Staying in the Eye of the Storm

        The last you heard from me, I was struggling deeply with the loss of my partner. I took a couple months off from the blog so that I could heal properly. Well, today I have decided to share what I have learned from my journey, and, more importantly, how it can apply to the struggles you face in your life, as well. I will spare you the details about my specific stumbling blocks and, instead, try to keep it more general for you. And, as an aside, I do not claim this to be a set of guidelines for overcoming any obstacle. This is just what I have found to be helpful so far in my life.
        
          

The strongest storms that exist on our planet are, of course, hurricanes, and I have found that it helps to think of these monstrosities as an analogous guide for dealing with crises in your life. They often are unpredictable and can cause a great deal of physical and emotional damage. It seems that some people are given plenty of warning about their impending arrival while others who lie outside of the predicted path can suffer if the storm takes a turn. Yet, no matter how much you prepare for it, the truth remains that if you are present in the area when the storm makes landfall, you WILL feel its presence. Sometimes people choose to stay in the chaos because they have too many emotional ties with their home, friends and family while others are just too confident in themselves to allow a mere storm to change their lives. Nonetheless, the storm arrives and the damage is inflicted. The initial blow can leave you reeling, but there is a secret to a hurricane (aka a life crisis) that can be your saving grace. 
          
               At the center of each hurricane is an eye, or a region of relative calmness. For many, it is a dangerous moment of relief when guards are let down such that when the eye passes they are more susceptible to worst of the storm that follows it. However, the eye never disolves as long as the storm is intact. So, to return to the real point I'm trying to make, if you can find something that gives you that calmness in the midst of your storm then you are halfway to finding your ticket out of the suffering. As I mentioned, the eye keeps moving in a hurricane, and much the same way, the only way to maintain your peace of mind is to not stop to dwell on the past or to worry about the future. The only way you can truly make peace with the destruction around you is to keep moving forward and accepting the blows that life has given you. 
         
              The beautiful thing about staying in the eye is that, if you can keep yourself in this area of calmness for as long as possible, then the worst of the storm will have passed and you will be able to go back and collect the pieces of your life when the skies are clearer.
         
              Sometimes lives, jobs, homes, and love is lost during these "storms", and there will always be a scar on the land and in the minds of those affected by it. Yet, there is a beauty in the opportunity to build anew upon fresh ground using the lessons that you learned from your journey. Nothing will ever be the same, but maybe that's how it should be. We can't grow if we stop moving forward, and just remember that no storm lasts forever.

Read More

It Takes an Army

          It's been a while since I last posted. I've been trying to find my "new normal," but to be honest, it's a difficult thing to do. After Jake's passing, I moved back to Tennessee and while it seemed like my only choice at the time, I can't help but regret my decision. It's not that I dislike Tennessee because, after all, it's where I was raised, but as much as I hate to say it, I've never felt comfortable here. The source of this discomfort is the topic of this post: bullying.

          Bullying, especially in school environments, is a problem that is the direct effect of our cultural climate in America. We have accepted the consensus that "survival of the fittest" is the philosophy by which we should live our lives, and I would not argue against this if we were a species that allowed our primal instincts to control our behavior. Unfortunately, there is a fatal flaw in this mentality, and it's the fact that we are a social species. We evolved an interdependence on our fellow man because that is what humans have always needed to survive. When capitalism emerged with such large success in the 19th century, independence and "boot-strap" philosophies began to permeate into every corner of our society. People began to be fooled into believing that relying on others was a weakness, but the only problem with this competitive spirit is that it leads to a lack of compassion.

 What happens when someone needs help?

        Now, for me, being bullied was an everyday thing, but then when I compare my experience to Jake's experience, there is a stark contrast. We both experienced social exclusion and loneliness when we were children, but why were our paths so different? For Jake, school was a battleground where he was an army of one with no weaponry while his opponents, his classmates, were numerous and armed with the most sophisticated weapons. It was a hopeless battle, and eventually he felt like there was no reason to continue the struggle, so he surrendered. When I met him, he didn't have a high school diploma and he had little confidence or knowledge in his own abilities, but the tragedy was that he had an incredibly curious disposition and an amazing ability to understand how things worked. His story was, like millions of other Americans, one of a talented individual who suffered his whole life because society failed to show him a helping hand and a pat on the back. I believe that he would still be here today if the trauma from the bullying he faced had never been allowed to go on for so long.
      For me, my salvation from this same fate most certainly came from the positive reinforcement that I received from the school, itself. I had teachers that cultivated my abilities and applauded my success. I suffered little by the time I reached high school because I would turn to my schoolwork as an escape from the isolation that I felt. Jake never had that because he felt unwanted at school.

