The Good Person Delusion

     "Nah, I don't believe in any of that Christianity stuff, but I'm a good person so I'm set." I've heard this statement and variations of it more than once recently and every time it leaves me puzzled. I don't see how those two mindsets are interchangeable, nor do I understand why people seem to think they are. I myself am a Christian but it's not because I'm a good person, nor do I think that me being a Christian makes me a good person. For those who know what Christianity is about, you know that Christ didn't say that you just have to be a good person to be saved. In fact, Christ pretty much said that not a single one of us was good, which is a big part of us needing to be saved. While I can see how these became related, I believe it's time to break the delusion that they are the same.

     One of the first things I question when someone says that they're a good person is what exactly they mean. Is a good person someone who pays their taxes on time and gives to charity? Or maybe someone is good if they do the classic act of helping an old lady cross the street. To challenge fellow believers, are you a good person because you go to church on Sundays, read your bible, and listen to "Christian" music, meaning songs that reference a verse have Jesus, Lord, or God sprinkled throughout? The hardest part in trying to determine if someone is a good person is having a standard by which to go off of. Without this, anyone's judgement is as legitimate as another's and you have to go off of opinions and varying perspectives. Often times it seems as though people base the notion that they're a good person based off of how they feel at a given moment.

     Although it can often have a religious connotation, the word righteous is a common synonym for good. According to Merriam-Webster, a righteous person is someone who is acts in accordance with moral laws. This can imply that a righteous person has character traits such as trustworthiness, honor, and responsibility. My test to anyone who believes that they have these traits is, how often do you live them out? Are you only a righteous person when it's convenient for you or when others will take notice? The famous UCLA basketball coach John Wooden once said, "The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching." One of the challenges of labeling yourself as a good person is being able to sell that label to yourself. For most of us willing to admit it, we're probably not living up to the standard of being righteous all the time. Those who are fellow members of the body of Christ shouldn't be surprised. Paul states in Romans 3:10-12, "As the Scriptures say, 'No one is righteous—not even one. 11No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. 12All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.'” Reading this, it's pretty clear where we stand as human beings. Whether you're a believer or not, it's clear that humans and laws don't mix and that we've been breaking almost every law we can find from the beginning of time.

     Now that we've reflected on what a good person is and how none of us qualify, we need to look at what this means and what to do about it. First off, we need to remain humble and recognize our hypocrisy when we judge others by our "good" standards that we ourselves fail to live up to on a of consistent basis. Beyond that, the distinction between being a good person and being a Christian must be made clear. Being a Christian means accepting the above verses from Romans as true and realizing that the only way to move on and be saved from our failure is through grace. We fail, we can't live truly righteously, and we graciously accept the undeserved gift of salvation that has been freely given by the only one who is good. For some reason unbeknownst to us, God decided to give us a way out of our failure even though we continue to throw the righteous laws back at Him. Caution must be exercised with this; I don't want to give the idea that grace has granted us a free pass and that we can now act purposefully immoral. The saving grace that fixes our unrighteousness comes through faith in Christ, and only you and Him can know how true that faith really is.

     Overall, it feels good to do good. We naturally get a sense of worth and accomplishment when we do something that we consider qualifies in making us a good person. Trying to live your life as a good person is still a good idea and can lead to making your life and the lives of others around you better. However, it's  important to remember to balance your idealistic good person self label with a realistic full picture outlook at just how good you really are. As I've written above, it's hard to determine what being a good person means and even harder to live it out in your daily life. Above all, the sharply contrasted distinction between being a so called good person and being a Christian must be known and maintained. The first looks at yourself and highlights the well intended and moral actions that you have done. The second looks at God and highlights the utter failures and immoral actions that we have done and humbly welcomes the saving grace that says we're accepted anyway. Although Christians attempt to live out good lives, calling yourself a Christian and/or calling yourself a good person and considering them to be one in the same is simply a delusion.

Welcome Back Winter, Once Again

     For those who have just read the title and are wondering if my calendar is still stuck in December, don't worry, I know that winter is just about to come to a close. As most of you living around the MD/DC area know, this particular winter has been a pretty powerful one. We've had the most snowfall since 4 years ago, had temperatures nearly at 0 degrees Fahrenheit, and even tossed around the new phrase "polar vortex". In the midst of all this frigid weather and the closing of countless schools and governments, I have once again found a sense of joy and peace. This post is different from usual because instead of getting into a deep theological topic or a major thought, I'm writing about my love for winter and why I believe it is the most powerful yet peaceful of all the seasons.

     Winter is a season unlike any other. As warm blooded humans, our natural response is to try and hide from the cold, sheltering ourselves from it's harmful effects. This is fine, but if you're like me, you've come to embrace the cold and soak it in, allowing it's chill to penetrate your body to the point where it's all you can think about. One of the main reasons I love this kind of feeling is because of how alert it can make you. For me, the biting nature of the frozen air puts a feeling of energy into me that is hard to beat. Those reading this most likely know of the humidity that comes with the summer heat in this region and for me, that sucks the life out of me because when you're working outdoors you're simply bathed in it. But, in the winter, the air is crisp and sharp with a penetrating force that can cool you down from outside in. The temperature isn't the only invigorating part of the winter air though. While all seasons have a different scent, the one I love the most is the smell of winter, especially when a snow storm is coming.

