Author: toseealife

What really matters.

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Well it’s been quite the week for me. On Sunday my grandpa passed away. Now this weekend is his funeral.

I  never knew that loss felt cold before. But it does. I felt cold after I heard the news. I’d expected it for a while, he was not doing well right before. He hadn’t been doing well for a decade. Especially the past four years or so. In fact, that he lived as long a he did was a mystery to his doctors, and my family’s opinion, it was a miracle. He lived off prayer, so many people prayed for him.

The show I mentioned before, RWBY, has a song about loss titled “Cold.” It’s pretty sad. And pretty accurate. When someone dies, do you cease to love them? No.

To me it’s more like a connection was lost. Like your spiritual cellphone now is out of service. But I know some people don’t feel that way. They still feel connected to people they’ve lost. I’m not sure why that is. Losing people has not made me an expert on it. C. S. Lewis wrote about feeling his wife’s nearness in “A Grief Observed.” He knew she still continued to exist.

Some folk think you can talk to the dead and they’ll hear you. I don’t think that, but I understand the need to have final words. So few of us get to be with loved ones when they pass on. I felt like if I had had the chance, I would ahve felt better. Though I did get to see him the very day before, so that was a mercy.

I don’t have a lot of very close memories with my grandpa, he had such ill health, and lived too far away, and he was not very good at connecting with people. But I did get to go out with him on his boat once, which was fun. And he took us around museums and a fishing expo once. I think we went to an aquarium once also. Before his health got really bad. He also paid for my braces, so I owe the fact that I have good teeth now to him.

He was always kind to me. As I got older I found out he was not perfect. None of my grandparents are of course. But I always chose to think of him more as how he was to me. His best self. I prefer to see people that way.

I notice that families like to dredge up old stuff. And I’ve been there, and I’m getting really disillusioned with it. It’s such a waste of time, as my grandmother liked to say. We all do dumb things when we’re young and immature. I’m fortunate to have realized this now and not when I’m 80.

What really counts, as a couple of good songs I know “It happens in a blink” and “Give a little love”, both point out, is not the dumb things we’ve done, but the things we did to love other people. The Bible says that some of us will do little, some of us will do none, and some of us will do much. The parable of the Talents, or when Paul speaks of our works being tested by fire. The point really isn’t how much we do, but that we do things out of love.

Whatever else anyone could say of my grandpa (and all of us could have plenty of things said of us that we wouldn’t like, couldn’t we?) he did love me and his other grandkids and he did things for us that we couldn’t pay him back for. He did help out my parents when we were down on our finances. He did try to take care of my grandmother. And that’s what we’ll remember more about him, or at least that’s what I want to dwell on. No human being is perfect, if we focus on our mistakes, that’s all we’ll ever see. If we focus on the things we did right, at least there is love.

 

 

 

Until next time–Natasha.

Character Grief.

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That moment where you’re innocently watching your favorite show or reading your favorite book series and then it happens. you stare at the page/screen in abject horror. You slam the book shut, you shut your laptop. You yell “How could this happen!” You scream.

Because what just happened was they did something you never saw coming and you felt in your bones was a bad idea even if you did.

Now you’re left with that strange phenomenon known as Character Grief.

Actually I just made up that term just now, but it’s a thing.

It’s not a fun condition, but not everyone suffers from it. Here’s a way to rate yourself.

1-5: If you are mildly annoyed, and tell your friends or family it was stupid, but other than that you don’t do much.

5-10: You cry and can’t bear to continue, or you cry and then re-watch or reread said materiel over and over again because it’s cathartic, and tell your friends because misery loves company.

10-15: You give up the material in favor of less infuriating entertainment and proceed to tell everyone else it’s no longer worth their time.

15-20: You get so upset that you figure out ways to solve what happened and fan fic your way to mental peace. Extra points if you convince your family or friends to join you.

And extra points if you do every single one of these things. Like I do. Except cry, I rarely do that.

Character grief is different form plot frustration. It’s more personal. It sticks you in your craw and wounds you to your whimsical/imaginative core.

I think Character Grief happens in one of three ways.

