Comfort

Wow how stupid this sounds on the day after Christmas.  A day about gifts and selflessness, about celebrating and love, how my Christmas was none of that.  Even more tragic than that statement before, is how it took Eclipse (yes the vampire movie) to show me what I really want in life.

Comfort

More specifically comforting.

I've spent much of this break with other people, but at the end of the day I'm feeling more alone then ever.  All I've ever wanted, I realize, is someone to be there for me, to comfort me in the times that are out of my control.  I've been thinking back on my life and so much of it has been torture and suffering.  I just wish that as I came home from school, beat-up and friendless, that I had someone to tell me, "its ok that these kids don't like you, it will get better, i'll help you".  I just wish that as a teenager when I had been rejected, outcast, made a pariah, that someone had stepped in and said, " your worth something, people just don't get it".  I just wish that as I tore my body apart and reconstructed it that someone had said,"It'll be fine, you'll make it, I know you can do it"

I just wish that at the end of today, I had someone say its ok that your family uses you as a tool, but I won't.  That its going to be ok leaving college, that people won't forget you, that I won't forget you.  That even though you aren't spectacular, I wan't to commit to seeing you thrive.  That's what I want.

Recently I've been so afraid of everything, that I'll make it through this next quarter that could be my very toughest. That I'll have some friends after college or that I'll end up like my sister who is so alone and that we'll only have each other.  Or even for the first time driving down from Norcal through 8 1/2 hours of rain and traffic. Trying to reroute yourself because GPS doesn't account for the grapevine being closed. All alone. Can you imagine my fear.  Or having a conversation with your "best friend" who says I can't make time for you anymore, your not important to me.  Realizing after that conversation you can't come up with a single person you feel comfortable talking to about it. Because you honestly don't want to bother them, or feel like its a burden for them.

That's it in a nutshell, I'm afraid, I'm afraid to let go of any of this, because I don't know its going to be ok, I've lived 21 years, I've fought for 21 years, and all I want is the comfort of someone standing there by me while I fight.  Wanting to understand my pain, wanting to be apart of my life.  I'm tired of inviting people in, only to have them leave.  On my 21st Christmas my heart shattered again, and I can't pick up the pieces anymore, I rather just stay broken, its less work.  No more, No more, I tap out, God, I tap.  I've finally given up faith in myself like you always wanted. I guess theres always 2011.

Life Is

I wrote this as a Freshmen in college over 3 years ago, I don't remember where I was at or how I was feeling, but some of the things on this list still make me smile

Life Is

Life is Inexplicable
Life is Love
Life is Laughter
Life is Friends
Life is Pain
Life is Drama
Life is Wonderful
Life is Banana Pancakes
Life is Sleeping till noon
Life is Awesome
Life is Incredible
Life is What you make of It
Life is Hard
Life is a Quest
Life is Family
Life is Time
Life is Action
Life is Robots
Life is Voodoo
Life is Magic
Life is Shit happens
Life is a Process
Life is Good Times
Life is many Conversations about one Thing
Life is Worriesome
Life is Confusion
Life is Tradegy
Life is Complaints
Life is Heartbreak
Life is Romance
Life is Great
Life is Strange
Life is knowing those around you are awesome
Life is : )
Life is Happiness
Life is Self-Centered
Life is Sadness
Life is Self-Sacrifice
Life is Hope
Life is Marching to your own Beat
Life is Powerlessness
Life is being the Constant Observer
Life is You
Life is I like your Moves, I like your Style
Life is Helplessness
Life is Obscure
Life is Undeniable
Life is Forever
Life is Inescapable
Life is Mystery
Life is WOW
Life is Chit-Chat
Life is Movies
Life is Power
Life is Intelligence
Life is Divine Providence
Life is Knowledge
Life is Bad Times
Life is Count It!
Life is Comedy
Life is Disasterous
Life is Picking Up the Pieces
Life is Your Killing me Smalls
Life is Everything
Life is Nothing
Life is Wowzers
Life is Sunny
Life is Rosey
Life is Electronic Euphoria
Life is Disconnect
Life is Starting so you Can Finish
Life is a Constant Struggle
Life is Suffering
Life is a Message
Life is your mom
Life is Understanding
Life is Experience
Life is Rainy
Life is Danceing in the Face of Danger
Life is Forgetting
Life is Love Actually
Life is Falling
Life is Success
Life is Long-Lost Friends
Life is Flaky
Life is Joy
Life is Grace
Life is Faith
Life is Triumph
Life is Failure
Life is Creepy
Life is Upsetting
Life is Far From Over
Life is Getting it Right the Third Time
Life is Personality
Life is Amazing

Life is Life

Christmas Time

Wow do I love Christmas time! For many years of my life it was my sanctuary. It was a time, were as a kid, I would get a break from the stress, worry, and anxiety of schooling. A time were I could always escape the circumstances of my life, and just be me.  Christmas was when my parent's place would be decorated to the nine's with the most beautiful Christmas Tree, with over a hundred ornaments, with even more decorations throughout the house.  A sent of mistletoe in the air, with homemade gingerbread men that I would always steal when my mom wasn't looking and create gingerbread men villages.  Each cottage had a different "man" that had it's own personality that related to a whole community.  My mom always knew where the cookies went, always displaying my creation on Christmas morning.