     Another major reason that I love the winter is because of my upbringing and all the outdoor work that usually involved. For those that don't know, I grew up working outdoors with my father, helping him feed, weed, water, and sell the ever growing amount of plants he has in the fields around our house. This made the busiest times of year the ones that were warm and good times for planting. In the winter though, this all changed. Plants were covered up before the winter hit, nothing needed tending to, no storms would come through except those bringing a gentle snowfall, and everything slowed down to the point where I could enjoy some time with my dad doing something other than working. The start of winter marked a time of rest and fun as my dad would tow my sister and I around on a metal saucer behind his tractor in the snow. The snowball fights, the forts and snowmen that we built, and the rides down my grandparents hill stand as some of my favorite times with my sister growing up.

     Above all, my main reason for loving winter is the pure beauty it brings, wrapped together with a sheer bone-chilling power. It's well known that the odds of having two identical snowflakes are almost zero, with each flake having it's own majestic beauty. Put a large amount of these flakes together and you create a pure white blanket that covers all it touches, hiding imperfections and creating a frozen layer that is perfectly smooth. This makes me hesitant to touch it, knowing I could never make it as immaculate as it naturally is. Beyond just the snow, the true power comes from ice since even a thin coating can cause most things to shut down. When ice becomes thick though, everything becomes encased in it's beauty, forced to utterly halt. The raw capability to cause a crippling standstill while simultaneously creating total silence and peace is awe inspiring. Winter weather stands as a unique symbol, displaying nature's elegance until we clear the roads and shovel our paths, disrupting the natural for the sake of our daily needs and lifestyles. If you've already seen or are planning on seeing the recent Disney movie Frozen, you can get a sense of what I've written about in regards to beauty when you see Elsa singing Let It Go and creating her incredible ice castle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEJ566EnNgM). One of my favorite places to be is outside overnight laying in the snow somewhere with it continuing to fall around me, with no cars racing to get anywhere, no sun melting the snow away, no bugs chirping along, just pure white covering me as I lay in total silence.

     I hope that I've been able to summarize why I believe winter is the best of the seasons. My favorite color, blue, is often associated with winter and cold and I say let the storm rage on, the cold never bothered me anyway. I fully acknowledge that you can't do as much in it and it can force people to stay indoors while taking a day off work, but I feel like we need to slow down every now and then in our evermore busy lives. Although this winter is just about done, I invite you to enjoy what's left and remember your favorite childhood memories playing in the snow. As for me, I'll be enjoying the rest of the seasons as well, but always looking forwards toward December 21st when I'll be welcoming back winter, once again.

When the Needs of the "Me" Outweigh the Needs of the "We"

     Our society overall is constantly shifting, changed by things such as technology and economic cycles. This is a natural occurrence, as it should be because nothing can progress while staying the same. However, as well all should know, not all of the changes are positive ones. Granted, this can often be a matter of perspective, but I believe that there are some that tend to be negative regardless. For now, the focus will be on one in particular that affects many others. No matter the situation or setting, there seems to be a growing and dangerous problem. The problem is that in many aspects of our lives, regardless of age, the needs of the "me" seem to be outweighing the needs of the "we".

     While this problem may sound bad right off because I've said that it is, it needs explaining in order to be understood and dealt with. When I talk about the needs of the "me" versus the needs of the "we" I'm referring to what is beneficial and needed for our individual selves versus the community we're in or even overall society. If you have a situation where you may be able to gain while others don't because you're focused on your needs, but you could instead help a group of others gain while you don't gain as much, you have a conflict. For the most part, our natural response is to help ourselves first before focusing on others. There are many times where this is good or even necessary such as when you're on a plane and the oxygen masks drop down, you're instructed to put yours on first before helping others or else you could end up both without air. The problem is when this kind of thinking and acting goes too far and we forget others all together. When we perceive that our needs are the only needs and that others needs are unimportant or even obstacles to our own, things start to fall apart.

     If you reflect on our society today, the instances where this problem makes itself known aren't that hard to find. Let's start off with an easy one that I've had to hold off criticism from, being a business person myself, and that is with corporations and overall for-profit businesses. The main goal of a public corporation financially is to maximize shareholder value. This seems simple enough but the problem comes in the means of how this is accomplished. Often times, as we saw in the housing bubble crash in 08, companies become so focused on earning profits and meeting their numbers that they forget that they're not alone. When this happens, companies lose sight of the fact that they only exist because customers are buying their product or service. If they suck their customers dry and cause their economic situations to collapse, the direct impact will be felt when people stop coming through the door. Thankfully, a trend that is growing is that people are putting their dollars into companies that are focused on benefiting society overall. More and more firms are proving that you can in fact have a double bottom line, one for the company and one for the community in which they're based. An important thing to remember with this is that companies can often become the scapegoat when really, they can't survive unless we as consumers continue to feed them our dollars.

