Lyrics

If you read this blog, you probably know that I like to talk about religion a lot. I am a strong believer in the Christian faith and I've been following it all of my life. While I'm pretty firmly entrenched in what I believe, there's still a huge unknown element for me that I'm trying to somehow figure out. I'm sure that there are an infinite amount of things that I'll never know about God or about life, but as I talked about last post, I think it's better that way.

So this post is going to be about a part of Christianity, and that part is worship - like through music. I was in church yesterday and it got me thinking about it.

There's this one song that it played in churches and on Christian radio stations that I don't remember the name of or anything about it, except I know that the first line is "I'm at a loss for words". Guess what? The song doesn't end there. In fact is continues on for like 6 minutes. Starting a 6 minute long song by saying that you don't have anything to say doesn't really make sense, and pretty much just makes you a liar from the beginning. Which one is it? Do you not have anything to say? Or do you have enough to say to cover 6 minutes? If the song was 7 seconds long and only had the lyrics "I'm at a loss for words" I'd be cool with it, in fact that would be really funny.

That reminds me of this one scene from The Office when Ryan is talking to Pam and Michael about his time in Thailand. It goes:

Ryan: Do you guys wanna hear about Thailand?
Pam and Michael: Sure...
Ryan: pause... It was indescribable.

Hilarious.

Anyways, now to the serious part. The song that made me think about this had the lyrics:

Your love so deep, is washing over me
Your face is all I seek, you are my everything
Jesus Christ, You are my one desire
Lord hear my only cry, to know you all my life

People got really into that, which is great. But it had a different affect on me, because I knew that I couldn't say the words honestly. Like everyone is in there singing those lyrics but how many of them are actually being honest? For me, I can say that in my life I'm chasing after more than just God. Whether that's right or wrong is a different story and not my intention here, but I can say that I'm sure I don't give enough attention to God and I'm sure I'm hurting myself being that way. My point is to question what good singing words that aren't true really is?

Worship is more than just saying words towards God, it's a whole experience and focus thing, but again this isn't the point of the post. I'm not saying that if you're saying something in a song that isn't necessarily true that your experience is completely empty. There's tons to gain from it regardless. The point I'm trying to get at is that people don't pay enough attention to the actual words they're saying. The ideal situation would be to hear and understand what you're saying, decide if it is true or not, decide if you would want that to be true, and if you do then go try to make it happen. Isn't getting better and growing one of the main parts of Christianity? If you're just saying words that aren't true and you have no desire to make them true, I'm not sure there was much good in saying the words in the first place.

This is as much a challenge for me as it is for anyone else, because I was the one sitting there realizing that I was saying things that wasn't true. I know that I want them to be true, but I'm definitely not 100% confident in my ability to make it happen.

Not everyone really cares to talk about God, much less about worship, which I'm sure a lot of people think is weird, but you can apply this to other walks of life as well. There are always emotional moments in life when we say or feel like we're going to make some kind of change in our lives, but then the emotions go away and then we kinda forget about it and it never happens. You feel good and motivated for a short time, but then that moment turns out to be worthless because you didn't do anything about it when it was over. Getting to the point of constant motivation is impossible, it's not how we work. Figuring out how to get things done without the motivation is the goal, and that's what really separates great people from average people.

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Math and then Everything Else

This morning I started watching Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, which is really entertaining, almost in a strange way. The first episode I watched was with Chris Rock, and right in the middle of it he makes this really subtle but really profound statement. Just all the sudden he says

"There's math... and then everything is debatable"

That's starting to actually feel right to me. The longer you live the more you realize how rare it is for people to agree on things. There are a few things that you really can't debate on, like math (although people will try their best to do that too), but most things are pretty much up for interpretation. But you know what? I think that's how it should be - I think that makes life a lot more worthwhile.

The only reason debate is ever looked at negatively is because people let their emotions get involved and then they get upset and feelings start getting hurt. If everyone had straight and accepting heads on their shoulders, debate would be so much more valuable.

What would life be like if you could figure everything out? If by the time you were 40 or 50 you just knew everything. What would you live for? If you think about it, we all pretty much just live for the unknown every day. We all hope for opportunity and a good future - a lot of people live for whatever they think comes after life. If you knew what was going on and what will go on in the future I don't think there'd be much of a point to anything.

That said, I do think it's important to try and figure stuff out. At some point you realize that you'll never actually have it all together, and if that stops you from trying to get it together then you're a fool. Chasing unreachable endpoints sounds dumb, but there's an infinite amount of value in that chase. The worst thing you can do is go through the motions mentally. I say this in every post, which I guess means that I'm arriving at a theme. Use the brain that you've been given. It might not work as well as other people, it might take you to different places than where you thought it would, but whatever happens it will be vastly more worthwhile then letting the world control you.

