A Few Random Thoughts…

I often go downtown and sit in a cafe and write for hours about random things. It’s therapeutic. Something about a good cup of coffee and maybe a cookie or scone just gets the words flowing, I guess. Anyways, here’s a couple of paragraphs containing observations made during those long hours staring out the window, sipping a mocha and watching the people walk by. I feel like these capture the essence of some of the cultural curiosities that stand out to me as a teen in today’s world.

What is it about humans that longs to be loved? When we’re children, our parents’ love is enough. As we grow, we start searching for the love of true friends, and eventually, we long for the love of a soulmate. We all go through a phase where we don’t think we’ll ever fall in love, we don’t think we need it. Eventually, though, that wears off, and we’re left with an aching desire to be loved in a way that only that one special person can love us. We crave companionship. We want to be truly known and understood. Why do we desire that so much from other people, when we can get it unconditionally from God?

 

Jocks, nerds, hipsters, emo kids, they’re all defined by one or two things that constitute their “label”. Real people aren’t like that, though. Real people have a bit of everything in them. I love watching and playing basketball, but that doesn’t make me a jock. I love it because of the people that taught me to play, the people who first watched it with me. I love to read and do schoolwork, but that doesn’t make me a nerd. I love it because I have a longing to learn and understand. I am not one label, I am a mix of many. Real people are a mix of many labels, they cannot be contained. They are divergent. They do not conform. Real people have differences and similarities beyond the obvious.

This last one was definitely inspired by my own escapism, as I have a tendency to attempt to disappear from my day-to-day life. Often writing serves this purpose, writing and some good music from a bygone decade, but I’ve observed the desire to ignore life and hide in a fictional universe in so many other lives as well. I felt it deserved some attention.

Humans have an interesting desire to escape from their own reality, and dive into someone else’s fantasy. Perhaps more now than ever, we throw ourselves into movies and tv universes in an effort to distract from our own reality, our own story. We idealize the fictional world, because everything is seemingly so perfect. Artists create stories, perhaps, to heal their own pain. An adventure into what could have been, perhaps, or a fantasy of what we wish could be true. I find myself drawn to the simplicity of life in stories, the simplicity of good versus evil and the good guys always winning. I long for those shining moments of untainted peace, the uncomplicated tales of everyday life. In truth, life is never uncomplicated, and never untainted. Life is hard. Everything seems so easy in movies, and we use their simplistic worlds to escape from our own.

I definitely enjoyed putting together this post, it’s sort of a peek into what I think about/write about while I’m hiding away by myself with a pen and my notebook. Some of these things are interesting to think about. Also, I highly recommend spending hours in a coffee shop or bakery and writing or daydreaming or doing whatever you do… that time to reflect has been invaluable for me and helps to slow things down. I’d go so far as to say that taking this time to chill and write has almost made my life a little simpler.

Chasing Slow

My mom bought a book for my older sister, asking me to give it to her when I see her in two weeks. Intrigued by the title, I sat down to read it and it was the best decision I’ve made all week.

I have to start by saying that Erin Loechner is an amazing writer. Her words flow together so nicely, technically speaking it was a really easy book to read. I guess I found her writing style to be similar to the way I think, casual but eloquent. I can only hope my own writing will one day be as smooth as that… Anyway. Ranting about how the words are strung together aside, the words themselves hold an important message.

The title of the book, Chasing Slow, might just be two words, but it is the perfect description of what the book is about. Erin describes her own journey to embracing a life of less, a slower, more meaningful lifestyle. She uses her own experiences to illustrate the importance of letting go of control and allowing life to just happen.

Erin implores her readers to discard the calculating, mathematical control that we think we have over our lives, and instead embrace a life of slower pace, less distractions, and more life. She writes of her own experience discarding some of the “rules” that we adopt, defining what’s normal, and how it instantly transformed her lifestyle into something much more meaningful. She paints a picture of a lifestyle that many of us long for, but fear is unattainable.

