Wizarding Gothic

Curing Sadness

I haven't really had much to talk about lately because everything that has been on my mind has been slightly on the personal side, but I think I finally found something worth while to talk about.  I was at Relay for Life the other day, which is an amazing benefit that is set up to raise money and awareness for cancer, and I was walking when I saw a tent that was called "The Bucket List".  Because all of the tents were movie themed I sort of already knew the concept of the booth.  The movie is about two older guys that basically are trying to achieve everything that they have on their lists before their time is up.  But at the tent they had this easel with a huge blank piece of paper that asked "What's on your Bucket List?".  People has already written things like get married, sky-dive, and climb Mt. Everest and my friends were with me and they wrote things like see my favorite tennis star and save a life and all of these things got me thinking.  What do I really want to do before I die?  What is important enough to me that I would write it down on a list and really pursue crossing it off?  Well it took me at least a few laps around the track we were walking to figure it out, but I finally did.  What I came up with was that I wanted to cure sadness.  At the time I wasn't really thinking about how achievable that was, I just knew that I wanted to do it.

You see a few of my friends had been going through some personal stuff that was really bringing them down and then everyone at the Relay for Life just made me think how much sadness there is in the world.  It made me think how we aren't just saddened by people, but by diseases, and finances, and our jobs, and there are just so many things that can make us sad and I can't imagine that there wouldn't be an antidote for them.  So the more I thought about the true size of this task I had put out for myself I knew I had to think big.  What I have decided is that in curing sadness all you have to do is increase happiness.

To me, happiness is like a spark.  It bursts into brightness and astonishes you, so much so that you want to touch it.  But you know that you can't because it is red hot, and before it has been altered by anything, it's gone.  That is, unless, it touches something that will catch fire.  And that is what I want to be, flammable.  Because the more people that learn to become flammable, the more sparks will turn into fires that illuminate the world with happiness.  I want to burn up all the cold sadness with our fires and live in this world that I've always dreamed about where no one has to be sad.  And all it takes is seeing the good in everything, being eternally positive.

Whether it be losing someone you love and rejoicing because they have made such a difference in their time here and have gone on to a better place, or if it's losing all of your possessions in a tornado and being happy because all you have to lean on now is God and the amazing people around you that are willing to help you out, or even if you've just had a bad day, celebrating because you've conquered something that wanted to defeat you.  We have the power within ourselves to make the worst of the worst into the best.  Well I say within us, but what I mean is that God gives us the propensity to do such.  And if we can learn to harness that, and apply it all of the time, we can cure sadness.  And that, is a beautiful thing.

The Pursuit of Happiness

We all search for something in life.  Something to define us.  Something that shows everyone what we're about.  Some people look for it in money, some in fame, some in drugs, some in relationships, and some in religion.  But those people won't ever find it.  Not because they are looking in the wrong places, but rather because they are looking at all.  That's the tricky thing about self definition, is that it can only come from within ourselves.  It isn't about anything material or your legacy or anything like that.  It is more of a feeling, or a simple state of being.  It has more to do with being true to yourself and being happy than anything else.  We can have money, or a spouse, or be famous, or invent something cool, but that won't ever change who we are inside.  Who we are inside can only produce those results, not the other way around.  Being poor and happy is exactly the same as being rich and happy.  We're all together on Earth and what common goal do we have other that the pursuit of happiness?  It is the most basic piece of the human puzzle, but also the most revealing one.  The things that bring an honest smile to your face, the really personal things, they're what we live for.  It is our happiness that makes us human.  Anything beyond that is just white noise.

Here are a few things that make me smile, no matter what I'm feeling:
-Everyone at church dropping their guard and letting themselves become effected by God

-Seeing pure innocence in someone

-Being able to sit with my friends or family in silence but be totally comfortable, just because it's us

-The spark of someone's creativity

-People that are curious enough to ask "why?" in everyday situations

-The zoo

-Someone that knows themselves well enough to admit they're messed up, but also wouldn't trade that part of themselves for the world

Cooking Up a Great Friend

A lot of times we don't realize how special people are to us until we go without them for a while.  I don't really do a great job of keeping in touch with my friends while I'm away at college but sometimes it makes it even better when I finally see them. When I went home for Easter last weekend I got to see 2 of my best friends from Dalton, Casey and Audrey.  We did our usual thing of Chatt and walking around and watching a movie but even though we didn't really do anything special it was one of the best nights that I had had in a long time.  I don't know if it's because I'm spending time with 2 people that really get me or if it's just that we've known each other for a while but everything just seems to work when we're together.  And it's not just them that are like that either.