Oh, Christmas morning!  What an assortment of awesomeness, a ritual unlike anything a J person like me could hope for.  My mom, who many would say is a world class gift wrapper (just ask my elementary school teachers or anyone that's got a gift by her lol, to bad I didn't get that gift :P), would have wrapped all our gifts and put them under the tree.  Big packages, small packages, big bows, small bows, wrapped to perfection, each gift a small work of art.  With care and due diligence, my sisters and I would move the gifts and stack them in three piles in the family room.  And then with reverence we would take turns, one gift at a time, opening what we had got for Christmas.  A sight I know I'm probably exaggerating, but to me those memories are nothing but extraordinary.  Remembering the feeling of elation when my parents had gotten exactly what I wanted, had taken notice of what I said.  It was always in that moment that I felt most like family, the most connected with my parents and siblings.

So this Christmas season, I thought, I want to bring a little of what I love so much to everyone around me. But how? Sort of like how the Grinch Stole Christmas, but in reverse :D! I thought, I really want to bring the Christmas to Whoville, so let's throw a Christmas Party!  And Boy was it great! When I was inviting people to the party, I thought, well its the weekend before finals, I don't think that many people will show.  And oh how I was wrong!  More than I could have imagined showed up!  I honestly didn't even have enough dinner for everyone (my bad)!  But it turned out great, we had a Gingerbread man creation contest (wonder were I got that idea from) that saw creativity never seen before, White Elephant gift exchange which is always a blast, and watched the undeniably hilarious Elf!  I couldn't believe how in-to-it all college students were!  I was like this is to awesome for words! Hugs all around lol!

But the night before the Christmas Party, I gave my friends their gifts for Christmas! To me this was sort of an experiment. I wanted to see if the same feeling of elation and connectedness could occur when other people received gifts, and of course I just wanted to love on them because their awesome!  Needless to say, there faces were priceless. As each gift was being unwrapped, watching the person's face go from curiosity, sometimes confusion (lol A-Lowe), and turn to that elated feeling, of someone understanding them.  It was awesome!  Maybe my friends didn't ask for that gift, but it was so personalized to them, that most of my friends just said "Wow".  I loved that moment. The fact that I could share in their joy, what a privilege, what an honor, something that I hope I always appreciate.

But I think the best part about this Christmas Season, was the excuse to tell everyone I loved them, there's nothing like saying I love you, and meaning it.  So Thanks everyone for a wonderful Christmas Season, I love you all!

Blowing my Brain

Scientia and Sapentia, or, What the Schoolmen Knew -an excerpt

by John Médaille -The Full Article

These displaced truths, scientia (the integration of all knowledge) without sapentia (Wisdom), have another effect: they become, in the language of the post-modernists, “master narratives.” That is, they become organizing myths that “explain” everything without being subject to explanation themselves, or even to examination. In the realm of economics, we can see this phenomenon in a crude form in such books as the popular Freakonomics series, which purports to explain everything in terms of an almost comic statistical analysis.

But there is another displaced truth that has become an even more powerful myth, namely the myth of Darwinian evolution. It is certainly a truth that species succeed each other over time, and that there is a tendency to higher levels of organization and intelligence, as the fossil record reveals. Now this truth is remarkable enough in itself, but in attempting an explanation, the Darwinists have ventured into the realm of pure mysticism. That is, they attribute the phenomena to random mutations which are tested against survivability. But to say something is random is equivalent to saying it has no scientific explanation, for that is what a random event is. The findings of a “science” of random events are suitable only for publication in the Journal of Non-Repeatable Experiments. If the changes in the genes are random, then there is no science which can reach them.

Of course mutations can be as frequent as you like, but this only adds to the mystery, for what is interesting is not the rate of mutations, but the rate of useful mutations occurring at a precise time. For not only does a mutation have to be an improvement, it has to be an improvement at the moment it occurs. A higher level of organization imposes a higher cost in energy, and if an eye, a wing, or a fin is not needed at the moment it appears, it is of no value. The rate of useful changes would surely be an infinitesimally small number, and the number that appear at the right moment would be infinitesimally smaller. And if these odds were not poor enough, this remarkable set of coincides must occur in more than one individual in the same area at the same time, unless one wants to posit a single mother, an Eve-like origin to all species. But even Eve had her Adam, and without a mate with a similar trait, a trait is not likely to endure. Is it not odd that the Darwinists, having rejected a common mother for man, posit a common mother for every other species?
Yet the changes do occur, with remarkable frequency at the precise moment they are needed and over a sufficiently large population in a sufficiently small area to ensure that a beneficial change will endure. Something very interesting is happening, something that cannot be reached by a “science” of randomness, which can only be a pseudo-science. Creationists would like to attribute everything to the direct intervention of God in every case, which doesn’t tell us much about how God does it, which is the object of science, but at least it is internally coherent, in a way that a “science” of randomness is not; the creationists may be mere mystics, but they are not half as mystical as the Darwinists.

