Shortcomings

I don't know if you've noticed this, but people are generally proud of their accomplishments in life. This--probably--is the reason I have a cork-board in my room with ribbons and a bookshelf with plaques and trophies. If, in the future, I get an opportunity to through-hike the PCT or earn a graduate degree, I'm sure I'll be proud of those accomplishments too.

However, the weirder and more eclectic side of people is that they are also very proud of their shortcomings.

Part of this could be misplaced optimism, or maybe the educational system forgot to instruct its pupils to use the slow-lane if a brighter bulb is trying to pass on the left. In any case, I see this kind of thing all the time. People who are proud of their obnoxiousness, proud of their ignorance, proud of their stinginess.

In my case, it might be a case of not wanting to feel like a failure. As most of you know, I'm going to drop out of the Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate program at Purdue. The thing is, I seem almost to be ridiculously proud of this epic demonstration of academic incompetency. Some of the things I tell myself are...

"Those career academic types don't connect with real-life."

"The educational system is corrupt and work experience is where it's at."

"I didn't want an M.S. degree anyway. Buying a house and getting married should be my priorities."

For some reason, the thought never occurred to me that perhaps... just perhaps... I make a lousy electrical engineer. Maybe... just maybe... I'm not smart enough to learn the requisite math for the degree. Possibly... just possibly... I don't have the self-discipline to pull something like this off.

Wait. People have shortcomings? Horrors.

It seems that entrepreneurs understand what most of us don't. Failure is good. Why? Because it shows us--in a rather brutal and unforgiving way--what works and what doesn't work. If an entrepreneur fails in a business enterprise, they dust themselves off and try again, and--chances are--will do better, or at least not fail in the same way.

Shortcomings lead to failures. Ergo, shortcomings are good.

So, while I'm not exactly tickled over losing so much money in this grad school enterprise, it's probably a good and healthy thing for me to experience.

We homeschoolers can thump our collective chests as much as we want, but I fear that we fall into the same trap as our public school peers. Namely, the assumption that failure is bad and should never be acknowledged as such (even when we do fail). Ergo, we can't learn from our mistakes.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have about six months of soul searching I need to do. Time to reevaluate and try again with a better understanding of shortcomings and failure.

Until next time,
- Daniel

Compromise

Compromise. What a dirty word. It's like saying, "let's take my ideals and your ideals, combine them, boil them down to a sticky paste, and bake them into a solid mass that mollifies both and satisfies neither."

Lovely.

But, I'm here to tell you that compromise can save lives. And seriously--what's more noble than that?

You've all met the adventurer in your life. The man who wants to climb K2 and the woman who wants to swim the English channel. These adventurers are so bold, so cunning, that nothing can dissuade them. You name it, it's been tried. Fatality charts (there are two deaths for each attempt. :nods:). Raw facts (you'll have to ingest 500 pounds of raw meat to reach the summit). Pleading (Widowed at 23? What will the in-laws say?). Et. cetera., et. cetera.

Herein lies the opportunity to save your beloved friend or significant other. Compromise.

Face it, you're going to have to show an effort. Fatality charts, raw facts, and pleading are all well and good, but they're just words. Words without action. If you're going to hold off the Grim Reaper, sometimes you have to meet him half-way.

Case study. You're in the midst of wedding planning, when--out of the blue--your bride- or husband-to-be drops the anvil. "Honey, let's get married on the moon!"

(you laugh, but I warn you, if the commercial space industry continues at its present rate, you'd better be prepared for this one.)

You might play the fatality card (Apollo 13? Challenger? Hellooo???), the raw facts (You'll lose 10% of your bone mass. No, it doesn't matter if we bring whole fat milk along.), or even the pleading card (But. but. HOW can we possibly afford this after buying those rings made out of impossible-to-findium?).

These attempts, while valiant, are doomed to fail. Your honey has clearly already weighed the disadvantages and found them wanting.

Herein lies your only hope. Compromise. Unfortunately, there's a lot of grey area between terra firma and the lunar surface, but, on the other hand, you've got 239,000 miles of bargaining room to work with (more if you time it right).

Now, granted, you're going to have to assume some risk. Some people might consider Low Earth Orbit to be an acceptable compromise, while others might go so far as to shoot for Geosynchronous orbit (or perhaps even a sling-shot trajectory around the far-side of the moon--hey, the lunar module pilots were cool too!).

If you hold particularly strong sway over him or her, you might even be able to talk them down into the Earth's atmosphere. A wedding on the Vomit Comet isn't ideal, but you at least get the illusion of zero gravity--though completing the ceremony in 25 seconds might require a justice with a particularly dextrous tongue.

How close you get to earth really depends on you. No pressure. Wait… space is a vacuum… better make that lots of pressure…

Compromise. It saves lives. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Until next time,

- Daniel

(Credit to Melanie H. for triggering the mental synapse that led to this post.)

Cookies

A glass of water can say a lot about your perspective on life. If it's half-full, you're a bodacious individual who needs a pressure gauge to keep optimism from bubbling out your ears. If it's half-empty, your closest friend is a deep-sea ganglion and your only comfort in life is that one day he'll be big enough to swallow both you and your misery.

But, face it, water is an inherently limited medium for the barometer of personality. I'm here to suggest a much better alternative.

