Human Fallacy

     To say that we as humans act in a logical manner is, more often than not, totally untrue. It's amazing how many times I see, in other's lives as well as my own, instances where the right thing to do or the correct action is not the one we take. Over and over in my own life, I have times where I can see what I need to do, understand why I need to do it, see what the outcome will be if I don't do it, and yet I don't actually do that thing that I need to do. I've come to the conclusion that our actions are ones that we perform with the influence of a mix of factors. Doing something beneficial may look good on paper and may make sense, but in reality we need that reason along with a will, the right setting and a sense of motivation to follow through. The most ironic part of all this that I find is that we all realize this oddity in our human nature yet we're powerless to change it.

     There are many ways in which we may try to change the way we do something or change how we go about getting things done, such as creating to do lists or gaining advice on how to do something better. In the end though, all of human history shows the limits of our efforts. The other strange thing is that something that may make sense and seem like the right thing to do to us may not seem like that to someone else. Try as we may, we can never fully understand what someone else is thinking, regardless of how well we think we know them. I know for me personally as an introvert, I spend a lot of time observing, analyzing, and playing through scenarios in my head about how an action will play out or how a conversation with someone may go.  There are times I feel like I'm Sherlock Holmes in Game of Shadows. It never ceases to amaze me though how often these scenarios don't happen as I expected. On the other side of this, it seems as though we can never quite fully make someone else see just how it is we feel or what it is we're thinking. I keep wanting to somehow convey my thoughts and feelings into someone else's head like it's something I could load on a flash drive and transfer to them, but I keep hitting the wall of reality.

     This whole topic of actions not always following logic is something that has come up a lot for me in recent months, and I guess its always been there, just not as prominent in my thoughts. Oddly enough, the church service I went to this past Sunday was on this topic, talking about Romans 7:14-25 and how we do the things we know we don't want to do. This worked out well because I was thinking of this passage just the night before. On a quick side note and as a preview, that phenomena of me seeing things coming before they happen will be discussed in my next post. Anyway, the man giving the message that morning talked about how there are a lot of things in our lives where we just keep trying to do what we know we need to, but we fail repeatedly. This was strange for me sitting there in a room full of people mostly older than me all seeming to agree with him because I realized that this is a natural occurrence that's not likely to end anytime soon in my life. The main point of his message was that we are so lucky to be covered by God's grace, because it just keeps going regardless of how many times we act as Paul describes in the passage. Paul's writing about this clearly shows that this is nothing new but it's something that we must live with and in a sense can rest easy with because we know we're not alone. For me, I'm having to learn more and more that change, along with a lot of other things, can be a slow process. Changing habits, finding motivation, and shifting the way we live doesn't always happen quite as quickly as our fast paced society would like it to. Often we can see the results we want but when they don't happen instantly or sometimes even at all, we're left wondering what happened. This can easily be related to the concept of New Year's resolutions and how it seems like every year people make them and yet every year people joke about how they've failed to fully realize them.

     Overall, I guess it's like Paul says in Romans 7:23, "there is another power within me that is at war with my mind." We keep at it, whatever it may be, because we have a drive to succeed and a guilt if we do nothing. The brokenness of humanity, including my own, will continue to baffle me as long as I live, in all of the forms it comes in. For me, I've discovered that writing things down and checking things off makes me feel accomplished and makes me more successful, although again this is something that I fail to always do even though I know the benefits that will come from it. Really though, it seems as though more often than not we set up the logical course of action, just to watch it fall apart due to our human fallacy and this crazy thing called life.

All is Quiet on New Year's Day

My favorite song of 2012, One Thousand Suns. Feel free to listen as you read. 

I've discovered I have a deep connection to trance music as it always tells an incredible story if you're willing to hear it.  

     Well, here we are at the start of another year. Unlike my previous new years notes, I decided to make this post the start of a blog that I've been wanting to make for a long time. As usual, reflecting on a year gone by brings up a lot of memories, questions, thoughts, uncertainties, and somewhat of a sense of peace. One thing I discovered this past year about myself is that I love endings or closings, really coming full circle. Whether it be watching a season finale of a show, reading the last few pages of a book, or wrapping up a good conversation, I never seem to be fully satisfied until I can somehow mentally check something off of a list. 

     This past year was full of these kinds of events which really carried me from some of my highest highs to some of my lowest lows. It seems as though I will always have to be reminded that the only real constant is change and 2012 was certainly full of it. The year started off wild as usual as I decided to venture out on my own farther than I'd ever been before, out to Toledo, Ohio where I spent several days hanging out with my friend Leon, aka Jaguar, that I know exclusively through the internet. I got to explore the whole area, meet some new people, and have my first experience at a shooting range. Jaguar is originally from Russia and I got to meet the rest of his family one night, where I got to sit in a room full of people while we all had dinner and I had no idea what anyone was saying! A few days later I worked my way back towards home, deciding to weave my way through the West Virginia mountains to make a day trip of visiting my aunt and uncle. Eventually I made my way back to Maryland and UMD where I kicked off a wild semester. 

     The spring semester was one of the greatest times of my college career. I had the most memorable and incredible adventures with my best friends all while working through some difficult classes, having my first internship, and applying and interviewing for a summer internship. I went with the rest of the Navs up to Chester, PA where we got to spend about a week working in Fredrick Douglass Christian School on a variety of different projects. I learned that people come from a wide variety of backgrounds and they can often have different ways of expressing their belief in Christ, but that doesn't make it wrong. After the trip, I headed home to finish off the break and had my first drink with my dad as I turned 21. The rest of the semester seemed to fly by as I headed towards the summer. The big 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic came, something I had been looking forward to since I was much younger when I used to study all about the Titanic. I set myself up for an internship opportunity for the summer and bought my first car, a 2001 Honda Accord. Overall, my junior year was a crazy ride but it wrapped up well.

