more pain in our surroundings than we recognize. Actually, I don't think it's about recognition. I think it's about whether we are big enough to accept it. Because if we begin being true friends, asking the people we care about what's troubling them, we take on some sort of automatic responsibility to encourage them or help them even though we don't know how. And because we don't know how, we never try at all. Whenever we help someone, we know it will take something from us as well... so we ignore it, become passive, and wash our hands of the idea of aid at all. Someone else can help them, right?

I'm tired. This felt like a waste of time.

31 Days of Hollowness: Abundance

2011-10-12T20:28:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, in A Mouthful of Zero-Calorie Chocolate I discussed the notion of, "being on the right track." In brief, I spoke upon spiritual momentum and how we can trust a positive direction for our lives, despite God's frustrating silence, once we've genuinely listened when He was speaking and made a few capital "g" Good decisions in our lives. Today I want to touch on the appearance of blessings and how to recognize them when they spit on our shoes.

I am exceedingly inept at recalling scripture so bear with my creative attempts to paraphrase. In the New Testament, there is this incessant repeating of the way God blesses us. It says He doesn't merely restore what we've lost in sacrifices but endows us in abundance. As unfair as it seems on His end, God seems like a ridiculously good friend who I can lend $20 bucks to and the next week will give me $20 dollars back and an extra $5,000 for letting Him borrow some green. I mean, this generous characteristic is painted all throughout the Bible. Abraham had six billion kids, Solomon's wisdom was unparalleled with anyone on the planet, Noah coaxed every living species known to man (save the poor dinosaurs) to climb inside some multiple story, makeshift raft, David wrote a couple hundred poems that to this day woo 20-something girls into wishing he was their boyfriend, Gideon walked over an army of 400,000 men with only a few hundred carpenters and blacksmiths, and Job... Job basically became God's supreme poster boy. He was like the son God never had until Jesus miraculously popped onto the sonogram screen.

The common thread between all these characters is that they were all, "on the right track." When God did speak they listened and they acted. Abraham nearly burned alive his long awaited, one and only son, Solomon grew dirty dreadlocks for like three decades, Noah accepted ultimate village idiot status to build an ark during a drouth, David finally made God crack a smile after 400 years by restoring Israel, Gideon obliged to continue cutting people out of his dire military draft, and Job unfriended all of his friends on Facebook. They all listened, they all acted, and they all were blessed back in abundance.

It makes me wonder if the appearance of abundance in my life denotes me moving in a positive direction. The beginning of the year started off with perhaps the most important prayer of my life; to become the man God needed me to be and to start with the removal of the girl I loved if that was necessary to complete the process. This was all very horrifying because I know God and when you give Him and inch, He takes a mile. I also knew that typically change means pain. I shouldered an abundance of dispassion and guilt, I'm still picking up an abundance of shattered fragments from a broken heart, I befriended an abundance of Good people this summer, I have been abundantly bored at times this semester, and now I am nearly halfway through a blogging series which requires an abundance of time, picture quotes, and candidness. Four job offers in a one week probably shouldn't go unmentioned either. Hello, TwoStory.

31 Days of Hollowness: A Mouthful of Zero-Calorie Chocolate

2011-10-11T23:42:00.001-04:00

Today whilst walking back to my car, soaking wet, and anxious to see if my laptop would explode in my backpack and catch me on fire; I caught myself praying something ridiculous. I was headed to an interview at 2Story and I was praying that I landed the open barista position. To tell the truth, I would be positively ecstatic to work there. I fit in nice and snug with the audience, I am enamored by the homelike environment, and getting the job would finally balance out the shameful amount of time I spend with other human beings in comparison to the ludicrous amount of Sodoku puzzles I finish weekly. I'm not saying praying for the stuff you want out of life is absurd, it's not. What I mean is that sometimes it's comforting to know certain aspects of my life are out of my control. Because if they're out of my hands, then their in God's hands, which means I have a significantly lower chance of screwing it up. I guess I just believe that if God actually cares about me being happy, then if I don't get something I want, I can trust God didn't give it to me because it would't have actually brought me wholesome, long-lasting happiness.

Sometimes I become irrationally perturbed by God's silence. I can't tell if He's ignoring me to play frisbee with that winged lion covered with eyeballs from Revelations or if He's stuffing His face with zero-calorie chocolate, watching me fumble every decision I make. Whatever He's doing, I find solace in knowing He's perfect and that must mean there's a perfectly good reason for not letting me slip a glimpse at His universe-sized agenda for my life. Maybe because He designed human nature He well knows that if He clued us in on what our futures depicted and entailed, we'd trust ourselves to make the whole fairytale come true and, in virtue of that very self-reliance, irrevocably screw up the whole plan.

That's why I think there's something to be said for what I'm going to call, "being on the right track" or what somebody smarter with a seminary degree would call, "spiritual momentum." At the risk of sounding like a complete hillbilly... wow, I cannot believe this is the best metaphor I have up my sleeve but... it's kind of like a car. If I accelerate to 60 mph and let off the gas, you know what's gonna happen? The car is going to keep moving. I know, I know, I should win the Nobel Prize for Physics. I think after you've done some major listening to what God has had to say when He didn't have a mouthful of zero-calorie chocolate and you have made a few capital "g" Good decisions in your life, it's reasonable to say you're moving in the right direction or "are on the right track." I don't mean that if you've nonchalantly thrown a couple of dollars at a beggar and resisted Facebook stalking that person you think is hot for a couple of weeks then it's decidedly permissible to snort heroine and blow your college fund on lap dances or game day dresses. I just think being on the right track should make us feel less worried about the bits of our lives that are seemingly out of our control. God's not an idiot. He knows that if He's not thundering a To Do List for your life through an eerie cumulonimbus cloud, then you're probably going to have to settle with good intentions, wing it, and just do what you think you should do.

31 Days of Hollowness: The Good-Timing Award

2011-10-10T20:54:00.001-04:00

After a dreadful Spring Break in the infamous pan handle of Florida I executively decided my girlfriend at the time and I ought to break up. Unfortunately... um... prom wasn't until the beginning of May. I know, I know. I'm a monster. But I was young and naive and even though I am still those things, high school had unparalleled optimal conditions to incubate the kind of foolishness I can laugh about now. Well, it gets worse. You know what came after prom? Graduation. And after graduation? Graduation parties I needed a petite blonde escort to. Even though spending the summer alone in my room playing with action figures I outgrew 10 years ago was inestimably worse than not having a prom date, by some stroke of accidental maturity, I resisted the devilish excuse imploring me to continue prolonging the inevitable.

The truth is, inconvenience never won the Good-Timing Award. The last line of John Acuff's latest book Quitter reads, "Start where you are. Start with what you have. Start now." I think this is superb advice because in my experience, there's never really been a good time to do the things I didn't want to do. Between proms, parties, birthdays, anniversaries, exams, or freaking Christmas; there's always some unprecedented event agitating my ability to make decisions at the present time rather than later. That voice rallying us to procrastinate important decisions isn't founded on pure, wholesome motives, though. It's rubbish because its true intent is to persuade us that we can sidestep the inconvenience that usually walks hand-in-hand with difficult decisions if we would but only wait for the perfect conditions. That's like me trying to convince you it would be less painful to swallow a scorching hot coal if you just wait until it's snowing outside to do so.

My friend Paul and I sat out on my deck last night and he asked how writing everyday was going. I told him it was hard. Hard to sit in front of my keyboard everyday writing something that, at the very least, indirectly conveys that I don't really know what's happening in me right now, that I don't have everything figured out, that I feel like a mess inside. I told him that despite that difficulty it feels good to face my fears, take a severe lesson in humility, and be honest for once. If I waited for the perfect conditions in my life to arrive I'd be in a casket someday, pen in hand with nothing to show for myself.

31 Days of Hollowness: The Literate Trinity

2011-10-09T21:43:00.001-04:00

I enjoy how Christians all humanize God down to a type of relationship they're familiar with. Sometimes girls reference God as their Daddy or their unlimitedly pure boyfriend. And some guys reference God as this archetypical father, showing them what it is to be a man. I am grateful for these people and I am grateful for their depictions, however true or untrue they may seem. I haven't done any research, but I would hypothesize people relate God to the type of relationship that has or had the biggest impact in their lives. I think that's why I imagine Jesus as a best friend. I imagine Him and I alone by a bon fire near the edge of the woods on a brisk winter night just watching the fire crackle as it licks the bottom of the trees. I imagine He's not merely willing, but unfathomably eager to listen to me speak and that there's nothing I could say that He wouldn't smoother in understanding. I get the feeling He's easy to communicate with, someone who'll laugh at the admittance of my wrong doings and foolishness but tell me I should just relax because there's still hope. Because He loves me.

Sometimes I write to myself in the 3rd person as if that Jesus by the bon fire were writing instead of me. And I don't care if anyone thinks that's mushy or complete bullcrap because it works for me and I don't believe anyone has the authority to tell me what the Spirit can or cannot do. He always shrouds me in basic wisdom and calls me, "man" a lot. He enlightens all the struggles I've been battling which helps me acknowledge He's cognizant of my existence and isn't just eating a sandwich, watching some other planet. I really can't tell you if this is something miraculous or if I'm just some idiot pretending he's God, writing to himself. All I can say is that I believe the something inside of me when it tells me that I'm not a loser and that I'll be thankful in the end.

I know what it feels like to want to stomp on the gas and let go of the wheel after a hard night. And I don't want anyone becoming seriously worried that I said that or start recommending psychiatrists. I think what I mean is, at some point in our overload of despair, when happiness seems helpless, we all scavenge for anything that resembles escape. And we have three choices. We can let our pain define us, we can let our pain destroy us, or we can let our pain strengthen us. Something inside me screams, imploring me to not relent. Something inside me, or maybe it's just Winston Churchhill, advises me that Hell can be traversed if I'd just follow my feet and keep going. I don't think it's Winston Churchhill, or maybe it is in some twisted spiritual sense I cannot comprehend, I think it's my best friend.

31 Days of Hollowness: The Genius of Gangsters

2011-10-08T21:52:00.000-04:00

I want you to know how close I just came to writing something sappy and pitiful. I had a pink inspirational picture quote picked out and everything. But then I turned on an Against Me! song and Robert Schuller mentally cup-checked me into redeeming my dignity. I watched 8 Mile today. Despite the quantity of cursing making me feel like I needed to be re-baptized, it was a decent movie. 8 Mile is the like Good Will Hunting for poverty stricken hoodlums in Detroit, I decided. Think about it. Despite Marshal Mathers not having a hairy-knuckled psychiatrist to mouth off to, him and Will Hunter are basically the same guy.

What I've noticed about movies like these is that it's possible to get stuck anywhere. Whether it's in between college and real life or in jersey working construction with Ben Aflack, fear and laziness are deceivingly scattered everywhere like well hidden bear traps.

I have this friend who occasionally endorses the idea that he'll be President of the United States someday. I don't condone him or pass it off as innocent jest because behind his eyes I can tell the fire igniting that passion is authentic and honest. What I mean is that I know how he feels. Sometimes I wonder if I'll be one of the greats. I know that probably sounds silly but I hardly believe Oparah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, or M. Night. Shyamalan were absolutely certain they'd turn into what they did at only 22-years-old. Everyone has to start somewhere. That gives me hope because it makes my ambition not feel so fantastical. It makes me sad to think about all the great minds in the world who never amounted to anything because they believed the lies fear or laziness whispered into their souls, coaxing them to chain up their ambitions up to rot and die.

I like that quote everyone keeps posting on Facebook after Steve Job's death. The one about how the people who are crazy enough to believe they can change the world are the ones who actually do. I don't have a photographic memory or the ability to spit trill rhymes but I believe we don't have to settle at good. We can be great. And even though it helps to have Robin Williams or a ridiculously big black man continually encourage you and remind you that the reason your stuck isn't your fault, I think all we really need is to finally acknowledge that pestering voice that tells us we are different.

In one scene, Eminem asks his friend, "You ever wonder at what point you oughta just say f*** it, man. When you gotta stop living up here and start living down here?" This is crucial. This is the focal point for greatness. If I were Satan, I'd want everyone's ship to go down in sight of land. I'd want everyone who was actually so close, to give up and begin to believe their troubled life is the new normal. Fortunately for you and I, tough times don't last. Tough people do.

31 Days of Hollowness: Banana Hearts

2011-10-07T18:10:00.001-04:00

"Kids, you can't talk yourself into falling in love. It doesn't take days of deliberation. When its real, you know pretty quickly and with absolute certainty. I had forgotten that. But I was about to be reminded." - Ted Mosby

Man. This is so, so true. I could honestly stop there and be satisfied with what I wrote today but something inside me implores me to elaborate. I am generally privy of the belief that we humans do not possess proper control over the way someone does or doesn't make us feel. The only way I believe management of our feelings is possible is by removing or avoiding the catalyst from which those feelings originate and putting absolute hope in the quiet decay of time. And even that doesn't always work. I'm typically abysmal at being poetic so bear with my incoherency. But I think our hearts belong to God. And if that's the case, then we have no authority to decide the condition of something that isn't our own. It's like walking out of a movie you unquestionably loved. You may learn all your friends found the movie an immeasurable disappointment and read that RottenTomatoes gave it their first negative score in film history, but you cannot erase or simply alter the way you felt leaving that theater. This is the case with movies, music, food, books, places we visit, and most notably, other people.