Every time that Nate and Courtney come home, and yes they almost always come home together, I have SO much fun.  Of course with Nate it's more of superhero adventure fun but still, it's almost like I'm getting back something that I had lost.  Because really close friends are different than casual friends, or even good friends.  Not having your best friend around is like cooking without a stove, you can still do it, but nothing is quite as good.  Just like a stove, there are so many more possibilities with your best friends.  Then your second best friend is like the oven, without them, you're down to just using the microwave.  Eventually you get used to it.  You eat Easy Mac and Raman noodles and Hot Pockets, but the second you have access to the stove and oven again, you've all of the sudden got real macaroni and stir fry and cakes and casseroles and you realize just how much you've missed have them.

Even if you're just cooking a pizza, it still makes you wish you had that oven all of the time.  Because, honestly, we only make the big meal once or twice a year.  And of course that's when we need our friends the most, but what makes them really special is all the other times.  It's the times where you just go to the movies, or you just go to the park and talk, or you just walk around downtown, or you just go golfing.  They aren't the most special times but they are what make the friendship.  They add all of the character to your recipes.  They're what build you up to making Christmas dinner (or talking about your problems that you think are crazy).  It's not that I don't love my microwave friends, I can't get enough Hot Pockets, but the stove friends are the ones that keep me going.

If it wasn't for Nate, right now I'd be in bed and getting ready for some 8am class and on the way to being some up tight stiff that I couldn't stand being.  He's taught me how to be a kid and be OK with it, and even be successful with it. If that wasn't enough, he's been my best friend since like.....middle school, that's a lot of stuff to put up with from me.  And without Courtney I'd be taking myself way too seriously right now, and not to mention be another $28,000 dollars in the hole (academic common market, Google it).  She keeps me laughing at myself and keeps making me think how I glad I am that Nate is marrying her.  And let's be honest, she's gone from my best friends girlfriend to one of my friends.  Then there's Casey, who I would be totally lost without.  She's the best I've ever seen at not letting all the bad stuff that's happening around her effect her.  She's one of those people that just being around her makes you happy, just because she always sees the light even in the darkest of times.  Finally, there's Audrey.  I've only known her for maybe a year but she's really starting to become a great friend.  What I love about her is that she's almost exactly like me in her morals but she thinks totally opposite.  It's like she see's the world totally different than how I do.  It makes for a great person to talk to about situations you feel trapped in.

Between these four, there are so many times that I feel like I'm missing a part of myself.  But every time that I get to see them I feel complete.  That's what great friends can do for you.  They make you feel like yourself in those times when you feel like you're lost.  I wouldn't trade these four for the world.  They're some of my best friends and they're really all I could ask for in being that.

The Beauty of Easter

So Easter is always kind of a hectic time for me.  My sister's birthday is on the 25th of April and sometimes Easter falls near the Masters and school is usually getting to crunch time.  So I rarely get the week of Easter to JUST celebrate Easter.  But today we went to early church and I've got a few minutes to just sit and think about how really amazing it is.  You know how it is, when you're younger the only things you really take away from Easter are eggs and rabbits.  But even as you get into middle school and high school it still doesn't reveal it's true meaning you most people.  Granted some people are very deep thinkers but to me, at that time, all that I knew Easter as was a story.  And even though it is a great story, it's much more than that.

Now for those of you who don't know what Easter is about, I'll try to give the Cliffs Notes version of the story.  Basically this Jesus guy claims to be the Son of God and has performed some miracles and people are freaked out by that.  He has 12 apostles who are like his friends/followers and one of them, Judas, betrays Him and gives Him up to the Pharisees.  They don't really jive with Him claiming to be the Son of God and end up beating Him until he is unrecognizable and then they give him a cross. He is made to carry it through the streets of Jerusalem and to carry it to Golgotha, which is a sort of mountain or hill.  He is then nailed to the cross and left to die.  This is what Good Friday commemorates.  God sent Jesus to die for our sins.

