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The last blog that I wrote had some very interesting reactions. I had four different people that were mad at me because they were sure that I was talking about them. So apparently the “sarcastic person” is also the “everyone is always talking about me person” as well, but that is for another blog. One question that did come up, from a variety of different places, is what then do we do with personality?
I tend to be very optimistic and have a hard time finding areas that being optimistic can be a negative thing. (Wow that was the dumbest sentence ever) But over the years I have realized that it can be a bad thing. I can look at a bad situation and find something that is good about it. But i don’t think that always finding the good is necessarily a positive thing. When someone is hurting and I am optimistic I have to realize that my optimism can have the tendency to minimize what the other person is feeling. There are times when sorrow is necessary and people need to go through that. I have to realize that blind optimism can in fact hurt as much as it helps.
I think that the key then is knowing the areas that you are likely to fail in. Introspection is something that most people do not spend much time doing. I know that there are attributes of personality that we are born with and we will probably always have. But I still don’t think that is an excuse for crappy behaviour. In the end we all must be aware of what we do and say and be open to God transforming us, instead of leaning on our personalities and continuing in crappy behaviour. What do you think?
Kelly told me that my last blog was really depressing and that I needed to write a new one. She said that it sounded like I was in a place that I did not want to be so I decided that I should clear the air. I am very happy with were I am at in my life. I love Fuller. I am learning a lot and I am excited about the prospect of putting what I am learning into action someday. We live in a real nice community and we are building some really good friendships. Kelly and I recently started a college group at church and though it is small we are having a lot of fun hanging out with college students. So I am extremely happy with what is going on but occasionally I really do miss Oregon.
I was getting ready to go to a night class and Kelly told me that it was getting chilly out and I got really excited. I know the idea of being chilly is a common feeling for the rest of the world that actually has discernible seasons, but in California it still feels like July. All that to say I was happy for it to actually feel like fall and I went to my closet and pulled out a nice sweatshirt. As I walked to school just being able to wear a sweatshirt put me in a particularly good mood. I don’t think that I ever really appreciated the weather in Oregon. It was an annoyance that you just had to deal with but I never really thought about how nice it was to never really know what you are going to get, I miss unpredictability.
It really made me think about how many things I love that I really take for granted. (I have found my self missing mud lately but that is for another blog.) Oftentimes our lives are so ordered that we lose sight of the blessings that surround us because we have grown so used to them. I know this is no great epiphany. My prayer is that I might always be reminded of how my life is blessed. That I would be able to take joy in the little things like sweatshirts, mud and the changing of seasons.
Since moving to California Kelly and I have become pretty big fans of Disneyland. We purchased season passes about a month ago and we live close enough that we can easily go and spend an afternoon or an evening there. We decided to go there yesterday after church and when we arrived we were meet with an interesting site. Occasionally Disneyland has special days that are geared toward certain people and we happened to go on a day that was extra special because there were two special days. Not only was it MIley Cyrus’ sweet sixteen birthday party but it was also the 11th annual Anaheim Disney Gay Day.
It was kind of intersting to see these two groups mixing together and I am not sure that such a large repersentation of these two groups have ever been mixed together. You had literally thousands of gay men all dresssed in red shirts to show that they were in fact there for Gay Day. There were equally as many young tweens who at the mere mention of Miley Cyrus would surely die with excitment. By observing these two groups for a day I have come to a number of conclusions.
I am scared of Miley Cyrus and I think that she might be a cult leader. There were ravenous packs of crazed little girls moving like a swarm of locust throughout Disneyland devouring anything Cyrus as well as sending churro vendors running for the hills. It was scary. I kept joking around to Kelly that I though I saw Miley. She would get mad and tell me to be quiet because she did not want me to start a riot. At first I though that she was joking but then I realized that it was a real concern and decided that being trampled by a mob of prepubescent girls that are all jacked up on energy drinks, churros and Miley-mania is not the way that I want to go out. So when faced with the craziness we did the only safe thing, we backed away slowly and abandonded the madness.
I also though it was incredibly useful that you could identify people based on the color of their shirts. You could glance across a crowd that day and discern that the large group of men in red shirts were there for Gay Day and not just a large group of Hannah Montana devotees, although they could have been both I guess. I think that we should use clothes more to signify what we are about. I am not advocating the wearing of t-shirts with christian slogans but the use of clothing to make it easier to judge people. Judging people already comes easily to most people but this would make it much easier. Here are a few examples:
You can usually identify someone who works in an office by the attire he or she is wearing but I think it could get much more specific. For instance, I am a business man who likes golf and sleazy romance novels this could be signified by the wearing of a crushed velvet shirt with a green tie. Then you could see someone walking down the street and immediately say “what a pervert he reads smutty novels” or “I hate golf, what a idiot”. This would work really good in the church as well. For instance, say someone wanted people to know that they were a moderate Calvinist, who only sings worship songs that were written within the last two years, and that they think that Jesus is one “hip” dude. I would wear flip flops, khaki shorts and a yellow polo shirt (preferably Lacoste). That way people would look at me and think, “Wow! God preordained that guy to be one hip dude and know the best worship tunes”.
If only everyone could get on board with this idea, I could know how to judge people in much less time. I could judge without ever even having to talk to anyone. Awesome.
