On a lighter note...

I kind of posted about this earlier, but now with the advent of the new hit musical Rock of Ages, it's gotten me thinking a little more.  While the concept of shoving as many great radio hits into some semblance of a storyline would be cool, wouldn't it be that much more hilarious if it were entirely out of context?  I think that's part of what made Mamma Mia a great hit, well sort of.  Not that I don't want to see Rock of Ages, I totally do, but the story is too contrived to fit these songs in, of course, that's probably the easiest way to do it, but what if, what if we took something completely unrelated and then throw in stuff that marginally works?  I'm not claiming this would be an immediate hit, but it definitely would make things interesting, and I think hilarity would ensue.  For example, I love Phantom of the Opera, and I'm sure now Andrew Lloyd Webber would be turning in his grave to see me do this to his musical, but you feasibly could replace the score with songs by The Police, and it would still kind of work.  I mean, I can totally see the Phantom singing Every Move You Make rather than Music of the Night or something.  Someone is now going to throw something at me, so I'll stop.

If we'd only try...

I think this post is actually somewhat a continuation of my previous post, however disconnected my ideas conceptions were.  I heard recently that, "there are no such things as soul mates".  It's a very interesting statement, regardless of whether or not I agree or disagree.  Of course, this ultimately boils down to what we define as a "soul mate".  Intuitively, I'm inclined to think of a soul mate as someone whom God has prepared for someone else, and perhaps this is where my definition deviates from issuers of such statements.  However, let's not get into that, I'm not here to discuss God's providence and marriage.  Rather, let's consider a lot of times what society today construes as being a "soul mate".  From my understanding (which I concede is rather limited), modern culture depicts soul mates as two people who just kind of "click".  They'll always get along, they'll always be happy together, etc...  I believe this view is often perpetuated by the constant "love-at-first-sight" kind of romances that happen in all sorts of fictional works; books, movies, television programming, etc...

Now, I want to move to a point where we step away from all this "romance" stuff, because this concept I think applies to all relationships in general.  It's natural that we connect with some people more naturally than others.  When we converse with one another, we generally need something to talk about.  Hence why people who have the same interest generally can and will group together, they have something to talk about.  Already there is the bond of a shared passion there.  However, I hope that everyone would agree with me that friendship should be more than the things we have in common.  Being human, there will ALWAYS be times when we are in disagreement with others, where my interests conflict with someone else's (my friend's).  This could be a somewhat alien concept (while I hope it isn't, I wouldn't be surprised if it was), friendships are relationships in spite of the differences that separate us.  Ultimately, I think the closeness of a relationship is measured by the amount of time spent with the other person.  Time spent with each other may or may not be physical time, it could be done over the phone, Skype, mail, etc... depending on each person.  Naturally, physical proximity is that much more poignant than more "long-distance" means of communication, but still, it is time spent with the other person.

We as a people are very good at compartmentalizing things.  Each aspect of life goes into its own little box and never shall items be mixed.  However, we as people are individuals, not stacks of boxes.  I know for myself, I have a little hobby box here, and I hope to develop relationships with people in that box, but if I don't see them outside of the context of that hobby, how can I really get to know them?  How can they get to know me?  Perpetually, I'd probably end up as "that guy that's pretty fun to play volleyball with".  It takes continual work and effort to get to know someone, but oftentimes we kind of just "expect" it to happen.  We may not believe in "soul mates" but it's definitive that we connect with some people better than others.  Even then, there isn't anyone out there that won't take work to get to know, we don't make best friends every other day.  Part of what makes that friendship special is the time that has been invested into it.  What am I putting in?

Do we even care anymore?

Sorry if my recent posts have been somewhat brooding as of late, that just tends to be my state of mind.  Perhaps I should take the, "If you have nothing positive to say then don't say anything" approach but then, I'd be starving all 2 readers of this blog of any legitimate content.  I'm not really here to provide any scathing commentary on the state of society and modern culture, but I feel like it's really gotten to a point where the status quo has degenerated into some form of polite apathy.  Have you ever noticed that?  I suppose I'm personally as much to blame as anyone, I do it a lot too, and as much as I want to blame my natural inclination towards introversion, I don't find it to be much of an excuse. 