     Another major and easy target for when looking for where this issue is occurring is within the political realm. Time and time again we see, hear, or read about a politician that has become corrupt. Despite their original best intentions, they've become caught up in some scandal or scheme that's aimed at improving their power or wealth at the cost of their constituents. The unique format of our governmental structure is that it's designed to be representative of the people, where our opinions and needs are voiced and addressed, at least that's the intention. The problem comes when those representatives get off track and have the needs of their "me" more important than the needs of our "we". The tricky part of that though is determining what exactly are the needs of the "we", since many of us can have conflicting ideas of what those are, as most of us well know. However, often times as an overall whole, even if it doesn't seem like it, we get what we ask for. If you look at our government and think it's dysfunctional and wonder why there's so much gridlock, just take a look at things such as online comment boards on a political news article or reflect back on arguments you've had with others on political topics. I'm willing to bet that if I said that Obamacare was the greatest thing ever, I'd get uproar, positive and negative, from you all as my readers that you wouldn't believe. In fact, I bet many of you just now started firing off thoughts in your mind as to why I would be right on target with that statement or way off the mark to the point where I don't even know what the target looks like. But, politically charged statements such as that one are basically begging for controversy as they always have and will be. It's important to look beyond our own needs, and even the needs of our own families, to the potential benefits to our society as a whole. If there's a regulation put into place that hurts your own pocket but makes our country better as a whole, preference usually must be given. Granted, thing are never that clean cut and I'm not saying they will ever be, but hopefully you understand the point.

     Now I'll get into a couple of smaller instances that, while may be not as large scale, are still very prevalent situations where I encounter this problem in on a daily basis. The first of these is when it comes to driving. For those of us who drive on public roads we should know that the roads are indeed just that, public roads. This means that you do not own the road and most likely you're not the only one on it. Accidents often happen when drivers believe that their "me" needs of where they're going outweigh the "we" needs of everyone getting where they're going safely. I know from a lot of observation while on the roads that it takes an incredible amount of engineering to make traffic flow in an efficient manner, but all of that becomes worthless when someone decides that their needs put them above the rules of the road. The D.C. area is infamous for its amount of traffic and horrible drivers because of this. When one driver causes an accident due to this issue that shuts down part of a road, hundreds if not thousands of others have to pay the consequences, which can often compound into others becoming frustrated and causing more of the problem and so on. Remember while driving that although you make think you can do something, the laws of physics don't change and you're on roads with a lot of other drivers that can't read your mind and anticipate what you want to do.

     A final example comes from my main hobby and is actually the area where I see it most frequently, the place that frustrates me the most, and is the original source of why I wanted to write this particular post. I am of course talking about video gaming, more specifically in a multiplayer fashion. A few of the games I play the most often with others include Team Fortress 2, League of Legends, and Age of Empires. For those who don't know these games, what I'm about to say can be applied to any kind of competitive team game or sport. Time and time again when playing these games, those playing love to talk about how great they're doing or have done if the game is over. From "check out how much damage I dealt" to "look at my score" to even "well, that was good, but look at what I did", the amount of self promotion in these games never stops. Often times a part of this is because you're playing with random other people who you don't know, but even among good friends the focus of a team win or loss often ends up on the individuals. Of course, a team is made up of individuals, but it takes the combined efforts of everyone playing together to achieve victory. Many times in TF2 or LoL players like to go solo and try to show off just what they can do or act flashy so that they get the credit. More often than not though, this works against them and their team because while they may do some damage and get a couple of kills, overall their team ends up losing more than that one individual gained. This can often cause the team effort to fall apart and turn into a blame game because the individual is asking the others why they aren't as good as they are while the team is asking the individual to stop trying to be a solo superhero.

     The reason this is especially prevalent in online gaming is that the individual trying to "go huge" is often someone somewhere hiding behind their keyboard that you'll never see again as soon as the game is over. Accountability is non-existent and players don't feel the needs to care about another player. In this case, the needs of their "me" of trying to be flashy and look cool outweigh the needs of the "we" of the team playing together to win. This dynamic changes among friends because most likely you'll still be interacting after the game is over and therefore your perception of that individual as being selfish and a poor team player lingers on when you go to play with them again. One of my best online buds is someone that I met through a random server that I happened to be playing in one night back in 2009. The reason this friendship even exists and he is someone I'd rather play with in a game than some of my other friends is because he understands and plays in a manner that shows it's better for the "we" to work together to win rather than the individual "me" to do a lot on their own. When you look at any kind of team game or sport, those that win and do it consistently are the ones who have team chemistry, not the ones who throw a bunch of selfish stars together and call it a team.