The truth is, anyone can slow down and live with less. Actually, it’s when you slow down that you actually start living. Learning to break the rules and remembering that life is for living rather than just existing is not easy at all. But when I look back on my life in twenty, thirty or forty years I don’t want to remember a life where I’ve overcommitted to countless things that I have no passion for. I want to remember spontaneous road trips, playing cards at a dinner table on display in an isolated corner of Sears Home, and walking in the rain without an umbrella.

I see Chasing Slow as a challenge, a call to live the fullest, most authentic version of my life. The key to this, or so it seems, is realizing that all I need is right in front of me, and everything else is white noise. If we choose only to fill our lives with the things that truly matter, we have so much more free space to enjoy those things. Even as I’m writing, in my brain I’m going, oh gosh this sounds hard… but in the long run I think it will be worth it.

Art Gallery Reflections…

So I went to the Kelowna Art Gallery today. I’ll admit I’m not the biggest fan of modern art, its deeper meaning has a tendency to escape me. Today, however, I had an interesting revelation.

I wish I’d taken pictures of this particular exhibit, it would be so much easier to describe, but I’ll try my best anyway. There were all kinds of white clothes of different styles and sizes and shapes sewn together in a massive canopy hanging about 12 feet above the floor. The lights from the ceiling above shone through the white material, making the canopy semi-transparent. Pillows lay on the floor below, giving a perfect spot to lay down and gaze at the canopy above.

As I was lying on those oh-so-comfy pillows, an interesting comparison came to mind. I thought of the fall of man, and how Adam and Eve fashioned clothes out of leaves when their eyes were opened to their nakedness. They felt shame for the first time, and clothing themselves covered their shame. The fact that the clothing I gazed at was white also resonated with me, as white has always been associated with purity and perfection.

I came to the conclusion that as humans, we make mistakes and we have deep imperfections. We try to cover ourselves with fabricated perfection (no pun intended), and we present an image that seems unblemished to the rest of the world. However, when God’s light shines on us, our lily-white facade becomes transparent, and He sees through to our deepest blemishes and insecurities.

I suppose this resonated with me particularly because I have always struggled with appearing to be better or stronger or more put-together than I feel inside. In a way, there’s a comfort in knowing that God sees it all, regardless of my attempts to cover it up in shame, but He doesn’t love me any less because of it.

Hope

When we think of hope, what is the definition that comes to mind?

Well, I sure hope it’s not this dictionary definition. The amount of things that end up going wrong in life make this version seem naive and childish. And interestingly enough, this is probably the least hopeful definition of hope I’ve ever seen.

So what is hope, really, and where does it come from? The second question is easier to answer. The kind of hope described above is relative. It lasts you until the next big wave knocks you over. You can find that kind of hope pretty much anywhere. True hope, the kind that gets you through your whole life, is only found in Jesus.

So what is true hope?

 Hebrews 6:19 describes hope as something that anchors the soul, something that keeps you steady through the biggest storms.

Hope comes from God alone, and it has many different applications.

“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.” – Psalm 39:7

Hope can be defined with respect to anticipation, it can be described as waiting for something to happen. This is probably the simplest kind of hope, as we employ this all the time. Our problem is that we put this kind of hope in things like waiting for that exciting package to come in the mail, or waiting for “something interesting to happen” to us. I think the kind of waiting that God has in mind is the kind of anticipation of His coming, a long-term hope that will get us through life.

“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” – Isaiah 40:31

Hope can also be defined as hanging onto the last thread of a prayer for rescue. A desperate hope in hard times, looking to God in anticipation of the deliverance that only He can bring. This hope is combined with trust, that God will provide the strength that you need to beat whatever it is that you’re fighting. The hope of a warrior.

