Game 6, Here We Come!!!

One of my passions is basketball…the Orlando Magic to be exact. So I’d like to share some of my musings regarding the Orlando vs. Boston game last night.

There were so many moments last night when I did a double-take and couldn’t believe my eyes. One such moment, perhaps the most unbelievable, was when Boston started committing retarded fouls against Dwight Howard, using the ol’ Hack-a-Shaq strategy, only now calling it Hack-a-Howard. Um, could we please try to be a little more creative? First Rondo, then Allen, simply ran over to Dwight and straight-up shoved him. Poor Dwight (all $80 million of him, that is).

I remember in the 90s when my dad used to take me to Magic games frequently. I especially remember Shaq’s rookie year. It was the year I helped my dad with his sports-card collecting. He’d let me stay up late with him so that we could search through countless packs of basketball cards in a feverish quest to find a Shaq rookie card. Anyways, that was the year the world was introduced to this “Hack-a-Shaq” strategy.

The idea is to put Dwight on the free throw line, an idea that would be terrible if it involved anyone on the Magic besides Dwight. I love the guy, but seriously, 43% from the free throw line? Yikes. Once he’s on the line and presumably misses one or both of his shots, possession of the ball is returned to Boston. Clever? Yes. Dirty? Oh yes. Effective? Not at all. Nice try, Boston.

Another moment that made me look twice was when Big Baby Davis got knocked out and stumbled across the court to the sideline. He ended up with a concussion. Apparently those elbows of Dwight’s are pretty strong. I actually felt bad for Davis. First of all, that goofy smile of his is somewhat endearing, even though it seems totally out of place on the basketball court. And second of all, I mean, come on. He got whacked in the face by Dwight’s elbow. Ouch! And by the way, Davis, what’s up with this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBPA0WCZdcA

Those are my musings for now. Be sure to check back after we win tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll have plenty more to say. Oh, and to the one Boston fan I know…I can’t wait to go to the finals!

What I Didn’t Learn in Church

I grew up in church. I was that barefoot kid running around the sanctuary after a service as if I owned the place. I took naps in pews between services, I could tell you all the snack options in the nursery, and I knew all the best secret hiding places in the church building. I was a true church brat.

With all of the time I spent in church, not to mention the Christian schools I attended, I always thought I knew everything about the Bible. I don’t say this to sound “holier-than-thou.” I really thought I knew everything there was to know about the Bible. I could finish a pastor’s sermon after hearing the first point. I could quote verses to support just about any aspect of life. I thought I knew it all.

However, I recently came across some teaching that I was never taught. I wasn’t even told it existed. It’s the Near East literature that was written about a thousand years before Genesis. Some examples are the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Atra-Hasis Epic, and Enuma Elish. The similarities between these writings and the Bible are incredible. There are also differences, mainly related to the issue of monotheism.

I wasn’t even taught about the Apocrypha, which the Bible itself quotes! If the writers of the Bible found the Apocryphal works to be reliable enough to use as a source, then why aren’t Christians taught to study these works?

Is it possible that the early church and the Council of Nicea chose books to place in the Bible that fit with their agenda? Why are the other books hidden and forgotten about? These are questions I believe each person must answer for himself. We must be willing to look at what we’ve been taught, and haven’t been taught, with fresh eyes. Forget all the preconceived ideas that the church has placed in your head, and do the research for yourself. I guarantee it will be a rewarding experience to uncover truths you never knew before.

Dreams vs. Reality

Sometimes you have to trade in your dream for reality.

It’s time for me to leave the place where I grew up professionally. The place I once swore I would retire from. The place that holds four years’ worth of memories.

I remember in my first month here going to a staff meeting where anniversaries were celebrated. Slide shows were played in honor of the people who had been here for five, ten, fifteen, and even twenty years. I remember imagining what my slide show would contain. I thought about what I would say and who I would thank when they handed me the microphone.

I always imagined my career in publishing being a long, successful one, ending at the same place where it began, just like my mom’s. She began at the bottom and worked her way up, at one company for almost twenty years. She helped get me in the door and mentored me for the past four years.

Even though my dream of picking up her legacy will not be realized at this company, I believe there is a place for me that is even greater, where I will be welcome to use my talents and grow more than I ever imagined.

So what is my reality now? Finishing something I started a long time ago—my college education. I’m taking a step back from the hustle and bustle and giving myself time to accomplish my original dream. Maybe by going back to the basics, then one day my dreams for my career will also be realized. Until then, time to hit the books!

Release the Passion

Passion is the true essence of your being. It is the thing closest to your heart. It is your heart. It is everything you hang on to when the ocean of life gets choppy. It is the thing you immerse yourself in when you need a mental vacation. That is true passion, and it’s inside everyone, waiting to be awakened…but not just awakened—released!

