What Music Means

Its strange to think about how much meaning a song can have – it can not only totally change your perception of the world at that time – in some cases it can change your perspective of the world for the rest of your life. Thats something that is truly powerful. Uplifting, dismayed, hopeful, or angry, they can dictate our outlooks and awareness of the outside world, all while taking on in some cases, an idol-like figure. Its rather strange that something so powerful can manifest itself, but really it seems like a good analogy for the human spirit. One that is sometimes fallible and in many cases flexible among a spectrum if you but know the right buttons to push. That, too, gives each of us a lot power. And I wonder how often to think of the power we all have.

Like really, you could very easily change the world. Perhaps not in a positive way, but we all affect those around us and the things that occur to us and to others. We are all part of a very large network of interactions that shape the universe and how we understand it. In whatever time we are in, in whatever place, our aspirations and goals dictate how we live and how others live – just like music does. We are all musicians and we are all listening keenly to the song of our existence.

Being Healthy

“Healthy” is kind of a buzz word around the rhetoric I hear in class and among peers. Eating healthy, exercising to be healthy, etc. All of these are just fine goals for the well-being of our own existence, I quite agree. But why do we seem to care so little for the health of our functioning minds? To actively think and pursue intellectual ventures is human by nature, I think, and here we are in the age of information, quite actively exercising our brain mostly in the realm of entertainment. Sure, sometimes there is the positive of relaxation or pseudo-entertainment/education (I am particularly a fan of this, such as a documentary which is part entertaining and part educational), but I find that the overwhelming point of discussion among peers relates to this very point: what do we do with our overwhelming amount of free time. And to some extent, its a valid question. As a college student, at least, I have a pretty fair amount of time not spent in class – some of which is spent reading or studying for class, but the far majority is time spent in the “other category”. Which seems, for many, to consist of mind-numbing enterprises focused on recharge. But why do we recharge if we never use that energy otherwise?

I certainly understand the appeal of having a do-nothing day, and in many respects, I’m rather guilty of doing just that on occasion. But the fact that it is so tolerated, so encouraged by the consumerism that has, in turn, consumed us, is something frightening. Maybe I’m just paranoid, like it seems all people start to once they grow older, saying “oh, the world is just going to a hell-hole, its different from how it was when I grew up!” But I really do think that “progress” is something that we should check, especially when encouraged to generate further money – by the people that will benefit from such growth (and even more so when these people have such sway in our governmental decisions). Something we should think about critically, and often. Because a step forward may not always be in the direction thats truly healthy, for ourselves and for others.

As I’ve heard others say before, 1984 was a warning, not a instructional manual.

Choices

Ever made a pro-con list, like actually written it down, and found that the list didn’t really help? No matter how you weigh each side, the choice doesn’t seem clear? These are the opportunities that really define who we are and what we do in life, because the easy ones, ones with clear winners and losers, the no-brainers don’t show distinctions. The difficult ones, however, do. And they are the ones that determine the path that you will travel, whether you hate that path or you love it. That choice marks your personhood and how you react in the face of embarking on your own destiny.

Meditating on that.

“Quick decisions are unsafe decisions.” -Sophocles

March Madness

March has become synonymous with the mayhem of one of sports’ most exciting ventures, march madness. Part quasi-gambling, with everyone filling out a bracket of predictions, a phenomenon that never really occurs for any other tournament, and part truly competitive basketball, the tournament for me culminates in the first two rounds. There are multiple games going on almost all day and plenty of underdogs, eccentric characters, and feel-good stories to follow. While I know it probably isn’t the most healthy thing to get stressed, electrified, and fully invested in this kind of a thing, I find that I can’t help myself. Why?

Partly, it has to be the fact that sports, like many other things, brings out the zealous competitor in me. I find myself ruthlessly cheering for, or against, some team based upon whether I picked them (although picks can sometimes be quite arbitrary) to advance or not.

And there are definitely positives to fanhood, basketball, and some lively fun every once in a while. Loyalty, appreciation of hard work, and good, energetic fun are some of the positives to getting involved in the tournament. I think the most important thing though, is that I truly enjoy it.