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.” – Lamentations 3:21-24

The hardest kind of hope to have; hope in the best of times. When we’re free of trouble, it’s so easy to forget that we still need God even then. Hope in remembering that God is always here, always steadfast, whether we think we need Him or not. This hope is more of a verb, it’s a choice. To choose to live in hope is to understand and be grateful for all of the blessings that God has heaped upon us, and still acknowledge that we need his guidance. Hope in these times is found in the anticipation of growing closer to Him, knowing His love and getting a front-row seat to a display of his incredible power and protection.

So go forth and live in hope, whatever life situation you are in! God wants us to rely on him and put our hope in Him because ultimately the world’s definition for hope will always disappoint us. Great is the faithfulness of the Lord! He always has the best for us, and He will always be there. He is the only one worthy of our hope.

“I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies…” 2 Samuel 22:4

Limits

So, I’ve been working on limits in my Calculus course… and it’s kind of killing me. Here’s an example:

The mathematical definition of a limit: the limit of f(x) as x approaches c is the number L if given any radius e > 0 about L there exists a radius g > 0 about c such that for all x, 0 < |x – c| > g implies that | f(x) – L| < e.

Now, I definitely didn’t put that up there to say look at me, I’m so smart. Those two lines of text up there mean absolutely nothing to me. There are way too many letters, for one thing. And to be honest, it’s a whole whack of mathematical mumbo-jumbo that probably means something to someone, but definitely not the average person. Needless to say when I came across this in my textbook, I started freaking out a little bit. “How am I supposed to understand this??? I mean, it makes about as much sense as if the guy who wrote the textbook just banged his head against his keyboard for a few seconds and said, boom, there’s a definition right there!”.

Anyway, I decided to just go straight to the practice problems and try to figure it out for myself. Reading goofy tongue-twister theorems like “the limit of the sum is the sum of the limits” got super confusing, but I found that once I put them into practice they actually made a lot of sense! Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the definition of a limit that I put up at the beginning of this post, but does anyone really?

You know the quote, at the top of my blog’s homepage? Life really is like math. I mean, take this whole limits thing for example. When the author of my textbook tried to explain to me their own understanding of limits, it meant absolutely nothing to me. But when I experienced it for myself, I was able to understand it and put it into practice. Have you ever met those people who talk and talk and talk but you never really get the sense that they actually understand what they’re talking about? I can be one of those people sometimes… Basically it’s the difference between book learning and experience. Trying to talk about and explain something that you’ve had no personal experience with is first and foremost really hard, because you don’t truly understand it, and also tends to sound a little bit pretentious, not unlike the definition at the beginning of this post. Sometimes all it takes is personal experience to learn and understand for yourself before attempting to teach others.

Okay, rant over. Enjoy the rest of your day! xD

#AppreciationPost

I constantly wonder if I’ve made any kind of a difference in other people’s lives.

I can’t be the only one who feels that way. Haven’t you ever wondered if you’ve made an impact on the people around you? I think that as Christians, we should continually be asking God to use us to reach people, and as humans, we like to know when we’re actually being effective.

I am a firm believer in the fact that God brings people into our lives for a specific purpose, whether it be to teach you something, to bring you comfort and community, to challenge you, or even just to walk alongside you for a time. I have seen this played out in my own life so many times. Because of this, I fervently hope that God has used me in the lives of the people around me. Not only that, but I would love to know if and how I’ve impacted other people’s journeys, just to have the assurance that I am successfully doing God’s work in this world. Doesn’t that make sense?

Think about, basically, anyone you have ever cared about. Okay, now narrow it down to three, because the average human has about 396 personal relationships in a lifetime and that is a very large number of people to be thinking about at once. 🙂 Wouldn’t you like to know if you made a difference in their lives? Okay, now think about the people in your life that have impacted you. Think about the people that God used in your life to encourage you when you were down, or to redirect you toward Him when you wandered from His path. Do they know how much their influence meant to you? I bet they would love to hear how God used them to bless you. Honestly, it is one of the most beautiful and effective forms of encouragement to hear that you actually made a difference in someone’s life, and don’t those people you were just thinking of deserve that?