What can we do about it? 

      It has been shown that bullying is greatly reduced in positive school environments.
What this means is that when teachers actively support positive student interactions through class participation, intervene in negative interactions, reward success, and generally take a more active approach to the learning environment, bullying and the impact that this bullying has on the victims is greatly reduced. This research implements a teaching approach that they call Tribes, and so far, schools that use this approach are showing vast improvements in their classroom climates. If you are a teacher or a parent, please take a look at the website that I linked to above and consider sharing it with school administrators. We have to stop being so passive in regards to the lives of the children in this country. Remember, children who are victimized become adults who are traumatized and we can prevent both of them if we just start showing a little more compassion.

It takes an army to win the war against bullying, and you can give someone a fighting chance, so do it.

In Memory of Jake,

and all of the victims of bullying.

Read More

In loving memory....

       In the past, I have avoided posts about my personal life, but my heart is demanding relief. My partner, my best friend, and the physical embodiment of my love passed away on Februay 7th at the age of 28. His name was Jake and over the past 5 years (nearly a quarter of my life) we spent almost every moment together. Eventually it seemed like we were merely a single soul in a constant state of duality. We came to know ourselves through the ways in which we balanced each other out. Then, at what seemed like the height of our happiness, he began to suffer from digestive issues which only worsened with time. The tragedy was that he had no health insurance and in this country, general healthcare is a privilege that isn't awarded to the less fortunate. Apparently, you have to have a certain income level to be worthy of life? Anyway, we had to wait for his condition to become an "emergency" before seeking treatment via the ER.
     See, I created this blog as a form of therapy. If you have ever cared for a loved one who is suffering through illness then you understand the painful erosion of both of your spirits as the days turn to months. This blog allowed me to explore hopeful ideas so that I could then share that hope with Jake. Sometimes when life is drenched in chaos, the only thing that seems real is hope.
       I had just completed my degree in August of 2012 when he began to fall into a deep depression. I had to dedicate almost all of my time to being at home and by the time we went to the ER he had lost nearly 30 pounds.
       Skipping ahead, antibiotics seemed to dampen his stomach problems, but he developed a cough shortly after he had gotten home. At first, it seemed like a cold, but by the end of January the cough had become an "emergency." His breathing was shallow and he would get short of breath from walking. His health was greatly weakened from the year of suffering he had endured, and he had contracted an antibiotic-resistant pneumonia that is apparently specific to hospital environments. He passed away after 6 days in the hospital. 

        I stayed by his side the whole time, trying my hardest to keep him smiling and hopeful. Fate, though, is always blind to the efforts of man. He went to sleep believing that he would get better, but he didn't. And with his life, so went my heart. I guess you could say that I had lost my hope, but truthfully, I had lost my everything. I have spent this whole month in a confused state of shock and emotional upheaval. It was obvious to me that the thoughts in my head needed to free themselves.
     But Why? Well, when you lose your confidente there is a lot of dialogue that no longer has an outlet. Allowing that dialogue to rot in your mind is dangerous, and the one thing I need more than anything right now is a sense of hope. Since this is the one place where I could find hope for Jake's suffering, here I am searching for my own. So that is where I am now, but I will be posting more about this journey as I go. Maybe someone out there will read this and find their own hope in my story.

~In eternal, loving memory of Jacob Clay Renfrow (1984-2013) ~

Read More

Please wait, the Revolution is Loading...

We are on the brink of a new cultural revolution, and it truly has the potential to change the very fabric of society, for better or worse. The facilitator of this change is social media, and while this prediction has been around for quite some time now, it's important that we know what we are getting ourselves into. There is no question that we, as socially motivated creatures, have an instinctual desire to be validated, to share our experiences, and to communicate our beliefs with one another. But now that we have established these complex and versatile social networks with which we satisfy these desires, the question is:

How can we maximize the potential for social media to improve society?

Undeniabley, social media provides us with some of the immediate, superficial satisfactions that we sometimes have difficulty finding in face-to-face interactions, but at what point do we have to start asking whether we are doing ourselves a disservice by not further exploring the collective benefits that this technology offers. For some perspective, consider these facts:

• Total time spent on social media in the U.S. across PCs and mobile devices increased 37 percent to 121 billion minutes in July 2012, compared to 88 billion in July 2011.
• 51% of people aged 25–34 used social networking in the office, more than any other age group.
• On average, 47% of social media users engage in social care behavior.
• One in six higher education students are enrolled in an online curriculum.
• A person's social media activity often can reveal signs of mental illness that might not necessarily have emerged in a session with a psychiatrist.
• People in Egypt (2011) used Facebook to organize meetings and communicate details of their political revolution.

