A season for everything

When I got to the Training Center I had a plan. I knew I would need a plan to get where I want to go. I want to be the best in the world in the sport I love. My plan was simple. I was going to reinstitute the 40 hour work week. At the time I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But I did know one thing: I had to get better faster than anyone else. That one thing didn’t change. I’m not the number one guy in the U.S. right now, I’m fourth. Although, I’m still 15-20 pounds under my ideal bodyweight for my weightclass, I know that if I become a better wrestler, weight won’t be that big of an issue. So I decided on a 40 hour work week.

As I said, I didn’t know what the 40 hour work week meant. But I knew there were wrestlers out there doing much less than forty hours in a week. Even if I only did 30 hours I would be way ahead of the game. Most other wrestlers are getting 10-15 hours of work in a week. Outside of the time they are wrestling, they aren’t focusing on wrestling in the least. They are playing video games, working a second job, or enjoying the fact that wrestling gives them a little more free time than a job with a 40 hour (or more) work week. I can’t possibly wrestle 40 hours in a week, and I can’t lift that much.

I can create 40 hours of self-structure. It can’t guarantee my success (nothing can), but it does reassure me I am on the right track. That’s what matters. 40 hours a week to create a holistic life, in which wrestling is my priority. I could include any type of exercise: playing soccer, skating, doing yoga, wrestling, lifting, etc. Seeing the trainer would count. Going to the recovery center, getting massages and icing. Keeping a journal. Volunteering around Colorado Springs. (I volunteered with a first grade class while at Northwestern and it was incredibly refreshing, great psychological recovery) It’s simple. I need structure. Things that might improve my health, my wrestling, my attitude. Writing does that for me. I never fully kept track of 40 hours. I just reinforced some type of structure for the next day and week; more structure than the schedule my coaches had for me (roughly 17 hours)  could provide me with.

I’m done writing now. I’m going to find something else to structure into my life. There is a season for everything. A time period when you dedicate yourself fully to something and attempt to conquer it. I wanted to conquer words. I wanted to conquer my thoughts. Now it’s time to move on, to enjoy the freedom to structure my life any way I choose.

Olympic Dreams

As a kid I used to boycott my parents. By boycott I mean ignore. That’s all boycotting is. It didn’t work all that well. I could ignore them for only so long, sooner or later I would find that my boycott wasn’t getting me anywhere. Boycotting is a method of the powerless. It’s what people who feel powerless in relationships do. By boycotting something, you need that thing to be fully dependent on you. If it isn’t your boycott goes unanswered.

There have been many countries and individuals who have decided to boycott the Olympics in the past. These people boycotted the Olympics to try to make a statement about human rights. This has accomplished very little. The Olympics have gone on consistently since 1896. The most any group could ever hope to accomplish by boycotting the Olympics is to destroy the Games. That would require the entire world boycotting the Games. It would require all the organizations that represent the Games to disband. LA is a backup location for the Olympics if one of the locations for the Olympics has to abruptly change. The Games will go on.

There are people who thought that boycotting the Olympics in China would have been a good idea. They believed it would be a demonstration against the inequalities faced in China and China’s occupation of Tibet. It’s a sad state of affairs when people think world issues have a simple answer. Tibet has been accepted as a part of China. Whether that occupation is willful or by force, it still has happened. At this time, freeing Tibet is beyond a simple “have your way”. China has been progressing very rapidly in the past 100 years. Their unity as a nation is very important to their progress. To let Tibet go is like the United States letting the south go in the Civil War. If it would have happened, there would not have been anything close to what we know as the United States today.

In many ways China is far more progressive than the United States. Read their constitution. You will realize that the ideals in it are that people should maintain power while the state works to motivate and direct it. There is freedom to own property, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, the press, and assembly, however they have guidelines so that these are not abused. Many are abused in the united states, as we see people with property dictating the free market; religious leaders manipulating their ‘flock’ for personal interests. (Equal pay for women is written right into their constitution, far more progressive than the United States) Of course lines are going to be crossed, rules broken. China is concerned with human rights and justice. The foolish ignorance of Americans about China is based upon rumors and anecdotal evidence. China is looking out for the best interest of its people. All its people. That includes Tibet.

