When I was in college, my photography professor said something about pictures that I haven't forgotten. He said that our generation has begun to take pictures by the millions and billions. The mental culture that this has created is this: we are the first generation in history who has ever had to prove that we are alive. We take pictures by the millions to prove that we are not invisible.
It has become part of our cognition that, if you don't have pictures of yourself doing something, it never happens. If you didn't take any pictures of yourself on your trip, it is just as good as if you didn't go. If you have no pictures to show from your experience, then honestly, how much good actually was it? What was really the point? For the first time ever, just being alive and experiencing is not enough, and we as people have to evidence ourselves.
Another way that this phenomenon is affecting us is, not surprisingly, with Facebook and social media. The social media experience is beginning to be linked to several mental disorders and problems, including depression, loneliness, and anxiety. There are many facets and causes for this, but one of those is the inherent nature of comparison.
By nature of the site, people put up pictures of themselves at their happiest. They are smiling, they are showing off their cool trip, they are giving you the best flashes of their experience. You don't see anyone taking a picture of herself, on her bed alone and sad, and putting that up there.
So, for people who are lonely or depressed and are sitting alone in their rooms on Facebook, they are already feeling alone and down and sad, and they go on Facebook and this is the message: not only are you sad, but you are the only one. Everyone else you know is happy and having fun. No one is depressed but you. And here are 10,000 pictures of everyone you know to prove it. And now your depression and sadness and loneliness are coupled by this sense of isolation and this sentiment that no one is sad but you, your experience is not only hard, it's super abnormal. Your depression becomes cyclical.
I don't have much to say about this other than that I wanted to remember the thought.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Finding "The One"
I just want to say that I do not at all think there is a "the one." I think that God knows who we're going to marry, so in that sense, there is a specific person for us, but I do not at all believe that we are meant to find one specific person who will make us happy and make love with us in a way that no one else could.
I think we could happily, successfully be with lots of different people. I think what makes someone the one for you is that they are a good, compatible match who has strong, healthy, desirable qualities and that they were the one who was there when you got ready to commit. I think we might have all, in the past, been with people who would actually have been very good, healthy, compatible matches for us, we just weren't ready at the time. Eventually though, we will find someone who we very much like and very much love, and we will be emotionally, even situationally, ready to do the very hard work of loving them for a long time.
I think people say "oh well, he just wasn't the one for you" about people we break up with, and that's a very nice and fine thing to say, but I don't think it's necessarily true. I think that person might very well have been a good "one for us," and what's more true is that we weren't ready at the time to do what it required to commit to love them well for a long time. And there is certainly no "one" who will come along and make that easy.
I don't meant to sound reductionist or unromantic, but I'm feeling more and more that the thing you do is to fine someone who you enjoy, respect, who loves God, who treats you well, who has something to teach you, who has qualities that you desire, who you're attracted to. And there can be a lot of these people! But you meet lots of them, and when you get ready, you pick one, and if those solid, healthy, compatible qualities are in place, it doesn't necessarily matter who it is that you pick. Each one of them would have had a unique set of things that would be especially wonderful and would be especially difficult. What makes or breaks "true love" is whether or not you each are ready and willing to commit long term to enjoying the good parts and working out the bad parts.
Are we ready to commit long term to staying together even when we don't want to anymore and working hard until we do want to again?
Do we love the person just because of how we feel, because if that is the case, when (not if, when) that feeling goes away for a while, the reason to be in the marriage is gone. No wonder people leave. Why would they stay?
Do we commit to someone because we're in love with them, or do we love them more because we committed and stuck to it?
I think who you are, what you are willing to put into the relationship, how long you can be patient as things go slowly on the path towards "better", how willing you are to turn a blind eye to those tempting people who make it seem like things would be so much easier if you'd just bail out and go off with them...
These things are not made possible because we found "the one", they are an outworking of character. This business is not done well because we found some mystical "One" but because we were the kind of people who could commit and contribute what marriage requires, and because we found someone who efforts are similar to and compatible with ours. It's not "the one." It's you.
I think we could happily, successfully be with lots of different people. I think what makes someone the one for you is that they are a good, compatible match who has strong, healthy, desirable qualities and that they were the one who was there when you got ready to commit. I think we might have all, in the past, been with people who would actually have been very good, healthy, compatible matches for us, we just weren't ready at the time. Eventually though, we will find someone who we very much like and very much love, and we will be emotionally, even situationally, ready to do the very hard work of loving them for a long time.
I think people say "oh well, he just wasn't the one for you" about people we break up with, and that's a very nice and fine thing to say, but I don't think it's necessarily true. I think that person might very well have been a good "one for us," and what's more true is that we weren't ready at the time to do what it required to commit to love them well for a long time. And there is certainly no "one" who will come along and make that easy.
I don't meant to sound reductionist or unromantic, but I'm feeling more and more that the thing you do is to fine someone who you enjoy, respect, who loves God, who treats you well, who has something to teach you, who has qualities that you desire, who you're attracted to. And there can be a lot of these people! But you meet lots of them, and when you get ready, you pick one, and if those solid, healthy, compatible qualities are in place, it doesn't necessarily matter who it is that you pick. Each one of them would have had a unique set of things that would be especially wonderful and would be especially difficult. What makes or breaks "true love" is whether or not you each are ready and willing to commit long term to enjoying the good parts and working out the bad parts.
