True love and Justin Bieber

Sometimes I like to listen to the Top Songs on Spotify to try and stay relevant with the kids and to find my new jam. And one day, lo and behold, a song came on and I began to sway a bit at my desk, getting excited. Could this be it? Then I looked down.

Oh no. Oh, please no. Its Justin Bieber.

As I reached to change the song, on sheer principle, I stopped myself. I….I, oh double no, really liked this song.

Beyond the fact that I enjoyed the stripped down feeling of the music and vocals, the words themselves really arrested me. Its called “Love Yourself,” and its a song about Justin leaving someone because she thought only about herself in their relationship. She tried to change him into another person, what she thought he should be, and eventually, seeing how everyone around him, and eventually he himself, were so unhappy with her, he ended it. But this song’s message was more than just a “Forget You” type of song, where it calls the other person names and wishes them the absolute worst.

Instead, Justin seems to have realized something important from his time of pain: when we don’t love ourselves, it comes out in how we deal with other people. Someone as broken as this girl actually needs to learn how love herself. She needs to learn that she can’t project her own insecurities on others and demand that they fill that hole in her life, or that others are not just an object to make her feel better about herself, by making them her project and changing them into what she thinks is best.

Having been involved with people like this, I know this to be true: I (and Justin) may have been ready for a relationship, but the other person wasn’t. If they can’t love themselves, then they can’t love you. Signs of not loving themselves can come in many ways: putting the other person and themselves down, trying to change them, constantly seeking the other person as their fulfillment, being very possessive, and the list goes on. It doesn’t mean they are incapable of love, but it means that fundamentally, they haven’t learned to love and find worth in the one person who needs it the most in their lives: themselves. And maybe your role in their life is to be just their friend, until they are ready to start a real relationship, that has respect and real love. Either way, do not try and fill that lacking in their life, because you can’t.

So, crank up the Biebs and let them love themselves.

Sorority videos hit upon true human desires

Let’s take a quick poll. How many people have ever watched, listened to, or done something because they saw someone attractive singing, acting in, or doing that thing? Good, I am not the only slightly shallow person on this earth.

I am not saying that this compulsion is all bad. I mean, the reason why we do a lot of anything is because we feel an attraction, a pull, towards it. It might have nice colors, a pretty face, beautiful scenery, etc, and because of this, we watch that movie or grab that book or go up to that person. Being attractive is also not limited to the physical-people are also attractive in their intelligence and even in their kindness and charity. Attractiveness just means that something calls to you and you want to go to it, you want to be part of it, you want to be near it and even possess it. And if attraction speaks to the whole of something, so we are attracted to someone’s physical makeup, their mind and their soul-then we have won the true Powerball.

But physical attractiveness is a lot easier to ascertain and be swayed by than intelligence or kindness. And in a culture that is literally imbued with physicality, from the constant barrage of sex to the celebrities we follow on Instagram just to look the pictures they post of their faces, it is no surprise that physical attractiveness is the most important, even if we know better.

So, when people post about how outraged they are about sororities posting videos that concentrate on the faces and bodies of their members, I am glad they see that people should be treated as more than just their physical appearance, but are they willing to put their money where there mouth is? Because the continued popularity of such recruitment videos, the way women ad men are portrayed in music videos and in films, speaks volumes on how we, as a society, are still hyper focused on the physical. These sororities, those magazines, those posters of picture perfect playboys, play on selling prettiness and it works. Those sororities know that it is a dream for many girls, even if they don’t admit it, to be one of those desirable young women. Why? Because society says that they will be lauded by millions if they look perfect enough, if physically they meet the standard of whatever passing fad. These people pray upon of our deepest needs: being desirable. And since it is the easiest to exploit, people concentrate on selling physical desirability. Case in point, the Kardashians, who I am unable to find contributing anything to society besides selling their physicality and making it a commodity.

So ‘bravo’ to the sorority video planner for figuring out one of the best ways to make a sorority superficially desirable and to play on our deepest needs as humans.

And also, thank you to everyone who poked holes in the video, aptly stating that people are meant to be more than physical objects. Let’s hope more people being to believe this and that media and culture start to make real changes.

But, since I don’t want my words on the internet to be just that, I am going to unfollow all those random people I follow only because of their nice faces. Yeah I did that, but not anymore.

The (un)common cold

I had won so many battles that I thought perhaps I had won the war.
What a foolish thought that I, a mere mortal, had. That beast of a common cold will always win out eventually. And so, I find myself once again loosing the fight against sniffles, coughs and sympathetic glances.