Life puts a lot of conditions on us. We're all raised into a way of thinking and living and if you don't take ownership of it you won't be much of a person. Humans can become like animals. You raise animals to do what you want them to and they're wired to (eventually) obey. Life is constantly trying to condition us to do things a certain way, and if we let it determine our lives, how much more valuable are we then animals?

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No Topic (Almost) Tuesday

It's close enough to Tuesday to just go ahead and assume it's Tuesday. I haven't written in almost a week and I've got a few things, so here it goes.

Life's really weird, right? We all have to rely on money to live, so our lives are really determined on how much money we make. It doesn't take all that much money to literally stay alive, but everything is pretty much determined based on what kind of money we do make. If you make a little, you learn to live on a little, and you're still fine. Then you start making more money, and then you start living a little better and your expenses go up, so then you still have about the same amount of extra money. As your income goes up, your expenses go up. Makes sense I guess. It's important to save money, but not taking advantage of the money you make wouldn't make much sense either. Anyways, all of the money we make seems to go towards ourselves, and towards our ever dematerializing lives. Dematerializing is not a word per say, but I think it's cool enough to work here. It just seems like we all end up just studying or BSing our way through education for the first quarter of our life just to get a job so we can work away a third (or more) of our life just to stay alive and have a "happy life". And to me it seems like the word "happy" is sufferingly weak, to the point where all it takes to be "happy" is 3 meals a day, a house, and a couple cars. It's like we're all told at birth what it takes to have a good life and we slave away every day like robots just to reach it. We never really think about what happy is individually. Do I want to work 40+ hours a week doing stuff that doesn't really bring me satisfaction just so I can pay to eat and sleep at night and have some element of cheap fun when I don't have to be at work? Hell no, that doesn't seem like the best way to spend the one life I have. Do I have a choice at this point? Well if I do, I really don't see it.

So why do we do this shit? Why do we just conform to everything that we were grown up to believe? Maybe our minds aren't developed enough to see the other options. Maybe we've fallen victim to our conditioning. Can you imagine being conditioned in the way that a kid in a third world country is conditioned? Living a below average American life would feel like being a freakin King. Yet every day Americans commit suicide because they don't feel their lives are worth living because they'll never make it anywhere; despite all the incredible opportunity that exists just because of where they were born. If you were raised in poverty and then turned out to be 'successful', at least by American eyes, imagine how much hope you'd have? Imagine how much your perspective would change? Every meal you ate would taste better, because you wouldn't take it for granted. Yet we all sit here in our warm houses with our name brand clothes on wishing we had more, wishing to be held up above our peers with no regard for the lack of positive worldly impact you're making a long the way.

I had absolutely no intention for this post to go this route. I haven't even had these thoughts seriously before right now, and it's kind of depressing me. Ignorance truly is bliss. I'm sure God intended human life to be more than what it is now, I know He sits up there and just shakes His head at everything we do and everything we strive for. I'm not entirely sure God has a physical head that He could shake, but that's a different question. I wish I really knew how He would live my life if He had it, because I'm sure it would be a hell of a lot more fulfilling than it will turn out after my stupid ass is done with it.

In other news, I'm selling my Macbook. For the last 6 years I've sworn by Mac products and said I'd never not own a Mac. In a few weeks that probably won't be true. Right now I'm typing on a Samsung Ultrabook with Windows 8 running, and I love this thing. I'm seriously considering buying a Microsoft Surface with the money I'll make from selling my Mac. Couldn't have predicted that 4 years ago.

I had a couple more things to say when I started this but I completely forgot about them... this really didn't go the way I had planned.

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No Topic Tuesday

I used to do No Topic Tuesday on here (alright, so I did it twice... and one of the times was on a Wednesday), so let's bring it back this week. I've got a small smattering of things to talk about.

The first thing is about girls, and one of the large characterizations of their kind. I'm not sure if it's a confidence issue or a preconditioning issue, but it really doesn't seem to like a girl ever goes out of her way to show a guy that she's interested. Girl might react positively when guy reaches her way, but it doesn't seem that girl will ever make that first move. Even with girl and guy are talking regularly the girl always seems to be emit friend only fragrances until guy makes a move. Is that because the girl doesn't want to get shut down? Or is it just because they don't think they're supposed to act a different way? I mean there are exceptions, but really for me only one girl comes to mind. Honestly it's probably better this way because from what I've noticed, guys aren't very selective with girls. Any guy will date any girl as long as she the least bit attractive to him. Fortunately that's never been the case with me, but if girls were just going after guys all the time they'd probably get them a lot of times and a bunch of really shitty relationships would start.