  1. The least painful, most annoying way is when your favorite character simply is left out or disappears from the story. This can happen with books made into movies, like how Tom Bombadil got left out of Lord of The Rings. And all my favorite characters got left out of the second Anne of Green Gables movie.
  2.  The most painful, actual death. I mean unforeseen, or totally unwanted character death. It feels unnecessary and it leaves you sad for days. Probably you can’t even go back to the story without crying or reliving those emotions.
  3.  The last way is the most poisonous, but that does make it easier to be mad about and less sad. It’s when a character is radically changed for the worst. They could turn evil (like Ever After High), or they could lose their most lovable personality traits. This happens a lot with the books to movies thing , but it also happens when new writers or producers take over, or the creators stop caring for whatever reason. Like Shrek: the Final Chapter. The change is usually brought on by the character doing something they would never actually do if you went by previous traits they exemplified. The action violates their moral code, and they haven’t been brainwashed or anything that would make it seem reasonable.

The last two bother me way more than the first one. And I take it hard. I can’t just quit the thing like some folks who don’t get involved.

So I though I’d write this post to speculate about why Character Grief happens. There’s probably research on it out there, but it’s tricky to explain because every person is different.

The first thing that shocks you about character grief is that it feels like real grief. Though a part of you remains separate from it because you know they cough* aren’t cough* real. (Angry gasps form people who’ve felt this before.) yet you still feel sad, mad, and in denial just like when real grief strikes.

Actually, with real grief I tend to go numb. A part of me just can’t believe it really happened. Even when I accept it, I don’t feel strong, out of control emotions. I don’t sink into depression. somehow I distance myself form loss. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I’m learning to explore those emotions more.

But character grief has a way of cutting through my defenses. Much the way spiritual things do. It’s almost like when I can see and hear the loss, and it affects my physical world, I handle it. But when I can’t, and it doesn’t seem to, then I get cut to the quick.

With real loss, I feel the unfairness and helplessness people talk about.

With loss in imaginary things, I feel like my heart got ripped out.

I think partly because in fiction, you see people more clearly than in real life. There’s less sin and misunderstanding to cloud your vision. You just see them s people.

Maybe if in real life we could be that honest with each other, caring would be easier.

because to be honest, we make it hard for people to love us, don’t we?

I know I can be difficult. The people who love me most are the ones I can’t hide from as well.

With strangers we are on our best behavior, but do we really connect with people until we know they’re flawed and we accept them anyway?

I love characters who are better than me because I can see them just as people, I don’t have to worry about them doing wrong that I’ll have to fight against. IF they do slip up, I know they’ll recover.

The people in my life who I know will pick themselves up after they fall are the ones I trust the most.

In fiction, losing that person, whether to bad writing, or to a tragic end even if it is well written, can feel like losing a friend.

People have always thought those who have imaginary characters as friends were kind of odd. But I think we have them because they have more of the author’s soul than we might see if we just met the person. When we can get our cumbersome flaws and failings out of the way through our creativity, we see each other better.

Not that it always goes well, but fiction fans live off the times that it does.

Some other time I’ll talk about how character grief can also teach us about hope, but I’m out of time for now, until next post–Natasha.

Vacation and Compromise.

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Wow, you guys are awesome. My first post in days and you gave me like 8 views plus five other posts.

I haven’t really talked about my vacation, and I should post some pictures once I can get them onto my computer, but for now I’ll just say it was pretty good.

I won’t call it the best experience I’ve ever had. There was too much driving and drama for that, but I got to visit a lot of cool places, including the Grand Canyon. Which is beautiful. It’s huge too. I know you know that already, but until you see it you just don’t comprehend its grandeur.

Yellowstone was cool too, I got to see little baby bison, and some elk grazing on bushes, and even a Mama bear and her cubs.

The best thing was getting to see family I usually see two days out of a year and actually learn to know them better, and to meet family I hadn’t even known about before. Also I made a new friend who I’m staying in touch with.

Family Vacations are something that’ll make you either love your family or hate them. We got to see the good and bad of each other. I don’t know how my sisters put up with being jammed int eh back seat with me for nearly 14 hours. And with my parents when I drove. Things like music priveledges are points of contention.

