The best things in life

I’m 23 years old and still relatively inexperienced, so for me to come on here and say I know all about what’s good and bad in life would be hypocritical. But there have been a few life lessons laid in front of me and one of them in particular has stuck out to be recently.

Looking at a slightly bigger picture of life, it sure seems like the best things in life are things that take time to achieve. They are things that take a lot patience, will-power, and hard work to get. That’s why healthy food doesn’t taste good, and why you can’t just do a few push-ups a day and be in good shape. That’s why tobacco and alcohol are really bad for your body, and pornography is so bad for your mind. Most things that give quick satisfaction are bad for you in the long run, and most things that are good for you in the long run don’t provide much instant gratification. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

The life lessons that we all learn take time. There are very few things that we understand naturally and quickly, which is why those understandings are so valuable when you find them. Malcolm Gladwell said it takes 10,000 hours of working in a field to achieve mastery in it. Just because someone says something like that doesn’t make it true, but it’s largely accepted, and really eye opening. What would the point of life be if you could just get everything you want super easily? Would you really have any appreciation for anything? Would you ever be able to have real passion for anything? Absolutely not.

The more you think about it, the more true it becomes. If you live your life looking for gratification out of short-term things and quick fixes, you’ll never really get anything out of life. You’ll never be truly happy and you’ll always be relatively disappointed.

Commit to long-term goals, think before you act, and find something to work hard for. No matter what it is. Work towards something no matter how far off it seems, having a far off goal and doing whatever it takes to reach it is a sure fire way to really live a full life.

… or something like that, I don’t know

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Reaching for unreachable

I saw this quote on Twitter the other day, and I don’t know exactly what it was but it said something to the extent of the following:

Don’t get upset about having flaws, and don’t criticize others for having flaws. Flaws are what makes humans unique; they make life interesting.

It was probably worded a bit better than that, but that’s all I can do for you right now.

Anyways, I saw that and my mind immediately started thinking about it. We all know that nobody is perfect. There is not a person in the world that hasn’t made a mistake or done something they wish they wouldn’t have. So, in a way, having flaws doesn’t make us unique. Having flaws makes us just like everyone else in the world, who also has flaws. It’s not some stand out thing to make mistakes. I don’t think having flaws makes life any better in any way. I think that the process of learning to react to the flaws and improve after you see them is what makes life more enriching and fulfilling. It’s one thing to learn a lesson verbally as a kid, but it’s a completely different thing to learn a lesson from an experience that maybe didn’t turn out as well as you would have liked it to. Some of the most impressive lessons a human learns are ones through experience, where they can see the repercussions and the impact it really made.

Now all that is just fluff. It’s all stuff everybody’s heard before. I’m not breaking any new ground there.

But how about this? How about not letting the fact that nobody’s perfect make it okay to not try to be perfect. What’s so bad about striving to not have flaws anymore? If someone came up to you and told you that they were trying to go an entire week doing everything the right way, you’d probably think they were some super cocky, unrealistic person. Striving for perfection is almost looked down upon.

Is it possible to be perfect? Absolutely not. But that fact stopping people from trying is stupid to me. You shouldn’t let mistakes discourage you, but you shouldn’t brush them off and think that they couldn’t have been avoided. Living for an unattainable goal seems empty and kinda foolish, but I think it can be really rewarding. Never reaching the goal doesn’t mean you failed, it means you tried to reach something that nobody else did — and I think that fact alone can take your life to a whole new level.

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128 Hours

The whole education system is about getting you to a place where you can excel after you graduate. But ‘excel’, they mean you can make enough money to support yourself and eventually a family while not completely hating your life at work. If you chose the right major, that’s not very hard to reach, in fact it’s really easy, especially if you have some people skills.

Choosing the right major can be tough though. I’ve come to realize that no 18 year old kid knows anything about life and they really shouldn’t have all the say in what major they choose. If it had been up to me I would have majored in Sports Broadcasting in college and I’d be living with my parents for the next couple years because I’d never have enough to money to pay off student loans and pay rent at the same time. What really killed me in college was seeing some of the people that did major in Sports Braodcasting and majors like that. It’s hard enough to get jobs in those fields even when you’re really good at it, but some of those people were just miserable at it. Do people still operate under the idea that “you can be whatever you want to be”? Because you can’t, you just can’t.

