A passionate man
Finding that time never stops
Takes a deeper breath.
Not sure what this means yet. But it reflects the concept alive in my mind right now. I’ve been realizing that if I don’t have a gnawing inside of me that is longing for more, deeper life, then I’m probably not living.
I’m an experimentalist. And I often end up being the guinea pig for new ideas I try out. I love to learn, and it’s amazing to watch my hypotheses come true. I laugh and move on when I am proven wrong, and generally enjoy the process.
I started this at a young age. Once, I decided to try the cute trick of seeing if the child lock worked on the front door while we were driving. Let’s just say that I got a good talking to after that ordeal.
Recently I’ve been observing the effects of social media. The attention-grabbing capacity of applications like Facebook is astounding! I love dissecting how the
Social media is all about time consumption. The longer you spend on an app, the more ads can be directed your way. This translates to more money for the company behind the app.
Maybe this objective is a direct attempt to divert the attention of culture from other more important issues in the world. Or maybe it’s simply the desire to make money that drives this technology to its peak. Regardless, the probability that social media will consume inordinate amounts of your time is extremely high.
Here are my ideas for remaining intentional in the world of attention-seeking applications:
For example, many of my social media goals are centered around inspiring people to grow. This rules out the allowance of scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, because it does not in any way inspire others or challenge their mindsets. Instead, I spend my time writing encouraging comments and replying to stories.
If you get bored when you are on your social media break, then it’s a sure sign that it had more control over your mind than you realized.
Another way to cut off from the addiction machine is to have certain times during the day where your phone and computer are shut down so you can focus on the world around you. Take an hour to read, take a walk, or spend some one-on-one time with a person you love. Do anything that resets your mind from the
On iPhones this is easy. Simply go to Settings> General> Accessibility> Accessibility Shortcut. Enable Color Filters. Now, with a triple-click of your home button, you can turn your whole phone to black and white mode. This is awesome if you want to focus on writing an article without losing your focus and moving to other apps.
It’s like double-hacking your own brain. It gravitates to bold, bright colors and tends to shun dull tones. In theory, if your surroundings are more colorful than your phone, you will put it down quicker and focus on what’s around you.
Go a step farther. Turn off notifications for any app that takes your time unnecessarily. Personally, I only have notifications for my calendar, in addition to phone calls and messages.
Constant notifications are leeches of your focus, whether you can distance yourself from them or not. Make your life more organized and less stressful by taking the time to turn them off!
You can only get so much done in 15 minutes. If you learn to maximize the short amounts of time you have, you’ll get a lot more done than if you try to fill a longer segment of time.
Photo by William Iven on Unsplash
Spring break for everyone else is still school in a homeschooling household.
Today, Pensacola’s Blue Angels were practicing at the NAS Museum. So we took the kids out to watch the show.
It’s always a treat. The sheer thrill that runs through you as those F-18’s soar over your head is incredible. After watching the show, we hopped over to the old lighthouse and ate lunch by a shade tree there.
I was impressed by the teaching moments we had. Even though the kids were not reciting Math facts and studying philosophy, they were spending time in the top school called the big wide world.
It got me to thinking. These mindsets are key to life. But we don’t think about them in our overview of school.
Qualities like observational skills are often overlooked in traditional education. Yet we are as lost without them as we would be without the ability to read.
Many times, experiences are the best tools for learning if you only open your eyes. Make every moment a teaching moment!
If losing my dad did anything for me, it taught me empathy.
It’s not like I didn’t understand others before. Tragedy has simply given me the ability to understand another’s pain.
But it goes beyond understanding. Personally, empathy is also the ability to stand beside a hurting person as they heal. True understanding of another requires you to walk through the gates of hell with them. It’s not just pity or even sympathy. It is the willingness to be the rock of healing that brings another soul out of the waters of pain.
This kind of empathy has to be birthed. It’s not like one day you can suddenly understand what others are feeling.
How does empathy grow? It’s through travail. You have to experience pain before you can have the ability to help another human navigate the pain they feel.
If you allow the hurts of your life to teach you to be balanced, you have the beginnings of empathy in you. Walking beside others will help you develop the skill even more.