Human rights aren’t a simple issue. Most people that refer to human rights are talking about one little thing called money. The human right to not have your clitoris cut off at age ten is just. The human right to not be a victim of a genocide is good. The human right to have adequate medical care is a whole different story. Medical care costs money. The purchasing power per capita of the world is roughly $10,300 in the US economy. That means if we divided all money equally throughout the world, we would have roughly $10,300 per person per year. That includes profits and the money yet to be removed for taxes (although subsidies get added back in). We would have to remove money from each individual’s paycheck to reinvest in the market also. It’s certainly livable, but most people fighting for human rights in the United States would be outraged by such a low sum. $4.95 an hour before we remove anything. It is important to acknowledge that the whole world isn’t efficient. Solving that problem would take years and years. Even doubling the productivity of everyone is living in poverty. This assumes everyone makes the same amount of money, an idea which is incredibly demotivating, likely to lower the efficiency of humanity. When you view human rights in a materialistic sense, even if the materialism is basic necessities like food and water, you find that there aren’t enough human rights for everyone.

People grow used to their life circumstances. They learn that living in a twelve by twelve room with four other people is just how life is. They learn that two small meals a day and a few glasses of clean water can make a very satisfying life. They develop attitudes about their world. They learn that they are oppressed or that they are lesser human beings. They learn that they are richer than other people or more educated and in this way better. Or they deny that they are better and feel obligated to help these people. They learn how to hope, how to stay ambitious and work hard. They learn to trust other people. Or they learn to distrust other people. This is the type of rights we can give other people: the right to know what it means to be an individual with a place in the world and pursue it. China would like economic prosperity as much as any other country. They don’t have it though. As they pursue it, they would like to find satisfaction in their own reality.

The Olympics have been primarily held in wealthy nations. It was held in Mexico, Russia, China, and Korea once each. As for the other places it has been held:  7 were in the US, 2 were in Canada, 2 in Australia, 4 in Japan, and 26 in Europe – all of them located north and west of Athens (including Athens). There is a bias for wealth. It’s an advantage for holding the Olympics and it’s also an advantage for competition. These countries attract better athletes and the athletes have more resources at their disposal. Yet the smaller nations do send several athletes to the Olympics that are successful. They send teams that they watch and cheer for. They have a chance to compete against the rest of the world, a chance to prove that maybe in some way they are superior. Jamaica’s Usain Bolt made his country proud, setting a world and Olympic record in the 100 meter. Jamaica is a country that has been abused by the United States. With all our progressive ways, other countries citizens still have no rights in the eye of our government. A citizen of the US can’t be prosecuted for having sex with a five year old in Thailand. The economic bias favors everyone in the US, not just the rich. Our ‘human rights’, measured in wealth, is determined by other countries lack of human rights. Without creating new laws and enforcing them, the best we can offer other countries is the feeling of satisfaction with their lives. We can reinforce their psychological right of feeling worthy of an opinion, of being part of a community, of having a unique place in the world.

The Olympic Games have tried to keep politics out for one major reason. The more political the Games get, the more likely they are to fall apart. They, like everything else in our world, are fragile. If one person or group makes a political statement, there is guaranteed to be another group that opposes it. If one group boycotts it or uses propaganda during the Games, then the other group also feels entitled to it. Every culture is built upon a common thread of tradition and history. It is the thread of a history that overcomes distance and differences to unite in common goals. By tradition people hold sacred things that unite groups through differences. The Olympics is a world tradition. It allows everyone to feel like they have a place at the table. Language, culture, and location are overcome for the unity of athletic competition. The dream of a better world always rests on the table. Even if that dream just means finding a little bit of value and community, a little bit of hope in a life of poverty. To claim it’s about money is to deny that there is a value in money that goes beyond money. It’s about sports, only sports. Anyone who takes part in making the Olympics a reality should know that.