Imagine the passion inside of you locked up like a bird in a cage. There it lies, lifeless and useless. Maybe you went a long time without feeding it, and it lost all its energy. Or perhaps you let someone else handle it and they were too rough. Now it’s broken and retreated to the back of the cage so that no one can mess with it again. Regardless of whatever circumstance caused your passion to end up lifeless in that cage, it is there nonetheless.

The first step is to awaken it, as I’ve talked about in most of my previous blogs. Awakening passion inside requires that we first acknowledge the passion is there. So many people brush it off as an “artsy,” impractical entity, when the truth is passion is the fuel for life! Discover what you love to do and do it!

What I didn’t realize until now is that you can awaken the passion all you want, but it must also be released. A very close friend of mine was encouraging me to write more and said, almost in passing, “Release the passion.” It hit me so hard that I had to stop everything I was doing just so I could write this blog. (If you’re a writer, you understand the need to get something out right away.)

Sometimes it takes another person besides me to acknowledge the passion that’s in my heart. Life gets in the way, and it’s easy to forget about the things in the depths of my soul that keep me going and give flavor to my life. So when someone else has the ability to look in and see the passion, that is a valuable advantage.

Regardless of how the passion gets awakened, whether by yourself or someone else, only YOU have the power to release it. Open that cage, and give the beautiful bird space to spread its wings. It will make you feel alive and free.

The Illusion of Hope

“Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.”

It’s a saying we’ve all heard…and maybe even one you live by. But is it practical? Is it really possible to simultaneously hope for something good, yet prepare for the worst?

To believe this is to acknowledge that hope is simply an emotional state of mind that requires no action. Webster’s definition of hope is “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.” Would you expect something to happen and not take steps to make it happen? That just seems like a waste to me! Why would you expect something and then sit around and just wait for it to come to you without making an effort?

People who hope for things yet don’t try to get out there and grab them are under the illusion of hope. They think they can reach their goals without ever having to get off the proverbial couch and work for them. They think that fulfillment of their dreams will just land in their laps because the world owes it to them. This is called “entitlement,” and it is an ego issue.

Most people, Americans especially, believe that because of the difficult times they’ve endured, they are somehow owed something. Think about it. How many times have you said to yourself, “I deserve this”?

Life is made up of ups and downs, good and bad, positive and negative. You have to take the good with the bad and know that there is a reason for it. Every situation is placed in your life to teach you something, and I have found that I actually learn more from the negative situations in my life than the positives. I always grow more in the valleys. And that, to me, is the reward.

When I hope for the best, taking action to make it come to fruition, I hardly have time to think about the worst. I’m focused on my goals, and I believe that expectation has a lot of power to make things happen. I’m not saying it’s wrong to be prepared; it’s good! But prepare with expectation. Believe in yourself, and be passionate about that belief.

It makes me sad to hear people say, “I’m not getting my hopes up.” (I’ve said this myself many times.) It is a defense mechanism people use because if they were to completely open up their hearts and go all out, passionately going after a dream or a goal, there is always the possibility of being disappointed. So hope is replaced with fear. People close off the “hoping” part of their hearts, not realizing that the very hope they suppress is often the catalyst for the outcome they desire.

Pain is inevitable. It cannot be stopped. But living in fear and missing out on all life has to offer is a greater tragedy than being hurt because you took a step out into the unknown. In the end, I just tell myself that if I get hurt, at least I experienced life.

The “To-Think-About” List

If you could get inside my head and hear my thoughts, you would quickly come to find out that I am a “processor.” Ok, maybe an “overprocessor.” I think things to death. I literally make time in my day to just sit down and think. Usually it’s with a pen in my hand (or a keyboard at my fingertips), but I often end up staring into space and contemplating the details of my life.

Inevitably, things will get in the way and cut into my thinking time. When this happens and I don’t have time to process things, I feel fragmented, unprepared, fuzzy. It’s almost like that feeling I would get in high school when I would arrive at school without my homework being completed. I just knew there was going to be a pop quiz and I wouldn’t know the answers.

That is how I’ve been feeling lately.

The other day I went for a walk around my neighborhood. Something about walking and being in nature helps me to process things. There was a whole list of things on my mind, so I started at the top and just started working my way down my “to-think-about” list. I wasn’t getting very far because my mind kept jumping around to the different things on the list. It seems sometimes that life gets so busy and I’m juggling so many different things that I’m not sure which thing to focus on.

Being the efficient, multitasking, nearly OCD person that I am, I wondered if there was a way to process everything at once, instead of having to think about each individual thing. So I asked myself, “What do all these things have in common? What connects them all?” If I could answer that, and focus on whatever that thing is, then maybe I could tackle everything at once. Well, the answer hit me like a freight train.

