What i'm thinking about this month...

I keep a word document open on my computer where I briefly type things when they come to mind or copy quotes or excerpts from articles that I find particularly interesting. Here is a sample from this month’s random thoughts

1.Much of our life can be thought of as a struggle between emotion and rationality.

2.Where is the line between learning from your mistakes and becoming jaded and hopeless? Do our experiences really show us the way things always are or just the way things were one time? How can we balance rationality and idealism?

3.“I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man”

“Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes.”

Che Guevara is surrounded by a lot of controversy for his ideals and methods of revolution but I admire the fact that his passion and convictions were so strong he would take great risks to make things “right”. Is there anything that I am this passionate about? While he may have been misguided he cared about his cause in a way that I cannot relate to. I can’t wait to see Benicio Del Toro’s depiction of his life. At the same time, I’m perplexed by liberals who champion Che’s revolution and place him on a hero’s pedestal. While I understand their affinity towards his “message” I’m not sure how they can overlook his methods. If your anti-war, Che Guevara probably isn’t a guy you should be wearing on your t-shirt. Maybe you could consider Gandhi…or Stephen Colbert…

4.Is everyone better understood if we understand their context? I believe that we must strive not to judge people or their behaviors because we have no idea where they are or where they have been. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”

5.Horseracing, Nascar and golf are all starting to be covered regularly on ESPN and are seeing record breaking popularity. I wonder if this means that Americans are generally more bored than they used to be…I guess there could be other logical explanations

6.I would bake more if I wouldn’t eat what I made. I love to bake but I don’t want to look like I love to bake.

7.“I don’t preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people are hungry, Jesus didn’t say, “Now is that political or social?” He said, “I feed you.” Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.” –Bishop Desmond Tutu

8.At the risk of sounding braggy, before the end of this year I’m going to Cambodia, Lollapalooza, and Ethiopia. It is possible that I am equally as excited about all three. I’m not sure I should share that…It feels wrong somehow that Lollapalooza made the list with my visits to two developing nations

Business as Mission

I’m anxiously awaiting the end of this semester for several reasons, one of which is the luxury of reading for leisure which is somewhat limited when there are MBA books to study. I have recently become fascinated with the idea of business as mission and have discovered numerous books on the topic. The past few months, I have been reading a book called the end of poverty which was kind of academic and a bit hard to plow through at times but left me amazed by how our life experience often leaves us more equipped to help the world than we ever dreamed possible. I’ve slowly become to realize that our traditional ideas of charity may sustain the poor today but do nothing to change their tomorrow. I also stand in awe of a god who somehow convinced a stubborn girl to switch her major to business knowing that eventually I would become passionately interested in learning the way its principles can be harnessed to pull developing countries out of their cycle of poverty. I had no idea what I was in for.
A book I’m incredibly excited about beginning came in the mail yesterday. Here is an excerpt:

After more than 20 years of working in Africa, India and Pakistan, I’ve learned that solutions to poverty must be driven by discipline, accountability and market strength, not easy sentimentality. I’ve learned that many of the answers to poverty lie in the space between the market and charity and that what is needed most of all is moral leadership willing to build solutions from the perspectives of poor people themselves rather than imposing grand theories and plans upon them.
The book is called the Blue Sweater and is the story of Jacqueline Novogratz who is the founder and CEO of the Acumen fund. The Acumen Fund, if you are not familiar, is an amazing and innovative International Non-profit that provides capital to entrepreneurs around the world who start businesses that ultimately help some of the poorest citizens of the world climb out of poverty. I can hardly wait to get started!

Potential

Susan Boyle Sings on Britain's Got Talent 2009 Episode 1 @ Yahoo! Video

Admittedly I'm more emotional when I'm tired and also when I'm stressed and this morning I am a bit of both. However, as I looked over the news when I first signed online this morning I noticed a story about a woman named Susan Boyle that made me tear up a little. This clip doesn't show the whole interchange between the judges and Susan but before she began to sing, Susan told the audience that she is 47 years old, that she lives at home with her cat and that she has never been kissed. You can see the look on Simon's face as he anticipates a female William Hung and then a complete change of countance as he realizes the hidden talent this woman holds. It is amazing to me that Susan has been living in some tiny British village in a tiny cottage and sings like a Broadway star to a feline audience of one. For years she has been cultivating this gift unnoticed and alone, until this moment when suddenly her gift was revealed to the World. To me it says something profound about the hidden potential inside of each of us. It reminds me once again that outward appearances aren't always indicitive of what's inside and that each of us has something profound to give to the world if we will only take the opportunity to share it.