It is not as science that Darwinism obtains its remarkable prestige, for it stands outside the scientific hierarchy and will accept no critique from statistics, biology, zoology, or any other discipline. It is a master narrative, claiming to explain all things, even as it has no explanation of itself. I was reminded of this fact by a book on technology covered in the last issue of the New York Times Review of Books. The author would tie the progress in technology to the theory of Darwinian evolution. Even the reviewer noted how silly that was, but I doubt a week goes by when the Review doesn’t carry notices on a book that “explains” something or other by Darwinian “science.” The path to scientific prestige in our age runs through Darwin’s mysticism; only by embracing this myth can we prove that we have risen above tribal taboos and myths of the Jews.
Of course, we all live by some organizing myth; it’s the only way to live. Our information must be “slotted” before it is received, or we could not make sense of the world. And the mythical narratives can never be proven, they can only be compared. The Scholastics were fully conscious of this fact, yet they could not rest with it. They worshiped a God who was not merely a mythos, but a logos as well, a rational God ruling a rational universe. The great and bold project of the Schoolmen was to understand this universe, not just a a collection of “facts,” but as in inter-related whole, in which each truth found its proper place to produce wisdom, a wisdom that was a remarkable union of belief and science. Modern science has given us modern miracles, like iPhones and atom bombs and Chrysler cars, but has not given us the wisdom to use them. And it is this wisdom, sapentia, that we need right now, if we are not to bring the whole thing down upon ourselves and our children.

Strip Me

This song is so deep to me, I've probably listened to it 40 times by now, I literally think that the first verse is my life.

"Everyday I fight for
All my future somethings,
A thousand little wars
I have to choose between,
I could spend a lifetime
Earning things I don’t need,
That’s like chasing rainbows
And coming home empty"

Always striving for what?  Fighting for what? The future, all the lives I could of had or want to have. I'm never satisfied with my own, having to be better.

The second verse I swear mirror's how I view myself, always on, always speaking my heart, always wearing it on my sleeve. I guess I realized that when I examined my identity, to see if there was something deeper underneath the surface, I found that there is very little underneath the surface, I let most of it all-hangout there.  Finding security that in my identity was openness. 

I don't need a microphone
To say what I been thinking,
My heart is like a loudspeaker
Thats always on eleven,
And if you strip me,
Strip it all away
If you strip me,
What would you find
If you strip me,
Strip it all away
I’m still the same

And finally the chorus, the story of my life, my past. That at the end of the day, everyone that has taken any part of me, take it all, keep it, its yours. And realize you only took part of me and you can't take my entire identity with you.

Take what you want,
Steal my pride,
Build me up
Or cut me down to size,
Shut me out
But I’ll just scream,
I'm only one voice in a million
But you ain't taking that from me.

Because behind it all, the brokenness, bruises, memories, there is still a voice, a person.

Strip Me- Natasha Beddingfield

Funny Faces hmm....

Ya so I'm trying something different, how about some video! But this is sort of a test video lol! Funny faces that make no sense, but hey hopefully you'll be able to hear the T-swift in the back lol!

Agape

So this week I've been thinking a lot about love.  I've been thinking a lot about how I feel towards other people, to really examine the relationship, to see were I stand with them.  Mostly I've been looking for this particular type of love, the Greeks defined it as Agape, or a deep passionate love or Godly love.  This opposed to Filao, or a friendly love.  Agape to me is allusive. When I start getting to know someone I don't necessarily focus on getting to Agape love right of the bat, but I definitely look to further my relationship until I reach Agape.  To me the feeling materializes in the reference of a name, if I get the warm fuzzies by the mere mention of a name.  I know I'm almost at that Agape love. To me the feeling is knowing that I would do anything for that person, that I long to know more about them, to make their life the best it can possibly be, to want to be a great friend to them.  I know I've achieved that Agape love when it is so easy to seed my pride over to further that other persons life. Or that to be generous to them doesn't even register as strange or unnatural, but as a regular extension of our interaction.  But most importantly, I know that Agape has taken me over when, in times of tragedy or triumph, I don't just feel for them, but I feel like them. That because of that love for them, I've learned to understand who they are, their inner thoughts and feelings, and that when they cry or laugh I don't only know their pain or joy, but I can be in their experience with them.