I think it's easy to become consumed by mapping out our feelings the same way we'd normally do with rational thought. But the truth is they're not the same. It's like peeling a banana, being handed a pineapple, going about getting to the edible part with the same method, and recognizing you could have spared a considerably less amount of time as well as hand cuts by merely grabbing a knife. I think if we're composing pros and cons lists and drawing colored charts in attempts to extract something about the way we feel about someone, we're being utterly moronic. Don't our parents always admit, "they just knew"?

I hate using the introduction to my ex-girlfiend Tracey as my standard for comparison, but it's really all I've got with respect to what it felt like to fall in love. Time stopped for me. High fives were frozen in-between seconds, stories were halted mid sentence, and all the sudden I unmistakably knew I wouldn't even have a shot at happiness without this girl being in my life. I didn't have to convince myself of anything or deliberate the reality of what I was feeling. I knew quickly and with certainty I had to fight for her. And even though that's admittedly very hard to write, I think the authority originating in my heart is what made me feel like my pursuit was something pure, something sure, something honest.

I want to feel that away again; short of breath, empty minded, and on that straight line concluding with an emphatic "Yes." It has to be this way at some point or another or we'll spend all our time with that other person busy convincing ourselves to feel something we obviously don't. Unless you're prepared to spend everyday for the rest of your life brainwashing yourself as tenaciously as you are now, my advice to you is to not settle, to not compromise, to not squander another second preoccupying yourself with contemplating what your heart knows isn't real. Just wait until you don't have to think about it.

- and you should always always always always try to say yes

31 Days of Hollowness: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Goes to UGA

2011-10-06T15:34:00.000-04:00

At this very moment, the boy to my right is shamelessly utilizing the iPad's built-in accelerometer to fervidly play a racing game in the middle of my philosophy class. I wish I were making this up. With his lanky arms extended immediately before his face, he is plainly swaying the device left and right, tapping the screen mindlessly like a monkey in a space shuttle's cockpit. I mean, I'm not paying attention either, but at least I'm being subtle about my devilry. Pretending his raggedy, 20-year-old school desk is a racing seat and his iPad is a steering wheel, this clown isn't even attempting to hide his blatant Dale Earnhardt Jr. simulation. My professor isn't even upset by any of this kid's tomfoolery. Whenever he looks in the kid's direction he just smirks out of disbelief like the kid might as well be juggling kittens in the middle of a lecture.

I cannot help but to chuckle at the senselessness of the subtext. I am going to pay you $5,000 to dispense what you know to me over the next few months. And then, when you start talking, I am going to tune out and play a video game. I'm not saying I don't partake in this absurdity. I do. Perhaps more than anyone. I can't count the number of cartoon monsters I've drawn, Sodoku puzzles I've triumphantly decrypted, or hours I've spent simply watching nearby girls pour over wedding blogs, cupcakes they'll never make, and outfits they can't fit into. But despite the seeming lack of scholastic attentiveness we college students typically portray, I admittedly don't believe a formal classroom setting constructed by attendance, homework, and multiple choice exams works for everyone and for that matter, must be adhered to. Take my friend Ryan for instance. I don't think he'd mind me publicizing this, but he's a downright terrible student. Not because he's not intelligent; he's a brilliant guy. He just can't muster the concentration or care compulsory to study for an exam in which will test him on an assortment of knowledge he'd never even desire to use in his life time. That's why he boldly decided to pack up his life and move to North Carolina where all of his classes involve him kayaking daily and reading outdoorsy books by pioneers like Aldo Leopold.

And I respect that because I do the same thing just in a more cunning, shirking manner. At the beginning of every semester I spend days meticulously assembling the perfect class schedule. All potential courses must strain through a filter requiring them to be on tuesdays or thursdays, no later than 3 p.m., heavily writing based, and be instructed by professors who obtain above a 3.7 easiness rating on ratemyprofessor.com. I suppose there's nothing decidedly wrong about carefully picking one's classes, but I think when people learn you slithered through college like that they conclude you're an underachiever. And I am an underachiever. Just today I made a barter with my friend Catherine to trade a bag of Sour Patch Kids in exchange for her notes because I haven't taken any. The imprecise conception, though, is that if you're an underachiever in school then you must be one in life. This is an ill founded assumption because we are more than willing to scrap out the initiative necessary to accomplish something grand out of our relationships and devotions, we are just square pegs that don't fit into the round holes of academia.

My good friend Leesa and I discussed this on the phone just last weekend. She feels it demonstrates well established character for an individual to regard all work with diligence regardless of one's interest in the task, thus requiring him/her to work hard upon all their endeavors in order to build and convey commendable work ethic. I don't wholly disagree with this. Even how well someone cuts the grass exhibits something of their character. I guess I just feel like if I can envision a route to beat the system, then it is my prerogative to take the advantages. I told her about how when I study for tests I sit out on my porch for 12 hours between 2 days prior to the test, smoke a pack of cigs, drink 20 cups of coffee, and self-teach myself the first half of the semester. She replied by saying she could never do that (implying intellectual capability). What's peculiar is that she can't do something I can and no one would think anything of it. But if I admit I can't read my class readings every night and take notes in class, steadily learning over time, the whole world thinks I'm a miserable excuse for a "real" student.

In conclusion, I don't disagree with Leesa's position I just think there's an additional perspective that shouldn't go overlooked. Which is that there is still something positive to be said about the intelligence it requires to find and successfully apply alternative methods relative to any standard system. In a sense, and granted that he passes, even the moronic Dale Earnhardt Jr. impostor beside me can display genius despite, but most importantly, because he can pretend he's a race car driver in class and still write a wickedly brilliant philosophy paper. My accolades go to that guy.

31 Days of Hollowness: Re-beating Pokemon

2011-10-05T23:27:00.001-04:00

It's always shocking to see how rapidly we can go from being overwhelmingly preoccupied with stressful obligations to painstakingly bored. This was especially evident in high school, I remember. I'd practically be giggling at the thought of not having to spend 7 hours a day in cinderblock Hell once summer break commenced and a week later I'd be trapped in my room on some idle Tuesday at 4 p.m. re-beating Pokemon on my Gameboy for the 55th time.

This semester has been unremittingly prolific with boredom. I have to stay optimistic about it, though. I have to regularly remind myself that not all seasons of life can be overflowing with things to do and people to be accompanied by and that somewhere in the mists of the empty time I immediately perceive to be wasting is a gently growing appreciation for the time I will be provided for. I have to be optimistic because the alternative is pathetic. If I don't remind myself of those things I promptly begin to blame myself for not being hip enough to enter thriving social circles, confident enough to attract girls, and untalented enough to lackadaisically waive off the pursuit of new hobbies I'll never be proficient enough at to impress everyone watching.

When I don't have a whole lot to show for my life I think it's pitifully easy for me to blame myself and hastily rush to the conclusion that it's probably because I suck. I know that sounds pathetic but logically it checks out. If the whole of something is deplorable it is likely its constituents are also deplorable. Think about it. If you have a slice of apple pie and immediately deduce its the worst pie you've ever forked into your mouth, the first thought you have is if the apples it was made with came from a Russian landfill or were replaced by some apple flavored, synthetic freezer paste. But I don't believe I suck. And if you're getting up, putting your pants on, and taking a stab at life, I don't think you suck either.

I like to think about what God is doing when He's silent and I mistake the turbulence of operating the universe for Him sitting around playing Angry Birds on some God-sized iPhone. I think He's diligently moving pieces, carefully constructing victory in our lives, and just waiting for our sense of time to unfold the glory He's worked so hard at blueprinting. After all, we always miss the time we had nothing to do once our lives gain momentum and all the additional complexity that is packaged with obligations and relationships. Once the school year recommenced and I became loaded with school work I had to figure out a way to cheat on or was locked in detention for sticking my MP3 player in my pants when my spanish teacher attempted to imprison it in the infamous "June Box," I always reminisced and cherished those careless days I spent flawlessly handing the Elite 4's butts to them.

31 Days of Hollowness: The Urban Outfitter Jesus

2011-10-04T00:22:00.000-04:00

There exist two distinct places where finding Christians is like finding a untarnished, mint condition Pete Rose baseball card or perhaps a holographic Charizard. Atlanta and philosophy classes. Maybe a third if we count the Middle East. I always feel intellectually inferior in my philosophy class because the bulk of the literature I've read was written no earlier than the 20th century mark and because I never wrote my own satirical rendition of the allegory of the cave. Apparently to be intellectually considered you have to have a thorough understanding of at least six obscure philosophical theories only 10 other people in history have read and wear fake rectangular spectacles so that everyone else around knows not to argue with you unless they have an abnormal desire to be cognitively spat on. When philosophy teachers first learn you're a Christian it's like they just discovered a 12-year-old who still has an imaginary friend named Mr. Pickles.

After spending the last couple of days critiquing Immanuel Kant's ethical theory, all I seem to want to talk about is metaphysics. The rigorous hunt to identify what is objectively good and further proving why what is "good" is in fact "good" all seems a bit trivial to me. Not because I find metaphysics undeserving of respect but rather because I feel like there is a simple, inalienable truth patiently waiting at the finish line of all metaphysical endeavors. Seemingly, the only way to terminate the infinite regress of asking where the goodness of said entities derives from is through belief, not fact. Whether you believe in the Bible, or believe you are your own god, or that a fantastical tribe of celestial gnomes created the universe - we all eventually have to believe something we cannot prove in our persistent quest to identify an objective entity that is an end in and of itself.

The topic of objectivity reminds me of Mosses and the burnish bush. I mean, it's likely anyone would conclude God or something supernatural was present if you were walking through a desert and a bush that spontaneously combusted with time altering light began repeating the world's shortest sentence. I don't actually think of Mosses as much as I think of the same instance in conventional terms. I picture this bearded Jesus clad in a trendy Urban Outfitter plaid button-up and brightly colored Vans descending from a stupidly big cloud and resting in mid-air right before me. He then tells me he's God. And I say prove it because all he appears as is a copy of me but who can fly (which I'm promptly jealous of). So he snaps his fingers and I immediately receive an e-mail from my soul mate, find that I won the lottery without even buying a ticket, and I grow 4 inches taller. He quietly chuckles and says, "See?" with convincing authority. And because I'm stubborn I demand further proof by asking him to tell me something in my past I've never told him. Disappointed yet still eager to win my trust he strokes his beard in contemplation and matter-of-factly states, "In kindergarten, you deliberately pooped your pants in order to avoid going to the principal's office." Incalculably surprised, I begin to understand my incessant demand for proof will never actually prove the dude floating before me is indeed God. As illogical as it sounds, adequate proof won't prove God is who He says He is. We have to believe. It's like, I can come to you and say, "I'm Adam Evancho." And even though I brought my social security card, my birth certificate, passport, driver's license, and 5 people who have known me since birth - you could always conclude it was all an elaborate fraud and that I was just some exceptional identity theft. Identity will always and inevitably collide with the requirement of belief.

31 Days of Hollowness: My Sexy Reading-Buddy

2011-10-03T22:49:00.002-04:00

You know what's hands down the most pathetic feeling? When you get embarrassed alone. And don't say you've never been there. You have. And everyone has some unique bodily response promptly upon recognizing their boundless foolishness. They start whistling, looking around aimlessly, scratching themselves when they don't itch. I hum. Man, I still hum when I think about farting in front of my 3rd grade reading buddy. Ashley was the sexiest girl in the 5th grade and I got to woo her every Friday with my sensual Ghostbusters reading skills. I was honored just to be enrolled in the same school as her. It was like being neighbors with Helen of Troy and trying to be casual about the whole thing. We laid side-by-side on our stomachs, immersed in a sea of appallingly unfashionable 90's carpet. The classroom was as silent as the aftermath of an apocalypse save for the few high pitched voices of some pubescent boys. Ashley smelled like a garden of fresh laundry and she immediately began flirting with me. "How's your day", "turn to page 60", "you can start here". I wasn't 2 minutes in and then there it was, mid sentence, a pocket frog croaked out of my netherlands emitting a funky wind that would make a muggy landfill seem like a bundle of cinnamon sticks. She crinkled her face in disgust, I kept reading trying to ignore my embarrassment into nonexistence, and here I am 15 years later humming in my Birds of Our Lives poultry science class. Ironic.

I always want to travel back through time and change all these moments but when I take a moment to think about it I think I'd be attempting to alter the majority of my history. I don't know if that means I am a perfectionist or if it means I live a generally clownish life, I just know I'd spend all my time in the past fixing embarrassing moments rather than becoming someone less embarrassing in the present. I'd pay a visit to Helen of Troy too. Really, everything I remember looks stupid to me now, like I could say or do it better if I could only take a ride back with Doc Brown or meet Spock from Startrek the Next Generation. I think we need these moments, though. I'm not saying everyone should flap their buns in front of their reading buddies. But I think we typically only feel embarrassed when we are being the rawest versions of ourselves and that's something to be proud of. It's like our formal initiation to the Human Club. They say we learn from our mistakes. But this is not always the case. Sometimes we see them and all we understand is how we made them again and again.

