Category Archives: Axel Thinks

On Giving

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“No one ever became poor by giving.” – Anne Frank

In 2014 the Gross World Product (GWP) was between $87 trillion and $75 trillion. GWP is a count of all the money “made” from sales of good in a year in the whole world, legal goods. That comes to $16,000 per person. This means everybody! The old. The sick. The hurt. The children.  This means that if money were divided equally each person would have about $16,000 a year to live off of. How much did you spend last year?

The Motley Fool said that the average American spends $140 a day or $51,000 a year. That’s crazy!  $51,000/$16,000=3.2 (Subtract one for yourself) So that means that the average american is using 3.2 people’s worth of money! Now I’m certainly not saying I’m exempt from this situation. I am fortunate to have a high income. I have been considering how to effectively use this gift I’ve been given. What could we do with that money instead? Give it away!

This study by the National Center For Charitable Statistics shares some facts on giving. The “normal” US family gives between 2% and 6%. Honestly, 6% was better than I was expecting, but that’s for people who make $10 million +. For us “mortals” There’s a correlation between lower wages and higher percentage of income given. Ranging between up to 4% for people making $45k while those making between $100,000 and $2 million are giving around 2.5%. While that is more money total, we should all remember the great words of Uncle Ben “With great power comes great responsibility.”

There are a myriad of reasons the “normal” person doesn’t give. One is we are afraid we won’t have enough. We compare ourselves to our neighbor who undoubtedly has more stuff than we do, but if we compare ourselves to, for example, the Syrian refugees, we seem to have a lot. If you are reading this on a computer you already have electricity and internet which puts you ahead of most people in the world. If you have electricity you likely have running water and a reliable grocery store within 30 minutes of your house. If you have a steady job you are already more privileged than most in the world.

No one told us it was good to give. Some people are just so caught up in the consumer lifestyle in the US from watching crap like Jersey Shore and The Kardasians that they think all you can do is spend money on stupid crap. For these people I will just say, stop watching that crap. Also stop going to the store to buy whatever strikes your fancy. I know the power of advertising as much as anyone. I walked into Walmart yesterday just to “Look at the new Star Wars toys” since I’m a bit of a Star Wars nerd. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with Star Wars or entertainment (besides Disney disregarding 30 years of continuum books to make boatloads of money on new toy deals but that’s an argument for another day). But the sheer volume of new toys for that is staggering! Also I succumbed to buying a handful of new Hot Wheels, naturally Fast and Furious branded. Marketing is tough stuff! That’s why it’s just better to stay away!

Another reason we don’t give more is we don’t think our money will be used effectively when given to a charity. This is a valid concern. Some people I talk to don’t want to donate money abroad because they are unsure if it will actually reach the people they are trying to help. That is a great and valid concern, but we shouldn’t let it paralyze us. There are plenty of sites that independently audit non-profits and give them effectiveness ratings. An alternative would be that you could donate to a charity in your town. Most of us spend time with people in the same boat as us, economically. We feel uncomfortable going to a different part of town where the houses are a bit run down. We should embrace those people. They are our neighbors also. The more we embrace uncomfortable situations the more comfortable we will become in them. We also might just help some of those people out of those situations and that will be good for everyone. For these people I’d reference Matthew 6:21.

“Where your treasure is there also your heart will be.”

If you are donating money to some organization and also volunteering there you will be able to be sure that your money is actually helping others. An added benefit is that you aren’t out spending money if you are volunteering!

How will we see this world improve for everyone? We have to start with ourselves. If we don’t help our neighbor, why would we expect anyone else to help them?

So how does your giving compare to the “average person”?

How does your yearly spend compare to the world per capita income? Could you live on less and still enjoy life? I’d challenge you to think about those questions.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Ghandi

 

Being Jesus

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Matthew 25:40 “The King will reply “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I have been talking with many different Christians lately. Many ask me if I “know” Jesus or if I know that I’m going to heaven. I must confess that “No” I certainly am not that sure of anything like that, at least not in the manner they are implying. Jesus hasn’t come knocking on my door lately asking how I’m doing (at least not a clearly identified Jesus!) and I haven’t gotten my reservation card in the mail yet either. I can identify many sins each day that are mark me as worthy of eternal damnation. I think many Christians get too caught up in “faith in Jesus”. Too many are focused on “believing in Jesus” or ”knowing Jesus”. Others get caught up in personal prayer (which is not bad) or making sure they attend every required religious service. Some will walk past a person in need while on their way to a service, never giving them a second thought. All their thoughts are on their mental image of Jesus. We are all to focused on these things but aren’t focused on “Being Jesus for others”. This seems more important to me. And it seems more important to Jesus also.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan Luke 10:25-37

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” 27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” 28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” 29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers…. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” 37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

We are told here to ‘Go and DO likewise.” Jesus didn’t say “Go and think about your neighbor.” or “Go and pray to God”. He calls us to action. To love.

