Strength

Whew! It's been almost three months since I last wrote! I wish I could say that is because I have been working so hard to think of profound things to express in this blog, but that is not the case. Actually I've been focusing on different areas of my life, trying to find a balance between everything I love and am passionate about. I can't say that I've accomplished that, but on the positive side I've decided that I can no longer sideline my writing in the process. Doing so is counterproductive to my goals, because I dream of writing on a more serious basis. Someday.

So what to discuss now? I think I'd like to discuss something that is difficult for me to write about, but which has been on my mind a lot lately: the ability of both strength and weakness to hurt others. I am told that I come off as a very strong woman; I seem sure of myself, confident, and able to accomplish. Interestingly enough, I have to stifle laughs and hold back tears when I hear such things. They seem so ridiculous that I can't hold my amusement in check. They are so grossly distant from the way I feel inside that I become almost unbearably sad.

Why do I become sad? I've pondered this at length. I think it is because when people come off as strong, others seem to disregard that they can be hurt. Indeed, strong people can be crushed. I sometimes wonder how people would speak to me if they knew I was fragile, or at least acknowledged it openly. Would they be kinder with their words? Would I like that or would it bother me as something less than genuine, knowing that they would not be so kind if I were the same person, but stronger?

I stated at the beginning of this post that both strength and weakness can hurt. I believe this is because strength leads us to forget that others are fragile, while weakness entices us to destroy those we perceive as being strong. The most complicating factor is that I believe we are all both weak and strong at the same time. We can choose to be either strong or weak at any moment. Our very actions can be further subdivided as strong in some ways, and weak in others.

Before subdividing this issue further and making it increasingly complicated, I'll say what I'm really thinking at this moment: that strength and weakness both have important roles in our lives. It is through admitting and living our weaknesses that we develop compassion. It is through strength that we overcome our weaknesses and can lift others with whom we identify. Strength and weakness, when working together within the individual, can heal and enliven rather than damage and destroy. And I, for one, am thankful for them both.

Competition

It’s been a long few weeks and I’m glad to finally be able to return to blogging. I’ve been very blessed to have many friends and family visit these last few weeks. It’s been wonderful and I miss you all already.

Numerous experiences I have had in the past year have led me to reflect on competition. I think it’s particularly forefront in my mind right now as the Olympics have been faithfully entertaining me almost constantly for the past week or two. Due to their attention from the media, sports are perhaps the most visible example of competition we consciously encounter. Yet competition permeates almost every aspect of our lives. We compete for jobs. We compete for promotions. We even compete with our friends and families, though hopefully we do so in a spirit of love and acceptance.

Here’s my beef with competition: people seem to despise it while simultaneously enjoying its perks. In many ways, competition breeds excellence. There is a reason that the best sports teams are those with the most athletes to pick from. It is the same reason that the best theater companies turn the most actors and actresses away after auditions. When we are forced to compete, we push ourselves to be the best we can. Teams of the best performers, regardless of the venue, create stellar results.

However, competition also breeds maliciousness and vindictive behavior. I cannot speak for everyone’s experience, but I found participating in high school activities to be a very painful experience at times. I was always encouraged to have fun and to only do the things I enjoyed. Yet it became increasingly difficult to separate the enjoyment of the activity with the dread of the politics and cruel behavior that others exhibited when competing for spots. One would not think that high school choir or the tennis team would be something to cry over, yet many tears were shed when scores were not upheld or spots in particular singing groups were not earned. Things would get ugly when jealousy led to cruel remarks and the spread of rumors.

At any rate, although these experiences felt important at that point in my life, they are barely a glimmer in my memory now. I mention it because it illustrates well that there are positive and negative aspects of competition.

Which brings me back to my beef with it: I wish people could enjoy the perks of competition being fully aware that it HAS perks, despite its imperfections. I am almost uncontrollably irritated when I hear people complain about competition on a national level while enjoying the privileges it allows. The best example I can conjure of this is within the health care system. Health care costs are rising at an exponential rate. I have personally experienced strain from this, as I have gone for extended periods of time in the last few years without insurance. I cherish the belief that health care is a universal human right, and it sickens me that not everyone around me receives the care that they need despite living in the wealthiest country on Earth.

Yet, there are two sides to this injustice. The United States also happens to have the best quality health care out there. It blows any other country’s system out of the water, especially those with universal healthcare. If you question this, I challenge you to take your relative with malignant cancer to Canada, Cuba, or any of a number of European states. Your may get treated, but it will take so long for them to be seen by a physician in the first place that it may be too late to help them. And even if they do get seen, the resources will be lacking, as they will be state funded. Ask any public school teacher or department of transportation worker in THIS country what the usual result of public funding happens to be. I see it every day at my office supply store job, as teachers are forced to buy materials out of pocket when the state fails to supply their classrooms.