31 Days of Hollowness: What I Do in the Shower

2011-10-02T14:50:00.003-04:00

A lot of people believe that if you possess a showy vocabulary and an acute awareness for where to best position exclamation points, then you've indubitably inherited a knack for writing. Fortunately this isn't true because I have no idea when to express excitement with exclamation points in my writing. I think there's a lot more to it than that. I think a writer has to be honest because if people wanted to absorb a cornucopia of superficial bull they'd just Google a presidential speech or audit sorority girls' conversations on a Friday night at Yoforia.

To be honest, I am not a very honest writer. Because if I'm honest then people will begin to read that I am still struggling with a break-up, that I spend about 10% of my time in the shower actually washing my body and the other 90% contemplating the universe, and that I'm generally confused about how to grow up and be a man. And none of that sounds as fun as waiting around for 1 day out of the month to feel inspired, writing it down, and convincing everyone that I've got my head on straight and all that time in the shower staring into the drain wasn't for nothing. I can't stand conveying weakness. I'd rather rearrange all my verbiage to the past tense to trick everyone into believing I used to not have everything figured out but now I'm immersed in some epic adventure, God talks to me via e-mail, and I can have any girl I want. And this is all very silly because if you can't be honest about the stuff that really matters in your life, how is anyone supposed to pray for you, encourage you, or provide camaraderie by saying something as simple as, "Dude. That sucks."?

All my good thoughts end up being suffocated by a never-ending cascade of worry. That worry doesn't stem from people wondering if my writing ability is impressive or adequate material to satisfy the thirst to eradicate their midday boredom. It comes from wondering what judgements I'll never hear and what others will decide about how they think of me.

A few weeks ago I met this successful mommy-blogger named Miriam Kamin. She maintains a couple highly read blogs but one is more of a public online journal brimful with all her vulnerability, embarrassing moments, and idiosyncrasies. She said to become successful she had to start writing everyday and that was always scary because it was like anyone had the capability of reading her mind. All they had to do was Google her name, find her blog, and read about her thoughts on a day-to-day basis. Part of me wanted to give up on my dream of writing then and there but then I thought about how if I wrote everyday it would help me overcome my fear of judgement, molding me into someone honest and striving me to become someone more positive.

Jon Acuff, the writer of Stuff Christians Like and Quitter, insists that we must practice our dreams so that we aren't overwhelmed when they might turn out to be a success. Essentially, he says we don't often practice because we don't believe our dreams will ever come true which is a journey already off on the wrong foot. So this October I've committed myself to writing publicly everyday. I'll probably change the names of the characters and keep secrets secret but I need the challenge, the fight for maturity, and I need to be honest with you.

-this is how we breath underwater

Funny Analytics

2011-09-06T11:35:00.000-04:00

Today I was checking Google Analytics. Typically I just slap myself and quietly sob when I look at my pathetic numbers but today I found something especially humorous. I was looking at a few of the keywords people have used in search engines and wound up on my blog.

The other month I wrote an entry called, "Laundry Room Sex, Books, and a Siberian Husky named Gandalf." It is my most read post. Unfortunately for #2 and #8, my blog was probably not what they were looking for.

The Quickest Way to the Ocean: the mystery of the Unicorn unveiled

2011-09-02T17:22:00.002-04:00

I recently saw an article about Christian dating on Relevant Magazine’s website and then the Lord told me I could write it better. Okay, the Lord didn’t tell me anything of the sort. But I decided I could because I think Christian dating is an ugly bag of snakes deserving of better reconciliation than some lousy tips on becoming the right person first and deciding whether or not dry-humping will guarantee your own personal oven to bake in, in Hell.

This summer my buddy asked me if I believed in the Unicorn. Of course I believe in unicorns, I thought, they gallop weightlessly on the arches of rainbows and leave trails of glitter in their wake that make children giggle and make puppies never grow up and always stay puppies. Then he shattered my fantasy and alluded to what he really meant: a soul mate. Somebody who challenges you, somebody who opens things up for you, somebody who touches your soul. I wish I could have told him no more coherently than I did, but I have a problem being brief and clear. I guess I feel like our position regarding the notion of a soul mate has less to do with how we think the universe operates and more to do with the limitlessness of God.

There’s all this talk in the Bible about freedom. Seemingly, the understatement of the entire New Testament is this repetitive proposition to lose your life so that you may save it. And if you’re more privy to conventional terms, then take Tyler Durden’s word for it, “Only once we have lost everything, are we free to do anything.” Aren’t we taught that God’s power has unrestricted omnipotence, boundless authority, and incomprehensible grace? If we believe so, then how, argumentatively speaking, does that leave room for the contention defending merely one objectively perfect match exists for us? That rationale sounds awfully limiting coming from a God who offers us freedom from our faith.

To me, the concept of mercy sounds a lot more forgiving than, “if you step off this direct line to Me, you’re screwed.” I cannot count the times I’ve faltered or made hesitant steps down an unsure path in my life and still found God waiting arms open at the end, ready to tell me that He’s glad I made it and that it’s all okay now. I don’t mean that we cannot take wrong turns, our mistakenly choose longer paths, or simply more dangerous routes. What I mean is that I don’t think God is stuck by some uncharted pond in an obscure mountain range teaching deer how to juggle and getting Big Foot to open up his heart, waiting for us to hopefully find and take the one and only perfect trail that leads us to Him.

The paths to Him are always narrow but finding Him is a lot like finding the ocean. Assuming you’ve looked at a world map before, you’ve probably noticed something explicably true. There’s a lot of ways to get to the ocean. Some take longer than others, some are less forgiving, some go the complete opposite direction, but the redeeming water and boundless horizon is patiently waiting for everyone. However we get there. I know the soul mate debacle is controversial and a theological nightmare, but it would do us well to contemplate the enormity of God before we so rashly pick sides.

Before I finish, consider one last perspective. A relationship is only one part of life. If there is only one perfect person for each of us, is it unacceptable to assume there exists one perfect choice in all realms of decision? From our most dire decisions - one perfect spouse, one perfect college experience, one perfect career; to our most petty decisions – one perfect breakfast drink, one perfect hat to wear for the day, one perfect way to spend the evening. You probably already see where I am going with this. We don’t frustrate ourselves over one career option because we know many may be suitable for us throughout time due to the change of immeasurable variables. We do not fret over the perfect way to spend the evening not merely because we know there will be more, but because even if we experience what we deem the perfect night we discredit ourselves from infallibly discerning the concept of perfection because we are blissfully unaware at all times by the happenings in which could have satisfied a truer depiction of a perfect night. Likewise, how can we ever be sure of a perfect soul to complement our own when we are blissfully unaware who else in the world could have made us happier? The tricky thing about finding the ocean is that we may always be unsure of the route that asked the most of us, was most promising, and unfolded the best and most brilliant journey.

I would be thrilled if you as readers might be stirred to become more than readers, but enthused respondents. Clearly, I am no expert and my opinions are as subjective as any ones’. I would be honored to hear your thoughts and delight in your own wisdom.

-Unless you love someone, nothing else makes sense. E.E. Cummings

Bifocals, Time Machines, and Wisdom

2011-08-29T16:07:00.001-04:00

I read this excerpt from a book this summer: "People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed. The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see ..."

In the past couple of years as my character has slowly been developing people have referred to me as a wise individual. That's hard for me to accept because when I envision someone brimful of wisdom I feel like he should be wearing bifocal spectacles and privately constructing a time machine in his liesure time. And all it seems that I do is spend excessive time on the toilet playing iPhone games long after finishing pooping and avoiding scholastic responsibility. This is a long shot from assembling a quantum mechanical device like the ideal wise man.

But really, when people assert to me that I am wise the first thought that trains through my head is, "Well... I'm no different than you?" I mean, sure, I may spend more time on my porch overanalyzing things than you and I may have Stumbled through a few more inspirational picture quotes than you... but more wise? Doubt it. If I could deconstruct wisdom into component parts they would look like this:

1. What you know
2. How well you know what you know
3. How to dispense what you know
4. When is best appropriate to dispense what you know

For now, let's pretend number two is the heart of wisdom, the flux capacitor of the time machine. Let's also pretend you read the quote in blue above (Actually don't pretend. Go read it real quick, I'll wait.) In the recent years I have stumbled across noticeably fewer "ah-ha!" moments. I don't think that's because I am less keen to the profound, the paramount, or that I picked up the stupid stick and have been a naive ape ever since. I have just begun to learn that perhaps growing in wisdom doesn't always mean learning something new but rather reapplying those conventions we so easily veer away from, forget, or deliberately smother.

This is going to make me sound a lot older than I actually am but... when I talk to younger people I rarely see earth shattering revelations cognitively erupting inside them when I speak. Typically they just gawk at me and wander why I don't grow my beard longer and how my eyes are so blue and if I'm secretly building a time machine. It's not that there is no profundity to my words, I just am more intimate with the principles they already know, just as those older than me are more intimate with the principles I already know. This is befuddling because intimacy knows no measures. It is no use saying, "You know that saying if it's too good to be true, then it probably is? Yea well... I know it better than you."

There are plenty of principles like - think before you speak, if it's too good to be true it probably is, if you don't have something kind to say don't say it at all, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger - that you don't have to be a withered old man tinkering on a theoretical machine to understand and be capable of asserting in your everyday life. Too often we gather new information, store it, and then read books by wiser Christians, watch online sermons of more popular preachers, and beg God to open our eyes when He already has. What if you already know what you need to know, but you just need to know it better? More intimately. What if you weren't always searching for something, but reminiscing and contemplating what you are so eager to forget? Think about it, if you have ever been told you are wise or know someone you label wise. Do they really know all this stuff that you don't know or are they just savvy at reminding themselves of the importances of life? Think deep.

- It is what it is. You are what you are. Just try to enjoy your day.

Capacities

2011-08-11T14:18:00.002-04:00

I heard once that when I've found my true marital match, I will have found someone who is strong where I am weak and who I can be strong for where they are weak. And this always seemed like a jolly idea to me because that meant I would eventually find someone to get me to brush my teeth longer, falling asleep in the shower, and consuming unhealthy quantities of croutons in one sitting. Not to mention this special dynamic would neatly get us both out of doing thing we hated - I would never have to tri-fold an ironed shirt ever again and she'd never have to crank a weed-eater. And to a degree, I am sure it may work a little like this but I imagine it looks a little bit different than my future wife slamming on the bathroom door, screaming obscenities to awaken me from my hydraulic sleep chamber just to get me to work on time.

A couple of weeks ago a girl my friend is dating casually asked him how much he smoked. He told her one of those "technically I'm not lying" answers. Later on that night as he was driving her home he pulled over and expressed that he had felt guilty and compelled to unveil the uglier truth about how much he really smoked. Softly she replied, "Oh, I know. I just wanted to see if you were going to be honest with me." After he had recounted this story to me we laughed and then the porch grew still with quiet contemplation. Without looking him in the eyes I broke the reticence and carefully stated, "You know man, I mean this in the most 'best friend way' possible, but the woman you marry someday will be someone who has that quality. Someone who can see through all your meticulously worded and technically valid bullcrap."

And one might read this and think: Thank Jesus for men like Adam who so subtly call out his friends as chumps. But that is not how I meant it. I deeply respect my friend's uncanny capacity to bullcrap. Slinging some bull around is what makes him the best salesman in Georgia, it's what has gotten me A's throughout my comparative literature minor without reading a single book, it's what millions of people gather for to vote on every 4 to 8 years to executively run our beloved America. On the other side of the token, however, bullcrapping will never save him when he is whispered to from within to follow his heart, it is crippling when someone earnestly desires to know him, and it is devilishly tempting to turn to when he has the opportunity to reveal small truths that in the short-run may do him a disservice. Bullcrapping qualifies as an incomparable weapon but a weapon that essentially can do as much harm as good. It's like a pistol without a safety or owning a pet bear you think is tamed.

But this post is not about my friend, or about his lady friend, or about how much his lungs actually loath his lifestyle. He is merely a recent example meant to properly demonstrate the misconception about our strengths and weaknesses. You see, I think everyone acquires a unique capacity for some arbitrary skill that can be used for good or for evil rather than this ugly dichotomy of scrutinizingly applicable pros and cons. And that's what I think is truly meant by the quote about a marital match. It's not that you suck at washing dishes but he's an impeccable dish washer so those balance everything out and now you can cash in your winning lottery ticket, buy an overly friendly talking platypus, and live happily ever after. It is that the next job application should be strikingly simple to answer when it asks you what your greatest weakness is. You will never have to reply that you work too hard ever again. All we have to do is think about that quality we are unmistakably more efficient at than all our friends and then flip it upside down to perceive how it is inarguably the coinciding thorn in our sides.