You’ve probably heard that it’s wise to learn how to compromise. Or to quote Captain America/ Peggy Carter “Compromise where you can,”

Do you know I’m starting to wonder if people know how to compromise anymore. Have you ever walked away from a conversation feeling like the other person just passive aggressively told you it was okay, when it really wasn’t. They give you that “I’d argue further if I cared enough about what we were doing” feeling. Or they say “Do what you want.” Which means pretty much the same thing.

It’s a problem with younger people especially, not knowing how to tackle something out. To give a little, to take a little. I have the same problem myself, but I’m trying to get better at compromise.

My definition of compromise is not give up what you want, but be willing to take only part of it, and give the other person part of what they want.

But compromise has different levels. Sometimes it can mean you do what someone else wants more than what you want. Say both of you want to do different activities on an outing, but you have limited time. You could relinquish doing what you want more than once or twice, and let them do more of what they want, in the name of peace.

Or you could compromise by splitting what you want into separate days or times.

But if you truly just relinquish your will to the other person, I call that a surrender. We need to know how to do that too. But in a way that doesn’t make the other person feel bad.

I’ve never been the best at this, but some people can surrender without you even realizing they did it.

Anyway, I don’t have much more to say about this, except that if you’re going to have a family, you better learn to compromise, in the name of peace.  Just a word to the wise.

Until next time–Natasha.

Pure Love and the human condition.

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Hi, sorry I’ve neglected you guys. I was not feeling good this week and I had a lot of homework to catch up on. Thankfully my books arrived!

I’ve had the time, however, to get hooked on a new show, it’s called RWBY. I don’t often say this about anime anything, but I recommend it a lot, though it is not finished yet, and if you watch, be prepared to wait a few years for the conclusion because each season takes about a year to come out.

But two seasons was enough to sell me on it, season 3 ripped my heart out, and seasons 4 and 5 continued to blow my mind. Season 6 comes out next month.

A little summary before I get to my real point: RWBY is basically a superhero team set in a fantasy world with heavy spiritual undertones. Or even overtones sometimes. It features a host of likable, deep, smart, and none cliche heroes who you actually want to imitate though you wouldn’t want to be them per sec because they have problems. Not petty issues, but actual life challenges. I’m pretty sure this show is aimed at older teens. The show features villains who you will utterly despise even though their motivations are explained to you, which is a plus in my book since I never liked sympathizing with evil characters. They are not two dimensional, but the show makes it very clear they are evil and you do not want to be like them.

But that’s enough about the show. What I really want to talk about is the contrast between the show’s view of human nature, and the one I’m getting in my Critical Thinking Class. I don’t know who picked my curriculum, but it’s been the most depressing stuff I’ve read in a long time. and I just read Fahrenheit 451. Each short story or novella has featured the theme of human nature, I guess it’s the point we’re focusing on for these weeks.

According to these authors, human beings are cruel, unfeeling, ungrateful, willing to abandon loved ones as soon as they become an inconvenience, and on the brink of insanity constantly.

I know some cynical person might look at that list and say “That sounds about right.” Yeah, that person might not like what I’m going to say.

THIS IS WRONG! WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

I won’t name all my sources here because I think you’re better off not reading them, but the highlights are a story about a man turning into a cockroach and becoming a monster to his family; a woman killing her boyfriend and committing necrophilia; a man with a mentally disturbed employee who starves himself to death after becoming a nuisance to everyone around him; and a man who removes his wife’s one blemish because he can’t bear imperfection and kills her by doing so.

Now if all those sound like something you’d never want to read, be glad you aren’t required to for the course. I actually enjoyed a chapter about straight logic more than I enjoyed any of those.

I do come up with dramatic things when I write my fiction, but I stick mainly to what I’ve seen on TV, or what I observes in the spiritual way of things. You could argue the case for all the above stories having spiritual connotations, but they aren’t ones worth being talked about.

The Bible says of the corrupt that it is shameful to even speak of the things which they do in secret. I don’t think it means that you never expose wickedness. But you should be really careful what you talk about just for the sake of conversation or discussion. No one should bring up the darkest parts of humanity for table talk.