So maybe public funding of healthcare isn’t necessarily the answer. Without intense competition between providers, our treatments will rival those available in nations whose citizens flock to the United States for their major medical problems. Plus, even fewer in this country will receive health care in the first place. They’ll have to wait so long for an appointment that they’ll die or become terminally ill before they are treated anyhow.

Here is what I propose about competition, be it in sports, healthcare, the arts, or whatever: perhaps competition is not the problem. Perhaps the problem is that we are currently competing for the wrong things. Imagine a world where health care systems were competing to give the best care possible to as many people as possible rather than competing to make the most profit and stay in business. And imagine a world where athletes were competing for the best times without the use of substances, rather than the best times with the most “legal” substances.

This probably sounds like a child’s dream at first, but I see it happening around me. Slowly but surely, society is shifting to compete for things that are friendlier to the environment. At work, paper companies are competing to offer the lowest priced paper made from recyclable materials. Because they are ALL offering that product, the competition is driving them to lower their prices again and again, making “greener” paper available to increasing numbers of consumers. This is only one of a myriad of examples. I wonder how many commercials I would count in a ten minute advertising slot that would emphasize environmentally friendly consumer options. There would certainly be more than even a year ago!

I personally am thankful for the role that competition has played in my life. It has pushed me to the very limits of what I thought possible for myself. It has lengthened my life expectancy and those of my loved ones, and will continue to create wonderful things in the future that I cannot even imagine. Every day, however, I try to reflect on what it means to compete for positive, meaningful things. I believe the world is what we make of it, and we can make competition an ally.

SPOILER ALERT-Dark Knight

Although I wrote it in the title of this post, I want to state again that if you have not seen the film Dark Knight yet, you will not want to read the following paragraphs. I saw it almost two weeks ago amidst throngs of excited moviegoers. I have a few comments to make.

First of all, I want to say that I was extremely impressed by the film. It was truly a fun, adrenaline pumping way to spend a few hours. The characters were interesting and at times mesmerizing. I do, however, have one major complaint that I will discuss in the content of this post.

Heath Ledger deeply impressed me with his skill in picking up the Joker where Jack Nicholson left off. He took an iconic character to a whole new level. I say this because I was confused with how the movie chose to employ the character. I want to clarify that nothing Ledger did or could have done confused me. I think I was confused by the writing.

The Joker clearly did not kill or do anything because he was motivated by money. Lighting a huge stack of bills on fire illustrated that quite well. He was motivated by his psycho-pathic, evil desire to demonstrate that human beings are corruptible and inherently self-centered (for instance, the ferry scene). The movie seemed to want to emphasize that the Joker was wrong. A boatload of convicted murderers and rapists managed to be selfless in risking their own lives to preserve the lives of others.

Now we come to Two-Face. Harvey Dent was supposed to represent the best of the best in strong, brave, good human beings. Yet he was corrupted by the Joker in a moment of vulnerability. The Joker seemed to have scored a victory, for he turned the man who Batman referred to as "the best of all of us" into a relentless murderer who seemed to relish terror.

Interestingly enough, my complaint with the writing does not lie in the movie's decision to transform Harvey Dent into Two-Face. I was extremely disappointed that Batman took the blame for Two-Face's murders.

It's not that I was frustrated at Batman being seen as a villain. It's not that the ending wrapped up as neatly as it did. (These are two complaints I've heard from others about the ending.) What frustrated me was that Batman and the police chief did not have enough faith in the people of Gotham to believe that they could still believe in the inherent goodness of others unless they had an exemplary figurehead in Harvey Dent. The ferry scene demonstrated that people will not necessarily destroy eachother to save their own skins, right? Hence the Joker was wrong in believing that people are always corruptible. Yet the heroes of the story did not seem to take that as an indicator that people can be trusted with the truth and maintain their hope in the future. They believed that it was only through an innocent man taking unjust blame for another's actions that they could maintain a sense of hope in the people of Gotham.

I believe that faith in others is a good thing. I was told more than once by my classmates in college that I have "too much faith in people." I frankly don't think I have enough. I am painfully aware of my own limitations and how I have disappointed others in the past. I am also jaded from times I have been disappointed. Yet I believe that people tend to live up to the expectations set before them. If we expect little from others, others will deliver little in return. Yet if we have true, GENUINE faith in those around us, we will find that others can be trusted with more than we ever imagined, even peoples' very lives. Most difficult of all, we will find that people can be trusted with the truth.

I will always believe that we need to have faith in others. And those who do are true superheroes.

The first of probably many religious ramblings to come...

I'm going to go out on a limb with this post by touching a potentially sensitive, although extremely important, subject: spiritual beliefs. I observe spirituality to be simultaneously omnipresent and taboo in my environment. The only things I observe to be even more universal and taboo than spirituality are strong fears of both organized religion and notions of a transcendant spirituality.