It's easy to become obsessive and immediately write others off whom we feel are taking the wind out of our sails. But perhaps our best matches encourage those special capacities to be brighter as well as help mitigate the damage of their darker side. I have this other friend who works harder than anyone I know. I've actually heard him make the statement, "I'll either work until the job is finished or I'm dead." And I'm grateful for people like him because I usually work hard for a little while and then go sit outside and smoke and think about what'd be like to be a hard worker. This is a magnificent capacity because duties seldom go uncompleted when he's around. A match in his case might look like someone willing to work with him, pull his tools out for him, or spill lemonade on him. But it is not solely that, because capacities can ruin us as well as propel us. A truer idea of a match may look like someone who appears as if they are trying to curtail his project's progress when realistically they are trying to remind him to also spend time on other things he cares about. I think our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness, making it neither a strength or weakness but rather a capacity capable of strengthening us or weakening us. And I think a true match isn't looking to debunk our passions, but simply knows us well enough to consider how much damage we can do to ourselves from overexerting what we were innately created for.

run like hell

Notice:

2011-07-05T13:14:00.002-04:00

I have no outstanding reasons for abstaining from informing the audience I would be working at camp all summer in which kindly requires me to forgo electronics during my stay. So if you're apart of the generous crowd who follows my work irregardless of copious Facebook announcements - know that I still love thinking, still love blogging, and still am planning that book you're so eager to have sit unread on your bookshelves. In the mean time, enjoy this quote. Ignore it and fight it for as long as you like, but learn to enjoy its simplicity once you've recognized you're all wrong. Love.

Laundry Room Sex, Books, and a Siberian Husky named Gandalf

2011-05-02T16:34:00.003-04:00

                The peculiar part of dating someone for a long time is that you begin to sense the raw value of what it means to share your life with somebody else. It creeps up on you, but eventually you see that adventures and stories all amass to a void of shapeless purposelessness unless you have another to delight in those stories with you. And I'm not saying if you're single your life can't be exciting and meaningful. I just mean greatness is relative, much like everything, save the speed of light. And you can't be totally sure how epic the story your telling is until you tell it to someone else. I think that's what I mean.

                When I was in elementary school, I was a blubbery whale of a child and I became a hopeless romantic merely for the fact that earning the affection of another chestless 4th grade classmate was simply not in whatever deck of cards I was squeezing into my undersized pockets. And even though broke an Ab-Track to lose 35 lbs. and the cheer-leading squad in 9th grade included me on the Top 20 list of desirable guys to make out with, my unrelenting aspiration to someday achieve flawless family-man status continued. It's as if I miraculously grew an ovary and inherited all the feminine dispositions that seemingly point to a wedding being the climax of my life. And I never watched the Royal Wedding, because I deemed it emotional pornography, but there was a shameful limb of me who wanted to walk over to my neighbors house and join in on the Princess Slumber Party they were throwing. I figured if I could only find my soul mate and have exotic laundry room sex, unlimited time to read our favorite book excerpts to one another, and own a plushly furred Siberian husky we both excitedly agreed would be named Gandalf - then most certainly I could write another book into the Bible describing all the infallible axioms of married life Paul missed out on because of his absurdly inflated life insurance that discounted him from romantic consideration by the unshaven female body of the old days.

                And when you believe all this and you have the real opportunity to propose to a woman you love and who you've been with for years - a sub-par combined income, a directionless job in some obscure advertising agency, and humidified laundry room shag fests begin to appear like the greatness you were created for. To the butterball Adam Evancho of 4th grade, this fortune would be the equivalent of trotting around the universe with God and Goku upon an invisible chariot pulled by my favorite Pokemon. But I'm not a cream puff anymore, I'm not 9 years old, and Pokemon aren't real (unfortunately).

                This morning I met my friend Molly at Big City Bread to expectantly converse about my recent break-up, her seasoned break-up, and ineffectually scrutinize the meaning of their overarching significances. After we did all that she slouched back into the shady flashes of overcast sunlight squeezing between the property's trees and asked, "So, what do you want?" I glared lazily at the 3-foot stone wall behind her and envisaged the unmarked, empty whiteboard personifying my existence, my purpose, and realized a Siberian husky named Gandalf wasn't enough to make my life sound important anymore. And further, due to my break-up, the settled married life was now notably further down the shore as far as feasibility goes compared to the practicability of achieving my true dreams, my real life's ambition. And I don't mean to say my ex-girlfriend's premier function is to serve as a mediocre woman you settle down with if you want a boring life. Not at all. I mean that if she stayed we me, she would inescapably become a 1st grade English teacher. And there's no shame in that if what comprises the crux of your sentiment is to educate young children. But if she stayed with me she'd resort to that instead of writing for Self Magazine, instead of pursuing macro-scale theater roles, instead of sketching runway fashion outfits, instead of entering into the greatness she was built to pursue. Just like if I stayed with her, I would wind up as a copy-writer in some cubical, concepting humorous taglines to convince the public they should buy bacon-flavored dog food they don't need. I'd resort to that... instead of becoming a writer.

                I think the rosy framed picture of unconditional romance is meant for many unfathomable wonders, but I don't think it should spoil our chances at creating a great life opposed to a good life. For the first time in my life, I am beginning to understand that C.S. Lewis quote on the side of this blog. And I am horrified, because mansions take longer and more effort to construct than a decent little cottage. I'm horrified because publishing a book is leagues more difficult than becoming a family-man. But we can't, I can't, settle on the one and only life time I've been given. I'm scared now and I'll be scared when I'm 50 - the opportunity to cease everything you've ever wanted never magically becomes less daunting. I want to write about the umbrella concept of God's love related to worldly love, about the friend-zone, about toxic, poisonous relationships, about theoretical physics and the speed of God, about the small gap between God and Adam's fingers in Da Vinci's painting, about change, about pain, about risk, about love.

                I sat back and thoroughly meditated on the paramount magnitude of my answer to Molly's question. I recognized if I'm going to grow up, if I'm going to become a man, I might as well become the man I've always dreamt of becoming.

- And it's alright to get caught stealing back what you've lost

*Edit/Disclaimer: I have received multiple inquiries regarding this post. I try to steer away from making these entries too overwhelmingly lengthy because then people notice the size and promptly run away like a lot of words were as frightening as a hungry bear. But sometimes my brevity leaves out important notes for the reader and this is my fault. My ex and I did not part because we held each other from our dreams. Out of respect for her, I'd rather not go into detail publicly about our reasons. The purpose of this post was not meant to blame her or myself for restraining one another from accomplishing our dreams. As I said, she was indubitably my biggest supporter for writing a book. The purpose of this post was to point out that relationships are magnificent. And sometimes, a wonderful relationship tempts us to seek no further for the other wonders in life, because relationships are not the climax of life. I wholly agree romantic love should encourage and boost the participants personal ambitions. By no means is my belief that love inevitably courses you towards mediocrity and lackluster lives. My belief is that there is both great temptation to settle and great opportunity to accomplish what we normally my not without the strength of our loved one backing us.

The Last Drop

2011-04-28T21:36:00.001-04:00

                Before looking up the word Compatible in the dictionary I predicted its definition. How well things work together, I thought. When two or more separate entities who exist within the same system work well together we say they are compatible. I was close. The dictionary defines compatibility as: capable of existing or living together in harmony. In harmony - in peace, in social agreement, in kinship, in unity. If we entertain the cliche notion of cats and dogs we can understand the real idea of incompatibility. They don't work well together. They aren't friends and there is no peace. They chase each other, bark and scratch, are cautious of each others' territory, and strike unprecedentedly. They are not compatible.

               But what does it mean to be compatible on a level higher than cats or of dogs? When we apply it to intelligent creatures, humans, we see we are not so fundamentally ruled by the nature of compatibility. Unlike animals, we aren't forced into only bestial tendencies whenever we are in the presence of others whom we do not favor. No. With intelligent creatures, humans, we must remember to add the human factor, free will. We can see now, through free will, that humans have some degree of dominion over the nature of compliance. When the universe presents a specimen quite unlike and quite opposite of ourselves to us, how we act towards the given specimen is left to our prerogative. The due peace in the name of compliance or the due discord in the name of noncompliance is of our own choosing. We, most commonly, refer to this degree of dominion over natural incompatibility, Acceptance.

                 When we find ourselves presented with specimen whom we discover we are compatible with, if we are decent men, we take advantage of the pleasure elicited by their existence. We seek to enjoy the natural, given harmony and find intriguing the common places of our separate selves. But when we find ourselves presented with specimen whom we discover we are incompatible with, we can choose to be angels or animals. We can either reduce ourselves to a solely feral, animalistic propensity which festers fear, viciousness, territorial suspicion, and rabid hate like our lesser ancestors. Or we can respond by extending acceptance. Through acceptance, we override our animal nature and receive the rest of their remaining good irregardless of the presented incompatible quality which threatens us. Through acceptance, we sacrifice our own defense, humble our own individual safety, and cut ourselves down in order to provide room for the greater purpose of establishing peace rather than resorting to hostility and eradication.

                 For this purpose, acceptance should never be easy or wholly safe because it is a risk. At any given time the other person might overstep their boundary which demands further acceptance, further humility, deeper risk. Because every time we use acceptance to mend incompatibility we lose something of ourselves. If we reuse this peace-seeking method, exhausting its full potential, cutting ourselves down shorter and smaller, less and less, why, there will be nothing left. We will have lost ourselves. Given everything. We will have sacrificed our own desires for harmony, for unity, for compatibility to utter depletion. A sacrifice. That's a word we've all heard before.

                 Through the depletion of all of our dominion to choose to accept another for the sake of peace we end up sacrificing ourselves and letting the other force win. Or have we? Did the opposing, incompatible, force truly win? Did it beat us down and claim its victory? Or did we love so fiercely that we left it alone with nothing to fight, nothing to conquer, no reason to proclaim its pride?

               At the point of total acceptance depletion, though, sacrifice serves as the final act of acceptance. The last drop, if you will. But... it is not required. We can hang on, take the beating, and after long enough we will have forgotten our initial fight. We will come to think of ourselves as what we have reduced ourselves down to. The memory of being full and complete, the memory of peace and harmony before the threat brought by incompatibility will be dissolved, cognitively out of reach, and will dwell in our subconscious and not our hearts. The last fight, the last drop, the last effort of acceptance will be the sacrifice, the undoing of something old and simultaneously be the remaking, the mark of construction for something new and far lovelier.

- My apologies to the reader. These thoughts are taken from a separate journal (a few weeks ago) where my words are for my own understanding rather than the guidance of others. Hopefully though, you may learn from them as I have. Love.

Set Up For You

2011-04-26T00:23:00.001-04:00

"Aren't all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won't accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it? Who still thinks there is some device which will make pain not to be pain. It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.

And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness." - Clive

                      Today, while I was hard at work constructing the back bone of our project in the media flight plan application, I heard a car alarm blast its disruptive waves of warning noise through the serene Monday afternoon. Naturally wondering if it was my own car, I fumbled for my keys and clicked the panic button to see if it would correspondingly cancel the noise or add to the distressful melody. Unfortunately it was the latter and I quickly recognized that while I could activate my panic button I could not at the same distance deactivate it. I walked through two story and through the front door and ended the block's noisy misery. But as I was out there I noticed Gracie sitting alone on the bench. I promptly walked over and before I knew it - there we were - talking for an hour an a half. We discussed many things, particularly my recent stories. But other topics of great importance. We spoke of how it should be or must be impossible for the slow decay and eventual fading of vitality in conversation to inevitably take place in long relationships and ultimately marriage. There are simply too many people who have or do exist who, like me and Gracie, place great steak in deep, meaningful conversation. For it to inevitably die, for the newness to wear off, tarnish, and never come back would make marriage a shabby and disappointing endeavor. I simply believe that cannot be the case. Of course, to some degree, stories are told, attributes are known, and experiences are had - but the capacity to capitalized that which is fresh, to converse about ever changing qualities and thoughts shall not cease fully. If we use our relationship with God as the umbrella concept and standard - this idea simply holds no weight. With our relationship with God on the stand - this idea would suppose eventually our connection and communication with Him would inevitably wear out, become boring, old news, and permanently parch our minds for vivacious thought. If God can always satisfy our minds and satisfy our longings for conversation and deep meaningful connection - we must believe humans are capable of such satisfactory qualities as well. We must dream that someone out there manifests that perfect Image well enough to maritally please us.

                    But... what this entry is about is not of the content of my and Gracie's heart to heart. It is about how that quote up yonder applies. Suspense or a permanently provisional feeling are superb ways to describe pain. It seems the randomness in which we experience much of the time during our more contented days are overlooked, shrugged off as mere coincidence, or plainly ignored. But when we are in pain - when something has been removed and we seek novelty within life. We give (and I am sure inaccurately at times) meaning to all random instances - like my conversation with Gracie. Any other time, any other "normal" day, I would have never thought of why our conversation did indeed end up taking place. I would have never been impressed by the miracle, the crafty plan in which constructed that opportunity. An unidentified car alarm goes off > I hear it > I think it's mine > I activate my panic button > My alarm goes off and I conclude it wasn't mine to begin with > I try and fail to deactivate my alarm > I walk through 2story and outside closer to deactivate it > I notice Gracie > We sit and talk about meaningful, enlightening, wonderful things.