That my friends I feel is the crux of life, I think lately I've been sitting passively, waiting for others to make that Agape feeling real for me. But I've realized that to make that connection, to establish that love for another you have to work for it.  And if I truly believe in that love, that its the best thing life has to offer, than I have to be willing to work for it with all my heart.  No more self-pity of "why does nobody care for me", or "why do people not see the good things about me", its not about me. If someone wants to feel how I feel, I will welcome them with open arms, but that doesn't me I can't strive for Agape with another irregardless.  Fairness in love is not about meeting someone half-way, but going the whole distance for them in the hopes they will go the whole distance for you in return.  Life is Agape.

Cold

Tonight was cold, not only was it cold outside, but man did I realize how cold my heart is.  I was being presented with some terribly hard truths in my life and yet my heart was barely moved.  I was shocked, me who thought he wore his heart on his sleeve, had only a flutter in his heart, and at that moment I realized something was seriously wrong with me.

Today I ran in to a good friend of mine, she walked up to me, and immediately said what was on her mind.  She said, "Is something wrong, you look like your in turmoil", to me I was like "how could she get any of that from literally seeing me for 3 seconds", but she continued and said all I get is chaos from you.  It was strange that she would use the word chaos, me who feels like their life is so ordered, a time management schedule that makes wedding planners cry, and yet she would call me out saying you are nothing but chaos.  The sad thing was I wasn't even phased, I just answered with a perfectly prepared answer of just having a lot of energy drawn out in a lot of different places.  Not even pondering the question of how I felt about her statement of chaos.

That set of events is a perfect representation of how cold I have become, I can't even feel for myself, not even about something that some one calls out.  I can't even be angry, upset, happy, reluctant, defensive, or any other host of emotions and reactions.  All I felt was passive, subdued, almost didn't even registered that I was suppose to feel anything towards what was being said to me, only to react to what should be said back, what should be done to get through.  What a terrible robot I've become.  All I've done is suppress every feeling so it can't weaken me, so that I can keep my energy up, without being torn apart from being so upset about so much.  What else was I suppose to do?  I tried talking with people, I tried going to God, I tried changing my life, nothing worked, it was my last resort to suppress everything.

When I write this my inside is cold, I'm writing because I have to think to get out this thought or it would drive me insane, but I can't seem to register what I'm feeling, only that its off.  Its freezing in my head, I just want to feel what it is that normal people are suppose to feel.  I'm sick of being compelled by purpose, but not registering what the hell I'm supposed to be feeling.  WHY! WHY! I know this week we've been talking about secrets, but I've had my final secret for forever, I'll probably never talk about it, someone said it was what was keeping me lonely.  But the sad reality is it would rain judgment down on me faster than anything else in my entire life.  Who would ask for that? I'm not exactly happy, but I"m not exactly miserable either, people at least tolerate me.

I don't exactly have the answers to my problems, I just know there driving me insane and all I feel is nothing but a bitter chill.

Lost in the World

Lost in the World - Kanye West

Humanity

What does it mean to be human?  What does it mean to lack humanity? I think a lot of people have a lot of different answers to the questions.  Its been plaguing me for awhile, those questions.  For me I grab from many different traditions of what being human looks like. Being flawed, broken, in need of enlightenment, being driven by free will and its thronging for survival.  Humanity to me seems nothing more than a competition over a glass pane mosaic that has been broken, with everyone trying to fit their piece back into the mosaic in a better position then where it was to begin with.  Humanity can never achieve the perfectness of the original glass pane, but only seek to imitate its original's form and function.  Thus, once humanity realizes, and I believe it has, *cough* Post-modernism *cough*, that the mosaic can never be the same as the original, they will seek to dominate that which it deems unconquerable.  Like a four-year old at a museum that has been told not to touch the art, it is inexplicably drawn towards that which it has been told cannot be done.  This competition is nothing but a short-sighted attempt to replace the original glass pane with another.  It's the submission of the pursuit of perfection via an infusion of human chaos.  Instead of constantly reminding ourselves that there was an original design, that the world had a purpose, a place for order.  We disguise what we think and try to deceive ourselves into thinking that through blind tolerance the world will be made a better place.  This, without actually seeing nor remembering that the mosaic was best in its original form.  And furthermore that a mosaic is not only the pieces that make it up, but a holistic and collective vision of what its creator intended it to be.

Humanity, now more than ever, is lost within a sea of chaos. Before this new era we sought order, often times through unrighteous acts of war, hate, discrimination, and genocide. We wanted our world to be a place of peace and order for selfish gain, a way of controlling the world to fit our own self-edification.  But I believe that when Martin Luther King Jr. made his speech, "I have a dream", he wanted not only the equality of rights for his people, but the equality of purpose for all of humanity.  Mr. King saw that though White people had more power then Black people, the end goal of humanity was not to fight for power forever.  But it was to achieve its purpose through unity, obtaining that which it had lost.  Reclaiming a world that had fallen. Perfection.

