The rules of communication are slowly being obliterated.
Supposedly 58% of communication is through body language and 35%through vocal tone, pitch, and emphasis. That leaves 7% for all our texting, emailing, and twittering...and I don't know the statistic on this, but judging from my own life, that 7% has to be over 60% of my communication in a day.
In the 7%, I don't feel dishonest when I'm dishonest. I "like" things on facebook that I definitely hate, or at least feel indifferent towards, and I've also noticed that when I'm least interested in what someone says through text, I respond with "haha." How messed up is that. I say it because it's an easy statement that ends a conversation and requires no response.
It's messed up because, while I'm thinking, "I'm so glad to be blowing you off while appearing friendly," they are thinking they're funny.
I'm also fascinated by certain internet creepers. What is the return on investment for chatting a girl every day for a year with no response?
To be fair, it's not like previous generations had it better. Social media didn't exist in Pride and Prejudice times, but neither did deodorant. Still, it's kind of nice that girls could play "Pick-up-Sticks" without stopping to instagram the sticks, and the sticks from a cooler angle, to make the lord who lived 50 miles away want to date them. Because if the lord suddenly wished he was there playing pick up sticks too, he wouldn't be able to get there for another three days. People would travel for hours just to get into town, and to not buy anything nearly as needed as deodorant. Every little thing was inconvenient, and a big deal, and I don't want to whine abut how we're exiting a golden age - but nothing seems to be a big deal anymore.
There's more of everything and it's easier to get all of it. We have a zillion ways to communicate with anyone all over the world, but people are still people, like they were in the stone age, probably confusing each other with drawings in caves, except now we sit in our beds with computers, connected to facebook groups and tribes, managing 1753 "friends," online dating profiles, email, LinkedIn contacts, skype, chat, etc.
But let's be honest, with all our advanced technology, we are probably just communicating poorly with more people faster.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
Two Kinds of Light
Matthew 6:22-23
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"
It's that last line that gets be. "If then the light in you is darkness..."
How could light be darkness?
Unless, there are two different kinds of lights: the kind that come in as light and stays light, and the kind that comes in as light and turns dark.
A commentary I read gave me some insight. It links this part of scripture to a parable Jesus told of workers in a vineyard. They all worked different hours, but their master paid them all the same thing—a denarius. In other words, he was lavishly generous to those who worked only one hour, and he paid the agreed amount to those who worked twelve hours.
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"
It's that last line that gets be. "If then the light in you is darkness..."
How could light be darkness?
Unless, there are two different kinds of lights: the kind that come in as light and stays light, and the kind that comes in as light and turns dark.
A commentary I read gave me some insight. It links this part of scripture to a parable Jesus told of workers in a vineyard. They all worked different hours, but their master paid them all the same thing—a denarius. In other words, he was lavishly generous to those who worked only one hour, and he paid the agreed amount to those who worked twelve hours.
"Those who worked all day “grumbled at the master of the house” (Matthew 20:11). They were angry that those who worked so little were paid so much. Then the master used a phrase about “the bad eye” which is just like the one back in Matthew 6:23. He said, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” (Matthew 20:15).
Unfortunately that last clause is a total paraphrase, not a translation. “Or do you begrudge my generosity” is a very loose paraphrase of “Or is your eye bad because I am good (ë ho ophthalmos sou ponëros estin hoti egö agathos eimi?)” The “bad eye” here parallels the “bad eye” in Matthew 6:23.
What does the bad eye refer to in Matthew 20:15? It refers to an eye that cannot see the beauty of grace. It cannot see the brightness of generosity. It cannot see unexpected blessing to others as a precious treasure. It is an eye that is blind to what is truly beautiful and bright and precious and God-like....when your eye sees things this way, you are full of light. And if you don’t see things this way, even the light you think you see (the glitz and flash and skin and muscle of this world) is all darkness. You are sleepwalking through life. You are serving money as a slave without even knowing it."
Name The Voices in Your Head
Just when I started making decisions rationally... then there was the Adjustment Bureau.
Movies mess with our heads, because it appears that real life would be just like them. They give us the power to see inside every character's mind, but also the pleasure of sympathizing with their inability to do the same. We know Matt never called Emily because he lost her number. We know Emily really loves Matt even though she got engaged to someone else.