By contrast, RWBY, unlike all the stories I read, has the bad and good sides of people both. It’s most notable example is Pyrrha Nikos, who is hands down one of the best characters I ever saw on a show. Pyrrha demonstrates something that I have seen in stories I’ve read by C. S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, and Francis Burnette (A little Princess and The Secret Garden.) Stories like Heidi, The Enchanted April, The Bronze Bow, Anne of Green Gables, or even comics like Mr. Miracle and Spiderman, all contain exceptional people. People who, as George MacDonald would say, demonstrate “the common good uncommonly developed.” It’s my rule of thumb that if you find no true love in a story, then you find no truth. You’ll never separate those two things with any degree of honesty. You have to search for that one character or theme that demonstrates love, pure love.

Pure Love is an ideal for human beings. While it is possible for us to have it, it takes much growth and much sacrifice on our part. It is true that few of us are willing to undergo that kind of suffering. I could describe Pure Love as a concept, but I prefer using characters. Characters work better than real people in this case because unless you’re fortunate enough to know someone like them, most of us haven’t met anyone who exudes that kind of love all the time. A character is someone all of us could potentially see and hopefully understand.

Pyrrha Nikos struck me because I could never catch her doing anything selfish, no matter what scene she was in. All she ever seems to want is to connect with people and help them. I have seen a few characters like that, but they got ruined in the end by irresponsible writing. Surely I am not the only one tired of show writers growing cynical about their own characters and dooming them by violating the characters own convictions for the sake of the plot…ick.

The point is Pyrrha and the others stand up for what is right and don’t want to just stand by and let bad things happen. And I believe there are people like that in the world.

You probably won’t find them on TV all that much because unfortunately, the reason these stories are on my curriculum is because as a culture we have turned to the dark and the depressing, the antihero and the straight up bad guy. Our world is sick. But, that does not mean we do not have the healers in it. I don’t know anyone who always radiates love except Jesus, but I do know I want to be that person. I have a long way to go. But because I believe God transforms us, I believe I can get there.

The short stories made me feel like garbage, selfish scum of the earth, and that was not based in any reality or likelihood that I would do what the people in the stories did. I can honestly say I wouldn’t. But these stories don’t make me sit back and ponder my life choices as much as they make me think “people suck, at least the ones who wrote this trash did.”

RWBY shocked me with it’s real look at what it’s like to be in a war against evil, but that shock made me remember values I’ve been forgetting for some time now. And it made me want to live up to them again. A part of me was beginning to think having pure love was impossible, but I was reminded that I sure as heck should keep trying anyway.

It’s a pretty pass when an internet show has a better grasp of reality than literature in a Critical Thinking Class, but one cannot disregard humble messengers. Oddly enough, people who expect to be taken seriously the least can often put out the most worthwhile material, because who do they have to impress?

I guess my closing thought is, surround yourself not with what seems the most hard look at life, but with the one that strengthens your values and makes you want to be a better person. That’s the stuff worth engaging in.

Until next time–Natasha.

The Incredibles 2

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Whew! I’m sorry I haven’t posted, I’ve been working on a different project and there’s only so much screen time my eyes can take per day.

But I had to get this out, late as it is, but I have finally gotten to see The Incredibles 2!

I know I’m tardy, but hey, I can’t afford movie tickets, my dad took us. I know that some people may still have not seen it, so I’ll warn you there will be spoilers in this review.

But my overall impression was that the movie surprised me. Given the kind of sub-par Disney and Dreamworks sequels we’ve gotten over the past five years or so, (with how to Train your Dragon being an exception) and the reboots of old Disney Classics that did not go over well, it would have been hard not to be skeptical, add that to the fact that The Incredibles is one of the most brilliant superhero movies or kids movies ever made, and who was not cynical about it’s prospects. Everyone I heard was.

And we were partly right, the movie is not as good as the original, but strangely enough, it’s not a bad movie either. It’s actually above what’s come to be average.

What did I not like?

There’s plenty to not like in the film, mostly int he first 40 minutes or so. The movie had a bad case of the 15 year later addition loss of personality syndrome. Even Toy Story 3 lost a little, though I still think that movie is freaking amazing and it makes me cry, and the characters didn’t change much in it. But you can’t say that in this case, Mr. Incredible,or Bob, is the most notable example. On the surface he has the same issues of wanting to be superhero as he did before, but they really ignored all his vies on mediocrity and his concern about helping people. The mediocrity stint comes in a little bit but the focus was more on how unfair the law was. More on that later.