     Perhaps this problem has made itself more and more apparent to me because I've been trained in a sense to see it occurring. What I mean by this, is that my father has told me many stories of his time growing up where he and his siblings would join with others up and down the road, all working together to get farm work done and bring in the harvest, regardless of whether or not the harvest was actually theirs. There was work to be done and they didn't care that they weren't directly benefiting from it, they just had neighbors in need and hands to spare. He was actually the one that coined the title phrase of this post, as least as far as I know, and has raised me in a way to be aware of situations and to be always working for the good of the "we", not just the "me". Being someone who is highly observant and seeing things such as the widening of the wealth gap and increasingly individualistic nature of our society, I'm glad to have this background so that I can work to combat the problem through all that I'm doing.

     We all live in the same world, have the same basic needs, and usually have some dependence on someone else to allow for the lives that we live. So how, I ask, do we forget this basic concept? In most situations, more is accomplished by working together with others to achieve a common goal than we could ever do on our own. We were made to live in community with others while interacting, learning and growing because of it. For those of us who are Christian, we should know that in Mark 12, Christ commands as the second yet equally most important command to love our neighbor as ourselves. As I've shown in this post, we have the love ourselves part down, but what about our neighbors?

     When someone asks if you have time to talk or even seems like they need someone just to comfort them, really consider your priorities before saying you don't have the time. If someone needs help on a task, even if you feel they should know what they're doing, it's usually more beneficial for the both of you if you actually lend a hand instead of criticizing them for their apparent lack of skill or knowledge. When you're playing a team game or a sport and someone is dragging your team down, take the time to see what's going wrong and give them some advice, or better yet, show them what they can do differently. If you actually want to see a change occur, start by making it happen in your everyday interactions with others. The goal is to raise all others up and to become a better society through the contributions of all, not to push others down and create better lives for ourselves alone, especially since this kind of thinking and acting can't last for long.

     This is not a problem that our government can regulate us out of, nor is it one that we can all read about here and simply say that we won't do it anymore. With a post like this, people can also become defensive, trying to mentally reason out why what they're doing is fine or that this isn't a problem in their lives. In fact, some of you have probably already done this and are now catching yourselves having done just that. A disclaimer with this post especially, as with all of my posts, is that I do not claim to perfectly live up to what I'm writing. I can tell you now that I often am focused on what's best for me rather than the overall good, as is human nature. The caveat to that though is that I'm becoming more and more aware of these situations occurring and doing all I can to change my thoughts and actions while in the midst of them. After all, that is the point of these blogs that I write; not to criticize or speak down from a pedestal to my readers, but to challenge all of you to internalize what I've written and begin to make changes in your own lives for the better. If I see or hear of just one person who has read my blog posts and made a change for the better because of it, then all of my time and effort in writing these posts is worth it, especially since all of this started with just a thought.

2013: The Year of Change

     My top track of 2013, a peaceful yet powerful song that fits with all of the 

many ways that things changed in 2013. Feel free to listen as you read:

     Well, here we are at the start of another year, one that holds a lot of promise and I'm sure many adventures. People will continue moving, working, getting married, having kids, and overall doing this thing we call living. But, before we get rolling too far into the new year, it's time to look back and reflect on 2013 and all that it had to offer.

     For me, 2013 was called The Year of Change from the start and it certainly was. I started the year by starting this blog, which I guess makes Just a Thought one year old (happy birthday). Hopefully all of you readers out there have gotten something out of the ten posts that I wrote over this past year. I know I certainly got a lot out of writing them, as they often allowed and forced me to do deeper reflection on the various events happening in my life. As always, I write them for my readers to really consider the points that I'm making and think of how they can apply what I've written to their own lives. I plan to continue this blog into the next year, making my writings more crisp and hitting my readers with a lot of powerful points. For those who have read Just a Thought in 2013, I thank you for your time and appreciate any response you feel that you can give, as that's what I use to make improvements and know that I'm really making a difference.

     Continuing on, in January I started my final semester at UMD, one that was filled from one end to the other and wrapped up my days as an undergrad. Through this semester I was on a mission, one that I described in one of my previous posts (http://asickle.blogspot.com/2013/05/what-and-why-my-mission.html). I came out of a rough winter break searching for answers and landed on the concept that it is critical for you to know what you believe, and more importantly, why you believe it because if you don't then what are you really living off of and how can you expect others to really take you seriously? I spent a good amount of time through the semester meeting with friends and asking them these questions, finally compiling a mix of their answers as well as my own and presenting the whole thing on the last nav night. Since then, I've realized that the mission couldn't end there and I've decided that I'm going to carry it on throughout the rest of my life (see: https://www.facebook.com/whatandwhybeyondthemission). That wasn't the only thing that happened during the semester though. I took one more Nav spring break trip, enjoyed my last days at the Smith school of business, had a few more late night conversations with my awesome roomie/partner in bromance, and picked up my Testudo picture as I walked across the stage. All in all, my time at UMD ended well.