These facts highlight one thing: social media is quickly becoming the only effective way for our global culture to organize itself and function. It started with young people watching funny videos on Youtube and listening to new music on Myspace, but it quickly changed into a resource for dating, a way to advertise products and run businesses, a more effective method for newsreporting, and, similar to what I'm doing right now, a new way to express personal ideas and have more people hear them. It has become the face of social democracy, and now it has become the face of mankind's future.

To be clear, there is work to be done now to ensure that we steer this revolution towards progress instead of regression. As an example, the LGBT community has been fighting for civil equality for decades, but recently they have celebrated an unexpected increase in public support. One theory I have about this success is that there was an increased presence of LGBT lifestyles in social media as compared to mainstream media because it is, by its nature, created by the people instead of for the majority. Surely, then, there is unrecognized potential for social media to facilitate human rights efforts.

Which brings me to my next point: overall political involvement has seen a marked increase in recent years, and I doubt that's because more people actually care. My theory here is that it's easier for the general public to digest serious information from social media because it mixes it with entertaining bits of mindlessness. I mean, how often could you watch a video of a kitten playing with a shoelace directly after reading a heavy article on foreign policy back when we got our kicks from reading the newspaper? Never.

While social media has enormous potential, it also has an evil dark side that is begging to be manipulated. Now, ideas are powerful, and that's especially true when there is limited access to alternative ideas. The problem with mainstream media is that it can pick and choose the content it provides and the way that it portrays that chosen information. This creates a bias and biases in public opinion become dangerous weapons against personal freedoms. It's the same danger that is found in corporate monopolies wherein one company, in the absence of competition, has the power to manipulate prices to increase their profit. In this case, ideas are the currency and our minds are what could become manipulted. The fear is that as these social networks become more powerful, there is a certain level of self-interest they begin to develop to maintain their power. Censorship becomes the enemy here, and this enemy is rapidly becoming the arch-nemesis of the social media revolution. It may appear as "promoted" stories or refusals to integrate their network into "sharing" apps, but censorship can appear in many ways.

Governments have two options when it comes to censorship:
Support it or Prohibit it and I think you can ascertain which option I support. It took public support to convince the US government to break apart the monopoly of the Bell Telephone Company in the late 1800's, and it's essential that we learn of the dangers of social media censorship now before we no longer have such easy access to this information.

Anyway, hopefully I have made a convincing argument that social media has the power to improve our future, and that it's equally important that we maintain the freedom to interact how we choose. The last thing that our culture needs is another method in which the "few" can manipulate the "many". Hopefully, when we can look back on our Facebook timelines, we will judge them as being primitive and undeveloped instead of as representing the peak of social media's potential. I don't know about you, but I truly hope its the latter because I know we can do better than some of the things that show up on my news feed !

Read More

To Be Who We Once Were...

            Today, millions of people are tuning in to watch President Barack Obama’s second inauguration.  With so many eyes focused in on the core of our nation, it’s almost impossible not to feel a little proud to be American.  This is a pride that doesn’t come easily for a nation that is just struggling to walk again after the crippling effects that our over-confidence once had. Nonetheless, with the sun shining down on the bleached heart of democracy, it’s hard not to feel a little hopeful about the future. 

            The pressure on our leader and his family today must be crushing. His strength is our strength and the support that his family gives him equally as representative. Yet, the critical eye can’t help but notice the weary look in his eyes. Like the increased proportion of gray in his hair, it indicates to us that he too has suffered from the effects of the last four years. This is comforting to a nation of exhausted workers because the hope in all of our hearts is that today will serve as our re-ignition.

            After today, the torch of progress will be passed to the American people again. The question that should be on all of our minds is, “What can we do differently this time?”  Here are a few thoughts on the possible answer:

·      Much of the progress that has been made thus far has been measured with the sweat and tears of the employed, and while that must continue, there needs to be a larger focus on innovation and new ideas. The world is thirsty for fresh perspectives, and there are countless youth eager to provide them with just that.

·      The gap between the rich and the poor is larger than ever with the rich getting richer over the past four years while the proportion of Americans whom consider themselves to be poor is barely even hitting a plateau in growth. We can no longer afford to preserve their lifestyles while the majority of us are struggling to put food on our tables. More legislation has to be passed that supports those who cannot work and are suffering each day because of their misfortunes.

·      Healthcare must become more universal. I have seen first hand the prejudice that exists towards those without health insurance. We still have people that believe America has the best healthcare in the country while many of our fellow Americans are DENIED treatment because they don’t have enough money to afford insurance. This is barbaric. WAKE UP!!