There is a lot more power in trusting people than in boycotting them. You have to know who to trust. On this, I want you to trust me: If you want human rights for everyone in the world, you have to create a community for the world. If you want to create a community for the world that lasts, you have to have tradition. If you want to have tradition, you need celebrations like the Olympic Games – events we take part in as a group without knowing the exact significance of them, just understanding somehow they are a part of our history.

Drugs are bad mmk..

I don’t condone drug use. I was put on antidepressant pills from as young as I can remember. There were all sorts of them, and I had no say so in this. There were several times I refused to take my pills and my parents had a tactic for it. They would hold me down and one of them would squeeze my nose shut. The only way I could breath was if I opened my mouth. They would stick the pill in and I would have to swallow to breath. I learned a valuable lesson from this: how to rape. That’s the equivalent of what it was. If my parents would have known anything about depression, they would have understood that it’s caused by a feeling of helplessness. And if they had any self-reflective ability they would have realized that episodes such as this were the cause of any depression I may have had, which I refused to believe I had anyways (a pretty reliable sign that someone isn’t depressed). No amount of pills would solve that problem.

This is the main reason I don’t approve of drug use. I was an involuntary drug user every day of my life for a decade. I told my mom when I turned 18, I would no longer take pills. I knew what I wanted. I always knew what I wanted. I wanted to be me. The drugs made me something else. I rarely laughed when I was on them, I went through life numb. I could function. I had become used to my perspective. It was an altered perspective. It wasn’t what I wanted. I knew I didn’t want to go through life in an emotionless blur. I can live without my mind but not without my heart. So I don’t condone drug use, for myself.

There are some people who are satisfied with going through life with an altered perspective. In fact at times people may even need it. Life can be hard at times, and if you aren’t able to cope with it as who you are, than you can become something else. A little marijuana can make you forget your problems. Some alcohol will cheer you up for the moment. For anyone who says there is a difference between Marijuana and antidepressants, it’s a faulty argument. Both of these drugs affect the blood/brain barrier. The real effect depends upon the quantity, and the real problem exists in the frequency of use. I have seen people, who do a lot of drugs constantly, accomplish a lot in their lives. I have known wrestlers who have excelled in wrestling practices and competitions, wrestling while they are high. (USADA only tests for weed in competition, which is why Michael Phelps could be a pothead and not fail a drug test. Wouldn’t surprise me, every swimmer I’ve ever known is a pothead.) Football players at the highest levels snort cocaine before games because it gets them fired up for competition. It’s a stimulant and it allows them to play aggressively through pain.

Drug use isn’t a bad thing by nature. It stops parts of your brain from working as well as over stimulating other parts. For occasional recreational use they can be a lot of fun. For solving problems there are better answers though. There are ways to make life exciting without drugs. There are ways to handle problems without drugs. There is much more to be gained by being fully aware of who you are and what you are doing. Your body isn’t mine, and I don’t really care what drugs you put in it. You may be able to get through life perfectly fine high or drunk every day, as long as it doesn’t force you to neglect reality (like driving in this state or missing important dates) it’s OK with me. I don’t have your perspective so if I can’t tell, it can’t bother me. I value my own perspective, I want to be fully aware of what I am doing. For me that means not doing drugs.

Reality check, Mike Tamillow – absent

Some time ago I was trying to win my exgirlfriend back. I was trying to find just the right angle of pursuit. At times it seemed as if she was never going to talk to me again, and then things would look up. She’d answer my call or be willing to talk to me when I happened to see her around. One day she told me she wanted to see the movie Enchanted and asked me to go with her. I’d already seen it but obviously I wanted to go with her.

When the movie had finished, she said, full of glee, “It makes me wish I were in love…” I gave her a look from hell. For the past three months I’d been telling her I love her. And I never heard those words back. If I could have made her cry with only a look, I would have been delighted. When she realized what she said, she solemnly said “sorry”.