I’m a huge proponent of serious introspection, inspiration, and further learning. But there are times when it is good to relax, unwind, and get fully invested in something for no other reason than your own enjoyment. The difficulty that arises though, is moderation. Understanding that however exciting this tournament may be, it is not the only thing that determines my happiness nor is it essential to my functioning and still finding the ability to be productive and focused even in light of something that is so exciting for me. Last year, a reported estimate of $192 million are lost due to the tournament, mostly I would imagine from workers who follow games closer than their own jobs. To me, thats the true madness.

Its thrilling, sure, but that does seem to be a bit out of focus and speaks to the level that people care about leisure over hard work. I am just as guilty, I admit, but I simply think it is important to think about priorities, not just because we all lost $192 million, but because I lose productivity as well. Relaxation is important, leisure is important, satisfaction is important. But so is determination and self-awareness. Think about what we could do internationally with 192 million dollars. As a benchmark, I know that water.org, a charity that focuses on getting water and teaching self-reliance to communities in the third world, advertises that $25 could give someone water for life. So, $192 million is 7,680,000 million people (almost the size of London). I’m not saying that we should relocate that money, nor am I suggesting that the $192 million is a waste of money. Its just beneficial to think about things complexly and keep that self-awareness when contributing to large cultural trends, because thats all they are: aspects of culture. They are fluid and like anything in culture, they can be changed.

Thats just what I’m thinking on.

Feeling for Direction with a New Generation of Workers

The past couple days have been ones of, depending on your perspective, inner disarray or great conviction. In a move that has become a stronghold in my repertoire of feelings towards my own direction, I started asking myself the other day quite plainly and earnestly:

What am I doing with my life?

And I think that this is a valid thing to struggle with, no matter what point in life you may be at. We seem to always wonder what that next step is. I certainly do. Something I even wonder what the step after the next step is going to be. I remember during my junior year of high school, when the question of college was on everyone’s minds, I once asked a college recruiter what I should consider when looking into graduate school. He kind of stared at me blankly, speechless. To some extent, I don’t blame him. Perhaps its a blessing and perhaps its a curse, but this is something that I, and I believe many others, have struggled with throughout much of their planning for future goals. Even though there is such a wealth of potential that faces us (us, perhaps with my own bias, being those on the cusp of the work force, part of the generation of the internet, social media, and over-infatuation with perpetuating our youth) – yet simply, I feel like I’m trapped in a place of inability, misdirection. And perhaps this is a natural sense of hesitation we all feel when making a big step in our life, but I can’t help but shake whether it is my own shortcomings (or strengths, for that matter) that make me stall when thinking about the next step. Or the next steps, for that matter. The new generation, I feel, is definitely one that can wear many hats.

I am not particularly tech-saavy in a conventional sense, although I can work a computer and know my way around the internet. We have much bigger potential for networking with the internet and social media, a vital part of the hiring process. We know each-others likes and dislikes, as to give direction to the next generation of entrepreneurs. Anyone with an instagram is a photographer. Anyone with a twitter seems to be an aspiring comedian. We are in touch with music, movies, and entertainment like never before and thusly have a way into these fields via natural connection, I feel. Bloggers like myself interact with writing and editing more than our grandfathers’ journaling. Video gamers have potential as the next generation of video game producers. The internet allows for job creation like we have never seen and our traditional job markets are shrinking while new fields, like professional youtubers, for goodness sake, are allowing the possibility of new fields and new careers. And these are not simply specific talents, necessarily, they are the parts of our culture just like previous aspects of culture for our parents eventually became their jobs. The job market is just as dynamic as our culture, which is certainly changing – and at a faster rate than ever before, it seems.

Which is inherently unpredictable and for me, nerve-wrecking. Often our anxieties are just that, anxieties. And duly, it is only some apprehension, rather than outright fear. But it is difficult to ignore, I’ll admit. These nerves, however, are wonderful fodder for further contemplation. And to remember that any imperfection in our confidence, any chink in the armor of our own hopeful place in the world, can be solved with control of the mind. Humans can do pretty freaking amazing things when inspired, we just have to find that inspiration in whatever life surrounds us with – even if that happens to be simply apprehension.