The crazy thing about this story is that Jesus knew all along how much suffering He would have to go through. He wasn't exactly stoked about it either.  But God had told Him that it would save us from our sins. So this is sort of where the story gets interesting.  They bury Jesus in a tomb and roll this enormous stone in front of it to keep people out.  Then on Sunday, Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene found that the stone had been rolled away and an angel told them that Jesus wasn't there but He had risen from the grave.  This is where Easter comes from.  It's like the celebration that God not only sent His son to Earth to live with us but that He died for our sins AND was risen from the grave to go live in Heaven.  How freeing is that? It's God saying that He knows we're going to mess up and that's OK.

It's forgiveness day.  He sent His son to die for us just for our forgiveness! I can't even imagine giving up my dog and letting her suffer, but He gave up His own son!  It's tough for me to wrap my head around really.  Everything from knowing from that He was going to do it to actually letting His son get beaten and basically tortured.  I just can't imagine it.  But that's what it's all about, He freed us. Because He gave up His son, we can live free lives and be forgiven from our sins.  So always remember that Easter isn't just a story.  It's a symbol of the forgiveness the He gave us, and that is something that no one can take away.

Welcome To Nerdom

When Wheels are Turned

For a long time I have always thought about this theory of the turning color wheel.  Not many people know about it and I'm not even sure if there is a name for it but I'll do my best to explain it.  On the right is a standard version of the color wheel.  It goes in an order that can explain which colors match best and complement each other.  Everyone, aside from people that are color blind, can recognize the primary colors as red, yellow, and blue.  This is where I'm about to blow your mind. So be warned.  What if everyone's color wheels are different?  What if through someone else's eye's all the colors looked different than they do to you?  I'm not talking about being color blind, I'm talking about being color turned.  What I mean by that is that someone else's color wheel may be turned a half rotation so that the colors are in a different order.

This is where you may be saying, well then they would say the sky is green.  But that isn't true.  Since we have all been taught since we were born that whatever color we see the sky is must be blue, we could all in fact be seeing different colors.  So John Doe may see the sky the way I see green.  But to him this would be normal.  The second argument is that everyone knows what colors match.  Even though that isn't entirely true (I know from experience) there is still an answer.  Because the color wheel has just been turned, the colors would still match, just in a different way than other people see it.  Below is an example of how it would work.

Now I'm not trying to win the Nobel Prize here for some half baked theory that no one really understands very well.  Rather what I am trying to do is provide a better example than walking in someone else's shoes.  If you really think this deeply about it, you have no clue how everyone else see's the world, well, because you've only seen it through you eyes.  Perspective is a powerful thing.  It can play tricks on you, but you can also fall into the trap of thinking that the way you see things is just how everyone else sees them too.  It's difficult to have the presence of mind to stop and think if we're doing this.  But the people that can sense how other people perceive the world are some of the most successful people in the world.

So next time you get mad at someone, or someone hurts your feelings, or things aren't going your way just take the time to think how everyone else sees it.  Look at the situation through your bosses eyes, or your girlfriends, or your parents, or the homeless man's, or the African kids, and just try to think of how different things are for them.  They say you never know a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes, but to me, you'll never know a person until you've seen a day through their eyes.

Hanna

So out of nowhere yesterday I decided that I wanted to spend $8.  I figured that food wouldn't last me, clothes stop fitting pretty quickly, and gas is overrated.  That only left one thing. Go to the movies!  So I look up some showtimes and I see that this Hanna movie is playing and it looked somewhat interesting.  But I was soon to find out that "somewhat" was a bad word choice.

From the very beginning it was pretty much non stop action.  She kills this elk with an arrow and then her dad attacks her.  I mean, honestly, the opening couldn't have been much cooler.  Even though I felt like this was pretty much a textbook example of an action movie, what made it great is the fact that it still had some symbolism to it.

I don't want to give anything away but it touched on being different and innocence a little bit.  There was sort of underlying point that if you teach someone their whole life that Coke is a healthy drink then they will treat it as such until they somehow find out differently.  We tend to say that people are only products of their environment and that is very true.  People will normally grow up to be just like the people they were raised by, but there are exceptions.  That's where nature vs. nurture comes in.  Some people just want to do right or do wrong.  You could put them in almost any environment you want and it would almost never change.  To me, the real argument is that both are right.