Dash also got hit hard, it wasn’t so much that he lost his personality as that he was barely in the movie at all except as a background character. Somehow the first one managed to give even the characters with no lines, like Jack-Jack, or minimal lines, like Violet, a lot of personality. And Dash just seems…out of it. He was still fun for what he did do, but I miss the kid who just loved using his powers.

The biggest thing not to like however was how they dumped on poor Tony Ryanger. What happened to him was completely unnecessary. The movie opens up with his perspective, which is an interesting idea that I would normally like. What does it look like to a normal kid to see a super villain shoot up out of the ground near his school? Him seeing Violet without her mask might have been interesting too. But then he gets his memory of her erased…and never gets it back. If you knew me and how many times I’ve ranted about this very thing in shows, and I watch so much super-related stuff that you can guess I’ve seen it quite a few times. It’s a common action theme also. Suffice to say, I didn’t like it in X-Men first class, I didn’t like it in Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension, I don’t like it any other time it pops up. Even Barbie has done it. My reasons are: First of all, memory erasing is unethical, and it’s always good guys who are doing it, usually the government. Which is disturbing on so may levels. Second of all: It’s unfair. Often the character never even gets a chance to be found trustworthy or mature, which happened in this case, they get their free will removed by the event. Third: This is the least wrong thing, but it is just lazy writing. You get someone to forget and you don’t have to deal with the far reaching effects of the dumb idea. Like, it was dumb to do it in the first place if it couldn’t be resolved any other way…which it could have!

I really was almost ready to cry for poor Violet, she’s always been my favorite character and I completely felt her pain. What teenager doesn’t know the frustration of your crush not even knowing you exist!…this time literally.

And Tony, who I also liked as much as he was in it, never gets his memory back, which seems just too unfair. Why should someone’s mind be able to be messed with that much?

Anyway, that was the bad, and it did leave a sour taste in my mouth even at the end of the movie, so that’s a big problem. But now for the not bad.

Though this will depend on your point of view, because the villain in this movie was full on Scary. And I mean that I started getting a Matrix/horror film vibes during one part. It was like a much more mature movie. Now I know a lot of my shortsighted peers are gong to think that’s a good thing, but as someone who works with kids and still remembers what it was like a thing movies like that when I was younger, I cans ya I’m not sure I would show this to my seven year old. Maybe it would go over their heads, but it’s pretty interest. The hypnotism, seeing the heroes you loved being mind controlled into doing evil, and it was scary. They were more terrifying then Baymax going all hulk like for a few seconds in Big Hero 6. No one would have a hard time empathizing with Violet and Dash when first their parents and then their Uncle Lucius end up controlled by the Screen Slaver.

However, because the movie does turn serious rather suddenly, it did have a compelling message. Unfortunately, the compelling one was the villain’s. The Screenslaver calls out our society for being very much like the one in Farenheit 451 (which I just recently read) how we like everything packaged to us, deliver to us in a safe format that we can process. Our danger come s via screens, our talks shows substitute for talking to each other, and we prefer to let superhero take care of a our problem while we watch form a distance, safe. Which is exactly what happens in Farenheit 451, only the problem the police are taking care of is actually the worlds’ salvation. It would be easy enough to see how the Screenslaver would put themself in that position Especially since that protagonist murdered and framed people also to ensure his escape. It’s not the happiest book.

The things is, as the villain points out at the end of the movie to Mrs Incredible. “Just because you saved me doesn’t mean I’m wrong.” And it doesn’t. However well-intentioned Mrs. Incredible might be, she cannot really disprove the villain’s points because by nature she is outside regular society. She has to be. Supers can’t afford to be lazy and indolent.

I love good characters, and I hate it when people say the villain was them more interesting one. And I won’t say she was more interesting, but in a very Marvel like fashion, this movie makes the villain’s case and fails to make the heroes.