Courage

Greetings from Spring Break! It was a toasty 29 degrees today in Juneau, with lovely sunshine and the relaxed atmosphere of a campus on break. This break has been a great time to recharge, although the highlight was definitely this past Tuesday when I went hiking.

Luckily, spring break has been fortunate in terms of weather – whereas I didn’t truly see the sunshine in Juneau for almost the first two whole months, there have been many clear days, with mild temperatures and little scattered rain – truly a novelty for Juneau weather. It is a rainforest after all.

Anyway, on Tuesday, some of us kids still here on break packed up for a trip to Mendenhall Glacier, a regal and inspirational feat of monumental natural forces framed with an aesthetic geared towards the tourist’s “Alaskan experience”. Its a great sight for picture taking and hiking, although for the most part, the tourist experience consists of seeing the glacier from afar in the comfort of the visitor’s center. Now, of course, the visitor’s center is a nice area with some good information, I’m sure, but we decided instead that we should climb to and underneath the glacier. The route to such a achievement is a difficult one and veers from the comfort of Forest Service approved trails – a notion I was not completely comfortable with, but in the interest of seeing one of the great sights of Juneau up close, we went forward with a candid, yet not altogether detailed, hand-drawn map.

Hours of bouldering, hiking, climbing, and a little bit of complaining later, we reached the glacier itself, although not without the exploit of adventure attained along the way. It was amazing, humbling, and a little frightening to be underneath a glacier – especially one that can be heard cracking, shifting in weight, and receding consistently throughout the recent past and into the future. This glacier is always dynamic and changing. The scenario of hearing cracks from above and crashing ice played over and over in my head as we ventured underneath the glacier into the so-called “ice caves”, which fluctuate with the glacier and sometimes can be huge, other times little more than crawl space. The interior is simply indescribable, as was the feeling I had within myself, although I’ll try it anyway.

Imagine putting your hands on walls and ceilings made of compacted snow, ice, and lots of time – they felt smooth to the touch but look coarse and fringed with ice particles within. Even the walls themselves seemed vulnerable, like an object teetering off the edge of a table, only just weighing its center of gravity on the table. Even more vulnerable, however, was myself. My own flesh, which was cut by rocks and aching from over-usage, could not withstand the weight of this thickened, raw glacier. If gravity chose to pull, so did it pull my own vitality with it, a hair-raising and defenseless feeling indeed…

However, this may have mostly been an ego-centric feeling. The likelihood of that particular ice cracking and falling onto the particular spot of where I stood was likely rather low. Regardless, the possibility remains – one that the psyche wrestles with and ultimately, refuses to let go of. This, I think, was the important part for me while I thought about my own vulnerability. It didn’t matter how close I might have been to being crushed by the glacier – it mostly mattered how susceptible I felt to such a fate. And for some reason, before we slid out and began the long hike (I use “hike” loosely, it mostly consisted of crawl/climbing followed by sliding on our butts down the crevasses of the rock peninsula) back to the trail, I felt extremely confident. Which was nice. Secure, even. And in a very strange place to feel secure.

But upon reflection, I thought that perhaps this wasn’t the most important thing to feel. What I felt before I felt confident – scared out of wit’s end with the possibility of serious injury or death, by far the worst-case scenario although also a slim possibility, yet somehow putting one foot in front of the other, trusting my grip on indents in rocks and a helping hand (or judgment, or footing) from fellow hikers – the courage that spurred me on through the journey and underneath that glacier – that was what was important. A balance of logical understanding – the basic understanding of self-preservation and survival – and being an emotional wreck, although finding the will somehow to continue onwards onto what was truly the defining moment of the hike, the day, spring break, and perhaps my whole semester in Alaska – and in that will to continue on is where we all find the ability to face the improbability of peacefully and joyfully greeting every day with the courage and well-being to understand that although our own existence may be insignificant and difficult, there is still worth and beauty to find along the way. If only we have the courage to seek it out and capture it.