A recent Christian (and I’m sure a good man) I was talking with, asked why I (try to) do good things. “To what end do you do these good things?” He then asked if I thought they would get me to heaven. I said surely I wasn’t that foolish. Often we think of evil as “murder and rape” but we forget the evil we do every day. We are tempted to compare ourselves to the worst we can think of. We don’t often compare ourselves to Mother Teresa and say “Oh I’m so good!” I assured him that I might have more faith than himself, since while I wasn’t sure my faith in Jesus would get me to heaven, I was sure Jesus’ love and forgiveness would get me there. I think if more Christians busied themselves with just loving our neighbors and not immediately bombarding them with questions of “Are you saved” we might be helping the Holy Spirit on his mission of conversion, as we must acknowledge that it’s not us who saves any person but the Holy Spirit.

Love your neighbor.

On Being

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“Some people walk in the rain, some people just get wet.” – Bob Marley

“To be content we need to find excitement in the ordinary.” – Axel Hoogland

“I just want to be happy.” Is something I’ve been saying to myself for a long time without realizing what that really means. What does it mean to be happy? What makes me personally happy? I thought I was pretty sure nice weather would make me happy. As such, I committed a lot of time to trying to move to a warmer climate. I didn’t end up moving, but I did eventually secure a new position in my current location. But did that really make me happy? No.

In the mean time, I had resolved to being here for a while. I became more involved in activities in my community through volunteering, working on some projects and visiting different churches in town and committing to remember more people’s names as I meet them. This acceptance of my spot in the country and general engagement in activities all lead me to a certain contentment. Not happiness like when you eat an ice cream cone or accomplish a goal, but certainly not the general animosity I feel coming from a lot of people for their general spot in life. In doing this I have also tried to stop complaining about things that are out of my control. This is something that I feel has really helped me.

Another part of my life (and I imagine others in my position) that is rather stressful often is my current position of singleness. In our society people are always exposed to couples and couple stuff. It’s all over the media. Kanye and Kim. Angela and Brad. Taylor Swift and Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Conor Kennedy, Harry Styles etc, etc. Pressure from parents to “make grandbabies” can also be overwhelming for many people. (Luckily I don’t have this pressure). In general though, it seems that singleness is not celebrated or embraced in our culture. It doesn’t help that many relationships are based on rather shallow attributes. “We play the same sport, let’s date.” “We drink at the same bar every night, let’s date.” “You’re hot, let’s have sex and maybe date?” These attitudes of causal relationships certainly don’t help the person who is looking for a serious relationship feel content in their singleness. It seems like everyone is having fun while you are playing 3rd wheel.

What drives us to wanting to enter into a relationship in the first place? I have been scrutinizing this desire more closely lately. Certainly there is a physical interest in the opposite sex. The physical attraction is very strong and is what starts many relationships. Youthful beauty is often fleeting. Thus are the facts of life. Many people find this out much quicker than they thought, so what keeps older couples together? Hopefully there is a deeper attraction to a person’s character.  Another benefit of having a partner is the ability to confide in someone. We all have insecurities and we hope that someone will tell us that those insecurities don’t exist. “You are still beautiful” a husband will tell his aging wife. “You are still strong” a wife might tell her aging husband.  Is it also fear? Fear of being alone? The sad facts are that most couples will eventually be split up by death. The bible mentions that a marriage in this life will not continue into eternity. I think many people choose to ignore that part of the conversation, even though it’s right in the marriage vows “Til death do you part.” But I’ll save the religious thoughts for another article.

The sacrifices made to maintain a relationship are beyond logical! They fall into the realm of love which seems to defy any bounds of measurement. A husband will attend myriad of “chick flicks”, arts and crafts shows and family reunions with annoying relatives just to keep his wife happy. A wife will attend similarly annoying events enjoyed by her husband. Why? The only answer I can come up with is love. It’s certainly a confusing feeling for someone such as myself who prefers to quantify things.

What is our real goal in life? I think for many people it is to be remembered. How long will we be remembered for after we die? A decade? A century a millennium? If we really are honest with ourselves, our lives are quite inconsequential to the grand movement of things, although they seem quite important to ourselves. How many of you know much about your own parents even? Grandparents? Great-grandparents? What is our drive for reproduction? To carry on the family name? But of what consequence is that? Like the above description, you will likely be forgotten by your great-grandchildren unless you are of some world shifting personality such as George Washington or a wonder inventor like Leonardo di Vinci, neither of whom had children of their own.