Are we ready to commit long term to staying together even when we don't want to anymore and working hard until we do want to again?
Do we love the person just because of how we feel, because if that is the case, when (not if, when) that feeling goes away for a while, the reason to be in the marriage is gone. No wonder people leave. Why would they stay?
Do we commit to someone because we're in love with them, or do we love them more because we committed and stuck to it?
I think who you are, what you are willing to put into the relationship, how long you can be patient as things go slowly on the path towards "better", how willing you are to turn a blind eye to those tempting people who make it seem like things would be so much easier if you'd just bail out and go off with them...
These things are not made possible because we found "the one", they are an outworking of character. This business is not done well because we found some mystical "One" but because we were the kind of people who could commit and contribute what marriage requires, and because we found someone who efforts are similar to and compatible with ours. It's not "the one." It's you.
God's Agency
I think that often, very competent people get into a rut of thinking that they are so capable and are able to work so hard to make so many things happen, that this is the only available way of actually getting things done.
I was reminded recently of the opposite. I had to have a hard conversation with Coleton in which I had to ask for an apology that I felt I was owed. I was very nervous about it and I waited much longer than I should have to bring it up. When I finally did, not only did it go wonderfully, but he also said that God had been putting it on his heart for a while to bring up the same thing but that he'd been too nervous.
Now, I think it was a good and right thing for me to bring the topic up. I think that usually, God makes a way for us and we have to travel it. Our lives are shaped by choices and behaviors and movement and agency. I think this is definitely true.
However, I've noticed lately (and a light was really shown on it in this above instance) that I think of God as mostly passive. That the way things get done is that I do them and then He does or doesn't add His blessing. I've been thinking that it certainly matters whether or not God blesses my effort and that my success is a gift, but the core of the belief was that I had to get things moving or they wouldn't ever happen. This instance, however, reminded me that God is at work, all on His, own, without any of my help, to bring about powerful change and to make big things happen. I do think He values and uses human agency, but we shouldn't think (as I've been prone to) that that's all there is. I was hurting and needed healing and reconciliation, and I thought that that would never happen unless I made it happen. I do think that God used and valued my agency, but when C told me that God had been really laying this same topic on his heart to bring up, I realized that God had plans in the works to bring about this healing conversation that He knew I needed, even if I hadn't done anything to make it happen.
I needed to remember that sometimes it's very okay for our prayer to be: God, I really need this, and I don't have the resources or the energy or the ability right now to make it happen for myself or even to contribute to the project. I really need this thing, but it will only happen if you just make it happen and give it to me. I can't contribute anything and all I can be is hopeful and thankful.
This autonomous activity/agency of God was so dormant in my paradigm that when I started thinking about it recently, I was actually surprised. I had forgotten it so thoroughly that it had atrophied and I had forgotten that I ever knew it. I was both shocked and delighted.
I think we need to remember that, while our agency is a very big thing, it is not the only thing. God is working in big, mighty, powerful, active, present way to bring about both the things that He wants and the things that we need. We are allowed to rest in that sometimes (if not all the time), because I tend to stress when I think that the things I need will not happen if I don't get the ball rolling.
I was reminded recently of the opposite. I had to have a hard conversation with Coleton in which I had to ask for an apology that I felt I was owed. I was very nervous about it and I waited much longer than I should have to bring it up. When I finally did, not only did it go wonderfully, but he also said that God had been putting it on his heart for a while to bring up the same thing but that he'd been too nervous.
Now, I think it was a good and right thing for me to bring the topic up. I think that usually, God makes a way for us and we have to travel it. Our lives are shaped by choices and behaviors and movement and agency. I think this is definitely true.
However, I've noticed lately (and a light was really shown on it in this above instance) that I think of God as mostly passive. That the way things get done is that I do them and then He does or doesn't add His blessing. I've been thinking that it certainly matters whether or not God blesses my effort and that my success is a gift, but the core of the belief was that I had to get things moving or they wouldn't ever happen. This instance, however, reminded me that God is at work, all on His, own, without any of my help, to bring about powerful change and to make big things happen. I do think He values and uses human agency, but we shouldn't think (as I've been prone to) that that's all there is. I was hurting and needed healing and reconciliation, and I thought that that would never happen unless I made it happen. I do think that God used and valued my agency, but when C told me that God had been really laying this same topic on his heart to bring up, I realized that God had plans in the works to bring about this healing conversation that He knew I needed, even if I hadn't done anything to make it happen.
I needed to remember that sometimes it's very okay for our prayer to be: God, I really need this, and I don't have the resources or the energy or the ability right now to make it happen for myself or even to contribute to the project. I really need this thing, but it will only happen if you just make it happen and give it to me. I can't contribute anything and all I can be is hopeful and thankful.
This autonomous activity/agency of God was so dormant in my paradigm that when I started thinking about it recently, I was actually surprised. I had forgotten it so thoroughly that it had atrophied and I had forgotten that I ever knew it. I was both shocked and delighted.
I think we need to remember that, while our agency is a very big thing, it is not the only thing. God is working in big, mighty, powerful, active, present way to bring about both the things that He wants and the things that we need. We are allowed to rest in that sometimes (if not all the time), because I tend to stress when I think that the things I need will not happen if I don't get the ball rolling.
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