·      And finally, we have to get a handle on gun control in the coming years. We have had far too many deaths recently resulting from our inaction on this issue. Regardless of what exactly changes, something HAS to happen soon.

  

            This all may seem like a lot to swallow, but I think that is the message of today’s inauguration: Our work has just begun. The take-away here, though, is that we are all in this together. From the richest to the poorest, the sickest to the healthiest, the oldest to the youngest, we all are Americans, and while the President represents our voice to the world, we all can and do make a difference in shaping that voice. Let’s be who we once were.

Read More

The Dark Side of Ideas

    When we believe in an idea with enough intensity, often we develop a strong identification with that idea. An example of this phenomenon is evident when two people have been dating for a while. Usually both people will begin to lose their individual identities in social situations as they adopt a conjoined identity of "we." Their relationship is the idea in this scenario, and it's an idea with which they believe in enough to identify themselves.
    This is a phenomenon that has been studied for centuries and it's one of the major bases of social psychology and, more broadly, sociology. Every effective social movement in history was the result of enough people adopting an idea as their identity. When this happens, though, there is a certain amount of danger that arises too. This is easy to see in the relationship example. When abuse arises in a relationship, the victim of the abuse will often begin to feel guilty or somehow responsible for the abusive behavior of his/her partner because they are so accustomed to associating him/herself with their shared identity. He/she cannot appreciate the actual innocence of his/her seperate identity any longer, and the anxiety of losing part of his/her identity may outweigh the perceived benefit of being safely alone. This is one of the dangers associated with abandoning too much of your own identity in favor of the group's identity; you begin to forego your own well-being for the sustenance of the idea.
     The real issue here is:  

what happens when the leaders of the group become aware of these weaknesses in its members?  

There are two potential outcomes in this situation: the leaders can weaken the intensity of their ideology enough to allow for its members to appreciate their individuality OR (and this is more frequently the case) the group can manipulate these weaknesses towards selfish gain. Take, for example, political involvement in America. America functions under a bipartisan government so we have two main political parties with which politicians associate themselves with based on their ideologies. The problem, here, is that most politicians don't fit perfectly into either party, but luckily for them, there are enough people who identify themselves almost entirely with their political party that they will accept anyone that the party tells them is worthy of supporting. Politicians, to gain the political party's support, will manipulate information and carefully construct the presentation of themselves to the public until they are in office. Once they are in office, though, their actions may not seem as perfectly aligned to their parties ideologies. If enough politicians in the party can sneak these actions without public attention then the ideology of the group will eventually change, too, and this can sometimes be a good thing. But, it can be equally destructive. For instance, the Republican party passes legislation that favors the rich while the majority of its supporters are actually from the lower and middle classes, but this wasn't always the case. When Abraham Lincoln (a Republican) was in office, the party was known for its support of the working class and for its progressive ideology. Over time, though, this changed and the Republican party became the conservative party. 

      My argument here is that we all have to be more careful when we believe in something with enough fervor. While, on the one hand, we would do anything to make others believe in our cause, we have to ensure that we do not begin supporting things that we wouldn't have individually. It's vital that, sometimes, we take a critical look at the things that are being done in the name of our ideas. Just like the victim in the abusive relationship, we have to make sure that the things we believe in so strongly aren't hurting us as individuals.  

Read More

America, the Addicted

     Next month will make it a full year since I quit smoking cigarettes. For me, this is one of my proudest moments because not only have I proven all of those people wrong who said I couldn't do it, but I have, more importantly, proven that the dark voice of irrational doubt that haunts my self-confidence is not more powerful than my will. Any addict knows how strong that voice can be, and as someone that has always struggled with self-confidence, this is a huge personal win. Now don't worry, this post is not another preachy advice column about "how to quit."  I understand that addiction is a personal thing, and because of that, every person's journey is going to look different. Moreover, the tactics that one uses to quit must be tailored to that person's unique motivations and I prefer to keep those intimate aspects of my personality to myself. My best advice for anyone struggling with addiction would be to see a trained therapist (preferably one who specializes in addiction, but any therapist will work), and they will be able to help you to identify the best plan for you and your lifestyle.  I have included a link at the bottom of this page to a website with a great database of mental health professionals.
       Instead, my goal is to address how poorly our culture handles addicts. In previous posts, I spoke at great lengths about the stigma of mental illness in our society. So as a launching point, keep in mind that mental illness includes addiction. Many people in society tend to treat it as a seperate diagnosis, but, as a personal witness of countless addicts in my life, I know that they often display the same symptoms as any other person with a mental illness, and while treatment is typically much different, the causes are often the same. Now when I talk about addiction, I am talking about my personal definition of addiction: use of a substance that manipulates the brain AND subsequently changes the functioning of the brain in such a way that it results in a physical or mental dependence on that substance to maintain normal brain functioning.  
       What I want you to notice about this definition is that it doesn't indicate any sort of idea that addiction can only happen to weak or evil people. The fact that our minds so easily slip to an image of a dirty criminal when we think of the word "addict" proves just how ubiquitous the criminalization of addiction is in the public consciousness. The fact is that in 2007, alone, an estimated 23.2 million people aged 12 or older needed treatment for a substance use disorder in the United States, and my guess is that the self hatred that most of those individuals suffer from as a result of this criminalization doesn't help their problem. Labeling oneself as a criminal only perpetuates the cycle because as Mahatma Gandhi once said:

"A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

       If we truly want less criminal activity among drug users then we should focus a little more on reducing prison sentences for these "crimes" and by, instead, offering cheaper rehabilitation options to non-offenders and offenders alike. According to the National Substance Abuse Treatment Services Survey, the average cost for inpatient programs was about $7,000 per month. Since more than 30 days produces a higher recovery rate, the cost of drug rehab can easily range between $7,500 and $75,000.  To me, this is ridiculous. I understand that it costs a lot of money to provide quality treatment to these individuals, but I feel like using our tax money to pay at least a portion of these costs would be cheaper in the long run than the cost of repetitively paying for prison stays of repeat drug offenders. No matter how its defined, though, drug and alcohol addictions are a huge problem. A problem that is highly specific to the American culture. I personally blame our inefficient system of negative reinforcement, but maybe you disagree. Feel free to share your thoughts about this topic in the comments below!

Resources for those struggling or those who know someone struggling with drug addiction: 
http://www.allaboutcounseling.com/

Read More

The Cross and the Crescent

        Religious intolerance, as I noted in my last post, has been at the heart of society’s most destructive wars and its most enduring feuds. But why does our “intelligent” species allow such passive beliefs to motivate us towards such violent conflicts? Well, most social psychologists understand religion to be one way in which a group of individuals can assert civil order and convey moral codes to one another while providing answers to philosophical questions about the meaning of life. Questions that, until the development of scientific study, were highly open to interpretation and likely to invoke high levels of existential anxiety. I guess religion could be seen as ancient society’s equivalent of Xanax. And similar to the aggression that one would expect from someone addicted to Xanax who has had their access to the drug taken away, any threat to a group’s religious beliefs in ancient society would elicit a seemingly irrational amount of aggressive response. Most religious believers today are now much less hostile about new ideas (perhaps thanks to the existence of actual Xanax?), but certain followers within at least two major religions remain quite aggressive.  
      These two religions have a combined following of 3.7 BILLION people worldwide, and, as such, are the two largest of all of the world religions. Namely, they are Christianity (2 billion followers) and Islam (1.72 billion). Along with Judaism, they are known as the Abrahamic religions (due to their shared reverence of the patriarch Abraham) and they worship the same singular God. Unfortunately, 2000 years of separatism and political conflict has led to vast ideological and cultural differences among the modern versions of these belief systems to the point that they are now indistinguishable from one another. 
       In terms of similarities, Christianity and Islam both have a founding prophet on whom they base their divergent teachings; for Christians, this prophet is Jesus Christ. Islam actually agrees that Jesus Christ was a prophet of God and that he was the only human aside from Adam whom was created directly by God. However, Christians believe that Jesus was crucified and resurrected by God so that all believers in Christianity would thereafter be saved from condemnation in the afterlife. In contrast, the Islamic belief is that God would never have allowed his only begotten son to be crucified. Their belief, instead, is that Jesus was never crucified at all, and that there is only one manifestation of God. In other words, Muslims do not support the idea of the Holy Trinity (the three manifestations of God as believed by modern conservative Christians). Instead, they believe that another Prophet of God came after Jesus, and his name was Mohammad. As a political leader, Mohammad was passionate and determined. He believed that God’s word (the Qu’ran) was to be taken literally and any who resisted His word were to be forced into submission. Mohammad’s character traits stood in stark contrast to Jesus Christ’s self-sacrificing approach, and most of the conflicts between Islam and Christianity arise from these fundamental differences. 
        Nonetheless, even Mohammad’s first followers respected Christians as followers of a shared God. Early conquered Christians were even given more freedoms than their non-Christian counterparts. Moreover, early Christians didn’t believe Jesus was a manifestation of the Divine, itself, like most of today’s more conservative Christians. As a mere prophet of God (not God himself), he was originally seen as being wholly human. Over the centuries, the original concept was re-interpreted and transformed into what many Muslims feel is too polytheistic (worship of multiple gods) than their teachings allow. Early Christian ideals actually differed very little from the early Islamic ideals. So what went wrong? Well, one glance at a map can show you part of the problem: physical distance. This combined with population explosions and numerous inner conflicts within both religions have led to the development of entirely different cultures than the ones that founded them. 
        The current problem is now that these two vastly different cultural systems are being forced, more and more, to interact with one another as the world becomes increasingly interconnected. The only common thread to which they can both relate is their shared worship of the same God. Using this to their advantage, government organizations manipulate public opinion towards political ends by encouraging an image of the opposite side being “evil” wrongdoers from a strange foreign land. Today we see Islam and Christianity as two entirely separate and exclusive ideas, but its time for our governments to stop using this misinformed prejudice as a means to justify their aggressive foreign relations. Modern liberal believers within both Christianity and Islam have recently begun to understand that the two beliefs are not so incompatible. There is hope for the future if the more traditional sects can be convinced to accept this mutual tolerance. Thousands of years of violence and death must be forgiven on both sides of the conflict, but surely the security of future generations is worth making this effort. It's clearly time to grow out of the hatred that runs rampant in these two religions. As the new world culture strengthens, we all have to begin revering human life as passionately as we do our own personal beliefs or that life will surely suffer the consequences.