Even then those people are only a few hundred years old (300 and 500 respectively, approximately), are not really old by universal standards. The universe is on the order of 13.82 billion years old. That’s billion with a B. The sun and earth are each about 4.5-4.6 billion years old, with many years left in them! The sun is predicted to fizzle out in about 7.6 billion years. Do you think people will be remembering you at that time? I’m thinking not.

Some interesting things start happening when we consider the speed of light. While we cannot travel at the speed of light, let’s pretend we can. If you were able to move at the speed of light any distance you travel would be as instantaneous to you, as time stops at the speed of light. For an observer on earth though, the time it takes you to get somewhere depends on their reference of time. So if you wanted to go to to Alpha Centauri (the next closest star system) it’d take you an instant (at the speed of light) but would appear to take about 4.37 years to an observer on earth. If you immediately turned around (after being there for an instant), you’d take another 4.37 years to get back (to the person on earth) while only another instant to you. So you’d have moved a total of 8.74 years in earth time but only 3 seconds of your own time, assuming no time to accelerate and decelerate. This is ignoring the issues with traveling at the speed of light, of which there are many. This opportunity to travel forward in time is very interesting. I am not yet aware of a way to travel back in time though.

Again, how does this relate to what is important to our lives? It hopefully helps us think about what challenges we are presenting ourselves with. Challenges are good. They certainly keep us occupied. The challenge of any competition can drive people to incredible feats. Likewise the challenges of travel or learning inspire us to reach new heights of knowledge. Sometimes challenges are useless though.

We can set just about any challenge for ourselves. We can aspire to be the best athlete, farmer, artist or chess player. Of what purpose is each challenge though? While it is nice to be a champion, we each eventually are displaced, no matter how good we are and that is a tough blow to most egos. To focus on the journey seems a better use of time. In our celebrity obsessed culture, we are not interested in the journey, only the results, no matter how long it took the person to reach the heights and how short their rein is.

What is my point in all this? Simply that we should enjoy the journey. We should focus on being present and enjoying the beauty around us for while it is fleeting it’s all we really have, unless there is something that comes after the end of time and our brief stay in it, which I am still contemplating and will share some thoughts on that at a later date.

Don’t Kill Your Child! Please!

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“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” – Jeremiah 1:5

I recently was made aware of this website by The Friendly Atheist.

The basis of the story is there is a pregnant woman. She is 26. She has scheduled an abortion for July 10th and will have the abortion, unless pro-lifers send her $1 million, which she promises to put in a trust fund to give to her child, who she’ll not abort if the $1 million is raised. The child will be given up for adoption and the money will be transferred to the child at the age of 21.

“The Pro-Lifers” who have apparently decided they speak for all pro-lifers, have said they will not pay anything towards this fund, and I agree with them, in principle. Their argument being “It’s a hostage situation and we don’t negotiate with terrorism.” Terrorism in this case being using terror to coerce someone into doing something, not the general thought of Middle eastern terrorists that is prevalent in people’s heads these days. That is a fair stance.
Here are a few ways this situation could play out.

  1. The money is not raised and she has an abortion. – This would be the worst outcome as a child would be murdered.
  2. The million, by some miracle (which I do believe in miracles), is raised. The child is put up for adoption, which the female who will birth the child, has vowed to do. The money is given to the child at the age of 21, which makes very little sense, why not 18 which is the age people are considered adults, at least in America. Now this child (adult by now) will have to ask why there is a million dollars given to them. This could go 2 ways.
    1. The child could become very depressed at the thought that his/her biological mother wanted to kill them which would make the child question his/her self worth. Eventually leading to a unfulfilled life and potentially self harm or harm of others out of frustration.
    2. Alternatively the child could become so empowered by the fact that so many people (except his/her own biological mother) loved him/her enough to donate money to save his/her life that that child (now adult)  will become a super advocate against abortion.
  3. Another alternative, is that the mother could raise the child herself after thinking some more and realizing the grave mistake she is making by committing murder. I would encourage her to contact this woman or any other who regrets their own abortion. You can find plenty by just googling “I regret my abortion”. The only unfortunate part about this is that likely sometime it will come out that the mother was considering aborting the child and made a very large fuss about it. Likely the child will be pretty put off by the thought that his/her mother had considered killing him/her. I would be also. Hopefully the mother would do this very gingerly and really explain how she was led astray by public opinion into believing that the child was not really a person.

