Tag: life

How Changing My Mind About Changing Everything Changed My Life

I wish I would’ve learned this in my 30’s, it would’ve saved so much grief, frustration, relational entropy – emotional energy.

I’ve spent most of my life believing that situation determines happiness – the right job, a good boss, money, etc.  I’ve had multiple careers as a result – nothing salves a crappy life better than a drastic change.

There have been some fun moments, tons of things to be learned, not many of which have helped in my latest career – Stay At Home Dad (SAHD).  Regardless of where I’ve landed vocationally, there’s always been a nagging compulsion to change everything as soon as life becomes stale, boring, unjust, or downright bad.

Feeling like I can’t be happy until things change has always made me downright bitter, especially in those times where I was powerless to change things. There’s nothing worse than being stuck, feeling like you’re supposed to be somewhere else.

Everything changed in my late 40’s when I was assaulted in a men’s airport restroom.

I left my wife at the gate with 3 ancy kids, hoping to be back in time to board.  This particular facility was attended by a soon-to-be elderly gentleman of Middle-Eastern descent. Continue reading How Changing My Mind About Changing Everything Changed My Life

How I Came to Embrace a Truly Nut-Bag Religion

Some random nobody from nowhere shows up on the Judean countryside, rounds up a group of losers that nobody in their right mind would ever listen to, and turns everything upside down, for generations to come.

He claimed to be the “messiah” that the Old Testament prattles on about. That’s crazy.

He claimed to be God. His followers would later write, “yep, it’s true, He was God.” That’s crazy.

His followers also claimed that this nobody would die and remove the “sins of the world.” All of them – past, present, future, yours mine, etc. Crazy.

Top it off with the whole resurrection thing and Christianity gets really close to the top of the world’s craziest religions list.

Maybe that’s why so many Christian people are crazy.

When I first drank the christian Kool Aide, I was going crazy. My Baptist girlfriend had just dumped me at a local breakfast establishment, my dreams of becoming a military pilot had been dashed to bits, and I was deep in the throes of PTSD from something horrible that had happened years prior. Continue reading How I Came to Embrace a Truly Nut-Bag Religion

A Good Day to Die

Imagine that you have one week to live.  I know – sorry – that’s such a cheesy way to start a post.  If you were really dying though, you’d feel anything but cheese.  In our culture we like to pretend that death’s not real.  We invent all manner of fantasy to insulate us from the idea that our time here is so desperately short.

Close your computer, take 15 minutes of silence and imagine that this is your last week – give it enough time.  Make it real.

If you do a good job, you’ll look at everything differently – friendship, marriage, kids, possessions, career, worries, fears, goals, broken relationships, values. You’ll find that death brings a quality to life that “immortality” can’t.

Living with death is a quick remedy for the bullshit that we allow to move into our minds, our tendency to feel like the very cosmos has set it’s will against us, that life’s not fair, that we need more.

So many times I feel like I’m living in a giant, shiny, silver tube, where all I can see is a glimmer of what’s ahead, completely blind to the beauty and the weight that surrounds me.  The not-so-distant reality of my death makes me sad, but brings with it the reminder that I have a great life.