It’s ME! I’m what connects everything. I’m the common thread causing these things to come together and intertwine. And therein lies the solution. Processing me and working on myself will make everything else fall into place.

It is so valuable to know who you are. You are the only thing that can make sense of this life. You are the only thing that you can control in this world, and by knowing yourself, you will be a stronger person. It is not selfish to focus on yourself; it is necessary. And by doing so, everything else in your life will fall into place.

How do you process things in your life? Are you like me, in that you make a list? Or do you process by osmosis, by choosing not to think too much about things?

More Than Meets the Eye

How much of what we “know” of someone is based on assumption? If we truly never made any assumptions about people, then how would we know whether or not we want to know more about them? Without assumptions there would be nothing to throw up warning flags in the face of a situation that could potentially cause pain physically or emotionally.

In a way, making assumptions is a defense mechanism. I believe it is actually necessary for us to read people and discern things about them. It is for our own protection! It is the reason I wouldn’t give a shady man at a gas station a ride. I assume that he wants to take advantage of me or hurt me. Assumptions save lives!

That is not to say we should always assume the worst about people. I am a big believer in giving people the benefit of the doubt, at least once. It is true that you can learn a lot about a person by observing them, but the thing to keep in mind is that what a person appears to be, or even tries to be, is not always what they truly are deep inside.

The way a person looks, talks, and acts sends messages, maybe even subliminally, that cause a certain emotional response. Based on these responses, we make decisions about whether or not we trust people, and whether or not we want to know more about them. Here’s an example: my brother is 6 feet 8 inches tall, built like an ox, has long hair, and is covered in tattoos. He used to be a prison guard for the navy, so he is trained in the art of “appearing tough.” When some people see him, they immediately form an opinion about him and think he is a bad dude with a propensity toward violence. I find that assumption hilarious because it couldn’t be further from the truth. For people to believe that about him and stay away actually causes them to miss out on getting to know a great person.

The assumptions we make are not always intentional. Sometimes they are just impressions we get and don’t even realize it until we say something based on that impression. Someone may even point out that what we said isn’t true, or is based on assumption.

Being able to read someone well is not the same thing as judging them. Although, the danger in doing that is that you could be wrong. (Even if you’re not wrong, people change and develop so much that your analysis of them may become wrong.) When that is the case, you actually may miss out on getting to know parts of that person that are different than what you assumed or expected.

Since it is human nature to read people and form assumptions about them, it is therefore unavoidable. Whether you like it or not, it is going to happen because you cannot control the emotions sent to you by your subconscious. The best way to handle it is to recognize these assumptions for what they are, and to be flexible with them. Nothing is set in stone.

Flexibility is a very important quality to have. We all know people who think they are right all the time and refuse to even entertain the possibility that they could be wrong. How annoying! The best thing a person can do is be humble and have an open mind. I’m working on this myself. I tend to jump to conclusions too quickly, probably because it is just my nature to want things to be resolved immediately. And if there’s no conclusion in sight, I’ll find one. I’m trying to find the patience to wait for people to show me before I decide for myself. It’s definitely a process, but every day is a new opportunity.

Give people a chance to be themselves. Let them show you who they are before you decide that for them. You will find that this will require you to have an open mind and an open heart. For a lot of people, that is a scary thing because there is always the chance that you will be hurt. But there is something to be gleaned even from pain. Enjoy the new opportunities that will arise when you keep your heart open and embrace every experience.

When Passion Isn’t So Pretty

Living with passion is not always an easy thing. It’s not always rainbows, sunshine, pretty beach scenes, and frolicking through prairies. Those things are wonderful, and they do inspire me, but I wouldn’t say that they are the “face” of passion in my life.

There are times for me when passion isn’t so pretty and easy. Sometimes it is something I must struggle through and decide whether or not it’s worth the trouble. Sometimes my passion requires me to do something I don’t really want to do, or to take a step in a direction that may seem scary. See, the thing about passion is that once you open up and let it become alive again, let it awaken, it takes on a personality of its own. It will not want to be controlled. It will not obey your emotional responses and demands. This is because emotions and passion are two very different things.

To me, emotions are there for a reason. Some people write them off as problems that need to be overcome. (Men are notorious for saying, “Women! They are so emotional!” and implying that it is a bad thing.) Emotions communicate to you what you are feeling deep within. When you allow yourself to feel these things, embrace them, and explore the reason for them, you become a force to be reckoned with.

Passion, on the other hand, is more than mere emotion. It is the willingness to do something about the things that move you. It is what drives you to take action. Even though passion will not always fit neatly into your emotional idea of reality, the two must work hand in hand. An emotionless person is a passionless person. However, an emotional person is not necessarily a passionate person.