That’s the attitude that I’m personally taking towards this woman. She’s 26. I will be in August. I’ve done some dumb things in my life. She has also. But she still has the opportunity to make the right choice. Don’t murder your child.This is me pleading with you. If I was a millionaire I’d give the million easily, but I’d also try to talk to you. I’d ask you how you got to this point. I’d try to share the beauty of your child with you. But I can’t do those things, because you are an anonymous person on the internet. That’s also why I can’t just go about giving money to every person who threatens to kill someone. Will you give it back if you murders her child? I wouldn’t even want it! At that point it’d be blood money. What I can tell you is that I do support children I know are in need now as much as I can. I support children through The Job Foundation and through Children International as well as all people who need water via Charity Water. The point of mentioning these is not to show to the world what a great guy I am. It is to show you that real people do support others in need, as we can. But the value in that support is that it is loving support, given freely. Those people don’t demand I give them money. I give it to them because I love them, even though I don’t personally know them. It’s given freely, not taken or demanded. What does it prove if something is taken? Nothing.

When would you be happy? After I cashed out all my retirement accounts and sold all my vehicles? No. None of that would make you happy, because you don’t care about me, or your child, or anyone else. You are, at this moment, a selfish person. Our current society teaches us that it’s good to be selfish. This is the sad state of affairs we are in.

I do agree with you. Christians could always give more and that’s certainly something we each need to work on, but please forgive us. We are not perfect either, we are just sinners, just like you, and we really are trying.

While I disagree with your desire to murder your child, I will pray for you. I pray that you don’t murder your child. When you become more selfless, you will find that you are enjoying life more. You don’t love every moment, but living in love is more fulfilling than living for yourself.

I have also not donated to your site and I likely won’t but it has helped me recognize that I can always give more and so I have pledged to donate monthly to a local pregnancy help center, Alternatives. I only hope that you can find a similar place near you.

And please, don’t kill your child! Please talk to someone. Call me (715-820-0377) or email me (hooglandaxel@gmail.com) or talk to someone more local (probably more helpful) but please just don’t kill the child. We really do care about you. But we can only help you if you ask for it, not demand it. Love can’t be demanded.

 

Thank you to Amy Entwistle at Flickr Creative Commons for the cover photo.

Gay Marriage

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“You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” – Matthew 7:5

Gay marriage was legalized today in the USA and it should be, depending on what your definition of marriage is.

I think that the problem a lot of people are having with this debate is that they aren’t actually articulating their disagreements with each other clearly. Saying “I’m opposed to gay marriage” really isn’t saying much. Marriage is such a complex word.

Some aspects of marriage:
Two people who express affection for each other (hopefully)
Two people living together (usually)
Two people who are legally able to visit each other in the hospital, as family.
Two people who can file taxes together (if they want).
Tons of other things.

So when you say “I’m against gay marriage” which of these things are you against?
When I say “I am against gay marriage” I am professing my stance against my belief in the misuse of sexuality specifically. I am also against premarital sex, contraception and abortion, thus maintaining what I consider a “strong moral ground” for my arguments from that point. Here is what I think the purpose of sex is

“Marital sexuality achieves two purposes. The Church affirms, first, its role in creating new human life, sometimes called the procreative dimension of sexuality. In giving birth to children and educating them, the couple cooperates with the Creator’s love. Second, sexual union expresses and deepens the love between husband and wife. This is called the unitive, or relational, aspect of sexuality.” Excerpt from www.foryourmarriage.com. This page specifically.  You can find plenty more on the Catholic understanding of the purpose of sexuality on hundreds of websites.

I am for a legal union of 2 (or 3 or 5 or 100) homosexual, pansexual, transexual, octosexual, metrosexual or lumbersexual individuals. I am still opposed to the union on religious grounds, which is completely within my ability to do as a legal gay marriage was declared today, not a religious gay marriage. A person can be for something legally that you disagree with personally. My favorite example is smoking which I refer to often. The challenge with each of these unions is that we need to understand what rights the individuals in each union want out of it? If you are only going to be married for a short time perhaps marriage is not for you anyway? It’s much easier to end a relationship that there are no legal ramification for, now I don’t think that’s a good way to have a relationship  at all, but it’d certainly be a lot easier for all parties involved. This goes for many heterosexual couples also.

I think that one problem that has plagued “marriage” is the intermingling of legal and religious marriage. All married people are legally married, at least if they want the benefits. Some are married in a church. If you are familiar with a Catholic marriage you will understand that while you can be divorced from your spouse in your legal marriage, you are still bound by your religious marriage. Similarly you can be married again in the legal manner, once you are divorced, but you can not be married again in the Catholic church until you have your first marriage annulled, which is not saying it’s over but saying that in fact it never happened. Annulment is a declaration that there was something present from the beginning of the marriage that disordered it from the beginning.