Fish Buns

It’s an awful and rainy day. I woke up kind of grumpy. I’ve been feeling quite a bit of pressure lately between the demands of school and work and my finances and thinking about the long day ahead of me I did not want to get out of bed . As I finally stopped hitting my snooze, I checked my Blackberry and saw that I had a new email from Nelum, a pastor’s wife I know in Sri Lanka, and one of the most sincere and wonderful people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. Nelum and her husband Premadasa pastor one of the only Christian churches in Sri Lanka. It is quite dangerous to be a Christian in this country. They frequently receive threats on their lives and the members of their congregation are persecuted. There is talk of an anti-conversion bill which would make it illegal to become a Christian and their church is frequently visited by spies. The people in their country are quite poor and are in the midst of a violent civil war that threatens the safety of their families daily. This is part of the email I received this morning:

With the current economic breakdown you can imagine how it has affected the people, yet they encourage themselves to seek the Lord & experience His blessings. Some families where their are several kids cannot even come to church every week as bus fares are so expensive. Also they have to leave home early morning & when they get home it is late afternoon, so they have to find the money to buy at least a bun each for the kids. Sometimes kids who have not eaten faint in the church & this touches our hearts very much. Our people are sharing & even the ones who are going through much difficulty help each othe with bus fares or kids food.

I only asked you for a glass of milk for all the kids, but if you can help them by giving them a fish bun each too, it would be wonderful. I am giving you the breakdown of the cost of milk & the fish bun, separately, if you cannot give the bun it's o.k. but at least the milk would be wonderful, the little ones would be so blessed & their tummies full! If you can help us with this project I will keep an account that you can see & also get you some picutres of big smiles, I can just imagine their faces to see the milk, even most infants don't have milk as it is so expensive!

Suddenly my life had a completely different perspective. I couldn’t help but think how they must know God so much differently than I do. How they literally risk their lives for a faith I obviously know nothing about. I can’t comprehend what it would be like to live in that situation or how you could continue to hope when the world is literally crashing down around you. How does a mother watch her child faint from starvation and still continue to believe that someone is in control? Yesterday I was frustrated because I couldn’t find any closed toed grey heels and then I receive a heartfelt petition for milk and fish buns and I am reminded how selfish and shallow my life really is. I have a long way to go.

Part 2 of 3

About 20 minutes later Brad returned still carrying his jacket. Apparently once you left the arena re-entry wasn’t allowed so he had bought a drink and then returned to the concert floor. As soon as I saw him I wanted to ask for my keys back but I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t trust him so I didn’t. However, Ben was also worried and immediately asked Brad for my keys back. Brad reached in his left pocket and then his right and started to look worried. Then he checked his jacket, then his pockets again, my stomach dropped. The keys were gone and Velvet Revolver took the stage.

Screaming over the first pounding rock anthem Brad told me not to worry. We’d find the keys. We were in a sold out auditorium with about 10,000 people but the arena floor was concrete. “As soon as everyone filters out they will turn up,” he assured me, “just enjoy the show.” I tried to enjoy the show, I really did, but the thought of being stranded in Atlanta with no way back to Chattanooga or a way to get back into my apartment if I made it back to Chattanooga wouldn’t go away. I stared at the floor the whole time hoping by some miraculous turn of events the dancing crowd would somehow kick the keys directly in front me. It was the longest set of my life.

Finally the band reached their last song and we all prepared to split up and scan the floor for the keys. In the midst of their encore, confetti started shooting out all over the auditorium. In an excited frenzy the crowd cheered the confetti that I suddenly despised. As it piled thick on the floor it effectively eliminated any chance I had of finding my keys. The crowd filtered out and we shifted our feet through the confetti and trash filled auditorium in vain until security kicked us out.