“What makes a king out of a slave? Courage!” - The Cowardly Lion, Wizard of Oz

Don’t be a slave to your everyday life – be the transformation of your existence into something worthwhile, beautiful, and uplifting.

Thoughts on Gratitude

This past week has been an interesting ride, for sure. Stressful, full of assignments, and pulls in all directions. Finally, by Friday, I was looking forward to a relaxing and adventurous Spring Break in Juneau and a huge announcement came in – I’m going to be the summer intern at my Church, helping mostly with youth ministry. I’m ecstatic about this opportunity, not only because it offers a chance for me to grow in my own sense of ministry and discipleship, but because it allows me to give back to a community that was so important as I grew up. Less than an hour later, I found out that the spring semester of 2014, I am going to be studying through NSE again at the university of hawaii in hilo, on the big island. It was a flurry of good news, but nonetheless, was rather jarring in its excitement. I decided to take a step back from the world yesterday afternoon and meditate, focusing most closely on being thankful.

Being grateful should be one of everybody’s talents. It fills you up and really allows you to appreciate small things that are important to who you are and who you are becoming; this being one of the key things I have learned in Alaska. Its impossible not to get into a routine of some sort; everyday we get up, get ready for the day, go about our daily lives, get ready for sleep, go to sleep. But the little moments in between, or that constitute, those steps are the ones that are truly important. Walking to class and stopping to think, I’m freaking in Alaska. These trees are crazy old and magnificent as they stand proudly, reminding me that we are on nature’s turf, not vice versa. I’m in a city surrounded by mountains, glacier fields, and the vastness of the ocean. If nothing else, its humbling. At best, its genuinely inspirational – and can be life-changing. Stopping to smell the flowers, as they say, and taking it a step further to appreciate the growth of that plant, its inter-connectedness, its pollination, and place in a broader ecosystem of the garden, our well-being, and Earth is vital to human functioning, I would say. We are humans with emotional input to the beauty of the life that surrounds us, if we but take a moment to notice it.

And, of course, it doesn’t have to be smelling flowers, per se. They can be the Hemlock trees of Juneau or the Puhala plant of Hilo. Gratitude is the essential component.

Peace

Hello!

This has been a stressful week so this post will be a short post. Next week is spring break, which I will be sure to chronicle as I think we will be busy doing Alaskan activities like ice caving, tons of hiking, and spending some time in beautiful downtown Juneau. But as for now, its the dreaded week before spring break, where most everyone has checked out mentally, but its the official halfway point of the semester, so big assignments are due and tests are conveniently placed at the same time as a paper.

Usually I do pretty well planning ahead and doing some school work ahead of time, but for whatever reason, I feel like I’m last minute on a lot of these assignments. Its no big deal – it will get done and as I told a friend today, hardship only begets growth. Nevertheless, it can be stressful.

I also hit one of those “what the heck am I doing with my life” things tonight, which has added to the stress. College is a difficult time between childhood and adulthood – finding purpose, meaning, and planning for the future in such a time period can be overwhelming. I don’t mean to only complain, I’m very grateful to be in college or a country that so invests in my education and am tremendously thankful to be studying in Alaska – but internal struggles can be very real conflicts in the development of the self. Patience and maybe some more meditation will help, I think. And in due time, I will find what I should be doing with my life. I’m confident in that. I plan to meditate on this quote tomorrow, “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles,” (from Nature, Emerson) and I truly feel like that will promote a calmness of the mind (spring break may help too!).

“Peace is its own reward” -Gandhi 

Why I Don’t (or at least try not to) Curse

Happy March!

Once upon a time (actually just two years or so ago), I showed up in college cursing quite frequently. It wasn’t an all the time kind of a thing, and I actually didn’t even really notice it very often, but some of my newfound friends encouraged me to try and stop. Suddenly, I realized how much I was cursing and made a conscious habit to stop (this could be an example of “becoming the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with”-theory I have read about it, or one of cultural norm adjustment, but thats a topic for another day).

It got me to thinking about cursing. Why are some words accepted and why are some not? What does it say when I curse-what I think it does or something else? Should I care about what other people may think about my own choice of words?