**The information above is not meant to be a full analysis of either religion. I have simplified the information so as to support my argument. If you would like a more exhaustive source of information, visit my information sources below: 
http://www.religioustolerance.org 
http://www.religionfacts.com

Read More

The Life of Ty

             This is the first in a series of posts in which I will be discussing the role of religion in our lives. As the title suggests, I was inspired to write on this topic after reading the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel. For me, Piscine’s (aka Pi) inner conflict with religion is a battle that really hits close to home. Much like Pi, I was raised amidst a culture of religious uniformity, but instead of the religion being Hinduism, mine was Protestant Christianity. As a gay male, I found myself at odds with my religion like many other LGBT individuals have experienced in their lives. I guess that was my main motivation for questioning the power of the Christian faith, and for questioning the validity of religion in general. My personal relationship with God had previously been a genuine one so this was a personal betrayal of ultimate proportions, and in my youth, the only reaction I could muster was complete denial of spirituality

            My academic studies did nothing but encourage my Atheism. Yet, I inevitably found little inner fulfillment within this lifestyle. Neurology has shown us that there is an observable mental state that religious experiences activate which is unlike any other state of being. The patterns of brain activations in these moments have been shown to have a therapeutic affect on the individual, as well. Perhaps this aspect of the human psyche provided us with an evolutionary advantage over other animals, but the believer in me argues that this could also just be the part of the brain that is directly linked to the divine, whatever that may be. 

So, again in parallel to Pi's journey, I began encouraging my curious disposition to explore the foreign world of religion. This time, I approached it much like an archaeologist would approach a new archaelogical dig. I was meticulous and critical of each new “artifact” that I encountered; studying it and extracting the parts that, to me, held value. What resulted was my own fusion of worldwide religious beliefs. It works well in my life, and it carried the additional perk of providing me with more cultural tolerance and for that, I am truly grateful.

           Now, one thing to know about Protestants is that they emphasize the importance of a personal relationship with God, and that belief is one that has remained in me to this day. I hesitated, at first, when I thought about writing on this topic because, for me, religion is a personal thing. But, I have also seen the painful and destructive power of religious intolerance. So in the next couple of weeks, I will be presenting the main world religions in hopes of drawing the numerous parallels among them.  I think we all have something we can learn from other cultures, and my challenge to each of you is to approach each religion I present with an open mind.  At their cores, every religion is about love and forgiveness so my ultimate goal is to encourage all of us to practice those aspects of spirituality a little more in our daily lives.  

            I will present them in pairs with no particular order so up first for next week: Christianity and Islam.  So stay tuned!!!

Read More

Imagination is Power

"Live out of your imagination, not your history."
-Stephen Covey-

Any frequent "daydreamer" knows that it's not unlikely to sometimes miss entire conversations going on around you due to the mental energy being used inside your own mind to create your artificial environment. It's this ability to shut down entire sensory modalities in order to utilize our brains' ability to create entirely original ideas that sets us apart from other, less-inteligent animals. This ability to create new information using recombined bits of our memories is also known as imagination, and it has led mankind into making some of its greatest achievements. In cognitive psychology, one form of human imagination is the combination of several simple parts into more complex new objects, and it is this kind of imagination that is frequently the origin of scientific innovations. The "recombinations" are also what inspires those "ah-ha" moments in our lives. Yet, beyond the realm of invention, our imagination can also be used as a tool with which we can create new experiences in our lives. This is the kind of imagination that inspires those times when you're sitting in your cubicle around 2 PM while your conscious mind is busy sitting on the beach in the Bahamas.