     Of course, despite what it may sometimes have felt like, life wasn't over just because I graduated, rather it was just truly beginning. I was lucky enough to have gotten myself a job related to my major before I graduated, something that's hard to do these days. I started out on my own up in Rockville in July at a company called Avendra as a Strategic Contracting Analyst, a position that taught me more in a few months than I learned in a whole year of school. It was a bit of a wild ride between my new job and my living situation but it worked as a starting place...at least to start. By the time October came around it became apparent that things weren't really working out with what I was doing or where I was living. I left my position in search of one that would be a better fit and I'm now still job searching, looking for an entry level role as a buyer, something I believe will fit me much better. I also was given the opportunity to move out of the place I was living in when my brother and his wife bought a house in Greenbelt, with an extra room that they offered to rent to me. I've spent the past couple of months there living solo which has been a great time for reflection, but that's all about to change when they move in in the near future.

     With all of the changes happening this year, there were a few times I had the itch to travel. My first big trip was when I got to visit Chicago for a few days with one of my classes. This was a unique experience to a wildly busy city, one that acts as a major logistics hub for the US and has many sights such at the Willis (Sears) tower. After graduation, in June, I traveled again, this time heading up to Pittsburgh to see a good friend who I hadn't seen since his graduation over a year before. We went to a Pirates game, checked out the Duquesne Incline, and I saw a lot of road construction including some that had been going on for a while...as in, a quarter of a century kind of a while. My third and final trip of the year came after I left my job, when I felt the need and had the time to travel south and see what my old roomie was getting himself into down in Atlanta at Georgia Tech. On the way I checked out a couple of museums in Richmond, visited a museum/aquarium/zoo in Greensboro, and an awesome transportation museum in Spencer. In Atlanta, I got to meet my bud's new roomies, check out the campus, see the Coke HQ (did you know the reason we have the Santa figure that we do today as a jolly red suit wearing man is because of a Coke marketing campaign?), tour the CNN HQ, and overall relax for a few days. I eventually made my way back north, stopping in Pigeon Forge Tennessee for a day, long enough to visit the most incredible museum I have ever been to. The Titanic museum building itself is a replica of half of the original ship and the inside had some of the most incredible displays, artifacts, and realistic exhibits I've ever seen. I continued north the next day, driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway for a while and stopping for a tour of Luray Caverns. Overall these trips expanded my view of just how much the world has to offer.

     I'm not the only one that change happened to though. This fall I got to be a part of my second sibling's wedding as she brought a man, one whom I've looked to for advice and mentorship since starting my time at UMD, into our family. Being asked to do a scripture reading as a part of the ceremony after all that she helped me with in terms of my faith over this past year was really powerful. I realized and shared that day that up to that point, I had spent more time with her throughout our years growing up than anyone else had, and I figured it was time someone else took over. They decided to go and live out in Seattle though, so I suppose I have somewhere new to be travelling to.

    One sibling didn't entirely steal the show in terms of change this year though. When I mentioned earlier that my brother and his wife were about to be moving into their new home, I didn't mention that they would be bringing an extra person with them. Announced back in February and arriving in October, I became an uncle this year when a new little squeaker made her way into the world. In just a couple of short months I've gotten to see her countless times, learning the different noises she makes and positions she likes to be held in. This is something that will only increase from here once she's living across the hall from me. It's certainly odd seeing the next generation of our family beginning, but it's something I'm coming to like more and more every time I see her little smile.

     The cycle from the old to the new didn't just happen within my family though. Although the year started off rough with one of my closest friends, it seems as though time, a letter, understanding, and some time like the old days may have breathed new life. My moving up to Rockville also allowed me to make some new friends, one of which I've gotten to hang out with throughout this fall semester as she has made up one of the three of the new nav trio, with the trio that I was a part of having made our way out this spring. Getting to hang out on campus some this semester without actually being a student myself was a pretty unique experience, feeling like somewhat of an outsider even though I called the place my own not long ago.

     Even Christmas time was filled with change this year. For the first time, I set up a Christmas tree but it wasn't in the same place that I have for the first 21 years of my life. Luckily we had everyone down in St. Mary's for Christmas eve and Christmas day, but this year my father moved next door and we woke up and opened presents in a new spot. Despite the changes involved with my favorite and most tradition based holiday, things went well and the season was great as always.

     Well, there you have it, my 2013 The Year of Change in review. Now we're here once again at the start of another year, 2014, which I'm sure will hold just as many surprises as 2013 did. Looking back at my first blog post, the one that reviewed 2012, I noticed that I'm once again saying a lot of similar things in terms of moving, marriages, kids, jobs, and everything else. This annual post is the big one though, the one that causes me to really stop and reflect on an entire year rather than just a specific topic as most of my other posts this past year have. I continue to learn each year more about how vastly different humans can be from each other, even if they come from the same family and grew up down the hall from each other. Despite all of these differences, somehow each year all 7 billion or so of us continue to live in some sense of harmony on this spinning space rock we call home.

     One thing is for certain though, as 2013 showed, change is a constant. One of my favorite shows, Doctor Who, just introduced a new actor to replace the main character of The Doctor, something that happens every so often and is how the show has been around 50 years. The actor bidding farewell was Matt Smith, the person who was the doctor when I was introduced to the show a few years ago, and his final words were as follows: "Times change, and so must I... We all change. When you think about it, we're all different people all through our lives and that's ok, that's good, you've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be." I've been reflecting on these lines since first hearing them a few days ago and I believe they cap off 2013 perfectly.