The challenge: to allow hardships to mold you into a healer. Don’t let your heart be hardened because there is evil and pain in the world. Be an example of empathy in this broken universe.
“Don’t you guys fight at all?” a young friend asked me as she watched my siblings interact at a youth retreat.
I paused for a moment to think.
“Come to think about it, no,” I replied.
Culture has gotten to the point where everyone believes that it’s normal for families to be at odds with each other constantly. I wasn’t raised like that.
It goes back to parenting. I owe my perspective and confidence to my parents, who modeled what relationship was supposed to be. Here are some ways they raised us that differ from normal parenting.
I don’t understand why anyone thinks they are going to prove a point by yelling. Here’s the thing: humans are selfish. They tend to think of each situation from their own perspective. This perspective will only be strengthened if others throw opposing opinions loudly in their faces.
Children are individuals. I think parents forget this often. They try to mold their kids into a certain behavior pattern that hopefully holds up as they grow into adulthood.
And when the child shows his individuality by contesting a parent’s wish, mom or dad freaks out, trying to frantically put the nice behavior pattern back together. And yelling is the preferred approach.
Parents are to be guides, not slave masters. You have in your hands the life of an individual. If you crush that individuality by pushing your point, you will lose the relationship that could be yours, and
There was one exception to the yelling in my life. If there was an emergency, then was the time to use the powers of your voice. This way, we learned to act quickly and without question in the face of danger. We knew instinctively that there was a reason for the tone our parents took on. Even then, it was only one quick word, then they would reduce to normal levels to talk us through emergency procedure.
This goes back to the individuality concept. Many times kids don’t want to do what their parents ask is because they don’t understand the reasoning behind the request. My parents didn’t just tell us to do things because they said so. Instead, we talked about the situation that caused them to come to the decision they did.
When dad and mom were wrong, they admitted it. If my ideas were good, they changed their perspective and put mine into practice. If my opinion was faulty, I was never the worse for having spoken my mind and heard the whole process of reasoning.
The result? I trusted my parents enough to do things just because they said so. I knew that they had solid reasoning behind their decisions, and I based my actions off that knowledge.
You can’t build a relationship by shutting down the voice of your child. Instead, focus on setting precedent by hearing his or her ideas, and expressing your position genuinely.
We knew that we had an alibi if we would only tell the truth. My parents always heard us out. We didn’t get punished for making mistakes. But we weren’t spared if we lied about our actions.
Mistakes are a part of life. My parents taught me to realize that facing those mistakes head on is the best key to personal growth.
Honesty also helped my relationships grow stronger. If we had quarrels as children, we knew that if we were honest, we would be given the chance to fix our wrongs and move on. This birthed healthy relationship mindsets in our hearts.
Now, we are simply honest with each other about thoughts, feelings, and ideas. This keeps our relationships open and solves any problems that might come up. We have hard conversations, but we leave with stronger connections than we came with.
And if and when I have kids, I will be sure to use these three tools daily.
Why do kids struggle with math facts, but quote movies perfectly?
Take away the factor of the addictiveness of screen time, and you are left with one thing that makes movies much more memorable than random facts: storytelling.
I’ve been thinking about this concept a lot. We connect to other humans through the use of stories. They imprint concepts into our heads, and give us a mental picture for what we are learning.
It’s this concept that can help change the way we teach new ideas. Instead of trying to acquaint another person with abstract ideas, give them something that paints a picture in their mind.
Reach a person’s heart first; their mind will follow.
This is what makes stories so important. They connect to a key part of us: our hearts. And it’s always worth gaining a heart, not?
I love puppy breath. Yes, it smells like skunk scent, but it’s different somehow.
National Puppy Day made me nostalgic. 
I miss the feeling of tiny wet tongues licking my face. I used to experience that every day. It was perfect heaven.
I miss the sound of roly-poly bodies tumbling after me.
I miss laughing till it hurt, because of the pups’ repeated attempts at learning.
They were as round as they were tall, and every time they tried to run they rolled over themselves.