We were very different people. It wasn’t that she didn’t have feelings for me, it’s just that she thought if she were in love, she would know. I, on the other hand, thought that if I wasn’t in love, I would know. If I was uncertain all the time, that’s a pretty good sign I was in love. As long as I was worried about where our relationship might go, if I was unsure what an unanswered call meant, if she gave me every sign she was interested and I still wasn’t sure of my place in her heart, then there was only one thing I could be sure of, that one thing being that I was in love. My love lasts forever, it doesn’t fade with distance or time. It means everything to me; if you have my heart then I will offer you the world. She felt that life was about average, it was what it was, things were OK most of the time sometimes better sometimes worse. I thought that life can always be amazing, the only sour moments that ever have to come are those filled with the ironic cruelty of life, the ones that teach you how to really feel. And I felt that life should never be boring, there is always something to feel, something to renew you.

I live in a fantasy land. I’m foolish enough to think the stories of heroes, giants, and true love were written for guys like me. If they weren’t who were they written for. Who are those fighters out there with indomitable will? Who are those lovers out there with a love that conquers all? I can’t imagine anyone more courageous than me or more loving. If there is I wouldn’t believe it, I live in a fantasy land. More than once I got into an argument with Dustin Fox about who was a higher level warrior-wrestler. I determined that I was level 57 and he was level 49, but since he is half-ogre he had that advantage over me.

Some people see what’s real in their fantasies. They read stories and watch movies and find the reality in those stories. They see the virtue in the characters; their honesty, integrity, and good intentions. They watch a leader inspire a group of people to greatness. They swoon over true love in it all. This fantasy has all the best qualities of the real world. However, they still see it as a fantasy. When they leave it, they go back to the real world. The real world isn’t their fantasy.

Then there are people like me. We see the fantasy in the real world. I look at my life and see everything I could ever ask for in my fantasy. The only thing that holds me back are people that try to bring me back down to the real world. Don’t bother. I don’t want to live in your world. I’d much rather live in my fantasy land.

Dave Schultz

I want to write a movie. People forget things too quickly. There’s always something new coming our way. Something that is closer to us and it’s real. In our culture, stories stay strong until the generation that experienced them disappears. With a movie though you can keep something sacred forever.

Dave Schultz was one of the greatest wrestlers ever. I never knew him, I’ve only heard stories about him. He was incredibly talented. What really shines through in the stories is the type of person he was. He would joke with people right after they lost a match, making fun of how they lost. Wrestlers aren’t in the most agreeable moods after losing wrestling matches. Most of them pout or throw a fit. In one story, Schultz was wrestling an Iranian and had gotten taken down on the edge of the mat with a fireman’s carry. He got back up and, since it was a nice move, shook the guy’s hand and got ready to wrestle. The same fireman’s carry worked on him twice more. He was upset with how he lost the match, tricked by the same move three times in a row. When he got off the mat, one of his teammates made fun of him right away. He didn’t find it very funny. Obviously wrestling mattered to him a lot. He wrestled because he loved to wrestle, not only for the satisfaction of winning. I could imagine him sitting down next to a wrestler who just lost and saying a few words of consolation. “Look at it this way: you lost, that sucks.” and giving him a pat on the back, then joking around with him. It makes you realize that’s just how life is, so you might as well enjoy it. From my understanding that was Dave Schultz’s attitude.

He was always trying to learn a little more about wrestling, too. He would ask other wrestlers how they did moves, even though he could beat them up in a match. He had some tricks up his sleeve. I’ve seen him do an arm lock used in jujitsu several times. If it is physically possible to do, then why not try it and see if you can make it work? Why assume that a move won’t work just because it isn’t something your coach taught you and someone told you “that will never work”? Try it. Unlike all the other sporting movies out there right now, this wouldn’t be aiming for a quick fix of inspiration. You don’t have to be constantly inspired to do something you love. You do it because it’s your life and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Dave Schultz lived that dream, far bigger than any Olympic dreams.

