Elliot

It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed  them.

How can I give you up,  Ephraim?  How can I hand you over, Israel? My heart is changed within me all my compassion  is aroused.”

-Hosea 11

I want so much for this to be true, I want to nod my head and say “yes, this is the God I know”. A god who is pleading with us, gut-wrenching tears saying “look at the position you have put me in. I love you so much this is killing me”

10.16.17

“Surely your love and goodness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”

- Psalm 23

I don’t know what it is about this verse, but it always makes my eyes tear up. When I have been caught up in all my anxiety, all my scheming plans to make my life the way I want it to be, it gives me rest. When I have been caught up in my regrets, tossing and turning over things I wish I could do over again, it gives me peace. 

God has been so good to me, and I can’t fathom why he continues to love me so much. I would be a fool to not remember his track record. When I saw no hope for myself, he delivered blessings unimaginable. He will do it again. And when I squandered his blessings and dishonored his name, he remained faithful regardless. And he will do it again. 

whom have I in heaven but you? and earth has nothing I desire but you

“I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court... It is the Lord who judges me” - 1 Corinthians 4:3

My niece is in high school. From what I’ve gathered, there is no human population more psychologically assaulted than females in suburban high schools. I think it must be four years of pure torment. 

She’s hurt because she wants to be prettier. She watches k dramas and k pop videos, and last time I saw her, she had lost so much weight. I suspect she’s developed an eating disorder. She wants to be more popular in school. She’s hurt because she wants to be in praise band in youth group. She wants the love and attention of the other girls. Every single moment of her life is self-inflicted anguish over her inadequacy by her peers standards.

Dante’s Inferno should be rewritten for the 21st century with one of the levels of hell being “poor minority girl struggling with her weight in a mostly rich white high school”

I remember when these things mattered to me. There must be something about the developing adolescent brain that distorts the importance of social status. 

I wish I could just shake her and say “Why do you care what they think?! In a few years, you’ll never see or think about these people ever again!! What’s the point?! Why do you even care?!”

Somewhere I know God is looking at us, and saying the same thing. “Why do you care? You are leaving this place. Soon. Why spend a single moment of concern over what you accomplish, what people think, or what reputation you build?”

The philosophical implications of an eternal soul change everything. This is not a touchy-feely topic; If we are going to spend 100-ish years here, and then an eternity elsewhere, there is only one rational response: give absolutely zero fucks about what people think of you.

But like her, I just can’t do it. I need your validation. I need the love of others. I need to accomplish something with my career, something meaningful. And no, I can’t just do something meaningful, I need to make lots of money doing it, so that I can build a life that others look at with envy. No, I can’t just marry the first girl I fell in love with even though she was perfect for me, I need to sleep with many women to feel attractive. I needed the advanced degree so that my intelligence is officially documented, and I need to spend countless hours in the gym so even people without access to resume will notice me.

There is something deep and persistent inside of me that whispers “you have no value” and it has convinced me that if I build up enough of a record of achievements, I can change its mind, And every single moment of my life is self-inflicted anguish over my inadequacy by my peers standards.

“The opposite of love is not anger, it's indifference.” -Tim Keller

Over the course of three years, I broke up and got back together with Echo four separate times. Our relationship was so unpredictable that most of my close friends stopped asking about anything related to her, because I could tell they weren’t sure what the current status was.

I was so immature and selfish, and she had a heart that was built to love and forgive. That combination was a recipe for cyclical passion and heartbreak. On the spectrum of emotions, our relationship only existed on the extremes.

We spent nights out on a blanket watching meteor showers, and we spent nights yelling at each other outside my apartment building with hundreds of people able to hear us.

We helped each other climb over gated fences to sneak into pools at night, and we sent each other photos to gloat about how happy we were with our new partners. 

She couldn’t stop crying when I surprised her with a room filled with candles and flowers, and she couldn’t stop crying when I was standing over her, laying on her back, kicking me away.

A few months ago, I tried talking to her again. I had been missing her yet again, looking through our old photos everyday, and replaying our memories in my mind. I wanted to know if there a chance if we could try being together again, despite having failed so many times before. 

Her reply was “I haven’t even thought about you in a while”. 

“The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and needy, but their swords will pierce their own hearts, and their bows will be broken” - Psalm 37

Donald trump is the best thing to ever happen to our generation.

Rewind back one year. There was a subtle melancholy falling over our generation. Somehow we knew our future was getting fucked in the ass, but hey, they kept giving us new snapchat filters, so we swiped left on the issues. We shrugged and said “I don’t care”.

I remember Occupy Wall St. People grew tired of getting robbed by the 1%. It had good intentions, but we lost. We got angry, we made a big fuss, and then nothing changed. Eventually people grew tired of thrusting their signs at nameless, faceless skyscraper windows, and the movement died.

I remember the Iraq war. "Weapons of mass destruction” they said. They fed on our recent memory of 9/11, and we swallowed the story, hook and sinker. We know now that was a complete hoax, fabricated by our own government. We went into Iraq for oil, plain and simple. Deep down, we know our planet is being raped and our news is being manipulated by a small group, but it all felt so helpless. What could we do?

I remember Black Lives Matter. We were all dumbfounded how cops could continue to kill unarmed black men, week after week. We remember that rich white kid who raped a girl and got away with it. Not enough melatonin to make a conviction. But what good is it to suspend one racist cop? What good is it to publically humiliate one racist judge? Somewhere deep down we all know this problem was deeper, more systemic, and undefeatable.

I thought it was done. Our world was fucked. We were in the wicked and corrupt’s end game. Once in a while, we would get angry enough to shake our fists at the sky, and maybe take down a pawn or two, but nothing ever really changed. We knew the real orchestrators were still hidden somewhere, behind cloak and dagger. 