We as people are hardly to blame, completely, for our complete lack of understanding. We don’t take the time to understand what each other is actually trying to say or why we are saying it. It’s a result of the short attention span shown in the media.
I hope each religious person will take the time to consider what part of gay marriage they are against and perhaps take a look at how their lives are also at odds with God. One of my favorite responses to the question of sin comes from Frank Turek where a man asks him “Why doesn’t God get rid of all the evil?” Frank responds with “Perhaps because he’d have to get rid of you! And me.” What he is reminding us is that we are all sinners. While I am against homosexual relationships because I believe they are inherently sinful, via the misuse of sexuality, I am also aware of all the times I personally have not lived up to the pure ideals of sexuality put forth by Jesus and the Church.

We like to point to others whose sin appears egregious to us, while ignoring our “minor sins” but if we truly believe that all sins are equal, as most Christians do, perhaps we need to spend less time worrying about others and more worrying about ourselves. I will continue to campaign for the correct use of sexuality by both homosexual and heterosexual couples, married and not but I will not waste my time trying to make a union of 2 homosexuals (or any other sexuals) illegal simply because I disagree with their definition of the word.

Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” – Mark 12:17

The implication here being that the legal definition of marriage is for the legal system to determine. If you disagree with it you don’t have to agree it, and that’s ok.

 

What Is A Dyson Sphere?

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The whole earth uses approximately 15 TW (terawatts) of energy/year. The sun that strikes the earth would be able to create 89,300 TW/year. The sun is able to provide 5953 times as much energy as we need!

A Dyson Sphere is a theoretical megastructure that would be able to absorb all the energy from a star, such as the sun. Think of it as a ball completely enclosing the sun that absorbs all the energy that star puts out. That’s a ton of energy as shown above! But we don’t need that much energy. According to this site, we don’t need anything near the size of a dyson sphere to provide all the energy we need as a world. We only need enough solar panels to cover a land mass the size of the country of Spain, spread over the world, that’s not a lot of land at all!

What would we do with all this energy? Obviously we’d power all the appliances in our houses! What else could we do? How about power our cars? If you haven’t heard about Tesla Motors, you are missing out. Tesla is a company started by super genius, Elon Musk. He started the company with the intent of making an all electric car for the common person. He is nearly there. Tesla Motors is planning to launch the Model 3 (their 4th car) in 2017. This car is projected to have a range of 200 miles and a cost of $35,000, about on par with many current vehicles. Their first car was the Tesla Roadster, a sports car based on a Lotus Elise to display the technology. Their 2nd car was the incredible Model S sedan. The Model S is a 7 passenger sedan available with a range between 200 and 265 miles. It can also be charged (for free after a fee) at over 170 superchargers available around the USA and 445 in the world, and more being built every day! Here is a map of all of them.
While every Tesla is an incredible car and works great in places dense with  superchargers, in places such as where I live, Iowa, it’s not quite the perfect, do all car, yet. For this time in history, a great thing would be a car that could drive most of it’s miles on an electric charge but also have a backup gasoline/diesel/fuel motor to extend it’s range. Luckily, there is a car just like that available on the market today, the Chevrolet Volt. It has a range of 38 miles on electricity only (for a 2012) and a fuel extended range of 341 miles using its gas engine, likely much farther than you care to drive! With those numbers up to 95% of all trips could be made using electric energy according to this study that shows the average trip is under 30 miles. How long is your daily commute or average trip? Of course one new issue we get with electric cars is that we would have to plug them in every night. What a hassle! Never fear, technology is here! Using the Plugless L2 charger, we are able to just park our car and it automatically charges itself, problem solved! The Plugless L2 is obviously a bit more expensive than a plug in charger, but that’s what technology is, convenience for a price. A plug in charge is about $500 for a Chevrolet Volt while a Plugless L2 is about $2000, but how much is your time and convenience worth! Also, think of all the savings you have from all the gas you aren’t using! Couple that with the fact that you can’t put a price on being green and the cool factor of being in the future and I’d say it’s a no-brainer, get the electric car with a wireless charger!

If you aren’t excited for the future after reading this I think there may be no hope for you! Let’s march to the future and up the Kardashev Scale.

Taxes. Government. Happiness?