     The summer came and for the first time in a decade, I wasn't working at the produce stand. I headed up to Bethlehem, PA for a summer internship in a wholesale grocery warehouse where I got to learn about just how much it takes to fill the stores with everything that we can often take for granted. I got to spend the summer living in a guest room with a great guy, Rich, who was happy to show me around the area and get me plugged in to his church.  I also made a friend who took me on some adventures around town, including Musikfest. I certainly had quite the stories to bounce off everyone as I had the experience of doing things such as spending five weeks on night shift where my work day started at 10 pm and was almost over when the sun rose. It was certainly a rough environment for me but I made it through and learned a lot because of it. I decided to take a long weekend that I had and head up to Schenectady, NY to visit Tyler and see where he grew up. I eventually finished up with my internship and headed home to enjoy a week off before heading back to UMD to start my senior year. 

     The fall semester started off with a bang as I was caught off guard by career fairs that started the second week. That was just a sign of things to come as I applied for so many opportunities that during one week I had five interviews. I ventured up with Matt and Alyssa to visit my grandmother in Erie, PA which was something we hadn't done in many years. In our apartment, I got used to living with a few new guys but Tyler and I started into our third year of being roomies. I got baptized through the church I go to at UMD, Maryland Christian Fellowship, which signified turning over a new leaf for me. Through my classes and interviews, I went even further than I had ever gone before, spending a few days in Anaheim, CA one week and a day in Keene, NH the next. This fall semester was one that really stretched me to my limits in a lot of ways and just kind of slowly rolled towards the winter break, leaving me uncertain of a lot of things but constantly exploring. 

     So, now we're here at my final winter break of college. So far I've had a good Christmas and I've finally started to pack up my old room, which is a big deal for me. But, I've still got three weeks left of break and I'm gonna enjoy them.

     Well, that's about it, my 2012 in review. But now we're at the start of a whole new year, one that will certainly hold a lot of surprises and big changes. My two majors that I will be graduating with a degree in are Supply Chain Management and Marketing, with my ambitions aimed more towards the first of the two. I've got one semester left at UMD and then...well I'm still not sure of what then, but I'm working on it. This past year, once again, some things and some friendships changed more than I ever imagined they would. People moved, got married, started new jobs, graduated, and so on and so forth. It's funny because I seem to say the same thing every year but it always feels like something is different each time around. I've never been a big fan of change but it seems that I don't have much choice in the matter. These reviews always make me take a step back and see the story that's always being written. It seems that we get caught up so much in the day to day nature of our lives that it can be hard to realize just how one thing impacts another. 
     
     One thing that I've definitely tried to learn and wrap my mind around is that we pretty much always have a choice, regardless of whether we realize it or not and regardless of the subject matter that we're making the choice about. I've learned that I'm someone who is highly analytical and because of this I can never seem to fully settle on a choice and be fully satisfied. Satisfaction itself seems to be a never ending quest and life is a mystery filled with unknowns that we can never solve. The main thing I keep facing is that, barring any catastrophic events such as Mayan doomsdays that never seem to actually happen, the world keeps turning and time keeps ticking along with us powerless to stop it. But I guess, even if we could, I'm not sure we would want to because then we couldn't reflect on time gone by as I am doing here. Something else I've realized this past year is that logic is not a motivator and just because reason shows us what may or may not occur, it doesn't mean that we're actually going to do the reasonable thing. Really, humanity is this strangely broken thing that doesn't have that concrete ending or obtainable set foreseeable result of being fixed or completed that I described back at the start as something I seem to always desire. People come and go, events happen, life goes on, and the amount of actual control that we have is astoundingly small. Everyone always seems to have their input, their advice, their ideas of what should happen but it comes down to how we act on all of this. One of my favorite quotes is "Man Plans, God Laughs" which is funny because it relates to my key "life" verse, if you will, of Jeremiah 29:11 which states "For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." These are both things I've looked to quite often as 2012 has drawn to a close and I look back and see how many of my plans did not go as planned. We can't ever fully know a situation or fully know another person and every part of life requires faith of some kind, even if we don't realize it. Along with that, I've discovered that a lot of what we do and how we live comes down to not whether or not something is actually true or not, but whether we actually believe its true or not. Regardless of what our beliefs may be, a fact is by definition true, we just can't ever fully know what all of the facts are. This is something that I feel I will wrestle with for a long time.

     

     So here we are at the beginning of a whole new adventure called 2013. Although we may not know entirely where we're going as individuals, as a nation, and as a world, I'm pretty sure we'll be back again this time next year reflecting once again. I know I plan on diving right in, being hopeful about the changes that will come and knowing that some things never change. I want to thank everyone who played a part in my life in 2012, you certainly helped make it a wild ride. Hopefully I've left a positive impression on you all and if not, maybe even that's something that can change this new year. Now comes my favorite part though, that thing that I tried to describe at the outset of this message, the ending that ties it all together as a complete package. Although, I've learned that even the things that I think that I've brought to a close never really end. But for now, here's to 2013 and whatever it may bring. Let's make it another year to remember.

-Adam