                  Seriously, we overlook the magnificence in those seemingly insignificant opportunities daily when we are "okay". But give yourself one day in pain, isolation, desperation... give yourself the eagerness to discover that which changes and brings about creation within your life, and suddenly the whole world and every occurrence within it seems to have been miraculously set up just for you. But it's not the world that has changed for us. We simply see it differently. We give the world and our role in it meaning - or perhaps we see more clearly the role we have already been given. How enchanting. I am purely ecstatic for the upcoming opportunities similar to this. The opportunities in which I derive their importance not by or from face value but from the intricate design in which formed their very existence for my own growth, my own good, my own comprehension and reciprocating aptitude to love selflessly.

- we shipwreck life fools only to become the ocean's choir

The Inescapable Bridge

2011-04-09T16:12:00.004-04:00

"But then of course I know perfectly well that He can't be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all. That's what was really wrong with all those popular pictures of happy reunions 'on the further shore'; not the simple-minded and very earthly images, but the fact that they make an End of what we can get only as a by product of the true end. Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet H. again only if I learn to love you so much that I don't care whether I meet her or not? Consider, Lord, how it looks to us. What would anyone think of me if I said to the boys, 'No toffee now. But when you've grown up and don't really want toffee you shall have as much of it as you choose'?"

This practicality of faith has become a wall of unlimited height, a precipice of unmeasurable breadth for my cognitive ability to rightly justify. If I may rashly skip to the conclusion of my many assertions, I would surmise; no, this facet of our human condition when correlated to faith cannot be righteously rectified. Now to map out the rocky trail of my feeble logic. By foreknowing the promises of God (e.g. the prosperous plans He shall develop for us and set us on the course toward should we follow Him by making Him the center of our disposition) do we not exclude ourselves from wholesome, untarnished selflessness? It seems the very information and awareness of Heaven may do us as much good as it may equally damn us. I cannot abdicate the perspicacity screaming within me that acknowledges no one is impervious to selfish intent once they ascertain the enlightenment of promised reward. How could we? Once we have learned a sugary, tart piece of candy awaits us once we've accomplished our good deed, how can we be sure our efforts were executed for the desire to achieve nobility or goodness rather than for the love of candy? Are we so pious to exclaim that none of our virtuous intent may have bled onto the page of selfish intent? We may persistently argue, "No, no. I am quite certain I went about my duty with but only charitable reason" but could we say our undertaking would abide identical should we be unknowing of the expected prize? Should we all be the same Christians, through and through, if we had not knowledge of eternal paradise?

I would like to convey a personal instance to hopefully keep my skeptical readers from establishing hostile presuppositions. In what seems short to me, I let just about everything in my life stoop to an unimpressive and apathetic low last semester. Through various trials I recognized my uncertainty about my future, coming-into-adulthood process struck vast fear in me and rather than get serious about it I turned from God and instead became lethargic. After heartbreaking deliberation and incessant swimming in that river in Egypt, I realized I didn't know what I wanted (about anything). Eventually, I was able to admittedly confess that if I didn't know anything about what I wanted it was likely that I didn't know who I myself was. I concluded the closer I became to Christ, the more I could liken myself to Him, and the more I could liken myself to Him the more I could by result learn about myself, and that the more I knew about myself the more I could understand what I wanted. The frustrating gap in this systematic endeavor, is how am I to pursue God, well knowing the result I can expect, without using Him as a bridge or as a means to an end. I can earnestly confess my pursuit to liken myself to His perfection is clean, yet the very knowledge of the splendor I may receive from doing so aggravates my human condition like pollen in the face of an allergic eye.

Lewis, perplexed by the same enigmatic dilemma, resorts to suggesting we may be asking a nonsensical question. "Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that." I cannot discern a fully rational conclusion. Maybe there isn't one or perhaps we are, like Lewis denotes, simply asking the wrong question.

Rather than simply reading this and then continuing to waste time on Facebook, I urge you to let yourself critically think upon this. What do you think? Comment and submit your argument so we can all learn by sharing our wisdom. Thanks.

His Job

2011-04-08T22:31:00.000-04:00

"The time there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hope to hear. On the other hand, 'Knock and it shall be opened.' But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac? And there's also, 'To him that hath shall be given.' After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can't give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity."

Oh C.S. Lewis, how your words always manage to meet my point of moral contact and strike it like a boisterous pan. It's as if these words needn't mental comprehension, literary attentiveness, or to be reread. They are written on my heart the moment I lay eyes on their splendorous wisdom, they automatically feel the truth of something fought for and earned. It is the familiar language of my heart.

It does seem peculiar that when tragedy befalls we never seem to whisper, to lightly stir, or even reasonably voice our initial and most primary concerns to the only One capable of lending aid. No. We strike his door in desperation, screaming in rage, "Where are You?!" But what is most noticeable about our fits and begging isn't the answer to the question we've asked God (where are You?). It is why we've asked. It's as if we had some hint, some former knowledge, some sturdy belief that He had to be readily available and present with a tool box the moment lightning struck. The real question we seem to be asking isn't, "Where are You" its "why aren't You doing your job?" We expect His handy life fixing skills and are indescribably shaken to only meet a vacant abyss, a silent vacuum, a presence of nothing staring back into us blankly yet fiercely. A silence that only becomes more emphatic the longer we wait out our expectancies. And we let this, embarrassingly, cut into us so deep don't we? That closed door, that seems to us to have been slammed, with God on the other side doesn't merely ignite our curiosity, our anger, or our frightfulness. We are far more affected, shaken by a closed door. We immediately, though sometimes barely a microscopic thought, inquire whether God exists at all. A reasonable conclusion to throw into the bucket is that there simply is no one on the other side.

"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope from a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it? ... Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief."

So true. I wish our imaginations attained the necessary aptitude to bypass naivety and be totally capable of predicting what we truly believe in and what would merely break in us if the steaks were high.

Silence Is Silver

2011-02-08T21:19:00.001-05:00

When people admit they are non-confrontational as a substantiate excuse for evading a warranted exchange of truthful statements, as if being non-confrontational was an innate quality equivalent to naturally sporting a ginger pubic mane or having a pleasant singing voice, it makes me want to strangle a bunny. It seems rolling over to avoid stressful encounters has become such a pathetic tradition throughout human history that it has become a culturally justified cop-out that is as excusable as not wanting to play catch because you don't have arms. These days, it is completely admissible for someone to confesses to their friend they cannot engage in honest confrontation with the girl they've become infatuated with because they're not a confrontational person as their rationale. Worse, the friend most likely says something idiotically self-incriminating like, "Dude, I totally understand. I don't know how to sack up either. Let's blame it on our personalities instead of recognizing its a choice so we can escape being pinned as yellow-bellied fudge slingers, together!" But really, non-confrontational nature has become so common, the bystander listening to the pitiful admittance casually sips their big glass of dumb, looks around aimlessly, and never acknowledges their companion just claimed something horrific about their personality. What if we replaced non-confrontational nature with an alternative self-degenerative mannerism? "...Yea dude, I can't talk to her because I'm addicted to eating babies. No! Don't try to change my mind! It's my nature, I can't change it anyways."

I do not mean to submit that it is never wise to keep our mouths shut. We should choose our battles carefully and many battles are better left unfought (that's a made up word). Or as my Dad's mantra follows, "Less is more." I also do not intended to point out that everybody acquires an equal capacity for courage, charisma, or outspokenness. Indeed some of us are shy, some lack confidence, some eat babies and as a result are socially uneasy (especially when infants are present because they're salivating and hungry. Okay, I'm done). But being non-confrontational is not a biological or psychological characteristic impervious to subjugating. It is a choice. A choice necessary of choosing at the right time and the right place.

To address the presumed Christian argument contending that confrontation withholds the potential to hurt feelings and/or stir unwanted pandemonium.

God the Father in confrontation: 1st Kings 21:17-19 - "Then God stepped in and spoke to Elijah, "On your feet; go down and confront Ahab of Samaria, King of Israel ... Say this to him: 'God's word: What's going on here? First murder, then theft? ' Then tell him, 'God's verdict: The very spot where the dogs lapped up Naboth's blood, they'll lap up your blood - that's right, your blood.'"

Jesus in confrontation: John 2:14-17 - "He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength. Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, 'Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father's house into a shopping mall!'"

The Spirit of God in confrontation: Luke 12:11-12 - "When they drag you into their meeting places, or into police courts and before judges, don't worry about defending yourselves - what you'll say or how you'll say it. The words will be right there. The Holy Spirit will give you the right words when the time comes."

If our lives' purpose, our image is to bear comparison to the resemblance of God and the trinity clearly demonstrates confrontation, what excuse shall we present for evading truth? In this aspect, kindness deserves a much closer look. Note that kindness is not limited to speech and should be forgone in the sake of long-term well-being. Say you have a gargantuan pus festering zit mounded on the center of your forehead and I say, "Good day sir/mam. You look truly extravagant. You may, however, find it decidedly profitable to exterminate the fortress of dead white blood cells amassed on the middle of your face." Obviously, I have forgone kindness in my speech but the untactful confrontation did indeed elicit truth. A truth which might convince you to squeeze that bad boy into oblivion and avoid all the unkind silent judgments you could have received from the public throughout the remainder of the day.

It's okay to be afraid to speak up. People have been killed over voicing their thoughts. It's not okay to inaccurately excuse yourself from confrontation because your personality disables you from doing so. That's a lie. My biggest drive here though, is not directed at you. It's relatively simple to start believing in the power of your convictions and begin asserting them. My main point is to not take that as an answer for the people whom you befriend. Don't let them admit it is their personality's fault and pass that big glass of dumb to you and take a considerable gulp from it too, then you're just as weak. After smacking them, begin to encourage them and enlighten them upon how being confrontational provides an opportunity to have faith and a chance to ask the Spirit of God to lend discernment and wise speech. Silence is Silver, but Truth is Golden.

Partial Justice

2011-01-25T21:54:00.002-05:00

This is the film my roommate Mark Willard and his/our friend Matt Stapp wrote and shot for the University Film Festival.

Mark and I have amassed probably months of hours throughout our college years sitting on a variety of porches deep in conversation over an astounding array of subjects. One recent topic that has arisen frequently is the growing fear of growing up. For both of us, I think, a dangerously frightening future would be considered landing in a career that made absolutely zero use of our talents. He prefers a multifarious spectrum of positions correlating to film making and I fancy any position that would pay me to write. For the common extrovert, its analogical equivalent would be that of playing ultimate frisbee with an athletic group of attractive strangers. Unfortunately, beings the modern arts, these class-fields are magnificently competitive which render their conceivability seemingly unattainable. Luckily, that doesn't stop us. So long as he is able to watch films and I am able to read books and walk away legitimately pondering, "Hrmm.. I can do better than that" our spark of hope shall remain inextinguishable.

My devotion today reminded me, "Do not look for God to come in any particular way, but look for Him." It later suggested, "Keep your life so constant in its contract with God that His surprising power may break out on the right and or on the left. Always be in a state of expectancy, and see that you leave room for God to come in as He likes."

I won't lie, no matter how powerful my words seem or how confident I appear on my exterior, my inner competence upon entering adulthood is as weak as a puppy's bladder when presented with arriving party guests. But something tells me that should I leave room for His power, I'll be alright. I know that sounds logically pathetic. But really, besides becoming the best man I can be, what more can I do then let God do the rest? I have always equated finding a job much to finding a spouse. Typically, we don't survey relationships with a clipboard and embark on an overwhelming expedition to locate and marry the right person. We just live out our days learning the best we can and somehow paths cross at the right time. Well, that's what helps me sleep at night at least. Speaking of sleep... actually I'm not going to bed I just have nothing more to say.

What We Do

2011-01-23T19:37:00.003-05:00

Should I author a book stuffed full of comedic anecdotes tied to offbeat analogies in order to reveal paramount insights upon what we do and why we do them, the public should know forgoing that introspectively penetrating clips such as this were the stimulus for my lethargic brain cells.

"Stop talking about love. Every asshole in the world says he loves somebody. It means nothing. ... What you feel only matters to you. It's what you do to the people you say you love, that's what matters. It's the only thing that counts." - (Stephen - the father of Zach Braff's girlfriend he cheated on)

About a month ago my Dad and I were out to eat succeeding an ungodly stressful day of Christmas shopping. In the midst of my sasquatch-sized bite of ciabatta bread, Dad carefully sets down his Samuel Adams and asks if I think I love my girlfriend as casually as if asking what my favorite color were. Taken aback by the depth of the question, I took a temporary moment to gag on the olive oil oozing down my wind pipe and avert my eyes to prepare for my incoherent mini-speech.

I told him that love is not always a good feeling, but it is always a good action. I told him that should I earnestly subscribe to the belief that love is actually manifested through physical control rather than involuntary emotion (the byproduct), then it requires the participate to lend a lofty amount of focus towards mediating upon the actions in which best demonstrate love in particular scenarios. I said that I partitioned a considerable chunk of mental exertion towards choosing to love her when it was not easy to do so and less time probing my deceitful heart for a romance status.