I miss cuddling a 2-week old baby in the pocket of my sweatshirt while doing school.
Weirdly enough, I even miss cleaning the puppy barn.
It was hard work raising dogs, but the puppies made it worth my time and energy.
There’s something to be said for the unconditional love of a baby animal that trusts you implicitly. It changed me, I know. Happy Late National Puppy Day!
Tragedy changes a person, no matter how you look at it.
It can harden your heart or tear it to shreds. It makes you seek the comfort of people one moment and loathe their company the next.
Many times people use the tragic situations in their lives as crutches to excuse their behavior. Instead of focusing on the hard part of tragedy, I am reflecting on the lessons I have learned because of facing tragic situations.
Whether a tragedy takes you down or grows you is your choice. In the height of pain, it’s hard to feel like it will ever get better. But I can promise there is light at the end of the tunnel.
I was looking over previous writing that is stashed away in my computer and laughing at myself. But one of the pieces got me to thinking. Enjoy:
“Written by Daniel Defoe in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has fascinated readers for years. The book covers the adventures of a young, headstrong sailor through his journeys and finally the 28 years that he is stranded alone on an island near the mouth of the Orinoco River in the Americas. Themes in Robinson Crusoe include colonization, redemption, and individualism.
Is Robinson Crusoe a lovable character? Some look at the brat that forsook home at a young age. Others see a shiftless sailor who flits from one ship to the next. Still more criticize the domineering master who takes it on himself to civilize a savage. The statue these ideas sculpt is rather on the dislikable side- even repugnant.
Yet there is another side to the character- one found by those who look past the human flaws to the heart of the story. This aspect is the one that has caused Robinson Crusoe to flourish for almost 300 years. The brat disciplines his faulty character, experience balances the shiftless sailor, the teacher eclipses the domineering master. Meet Robinson Crusoe: the rugged lone wolf.
Everybody likes to read about a lone wolf. The character Robinson Crusoe is lovable for three reasons: his rugged individualism, his ability to recover from seemingly impossible situations, and his destiny of adventurous experiences all endear the reader to our protagonist.
What is possibly the greatest thing that reels a reader into the book Robinson Crusoe? It is the fact that he is a lone wolf: a rugged individualist.People love the fact that he figures out how to use the spoils from the shipwreck to build an empire on the island. He depends on no one and survives quite happily on his own.He digs a cave for his own house, domesticates animals for food, sews his own clothes, and grows food out of a couple random seeds that happen to sprout. Who doesn’t absolutely fall in love with a man who can care for himself?
What keeps the reader enthralled with Robinson Crusoe is his ability to escape from crazy situations. He escapes slavery and multiple shipwrecks, saves a man from death by cannibalism while risking his own life. Most would have died in the first shipwreck: nay, most would never have been on the first ship! So they revel in the life of one that cannot seem to die, for all life seems to throw at him.
The experiences of Robinson Crusoe are what make the book what it is. Who else builds up from slavery to plantation owner, then on a journey in which he only survives, to living and learning 28 years on an island, to going back to England with a personal companion to continue adventuring with? All readers love this because it is different, and because he became a self-made man.
Back to the brat, the headstrong sailor that has no fear of his parent’s desires and remonstrances. Give the guy a break, okay? He learned by experience what his father tried to teach him. And he gained more by the experience than he ever could have by simply living the normal life of an English gentleman.
Or, critics may claim that while a lone wolf sounds good, Crusoe was proud and unsociable.Then why has the book lasted for 300 years? Something about individualism endears anyone to that individualist.
In conclusion, why do we love Robinson Crusoe? It is because of his individualism, his narrow escapes, and his life full of adventure.
Everybody loves a lone wolf.”
I still think that everyone loves a good book about an individualist. But if Crusoe lived in our time, many would reject him.
So there is an addition to my essay: Everybody loves a book about a lone wolf. Today, we would drag the man out and call him crazy for his purposeful estrangement from society.
But we still love to read about him. At least, I do.
What are your thoughts? Would Robinson Crusoe survive the critiquing of people today?
I’m getting tired of the sound of my own voice. Continue reading My Voice is Frustrating Me