My family and I discussed how in real life when disaster strikes, you do see ordinary people coming to the rescue. My dad pointed out that it happen during 911 on the planes, where passengers stopped the terrorist. It happened at the shooting at Columbine high school. It’s happened recently. In fact disaster brings out the best and worst in people. Humans who have some mettle in them rise to the occasion. It is because we have such boring lives that most of us are neither bad nor good. And it is also why Moral Relativism can be so popular. Frankly, only a bored and lazy society could even buy into it. Disaster forces you to pick a right or wrong, you have no choice.

That said, the villain’s professed intent is to scare people into waking up to how fake their society is by using that against them. However the movie show no ordinary people coming to help the Incredibles. In fact the ordinary people are either fired, taken out, or have their freaking memory erased. Anyone who might’ve disproved her point is removed from the equation and no one else is provided. Unlike in Spiderman where the New Yorkers were inspired by his heroism to stand up to the Goblin and Doctor Octopus.

It may be true that many of us here in the real world prefer to watch superhero movies because of escapism. But some of us, like me, are looking for inspiration. Looking for an example to be held up somewhere for us to follow. Oddly enough, in the first movie, Buddy gets this. Though he gets it in an obsessive way.

I call it Marvel Syndrome, the disappointing fact that a movie can explain the villains perspective and even back it up with its own fictitious events, but not do the same for the hero. And that’ a problem. because words have power, and people will remember them. I see the disrespect for human beings spreading in these movies. And though we give lip service to the heroes, we are are sympathizing a lot more with the villains because it seems like they are right. I have endless examples of this just form Marvel. Thankfully at leas Wonder Woman did not fall into this trap. She rocks.

Anyway, despite all the time I jsut spent on what eas wiehter bad or problematice, there is a lot of good in this movie.

I loved having Violet being the smart, take charge character that she became in the fist movie. She didn’t lose that, and that was huge since a lot of the other characters suffered set backs in their personalities. Even though Violet gets burned by being different more than anyone except her dad, she was still willing to don her suit and jump in as soon as she realized what was going on. and she’s definitely the one who can think, she figured out the villain’s plan, how to save the ship, and creative ways to fight the bad guys. She and Dash still have their funny brother-sister exchange.

Dash’es one real charcter moment was usning the incrdibile. Taht was funny. And a good chekovs’s ugn pay off.

And I’ll give Helen this much, she does get fleshed out more. We come to see why she loved being a super hero. And we know she gave that up more willingly then Bob, but she gets to rediscover why she was all “Hey, we’re not letting the men do all the saving. I’m at the top of my game!” And though Bob of course originally was the one who wanted to settle down she was the one who made it work, and she still keeps her family at the top of her priority list even in the midst of chasing down a train. It was great to Helen have her time to shine, yet to be honest, I came to the movie for the family. And we do get it for the last 20 minutes, similarly to the first one.

Now the final battle was not quite as climatic. A ship crashing into a city jsut doens’ thave the smae irng to it as a giant Robot wrecking havoc. But it was dramitc enough to give everyoen time to shine. wE get to see FRozone do a lto more and be a lot mro powerful, which was cool. No pun intended. Mrs. Incrdibles’ fake out to get eh villains’ guard down was clever, had me going almost. I kind of missed Bob having a more cirtical role, but fair enough, he got the winning shot int he last movie. It’s not all about him.

Now to talk about the other message of this movie. There’s a few different one.s One is that people who are true heroes will rise both the family and to hero work equally. Both Bob and Helen have to do this. And so do Vi and Dash, by keeping an eye on Jack-Jack even while rescuing their parents.

But I think there’s a more interesting message. No counter point is ever made to the villain, except just once, when Helen points out that she at least has core values, even if the villain thinks they are stupid.

And that is the hypocrisy of the villain’s plan, claiming you are trying to help, but being wiling to sacrifice other people to get your way and ave your own skin. That’s not heroism.

But even more than that the overall attitude that the law has in this movie, that supers are too dangerous to have around. And yeah, that’ about as original as capes and cowls by now, but the movie approaches it a little differently. The idea being that people are afraid of people who are special. That’s in the fist movie more, but if you take that foundation, then this movie makes more sense. It’s kind of like the whole anti-gun movement. Something is powerful, it’s dangerous, so that automatically makes it bad unless the government controls it. (Ri-ight.)