Cookies.

Cookies are extremely heterogeneous. They can be made of sugar, spice, and everything nice--or frogs, snails, and puppy dog tails. The latter may not sound appetizing, but neither were the mud cookies you made as a confectionary-crazy kid.

So, what exactly does a cookie say about your personality? The possibilites are endless, so I'll just focus on a few:

Oatmeal Raisin

You're... well... a kind of boring individual. If you go out to lunch with your friends, you'll be the one at the salad bar. When you get home from work, you'll be the one out for a jog through the neighborhood and early to bed while the rest of your compatriots are at a rock concert. But, hey, there are perks to a boring life--you'll probably be ice skating at age 75 while the rest of your acquaintances are constrained to walkers.

Chocolate Chip

You're a justifier. You try to counterbalance every negative with a positive. If you faceplant on the sidewalk while learning how to ride a unicycle, you switch and learn braille instead while the surgeons are reconstructing your face. If you tend to be a bit of a firebug, you request that your community service hours be spent at the local fire department. On the other hand, at least you're worthy to have the word "exciting" etched on your tombstone.

Snickerdoodle

You're a manipulator. You know that nobody would agree to going on a 100 mile ultramarathon through the wilderness, so you ask if they'll go on a fast day-hike with you instead. When the pastor asks you to assemble the church directory, you proceed to oversee the whole operation and delegate all the work to others. Change the name, increase the attractiveness of the proposal. That's your motto. You should be a politician.

Fortune Cookie

You're deceptive. You don't care about getting cookies to eat them any more than you care about going to the library to read books. Nobody knows what's really going on behind your baby blues, because you've always got so many angles. If you have friends with a good sense of humor, you'll be getting a lot of protractors for Christmas.

Hey, at least it's not coal.

Until next time,

- Daniel

Nonnegotiables

Humans are... can I say it? Stubborn.

And not only that, but the affliction gets worse as we age. If stubbornness were a cold virus, by our early twenties, most of us would have full-blown pneumonia.

"This is obvious," you say, "tell me something I don't already know."

I can do that.

There's a magic word most of us have ingrained in our vocabulary. Nonnegotiable. There are some things we won't permit--that go too far. These things, we don't even bother coping with them, because... after all... they're nonnegotiable.

Maybe it's just the season of life I'm in, but I see this concept used a lot in relationships.

"Yeah, I'm attracted to her. I thought she was The One. But, getting to know her better, I found that she's Pentecostal. I'm Amish for crying out loud. That's nonnegotiable."

"He's a fantastic guy. Thoughtful, courteous, and makes me feel special. But his close relatives are constantly doing things that remind me of bad Addams Family reruns. Sorry, that's just nonnegotiable."

Sure, those are outrageous examples, but they illustrate the point. "He snores." "She doesn't want a lot of kids." "He's not interested in going into the mission field." "She's not thrifty in how she spends money."

Nonnegotiables? To some people, they are.

In a Biblical sense, what sorts of things are nonnegotiables? Well... you both need to be Christians. That's about it.

Oh, and it helps if the two of you like each other. That's always a useful thing, assuming you're not the betrothal type.

Fact of life: there are some things you won't find out about the other person until you've married him or her. Some things--indeed--that you might have considered nonnegotiable beforehand.

Say, you find she's a terrible cook, and burns your toast every morning without fail. What are you going to do about it? Divorce her?

Of course not. You work through it. Maybe you team up with her. Take cooking lessons together. Something. You don't just roll over and die (unless the cooking really is that bad.)

Another example. Say you find that he has different ideas on how kids should be raised. What do you do about that? You work through it. Prayerfully, humbly, and in a giving way. Again, divorce isn't an option. In fact, the only Biblically sanctioned reason for divorce is sexual immorality, and even that isn't mandated.

Here's where I make a little stretch in logic. You tell me if I'm way off-base or not.

If we don't consider any issue in marriage (with the one possible exception given above) to be nonnegotiable, should the same be true (with the added requirements of both being Christians, attracted to one another) for pre-dating, pre-engagement?

Yes, relationships are hard work. I don't say this from personal experience, though those who have been in them tell me they are. However, hard work implies that some progress is being made. It implies that the obstacle isn't insurmountable, and that two people with a desire to work through issues that pop up can--indeed--do that very thing.

In short, stop being so stubborn.

The older we get, the more set in our ways we get. Don't let that get in the way of God's plan for you.

Until next time,
- Daniel

Poetry

Veil of Pride

Why do I always ask the heart,

For leave to cherish it as art?

Why do I give it center stage,

While walking through this present age?

A question grim, a question drear,

You see me from a place of fear.

You know I speak the truth in love,

Yet hearts are hearts, and yours a dove.

Where are you now? Where is your face?

A scathing river hides that place.

I do not know, I cannot find,

A way to see or glimpse your mind.

This effervescent flow of pride,

Can I condemn, should I subside?

Its source is neither yours nor mine,

Yet both may use to draw the line.

Sorrow floods my pained soul,

Yet God is God, who makes me whole.

I shall not turn my back to you,

But ask for what will see me through.

The veil, if it holds, is just,

I do not question it, or us.

But He knows best, the truth He holds,

Let faith be key while life He molds.

~ D.S.