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Tuesday, 22 July 2008

  • nervous in the light of dawn...

    ...i look at the profile picture that i have had on xanga since march of 2003...and can't help but think back to everything thats happened in my life since then. its hard to imagine that 5 years have passed since that picture was taken....5 years that have turned that school boy complexion into something more like a school-bus complexion hahah. i definitely look older...and i definitely feel older in the physical sense...but sometimes i can't help but feel as lost and confused about my life as i did all those years ago...

    i just dont get it...i did everything my parents told me to do in order to secure a bright and happy future...i studied hard, i graduated from college, i have a respectable engineering career at a nice big company...and yet my life makes about as much sense now as it did when i was a freshman in college. not to toot my own horn...but im pretty damn good at what i do at work...and it shows as im getting a lot of attention from the senior leadership team. but i dont love what i do...there's no passion...no "umph" that makes me excited to wake up each day and do it all over again. the way i look at it...its something that i can do...its challenging...im hardly ever bored...there's lots of room for growth and promotions...im good at it...and the pay aint that shabby either. but i guess what i want to know is....is that enough??? im not necessarily unhappy...but to still feel like i haven't accomplished much this far into the game isn't a good indicator of what lies ahead. i find myself in a very weird stage in my life...seeing so many of my friends successful and happy (getting married, getting masters degrees, starting new careers), i can't help but feel as if im falling behind in life. i guess thats what happens to someone such as myself who is prone to look at life the way others think is "best." and i definitely think its a fault of my generation to feel like i have to keep moving on to the next big thing in order to feel like im moving up in the world. i just want to have my moment in the sun...to feel like im really getting somewhere...or at least headed in the right direction but so far, it just seems like my life has been an endless list of compromises. i really wanted to try architecture...but my grandfather really wanted an engineer to follow in his footsteps. i wanted to go to berkley, but my parents wanted me to stay close to home and wouldn't pay for it otherwise. i wanted to have a burger for dinner...but my girlfriend got me salad instead......you get the picture.

    i guess what i have a hard time with is that setting and meeting your personal goals requires responsibility, commitment and fortitude....but life, on the other hand, invokes flexibility and compromise. its like they are constantly at odds with each-other, and im always just stuck in between...trying to find the middle ground between my goals and what life throws at me. and so 5 years later..in some ways...it still feels as if things are still the same. maybe my problem is that i just don't know what i want from life yet...maybe im trying too hard to peg my happiness to what has made other people happy........i dont really know yet. but i do know this...im tired of wasting all this time living someone else's life and being trapped by the results of other people's thinking. i really feel like im ready to break free...and start walking down the road less travelled. im at a point where i have to start taking some risks and perhaps walk away from what's safe and comfortable and just trust that it will all work out OK. maybe then i will find the answers to my questions...


Wednesday, 09 July 2008

  • the reason for God...

    c.s. lewis once said in an article that "if there is a God who created the world, and created us...you don't relate to God the way a person from one story relates to a person in a second story. rather, you would relate to God the way hamlet relates to shakespeare. you see if hamlet wants to prove that there is a shakespeare, he's not going to be able to do so in a lab nor is he going to be able to find shakespeare by climbing to the top of the stage. the only way he is going to know anything about shakespeare is if shakespeare writes something about himself into the play."

    dorothy sayers was one of the first women ever to graduate from oxford and she was a detective novelist. and she wrote a series of novels about an aristocratic detective named peter whimsy who solved mysteries. half way through the series, a woman shows up named harriet vane. in the story, harriet was one of the first women to graduate from oxford, and she was a writer of detective novels. and she goes on to fall in love with peter whimsy and marries him. do you know who harriet vane is? see what happened was, dorothy sayers fell in love with peter whimsy. she created him, she created the whole world that he was in...and she also saw he was horribly lonely. and she wanted to get into that world and save him. and guess what...she did. she wrote herself in...and she married him and they lived happily ever after. now you know what the gospel is? every other religion says that God is up there and you have to believe in him...but only christianity says that God wrote himself into the play.....thats really moving to say God put himself into the world that he created and fell in love with us.

    if i was falling off a cliff...and i saw a branch sticking out the side of the cliff...lets just say the branch is strong enough to hold me up. and im about to fall...if i don't grab that branch im dead. if i look at that branch and i say..."oh i dont know if that branch can save me" but grab it...i'm saved. but if i say "oh i KNOW that branch can save me" but don't grab it...i'm dead. you see...weak faith and a strong object is infinitely better than strong faith and a weak object. because its the object of your faith not the strength of your faith that saves you...



    - excerpts from "The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism" by Tim Keller


Thursday, 24 April 2008

  • things i wish i realized sooner in life....

    RULE 1 - Life  is not fair - get used to it.

    RULE 2 - The  world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you  feel good about yourself.

    RULE 3 - You  will NOT make 100 thousand dollars a year right out of college. You won't be a vice president with your own secretary, until you earn  both.

    RULE 4 - If  you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

    RULE 5 - Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping, they called it Opportunity.

    RULE 6 - If  you mess up,it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

    RULE 7 - Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying  your bills, cleaning your clothes and  listening to you talk about how cool  you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

    RULE 8 - Your  school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll  give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

    RULE 9 - Life  is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own  time.

    RULE 10 - Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

    RULE 11 - Be  nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for ne...

                                       - john sykes

     

Friday, 11 April 2008

  • life...

    i was reading a pop sci article earlier about how scientists were able to re-animate/revive a dead pig heart by re-seeding it with new cells from a baby rat heart....applying a small electric shock and voila...a heart that had been dead for a few weeks starts to beat again. grossness aside...what got me thinking is how science is getting closer and closer to being able (or is able) to grow new organs, repair damaged ones with stem cells, or even implant artificial ones...having the ability to essentially extend our lives indefinitely. we spend billions of dollars every year researching and developing new cures...new drugs...new procedures...all in the hopes of what?...eluding death for a few more years? what i find interesting here is that we as a society expend such a disproportionate amount of energy and resources trying to prolong our lives...but do little to try and actually make life as we know it better and worthwhile. its like we're stuck in that battle between quantity vs. quality.

    think about it...what has all our technological advances done to improve the quality of life for the small child who has lost his/her parents because of the genocide happening in darfur, or the family who has lost someone dear on the "war on terror?" what has all our advances done for the parents who lost their child to disease or malnutrition....?

    what good is being able to grow a person a new heart...if we can't use the hearts we have to heal the brokenness in the world? i guess ill leave this blog open ended and leave it to the readers to answer for themselves. but i will close with excerpts from a quote from george carlin entitled.."the paradox of our time," which is rather apropos given the topic of this rant...



    "The paradox of our time in history is that we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.
    We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years.
    We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things.
    We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice.
    We write more, but learn less; we plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait; we have higher incomes, but lower morals; we've become long on quantity, but short on quality.
    These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.
    These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill...."



Monday, 07 April 2008

  • im walking in the shadows, of my own tempted soul. i know that im not perfect, i'll admit that im a fool. every time im lost...im always finding my way back to you...the ONE I need when i'm awake...

    im wrong...i should've done better than this. please, i'll be strong...but i'm finding it hard to resist. save me, i'm lost. oh Lord i've been waiting for you...i'll pay any cost...just save me from being confused. show me what i'm looking for...oh Lord...show me what i'm looking for...

    don't let go...i've wanted this far too long. mistakes become regrets...i've learned to love abuse. so please show me what i'm looking for....


    save me, im lost. oh Lord i've been waiting for you...Lord show me what i'm looking for...

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