So, back to the not-so-pretty side of passion. When something in me rises up and refuses to settle for anything less than a happy, purposeful existence, I find that my passion drives me to do something about it. A lot of times this causes a struggle within myself, and I feel like a dual person, one side of me fighting against the other. This can cause feelings of being disconnected and misunderstood. It’s only when I figure out what action I should take, and take it no matter how scary, that this is resolved in me.

I have found that even when passion feels like it’s grinding against me and causing me to do something scary or uncertain, I’m always thankful in the end that I listened to my heart and followed it. It is always worth it. So even when I’m not horseback riding through the country with my hair flowing in the wind, I still feel inspired and passionate. And that, to me, is the key.

Captivity

Passion cannot be bred in captivity. The minute you try to box it up and put boundaries and limits on your passion, it begins to die.

Last week’s horrifying event at SeaWorld—in which Tilikum, a killer whale, killed a trainer—has made me think a lot lately about captivity. It was a tragic thing that happened; however, I sympathize with Tilikum and other animals that are held in captivity.

Tilikum is a physical manifestation of what is going on inside of many people. Inside of each of us is an untamed, free spirit that wants to roam and live free from restrictions. It thrives in an atmosphere conducive to growth and wildness. It craves open space and endless possibilities. It should not be caged.

Because of the way our lives have evolved, restrictions have become necessary, and we have slowly built walls around the wild passion inside us. Most people find that because of their jobs, families, and other obligations, they must first do what is required of them, and doing things that make them truly happy and free comes second. Of course there is nothing wrong with conducting yourself professionally at work, or with caring for a family. Those are good things. They can even be freeing things. But oftentimes, they just become a routine. They are a way to make it through the week. That is when the wildness inside begins to die.

Just like Tilikum, the passion locked inside you is a wild beast. It may appear tame and under control, but if it ever finds a way to break free, it will shake up your entire world. You will be amazed at its power. Once you begin to tear down the walls and let out the real you, you will thrive in a way you never knew possible. You will find strength inside of you that you didn’t know was there. And most importantly, you will find more joy and peace than you ever imagined.

Have You Pined Lately?

One of the books I’m copy editing now is a historical romance novel set in the time of the Civil War. I’ll admit, this isn’t my favorite genre of literature, and I probably wouldn’t be drawn to it if I were shopping in a bookstore somewhere. However, this particular book does stir something inside me and has me thinking about the way things were back in the day. You know, back when women wore skirts all the time and men said things like, “Oh, dear. I do believe I find myself to be rather enchanted by you.” (Can you picture someone saying that to you now? It would either be the sweetest thing in the world, or the most hilarious thing. I’m going with hilarious.)

One of the things I noticed about this time period is that people spent a lot of time pining. (That’s a word you probably haven’t heard, let alone used, in a long time.) Friends with mutual feelings (is that politically correct enough?) had to write letters to correspond if they weren’t living near each other. And since everything was more spread out than it is today, chances are that even if they did live within a mile of each other, they probably didn’t visit every day. So what did they do? They pined.

The impact of technology on communication is incredible. It doesn’t matter if we live near someone or not; we can call, text, email, instant message, Skype, tweet, blog together, or write on their wall. We don’t even need to see anyone face-to-face in order to build a relationship. And there’s certainly no need to sit around pining for anyone when we can have immediate access to them any time of the day or night.

I can’t help but wonder if we’re missing out on something. After all, there is that old cliché that says absence makes the heart grow fonder, not to mention the inarguable truth that more couples stayed together back then. Could it be as simple as the fact that Americans don’t spend enough time pining? Is it really fair to blame our lack of relationship stamina on technology?

I believe there is a process that takes place in our hearts and brains when we are unable to be with someone. It gives us time and space to process everything. It allows our subconscious minds (here I go again with the subconscious stuff) to be free from distraction and have the opportunity to throw up warning signals, if necessary. The resulting emotions do not get intermingled with the emotions caused by being with that person. Our judgment is not clouded.

So what am I saying? Should we toss out our cell phones and computers and start wearing giant hats and skirts again? Of course not. I would look ridiculous. It just gives me something to think about. Maybe just acknowledging this difference between our time and the past is enough.

My advice (to myself and anyone else) is to give your heart and mind space to process. Remember that you are a whole person on your own. You may become a part of someone else, but never forget about the things inside you that make you who you are.

BTW, here is my shameless plug for this book I’m working on. It’s called Unwilling Warrior by Andrea Kuhn Boeshaar. Look for it in bookstores May 4, or pre-order it here: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/An-Unwilling-Warrior/Andrea-Kuhn-Boeshaar/e/9781599799858