More and more I find that we try to occupy ourselves with various hobbies, past-times, etc...  We involve ourselves with various clubs and associations, getting on the latest trends of the hottest hobbies, researching the best gear and the most effective techniques to do whatever it is we suddenly love doing better.  We find the hottest locations and where everyone goes locally to do whatever it is you do.  Not to say that this is a bad thing, it's not.  Perhaps it's been taken a little too far though?  Maybe I'm just being cynical and jaded, but has suddenly the thing we're doing suddenly become more important who we do it with?  Again, I'm not trying to throw out some scathing commentary on our current cultural condition, but rather just a simple observation how things seem to me.

Maybe I'm just strange, but have you ever wanted to have just a deeper conversation?  As sappy as they are, why do you think Hollywood keeps making these "soul mate" chick flicks?  Why are we so stirred by men who understand each other so as to be as brothers?  (I hope that this analogy still rings true today, despite the general degradation of familial bonds within recent times).  When I think about it though, 80% of my conversations are "small talk" or "shop talk".  "How are you doing?" has become a cliched kind of greeting where the obligatory answer is the synonym of a shrug or if you're a little more optimistic "Pretty good."  Not to say that I want to go discussing deep philosophy with the next random stranger I meet or that every other conversation has to be about something "deep", but there certainly it is a lonely existence where we cannot share in life with others.  While much of life is shared doing stuff together, lives are also matters of the heart; what is weighing upon our hearts, what is inspiring us, etc...  It's sad that our interest is only piqued when we discuss things we like to do rather than how the person we're talking to actually is.  I don't know that it's that we're so cold and apathetic that we don't care or want to care, but rather, perhaps we're just too caught up in ourselves.  Let's open our eyes up a little.

Growing up isn't easy

I'm not dead, just, lazy?  Anyways, today's random thought, is about growing up.  I remember as a child, I looked up to adults and think, "Man, they got it all figured out."  Today, I am among that population of "adults", even though I still think to myself, "Man, they got it all figured out."  Implicitly saying, I don't have it figured out, which I don't.  I suppose part of me is caught up in the consumerist attitude of everything being just kind of given to me when I pass "Go" enough times and can pay up.  Perhaps I'm just cynical, but the great epiphany of life, at least for myself, is that there isn't a great epiphany of life.  Things don't just fall into place and everything makes sense and works out.  Sometimes it providentially does, but it really is an act of God.

In the end I think it's all about how the little things add together to make the bigger picture.  Nonetheless, I'm an adult, I've got it worked out right?  Not.  The word "adult" really is intimidating, and I'm not entirely comfortable labeling myself with it, though technically I'm already years past legally qualifying for the honor. Will it make sense with more time?  Maybe, but not time alone.  Maybe I just haven't had my epiphany yet, but still, life goes on.  I can't just stop because my personal life hasn't been sorted out, I have to do it on the fly. How do I do that?  Well, one thing I realize more as I grow older is the enormity of the extent of things I can't do.  More and more, I realize that while I'm bumbling about hoping to serndipidously stumble upon the right answer, there's someone I know that's got it all figured out already, I just have to ask.  So, I just need to trust Him (the guy with the right answers) and trust His answers, and live accordingly.  Things will work out in the end.  He's got it figured out.

Not enough...

I find it intriguing that we often complain we don't have enough of things.  Maybe it's a sign of the modern era of discontentment.  I mean, we always say, "Grass is always greener on the other side."  Though I'm not here to really talk about how we are a very instant-gratification generation, how we have to have things now.  I'm in a sort of contemplative mood, I suppose, so now I'm going to do some contemplative ranting.  So here goes... I don't believe the statement, "I don't have enough time..."  This is something that's a little difficult for me to articulate, but it's something that I frankly don't believe is really the case a lot of times when people say it.  How should I put this?

Time, I think is like money.  The primary difference is that everyone has a fixed amount whereas our earning potential has some flexibility.  There are things we need to spend our money on; food, clothing, rent, bills, etc...  What money we have remaining we can spend on the remaining things that we want or in some cases to improve on the niceties of such things we spend our money on.  Likewise, we have things we ought to spend our time on; work (be it vocation or school), family, sleep (seriously, we do), etc...  We were given 24 hours in a day for a reason, I'm sure that it's not impossible to get by with just that amount, otherwise we'd have more.  I think I'm sort of at a loss as to where exactly I was going with this...