Second thing is about sports and sports writing, again. My boy from the Trib Dejan Kovacevic wrote this article about what to do if you're a young person aspiring to be a sports writer. I really liked this piece of advice from him:

"If you’re interested because you want to write about sports, get out. Find something else to do. You will fail, and you will fail quickly and miserably. The job is about journalism, not about being pals with your favorite teams or athletes. The passion has to be for journalism, for reporting and writing and editing and taking pics and page-designing or whatever your specialty."

It seems to be that the thing young people are most opinionated about in general is sports. You know why that is? Because sports are senseless, simple, and frivolous. Also, a lot of young people are also senseless, simple, and frivolous, it's a perfect fit! I've grown to have so much respect for people that have serious opinions and passion for anything that's not simple like sports - I wish I had more passion for such things myself. Anyways, Dejan makes a fantastic point. You'll never be successful in working in sports if you just have passion for sports. Almost everyone loves sports, and almost everyone can talk about sports to some extent. They might sound like idiots, but they can talk about it nonetheless. If people don't have a unique way to get points across and differing perspectives to look through, they'll just be some other average Joe sitting on his couch on Sunday yelling at the TV.

This applies to more than sports too. If you want to succeed in something, you can't do it like everyone else does. There are almost 8 billion people in the world, and there aren't nearly that many different things to do with life. You can't beat someone by copying them, you have to set yourself apart in some way. Following the trend and aping other people isn't going to get you very far.

I've also decided that one thing I really want to do in my life is speak in front of people. I'm not really sure what I'll speak about or who I'll speak about it in front of, but I've always really loved public speaking. Unfortunately there's really not a career for "public speaker" unless you've done something first which makes people want to listen to what you have to say. I've been thinking about writing a book and then speaking to people about what I wrote in my book, but I don't really have any idea what direction I would go in if I did want to write a book. So there's some definite roadblocks there, but I'm still young and I have time to figure all this stuff out.

Being passionless really sucks. I've done it most of my life and I'm kind of sick of it. I thought I had a passion for awhile but that kind of fell apart. Being 20-something is fun and all, but the whole part of not knowing where you wanna be in 10 years is frustrating. Luckily I have a lot of patience, a lot of confidence, and a good head on my shoulders.

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Philosophy

I took one philosophy class in college, and I pretty much hated it. I think the reason that I hated it was because it was my first semester of college and I was this really close minded Christian kid who didn't like to hear people give their world opinions that didn't match up to mine. I thought anyone who believed in the big bang was stupid and couldn't teach me anything. That was one of the reasons I went to a Christian college, to try and avoid a lot of that stuff, so I was pretty surprised when my philosophy teacher would preach how we all came from monkeys every day. In addition to all that, the class was super boring and we were only graded on papers that were graded way too harshly, so it all added up to me just hating the class and hating philosophy in general.

Fast forward four years and I am a lot different person. My beliefs haven't changed, but my perspective on the world's beliefs has. I don't think less of a person because they believe something different than me. Honestly, I'm probably more apathetic than I should be about other people's beliefs. What they believe doesn't change what I believe, so why make a big deal about it? A lot of people, especially Christians, are way too concerned about conflicting beliefs. They'll get offended and straight up insulted by the passing glance of someone who doesn't believe in God or the Bible or what have you. The worst times are when one extra confident Christian feels high and mighty enough to try to change the beliefs of another person by force. I saw this a couple times in college.

I do think that most Christians that do this kind of stuff have good intentions in mind, the problem is that they lack any kind of tact or reasonable understanding of how the human brain works. If there was a way to prove that God existed and that everything the Bible says is true, we wouldn't be talking about this right now. As long as humans exist there will be argument about the supernatural. While most people prefer to avoid it entirely, I don't think that there's anything wrong with talking about it with someone who doesn't agree with your views. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to hear an opinion that butts heads with your own. However, that head butting can easily result in one or both parties getting really offended and hurt, which then often leads to things being said out of anger and everything just becomes a chaotic mess.