It’s too risky. But the movie shows that when we remove something good just because it has dangerous potential, we shoot ourselves in the foot. Because danger is what protects us as well as threatens us. Just like we need germs to have a strong immune system, we need danger in order to not be taken out by it.

Superheroes are like that. It’s not only unfair to outlaw them, but it is  unwise. Threats arise, and accidents happen because of them. But how much more could and would happen if they weren’t there? The villain could have hated people just as much without the added motivation of hating supers. And then who would have stopped her?

Eden if supers are not strictly necessary, they have gifts and they should use them for good. It goes back to being special. The question might be do we need exceptional people to keep moving us froward in order to survive? Maybe not, but we need them for other reasons. We have to have leaders, we have to have heroes. They remind us to not just subsist, but to do good.

And that’s what I’m leaving you with. Until next time–Natasha.

Hello again

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I’m back!

My vacation was exhausting. I don’t think we go on vacations to rest, we do it to get away from our routine. that’s why it’s so tiring, New things make us tired.

Human beings are adaptable, but it’s not easy. After a week or so your body just wants to go home and sleep in your own bed.

My vacation was not one of those eye opening soul discovery ones. I was surrounded by various members of my family almost he entire time, jammed into a small car not meant to carry so much stuff, and on the road for 2 hours on a short day and 5-8 hours on a regular day.

But it did surprise me how, when I finally had a few hours to myself, and I settled down, I felt much clearer about what I needed to do.

In my life there’s so much noise, but what getting away from it made me realize that noise isn’t something that you ecape by switching location.

I went from a Suburban  area in a west coast state to the empty wilderness of Wyoming, Montana, and Utah. Hiking over mountains, driving through Yellowstone, and staying in towns of less than 2,000 people, which is unheard of where I live. As someone aware of how hard it can be to support a small business when you advertise to thousands of people, I wonder how motels in these tiny towns stay afloat, I guess the cost of living is less. Plus people might work a few different jobs.

Anyway, I always thought of myself as someone who liked quieter areas, but I realized I don’t. I like nature, but I feel out of place in rural country. It reminds me of one of the essays I read for English class “The Trouble with Wilderness.” The real wilderness left in this country is between the cities, it’s not even really our national parks. It’s the places no one goes to except wild horses. It’s the undergrowth that keeps animals out of sight form the road.

The truth is, wilderness is only something you find off the beaten (or paved) path. My sister and I got close to it driving a quad over a desert area. But even so, that’s not quite it. And I got to visit some dinosaur tracks, which I’m a big fan of, there were some paw prints there too, probably from a more recent animal. Still, that’s not really wilderness.

Wilderness is something you find when it’s just you alone with God and with nature.

Civilization is really just what you call it when two people meet and settle down. Why else does marriage represent civilization not just in the Bible, but in many religions and stories?

I don’t think it’s impossible for a couple to experience wilderness together, but when it comes to being in it even when you’re not out in nature, you need to be alone.

Capturing that feeling of wildness is something we can only do when we’re either by ourselves, or with someone else who has felt it and understands it.

The feeling you get when you’re out in the wind, or when you gaze at a sunset, or look at the mountains. When you feel really alone, but not lonely. That’s being wild. Because in those moments you dare to dream anything and you believe in anything.

It’s no surprise really that folks who live surrounded by nature used to come up with stories about fairies and elves and sprites, something about it makes you believe in what you can’t see.

After all Romans does say that the invisible attributes of God are plain to us because of nature.

The real reason science isn’t enough to produce faith isn’t that science disproves God, but that sciences deals with what our eyes see, while faith deals with the unseen world, because that’s where the spiritual, the most important part of life, takes place.

I realized that finding peace and quiet in my life isn’t something I can do by eliminating city noises till all I hear are crickets and grasshoppers. (Some of them in Wyoming make this weird popping sound that you wouldn’t think a bug that size could so without snapping itself in half.) It’s something I have to be willing to seek out.

Peace is about letting stuff go and focusing on God, or even just on another person in your life. Without the TV and the radio in the background.

And being willing to be by yourself for awhile. I actually had gotten out of practice, but when I chose to keep being alone, I felt it cleared my head.

So my exhortation to all of you is to take some time today and find that.

Until next time–Natasha.

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Shell Waterfall in Wyoming.