Though humanity can never be perfect again,  its purpose to never be fulfilled, it has a duty neigh a calling to try, yes to try to obtain perfection.  Not in the way that social Darwinist think, nor eugenicists, for they lost sight of the perfection that had been intended. They believed that by perfecting humanity physically, genetically, it would bring about the immortalization of man as the dominant species of the universe, their universe.  Spiting God for allowing us to fall, and allowing them to control the perceived chaos of their world.  They missed the point, perfection was never meant to be physical, but an entirely spiritual experience.

That if you really think about the garden, what made it so perfect? Was it that Adam did not need or want of  any food? That every physical comfort was tendered that made it so perfect?  I don't believe that this is the end of perfection, because, though Adam may have eaten, God did not provide to complete him, to fill up a lack in him.  Hunger had not been thought up nor invented, you cannot perfect that which does not exist.  So what was the perfection of the garden? Its perfection lied within what man lacked.  That man lacked a need for a moral compass, that man did not need the knowledge of good & evil, because he was one in unity with God, the creator.  The perfection lied in the absence of the need for knowledge.  And the pursuit of knowledge is a spiritual journey.  Thus, the lack of that need needing to be satiated and fulfilled, is perhaps the perfection that God had intended.

Contrast that idea with today's world, what do we see, a world busting at the seems with information, were every nook and cranny of life is recorded, analyzed, documented, and archived.  Where humanities thirst for knowledge is reaching a critical mass.  That most people think there is just to much information out there to be able to know it all.  What has all this information done to us?  Some would say that it has made us more connected, that we as humans, being able to share our collective knowledge, has been a boon for the overall well-being of humanity.  And I would be hard pressed to disagree.  We have cures for many more diseases, we grow more food then ever before, we have created systems that now span continents.  But again we miss the point, as we give in to the thirst for knowledge we seek to fulfill our own personal physical needs, never our spiritual. The Scientia that permeates the information age's society leaves humans feeling more connected physically, but more disconnected spiritually, unable to comprehend what their fellow man is going through, an epidemic of empathatic-less people.  That in our own pursuit to end the suffering of the world, we neglect a more important pursuit, a pursuit which is ultimately the most important thing you can do while on this planet.  That is to achieve a spiritual connection to the creator and to each other.

So what does it mean to be humanity?  It means that, together, we are more than just individuals, we are a purposed entity, an entity that seeks unification of spiritual connectedness, that should be striving for more than solving the physical needs of today, but striving to regain that which God gave us in the beginning, a deep an eternal love and understanding for him and each other.  A state of lacking nothing spiritually.  That is what it means to be human.

Today

I was just feeling motivated to write something today based solely on the beauty of the clouds in the sky.  Its amazing that God can produce a piece of art right before your eyes and allow you to watch it develop.  Seeing the different wisps and puffs moving throughout the sky, the radiance of the sun creating almost a pop-out effect on the clouds.  It reminds me that today can always be better than yesterday, that tomorrow, can be better than today, and that tomorrow's tomorrow can't be imagined.  I think that the simple things give me the most joy, there often times hidden in plain sight, you just have to be looking in the right places. 

Walking across the bridge today in the quiet of the morning. I realized that what a simple thing quiet is, but how we really don't get much quiet in our lives.  Or how simply opening the door for someone and seeing their face be appreciative makes my day.  Or even the simple pleasure of saving one pop-tart for later just so you can experience it again.  Today has been about the simple things, it doesn't get much better than that.

Fragile

In these last few weeks I've seen how fragile I am.  After gaining some clarity, I see now that my life hangs in a precarious position, balanced between 4 lives, one of work, one of calling, one of suffering, one of obligation.  All sit upon a person that is like a chemist in a lab with 4 experiments going on at the same time, stressed, running around like a crazy person, with nothing to show for it.  My life is fragile, if but one of those lives gets out of containment, all of them will come crashing down.  To the people involved with those lives my crash would affect them only slightly, no one is irreplaceable, and sadly enough I know it.  So really the crash is wiping away all the work I have done, all the struggle, all the perseverance, all of my life.  And to know that my life is that fragile, to know that at any moment I could be crushed under the surge of inability and have everything be taken from me.  I'm afraid, I know I'm reaching that point. Of utter collapse. And I'm afraid of the aftermath.  I feel as if everything in my life is built on vapor and clouds, and all I want is someone, God, anyone just to pull me close and tell me its worth it, your worth it, I love you, and you'll be safe with me.  Blazing trails leads you into the wilderness, its cold and dark out there.  I just need a fire to keep me warm and to light my path.  I feel as if I'm going into hypothermia, waking up just in time to realize I've been dieing.  To realize how breakable I am, how weak my identity is, how disposable my life is.  All I want is to be safe, removed from judgment, buffered against the elements of life, and loved for who I am, not what I do.  I'm so lonely, I feel like I can't make a connection with anyone, I try so hard to get in other peoples' worlds just to ease the pain of feeling so alone.  I just wish it wasn't always a struggle, that I could form natural bonds, that every decision in a relationship doesn't have to be some calculated dance.  That every conversation wasn't an intense internal battle of what to say or what not to say.  It tears me down, it makes feeble, insecure, and afraid.  Feeling connectionless makes me feel fragile, forgettable, and all together worthless as a person.  I feel like all I want is to know that I'm worthwhile, that beyond a shadow of a doubt that, if and when my house of cards falls, someone would want to play 52 card pick-up with my life. I'm tired of writing this, peace.