Before this passing confrontation about my language, I had said things like “we only have so many words, why should I stop using part of that language?” But in the same way as being vegetarian actually exposed me to more foods, restricting my language has exposed me to more words than before. Which brings me to my first reasoning:

1. A curse word can often be filler for a word better suited for what you mean and doesn’t truly facilitate conversation.

This one I hear a lot when people are struggling for the right word. “I was f***in’ walking to class when some f***in’ skateboarder came up behind me and f***in’ almost hit me, that s**t!” Why not “I was leisurely walking to class when some hurried skateboard came up behind me and barely avoided hitting me, he should pay more attention!” Sure, it sounds kind of lame, but at least it was a better scene depicted in the second example-and isn’t the whole purpose of conversation to convey a story/meaning/feeling to someone else-something that requires a wide scope of words to truly communicate what is meant to be understood? By not using curse words, I found I was using more words and learning others in the place of curse words.

2. Cursing is an assumption of another’s comfort level with such words, which is inherently disrespectful.

This one sounds a little more harsh than I mean it to. But to break it down, perhaps you can understand thinking about a situation of two acquaintances talking, one of whom is uncomfortable with cursing (for whatever reason, this could be cultural norm, familial habits, etc.) and the other, who finds no complication with using curse words in conversation. By using a curse word, a supposition is made-that both parties are alright with and not bothered by the usage of such language-these suppositions, which can manifest in a lot of different ways (such as assumed permission to tell a joke bridging on a sexist, racist, or classist nature), show little respect for what the other person is comfortable with or even further, may find offensive. Its an imperfection within our conversations as a culture, I believe, but still, cursing can complicate its functioning.

3. I find cursing to be correlative with the area between teen and adult.

I don’t mean this in a specific age-related structure-in fact, it can linger well beyond this age, but it seems to persist among this “age group”. Perhaps this is because cursing is so readily associated with adults and an age around college, we are all trying to bride the gap between kid and adult. This is indicated not only by cursing, but in uninhibited drinking, increased sexual activity, etc. College sets up the ability to still be kids-most are not responsible for much of their basic living requirements and may have social cues set up by authority figures (not parents, mind you, nor even a traditional authority figure, but expectations of how to act in college: college cultural norms. Many adults view people in this stage as children, while children may think of this stage as adult-its definition is unclear, but this unclarity forces college-aged kids to act in the way they should, often dictated by those college cultural norms. I believe this to be why many go to college and may start drinking heavily, lose their traditional faith system, etc. But in the end, it can seem just like trying too hard.

4. Probably as part of a cultural norm.

I won’t deny the role of this in my own thinking. I went from suburbs to a college in the Bible Belt, surrounded by friends, many with evangelical or at least traditional Christian backgrounds. Then I joined a fraternity that discouraged cursing. Whether for ethical reason or not, it becomes cultural norm-one that I tried, and continue to try, to fit into. Its only natural to adopt their stance on cursing.

5. I find women cursing to be unattractive.

This one is difficult to think about. Am I perpetuating expectations of women to act “lady-like?” Its possible. I think that probably it has more to do with implicit egotism, which is attraction arises from things that remind you of yourself and therefore, because I do not (or at least, try not to, curse), I find those that do not to be more attractive (also part of the reason that couples often emerge within same-race perimeters). This point is not so relevant to everyone (I won’t be vain and assume everyone wants to be attractive to me), but the same may be true for others as well.

Feel free to disagree with or ignore my own reasons, they are particular to myself and I think anyone with a valid reasoning for why they do (or do not) curse is their own decision and logical understanding, something I can’t take from them, only give my own opinion and perhaps be an element of persuasion. Its language, something so profound and vast that no one could possibly utilize all of it and it should be within our own right to choose what parts we want to use and what parts we do not. Hopefully this made you think about it, at least. I think really my main point is to be respectful and to use more of your own language-its a beautiful thing that we have the ability to use, and I find huge amounts of people that simply have no interest in learning/employing a larger amount of words! We are all struggling to find what truly tells others what our own subjective experience is like in an objective way, trusting the other to have their own connotations of words to be similar to that of your own-a constant struggle to expedite conversation and the shared importance of a human experience, a goal for our stories to be shared in fullness and vibrant colors. But until then, we struggle onward.