It seems fair to say that every parent should want the best for their children.  I do know that is a naive statement to make seeing as we have things like abortion and adoption, but those things can be seen as parents knowing that they don't have the ability to give their children a good life.  But that argument aside, my point is that no one ever means to cut their child's chances in life.  It just happens.  Some people drink too much, some people have anger issues, some people just aren't around enough, and some people smother their kids.  It's just not human nature to be perfect.

However, we do expect our kids to be perfect.  We expect them to have all A's and go to Harvard and be lawyers and get married to someone that is perfectly adequate for that type and then have 2 kids and live in a black shutter house with a tire swing.  It's either that or let go and hope for the best.  What I don't understand is why the middle ground is used so much less.  Why not just hold on loosely but don't let go? It may be just and average .38 Special song but it makes sense.  It's just hard to see people make the same mistakes that we've made.  But sometimes it's honestly better to figure stuff out on your own.  That's the only way it really sticks, the life lessons aren't ever anything that someone just tells us.  We just have to figure them out on our own, and when we can't, that's what other people are here for.  Just teach me to learn, and I'll become the most successful man alive.

The Beauties of May

With May being just around the corner I'm starting to get pretty excited!  May is a big month for me.  It holds a few big events that I can barely wait for.  First and foremost, schools out in May.  Not that I don't love being in Knoxville with all my friends, it's just that I honestly hate being in class 5 days out of the week.  I would probably rather eat nails than keep this up another 4 years.  But aside from that, May 15th is my birthday! My Amazon wishlist is linked to my Blogger page for everyone that wants to send me stuff haha.  In all seriousness I am super stoked about it because I'm finally getting a Kindle and will be an official nerd!  About 3 years ago I would have never admitted to it, but now it seems really cool.  But I really do love May because it sort of symbolizes summer for me.  It actually is hot every day and I can sit by the pool shamelessly.  I finally get the time to just relax and take a break from everything.

But the thing I am most excited for in May is the big screen.  Three amazing looking movies are coming out that I really can't wait for.  May the 6th is the opening of Thor!!!  For those of you who aren't massive nerds, Thor is a superhero that ends up teaming up with Iron Man, Captain America, and for the movies sake possibly Hawkeye to make the team called The Avengers.  The cool thing about Thor is that he's a god on another planet, so he has to come to Earth and just be a super hero.  But anyways, that's just the kickoff.  By the 20th we'll have the fourth Pirates movie coming and despite being disappointed about losing Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom I'm still overall excited.  I mean, it IS Johnny Depp. So how bad could it really be?  And then to top it all off, as bad as it really is, The Hangover II ends out May.  Sure the humor may be racy, but it somehow never fails to make me laugh.  So in contrast with March, May seems to be one of my favorite months because of all the blessings it brings!

One Chapter

Being in college you learn a good deal about things that really have nothing to do with your major, minor, or even school.  The thing that I'm learning the most about is people.  I've started to realize how good of a saying "don't judge a book by its cover" really is.  I was talking to one of my best friends the other day and she was talking about how her friends at school don't know her like I do and like her friends from back home do.  It made me think that what the people that meet us throughout life see is just a glimpse of our stories.  Some people get to read a chapter, some read a paragraph, and some just read a sentence.  But in all actuality no many people at all read or even skim the whole book.

It's only our oldest friends and our closest family members that ever get the chance to read that much.  That's why it's so scary and frustrating to go to new places.  Because as soon as you have some big problem to deal with you don't have anyone to go to about it.  Let's face it, not many people want to hear your whole life story and even if you find the few people that do, it's exhausting to tell it.  It's like trying to give Cliff Notes for your whole life and pick out what was and wasn't important and leave out certain things and exxagerate others.  But the beautiful thing is, that's what God is here for.  He's the only one that has read us cover to cover and knows us through and through.

I make the mistake of trying to internalize my problems or go to someone else about them that doesn't know me.  That isn't always bad but sometimes I forget that God is the best person to go to.  He read my preface, every chapter, and even the boring little side notes that popped up from time to time.  Honestly that's what we all need, someone who just gets us.  We need someone that knows everything there is to know about us and that's what God does for us. He promises to know us even better than we do.  That's the beauty of the relationship, He knows us better than we do. You can't ask for much more than that.