Isn't it peculiar that when most of us are inquired with, "do you love him/her?" our immediate answer route follows the path to what our fleeting feelings currently suggest rather than the record of junctures we have consciously chose to love them? I am not proposing we dedicate no reverence to our feelings. They indeed posses an indicative value much hastier to decipher than a historic list of action and inaction. But a great danger lies in referencing feelings to declare status. Once we begin consulting feelings to originate arguments for why we love someone, what is to stop us from using them to decide how we love them?

What we do does accurately portray what we want. And we can either want to love someone or not, it's up to our minds not our feelings. This involves us taking the time to consider whether our actions will correctly mimic the desire of our hearts. And the tricky part is not solely demonstrating love in the way we understand it but utilizing a language in which the reciprocate understands it. Or else we are like the high school dweeb who wrote the captain of the cheerleading squad a poem depicting his eternal love. If she thinks poetry is lame and for turd burglars, then the dweeb who wrote the letter only succeeded in becoming condescending lunch table gossip. My suggestion: Don't back the argument of your love with the giddiness or disappointment residing in your chest or accept that as a reasonable response from another. I know it seems simple, but take a second to consider if what you're about to do or say is loving them or not. Then when people ask you whether you love said him or her, you know that you do according to what you've chosen or know that you don't according to what you've wrongfully chosen.

The Bad Son and the Bad Son

2010-12-26T22:33:00.002-05:00

Nearly a year ago, I spent the night at a buddy's place in downtown Atlanta. For those of you who aren't familiar with southeastern Atlanta, Mooreland is the ghettopolis the evening news casts stories about discovering wooden shanks as homicide tools and tweezers as the surgical device utilized in back alley abortions. I too, fell victim to the criminal wrath lurking within the capital metropolis of the south. My innocent silver Ford's passenger window was shattered and my precious iPod was kidnapped from me. I have spent many months internally writhing from the torturous anguish induced by reticence. From the empty vibrations lulling noiselessness around my truck's cabin to the erratic thumping of my heart to serve as my only rhythmic tool in the weight room, I have simply consigned to oblivion the true momentousness provided by a decent tune. Alas, the new iPhone4 I received for Christmas has finally rescued me from that mute void and vanquished the treachery of motionless airwaves forever! Huzzah!! With that said, this entry is indubitably devoted to the magic of music and its remarkable capacity to invigorate my creativity like vinegar in a 4th grade science fair volcano.

During the jolly Christmas Eve church service my family and I attended the other night, the pastor pulled the ol' Bible Remix stuff aged Christians employ to appear hip and modern and to better reach the mangled minds of the American youth. Hell, it must worked on me, because I'm writing about it. Anyway, he told the Parable of the Prodigal Son (found in Luke) but instead of the younger son squandering his fortune on a new sandal rack and cedar staff collection, he wastes it on modern things like fraudulent investments, STD infested street trash, and materials compulsory for rollin fatties and chiefin a bleezy. In closing, the pastor revealed the parable's ending in which the older "good" son complains about how his loose-living younger brother could be extended forgiveness so easily to which the father remarks, "But it was appropriate to celebrate and be glad, for this, your brother, was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found."

Now I have heard this parable before a good 600 times in Sunday school, but what crushed me like a parachuteless skydiving shark was what the pastor said next. He carefully examined the congregation in preparation for the spiritual punchline. He crouched over the podium and with one fuzzy eyebrow raised croaked, "...and you know, it's usually our most valuable church members who've been here the longest who realize they are the older brother." He went on to make known the danger of scorning others who've ventured offtrack in various ways but I wasn't paying attention anymore. I was fiddling with my new scarf and reminiscing about this precarious little riddle jotted onside a bathroom stall I noticed whilst draining the sea-monster in the SLC a few weeks ago which read:

The statement below this is True.
The statement above this is False.

I wasn't specifically focused on the enigmatic scribbling itself. I was rather attempting to discover a relevant correlation between the mystifying bathroom cryptogram and a famous analogy from a Holy book... and by golly, I found one. Which is this: they both are founded upon a nonsensical pattern. Ever since the pastor mentioned that the unruly son became righteous through redemption and that the reserved son became hateful by the disillusionment of pride, my mind started dizzying itself. I couldn't understand who the bad son actually was. If the bad becomes good and the good becomes bad, than how am I supposed to avoid becoming a wanton man-whore and an uppity church prick simultaneously? I can either cash in all my investments and host the Sinners' Grand Ball, wind up plucking crystallized used gum from beneath high school football bleachers, and return to the source with tears in my eyes, begging for mercy. Or I can scavenge for a photograph depicting a fun time, piss on it, work diligently to make something of myself, and due to invisible progression and ignorant bliss, unknowingly become a unsatisfactory specimen. Either way, I am inescapably the bad son.

The parable's moral is not meant to provoke the inquiry upon how to evade becoming the bad son in either scenario but rather to exemplify the grace our Father unconditionally administers. But I think if we can take more from the story than what it intrinsically provides, then it is our prerogative. Which is this: Relationships are give and take. When I think of a believer, I don't think of a big list of Christian-Things-To-Do or signing a contract. When I think of God Almighty, I don't think of Santa Clause or a magic slot machine. When I think of Christ and when I think of Christians (little Christs), I think of Jesus and His disciples. And do you know what they were? Friends. Friendship is a type of relationship. We can only be the bad son long enough until we ruin what God has privileged us. And at the expensive of pride, He gives it all back. And we can only be the "good" bad son long enough until we don't even realize we've become bad and He must take away what we thought we earned and became our own. Know that we're all the bad son who has either gone too far or not far enough and that trying to figure out how to avoid either cannot be accomplished through a math equation, rocking in a rocking chair, or asking someone smarter. Instead, know that you always have the capacity to become the good son and that the real challenge is not maintaining complacency in being too hungry or being to full but in trying to find peace in both. It is in trusting the nonsensical pattern we call a relationship with a God. Usually two wrongs don't make a right, but I think in the case of spirituality, if you can manage to resemble the bad son and the bad son simultaneously... what you end up resembling best is the Good Son.

there's a distance in your eyes only mine can see

Lords Of Creation

2010-12-12T21:41:00.000-05:00

In response to Frederick Turner's assertion made within "Cultivating the American Garden" I wrote this as my final term paper for my Comparative Literature Ecocriticism class.

The assertion: "We must take responsibility for nature. That ecological modesty which asserts that we are only one species among many, with no special rights, we may now see as the abdication of a trust. We are, whether we like it or not, the lords of creation; true humility consists not in pretending that we aren't, but in living up to the trust that it implies by service to the greater glory and beauty of the world we have been given to look after. It is a bad shepherd who, on democratic principles, deserts his sheep."

My response:

Whenever I consider humans beings not enacting the alleged role of Lords of Creation, though preposterously imaginative, I simply cannot break the staggering and comical urge to retrospectively cherry pick the plot of Franklin Schaffner’s science fiction film “Planet of the Apes” for answers eluding to why such a perspicacity is indeed false. I automatically question rhetorically, “Why, if not humans resume the daunting role of commanding the world, which daring species would step up to spearhead the task?” If not humans with their eviction of weapons of mass destruction fabrications, triangulating Walmart stratagems, and Justin Bieber infatuations then it would be apes with their banana thrones, rope swings, and Speak and Spell devices designed to enhance the betterment of relying on formal speech patterns rather than chest wallops and suggestive grunts. And if apes did not exist or step up then dolphins would need to commence the reconstruction of Atlantis, master the whole echolocation thing, enslave sharks, and then eventually be incredibly stammered when a particularly intelligent shark is elected president and proposes an Underwater Health Care bill half the dolphin community profoundly opposes. No but seriously, what I mean to say is that I agree with Frederick Turner, we as human beings cannot pretend we are something that we are not. The human race is indeed the apex of multifaceted species within creation. With such abundant mental resources, humans conceivably are probably best suited to assume leadership and dominion over the Earth. What I do not find plausible is the allegation that contends assuming leadership fundamentally divorces the leader from the group as a whole and can be envisioned as a sovereign entity. As Aristotle puts it, “A whole is greater than the summation of its parts.” The scenarios in which we see a leader fail to recognize that they are as equally significant as their subordinating parts is where we also see tyranny, greed, dictatorship, and malice. Barrack Obama is our president, but he is still an American. Jesus founded the Christian movement, but he was still a believer. A father is typically the head of a household, but he is still a part of the family. Just as our brain is the motor responsible for everything we think, say, and do; our subordinating vital organs are inanimate and useless after decapitation.

Out of all the various cultures that have originated from the beginning of human history, I think it would be reasonable to argue the Native American culture represents the archetype of belief structures that conceptualizes nature and anthropology as a single unity. With that said, I believe it is fair to assume Silko’s (considering her full-blooded Native American heritage) disposition regarding Turner’s dualistic approach upon human beings being independent from nature would be in fathomless discordance. As I am leaning back dangerously on the two hind prongs of my plastic porch chair, triple layered by multiple zero-degree-resistant jackets and wool socks, carefully examining the chaotic system of snowfall as unprecedented flurries wet my screen and meticulously squeeze through the cracks between my backlit keyboard, I ponder. I ponder upon the ostensibly boundless correlation between two excerpts from Silko’s essay Landscape, History, and Pueblo Imagination, “Survival in any landscapes comes down to making the best use of all available resources” and “only through interdependence could humans survive.” Survival is such a relative term. A tree’s survival could be identified by the reaching of its branches into sun basking positions and away from shaded regions that inhibit the chloroform creation rate compulsory for autotrophic growth. A bird’s survival could be distinguished by the gathering of twigs and switches necessary to assemble an appropriate nest for laying eggs. A bear’s survival could be recognized through its perilous expedition within a state park to locate a suitable den for upcoming hibernation. Despite survival’s conditional nature, it is apparent that interdependence exemplifies the unifying quality between each species’ respective scenarios. Trees’ survival are contingent upon the nutrients radiated by the sun’s ultraviolet rays, the construction of birds’ nests require the materials only provided by the plant life within their environment, and the bear’s survival relies on the motion of tectonic plates that haphazardly form convenient sleeping quarters within the mountains. As I remain here combating the withering cold, I am enlightened by the correspondence between the picture of my own survival and the codependence mandatory to sustain it. An innocent sheep endured a full body haircut in order to weave my socks together. Aluminum was mined and tempered into the frame of my computer. Even the reason I write accords to the provision of my survival. I write to produce a decent paper, to achieve an outstanding grade, to earn a degree that supposedly accredits my worth to future employers, to acquire a lucrative career, to bolster my income, and ultimately to attain enough money to insure a comfortable and satisfactory survival. The trust Turner mentions would result in a much greater good should it be placed within the whole of creation rather than an implied part.

The last lines of Daniel Quinn’s autobiography, Providence, precisely sums up his feelings concerning Turner’s contention, “No species can set itself apart from all the rest or make itself ruler over all the rest. … We’ve got to find our way back into the community. We’ve got to stop living like outlaws. When we begin to do that – when we begin to acknowledge that the world needs us and that we belong to it, not it to us – I think our feelings of desperate loneliness and neediness will begin to evaporate, all by themselves.” We are not predominating scientists within a generously supplied laboratory, free to conduct whichever disturbing experiments we choose. We are the laboratory. As Quinn has come to believe, the only existing external force is the prerogative of the universe. The universe does not favor righteousness over evil or evil over justice. No. The universe only seeks balance, balance that gives life or takes life away according to the nature of the imbalance. It is because we selfishly regard ourselves as a species with “special rights” that is to blame for the global crimes submitted by humans throughout history. I imagine if Quinn sat down with Turner over a cup of coffee, he would tell him to be careful what he wished for. He would tell him that if we aspire to achieve independence and lordship over creation then, knowing the adamancy of the human race, we would eventually attain it. And after we have become desensitized to the glory of independence we would consequently experience the loneliness of isolation. He would tell him that all the imbalances the human race has brought into existence, the disassociated, awkward steps necessary to grasp autonomy, would not go unnoticed. He would slowly lean over the table and with a sinister confidence, whisper that the universe seeks balance and despite how fervidly we run from the encroaching footsteps of neutralization, the universe will catch up.