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“The government is in the business of forcing people to do what they might not otherwise do.” Page 171 Reasonable Atheism

I read the book Reasonable Atheism and beyond all the talk about religion the above sentence stood out to me the most. Complaining about taxes is one of the favorite hobbies of our country. The only sure things are death and taxes as the old saying goes. There will likely always be some need for taxes. Not many roads get built by themselves or by private entities, although even that has been different in the past.Toll roads are evidence of that, so perhaps complete capitalism is what we are looking for? I don’t think it’s quite that simple, but I digress. A lot of our taxes are used to take care of others, via Social Security, Medicare, Pell Grants for colleges, paying for high school for families who can’t afford it, food stamps and many other ways.

If we don’t want the government taking our money to help those in need, we need to take responsibility for them ourselves. If we are unwilling to do that then we need to submit to government to take care of them when we are unwilling. We need to be less selfish.

We all have to feel at some level or another that what we are doing is a bit ridiculous. We, the majority of Americans and the rest of the people in the 1st world, live in excess. We have all we need. Food. Water. Shelter. We spend our time playing with toys or chasing after sexual partners or numbing our senses to the point that we think we are enjoying ourselves. We challenge each other on who has the fastest car or the nicest lawn, who has the highest score in the newest videogame or who’s 401k is the biggest. We complain about the latest sports scandal. Deflated footballs? Really? Isn’t there something more important we could talk about anything?

There is, but we aren’t too often talking about it. We are comfortable. We read the new articles about those who are committing violence and we are assured that they are off base. They are insane. They need to rethink their lives. They need help. But not from us….. Someone else needs to help them.

Perhaps they have asked for help time and time again but no one has listened? Perhaps they don’t know how to ask for help anymore, so like children when they are ignored, they act out with violence to gain our attention.

Perhaps we should start doing what we might not otherwise not do. Of utmost importance, taking care of those who can’t take care of themselves. If you don’t know anyone who is in need, that is your fault not theirs. Have you asked? Perhaps you do know someone in need but they are too embarrassed to ask for help. This is partially due to how we have stigmatized needing help in our world. We value individuality so much that to need help is seen as weakness and often if you need help you are given less and treated as though you deserve your fate.

Perhaps you are so tuned into your wants that you can’t even see the needs others have. Perhaps you choose to ignore it because it makes you uncomfortable. It should! We are too comfortable while there are people who sleep on the street! Who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Who don’t even have access to clean water!

When was the last time you stopped and thought “I have enough.” Likely not as recent as the last time you said “I need to buy a bigger TV, couch, house, car.” Recognizing when you have enough and when it might be time to start helping someone else is when you will start to find true happiness.

What if we all started worrying about how we could affect our community for the better instead of just how we could make our lives materially better?

Reaching Your Childhood Dreams

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Sometimes when I was in middle school I would bike to school. It was 1 mile down the highway or about 5 miles on the back roads. The back roads were ½ dirt. The specific day I’m writing about, my brother and I were biking down the highway and went past the one gas station in our 150 person town.

There was a guy who was in high school while I was in middle school. He had bought a 1970’s Firebird. I saw him leaving the gas station and saw 2 girls in the car with him. I was already attracted to girls, although I didn’t know why. I told myself that I wanted to get a fast car so I could get the girls.

I remember when I was a sophomore in highschool I was talking with a friend just waiting to get my license the next year. We hadn’t had much success with girls thus far, but I was sure that once I got my license I’d be picking up all the girls. Boy was I mistaken. Looking back, unsurprisingly, getting a license didn’t change my behavior towards women any and thus I didn’t pick up any girls, at least not for that reason.

Now I’m 25. I have partnered with The Job Foundation and I am mentoring 2 young boys. I occasionally take them for rides in my 2007 Mustang GT. They have some racing games for their video games and I they really like my car.

In a similar situation, the other day  was riding my 2008 GSXR 600 and stopped at a gas station. A kid yelled at me from the back seat of his parents SUV “Nice Rocket!”. I smiled. There were 5 Harley’s parked at the other end of the gas station. The kid didn’t see them. He just saw what he thought was cool. I wonder if that kid will look back and remember me some day?

These stories make me pause and reflect on what growing up really means. Sure I am a pretty fortunate guy and relatively happy but I am always looking for more. How to make a bigger difference. How to have more toys. I’m finally starting to question what the right goals are. I don’t have all the answers yet, but just taking the time to think “I’m that guy that I wanted to be as a kid”, at least in some aspects is a pretty cool feeling.

Did you have any memories of what you wanted to do or be or have from when you were a kid? Have you reached any of those goals? Did they make you happy? Did you set new goals part way through?

Help!