On a more serious note, though, I want to encourage those who are stuck in a bad situation or who are unhappy in their lives to use their imagination to their advantage. When I was a child, I read books and wrote my own stories about magical worlds and impossible feats of adventure. Now I understand that this was a way for me to explore the world of possibilities and have limitless "playgrounds" while still being physically situated in rural Tennessee. I know It may not seem very useful in the moment, but, as Einstein once said: "Imagination is everything. It's the preview of life's coming attractions." In other words, our imagination is a method by which we can peer into the future and determine the means by which to attain the goals we envision. So let's take an astronaut, for example. This astronaut often imagines himself as being the first human to walk on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. This astronaut is very passionate about reaching Titan so he starts thinking of all of the conceivable ways in which he could get himself there. Eventually he may combine his knowledge of space travel with other, unrelated bits of information in his memory to create a new method of long-distance space travel that no one else would have been able to conceive. If he had not been able to imagine himself reaching that planet then he may not have attempted to find a way to get there. What's more is that none of society would have been able to benefit from the technology that would result. Had he, at any point, told himself that it was impossible for humans to get to Titan then his uncertainty would have prevented the possiblity from becoming the reality it could have once been. So:

The moment that you lose hope in the possibility of the future you imagine for yourself is, ironically, the same moment that it becomes impossible to attain.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that you can never lose confidence in the things that you imagine for yourself. Even if the result is, in fact, impossible to achieve. I can guarantee to you that the effect of having hope in itself is worthy of the effort. All I know is that despite the amount of human suffering in the world, there is still a constant forward motion. Things must, by their nature, change and the smartest of us are the ones who know how to direct the motion in their lives. I don't think that people need ultimate control over their lives to be happy, but I do know that hope always gives us strength and I've never seen a situation wherein strength wasn't a powerful ally. So imagine the life you want and don't allow yourself to question the possibility that it can come true. Maybe you will surprise yourself.

Read More

What happened to our futures?!

I’m a recent college graduate from a private university which consistently ranks among the top 20 universities in the US. I have to confess, though, that I am less than impressed with the return on the 24 years of dedication and focus that I invested into my education. In the five months since receiving my degree, I have been teaching myself some new skills to gain a competitive edge in the job market; this includes a firm grasp of computer/web-programming (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, & JQuery so far), digital media editing (Adobe CS6) and better approaches to marketing via social media. Nonetheless, I have yet to find a job. So my question is:

What happened to the future we were promised?

It’s a valid question in today’s society. We have somehow shifted the emphasis on knowledge in the workplace to an emphasis on immediacy and efficiency. And it comes at no surprise given the rapid-fire bits of commercialism that we are assaulted with in our day-to-day lives. In journalism, writers are even told that they have less than 150 characters to grab the reader’s attention and give them the major points of your article before the reader loses their focus & moves on to the next big headline. REALLY?! I mean they even developed an entire website based on this idea (yes, I’m looking at you Twitter).

This focus on efficiency and "doing what works" leaves little room for new ideas, much less new employees. So what about the hordes of new college grads, like myself, that have incurred untold amounts of debt from our student loans? Why aren’t we getting the “dream jobs” that we were promised? It only takes one look at a list of job openings to answer that question: employers are only targeting “experienced and expert talent”. THIS IS WHY OUR ECONOMY IS FAILING, PEOPLE!!! Maybe the older generations can’t see it because they are too busy trying to keep up with the digital revolution that has transformed the entire structure of corporate America in the past ten years, but take it from a generation that grew up online: you have to start focusing on fresh and malleable ideas if you want to get ahead of the competition. "Doing what works" isn't going to work anymore, sorry! But where do these ideas come from, you ask?

Ah, yes! From the younger generations, of course!!

Yes, thats the very same population that the corporate world is currently neglecting. Well, I can’t help but find a little bit of comic relief from the irony of it all. College grads need the jobs to pay for off our student loans and survive, and the employers need us to help them improve their revenues (whether they know that or not). But as they remain paralyzed with fear of inexperienced workers, we are further developing our web-based culture and pretty soon, without us, they will all become as obsolete as we are to them now.