“A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these ‘resources,’ but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state. In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.” You know what peculiar word strikes me into total bewilderment in this excerpt from Aldo Leopold’s chapter “The Land Ethic”? Respect. As far as Americans go, the phrase “respect for an ecosystem” might as well be in the back of the gutterspeak dictionary written in invisible ink. Sure, we have bordered state parks we conserve and allow to exist as memorabilia for the prehistoric days before human beings defiled the planet, but everything beyond those quarantined perimeters of sacred undisturbed nature we treat like hell. I know this is going to be an offbeat analogy, but it is all I can manage to properly convey the magnitude of disrespect between our culture and the environment. I picture the sun existing as this self-aware, omnipotent being who proposes this unfair yet inescapable binding contract with the human race. In all his might the conceited sphere of combusting gases and plasma arises and addresses all the leaders of the world at a United Nations meeting. The Sun points with his fiery arm to a planet-sized declaration and in his booming voice announces, “I grow weary of restraining my solar intensity. I have concluded that because I am the all-powerful star that sustains life within the proximity of light years and that you are merely inferior fleshlings, I am entitled to burn as brilliantly as I see fit. But worry not. I have designed an ingenious compromise that should silence the expected whining groans about your petty survival. I have allocated a few hundred shaded regions, dispersed among your countries, which should be sufficient for the continuance of your puny race. But beware! Should you wander beyond the shaded safe-zones I have diligently sweated over to allot, you will be incinerated on the spot. Beyond the regions I have assigned you to live, I will unrestrictedly blaze solar beams upon this planet severe enough to anti-materialize any and all intruders. Have a pleasant evening, we start tomorrow.” By assuming lordship over creation, we have only succeeded in creating the illusion of respect. Respect is not arranging crooked contracts that target specific spots in order benefit ourselves. The whole concept of respect is that it must be founded upon something mutually beneficial to both parties. Our soil, our water, and our animals already provide so much for us. Leopold would concur that true respect, the kind that represents good land ethic, begins with asking not what an ecosystem can do for us, but what we can do for it.

Humans do possess the qualifying attributes necessary for leadership over our planet, right up to the point until we begin to envision ourselves as a separation from the whole. If we allow ourselves to enter into the mentality of lordship and designate ourselves as a “shepherd”, there is no doubt we shall be a forgetful one. Because we are sheep, we cannot become the shepherd anymore than our wooly counterparts. We are not angelic singers whom bashfully omit compliments for the sake of modesty. We are tragic singers with voices like a frog’s croak. But if you settle down and listen quietly to the midnight brook, you’ll notice that when we sing together, we make a hell of a choir.

Friends - Part 4

2010-11-25T17:12:00.000-05:00

This is Keith (aka French Keith or Keithy France). Keith is the only person who can accurately articulate the meaning behind sentences like this: "Despite Frost Nova and the debuff I contract from Frost Barrier, my 4-piece PvP set bonus allows me to generate 15 Runic Power over the next 5 seconds whenever a movement impairing effect is applied. This provides me with extra Death Coils that contribute to the upkeep and consistency of my DPS whenever I am CCed." While working with Apple Computer, Keith has amassed multiple hourly income raises, position promotions, and in-store awards. But most rewarding of all, he has earned considerable respect from employers and employees alike for both his remarkable salesmanship and his earnest and humorously sociable attitude. You see, there are two distinct parts of Keith French. There is the Keith who tricks you into sipping from a large glass of apple juice which is really a large glass of straight whiskey. The Keith whose methods to lose weight involve smoking and taking the stairs more to increase his heart rate. The Keith who mischievously parties with 29-year-old Sunday school teachers. But there is another Keith, one only a select few of us are exceedingly fortunate to be acquainted with. On the inside, behind his rough-around-the-edges demeanor and rugged vocabulary, there is an unblemished kindness and a devoted respect for others so flawless, it mimics the characteristics of Jesus. Keith is not successful at Apple for his manipulative wit, hypnotic good looks, or innate sales talent. He is successful because that sales-floor provides him the unmatched opportunity to let his inner grandeur radiate uninhibitedly. I am the only person on the planet who can properly decipher when in fact Keith is intoxicated (the pillowy cheeks and dull cow eyes give it away like Christmas lights). Along with that, Keith becomes especially irate when he is accused of drunkenness when he is actually sober. Keith eats faster than a starving lion who recently discovered a wounded antelope. Keith takes a subtle pride when complemented upon his knack at selecting mood-fitting songs. I respect Keith more than he will ever comprehend. He is a genuine man in my eyes; well-versed in current affairs, theology, philosophy, economics, psychology, history, anthropology, sociology, and relationships. When I think of Keith, I think of the icy atmosphere resting gently outside Wall Crawlers Rock Climbing Gym in Atlanta, the peace shattering rattling from the nearby Marta train, clouds of peach flavored smoke emitted from two burning hot pipe cherries, and the companionship of someone responsible for the bulk of the best memories of my life.

Providence

2010-11-15T22:13:00.002-05:00

I blow my nose inordinately loud. Honestly, it’s like unscrewing a magic mason jar that has captured a parade of sick elephants all sneezing in unison that unleashes a boisterous thunder upon everything within a twenty yard proximity of my schnoz. I’m sure this seems rather comical now, but when I was a youngster the city evacuation alarm planted within my face was the pinnacle of my embarrassment. I remember dripping snot all over my history tests in elementary school. I was too horrified to attempt to subtly walk to the front of the classroom, swiftly swipe a tissue, and virtually be the one to blame for two dozen students getting #28 wrong on their tests because that’s the question I decided I would disrupt with my comically loud nose-blow. And I did not dare venture into the hall to power out my mucus. That’s even worse than asking the teacher to use the restroom and not returning for twenty minutes. Glancing eyes and silent buzz about the chocolate baby you just birthed into an innocent toilet ridiculed the walk back to your plastic blue chair of abashment. Fortunately, this all changed in 8^th grade thanks to Josh. Josh was quite a butterball and a bit of a dork but he inadvertently changed my life one memorable day during a math test. Next to me I hear him sniffling and I occasionally catch him smearing nose slime on his wrists until eventually he lays down his pencil and proceeds towards the front of the class. “NO JOSH,” I screeched inside of my head “your entire reputation will to be ruined for the remainder of your obese life!” But then, he did it. He blew. He blew his nose proudly like a trumpet during the National Anthem before the World Series. The clamorous blast echoed off the cinderblock walls with a decibel level only comparable to God’s voice. And that’s when I realized, not a single one of my peers glanced up from their tests. None of them were disrupted, none of them giggled, none of them remarked anything discrediting about Josh behind his back after class. No one cared.

It was in 8^th grade that day when, like Quinn’s list of positive characteristics about himself, I realized the requirement to achieve perfection in this life is a nasty, misleading illusion. I know I was young and I know the medium I discovered this truth was through some random Joe ringing his snout in front of a diligently engrossed math class but forever was my psyche scarred. It has been fortunately injected with the perspicacity that states everyone’s favorite subject is himself or herself. Nobody is flashing up from the life they’re working so painstakingly upon to inquire the grounds of someone else’s inadequacies. They simply do not care. They don’t care because they blow their own nose inordinately loud too, because they also poop, because they hide cellulite, because they cover magnificently sized zits with concealer, because they secretly struggle with homosexuality, or because they openly loath their mother. We find company because of our human condition. It is like being in Georgia but crossing paths with a fellow Ohio State football fan. It automatically creates a ground of commonness. And, if you believe in it, the one guy who allegedly was perfect, Jesus, half the world abhors. “At last I understood the obvious truth. No one wanted me to be perfect. Everyone wanted me to be like them – and I was. I was one of them. At the age of thirty-seven, I had at last joined the human race. I no longer had to guard against spontaneity. People wanted me to be spontaneous. Nobody cared if I made mistakes. Nobody was watching to see if I made mistakes. I was free of all that.” (Providence pgs. 112-113)

Humorously written, Quinn sarcastically elucidates the thought process of an unenlightened journalist who believed Ishmael could not contain novel concepts because all original theories had already been previously discovered. “And I thought, wow, I wonder when that happened? When was the very last new idea produced? Was it 1647, or 1763, or what? And how did they know it was the last one? Did all the thinkers of the world gather round and say, ‘Golly, there it is, the very last new idea in existence. From this point onward, all we can do is hash over the old ones.’” (Providence pg. 10) And you know, he is spot on. Copping out, pronouncing no untrodden viewpoints could possibly be unearthed is the anthem of the uncreative man. That’s why I do not think it is wildly unacceptable to imagine that teleportation, stealth camouflage, defying gravity, or curing cancer will, in the distant future, be discovered. If I could convince Doc Brown to lend me his DeLorean DMC-12, I would travel back 300 years ago. If I met some local townsmen and elaborated upon a miniature touch-screen device that transmitted a high frequency radio wave to a massive metal structure orbiting the earth which channeled that same invisible signal back down to my acquaintance’s handheld device which allowed me to physically speak with them I suspect they would surmise I was a warlock and burn me at the stake for practicing witchcraft. But thanks to a handful of inventive minds, cell phones do exist. To excuse the origination of radical ideas is to excuse hope.

I full heartedly concur with Quinn’s outlook on the universe shaping individuals so distinctively that we all acquire a unique magic compulsory to originate virgin ideas. “Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself – and thus make yourself indispensable.” (Providence pg. 11 – quote by Andre Gide) Throughout the ages, people have encountered more or less similar experiences that liken them to one another. There have been individuals who have aspired to become doctors who never made it through medical school, those who have been divorced and found themselves more joyful thereafter, those who have struggled with chronic illnesses but persisted to achieve good health, and so on with every countable ordeal under the sun. What makes one man different from the man next to him who endured a similar experience to the first is 1.) How he experienced what he did and 2.) What other experiences comprise his life. For instance, every man can recall the exact moment his virgin eyes beheld their first pair of breasts. My friend Jesse and I used to wake up around 5 a.m. in elementary school to speed-walk the perimeter of the neighborhood to burn off our insecurities. One morning we spotted a woman unveiling her nighttime garments through a vacant window and my 10-year-old eyes feasted upon the sight of its first fleshy orbs. Maybe, just maybe, there was once an adolescent within history who peered upon his first pair of breasts from across the street. But was it during the hours even God isn’t awake? Was he out jogging because he refused to be called “cream puff” anymore? Did he have to wake up his lazy friend Jesse by throwing acorns at his window? Did he live in Spring Forest in Lawrenceville, Georgia? My guess is, probably not. Probably, I am the only person to have ever existed besides Jesse to encounter my first couplet of dairy pillows in such a way. But for the sake of argument and to prove my second point, let’s hypothetically imagine there is or once was another boy who experienced what I did, how I did, verbatim. I once rode a midnight express train from Venice, Italy to Weimar, Germany. I am sure countless others have trekked the same 12-hour expedition. But was his sleeping cabin occupied with four additional senior aged, Middle Eastern men? Did those four men all have their shoes and socks off to discharge the most powerful foot stench known to man? Did he finish a book called Eldest because the rank funk prohibited him from slumber? Did the onboard authorities check his passport six times through the night to affirm he was legally traveling to Germany? Yet again, probably not. Now we have an individual who not only experienced his first peepshow at 10-years-old but an individual who experienced his first peepshow at 10-years-old who also took a train from Italy to Germany with four Indian men who contaminated his sleeping quarters with exposed feet. Do you see where I am going with this? These are only two memories from a rolodex of millions that comprise my life and are held accountable for who I am. The magic that rests like a sleeping dragon within us, the magic capable of concocting totally virgin ideas, takes refuge in our minds because we are different, because none of us meander through life in the absolute same way. No one else can produce what I can produce because the universe shaped me differently than everyone else. “No one on Earth could have written that book but me, and that’s what Gide meant by making one’s self indispensable.” (Providence pg. 12) That’s why applications requesting us to submit significant experiences that have helped define us as a person is complete ludicrous. There does not exist three or four, or even a hundred, reasons responsible for sculpting us into who we are. Our entire lives are to blame. “In responding to readers’ letter, I soon realized that the question, ‘Where does this book come from?’ doesn’t have just one answer. It has dozens, because Ishmael came from every part of my life.” (Providence pg. 13) As I have learned, there is one definite thing I can do better than anyone else on Earth: being Adam Christopher Evancho. And that is magical.
[Note: I have attached a rather humorous college application question and response that, if you find the time, can enjoy too.]