So there we stood, outside alone on a cold December night with no way home. All of us but Brad had left our jackets in the now unpenetratable fortress that was my Ford Explorer. As we took the long walk to my car with the small hope that somehow I had an extra key I knew nothing about, it began to rain, hard. It was a weird feeling to feel so abandoned and lost surrounded by grocery stores and coffee shops. It was about 12:00 and everything was closed. I had no idea what to do. I’m still not sure why but Ben went to see if the grocery store was open. Casey was starving. Brad felt awful that he had put us in this situation. I was just worried.

“Don’t you have a spare key?” whined Casey. “I might,” I answered. I knew I had a spare key, I just had no idea where it was. It was possible it was in the car, it was also possible it was in my apartment in Chattanooga or maybe I left it at a friend’s house for “safe” keeping. I had no idea. I started praying that wherever it was God would somehow transport it inside my car. We decided to call AAA to see if my prayers would come true.

An hour and a half later, soaked to the skin in the freezing rain, hungry and beginning to lose our sense of humor, I received a call from the lock smith that had been assigned our case. He had the thickest back woods southern accent I had ever heard and was almost impossible to understand. As I confirmed our exact location and assured him we would be the only 4 people standing in the rain in a dark empty parking lot in the middle of the night , he asked me one more question, “Y’all don’t have a baby stuck in there do ya?” I hesitated to answer, wondering if a trapped baby would somehow get him here faster, “no…there isn’t a baby.” “Well that’s good,” he fired back, “I’m tired of dumb bitches leaving their kids in the car today. I’ll be there in a minute.” It was weird. It was only the beginning.

The first thing he asked us is why we were standing in the rain. No one answered; we thought the answer was apparent. He also told us he was just a lock smith in training, he had intentionally ran into another car earlier in the day because “they were fn stupid” and that he was on his way to meet up with several transvestites that “got pretty wild.” He invited us along if “we liked to party” and asked us if we “had any ice.” I was thankful I was with 3 guys. The whole process of unlocking my car took over an hour. As he finally popped the door open we all frantically jumped in, digging under seats and in the glove box looking anywhere for a spare key with no luck. We were completely stranded. “My boss can make a new key,” offered the locksmith as he unzipped his pants and began to “drain the lizard, if I didn't mind” on the right front tire of my car, “but he can’t get here until the morning.”

We started discussing our options. Casey couldn’t stop talking about how hungry he was. The locksmith, who had decided to wait around to watch the festivities, offered him his sandwich. Casey was starving but didn’t know if taking a home-made sandwich from a drugged up, transvestite loving lock-smith was a good idea. “If you’re starving you should just eat it,” insisted the locksmith. He seemed a little agitated so Casey took it and actually contemplated taking a bite but as hungry as he was he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. This temporary fix could result in some more long term problems.

Our only option for the night was to stay in the car or in a hotel. Brad offered to pay for a hotel but we had no way to get there. The locksmith offered to take us to a Holiday Inn that was only 5 minutes away. While getting into a car with this guy seemed like a horrible idea we didn’t think we had much of a choice. Hours of standing in the cold rain had numbed our common sense and judgment. We already knew we were going to have to pay $200 to get a new key made and at least $100 for a hotel room and didn’t want to wait for a cab. The tiny lock-smith truck only had room for one of us up front. The other 3 had to climb in the bed of the truck under the low hanging topper. Ben pulled out a cigarette as we all looked at each other wondering if we had just stumbled into the plot of a low budget horror movie. “We don’t have a choice,” Ben decided, “We just need to get out of the rain.” He put the unlit cigarette in his mouth, lifted the back window and climbed in, “if we’re going to die lets get it over with.” Brad attempted to be a gentleman by offering me the front seat with our scary chauffeur; I respectfully declined the opportunity to be alone with our unlikely savior as I whispered, “are you crazy?!” and followed Ben into the back of the truck. Casey was pale; in retrospect he seemed to be the only one who realized how reckless this decision was. As we struggled to get settled on top of the plastic jugs and tools that filled the truck bed, the locksmith smiled sinisterly and stuck his head in the window, “You better not light that fn cigarette,” he ordered “those jugs are all filled with gas.” My blood ran cold as he aggressively slammed the window shut and locked it. Casey grabbed my arm and whispered, “We really are going to die.”