The Day to Day

Just to remember how absolutely crazy busy I was when I look back at this time in my life I'm going to lay down the normal week.

Monday
Wake-Up -7:30
Work- 8 to 11
Class - 11 to 12
Back to Work - 12 - 2 or 3
Group Meeting- 3 to 6
Small Group - 6:15 to 10 or 11 (Probably first meal of the day)
Homework - 11 to crash

Tuesday
Wake-Up - 7:30
Work - 8 to 11
Class - 11 to 2
Back to Work - 2-4
Group Meeting/ Code Sesh - 4 to 7 (sometimes later)
Get IV stuff done, homework, helping other peeps out, fix-up the apartment, maybe eat - 7 to 12
Crash - 12 to crash

Wednesday
Wake-Up - 7:30
Work - 8 to 11
Class - 11  to 2:30
Back to Work - 2:40 to 5
Group Meeting - 5 to 9 (often times later)
Get IV stuff done, homework, helping other peeps out, fix-up the apartment, maybe eat - 9 to crash

Thursday
Wake-Up - 7:30
Work - 8 to 11
Class - 11 to 2
Back to Work - 2 to 4 or 5
Break before Praxis to get miscellaneous stuff done and help set-up, maybe eat - 5 to 7
Praxis - 7 to 11
Homework - 11 to crash

Friday
Wake-Up - 10
Class - 11 to 12
Miscellaneous - 12 till whenever get all the things done I couldn't during the week
Have Fun - sometime
Eat something I really like - sometime

Saturday
Chores - All Day
Fun - When I'm done with chores
Maybe Group Meetings depending on need

Sunday
Finish what I couldn't get done on Saturday
Leader's Meeting - 5 to 9
Prep passage for next week - 9 to 11

Of course every week is pretty variable, but it flows in this pattern!

Lets just say I love you...

So today I want to talk about something near and dear to my heart, affirmation!  I realized that as I've walked around this week, I've seen a multitude of different people each with their own unique gifts, talents, abilities, and personalities.  You know what I noticed about most of them, low self-esteem, I hadn't noticed for a long time just how unhappy certain people have been in my life.  Sadness, stress, worry, pain, grief permeated their very beings. So I said to myself where the hell have you been, let not another person go by without telling them something good about them, or how much I value them, or just how much I love them.  With that attitude at the front, I lead a charge against self-esteem with the sword of affirmation.  I don't think I have given so much affirmation in one week or done more to make people feel loved in one week.  Whatever need I saw, I fell upon it like a hawk.  Lest this turns into bragging, I want to talk more about the attitude of affirmation and its effect on people.

First the attitude of affirmation, it seems like such a simple thing just to say nice things to people.  Like "wow I'm glad you did well on such and such", or "good luck on your midterm", but what really encompasses an attitude of affirmation is telling people, "I knew you'd do well on such and such, your so awesome, you've always been one of the most intelligent people I know" Its letting them know you see them, you understand who they are.  Its seeding over your pride to boost theirs, its taking the time to figure out what makes them unique and directing all positive energy to that fact.  The attitude of affirmation is looking for the special in everyone and focusing on the uniqueness that makes them incredible.  Even if you don't think you see it, that specialness, or you even think that each person seems the same or that "why should I complement someone who is obviously not as good as I am".  I just want to say this attitude is not about you, its about them.  So you ask what's in it for me? Actually quite a lot.  Firstly, when you look for the good in others, you end up finding the good in yourself, because as you see their uniqueness, you start to understand what makes you unique.  Secondly, as you start examine others you start to see all the potential in them, and in that realization you understand what potential you can do together!  The greatest fault of mans pride is in thinking that if he does things alone they will get done better then together.  Realizing that potential for collaboration and then acting on that potential could radically change your life. 