Lastly, I want to touch upon the theme of Providence, which shares the same fundamental structure Ishmael is written with. “There simply is no such thing as nature – in the sense of a realm of being from which humans can distinguish themselves. It just doesn’t exist. … The world that we have is the world that has humans in it, just as the world that we have is the world that has air and water and insects and birds and reptiles in it. … Every aspect of the world was changed by our appearance in it three million years ago, just as every aspect of the world was changed by the appearance of plant life three billion years ago.” (Providence pgs. 53 and 54) We are apart of this world, not power hungry Martians who invaded a couple thousand years ago hell-bent on inoculating cows with steroids and depleting the world of its natural resources. I will not say many of the results of human nature are not repulsive, but those who feel overly contemptible promptly because of what their humanness reaped at times disgusts me. Is there nature and then human nature that affects it? Though our means of survival are drastically contrasted, is it not my nature to eat a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich when I feel hungry just as much as it is a grizzly bear’s nature to pluck a salmon from a stream? “No, it’s nonsense to try to find two worlds here that can be separated into human and nonhuman. Biological and philosophical nonsense.” (Providence pg. 54) This singular jungle, this lack of a barrier between the world and us is why, and not to discredit the various well-reasoned opposing arguments, I do not find drilling for oil in Alaska so outrageously corrupt. As humans whom belong to the world, we extract from it that in which we need because it is our nature to do so. As unfortunate as it may seem, it is our nature to raze sectors of our serene, icebound, northern state to collect a resource, which for the time being, is vital to our survival. This happens ubiquitously within nature but because we are human, the smarter species, we do not offer ourselves the same excuse we unthinkingly hand out to various other species whose respective natures compel them to desolate the world just like ours do. Hordes of kudzu strangle and suffocate acres of nearby plant life, viruses utilize other living organisms cells’ DNA and RNA as hosts to produce copies of themselves which leaves lethal implications for the host, trillions of locusts strip multiple countries’ entire stock of crops leaving millions starving, and wolves desecrate entire populations of forest creatures to simply satisfy their hunger. We even biologically classify ourselves as animals (Class: Mammalia/Order: Primate/Family: Hominidae/Genus: Homo/Species: Homo Sapiens) yet full heartedly refuse to accept the same condolences for our destructive human nature we so senselessly allow our fellow animals to receive. Again, I’m not here to exclaim that our human nature does not elicit negative repercussions upon the environment but I am here to say we should not always feel ashamed for it. “We’re not strangers in a strange land here. … We’re not aliens, not outsiders. We were born in the sea, three billion years ago. The deer and the beetle are our kin.” (Providence pg. 174)

I admire how Daniel Quinn commenced his autobiography with the citing of a dream. Stories always seem so much more adventurous and suspenseful when they seem to fulfill some whimsical prophecy. And I like how it took him twelve years to write Ishmael. The longevity of the process speaks of something true, something earned, something that is only accomplishable through an assortment of moral dilemmas and the wearing of old age. I have this comparative literature professor who radiates that same sort of wise allure. Though she is grey haired and hobbles to class on a cane, her mind alone sits head and shoulders above the multitude of brilliant minds comprising the class. Not in a proud, self consumed manner, of course. But I catch her smiling a whole lot when she listens to her students speak. I don’t think it’s because she feels our opinions reek with inferiority, I think it’s because it is enjoyable to see youths discuss new ideas and absorb new feelings for the first time. Even if it does include painful experiences, the learning process imperative to becoming brimful with wisdom is a process we eventually are grateful for, and she knows that because she remembers it. Just like we laugh when we listen to a child grumble and whine in the backseat of a car because he was elected to star as the reputation debasing elf in the upcoming Christmas play. We don’t laugh to poke fun, we laugh because we recognize its harmlessness and its usefulness for crafting a well-rounded human being. Quinn’s Providence, like my comparative literature professor’s autobiography should she ever write one, tells the story of that learning process for a now withered old man. It tells the story of discovering and wielding the magic only accessible to him, the same magic burning turbulently not so deep inside all of us.

Friends - Part 3

2010-11-01T16:29:00.001-04:00

This is Alex. Before I continue any further I must preface that the following statements contain no animosity or condescension that might give one reason to believe Alex is anything but a man among boys. Alex once made the unbecoming comparison of progressing physically with girls to the allegedly lascivious feeling of a warm apple pie during family time at church camp... he has yet to live it down. I once warned Alex to cease throwing DVD cases in my basement or else I would discharge a highly paced universal remote toward his pretty blue eyes. His disobedience rendered him in teary shambles. Alex is fiercely intelligent. Besides his somewhat easily sparked Hulk temper, this is a man you do not want to argue with. His logic, as far as I am concerned, is unmatched. While at home, Alex's right hand could be considered a legitimate sanitation threat as it is usually beneath his boxers carefully cupping his alarmingly distinguishable flesh balloons. Alex coined the virulently contagious phrase, "Alex hat" (pronounced obnoxiously: al-ek h-ahhh-t). The financially unfortunate minority boy Alex used to spend time with during the week for the Wesley Church Foundation once stole $60 from my wallet, hid it in the sole of his right shoe, and fibbed about there whereabouts of my missing cash. Alex is inarguable THE friend you contact when you're looking to have an adventurous night. Alex acquires pretty much every characteristic of a leader (i.e. commanding presence, positive, absurdly motivational, and an extraordinarily good flirt with the female body).

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This is Jesse. Jesse is my longest known friend - 18 magical years (I'm probably going to list a lot). Jesse and I used to wake up at 5 am in elementary school to run the neighborhood so we could get skinny. We ended up bringing soda, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and walking at a sluggish pace no where near fast enough to actually burn calories. Many times he never woke up and I found myself alone at 5:05 with a cold red stop sign as my only company and had to throw rocks at his window to wake him (and coincidentally his slumbering parents and crying baby sister) up. We also saw our first pair or real dirty-pillows one of those mornings through the window of a girl dressing herself. One time Jess had to explain to his dad the reason I was bawling in his garage was because my Pokemon game was deleted. Jesse and I created a game called "I like the Pain" in which we stood stationary while the other threw a frisbee at us from close proximity. No matter what tender, vulnerable extremity was bludgeoned by the burly plastic disc (fingers, ankle, neck, funny bones), you had to endure the blunt agony and against your human nature shout "I LIKE THE PAIN!!! AHHHH." Jesse once fell off a bar stool at my house from excessively laughing about mispronouncing Cracker Barrel as "Cracker Bell". Jesse has always been somewhat of a mentor to me. Though we are peers, I learned from an extremely early age the simple truths spoken by Jesse are usually right. I slapped his ex-girlfriend after she deliberately crushed my barefoot and launched her keys at my face. Jesse was the recipient of sheer and utter racism for denoting he was a Native American when we were asked by a man at Halloween to separate onto two sides on the porch. The left was for cowboys and the right for Indians. Jesse received no candy and I did (I later had mine stolen by some mangy teenagers who were then shot at by a crazy lady with a BB gun). Jesse and I were once hammered on the 4th of July and I got unreservedly angry at him for throwing grass on me in his front lawn at 4 in the morning. Jesse is known to eat all of your Tyson Buffalo Chicken Strips if he finds them, so hide them or lie to him. Jesse doesn't whine. Jesse is a master of one of the downright most difficult attributes to retain consistently. Patience. I used to drop to one knee and sucker punch him in the testes more often than I should. Jesse used to try to catch bumblebees with his bare hands. I once demanded Jesse to give me his new tie-die sand frog or (*point to the door*) leave. No matter how long Jesse and I do not communicate or see one another, we can always pick up where we left off because he knows I am his best friend and I know he is mine.

Friends - Part 2

2010-10-28T13:32:00.003-04:00

This is Landon. If you have ever caught How I Met Your Mother on CBS, Landon may remind you of Niel Patrick Harris's character Barney Stinson. Complete with nimble jocularity, boyishly handsome good looks, and a steel intellect - Landon would be easily elected to fulfill as my wing-man at a party. Landon has an unhealthy (and I suspect he may even be a little gay for him) fetish with Ohio State's football coach Jim Tressel and his sweater vests. Landon plays Jean Val Jean better than Victor Hugo could write it himself. Landon is afraid of two things. Because of spilling a scalding hot bowl of ravioli across the white carpet in my basement and because of the submission of an uncouth your-mom joke comment on Xanga that my mother read for herself - Landon is horrified of my mother. And Landon is found particularly troubled by Navajo Indians. Landon can sleep longer than most grizzly bears can hibernate. Landon's mental patterns function based upon structure, logic, and analytical observations which make him seem well versed among any topic he chooses to converse upon.

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This is Mary Lee. I call her Leesa or simply, Sa. And she calls me Sa too. In fact, we have developed an entire language founded upon including "sa" (pronounced: s-uh) where we see fit. For example, "Last Sa'mmer sa'cked because I saw Sa sa'metimes only twice a month." If I had 3 wishes, one of them would undoubtedly be spent on wishing I owned a carefully recorded collection of every single one of her unique laughs. Between giggling, snorting, squealing, rapid breathing, breathless squirming, high pitched shrieking, and just aimlessly flailing her hands - within minutes of meeting Leesa you are clearly assured she was made to bring joy to this world through her abundance of laughter. When Leesa becomes loudly amused in public I encourage her to laugh harder so strangers will assume I am one really funny fellow. Leesa refuses to sit in a chair when she visits my house, she prefers the carpet. Leesa is frustratingly the worst at deciding where she wants to eat. She is a G-mail Chat junky. Leesa is spiritually and mentally the most womanly girl I know at our age and listens to others more intensely than a poet listens to the fleeting whispers of the wind. Leesa is a bird.

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This is Chase. Hrrmm. Well, being friends with Chase is a lot like being good friends with Jesus of Nazareth. And if that's the case, I have long ago clinched an especially toasty spot in Hell for perpetually asking, "if we can have sex with the lights on" every time I spend the night in his quarters. I just want him to appreciate my body, that's all. Chase could experience a violent earthquake inside a pit of lethal blood thirsty black mambas and still manage to lull himself asleep. Chase is freakishly aware of all music all bands world wide will produce before they even release their albums. The molecular infrastructure of Chase's right arm manipulates the properties of rubber when he plays ping-pong as he is the inventor of the monkey shot. In the physical universe we occupy, the shots he lands are considered impossible without the use of black magic. Chase attains the spiritual gift of communication and possess enough wisdom to make Solomon's ideologies appear elementary. Chase is an exaggerator (e.g. "Wanna hang out tonight?" - "Well, I stubbed my toe and went into cardiac arrest, so probably not.") Chase enjoys mint chocolate chip ice cream. And if you have a y-chromosome and have managed to read this entire description without developing a crush on him, I seriously commend you.

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This is Michael. If you haven't noticed, men in American are decreasingly becoming less manly each new generation. My Grandpa was a plumber, carpenter, electrician, engineer, automotive specialist, etc. My dad acquires merely a little less of the vast spectrum of skills my Grandpa possessed. And I am good for nothing. Michael does not follow this sheepish trend. Michael has a toolkit for hands and a mind mapped out like blue prints. Michael is largely a neutral observer during conversation but when he submits his mind upon a subject it is sensible, truthful, and usually results in an epic epitome of realization that will change your life. I once asked Michael on the bus ride returning from a Hebron Church Retreat to switch seats so I could flirt with a girl who later banished me to the friend-zone. Michael has more stamina than a wind turbine in the middle of the North Atlantic current during a hurricane. And if you're friends with Michael, his mother will send you Subway Gift Cards in the mail for Christmas.

Friends - Part 1

2010-10-27T17:51:00.006-04:00

Just about a year ago, a close group of friends of mine and I gathered on the porch to enjoy a cozy summer night. I cannot recall who originated the idea, but one by one we took turns saying positive tid-bits about one another. Ultimately, each person accepted six encouraging speeches plump full with kindness. This night, I imagine, will continued to be remarkable and treasured among the rest of my memories for my life time. Not because of how appreciated and exalted I felt after everyone spoke over my personality but because of the irreplaceable opportunity to enlighten others with encouragement. I am beginning a series called "Friends" to hopefully, in a small way, mimic the goodness of that night. I will post a picture of a friend and share a brief glow that their personality's pearl shimmers or simply unveil/publicize a unique tidbit about them (a positive one of course). These are in no particular order, so don't be alarmed if you're not first.

This is Bryan. If any of you know Bryan you know something indisputable at first sight of him. Bryan is one seriously good looking fellow. He's the type of guy who sports a fuzzy black beard, buttons up a flannel, and swings curly dark chocolate locks finer than most females and on most nights out leaves you secretly admitting, "I sorta wish I looked like that guy." I'd pick another picture but I am sure he'd feel him on the water is what represents his vivacious and adventurous spirit best. Bryan and I participate in a repugnant tradition every time we answer each other's calls. Which is to answer calling the other a clever and debasing name. Example: "Hey, jew sperm!" --- "Hey, cockasaurus rex"

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This is Sarah. When I arrived to UGA friendless and heartbroken from a very recent break-up I decided that when I walked into my intro to advertising class I would scout out the prettiest girl in class and sit beside her. Through that semester, though angelically gorgeous on the outside, I got to know the true knock-out her soul carried insider of her. Sarah is my powerful, majestic, and righteous Queen of Smells. Sarah owns an impressive set of dangerously intoxicating perfumes and it seems she carries a new hypnotizing scent every day. I really wouldn't be surprised if I accidentally fell in love with her just from sniffing one of her sweaters.

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This is Molly. Molly and I are, well, slightly different. I am crude and have little reservations about censoring my speech even if what I say is indeed true. And Molly is poised, extremely well mannered, and extraordinarily polite even when she is being upfront. Though I have given her, on numerous occasions, plenty of good reason to find me repulsive, she always accepts my personality. She always excepts my vulgarity and plays along with my weirdness. Also, Molly may be the best person possible to invite to a casual party with the expectation to get everyone to have a good time. She is positively obsessed with card games, amazingly skilled at them, and has an uncanny gift to consistently coax others into playing too.

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This is TJ. TJ is quicker on his tongue than anyone else I know. He is impeccable at discovering what makes you laugh and then drilling that category. TJ may have learned how to manipulate people from Lucifer himself. No matter how ill you feel, what mood you're not in, or how much you have to do the next day - TJ will get you to go Taco Mac with him at 2:30 a.m. And when you talk to TJ, be prepared to talk for at least 2 hours. He is one of the most developed and thorough people you will ever share yourself with.

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