There was one time my sophomore year where someone who didn't believe in God (at least as the Bible describes Him) got into a pretty intense discussion with a pastor's kid who had been homeschooled through high school and had just recently been exposed to differing beliefs. While I don't remember it perfectly, I do remember the end result being that these two were not very good friends after that night. They were both being mature about their discussion, at least in the start of it. The atheist (or agnostic, whatever he was) was asking honest, reasonable questions about the Christian beliefs, and the Christian just wasn't answering him how he wanted to be answered, he was basically dodging the tough questions. I remember the one question was something like "so you think that since I don't believe in God, I will go to hell when I die". Christian kid, for whatever reason, was afraid to answer honestly in the affirmative. By this time I had shown up and was catching up on what was going on, so being the overconfident person I am, I stepped in to try to save myself, being a strong believer in Christianity and not wanting to made look foolish by someone else with the same beliefs as me. I simply said "yes, that is what we believe". I didn't know how the kid was going to take it, but that's what he wanted to know, so I told him. From then on I was pretty much entrenched in the conversation and I tried to do as much talking as I could to avoid my tactless teammate making me look bad. I wish I could remember more, but basically it all ended up how you'd think it would - nobody's beliefs ever changed.

While I certainly didn't have all the answers that night, I was still happy with the way I handled everything. The kid I was arguing against and I had mutual friends, and a few months later one of those friends told me how much respect I had earned by being truthful, confident, and not emitting any signs that I thought less of the person because we disagreed on the subject. The kid didn't have the same good things to say about the person he was arguing with first.

Am I tooting my own horn, yes. But I'm trying to make a point.

Changing the opinions of another person is one of the hardest things to do in life. Especially when the opinions are about things that no one can prove right or wrong. It's almost a waste of time to even try. It's happened before, and I'm not saying that Christians shouldn't try to do as the Bible says and be fishers of men, I just think most of the time they do it wrong. Nobody likes being told they're wrong. Starting with that approach is the same as challenging someone in the same shape as you to a foot race and letting them take a 30 second head start. If someone doesn't respect you, they'll never listen to you, even if you are right. Tact is key in all facets of life, and a lot of people never understand that.

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Thomas Edison's Lightbulb Test

Read this story today, think it teaches a valuable lesson:

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incandescent bulb, was an incessant inventor. When he needed to expand his staff, he employed an unusual technique for interviewing the engineers for positions on his staff. Every prospective applicant who came in for an interview was handed a light bulb. Edison then asked the engineer to determine the exact amount of water the bulb could hold.

Edison knew very well that there were two basic ways an applicant could determine the correct answer to his question.

The first, was to apply several engineering gauges and mathematical protractors to each of the complex angles of the glass bulb. Then, using a slide ruler and applying basic logarithmic formulas, the applicant could calculate the inside surface area of the light bulb which would allow him to determine the total volume of the glass bulb. This approach would take an experienced engineering applicant approximately twenty minutes to solve the answer.

The second method an applicant could use to find the answer was to remove the brass base from the bulb and then fill the bulb with water. Once the bulb was filled with water, its contents could easily be poured into a measuring cup or laboratory beaker mug to determine the exact amount of water it could hold. This method generally took less than two minutes.

Nearly all the engineers who used the first method to calculate the volume of water a light bulb could hold were politely thanked for their time and sent on their way. However, the applicants who used the second method were greeted warmly by Mr. Edison who asked, "When can you start?"

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Life's not always about impressing people with how much you know or how much you can do, sometimes it's just about getting the job done as simply as you can.

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Authenticity

Came across a quote in this Dale Carnegie book I was reading today:

"Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind”
I've basically said that myself a few dozen times in my life, but maybe just not with such profound wording. Maybe this blog is becoming just a bullhorn for me to say the same thing in two to three times a week, but I just feel so strongly about this one general topic that it's all I can ever end up writing about. Nothing is worse than someone who lacks originality, to me at least. As far as I'm concerned we are all born with the potential for three things; three things that everyone has somewhere, three things that I believe the utilization of which go a long way to determining what kind of person you are.

1. Human ability to think originally
2. Human individuality
3. Human creativity

Those three things are really the only things that separate us from animals, or even computers in this day and age. When you long to be somebody and something other than the person you are in body and mind", you are eliminating all three of the above things. It doesn't take make much original thought to try and be someone else, nor does it take much individuality or creativity.

I don't think anybody would willingly admit or even realize that they are living their life without much originality. If someone fully realized that their life was trying to be different than the person they really have the potential to be, I think they would stop living like that immediately. It just doesn't make natural sense to not use what we've been given to become our own person. That said, it does seem like there's a shocking lack of confidence in a lot of people that really makes it tougher for them to have the desire to be themselves.

Again, I've beaten this horse to death over the last year. You don't have to conform to the typical American idea of a "successful person" to have a good life. The worst thing that you can do is live your life with no original thought, no individuality, and no creativity. If you can get those three things figured out, you're going to have a happy life and you're going to attract a lot of legitimate people, and that sounds pretty good to me.


In addition to all that, I have a huge pet peeve for people who put the word "literally" into their sentences preceding something that's not actually literal. If it's not literal, just keep that part of the sentence out.

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