The bane to this attitude is focusing on comparing how you stack up, looking for weakness, turning everything into a competition.  It will only lead to momentary happiness, only the momentary elation of you winning will fill you, until you have to find the next challenge to master, a slave to your own ambition.  How small that is in comparison to achieving something as a team, as a group, as a community.  The reward of achieving something beyond yourself, that exists beyond your own consciousness. That is the effect of affirmation on a community. It starts small, a community begins with an affirming attitude, then people start to affirm the awesomeness they see, then they realize the uniqueness of others, then they see the potential in the combination of talents. And together they do amazing things. 

The more I think about the interactions I've had this week, I realize that people meet affirmation with curiosity, generosity with caution, love with confusion.  So when someone asks you, "What's this for" just answer, lets just say I love you.

Awakenings

So yesterday in Small group (that's what bible study is called in InterVarsity), I realized something remarkable about life.  Now before I get to that,  I want to preface this a little bit.  I feel like from last week to this week I've had a reawakening.  And I mean that in the truest sense of that word.  For the past 8 months, maybe a little bit more, I've been seriously depressed.  I didn't even recognize it till about 5 days ago until I had the experience of vividly being awoken. On that day, I seriously felt like someone who had been asleep then startled awake.  Such was the transformation of my mind, my heart, the connection being reestablished between the two. For those 8 months, I realized I had been shutting down, turning off functions of my heart.  Burying pain, tragedy, heartbreak, trying to escape the damage that had been done.  Even more so wanting to hold on to the person I had lost.  Trying to remember the love you had for that person and how the pain of them leaving, felt, feels like burning.

Over 8 months, I tried to cover my grief over with action, as my heart was dying, suffocating over its own suffering, my mind continued to work, to push through. It would set a mental check-list of all the things that I needed to get done, skip over all the things I didn't want to think about, and the days would flow by.  I would realize things were wrong in the quiet times, like when I was at work surrounded by the quiet of the office, or when I was on vacation not inundated with the business that kept me protected.  The things I did acted as the buffer-zone to my heart, as long as I constructed more buffers I would be safe from ever having to deal with my issues.  So continued my pattern of buffering and trying to forget, till one day I looked around at my life and I said how the hell did I get here. I had no idea, literally no idea of how my life had progressed from then till now.

When I realized that, it consumed me, why couldn't I figure out what had happened? why do I feel so at war myself?  I even said this to a few people- "I feel such a mind-heart disconnect"  A part of me was compelled to figure it out, and finally 5 days ago I found out.  All the lying to myself, all the self-hate, all the business it was trying to make me forget who and why I was. Yes, why I was, I feel like I have a purpose given to me by God, and I had forgotten that purpose, buried it just as readily as I buried my pain, and that purpose is to love people beyond myself.  All during my hibernation I was so self-consumed, self-absorbed in what I was doing I forgot how to love people right.  I feel like during that time I was like a nuclear-reactor that had hit emergency stop, then refused to start, and finally I've turned back on. I've had a reawakening.

During the past 5 days, I've felt better then I can remember for a long time, living for others again has never felt so good.  I can't describe to you the level of perception that has been given back, its like seeing a friend you haven't seen for a long time, they look the same, but you can tell things are different.  That's how I feel, my attitude was like how it was pre-winter heart-destruction, back to going above and beyond for others, back to wanting to make others lives the best they can be. God I love that feeling.

Friendship, its a funny concept...

I had this funny thought at work today, after getting a myriad of texts from a bunch of different people today, I thought to myself, why don't I characterize what the content of the texts was about into work or friend as a sort of experiment to see just what I get texted about.  Work texts fit into the realm of they requiring me to do something for the other person and friendly texts fell under the heading of they wanted to know how I was doing or invite me to something they were doing.  So for just the month of October and really just for the first 21 days I received a grand total of 402 texts.  After being bored at work and sifting through the vast majority of texts, I split my texts into the two categories with the findings being: 349 work related texts and 53 friendly texts.  Thus, I realized something striking about my communication with other people, it relied primarily on me doing something for them. 

Now I won't make any conjectures on why that is, just that I proffer this wisdom about myself...I'm a dunce, a dedicated dunce, but a dunce nonetheless and that many people trusting me with getting things done well.... is bad policy. But other than that people text me to do work.  I may have found it interesting that I get so many work related texts, but not at all surprising. Most of you know me, I do a lot of work, I'm always going to help somebody out or answer somebodies question or just plain working. The workhorse of the friendship fleet.  So naturally most people would think of me as a work-o-holic, which I won't debate the validity of that statement, just that their might be more than meets the eye. Though I understand the thought process, if you need something done quickly or as close to now as possible, or really done at all, you turn to the person that is willing to put their agenda on hold for your agenda in a moments notice. It makes sense to me.