So why is religion so difficult to talk about anyhow? Why is it included among topics never to be discussed at social events, right up there with political views? Doubtless there are numerous intuitive responses to these questions. In the past religion has had a difficult (and not entirely undeserved) reputation for being judgmental to the point of being prejudiced. Naturally it is difficult to discuss topics when there is an underlying fear that one will be judged or pidgeon-holed for their views. Furthermore, religious discussions frequently involve comments regarding "right" and "wrong." We are faced with consequences regarding the decisions we make based on our personal views of what is right and what is wrong. We live in a "free" society in which we are entitled to our personal beliefs, although we are required to be tolerant of the beliefs of others. All too often "tolerance" has equated "silence." We simply do not discuss our differences because we cannot tolerate them.

I believe these are a few of the many factors that have lead to a pervasive fear of organized religion and transcendant spirituality in my generation. My experience of organized religion is not overly positive or negative, though I have noticed that contemporary church beliefs and practices have on the whole been stagnant in the last thirty years. Organized religion, at least mainstream Protestantism, has not evolved at the same speed as other aspects of society. As a result it comes off to younger generations as being out dated. The world seems less judgmental without it. I believe John Lennon was prophetic when he wrote "Imagine," for he ingeniously harmonized a sense of peace through his soothing chords with images of a world void of things that divide people, organized religion being among them. Many years later, organized religious institutions of John Lennon's day have generally failed to keep pace with a society that is evolving to be increasingly accepting of diversity. At this rate, I believe that the church as it is known today will be extinct before long.

I hope this is not the case, and that one day members of my generation will come to have faith in organized religion as a potential force for good in the world, void of judgmental natures and brainwashing tactics. See, I don't believe that narrow-mindedness is a necessary consequence of organized religion. Rather I believe that narrow-mindedness results from the abuse of institutions, be they religious or otherwise, for the advancement of people. The church is, afterall, a human institution that utilizes doctrines to help people connect to the divine (loosely defined). I want to emphasize the word "human" in there, meaning that although it is associated (and wrongfully equated) with God , it is still a HUMAN institution, that can be abused. The church is not God, and hence abuses committed by the church are human abuses, not God's abuses.

The good news is that as humans are not perfect, they can improve and learn from their inevitable mistakes. There is hope that the church, as a human institution that is managed by humans, can become a healthy, uniting force that will foster tolerance and refrain from judging (and unjustly punishing) diverse world views. The key is in keeping both the institution and the hope and belief in its potential alive.

Gone and Done it...

Greetings, all! I have finally broken down and joined the blogging world. I have considered blogging for a few years. In the past the task seemed entirely too daunting, as I was not confident that I had the creative juices to generate enough interesting/intriguing ideas to fill a blog of my own. Recent years, however, have been chalked full of earth-shaking events that I believe will be poignant on historical timelines long after my life is over. I feel the compulsion to comment on at least some of them.

Growing up I frequently encountered an old cliche that said that young generations are somehow being lost in emerging liberal ideas and technologies. Though I identify as being neither liberal nor technologically inclined, I have been viewed and labeled under this sociological lens. I have also sharpened my awareness of my own perceptions and the heavy baggage of experiences that influence them. I have come to the conclusion that my generation, and those slightly older and younger than my own, are in no way "lost." Nor is my generation accurately defined by other labels that have been applied to it and that it has also applied to itself; it is in no way soulless, naive, wild, or hopeless. I believe I belong to a generation that is the antithesis of all of these adjectives. Through this blog I intend to demonstrate that, although I will never claim to speak for my entire generation. That would be laughable. Rather I intend to be an example of a member of my generation who does not always exemplify all of the negative traits associated with my age cohort.

I intend to write honestly and with all of my heart. My objective is not to document universal truths with which everyone will agree. On the contrary, I expect that many people will disagree with me, adamately even. I want to mention that I have a rather sharp wit and dry way of putting things. I offend easily, though I do not try to do so. Sometimes I am not aware of how strongly I come off to people, ESPECIALLY in my writings. My hope is that you will refrain from being offended if you are inclined to feel that way aobut something I write. It is not my aim to offend anyone at all, and certainly not to be insensitive or unfeeling toward others. I merely want to write about some of the many things I care about and feel deeply toward. I hope to generate new ideas in myself and my readers. I invite anyone who takes the time to read to comment and I promise to strive not to be offended. Feel free to speak your heart.

With that, I will begin dive into a post in the next few days.

And in case you were wondering, I posted the "poll" feature because I'm always curious about what others think about issues I go back and forth on myself. I don't have an agenda with any question, because on any given day I'm not exactly sure what I think about such questions myself.