     So here we are, at the beginning of another new year and another new adventure. We can never be certain as to what this year will hold, despite any hopes we may have or plans we may make. One thing I do know though is that as long as we have good people around us to help us go through whatever may come, I'm sure we'll all be back reflecting on everything again this time next year. I know one thing, I've certainly made many impactful changes in 2013. I started this blog, started a lifelong faith related mission, and even started my own EDM radio show called For the Soul. I changed my life verse that I spoke of in last year's new years post to Job 38:3 which says: "Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me." I even made a change right as the new year was being welcomed in by finally winning the annual spoons tournament at the new years eve party that I've gone to for the past 15 years, the first time a Sickle has ever won it (see below). Change is something I've never been fond of but I've been realizing more and more that change is what keeps things going. As some one who is apparently thought of when people think about someone being themselves, I believe that I will continue going from being the one afraid of change to being the one causing it.

Happy new year everyone and thank you for reading what started a year ago now, as just a thought.

The victory spoon with my name engraved! Finally brought the Sickle family into the annually growing winner's circle.

Experience: Life's Greatest Teacher

      (Small Moments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z1pi1boiqo&noredirect=1)

     There's just nothing like it. Time and time again it proves to be invaluable, often more so than anything else. Someone tells you all about a big event in great detail...but you still can't fully comprehend what happened. You look at a picture of a huge moment in time...but you still don't feel the strong emotional attachment. You've read all about it in books...but you still don't have the memories and knowledge that you would have, had you actually been there. What's the missing link that pulls everything together, from our personal lives to our professional, from our friendships to our enemies, and even our huge failures to our greatest triumphs? Experience.

     One of the biggest ways that experience makes itself known and needed is when you're applying for a job. You can read all kinds of job descriptions and apply all you want, but more often than not, if you don't meet the required experience level that those hiring are looking for, you won't even get a call. College degrees are great, even more so with advanced degrees in specialized fields, but if you have eight years of education while someone else has eight years of direct experience, guess who looks more valuable to employers? The reason for this is that experience simply can't be beaten. When you are working in a position, really living it day in and day out, you get the full learning that touches on every sense and stimulates your mind in a way that lectures and textbooks can't. So many things that happen on the job are things that are unforeseen and the reactions to these events all depend on the situation and the human dynamics happening at the time. In my recent position I learned more in the four months that I was there than I did from an entire year of college education. The pace and relevance of everything I learned was incredible. Most employers today need their employees to be up to date and on top of everything that's going on in their industry and the greatest way to do this is by living what's happening on a daily basis.

     Experience doesn't stop in the workplace however and it's not just a check mark on a job application. The greatest experiences we have are in our personal lives. Whether you're experiencing ecstasy or symptoms of depression, everyone experiences life differently at different times and our experiences are constantly changing. One of the most notable examples of how experience makes a difference is when someone tells you about a great event or a great trip they had. You can see the pictures, hear the stories, watch the videos, and even see the expressions on the faces of those who were there, but you just can't fully grasp and understand it fully unless you experience it for yourself. I believe one of the major reasons for this is because we all take things in and interpret them differently. If you're someone who loves the beach and you took me with you on a beach vacation, we would probably have a different experience and remember it differently. You would probably have a great time and feel relaxed while I would wonder what we were doing there and ask when the real fun starts. Either way, we would still understand what happened better and feel more emotion associated with the trip than someone we shared stories with when we got back. The experience, good or bad, still has more impact than no experience at all.

     I believe the deepest type of experience we can have though is the experience we have in relating to other people. Entire relationships, dreams, and even lives are built off of our interactions with others and the overall experience we have with them. It's said that first impressions are the most important but I believe it's also important to look beyond this and really get to know someone before casting any judgement or feeling like you understand them. The experiences you have with another person are the building blocks in any relationship, be it friendship or a romantic one. You learn so much through spending time with another person that you could never understand through that person being described. With this, I believe it's also important to experience what another person is like in a variety of settings. If you only spend time with a person when they're in a happy mood or at a party like event, you don't really get the full picture. It takes the experience of interacting with someone through their triumphs and trials, being able to see them struggle and overcome, in order to really learn who they are. One of the stories my dad has told me about when he was dating my mom was that he spent some time working with her hand in hand on different projects so that he could learn what it was like to be around her in a more typical day kind of setting. If you think you know someone without having experienced at least a sample of what life has to offer with them, you've missed an important teaching lesson.

     Overall, I believe that experience is not just a teacher but the core of life itself. Life is worth living because of the wide variety of experiences that we have, with so many of them being unplanned and maybe even the opposite of what we expected. The interesting thing to think about is how others experiences in their own lives are what led you to the experiences that you've had in your own life and even the opportunity to have them.  As a good friend of mine recently said, "Our time is not infinite here on these grounds, enjoy those little moments like: weddings, first days of school, holidays, small victories, helping others and loving each other." That's really what life is in a sense, a series of experiences that everyone has that make a whole picture when put together. It's no surprise then that experience, is in fact, life's greatest teacher.