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” – Jack Kerouac

On Breathing and Living

Aldo Leopold: ecologist, scientist, hunter, and one of the most reverent appreciators of nature I have ever read. Part of his appeal, as I attribute to our terse – and shrinking – attention span, as he writes with story-telling ability that brings the marsh and wildlife off the page and into the reader’s imagination with little nuggets of truth, ranging from moral thought, “Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays,” to the ecology and interconnection of the earth,”Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf,” or my personal favorite, a remark that simply states the importance of the wild, “I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.”

His writings are ones I have mused over this past week, questioning what it means to grow up away from the wild. Leopold would argue that a diminished sense of awareness and perhaps, adventure, would coincide with a childhood spent away from the wild and this is a question I have pondered. Is this why I am in Alaska? Why the ‘Last Frontier’ so prominently called my name away from comfort and pleasant support in the midwest? Why I am pushing myself further next year across the Pacific and look forward to means of simplicity and travel in the future beyond college? There is a certain validity to a concept of recapturing a youth of the outdoors, but I think it goes even deeper than a simple connection with the Earth. I think it lies more in wildness than in wilderness.

There is a certain energy, a certain draw to that which is wild – not in the sense of out of control, although it may be such, but to that which is untouched or rare among the memory of man. The ability to take the unexpected, each rising sun, and greet it with open arms and ambition to go further today from where we were yesterday – both as a function of the self as well as that of an “us”, whatever may comprise that “us”. Life begins when you step out of your comfort zone – not in a rash or terrified way, but that which allows for new experiences and a further appreciation for the fundamental principles that encompass our interactions, our circles of influence, and our Earth. I had this thought as I stood on a small bride, looking down at the freezing Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Alaska for goodness’ sake, and thought of how absolutely frigid I was about to be. How my muscles could cramp and contract beyond all past knowledge. How strange I had swam in this same ocean off the coast in Hawaii, Mexico, and California, and here I was jumping into 37 degree water… (Although probably the one thing I thought the most was “what the heck am I about to do”) But the count sang 1…2…3, and somehow my legs lifted up and braced for impact.

It was cold and my body shook with cold for hours, but I’m glad I did it. I feel a level of connection with those that jumped and had jumped, the group that I jumped with in particular, and the ocean I jumped into. And even further, I thought that night about animals that live in that water all year. Despite their greater ability to survive in such a habitat, whether they realize they live in such cold water or if they think about what the rest of existence must be like. Perhaps I’m only giving personification where it does not fit, but I don’t think its obtrusively peculiar to think about this kind of idea. Whether the bird loves to fly or simply flies. Whether the wolf loves the hunt or simply does so to survive. And what do we, as humans, whether we are a creature set apart or not, do to ensure our ongoing existence. I really hope that the bird loves to fly and that the wolf loves to hunt – but I genuinely feel  as if our  species is that which mundanely prevails in the most prominence.

You’ve heard it said “working for the weekend” or similar declarations – but why? Why not work for now? Or if working for the future, for the future of others to be able to work for their own now? Security has its benefit, sure, but so does spontaneous life, so does ignition of emotion, so does poetry. And to some extent, so does insecurity. What is life but a pursuit? What would we do if someone had done it all, or if someone had known it all? There is some level of personal connection with others and the creation that surrounds us, and in that connection, our own experience – our own thrill and appreciation of this crazy thing we call existence – that sustains us.

As I wrote in 7th grade in a one-line poem answering whether it [denoting poetry specifically, I presume] has all been said before:
“Hasn’t this air all been breathed before?”

Breathe it in, think about that breath, breathe it out, and look forward to the next one.

(And maybe think about the air quality, which by the way, Alaska’s air? Best to ever fill these lungs. Maybe its just my tree-hugging self, but after breathing this air and comparing it to that down south, I find no reason to continue to degrade the quality of something we should all so fundamentally and exuberantly enjoy like air. Rant over.)

I think Alaska is making me into a hippie.

“…there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” -Alex Supertamp, presently part of the wild.