Learning to THINK

With 2015 nearly upon us, I’ve been thinking back on the past year, and I have to say, social media really bummed me out in 2014.

I don’t think it was any one particular thing, rather it was the year saw many less-than-stellar online practices reach new levels of prevalence, and acceptance, across all forms of online media. Clickbait, selfies, smear campaigns, hoaxes, hacks, leaks, hashtag slacktivism… nothing entirely new reared its head in 2014, but these annoying bits and pieces that were for a long time nearer the fringes of our online experience somehow pushed there way into the center of it. The result, at least for the last few months, was me seriously throttling back my engagement with most forms of online media. And I wasn’t alone.

But we can do better than this. We can make the internet a positive environment again. In order to do so, however, we have to take responsibility of what we click and what we post. We’ve let bad habits become standard practice, and it’s time for an intervention.

Taking the Stance But Missing the Point

Over the weekend, I went to a large Christian concert tour with the youth group I help lead. And I want to begin this post by saying that I came away from the concert, overall, very positively. But I want to talk about something that I experienced there that I think is important, and highlights an issue I’ve had with “Big Christian” several times in the past.

The 24 Project | 04: This Boat Will Definitely Float

This past week, I experienced my first summer camp as a youth leader. My summer and winter camps in high school were some of the most memorable and pivotal times in not only my early journey as a Christian, but as a teenager struggling to find my place in the world. Even with the guidance and example of the two older and more experienced leaders I was going with this year, being tasked with fostering a similar experience for all eleven of my students was more than a little daunting.

As these things tend to go, every assumption and expectation I brought in was thrown out, pretty much immediately. But as terrifying and disheartening as it all seemed at first, the week our little group actually experienced far surpassed anything I could have hoped for, and was exactly what we needed. There are dozens of memories we will keep and cherish from this camp, but there was one event in particular that perfectly captured the nature of the journey we began together during our week up on the mountain.

The 24 Project | 03: Emotional Correctness

I recently watched a TED talk from Sally Kohn, a liberal political commentator (who also happens to be a lesbian) who’s made the media rounds more than a few times, including being a continuing contributor on FOX news (yeah, that FOX news). Unsurprisingly, she has consequently received no small amount of hate mail. Speaking on this, she says:

“So what have I realized, being on the receiving end of all this ugliness? Well, my biggest takeaway is that for decades, we’ve been focused on political correctness, but what matters more is emotional correctness.

Let me give you a small example. I don’t care if you call me a dyke. I really don’t. I care about two things. One, I care that you spell it right. Just a quick refresher, it’s D-Y-K-E. You’d totally be surprised. And second, I don’t care about the word, I care about how you use it. Are you being friendly? Are you just being naive? Or do you really want to hurt me personally? Emotional correctness is the tone, the feeling, how we say what we say, the respect and compassion we show one another. And what I’ve realized is that political persuasion doesn’t begin with ideas or facts or data. Political persuasion begins with being emotionally correct.”

May the Fourth Be With You!

I was six years old.

I was at my grandmas house, and there was a movie playing on the TV that was really confusing me. Everything on screen was desaturated and a little dingy, from the swamp where the scene was taking place to the man on wearing cargo pants and a tank top. At first I ignored it, because the dialogue and the music were all serious and “adult” sounding, and there wasn’t anything exciting happening. But after the man fished a beeping little robot out of the mud, ate lunch lunch with a muppet and lifted up a space ship with magic, I knew something was up…

It was weird.

The 24 Project | 02: The Eliminated Dish

The 24 Project is a year-long writing challenge I began on my 24th birthday. To learn more, head over here. Otherwise, Read on!

A few years back, I had to get a form filled out for my work-study job at school. When I got to the office, the woman I needed to see was still at lunch, and rather than walk the 4 blocks back to campus only to return later, I decided and wait. There wasn’t a lot in the office, but I noticed a small statue of a panther, our school mascot, on one of the desks. I pulled out my sketchbook and started doodling and letting my mind wander.

It wasn’t a great sketch. It was barely an intentional one. But after while, a girl came in and noticed what I was doing. She commented on my sketch, and seemed genuinely impressed by it. A few minutes later, it happened again. Another girl came in, saw the sketch, and seemed even more enthusiastic about it than the first. I set the drawing down and looked at it. I had definitely made worse, but I couldn’t find anything particularly impressive about the smudged and scribbled lines on my page. The proportions were wrong, the lighting was impossible, and the face looked like smashed Play-doh.

The 24 Project | 01: Holding Doors For Girls

The 24 Project is a year-long writing challenge I began on my 24th birthday. To learn more, head over here. Otherwise, Read on!

Always hold doors for girls.

That is the earliest piece of fatherly wisdom my dad bestowed upon me that I can recall. Hold doors for girls. I’m not even sure he gave me any reasoning for this but, being six years old, I started holding doors for girls.

When you’re a three and a half foot tall kid with a bowl haircut and giant glasses, you get nothing but smiles when hold doors for girls. And that’s what I remember the most. Not the struggle of pushing those doors open, or the Herculean effort of then holding that door in place, but the smiles. Smiles of confusion, then surprise, then simple joy, laughter and thanks. And, pretty quickly, I didn’t need my dad to tell me to go do it, or to push me towards the door. I went and did it on my own, because I loved seeing those smiles.

The 24 Project | Prologue

So I’m 24 now, I guess.

I know it’s just another number, marking another day, another year. But 24 seems like a number of some significance. More, at least, than 23, or even 22 (despite what Taylor Swift may be feeling). 24 lies just on the far side of “early twenties” – after college, after the first floundering experiments with a real career, at the point where Life tires of standing against the tree with eyes closed, and says “Ready or not, here I come”.

Should it be long, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of my life now lies behind me. In that time, I’ve made enough mistakes to finally begin learning some lessons. About family, relationships, God, video games, and everything in between. And I would like to share some of them with you.

Games We Play: Flappy Bird

I picked a heck of a day to start playing Flappy Bird. Just minutes after my first annoyed time with it, I read of its imminent removal from app stores.

Insert “Floppy Bird” joke here, I suppose.

If you know what a smartphone is, you probably already have heard about Flappy Bird. It’s mobile game in which you play as a bird, whose goal is to fly between sets of large green pipes across over a flat, grass-covered pixelated world. It’s a simple concept, and the game has absolutely exploded in popularity since the beginning of the year, sitting on top of the iOS free app charts.

But here’s the thing about Flappy Bird: It’s kind of a terrible game, almost inarguably so. And not for the rampant visual “inspirations” it takes from other games. No, Flappy Bird’s flaw is the way it approaches it’s difficulty. Not simply that it IS difficult, but how and why it is difficult.

In the Name of the Game

Trash talk and aggression is nothing new to professional sports. We get it from the players, we get it from the fans. It’s all part of the nature of the game, the show, the deal. We expect it, we encourage it, we demand it, and we defend it. If it gets a little rough, we blame the energy and excitement of “being in the moment” and rush to remind people that everyone does it. Sure, we may cry foul if our team is on the receiving end, but turn around and use it as an excuse to fire right back.

What is wrong with us?