Just a thought.

Didn't see that coming: Finding your "fit"

     It never ceases to amaze me. We can have everything planned out, think we know what we're doing, and then watch it all fall apart and not go according to plan at all. We couldn't have predicted that, it just happened once we broke our plans out of the vacuum and introduced them to reality. Factors beyond our control get thrown into the mix and people react in ways we never expected. Often times we get to a point where we wonder why we planned anything at all and think we just wasted a lot of time and effort towards something that didn't come to fruition. Sure it was a learning experience, as all things are, but was anything actually accomplished?

     Recently, I've discovered for myself many of the hard truths of life after college that many can talk about but you can't really understand until you experience it for yourself. Suddenly you become entirely independent, which can be great but is also very daunting, overwhelming, and often lonely. No longer is there a clear cut path of sorts, no more 4 year plan, no more rubrics and grades to show you what to do and how to do it well. Just when you thought you were an adult now and were starting to have things figured out at the top of the pile, you get dropped to the bottom and learn quickly just how much you don't know. I feel part of this pressure comes from society and the way our "way of life" or "American dream" is structured. You get your degree, get a job, get a car, get a house, have kids, save for your retirement, and live happily ever after. The layout is a nice neat plan of sorts, a list that you can check things off of so that you feel accomplished and know that you've "arrived"...somewhere. But that's just it. Where are you "arriving" at? A place of safety? Comfort? Peace? Life isn't that simple and our desires may not match those societal norms. If we're in a place such as America, our lives are largely ours to control and, although it's cliche, if we set our minds on something, we can probably find a way to get there, granted it's not something impossible like flapping your arms until you fly.

     An important thing I've been learning is that it's not enough to just have a job that pays a large salary or be in a good location. Success and desire most often come from having a passion about what it is that you're doing. Take this blog for example; I'm not being paid to write this, I'm doing it because I have a passion for writing my deep introspective thoughts and sharing them with others so that you the readers reflect on what you're reading and consider these things for yourselves. As humans we are experiential creatures that thrive not off of logic but off of joy and passion in whatever it is that we're doing. It's been shown time and time again that big bucks, lots of stuff, and fame can cause depression and a deep feeling of emptiness if we aren't enjoying it and sharing it with others. That's why I believe, as I'm discovering, that it's critical to find your "fit", be it with a job, a place, or even a lifestyle that you're actually excited to get up for in the morning and can't wait to get more of. One of the complaints that many older people have about my generation, the millennials, is that we want a gold star on everything and expect to be CEO right out of college. While not everyone may not be on that power trip, many have the desire to actually get a sense of enjoyment out of what they're doing. It's silly and impractical to expect a dream job from the start, but in order to thrive, you still need some kind of joy motivating you to grow, not just a paycheck and a lot of learning about something that you may not actually be interested in learning about. This sense of fit not only comes from the new shiny entry level job environment, but also from your life outside of work and the time you spend doing other things with other people. If you don't really have a good fit in your workplace, your living place, or your social community, you start spinning round and round to look to one of these places to provide satisfaction and if none work, that spinning starts going in a negative and downward spiraling direction.

     Another trait of my generation is that we rarely stay in one place for a long period of time. We want to keep trying things and seeing what we like in order to find our fit. When we're in college, we have to declare a major and complete the requirements associated with that major in order to graduate and earn our degree. The thing is, at that point in our lives, we don't have that much experience actually doing real jobs and finding out what works for us and what doesn't. There are so many people that get their degree in something and then go actually do something completely different. This fascinates me because it seems so odd that our system is set up that way, where we're really just showing that we can earn a degree and then we can figure out what we really want to learn about and spend our time doing. Granted, college is a place where we learn much more outside of the classroom than we do in it. Regardless, my generation has been told we can be anything we want to be and do anything we want to do and with that in mind driving us, we're not going to stay with one job or in one place until we find what we want. We're used to instant gratification and things moving rapidly in all aspects of our lives, so we want to rapidly find our fit wherever that may be.

     One of the things that continues to challenge me is that there are many instances where you have to go with what you've got and you get caught off guard by an unexpected reaction or turn of events. In finding your fit, you may find yourself doing something you never expected, saying that you didn't see that coming. The same goes for conversations and interactions you have with others, no matter how close you think you are to them. You may have plans for what you want to talk about and things you want to do, all to have the fact that you even had those plans hinder your conversation and damage your relationship. The remarkable thing is, you can't really realize how wrong you are or how big of a mistake you may be making until you're in it or after the fact because again, you didn't see that coming. Having relationships with others require finding and maintaining your fit with them as well.


     Overall, it seems like life is always going to be full of curve balls and require continuous effort towards trying to find your passion and achieve your goals. There will be many times where you won't see something coming and your fit may seem like something you'll never find because you don't even know what you want or how to know what you want. But, the important thing is to keep playing ball and interacting with others because only once you pop your individual bubble will you be able to find your fit in a non-bubble world. It won't come easy and it won't come quick but the best things in life never seem to and it'll have all been worth it once you find your fit, or at least so I've heard. Remember, finding your fit has to start somewhere, so you might as well start with just a thought.