In real life, we can't have that power. We are, like Matt and Emily, confused, hurt, lacking closure, needing affirmation when something doesn't work out. We don't have the privilege of seeing all sides of the story unfold as we're living it.
Sometimes you follow your gut and sometimes you don't, but when should you?
I've made a paradigm that helped me - and might help you.
With any decision, there are multiple voices chiming in their advice: our fears, our desires, our memory, our parents, our stomach aches, our blood rushes to the head, the voice of God himself maybe.
Step 1 is to give those voices a name. I've named mine:
Emotion
Logic
Intuition
Divine Revelation
Before you name them, spend some time and consideration listening to the tone and color of each voice. Take emotion, for instance. As C.S. Lewis said, "Emotions are wonderful servants, but terrible masters." They have a place, but for some of us, they are sitting on a throne. You can't dethrone them without know what they sound like, especially if you're calling them "God" or just ignoring them.
Step 2: take a situation (relationship, work problem, etc.) that has been bothering you, and write it out from the perspective of each voice.
If you only listened to emotion, what would it be saying? If you only listened to the logical procession of events, would the story sound different? If you let your intuition be the only deciding factor, rationality and feelings aside, how would the story go then? What was God whispering to you during the whole process? Was there a scripture, or a verse that kept coming back to you?
Step 3: Read back each story out loud, and see which one sounds like truth.
Step 4: Over time, analyze the results. Which voice seems to be helping you the most? Tune out the others, and start listening to that one.
Movies mess with our heads, because it appears that real life would be just like them. They give us the power to see inside every character's mind, but also the pleasure of sympathizing with their inability to do the same. We know Matt never called Emily because he lost her number. We know Emily really loves Matt even though she got engaged to someone else.
In real life, we can't have that power. We are, like Matt and Emily, confused, hurt, lacking closure, needing affirmation when something doesn't work out. We don't have the privilege of seeing all sides of the story unfold as we're living it.
Sometimes you follow your gut and sometimes you don't, but when should you?
I've made a paradigm that helped me - and might help you.
With any decision, there are multiple voices chiming in their advice: our fears, our desires, our memory, our parents, our stomach aches, our blood rushes to the head, the voice of God himself maybe.
Step 1 is to give those voices a name. I've named mine:
Emotion
Logic
Intuition
Divine Revelation
Before you name them, spend some time and consideration listening to the tone and color of each voice. Take emotion, for instance. As C.S. Lewis said, "Emotions are wonderful servants, but terrible masters." They have a place, but for some of us, they are sitting on a throne. You can't dethrone them without know what they sound like, especially if you're calling them "God" or just ignoring them.
Step 2: take a situation (relationship, work problem, etc.) that has been bothering you, and write it out from the perspective of each voice.
If you only listened to emotion, what would it be saying? If you only listened to the logical procession of events, would the story sound different? If you let your intuition be the only deciding factor, rationality and feelings aside, how would the story go then? What was God whispering to you during the whole process? Was there a scripture, or a verse that kept coming back to you?
Step 3: Read back each story out loud, and see which one sounds like truth.
Step 4: Over time, analyze the results. Which voice seems to be helping you the most? Tune out the others, and start listening to that one.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
There Are No Mortals
"Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors." (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)
Imagine that the narrative of Genesis were true, and that the people we see around us everyday were really intended to be like God -- brilliant, different, intelligent, and beautiful -- not the stressed out, crude, ordinary beings we think we're surrounded by.
I'm looking at this woman across from me at Burlap and Bean. Short dark hair, black workout jacket, seems to be typing something important into her computer. Is she really a fallen goddess? I wonder if she knows? I've been raised to think that she's just an animal, an intelligent animal at best.
Are we animals or are we little gods? If she was in line to get coffee in front of me, would I play survival of the fittest to get what I want (at the moment being coffee), or would I smile widely and honor her the way I would royalty, the way I would immortality.
"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations."
We may not realize it, but every day we carry the weight of our neighbor's glory.
Have you ever had someone carry yours for you? My sister recently gave me a present she had gotten while she was visiting Oxford. It's a short story by modern artist Yoko Ono titled "The Invisible Flower." I opened to the first page and started reading about a young girl who sees a rose in a field where the conditions are too cold for them to grow. She runs to get a closer look, but when she finally gets there, she can't find it. She looks everywhere, wondering if what she saw was real. When I finished reading, eyes watering, my sister looked deeply into them and said, "Yes. You did see it. The dreams that you once saw haven't stopped existing just because you've forgotten them. Keep going."