His story comes to a tragic end. The Foxcatcher wrestling club that he was part of was sponsored by a multimillionaire from a long line of multimillionaires. John Du Pont murdered Dave Schultz without any motive. At this point Du Pont was insane. He had always done things that were a little quirky. He was a gun enthusiast and had driven his car into a lake before. He had gone foxhunting in a tank that he owned. He claimed to be the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and after murdering Dave Schultz he locked himself away in his mansion for two days, demanding that the police refer to him as “His Holiness” in negotiations. Dave Schultz, he claimed, was part of an international conspiracy to kill him, just one of the hallucinations he had been having. Schultz had been married for fourteen years when this happened, with a nine year old son and six year old daughter.

The last thing I need is something else I’m trying to do. To get the movie produced would be another matter. That would take much more work than writing the movie. I don’t know enough, I’d have to hear more stories to put together something interesting and workable. I’d want to find out all the dirty details, which is something USA wrestling works hard to conceal, as if all wrestlers are sacred beings. I don’t want to write a movie. I want people to remember the story of a man everyone respected and admired not because he was inspirational in his accomplishments but because he was inspirational in the way he lived.

Get them locoweeds

I went fishing today. I didn’t catch anything but I got a lot of bites, mosquito bites. That joke would have been a lot funnier to me if I didn’t have to stop typing every 2 seconds to scratch one. My coach, my teammate, and I drove up into the mountains to fish at a site called 11 mile. It’s called 11 mile because you have to drive down a road 11 miles long to get to the lake. The road goes all along the mountains, it’s all wilderness. The houses are spread out tens to hundreds of acres and fit very nicely into the natural landscape. It is beautiful. The entire ride is beautiful and then the lake is even more beautiful. Huge boulders are piled on top of other boulders, jutting out on the lake. Mountains surround the lake in every direction. Thriving dark green pine trees line the mountains untouched. And I saw the strangest thing on the other side of the lake, I saw flat landscape with no roads at all. Not one road. For a Chicago boy that’s quite unusual. I thought we had dominated nature and had our way with it a long time ago.

There’s a ton of wilderness left in this world. The people who live out on the mountains and near the lake aren’t the ones complaining about how humanity is destroying the environment. They enjoy the wilderness and realize how plentiful it is.

The people who are trying to speak on behalf of the environment are acting against common sense. If someone you loved was dying of cancer, would spend that person’s last days bitching and moaning to scientists and politicians about how we need to develop a cure for cancer before it’s too late, or would you enjoy those last days with your loved one? If you really love the environment and think it is doomed, you should probably move out to the wilderness right now.

All you hippies are still bitching and moaning. You moved out into the wilderness in the sixties, living on marijuana, mushrooms, and free love. When your high wore off though, you all came back. Somehow, you all still think we are running out of wilderness, despite the fact that you can’t stand the wilderness for more than a few years of drug abuse. Memory loss: marijuana will do that to you.

Oh Oh, Pick Me, Pick Me

If you want to have an enjoyable wrestling practice, you have to pick the right partner. That’s all there is to it. Know who you want as a practice partner before practice and try to get him before anyone else. Don’t go asking someone the day before practice because then you’ll look desperate and he’ll be quick to drop you and say he forgot. You’ve got to get him right before practice.

A good practice partner moves well. You don’t have to worry about him turning the wrong direction and sending a flying elbow into your eye. You don’t have to worry about him trying to prove how strong he is. The wrong partner won’t let you lay a hand on him without flexing. Wrestling with a good partner makes practice like a dance. You don’t have to worry about getting injured. With a good partner, when his moves work or your moves don’t work, he just happened to hit a nice move, a nice counter, or a nice series of moves that set up a nice finishing move. But with a bad partner, wrestling is a struggle. His moves don’t matter, he tries to tough it out or beat you up. He tries to go harder. He tries to be stronger and faster then you. This is how he drills also. So you have to deal with some kid trying to go harder to improve his technique, very counter intuitive.

Sparring is a type of wrestling that is supposed to fall in between going live and drilling. The problem is neither going live nor drilling describe sparring well. You can’t give a percent of going live to describe sparring.