And because I am stubborn and its a crazy week at work, I am going into the office. That means, I need to be productive while my body just wants to be in bed watching a movie. I had this grand thought that I can at least watch some critically-acclaimed movies while sick, but if I try to wrap my head around some complex plot, I think my sinuses will burst from my head trying to think too much.

So instead, I am trying to ‘just be.’

We live in such a high maintenance world that just ‘being’ is a rather scary idea. Every minute of every day can be filled with something. From the moment we wake up to the radio to the movie playing softly in the background till we fall asleep, our life is completely full. Well, if we choose to believe that is a ‘full’ life.

But when you are sick, your body forces you to lay it all down, including itself.

I realized that me being sick means I can get down to brass tacks and prioritize. I need to eat today. Check. Hydration, yes, good. I need to get some work done. All right, don’t overdo it. Ok, now go home. What needs to be done? Right, laundry and call that person. Done? Perfect. Now, go rest. And maybe coming home will just means collapsing and sleeping. Maybe you didn’t go to work. But being sick strips you down to that bare minimum, which is terribly humbling and vulnerable and super necessary. We are flawed beings. We need help, we need to give ourselves time to rest. We have to allow ourselves time to realize we can’t do everything and to remove what is unnecessary from our lives. And, when we are back to our healthy selves, maybe we should leave aside some of the unnecessary things we were doing and try to live a life full of what really matters, which will differ from each person, but typically looks like a contributing member of the world, at least in some way.

So, despite my body turning against me, at least I have an excuse and a reason to ‘just be’ and to remember what that is like and what is really important.He c

Men aren’t objects either

I am not typcially the type of person who would involve herself with anything Cosmopolitan. But, they have a Snapchat story that I quite enjoy browsing through because of its funny sayings and interesting stories.

But then I come to the sex overload that Cosmopolitan is known for. I have chosen for moral reasons not to have sex before marriage. I don’t expect that a lot of other people are doing the same. But I feel like there can be an agreement, even among those of differing points of view about sex, that Cosmo goes way too far in its sexual objectification of men. For instance,  throughout this 2015 pre-Christmas season, they had little videos of shirtless men saying dirty ‘holiday’ things. They have pictures of men in various stages of undress all the time, to make us ‘feel better’ and to drive out Monday blues.

Cosmo, if women shouldn’t be objectified, then neither should men. If women can be up in arms about people viewing them as objects, so can (and should) men. I am always struck by how there are no women doing similar ‘sexy’ things on the Cosmo snapchat, or even how on Buzzfeed there are lists upon lists of dirty pictures of men and captions that focus solely on his desirable body, but rarely, if ever, do they have the same for women. Women are much more celebrated and praised, for their bodies sometimes, but usually for their achievements and brains, on both of these sites. On the flip side, Playboy recently decided to remove the pictures of the naked women. Granted, woman are still being objectified in this magazine and in many other ways throughout the world, but this constant barrage of the male body, from sources that are not pornographic magazines, but instead mainstream sites and magazines that are used by millions of people, makes me think that we have a double standard that runs miles deep in our society.

Men should not be made into objects, and the blatant casualness of the objectification of men throughout society, and the fact that many people are willing to go up in arms against woman being objectified but not men, saddens me a great deal.

I don’t want anyone objectified.

So, no Cosmo and Buzzfeed, I won’t be taking part of that content. And if you had any respect for men, you wouldn’t allow it either.

For when you can’t and still do…

This is a shout out to all those times you felt sick and still went anyway because you promised someone you would. This is for all the times you swallowed that mean remark and helped someone anyway. This is for the times when you were busy but you reached out your hand. This is for the love you gave when you didn’t feel like they deserved it. This is for letting go and wishing well.

Maybe you didn’t get to see a reward come of these moments. Maybe people passed by with just a thoughtless thank you, or maybe nothing at all. Maybe they were sarcastic and unappreciative. Maybe they still left. Maybe they just went on with their lives.

But the next time you are faced with such a situation, you have stre-e-etched your soul so you are able to do a bit more, to stand a little more. And maybe this time you will see payoff. But, if someone else’s life is made better, you don’t even need to see the payoff. You just need the ability to do well towards others, because whether you see it or not, it makes a difference. In a world that needs it, it makes a good difference.

So, I raise a glass to you and me: I went into work today and felt hella sick but am still putting on a good face. There is a party today and I said I would bring lemonade and ice tea (you know I am making an Arnold Palmer, don’t even mess with me). And I hope to at least bring a smile to someone’s face.

But at least I was here.

Stop flirting with Jesus

Many of us might have heard the words “I have a date night with Jesus tonight.” I myself have used this phrasing to talk about setting aside some special time to pray. But, I have a bone to pick with this saying and the mindset that might accompany it..