That day, my sister saw me in my current state, with all my half written endeavors, scatterbrained forgetfulness, and invisible flowers, and she brought me closer to glory. I would be lost without the people in my life who see with eyes like this, and who treat others with the dignity they were created for, not necessarily the dignity they deserve.
On this point, I couldn't agree with C.S. Lewis more. "Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."
Monday, December 31, 2012
Friday, December 28, 2012
Am I Crazy?
Tonight I'm up at 3:57 a.m. editing a video. About potatoes.
After two hours of listening to focus groups discuss au gratin vs. cheesy I kind of wanted to die. So I got in the shower and almost actually died when my sister walked in unannounced (because of course I had been imagining people behind the shower curtain. And for a split second I thought she might be one of those people).
So for the rest of my shower I wondered, is everyone else as crazy as I am?
Maybe creative people are all hanging by a thread. Like we're pretending to be normal, but at any minute we could snap and the world would see us for who we really are - not borderline insane, but actually insane.
Is it normal to always hear the sound of your own thoughts louder than any noise around you? I think my fear of being alone at night has nothing to do with a fear of darkness...but the silence and emptiness that comes with darkness. The crack of a door, the brush of a shower curtain are enough to send violent shock waves through me. When my head is on my pillow I can hear full symphonies. I can wake up from a dream and feel the presence of nothingness so strong that it strikes me with panic. In the dark, material things stop speaking and invisible things take their turn - and the presence of them is so horrifying and delightful I'll never understand it.
It's this combination of sensuality and imagination that makes artists so stir crazy. We feel things and imagine things until eventually we're just imagining we're feeling things. After one of my faux break ups with someone I never dated, I remember grabbing a cab with my friends, sitting between them and having a near mental breakdown. Between sobs I kept saying, "I'm normal, I'm normal." To which my friend responded, "No you're not." Smiling. (because he's not normal either).
There are negative side effects to creativity, but every truly creative person will admit they kind of enjoy the torment. If someone told me they would flatten me out by taking away all of the fear, nausea, and jumping a foot in the air from the brush of a shower curtain (not to mention seeing people behind the shower curtain) I would be tempted to trade those things, but I could never follow through with it. Every time I've tried to take an easier road, the beauty always went with it.
It's a package deal. The heightened sensuality that makes you panic at night helps you write music. The thoughts that flood your head with nonsense sometimes manage to write themselves into beautiful stories that make people cry. And the ability to make people cry is not crazy. It's beautiful.
After two hours of listening to focus groups discuss au gratin vs. cheesy I kind of wanted to die. So I got in the shower and almost actually died when my sister walked in unannounced (because of course I had been imagining people behind the shower curtain. And for a split second I thought she might be one of those people).
So for the rest of my shower I wondered, is everyone else as crazy as I am?
Is it normal to always hear the sound of your own thoughts louder than any noise around you? I think my fear of being alone at night has nothing to do with a fear of darkness...but the silence and emptiness that comes with darkness. The crack of a door, the brush of a shower curtain are enough to send violent shock waves through me. When my head is on my pillow I can hear full symphonies. I can wake up from a dream and feel the presence of nothingness so strong that it strikes me with panic. In the dark, material things stop speaking and invisible things take their turn - and the presence of them is so horrifying and delightful I'll never understand it.
It's this combination of sensuality and imagination that makes artists so stir crazy. We feel things and imagine things until eventually we're just imagining we're feeling things. After one of my faux break ups with someone I never dated, I remember grabbing a cab with my friends, sitting between them and having a near mental breakdown. Between sobs I kept saying, "I'm normal, I'm normal." To which my friend responded, "No you're not." Smiling. (because he's not normal either).
There are negative side effects to creativity, but every truly creative person will admit they kind of enjoy the torment. If someone told me they would flatten me out by taking away all of the fear, nausea, and jumping a foot in the air from the brush of a shower curtain (not to mention seeing people behind the shower curtain) I would be tempted to trade those things, but I could never follow through with it. Every time I've tried to take an easier road, the beauty always went with it.
It's a package deal. The heightened sensuality that makes you panic at night helps you write music. The thoughts that flood your head with nonsense sometimes manage to write themselves into beautiful stories that make people cry. And the ability to make people cry is not crazy. It's beautiful.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
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