Milk Soaked Loins and the Death of a Dream

I've had some weird things happen in my life and I've always wanted to record them somehow. This is my first attempt at a biographical short story...Its kind of long for a blog so I thought I would break it up. I chose this particular occurance because the ending is something I feel relates to what I've gone through this week. The story isn't entirley complete but I thought posting it in parts would motivate me to actually get it done. Remember its one of my first serious attempts at a narrative (outside of school assignments) so be nice :)

Milk Soaked Loins and the Death of a Dream: A True Story

Several years ago, on a Wednesday night In December, myself and 3 friends: Ben, Brad and Casey bought tickets for the Jingle Bell Jam in Atlanta, Georgia. There were four bands playing, Keane, Muse, Jimmy Eat World and Velvet Revolver. I wasn’t a huge fan of the headliners but Slash is kind of a legend and I figured I needed to see him play. It was a memorable night for several reasons. It was the first time I saw the band Muse play. They were incredible and continue to be the best live show I have ever seen. I remember my friend Casey and I standing speechless as they walked off the stage, we hadn’t expected to be so blown away by the second band of a 4 band set. Brad was the most excited about seeing Velvet Revolver. He was a huge fan of classic rock and considered the Combination of Guns and Roses and Stone Temple Pilots a marriage arranged by God himself. Anticipating that he would want to rock heavily during the final show, Brad asked for my keys to go to the car and put his jacket up. For some reason, I hesitated, but what could possibly go wrong? “Don’t lose them” I joked as I handed them over. “How could I possibly lose them between here and the car?” he responded with what soon became known as the famous last words.

Marketing You

It’s been a long time since I last blogged. There has been no shortage of things to say but I’ve struggled with how transparent one’s public self should actually be. How much of my soul is appropriate to bear to the anonymous readers who visit my blog. As long as I can remember, I’ve strived to be exactly who I am to everyone. I believe that everyone tries too hard to hide their dark days and their questioning thoughts for fear of accusations of blasphemy or judgment from our peers. If I truly believe that God is only one who judges and that he alone is the only audience I should be striving to please then what do I gain by presenting something less than myself to others? However, as I get older, I have begun to understand the value of discretion and that there are some things that should be held sacred and shared only with those in whom I place the most trust. Giving all I have to offer to any casual acquaintance is akin to casting pearls before swine. This is why I’m sometimes fascinated as I browse Facebook.

I have Facebook friends who use the site as a type of public confessional. Some have publically announced to the world that they are lonely and tired of being single, that their last boyfriend was a complete jerk, or that they are plagued with dark thoughts and want to give up on life. Once again, I am a huge proponent of honesty, we are all crazy on some level. However, I also believe that we should do our best to contain crazy as much as possible.

The way I see it, in all actuality, your Facebook profile isn’t really you anyway. It’s a projection of your created self, the self you want to be perceived as, not the self you necessarily are. Think of it as an art project or an advertising campaign. It’s marketing at its finest; we carefully manage what is seen and what is not. Were you tagged in an unattractive picture? Delete the tag. Are you sitting at home alone on a Friday night eating popcorn and watching Titanic with tears in your eyes for the hundredth time? Tell the world you reveling in a much needed night in while contemplating the meaning of life. Think about the thought and effort that is placed into the perfect profile. Are the favorite movies you listed really your favorite movies or the movies you like that say the most about the person you hope others perceive you to be?

My favorite part of Facebook is the status update function. An article I read recently, touted them as “spontaneous bursts of being.” These brief snap-shots of our closest “friends” daily lives capture poetic moments that prior to the invention of the status update were forever lost. Moments as profound as “cleaning the house” or “watching the bachelor and baking cookies”, are now shared with hundreds of our closest friends at the push of a button. However, what I find the most interesting about status updates is not what they actually say but what the subject is attempting to say about themselves through them. Like tiny press releases we control what the public should think is going on with our product. I myself have fallen prey to this tool, posting a carefully constructed, “is having an incredible day thanks to her amazing friends” when I’m trying to send a subtle message to a guy, “your apparent lack of interest does not affect my mood or the rest of my life for that matter. Take that.”