It's basically along these lines, we spend on what we find to be important.  Generally, we spend in sequence of descending importance, the things that are important get first priority, as our resources are limited, it's uncertain as to when we're going to run out at any given point in time, thus it's only natural that we want to get the most important things out of the way first.  So I guess the first point would be to really take time to recognize what you're spending (time and money) on.  Maybe I'm just overly-sensitive, but this I feel becomes extraordinarily important especially when it comes to relating with other people.  I suppose I wouldn't really think of things this way if I didn't first come up with this perspective on spending, so I only really have myself to blame.

In terms of relationships, we can spend both money and time as well.  Generally, spending a ton of money I don't think works very well.  Thus, I think more indicative of how seriously a person takes a relationship is the time spent "invested" into the relationship.  Naturally, there are things we absolutely have to spend our time on, but I think too often we blur the lines between need and want.  Simply put, since we only have 24 hours to the day, at some point in time, something is going to have to give.  Oftentimes people forgo meals or sleep in order to do the things they find to be important.  What I'm ultimately saying is that we MAKE time for what's important.  Isn't that how we do things already?  We allocate a certain degree of relative importance to our tasks on hand and then accordingly allocate the time we have available appropriately.  While we may not find something as mundane as meeting and catching up with a friend to be "unimportant" it certainly would fall low on a scale of relative importance.  Thus the question falls back to one of perspective.  We measure not only tasks but also hobbies and even relationships and determine what things are worth spending on.

I suppose the direction I'm going here is a call to introspection, figuring out what really is important.  We certainly say a lot of things but is it true?  Think about it this way, in the event of a schedule conflict, what takes precedence?  While the whole process may be very similar to asking yourself in a schedule conflict, which you would rather do, the difference is there.  What takes precedence really is a mirror of what you hold to be important.  As calloused as it may sound, if, in the event of a schedule conflict, I found that going to open gym volleyball was more important than meeting my friend for dinner, then the reality of the situation is that I find volleyball to be more important than that dinner date.  This isn't to say that I can't schedule things around when I play volleyball (dinner included), but when push comes to shove something has to give.  When I cannot accommodate a friend who really wants to meet but can only do so on a specific date, then in some sense, I have put whatever it is I'm doing (volleyball, work, school, other friends, etc...) in front of that friend in terms of importance.  We make time for what's important, that's how things are.  I understand that we all weigh the varying factors of life differently, some of us think work is more important, some of us friends, some of us school, etc...  My thing is this, just take an inventory now and figure out what's important and if that's what you want to be important.  When I don't have "enough time" for something, I think it ultimately means this: it's not important enough.

The Remarkable Jading Effect of Time

Hm... Was the title a little too cynical? I dunno, it's just something I've been thinking about. It's kind of sad that I haven't realized it until now, but have you noticed that things get less interesting as time passes? I know I've heard it before, the more I do things the more commonplace they become and they lose their initial appeal, maybe that's it. I used to always want to go to McDonald's and my mom would say how if I had too much McDonald's I'd get sick of it. I didn't really believe her of course, but then, I didn't have McDonald's everyday either. Nonetheless, it's interesting how remarkably unappealing the mundane and routine become once they become mundane and routine. It's weird.

This is something that I find happening in life, and more specifically through my personal walk of faith. It's rather ironic, but what was once construed as spiritual fervor is now viewed with a rather cynical perspective. Everything that I once was passionate about has become cliched, and I wish it weren't so. A lot of times I go back to those cliched attitudes and sayings, and I sometimes cringe at how cliched it is, but also, I remember, how when it wasn't so. It's a difficult battle, and one that I think we need to be aware of. Time jades, we should realize that. I don't know if it's a by-product of the cynicism in our society or if it's the natural degeneration of man, but it happens. There's an opening line to a song that I've been listening to lately, and it goes like thus, "Can I look past the cliches?" Well, can I?

I suppose this has been a little on the depressing side, so I suppose I'll try to put a more positive perspective on this. I believe that in understanding this it's a calling to bring us back to the simplicity of children, where there are no cliches. Just because it's cliched doesn't make it wrong. Just overused, but we always have to have that fresh perspective, that kid constantly craving the simple things. I've noticed most of it comes back to a matter of perspective. As life progresses the wonder comes out of things little by little, but I believe with the proper perspective, things can be better.