Judgement

"Don't judge me." It's a phrase I often hear from others and which has always bothered me. Yet I heard the words escape my mouth. The phrase is an epidemic. So terrified of being judged is this generation that we assume judgment is around every corner and beg for it to leave us alone. Perhaps this is just because we hate and are ashamed of the judgments we cast on others. We fear that one day they will be pointed back our direction.

White-Wash

That white-picket fence that everyone's talking about (alright, so it's just me talking about it)-- that place where you can retire and rest--has to be white-washed. It isn't good enough on its own, so they made it look better. But the thing about white-wash is that it has to be re-done yearly or the illusion of perfection will be eroded by reality and everyone could see just how much that white-picket fence isn't what it's cracked up to be. And that could be the end of capitalist society as America knows it. It could be the dawn of something must better but the end of the land lords of the white-picket fence.

Hopefully my obsession with the American dream will ebb and be taken on by a new topic for thought.

Waiting

I was recently house-sitting for a friend. There were a lot of good things I learned, but the most interesting thing I noticed was simply the manner in which I lived. Knowing someone was coming back to check up on my actions drastically increased my productivity and maturity level. I lived better. If only I would live all my life like I was waiting...

Rebel Without a Cause

There are two ways to read this post's title: Rebel as a noun, in which case you are defining someone. and Rebel as a verb, which is what a rebel (noun) without a cause tells everyone else to do. Rebel from everything you think you know, everything that is in place and do so simply because you can. Because there is a chance it isn't right. You don't need to really think about it. All you need to do is think about how thinking about whether or not it is right.
But can you ever rebel from everything? Can you walk a path that has yet to be tread?
It's a lonely thing to do. They form packs of rebels. But can they rebel from themselves?
They preach freedom and yet they are enslaved to themselves.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of rebels with good reasons for their rebellion. And I applaud them. But there is a sect of people who rebel against everything they have been taught, told and seen because they have been told to and because they think it is cool. It is those who are slaves to the rebellion.

Just Be Yourself

Everyone tells you to just be yourself. But first you have to know who you are.
However, who you are is in flux. It is somewhere in between where you have been and where you are going. It is the point between who you have been and who you will be. Who you are is who you are becoming. But can you ever really know that?
You know where you've been, and you know where you intend to go, but do you know where you are actually going?
Decide who you will be. Be that person. Don't just be yourself, that's confusing and in the end won't get you very far. You'll never grow if you just spend your time being who you have always been.
We could all use a little improvement, alright, a lot of improvement.
Be who you will be. Be who you want to become.

Lies

The most dangerous lies are the ones that tell you that you already believe them.

Compassion and Confession

In a world of increasingly lonely and separated people, where technologies that were meant to bring us all together have separated us, I think we need to take a new look at what friendship means. I have around 300 friends on facebook. What does that really mean? I think it means I at one point in time was friendly with or an acquaintance of around 300 people. But how many were truly friends?

Friendship has less to do with convenience and compatibility than it does with love. That love may take time to develop, but that is what makes a true friend.

So many profess to desire community, but what is really desired are all the glamorous aspects of community and fellowship. We want the sense of being a part of something, we want the caring and love. But what we want to exclude is the compassion (the suffering along with others), and the confession. Until we can be real with each other and share our faults as well as our virtues, we have yet to master friendship. Until we live in a place where a member can bring to the whole their troubles and their struggles, both internal and external, then we have yet to master community.

I know I’m not there yet. I have a few true friends, and I hope to become more real with the rest. I have a small community with those few friends, but I look forward to its expansion.

Life and Death (Continued)

Continuing to consider living out our beliefs I wondered about America. Most people I know are dissatisfied. They want something else. They are not quite sure what it is, sometimes they are, but not really. If people knew what they wanted they would stop wanting things. But dissatisfaction seems to characterize America. We don’t like our lives and we don’t like what we have. If we don’t like our lives, then we must not like our beliefs. As a society what we believe in is self-importance and finding new ways to demonstrate it.

Life and Death

Today I thought about death. I considered the pain of various methods of dying. I pondered the reasons people allow themselves to die. There is this idea of going down in a blaze of glory. Death can be the fastest way to achieve glory and to ensure you are remembered as you really want to be. All you have to do is die for something other people believe in. But it seems to me that we live for what we believe in. That being the case, I am not sure I like what I believe. Most of it, but sometimes I just do things and I look back on the day and am repulsed by how selfish I was or how prideful or how inconsiderate I managed to be.

Alone in the Universe

There may be life on Jupiter’s moon Europa. But I wonder, if we found life elsewhere in the universe, would that change anything? Policy would change. Our formal philosophies would change. Would we change? Would our actions reflect our new knowledge?
There are people in my own community homeless and hungry, but what have I done for them? My life hasn’t changed for them, and I am ashamed to say it, so I can’t imagine my life will change for microbes in and ocean, under miles of ice, 5 times further away than the sun.
That is a truly depressing thought.

Humanitarianism

Once, I decided that the best way to help the world would be to become rich. I thought that it by getting rich and giving money to other people who would go places and actually do something, I could really help the impoverished and the oppressed. Wrong is not a strong enough word. People do not need money. They need love. There is nothing wrong with getting rich and giving it away. But when does one cross over the invisible line and become rich? No, it is too dangerous to even try. I would be in danger of falling in love with those tantalizing lovers, Lincoln, Franklin and Jackson.