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“There is a lot that happens around the world we cannot control. We cannot stop earthquakes, we cannot prevent droughts, and we cannot prevent all conflict, but when we know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist, then we can help.” – Jan Schakowsky

Somedays I get so frustrated with the world. There seems to be so much “bad” happening. There’s a huge boxing fight that millions of people are excited about but then a few complain that one of the boxers has been tried for domestic abuse. There is a huge earthquake ½ way around the world that I sure feel like I can’t help the victims and if I do donate to some charity that’s helping where’s my assurance that the money actually helps? Even in my own city there are shootings seemingly every week! I don’t know any of the people who are shot or how to stop it. I feel helpless.

For a while I’ve been trying to stop and actually talk with homeless people instead of just handing them money when I see them sitting by the road. I feel like if I spend some time to get to know them that perhaps I can help more than just handing them money. I finally saw the opportunity last week and built up enough courage to stop. I parked my car and walked up to the man. He was sitting on a gas can eating a Snickers. I asked him how he was and introduced myself. He said “Hello” and that his name was Giovanni. After asking a few questions all the answer I got was that he didn’t speak English much. Not a great start. I continued trying to ask a few questions.
Where are you from? What are you looking for? Do you need anything?

What I got was that he was from Romania. Apparently he had 2 kids and a brother in Phoenix, AZ. Why he was here I still was not able to understand. Another man, Greg, came walking up and introduced himself also. We talked a little more and just weren’t getting much. I handed Giovanni some money and my phone number and email address and told him if he needed help to let me know. Greg said he’d fill up the gas tank. We walked back to Greg’s truck and he and I talked a little. Giovanni started to motion to me that he wanted to talk again so I walked back to him. He motioned over to his van. I cautiously walked over there. Of course it was a suspicious looking vehicle. 2002 Ford Conversion van with all the window shades down. I was not sure if he was going to try to shoot me? Who knows in situations like that? He ended up not shooting me. Thank God. He said his van was not running good. I told him I’d come back to the same spot the next day after work and look at it for him.

The next day I was pretty excited. I was ready to help someone in need fix their broken car. This was basically what I had been training to do after years of fixing up cars! A friend at work asked what I was up to that night so I told him helping a guy I had just met fix his car. The friend was immediately skeptical replying “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Well that was not the reaction I was expecting. He then proceeded to tell me that he was skeptical of anyone who needed help and that they were likely to scam you in some way. I asked for any specific times he had tried to help someone and something bad had resulted. He couldn’t tell me of any actual instances but he did assure me his dad had some stories.

Next I asked another friend if he’d come along with me. He agreed but also shared his skepticism with me that we should be careful and that Giovanni might be just setting us up to be sued. Great! Two friends, both sure some guy I’m trying to help is only trying to scam me. Now I know why people are so reluctant to help others. The risk to reward sure seems small! I assured my friend that we’d be very careful to not do anything that seemed like it’d make us liable for anything.

I appreciated my friends advice.  After work we headed over to the spot I had agreed to the day before with Giovanni. I was happy to have a friend along since I wasn’t fully sure what I was getting into.Giovanni was there with his wife, who also spoke no English. I had brought an OBD II scanner so I plugged it into the car. It provided very few codes and none that actually told us anything was specifically wrong. I asked Giovanni to drive the car and volunteered to ride along. He and his wife both insisted that I drive but after the talks from my friends I was playing it very safe. I assured them that if there was something so wrong we’d be able to tell it from riding. We drove around a bit and my friend and I could not tell anything was wrong. We drove it to the auto parts store and asked them to perform the same diagnostic test for a second opinion. They found the same issues we did and said there was likely nothing to wrong. We thanked him and asked Giovanni to drive us back to the store. We bought a wrench and he started taking off a few parts, insisting that he’d show us what was wrong. He had told us it was the spark plugs and then that it was a few other parts. All of these we assured him were ok. Eventually having determined that there was nothing that we could do and basically telling that to Giovanni he shook our hands, said Thank You and we walked away.

I sure felt like a failure. I hadn’t fixed his car. Of course I also couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I talked with my friend about it and he assured me that we had done everything in our power at that time to help. Is that true I will never know.

Reflecting on that situation, one of the real challenges was lack of communication. True it was exacerbated by the language barrier but overall I think we understood what he was saying. That his car didn’t run good. That was not confirmed to us by the testing that we did. We were not able to clearly identify Giovanni’s need so we could not provide him the help he thought he needed. We also didn’t really understand if he was looking for work here. Why he was her and not by his kids and brother in Phoenix? Was he an illegal alien? He had shown me some papers saying he had a legal entry to the US.