That’s why I’ve made a point to tell people when they’ve made a difference in my life. There are so many people that I have met over the years who have taught me an important lesson, inspired me in my faith, encouraged me when I was discouraged, or given me a swift kick in the pants when I needed it most. The sad part is, I will never again see most of these people, and I deeply regret not having told them how much they blessed me. And honestly, if I could go back in time, I have a whole list of people I would want to talk to, to tell them how much they contributed to making me the person I am today. I can’t stress enough how important it is to tell someone how God has used them in your life. Even just a small expression of appreciation for the people who have affected you could go a long way in encouraging them, as well.

So thanks: to my incredibly patient mom and dad, to my beautiful sisters, and my dear friends. Thank you for continuing to inspire me, challenge me and encourage me on a daily basis. God has used you to bless me in countless different ways. I pray that He would continue to do so, and that He would give me the opportunity to do the same for you.

Learning to Drive

Learning to drive is probably the greatest and most stressful challenge in the life of the average 16-year-old… at least those who live in British Columbia, or other places where the age to learn to drive is 16. I’m going to be perfectly honest, it’s really, really hard. Crazy terrible hard. Super super insanely hard. You get the idea, right? I went for a drive today with Mom for the first time in probably 2-ish months, and getting back behind the wheel was, well, very very far from riding a bicycle.The funny thing about me is that I have this incessant need to be in control of everything. Meaning, I have a hard time leaving things up to God, even when it’s clear that there’s absolutely nothing I can do. You’ve probably picked up on that after reading the previous posts, eh?

Driving, however, is the one scenario where I am in complete control of what happens and, interestingly enough, I find it crazy scary. Of course it’s not a perfect metaphor, because I can’t control anything that the other drivers on the road do, but even when I’m on a lonely country road with no one else in sight, keeping control of that behemoth of a car is really stressful. After today’s driving lesson, I realized that I have a really hard time when under the pressure of actually being in control, so thinking that I can control every aspect of my own life is crazy, pointless, and let’s be honest, downright stupid. I guess it’s a good thing that God doesn’t make us deal with the pressure of being in control of our whole lives. It’s actually really nice to think that someone with perfect motives and flawless judgement has complete control over our lives, so we don’t have to worry about screwing up and causing irreparable damage.

The Importance of Having a Teachable Spirit

If you didn’t already know, I am a math tutor. I get crazy excited about things like Euler’s identity, Fibonacci numbers and the number 9, and I really enjoy passing that excitement on to other people. I can’t stress enough the fact that the primary goal I have as a tutor is to help my students find enjoyment and magic in math. If that sounded completely ridiculous, don’t worry because that’s not what this post is about.

Believe it or not, I’ve learned a lot from the few students I’ve worked with. I have to say, one of the most important things I’ve learned is that in order to have an effective tutor/student relationship, I have to be just as (or more) prepared to learn from my students as they are to learn from me. I have to be… teachable.

It’s much easier to be teachable as a student. It’s pretty much a non-issue, because being teachable is the only way you can make it through school. Those who refuse to humble themselves and allow themselves to be taught are generally the ones who struggle the most. It’s really quite easy to allow someone to teach you when there is no doubt that they know more than you do. Being teachable is a part of life when we’re growing up, and there really isn’t anything we can do about that. But as we get older, and learn more and specialize in our knowledge, it is much easier to allow our pride to tell us that we have nothing more to learn from anyone.

This is especially hard for educators. People whose careers are based on teaching others should wrestle with the fact that being teachable is a two-way street. A teacher who understands just how much he or she can learn from a student is far more effective as an educator than one who is adamant about passing knowledge to the students without receiving anything in return. I have had both kinds of teachers in my “vast high school experience” ;), and I have learned more from the former than from the latter.

I believe that everyone we meet has something to teach us, whether they are older or younger, more or less educated. Everyone sees the world differently, and to learn from another and see a glimpse of the world through their eyes is an enriching and important experience. I believe that we never stop learning, even when we finish our formal education we have so much more to learn about the world and life and human interaction. Book learning is not the end all and be all of education, and the sooner a person understands this, the sooner they become teachable.