Now, to begin, special time for special people, I think its very important. BUT, dating someone is very different from committing to someone. When you first start dating, you aren’t sure about where your relationship with the other person is going to go, what your future together is going to look like. You are a bit starry-eyed and don’t make the most prudent decisions. The first part of falling in love is all emotion and, by necessity, not a real commitment.

And this is where my dislike for ‘dates with Jesus’ comes in. God deserves more than uncertain dates and fleeting hormones. He deserves lasting love, just like you desire. Serious couples date to strengthen their relationship and to take time to appreciate each other more. They do not go on dates to replace a real relationship and the commitment to support each other in everyday struggles. And that is what I fear: that people will JUST go on dates with Jesus, that they will contain Him there in that hour or two, instead of allowing Him to enter into the whole of their lives. The God of the universe cannot be contained in an hour once or twice month, when our entire lives are about a soul constantly reaching and touching Infinite Love. He wants to pervade every part of our life. When you try and put a limit on God, you are only limiting yourself. You are limiting the heights to which you can reach, the people you can help, the journeys you could take. You are limiting the peace, love, joy, and graces that could fill your soul when you have a relationship with God. Honestly, i can’t even begin to enumerate what amazing things will happen when you really let God in.

Don’t just date Jesus. Go on dates with Him, but don’t just date. Have a full and real relationship with Him.

My stand-off with Saint Anthony

Saint Anthony and I have a tenuous relationship. All my Catholic friends invoke his help whenever they loose something. I, on the other hand, invoke my mother who then invokes Saint Anthony. You see, I can rarely find anything when I alone cry out to the heavens, late for a meeting, missing my earbuds. I then go about my day, not able to listen to music, grumbling and saying some not so nice things about Saint Anthony under my breath. And then I listen to other people praise him to high heaven. Hmph

My family has a years-long relationship with him. Five out of the eight of us wear contacts. And when you have that many people, and some of those people are maybe a little too young to be wearing contact responsibly, you loose contacts. But even the more mature of us are guilty of loosing them from time to time. Contacts go down the drain, in the hair, and worst of all, on the ground. One time my little bother lost his contact on wood chips in a parking lot. WOOD CHIPS. It is an almost impossible feat to find a contact that was dropped some feet behind you on wood chips, with all its textures and crevices. Wearing contacts is not for the faint of heart, and you desperately need help when you loose them, since you are now reduced to one good eye,. And Saint Anthony, without fail, will be invoked as my entire family gets on their hands and knees and looks for the precious contact. And almost without fail, after an hour of begging and searching, with achy knees and strained eyes, we will find it.
Or, we find it three years later. Hmph

And this is why I am convinced St Anthony doesn’t help me very often. I do not have the patience to wait for something to be found. I want it now. I want Saint Anthony to work like the charm he is supposed to be. You pray to him and its instantaneous, right? That’s what I need. Its a do or die situation when I loose something, and he has left me high and dry on more than one occasion.

Or maybe I am leaving myself high and dry. Usually when I loose something it is merely an inconvenience. As I search and even go about my day without whatever it is, I get the chance to learn patience and acceptance, in preparation for the bigger things I might have to loose later. I can learn how to persevere (this one is a particularly hard one for me, I usually can’t even finish a tv show) and to not take blessings, or help, for granted.

So, Saint Anthony, I lift up this honest prayer to you: help me find my patience. And those tweezers I lost.

Amen

Loosing my power almost caused an existential crisis….

A week or so ago, we had an extremely intense lightening storm and rain in the ‘sunshine’ state. As I sat in my bed that night, reading my kindle, I thought about shutting off the lights and watching the lightening storm from the safety of my house.

Then, the electricity went out.

And instead of taking advantage of this and watching the lightning storm as I had planned to do. I sat in my room for another 5 minutes, unable to tear myself away from the one source of light in my room: my phone.

And my phone was about to die.

Cue beginning of existential crisis.

I need my phone. I need the knowledge that at each moment, I have the option of distracting myself from the world around me. And as I clutched unto my phone for dear life, it started getting warmer in my room, because the AC went out with the power. And panic really started setting in. Because I need the AC. I hate being hot, especially if I am trying to sleep. My body goes into overdrive in the heat. And then I left the comfort of my phone and I had to stumble around in my house with only the flashlights from my family’s emergency store to guide me. I need the light. With my eye condition, seeing isn’t easy even with good lighting.

And as we waited for the electricity to come on, I found myself questioning my attachment to things. Wanting light makes sense: darkness is no honest man’s friend. But AC and my phone? These are lesser necessities. These aren’t even necessities. These are luxuries that I can’t seem to get by without. I, a human, a person with a soul and infinite value, could not stand the thought of not having my phone at my disposal. I could not survive an hour without complaining and ordering people around because I was hot and my plan of going to sleep was ruined by an hour long power outage.