Circumstances and Control

              We all do it, some more than others. We have plans, hopes, dreams, ideas, and goals that guide us from where we are now to where we want to be at some point in the future. Funny thing is, we don’t realize just how little control we have over actually accomplishing these things until something comes along and throws us off course. In fact, we have so little control over our own lives and circumstances it’s amazing we can function without becoming overwhelmed to the point of mental shutdown. I guess it’s just something we never really focus on, kind of like an elephant in the room that we just go around in order to do what it is we want to do.

               A bold and complex concept such as this one of course comes with its complications. I’m not saying you have no say in your life or that you shouldn’t have those plans, goals, etc. that I mentioned above. In fact, that would normally be a horrible way of thinking because it can lead to laziness, self-defeat, and an overall apathetic outlook on life. The saying goes that if you want something go out and get it, or at least something along those lines. It can require a mix of determination, will, and strength of mind and body to even get up in the morning, but we need these things in order to face whatever comes at us that day. But, therein lies my point of this post. Daily we face whatever comes at us.

Let’s say that one night there was a thunderstorm that made your electric flicker long enough for your clocks to be reset. You woke up that morning later than usual because your alarm never went off due to the clock reset. This caused you to leave twenty minutes later than normal which lead to you being caught in a major traffic jam that you wouldn’t have run into if you had left when you normally do. You eventually make it in to work but you missed a big meeting in which you were supposed to give a presentation. You explain to your boss what happened and he seems to understand, but underneath he’s irritated and thinks you’re just giving him an excuse for having hit the snooze bar too many times. When the opportunity comes for you to be promoted a week later, your boss considers you but remembers that day you were late and missed the meeting due to a “traffic jam”. So, he decides to give the promotion to someone who is more “responsible”, someone he feels is more suited for the position. Initially you’re disappointed, but this decision has huge ripple effects. Because you weren’t promoted, your career doesn’t advance as fast as you wanted it to. On top of that, you weren’t in the position to meet someone who would have been a great mentor and friend, someone who would have changed your outlook on life and maybe even those plans and dreams you have. The amount of hypothetical ripple effects could go on and on, but hopefully you’re starting to see my point. Was it within your control for that original thunderstorm to have happened while you were sleeping which lead to everything else? Maybe you were too reliant on that alarm clock and you could have had more “control” if you had gotten enough sleep to wake up naturally without it. The list of things that were in your control or weren’t could go on and on.

If you think about it, the amount of your life that’s actually within your control is rather small. If you put it into some kind of pie chart, I bet your slice would be about the size of a normal slice of pie while outside events and circumstances gets to chow down on the rest. You had no control over when you were born. You had no control over the country you were born into. You had no control over the race or gender that you are. Beyond all of this, you had no control over what the implications of all of these things mean. Maybe you wish you were born back in colonial times, seeing the country you live in today being formed around you. Maybe you’ve endured a large amount of suffering or trauma in your life simply because of the color of your skin or because you’re a chick instead of a dude. Whatever the case may be, it’s not really something we should dwell on in terms of trying to change what has already happened. The challenge is to try and overcome the circumstances you’re in and work with the control you’ve got to try and make things the way you want them to be, despite the fact that someone thought you were on a diet when they were cutting the control pie chart.

Now I’m going to take things to the next level a little bit. It’s often said that God is all powerful and “in control”. For Christians, there’s also the notion of surrendering control of your life to Christ. Now the question is, how does this really work? Is it down to an action by action level, meaning if I decided to wave hello to you, was that God in control making me do that? Or is it more of an overarching thing where different things in our lives work together for His plans in a way we can’t understand? The trick with that one though is that all of our individual actions add up to the bigger picture of our lives, as I talked about earlier. With all of this, I come to the same conclusion. There are countless things both inside and outside of our control and we can’t draw any kind of line as to where God’s “control” stops and ours begins, if that’s even how that works. That being the case, I try not to focus on it too much because it’s the kind of thing where you can loop around and around into perpetuity, never hitting any kind of central answer. If you want my thoughts on a similar topic, read my last post. Supposedly God has us in the circumstances that we’re in for a reason and we have to act out of that. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t complain or praise God for whatever situation you’re in or for the control you feel you have versus what you think you should have. But, good luck ever coming to any hard conclusions and join the rest of us questioning the same thing.

Overall, I guess my point is that we have to keep perspective on this whole matter. If we think we’re fully in control of our lives, we get knocked down pretty quickly when we walk outside and realize we don’t live in individual vacuums. If we think we have no control, motivation and progress are lost rapidly. Our circumstances and the control we have are usually the result of millennia of years of events from before we even existed. So, when you set a goal or start thinking about where you want to be in five years, remember how little control you have, work with the circumstances you’re in, and keep in mind that there are billions of others doing the same thing constantly around the world and their plans may not mesh with yours. Your life will never go according to plan but I guess that’s why it’s called a messy adventure.

Just a thought…