So my suggestion to struggling companies out there: I have no pity for your revenue decreases so stop complaining. If you want to prosper in the market these days you should open your doors to younger, more tech-savvy employees. What we lack in experience, we more than make-up for with our quick learning, resilience, and adaptability. We drove the web trends of the past decade so I think we have more experience than you give us credit for. We are quickly learning that we have what you need and, as a fair warning, if you don’t start making us fit into your job market soon then soon we will make our own job market. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you!

Read More

When the Mind Gets Sick...

Would you be surprised to hear that "the leading cause of disability in the US and Canada [is mental illness]" or that 1 in 4 Americans suffer from mental illness each YEAR? Yes,1 IN 4 AMERICANS THIS YEAR . In other words, one person in every average-sized (2 parent/caregiver+2 child) home will suffer from a mental illness this year. Who do you think it will be in your family this year? You? Your child? Your parent? Regardless, it doesn't take much more calculating to understand why ALL OF US will experience a disorder in thought, mood or personality at some point(s) during our lives.

Ok. Ok. OK. Let me back track a bit and explain why I am posting about this topic today. Of the quarter of Americans that suffer from mental illness this year, only half of those will seek therapeutic treatment for it. The recent "discussions" about the state of mental healthcare in this country have been quite heated. I believe that, without a doubt, the greatest delay in progress comes from the stigma of mental illness that permeates our culture. The media and the legal system encourage the implicit association between mental disorders and criminality and we all, to some degree, subconsciously absorb this belief. Hopefully, you understand why this association is dangerous for all of us, but I will assume that you need it explained:

1. When illnesses are stigmatized, people don't seek treatment out of embarrassment and shame.
2. When mental illnesses go untreated, they can escalate into more severe and more enduring conditions that can SOMETIMES pose a threat to the individual or others
3. These rare cases get picked up by the media thus strengthening the stigma and perpetuating the cycle.
4. Eventually, the stability of our public health & safety can become threatened if the availability of mental health treatments diminish. This occurs when therapists, researchers, and doctors choose more profitable fields.

So, how do we stop the process before it gets any worse? Well, we can start with developing an understanding that the family member that sleeps too much, or the boy whose face turns red when someone talks to him, or the woman who is mean to everyone for no reason, or the loud girl in your class, or that socially awkward co-worker may all be suffering from untreated mental illnesses. Does that mean they are crazy? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! It means that they have the mind's equivalence of a cold and they need to go to the doctor before it turns into the flu. I'm not ashamed to say that I, too, have suffered from mental illness in my life, but I can personaly attest to the fact that therapy works! Whenever I have a panic attack, I immediately see my therapist to determine the root cause of my anxieties because I understand that my personality type promotes this kind of negative reaction to stress. I, also, used to be a cigarette smoker due to my untreated anxieties, but now that I manage my stress in healthier ways, I have been smoke-free for a year. You'll be surprised with what all will improve in your life when you get your mind straightened out.

Anyway, so what can you do to help? The best thing you can do is to focus on yourself with this one. It never hurts to talk about your life to someone who will listen without judgement or bias even if you don't think you have a disorder at the moment. So go see a licensed therapist or psychiatrist and spread the word that you are tending to your mental health as part of a well-rounded health plan. Join this movement of self-respect and help end a harmful social stigma at the same time!!!

For More Information on Mental Health (source: www.NIMH.NIH.gov):
Educational Resources about Mental Health and Illness
Source of the statistics used in this post

Read More

2013: An Opportunity

Each new year offers us a new chance...

The natural world, as we all know, functions in a cycle of birth, life, and death. Similarly, our calendar year follows this cyclical pattern based on the seasonal progression of our planet. Today is the first day of 2013, a new start of this cycle, and it's also as close as any of us will ever be to having a "rebirth" opportunity.

In America, 2012 seemed to be a year of hard-work, political polarization, natural disasters, and tragedies. So, while I'm definitely not suggesting that we all forego our own personal resolutions, I do believe that the new year may be a good opportunity for Americans to also, as a nation, agree to a few universal resolutions:

• Improve mental healthcare and reduce the stigma of mental illness
• Pass better gun control legislation and begin better gun buy-back programs
• Work towards finding political middle-ground so that our currently deadlocked Congress will have a chance
• Be more generous and sympathetic to the less fortunate
• Try to do something each day that is self-less
• Be less fearful of the unknown and trust both your instincts AND your intellect!
• Be more knowledgeable and aware of American relations abroad
• Don't make judgements based on pre-conceived notions or stereotypes
• Try to free your mind a little sometimes and accept a new idea or opinion

So these are just a few ideas. Feel free to comment on this post with what you believe should be included in this list and I will be sure to add it to my list (this is about everyone, after all). Also, please take a moment and take my poll ! I'm going to use the anonymous results of the poll in a future post!!! Thanks guys !

Read More