Sparring is wrestling to perfect your technique and timing. Timing is not speed, everything can happen in slow motion, but timing is based on the occurrence of other events. It is good timing to attack your opponent as he is shifting his weight forward. It only lasts a split second but when you are sparring hopefully your mind clicks and says “now is my chance”. Unlike live wrestling, you don’t have to  go go go, you can initiate the move with good timing and then spar. The goal of sparring is simple, do everything technically and positionally right. This doesn’t mean that you will win every position. You aren’t competing to win the position. You are constantly trying to establish your position. Your body is like a spring for good position. As you get moved out of good position, you provide resistance to “spring” back into good position. And just like a spring, the amount of resistance you apply is relative to the displacement. The further you get from good position, the more you force yourself back into it. When sparring with your opponent, you should offer him opportunities to time attacks on you. You should also force him slightly out of position, and then consider forcing him maybe even a little more out of position if he is doing a good job at maintaining it. You want to give him a challenge but ultimately he wants to work for comfort and strength in all positions that he may get into.

If you pick the wrong partner though, sparring is going to be a big mess. First off, a partner who doesn’t have enough experience sometimes will not even understand what good position feels like. He will offer different amounts of resistance and movement based upon whether he has decided he wants to win the position or let you win it. He is essentially wrestling live but surrendering positions to try to be cooperative. Even though he is cooperating, he is not cooperating in a way that improves you both. It’s superficial, he doesn’t understand how sparring or drilling should feel. He’s caught up in doing moves on his opponent instead of with his opponent.

But if you do things the right way, you get more out of it; even if it doesn’t appear as if you’re reaching your objective.

I read slowly. I remember what I read though. I think about it and draw pictures in my head. In school that didn’t mean much, especially on standardized tests. (I found some extra time for the ACT reading section. Yeah I cheated. Eat it.) What really matters in life though is what I’m good at, getting value out of the material I read. I am reading the way reading should be done, even if it’s not fast and powerful.

The guys who are relaxing and going through the motions of every position may not be impressing everyone, but they just so happen to be the guys who are winning the most matches.

God is a scientist

Science has failed me. Cause and effect. Questions and answers. Correlation. Equivalency. Statistical significant. Hypothesis. Observation. Evidence. Theory. Laws. Proof. Structure and certainty. Sir Isaac Newton set down four philosophical rules that describe the right way to practice science:

1. No more causes should be admitted than are both true and sufficient to explain their phenomena.

2. The causes assigned to the same kind of natural effects must be the same.

3. Qualities that can be repeated through experimentation should be taken as the qualities of all bodies universally.

4. Propositions gathered from observation of natural phenomena should be considered true notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis, until further observations make such propositions more or less certain.

Now where does he mention God even once in these four rules. He doesn’t. Doesn’t anyone besides me see the problem with that. If God created science then why is there no God in these rules?

If God fit into any of these equations we wouldn’t have anything we could work with. The fact that we can determine a force that is real and substantial is significant. We can see this force at work or at least view the result of its actions. This allows us to work with it, to manipulate it, to predict it. We are able to realize that there isn’t some underlying intelligent force pushing everything whatever direction he chooses to. There are hundreds of forces but they all act in semi-predictable ways.

The problem is, as these rules have become more and more developed, as theories and proof after proof, law after law, have been created by following these rules, science has tried to establish itself as an opponent to religion. These rules don’t claim there is no God. They don’t claim that Science is in opposition to religion. Isaac Newton wasn’t trying to make a commentary on religion at the time. He was just trying to set down some ground rules that can be followed.

I can follow these rules. I know what to do. Pick a phenomenon that I want to find an explanation for. Isolate a single variable in the equation. Find a way to reduce the effect of all the other variables to zero or to some standard value that is experienced universally through my study. Gather up results that can be found in the form of concrete evidence, numbers. Use those numbers to find if there is statistical significance in the results. If there is some effect that is statistically significant, that means I can reproduce my results 95-99% of the time. My study has shown that I have found a cause for an effect. If my numbers aren’t statistically significant, then I should run a new experiment, isolating another potential variable.

