I Don’t Like Dressing Up

I can’t tell you why, but I’ve always hated dressing up. I didn’t even like pajama day in preschool—I wore sweatpants and a sweatshirt. For me, there’s something uncomfortable about pretending to be somebody I’m not. Maybe my psyche just isn’t on board with, or maybe that’s just a story I like to tell myself.

Over the years, I’ve been pretty good at recognizing my insecurities, getting to their root causes, and abolishing them. This is one I just can’t shake. I’ve tasked my psychologist girlfriend at trying to figure out why I hate it. She can’t figure it out yet either. Regardless, Halloween and I don’t do well together.

So I don’t know where the insecurity of dressing up comes from, but I know there’s one effective way to deal with it: don’t dress up, stay home, and give out candy to trick-or-treaters. Though this is a short-term solution, it’ll work for the time being. There may be some FOMO and some missed laughs, but in this instance I’ll choose self care over doing something I don’t want to do.

Happy Halloween, I guess.

Chocolate Popcorn

First, get a large pot. Next, poor organic popcorn kernels and cover the bottom. Third—drizzle some olive oil over the kernels and sift them around to coat every one. The next step is important: throw some grass fed butter in. After the butter, turn in high heat. They will stay popping soon. When they do, lower the temperature and throw in a handful of chocolate chips. No more popping means no more heat. Throw in some more butter and chocolate chips. Shake. Dazzle with sea salt. Serve immediately. Peace indefinitely.

Psychological Safety

A Lesson from my Perspectives on Leadership course:

Teams perform better when everybody feels safe to share ideas, concerns, questions, and mistakes without fear of judgement or embarrassment. Good leaders promote this type of environment by making every task into a learning opportunity, by admitting their own fallacies, and by promoting curiosity. This will allow employees to develop out-of-the-box thoughts and solve interesting problems.

We can all learn something about interpersonal relationships from this model.

God Is

Kanye West’s new album Jesus is King is taking the world by storm. I’ve been on and off the Jesus Music bandwagon since high school, but it’s always been important to me. And some of it slaps. When Kanye’s new album came out, I heard it was about Jesus. Indeed, it is. And it, too, slaps.

Whenever a famous artist outsteps his or her main mode of transmission, people loose their heads. Remember Old Town Road? When something can’t be categorized, people tend to dismiss it at first then eventually come running back.

Some people don’t like Kanye’s preaching, but He’s an artist. This is a masterpiece, whether people see it or not. Gospel and rap? Unthinkable. Imaginative. Powerful.

Thank you, Kanye, for opening our eyes. Let’s praise Jesus for a bit and bring people together.

Is Sunday the First Day of the Week?

Camille thinks Sunday is the last day of the week and that Monday starts the week. I think Saturday is the last day and Sunday is the first. So which is it? More importantly, how does that affect how what we seek to accomplish in our days?

I like to see Sunday as the start of the week so it can be a reset, a time to reflect on the past week and plan the upcoming week. Without proper planning, Monday (and the rest of the week after it) might be a disaster. I’m not sure this would have the same urgency if Monday was the end of the week.

On the other hand, having 2 days at the end of the week means 2 days of productivity before the week ends. This means you don’t have to cram your entire weekend fun into Saturday, but it can actually carry over to Sunday. Then you can rest on Sunday, looking back at a good week and forward to a brand new one.

Both of these are right and useful at different moments. What matters is what’s more resourceful this week.

Joker

There’s two sides to every story. Most of us only see the one that fits our narrative. It should be our job to seek the truth.

Accountable and Nonnegotiable

My teammates and I ran 5 800s today around 2:40 pace, except for the last one which was at 2:30. This was after a really long week without the best sleep. I didn’t feel like running hard at practice today, but I didn’t make it an option. When it’s not an option, the job will get done regardless of how I feel. It’s a nonnegotiable.

I have my teammates to thank for getting me through these 800s. I’m the captain of our Long Sprint group, but the guys I’m leading are tough. We run every workout together as a tight-knit group, stride for stride. Having them by my side makes workouts like this go by faster and with greater intensity. They hold me accountable.

When accomplishing daily goals is nonnegotiable and there’s people in place to hold you accountable, success becomes a lot more likely and a lot more possible.

How to Honor a Glacier

In environmental chemistry today, my professor brought up how the people of Iceland had a funeral for a glacier which melted due to climate change. In class, I voiced my opinion for why having a funeral for dying parts of the earth was a good thing, why personifying nature isn’t woo-woo but might just be necessary to actually make change. Sometime after class, my professor emailed me, saying my perspectives may have swayed her opinions. I replied with a further defense of my stance. Here is that response.

“Here’s a more elaborate perspective on the matter:

As a global society, we wouldn’t be where we are today without science.  That’s quite an understatement.  Speaking rather generally, though science has brought us very far, it’s also managed to almost wholly neglect any spiritual component or connection to the natural world.  We have become separate from nature.  We have been more or less conditioned to see this planet as something we can extract resources from, not someone that’s alive, that has a place at the table.  I believe the scientific community has a lot to learn with respect to the indigenous religions and belief systems of the Americas and other places across the globe.  Maybe it’s time we, as a society, stopped judging native people’s sun dances and conversations with trees and started listening.  I think they were on to something.

If we started treating earth as Mother Earth, maybe people would start worrying about her.  When we worry, we care–then we are moved to action.  I sincerely think we need more than just good science to convert the masses.  We need some reason for everybody to care, something that goes across partisan lines.  I think a funeral for a glacier is a step in the right direction.”

Strength in Surrender

It’s common to view the act of surrender as a sign of weakness, as quitting. From Tom & Jerry episodes to Braveheart, we’ve come to believe the white flag means failure. Nobody trying to be strong can accept surrender as an option, or so we’ve been told.

Imagine you’re driving on the highway and somebody cuts you off. The natural response is rage–what they did was dangerous and could’ve gotten people hurt. There’s two responses in this scenario: chase him down and try to cut him off, or choose to continue driving safely, letting the unsafe driver pass. Which is stronger here? Is it the response that will make you seem more alpha? Or is it the one that goes against our instincts, the one that’s harder and less glamorous?

Surrender requires strength. Saying it’s difficult to allow the world to unfold before you is an understatement. But this isn’t a passive pursuit; it requires changing your inner state, something each one of us struggles with daily.

The choice is yours. I will choose the more difficult path, because struggling through challenges is the only way to grow.

God’s Goodness

Excerpt from an analysis essay of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles Chapter 38…

​In section 4 of Chapter 38, Aquinas begins by discussing how any good thing, call it A, that exists must be good by participation in some other thing, call it B.  In this scenario B must be of a higher order than A because B is the source of A’s goodness; said in another way, any cause must be greater than its effect.  Though possible to trace a thing’s goodness back to its participation in another good thing, Aquinas argues that this pattern cannot extend to infinity because infinity is opposed to the end, and good has the nature of an end.  Stating “good has the nature of an end” indicates that each good can be traced back to the participation in another, higher good.  For this to comply, there must be a first good that doesn’t participate in any other good because there is nothing greater than it.  Its source of goodness is its own essence, not participation in any higher good.  As it previously argued, God is the only possible entity whose being is the same as its essence.  Thus we have come to Aquinas’ conclusion: because good things have the nature of an end, God must be goodness because God’s being is God’s essence.