But what I would really like to talk about is why there are only 53 texts that I thought of as friendly  (And mind you the criteria for this category was very loose).  If a "how are you doing" was in the text, I counted it, even if it was followed by a request to do something for the person. So I think to myself, what is it about my disposition that makes people think I'm not very friendly or more so that I'm not to invite-able to things.  I think the most distressing thing for me is that I feel like I only have half-friendships. Grounded only in the services I can provide or my ability to get something done for the person.  It's like I'm the garbage-man of friendships I do the jobs no one else wants, but as soon as my service is provided I'm forgotten until the next time the trash needs to be collected.  I understand that I may not be the funnest guy ever, but I've got to have at least some redeeming qualities.  Something that makes someone want me to be around just for existing's sake.  It's just sad, that at the end of the day, I didn't have to force myself to work all day, it was the only thing available to do.

So I don't know what to think about friendship in general. Its a strange amalgamation of being useful and being forgotten.  About being needed, but never wanted.  Always waiting for the inevitable text, but hoping it won't be what you think it is.  Hoping that you mean something beyond an agenda...ya Friendship, its a funny concept...

I had forgotten what living felt like

I went to this really awesome event on Friday night called Dance for Change. It was a fundraiser to help raise money for homeless kids in Santa Ana.  Santa Ana is one of the poorest cities in the United States, and especially in comparison to the Mega-Affluent Orange County. The church that was hosting the event had found pro-bono DJ's and had worked really hard to find sponsors for all the food and drinks so that all the donations could go to the kids. 

So I think to myself where do I, Matty, come into this story. How was I apart of this awesome event, what did I do to make it come together, or be awesome.  And the answer is absolutely nothing. That's best part, I didn't do anything.  I had no responsibilities, no obligations. I didn't have to come, be there, show up, donate, or even dance for that matter.  When I was at the event, I didn't recognize the feeling at first, it was almost imperceptible, it was a joy unlike anything I had felt in a really long time.  A joy that came from a subconscious realization that I was unbound and unfettered.  It was a feeling that for the first time in a long time, I didn't have to worry about whether things were getting done or worrying if everyone was having a good time.  The understanding that I came because I wanted to be there, I wanted to donate, I wanted to dance.  There was such freedom in the choice.  Nobody was going to miss me if I wasn't there, I didn't have to worry how my character would be reflected in my leadership, or worry about taking the blame for an event that was less then stellar.  I didn't have to be (insert anything)!

I think I had forgotten what it felt like to receive anything,  I think I spend so much of my time filling in the holes, gaps, and canyons of problems that surround me that I forget what it feels like to actually be given anything.  Though the Dance for Change organizer's didn't realize it, and (to be honest the event wasn't about me at all, thankfully),  I was the one receiving at the event.  Ironic that at an event meant for giving, I would feel an unbridled sense of receiving.  That God would, in those few hours, coordinate giving to those much less privileged then I physically, with me who was poor, spiritually.  I don't know what to think about God's timing of the situation, but what I do know is how it revealed by spiritual inadequacy. How much I need to be filled.  How my entire being had turned into a void, listless and without love for myself. I had forgotten what it felt like to be a person, and not just a slave to service.  I had forgotten what living felt like.

Someone said you should write your life down....

It was in total passing and actually caught me by surprise, as words of wisdom often do.  I was talking with a Freshmen at Pippin, probably a week ago (can never much tell time anymore : P). I had never met him before, but in an effort to be friendly and welcome him to this new found wonderland of UCI, I struck up a conversation with him. Asking how his classes are, how he likes the dorms, you know the normal stuff. Of course, he asks me how I like my dorm and I'm forced into telling him that I'm a 4th year. This of course produces shock, not only from him, but from the three people sitting around us that were ease-dropping on our convo.

I think what I love about Freshmen the most is their sense of awe in the moment of discovery, everything is new, holding almost a mystical quality.  Meeting a 4th year for the first time, was like a Unicorn had jumped into the room and started break dancing sending out rainbows of awesome.   So they pounced, like Lions out for knowledge, they started asking me all sorts of questions about UCI and my time here as student.  I couldn't have been any happier to answer all their questions (I'm a sucker for answering questions with common knowledge, but passing it off as utter wisdom), and when they had no more questions about how the school worked, how their major would turn out, or how and why an Anteater was our mascot, they asked me to share how my experience of college went.  Well that's probably a topic of another blog post, and by probably I mean definitely a topic of another blog post. 

And so I concluded my story, a journey through a young fools eyes. The Freshmen, by now their were a few more added to the number, didn't know quite what to make of the story as it was probably just ramblings. But out of the back, someone sitting at the end of the table, mutters under their breath, "you should write that down".  So that got me thinking, if these Freshmen, who hadn't known me from atom, or even just that one Freshmen who spoke that little string of words, got something out of my story, maybe just maybe, it would be worth it to write my life down.  I don't think to highly of myself, I generally dislike me, I dislike my thoughts often times even more. I think I hide that pretty well, but my credo if you wanna call it that is, "That I live to serve", so maybe this is another way to love people, painting a picture of a young fool, ramblings of a young fool.