If you’re on the basketball team and you never get in the game, there’s probably a reason for that. You can fuss about it all day, but it’s your own fault for spending time on something you’re no good at. Why’s it such a negative thing to say shit I’m terrible at this thing, I’m going to go do something I’m not terrible at it so I have a shot. There’s something to be said for PRACTICE and HARD WORK and that balogna, but there’s even more to be said for just starting out with talent and using that headstart to get somewhere. If you’re the 10th man off the bench, don’t worry about it, just quit. If you love it too much to quit, stop loving it and quit anyway.

I don’t think happiness in life comes from career success anyways. There are too many people that sit in cubicles for 40 hours a week to believe that none of them are truly happy. A desk job can’t possibly bring true happiness, I just won’t believe that. Happiness comes from the other 128 hours in the week. It comes from the relationships you have and the time you spend on things you choose. If you’re lucky enough to find a job in the thing you love (or just to love something that’s a common job), then that’s great for you, don’t brag about it to me though because that would make me jealous and really piss me off.

The frustrating thing about my life isn’t that my job is dull, it’s that I haven’t been able to use those other 128 hours to their full potential yet. The thing I miss most about college is just having people to talk to around me all the time. Having one interesting, genuine, funny conversation can make an entire day for me, and I’d take having more of those over having a job that I liked more any time.

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Actually knowing what you’re talking about

I've always been a bit picky about certain things… mainly things that like no one else is picky about. I hate when people use expressions wrong, like saying “I could care less” when they actually mean that they couldn't care less, and other things of that nature. Most of it has to do with words and the way people say things, which leads to this post.

Went to church tonight and they did that song “Scandal of Grace” (chill out this isn’t a religion based post), and at one point I looked at the words and I’m like wait why are they calling it a scandal? What’s scandalous about it? Doesn't that make it sound negative?

Unsurprisingly, the person who wrote the song was not being stupid and it actually has a pretty interesting meaning behind it, but it took me asking a few people to get a good answer for it. I had to get the whole way to asking the pastor of the church to get an answer that I actually liked.

I’m not saying it’s shameful or wrong that some people didn't have the right answer to a random and largely unimportant question, but I do think that we have a habit as humans of not ever thinking about the things we say or read. People never stop to really think about stuff. They’ll read something analogous and never even think to discover the analogy.

This mainly applies to situations in Christianity to me I suppose because that’s where I see it the most… so here’s another Christian example.

There’s this Bible verse that says it’s “easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get to heaven”. Scary verse, but that’s not the point right now. The fact is that everybody I’ve ever talked to about that verse has no idea what it actually means. They think it’s just saying that it’s really hard for a rich person to get to heaven because of the comparison to a huge ass camel fitting through the space that’s occupied by a tiny little needle. GUESS WHAT — they probably didn’t have NEEDLES when that verse was written. It means something completely different and you’d just do a tiny bit of research you could figure it out. It really changes the whole meaning of the verse, which isn’t something you’d want to miss out on if you really cared.

Maybe I’m being picky again, but I just really wish people would be more conscious with their words.

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Figuring it out on your own

I’m reading “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis, and it’s honestly one of the coolest books I've ever read. Basically, Lewis writes a bunch of letters as if a demon were writing to his nephew, who’s also a demon. The demons are in hell, and they are each assigned one person to try and trip up. So C.S. Lewis gives up the picture on the other side. Being a Christian my whole life, I've found that everything comes at you from the same perspective with the same words, and that really makes important stuff hard to really understand. This book really puts into a different perspective and hits you with some things you've never really thought of before. It’s a great read for anybody really. I’m only on like the 6th letter, but this passage below really stood out to me. Remember, this is basically the devil talking, ‘The Enemy’ refers to God.

“The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His ‘free’ lovers and servants — ‘sons’ is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refused to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own’. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.”

So this is all obviously very Christian and religious, and I know most of my friends don’t really think about this stuff too often, and a lot of them don’t really care about it at all, but I think it’s interesting regardless of what you believe. Isn't it true for raising children too? Think about it. If your parents never let you figure anything out for yourself and struggle through things, how would you ever learn anything? If your parents held your hand every second of the day for the first 3 years of your life how would you ever learn to walk? Humans learn best when there’s some pressure on them to teach themselves or at least fall into the lesson at some point. Not only is there a sense of pride in figuring it out for yourself that strengthens the memory and adhesiveness of the lesson, you just see more of the whole picture that helps you keep going.

If God was just going to walk us through everything and make it all obvious and provable, what would it even mean that we do believe what He says? It would be meaningless. Following and believing firmly in God wouldn’t be worthwhile because it was too easy and too obvious. Nothing truly worthwhile is easy to get.

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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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