Who is this person, afraid to think apart from her phone? Who are any of us to allow a little discomfort and suffering to control how we feel, how we react?

So, since then, I have tried to put a little more distance between myself and my luxuries. I have taken to turning away from my phone as my only source of entertainment and even started bonding with my brothers again, by playing board games (remember those? I barely did)

I highly encourage you to branch out as well, and to see if you can cut out a little of the unnecessary. You might appreciate the necessary even more.

What my love of ballerinas and Vikings gave me

I am sorry if I have been writing a lot of posts lately on staying motivated. Well, I’m not sorry if you feel motivated because of them. But, I am currently discerning what is next for me in life. Right now, I am living at home, paying off loans, and getting my toes wet while I prepare to take the deep plunge into the next part of my life, away from what is familiar and into the unknown.

And in life, in order to stick to my dreams, I need motivation. I need the incentive to keep with my plans, even when they seem to go nowhere and I am in a horrible rut, sitting in the mud with a frown on my face like a kid whose mud pies surprised them by not tasting like chocolate. Nothing is easier than finding motivation and then losing it. And recently, listening to a podcast called “Catching Foxes (listen to it, you won’t regret it), they talked about how you should not only be persistent in your goals, but should constantly seek new ways of remaining motivated.

And hit me: I would always start something then I would loose my drive because I would forget why I am doing it. I would stop motivating myself. And why do something if you aren’t motivated to keep on keeping on?

So, for my exercise and healthy goals, motivation came to mean flexible superhumans and ancient invaders. I am not as flexible as a ballerina, nor am I am as dead-set on conquering foreign lands as the Vikings were. But they are the exact type of motivation I need to keep exercising and, one day, please Lord, do a split. I haven’t had the ability, let alone the desire, to commit to exercise since I had to stop running last year. I got kicked in the shins, TWICE, in a week. It wasn’t Fight Club; no, I just tried to play soccer without shin guards among FRIENDS and FAMILY and bruised my shin muscle so badly from being kicked that I had to step away from hard physical activity for almost 10 months. But after such a long time of not being able to do much, doing anything seemed like a lost cause. That’s when I listened to the podcast and searched for that motivation. And I found it in ballet documentaries and the History Channel show Vikings. In both, self-discipline and determination rule the day. There are insurmountable tasks and despite the hard days, the days when they had four AM wake up calls for ballet practice, after not doing well at their last recital, or they were lost in the middle of the sea in 700’s AD in a boat full of angry Vikings mad for being lead on a wild goose chase to die in the middle of nowhere, their training and determination helped them remain resolute and damaging things: land that pirouette or find England. They stuck with it and they made it, even if it wasn’t pretty or exactly how they planned.

And this is how I get through my workouts. This is part of how I keep going day to day.

My call to you? Go find those things that motivate you.

Sticks and stones may just break my soul…..

This log in my eye stings something fierce most days.

Remember that quote in the Bible in Luke 6:42: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

My brother, my sister, have a stick in their peepers while I have a gigantic plank in my cornea. Such a discrepancy in size should raise a question (besides where the closest eye doctor is): if my flaw “my plank” is so much bigger than my neighbor’s flaw, then why do I pick on their faults faster than I would ever dream of correcting my own?

I think human nature is wired like this. We feel the weight of our sins, but we have grown accustomed to the weight. We can’t seem to shake it, so we hide it behind a facade. The world doesn’t need to know how broken we truly are, how every day we struggle with a vice, with pain, with suffering. And when others show a chink in their armor, when perhaps they can’t hold in their temper, when they are hurt and struggling, when they themselves are not aware of the weight of their flaws, we jump at the chance to deflect the spotlight from our own struggle. And often, those flaws that we complain most about in other people are perhaps our greatest weaknesses.  For instance, I have a hard time working with, being friendly, generally being around hypocrites. I hate being lied to and generally tend to trust people right away, so a hypocrisy is a betrayal of trust. And yet, I am one of the biggest hypocrites that I know. I talk about including people and being kind, and yet I daily struggle to go out of my way to keep a door open for someone. Perhaps this isn’t a typical type of hypocrisy, but it is still living a lie. I am saying one thing and doing another. And when I see others who say one thing and live their lives in a completely different manner, it drives me nuts,  for when I see them, I am reminded of how unhappy I am with how I live my life, how much it weighs on my soul to life this way.

So, the next time I (or you) get annoyed at someone for their sin, maybe instead of concentrating on their struggle, maybe try and take a look at what you are carrying on your back. Maybe you can try and shake it off your back, and you can stop staring at the dirt and see the sky instead.