“Those who learn more than they teach are the best teachers of all.” – Unknown

Eureka

Ever have those days when everything just goes so right, and fits into place and is just overall perfect?

That was my day today. 🙂

So, my day started out with a Student-For-A-Day class at Okanagan College. Wow. You probably know how insanely obsessed with physics I am, and that’s obviously the class that I participated in at the college this morning. It was – for lack of a superlative of greater impact – INCREDIBLE. I had such an amazing time, I surprised myself with how much of the college level class I understood, and being there just felt so right. I am still so hyper/excited, so much so that I feel sorry for my family having to deal with my intense euphoria about this whole day. The class itself was super interesting, it was a lab on vectors and equilibrium. Shoutout to Trevor, my lab partner, for being awesome. xD

Right after the class, I had lunch with a friend of mine by whom I have always been encouraged and inspired. I was super jazzed when I met up with her after the class, and talking to her and reminiscing about old times was just incredible. She also gave me a lot to think about, some spiritual insights on trust and peace and just waiting on God to do whatever it is to do with the time that you have. It was so encouraging to talk with her about her experiences and my hopes and dreams, and it contributed to having the absolute best of afternoons.

You know, it’s amazing to see God move in really obvious ways. Days like this just feel like a hug from Him, a whisper, or in my case a really loud shout from Him saying “I’ve got you, and I care about you, and I really do want to bless you”. It’s amazing to feel that encouragement in such tangible ways. It’s really easy to praise God on days like this, right? 🙂 The thing is, when we go through a tough time, we have to remember that we had days like this, and we have to have hope that a day of encouragement will come again. I know it sounds cheesy coming from someone who just had one of the best days of their life, but it’s true no matter what kind of day you’ve had. God has you in mind, and wants to take care of and bless you, in the good times and the bad! He never leaves us, never forsakes us, and the good days full of sunshine and rainbows WILL come again!

 

Darwin Was Darn Good at Titles

On the Origin of Species. Seriously, that would be the PERFECT title for this post, except it’s already taken. Anyway, in this post, I give my own informed answer to the ever-present question: Where did the world, and everything in it, come from?

God created the universe. I believe this statement wholeheartedly. Now, I have a scientific mind. I have a deep appreciation for modern science’s attempts at finding the answer to the question of “how did everything start?”. I don’t, however, believe that recognizing the validity of science and tangible fact means that I have to dismiss the possibility that the universe was designed by an intelligent creator. In fact, the probability of the universe having randomly taken a form suitable for life has been calculated at one out of 10,000,000,000¹²⁴. That figure is infinitesimal, bordering on impossible. Adding to that the intricate and thoughtful design of everything on this earth, from its very capability to support life to the labyrinthine processes of the human brain, it is far more logical to assume that an intelligent being was at work in setting the world in motion than to blindly follow the assumption that all the world came into being by chance.

At present, scientific data indicates that the universe is exploding outward from a point of infinite density, this point allegedly being the whole of three-dimensional space compressed to zero size. Even if the explosion of this singularity was indeed the beginning of the universe, the “big bang” as it were, where did that singularity come from? Everything has to start somewhere, science has proven over and over again that nothing cannot produce something. Matter does not just appear out of a void. Therefore, a deity without origin, one that has always been, one that is outside of time as we know it, is a reasonable explanation for the origin of this particular singularity.

In the words of author and Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias, “belief in a creator does not hinge on how he created”. The bottom line is: science itself denies the probability of life being a random product of time, matter and chance. Life cannot just pop into existence of its own accord, and nothing cannot produce something. Belief in a creator, whether considering a 7-day creation or a much longer time frame, is not a mere fancy of a child with an overactive imagination. It is a logical and educated option, based on a little scientific fact, a lot of faith and a measure of humility, as it involves admitting that maybe man is not the master of his own destiny.