The 1% used to be an abstract enemy. Corporate oil interests owning our government used to be a vague suspicion. Fighting racism used to be like swatting through a swarm of gnats. Nameless. Faceless.

Now the 1% has a name and a face: Steve Mnuchin. 

Now big oil has a name and a face: Rex Tillerson.

Now systematic racism has a name and a face: Jeff Sessions.

Their greed has become their own undoing. Donald Trump called them together to form a superteam of the wicked and corrupt. They were so hungry for power that they left their corporate boardrooms to take public office. A person, a face is a much easier enemy to fight than “the system”. People are pissed again, and I love it.

Oh and their leader. Their fat orange leader. Evil has done us a favor here. He is unintelligent, simple, and makes every mistake possible. Isn’t he the best enemy we could have possibly hoped for?

Consider for a second if he was articulate. Consider if he was a great orator. Imagine if he was cunning, and not the bumbling idiot that he is. Imagine if he was physically attractive. We would be so fucked. 

“fucking tryhard” -angry internet gamer

That is an actual common insult in the gaming world. “tryhard”. It’s like saying “Ha. Look at you. You care about this. What a loser.” Some prepubescent kid said that to me years ago, and it still eats at me as a sign of the times. Even since high school, effort has never been cool.

Playing pickup basketball, I see the same thing. A group of thug black basketball guys who are used to running the courts start to get beat by a team of white and asian dudes. As the lead grows, they begin to joke around and laugh hard at each others jokes in the middle of the game, as if to say “Haha we’re only here to fuck around”. We win eventually, but we have been stripped of our satisfaction.

Have you ever argued with someone, and after disproving every one of their claims, after articulating multiple flawless arguments, they have nothing left to say, you stand there with palms open, mouth ajaw, just waiting for a simple “ok fine i guess you’re right” or any sign of humility... what do they do? They flip their hair and say “I don’t care” and start playing with their smartphone. 

Apathy is the last bastion of the defeated. When every argument they’ve put forth has been shut down, that’s when its time to pull out the ace card up your sleeve: “I don’t even care.” I don’t need to stop smoking, or register to vote, or recycle. Apathy shields me from logic, and I turn to it as my crutch.

“...if you are just, you know, a middle manager at a firm and you say I don’t know, people look around and are like, this guy doesn’t know? What’s wrong with him? “

Freakonomics is by far my favorite podcast. After a good episode, I feel the urge to tell someone about it. I steer conversations towards my newfound knowledge.

My favorite episode is called “The 3 Hardest Words in the English Language”. Spoiler: People absolutely hate saying the 3 little words “I don’t know”. 

Children learn from a very young age, in academic environments, that saying “I don’t know” is equally if not worse than being wrong. 

In a business environment, if a boss asks for your prediction or advice, to say “I don’t know” invalidates your purpose at this company. You have a degree in marketing, you’re supposed to know! Your job title is Pricing Manager, how can you not know! 

When was the last time you saw a financial analyst on CNBC, or a sports commentator on ESPN, or the local weatherman say “Well.. this is a pretty tough call... I just don’t know.” That’s the hidden side of earning reputation as an expert; you forfeit your freedom to not know the answer.

A while back, I started to read C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces. It’s a re-telling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, from the perspective of Psyche’s sister.

The book reads like legal testimony. She builds her case against the Gods, accusing them as a plaintiff at the stand. She was ugly from birth, with a sister so beautiful people worshiped her instead of Aphrodite. Her father was abusive and insulted her at every opportunity. Her village is plagued with disease, famine, and war. 

But most of all, her chief complaint is the silence of the Gods. She is angry that they would give us so little evidence that they exist, give us unending and insensible pain, give us so many good arguments to not believe in them, and then still have the audacity to judge us on whether or not we believe in them.

I couldn’t finish the book. It hit too close to home. I felt like I was back on the rooftop of Shaffer Hall at Johns Hopkins, crying and begging God for to give me the tiniest shred of understanding.

I finished it today. The cryptic and chilling final lines of the book: 

“I am very near my death now... I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away... Long did I hate you. Long did I fear you. I might -- ”

Emotions

“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him.” - Repeated 3 times in Psalm 42 and 43.

This is how normal people operate:

- When something unfair happens to them, they feel angry - When something good happens to them, they feel happy - When the future is uncertain, they feel anxious - When someone mistreats them, they feel sad

Their condition will always be a function of their outside circumstances. Their emotions are controlled by the things that happen to them. To be enslaved is to have no freedom over your own condition, and in that very sense, they will always be enslaved.

But look at what’s going on here. I remember someone once said that if David were alive today, he would almost certainly be diagnosed with clinical depression. 

David steps outside of himself, and takes the perspective of an objective entity. He uses “You” and “I” in the same sentence, both times referring to himself. He literally is in conversation with his depressed self. 

Everyone seems to point out this one habit in me. In the middle of a conversation, my face starts to look sad and confused. My eyes drift off to the side, and then I say “I don’t know”.

I wasn’t even asked a question. I wasn’t queried for an opinion... but I say “I don’t know” anyways. 

Ex. “Yeah Qdoba gives more stuff, but Chipotle uses fresher ingredients. You can really tell the difference.” ME: “I don’t know”

Ex. “Oh professors don’t really want what’s best for you. They want to keep you around to churn out more papers” ME: “I don’t know”

Ex. “The Pistons are going to dominate the East in 3 years if they keep all their young talent” ME: “I don’t know.”

That is because I have just evaluated your statement, and believe you don’t have sufficient grounds to justify it. I am opening up the floor to debate.

Most people usually aren’t open to hearing “Are you sure?” or “That doesn’t seem right” so my polite version is “I don’t know”