This helped me think more about need. How do we know when someone is in need? Often we don’t. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have good communication with others. Perhaps it’s because people are hiding their actual needs from us because they don’t want us to think less to them? Is it a pride thing? Perhaps others don’t actually have any need?

The problem is we as a society have gotten so used to lying to each other. We do it all the time. Any magazine you read is a lie, especially the fitness magazines. We look at sculpted abs and huge muscles and it tells us we should look like that. “They” promise us this look will come easy and fast if we buy their pill. The lie comes in when the hours at the gym or the dollars spent on surgery or steroids are not mentioned. We are too obsessed with appearance.

This crosses over into our personal lives also. People are ashamed to admit that they need help for fear they will be looked down upon. Thus, we lie to each other that we are not in need. Truthfully everyone is in need of  something. Often we try to cover up our needs by focusing on something else. Usually it’s “good times”. We neglect the important aspects of our lives but spend time partying to make it feel better. Often the partying includes things that are actually harmful to us, like drinking 10+ beers, watching porn or going to a strip club. These things will make us feel happy for a short time but eventually they will make us feel worse.

Romans 12:4-8

4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your[a] faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead,[b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

None of us is a self made man, no matter how much you are inclined to think that. Once you make an connection and show you are willing to do a little work you will open more opportunities for yourself. Based on that, I believe we have a duty to our fellow man to help him when he is down, as we’ve all been there before and someone helped us. Often we forget the hard times when we get to the top. We only look for more to satisfy our continual hunger for success. How do we start to get ourselves back on track as a society? Perhaps we should start valuing what is actually good for us instead of what just feel good at the moment? Lets have more serious conversations at work or just with our neighbor. And after we have those conversations lets go out and DO something about the injustices we have talked about. The most important thing is to not talk ourselves out of doing something because of the tiny possibility of something bad happening to us. Ask yourself, what is the chance that bad thing actually happens? Like my story above, the likelihood is very small, especially if you are careful with what you do.

I leave you with this message from the Beatles and the challenge to expand who you think of as “your friends”.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends – The Beatles

Freedom!

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“We are moving to an increasing electronic society where our movements are going to being tracked.” Mary Cummings. (35 minutes 11 seconds in the video)

I recently watched this very interesting and terrifying video on drones. My definition of a drone is anything that is flown without a person in it. This can include unmanned aerial vehicles that have people operating them or autonomous drones. A current use of drones that have operators is the military used to target opposing forces. There is a camera on the drone that allows the operator to see what the drone sees. That’s terrifying enough, but the more terrifying idea is the one shared from Mary Cummings at the start of this article. HOLY MOLY that’s terrifying!

Think of everything you’ve done in your life? Likely you’d like a few of those to be left to the past. For example, I “broke the law” the other day by jaywalking or riding my dirt bike down the road. Now you might have said “Well you should have not have done that”, solely because you don’t like it or “It’s the law”. The problem with laws is that every law, once broken, must have some consequence. In debating the legality of homosexual marriages with a friend she assured me that it was “wrong” and that she thinks it shouldn’t be legal. Her argument was that it was already illegal! That’s very small thinking. This same friend also shared with me the multiple men she had lived with and had premarital sex with, yet she was making moral argument against homosexuality! WOW. To point out to her the ridiculousness of all her arguments I said “There are places where premarital sex is punishable by death. It’s the law.” She was not phased by that and was apparently convinced that the USA had perfected laws. WHAT!

Going back to my thoughts before the rant about my friend, what things do you do that might not be completely legal? How does that make you think about what other things that are “legal” might you disagree with? One of my personal favorite debates to have with people is about smoking.

Around 31 minutes, the video shows a whole city which can be zoomed in incredibly close. You can see things as small as 6 inches and they store all that data. And that’s just now and what they are telling “the public” unclassified. Think of in the future. “They” will be able to videotape the entire earth. This will undoubtedly provide some sense of safety for many people. I cannot argue that it would definitely have helped when my dirt bike was stolen the other day. A drone would be able to show exactly what vehicle and person stole it. Then they’d be linked to current face scanning technology and find the person nearly instantaneously. That would be great except for the lack of freedom it leaves! It would assure that those in power, however they got there, would be able to wield ultimate power, based on their definitions of right and wrong. I’m sure you all will agree that most of us don’t like being directed to do anything by another person.

We are continuously moving forward at a quickening pace and there are amazing and wonderful things happening every day. We need to be vigilant though that we don’t become (more) like sheep and more controlled each day. How much does the following quote by George Orwell fit with the people you know in your life?

“Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.” George Orwell – 1984

We must carefully guard our freedoms before we do worse than lose them, we will give them away.