It doesn’t matter what you are studying: physics, psychology, biology, astronomy… marketing. Anything and everything that have causes and effects can be considered science. If everything in the universe is composed of things that can all be deduced through science, then the whole of the universe can be comprehended through science. If the universe is the only thing we can ever experience, it is the only thing that we can be certain of. God no longer fits into our universe of certainty. It isn’t science against religion, it is rationality vs. God.

We use these rules Newton set forth for science, not because they are necessarily true, but because they are the only things we can reasonably accept on more than a hunch. Newton’s third definition of motion is that of inertia: every body preserves its state either of resting or moving uniformly straight forward. This isn’t the only law of motion though. There are other laws of forces acting upon bodies, an example of which is gravity. And Newton understood this. Although one thing can be isolated, everything works in a system. There will never be a body that continues eternally to preserve its state of rest. We exist in a system. We try to explain the effects of the world in terms of science but a system doesn’t allow us to predict and isolate all causes. Newton’s first rule of science actually becomes inverted. To explain a phenomenon, the causes necessarily approach infinity.

Though you can see predictable patterns in thought and love, these issues exist in a system. The human heart isn’t something to be calculated. Physics, also, has predictable patterns. What about the physics of wrestling? Two irregular objects being directed into motion by muscles, the use of weight and direction, shape, volume and friction; does this matter have a scientific answer? It exists in a system. The causes attributed to it approach infinity every second. Biology also exists in a system. Relatively everything in the real world exists in a system. Newton’s theory of gravity was reevaluated by Einstein. He had a much more systematic perspective, one in which space-time is bent by these astral bodies. Space-time? Don’t ask me to explain it. There seem to be more causes in this universe that are both true and sufficient to explain the phenomenon of a system than should be admitted.

Religion has attacked science in the past, both have fought for what we know as certainty. Truth, both have failed. So I have to offer science some words of advice “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” and for religion “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with it’s several powers, having once been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

You could learn a lot from one another.

Smooth criminal

I don’t like asking for favors I actually need. It’s uncomfortable for me. I’ll ask if I can get borrow a book or for someone to grab something for me while they’re up. I have a system for favors. I ask for some small favor that won’t inconvenience that person too much. I’ll ask if the person can buy me a drink or take care of the cab. Then I’ll offer a slightly bigger favor relatively soon. I’ve repaid my favor and demonstrated my generosity. If you wait too long to repay a favor then people will remember you as a mooch. Favors are good, when someone does you a favor they tend to like you more.

When I NEED the favor though, it changes everything. There may be no possibility of returning the favor. I’m no longer asking a person to engage in a social interaction with me, I’m now asking him to really help me. I couldn’t make it without help from my sponsors, the NYAC, JP Roberts, The Barnhisels, and, of course, my mom. And I still have a deeper hole than hill. I didn’t have to go begging for these people to help me out, they offered. I don’t know why it’s hard to ask for help when I really need it but it is.

There are a handful of other things I really don’t enjoy in social interactions. Most of them are much smaller then asking for a favor I desperately need. I don’t like asking for names after I’ve become too comfortable or I’ve seen the person around too much, especially when that person happens to already know my name or we’ve exchanged names at least once before. I don’t like asking for contact information. I like making plans, but something about getting contact information seems unnatural, taking away from the flow of the interaction. I’m not a big fan of saying goodbye and then finding out we’re going  to pass again or that we’re heading in the same direction. I like calling people just to say hi, it’s how meaningful conversations seem to happen. I don’t like when I’ve waited too long before calling someone again. I don’t like when I have to call someone more than once without an answer or return call.

I could spend my entire life trying to avoid all these awkward moments but I don’t. I consciously know that it’s going to be awkward and I just accept that. I try to make a small comment as we pass after our goodbye. I ask for a person’s name, acting as if it’s on the tip of my tongue when it isn’t anywhere in my mind. When I make plans I reassure the person I will call without asking for contact information. I bank on the fact that the other person will realize I don’t have his number and offer it up. When I call to say hi and it’s been a while, I try to feel like I’m honestly only calling to say hi because I’m a nice guy. I let the person know that if he is busy or doesn’t have the time to talk we can talk some other time. When I ask for a big favor that I need, I try to make it appear that with or without the favor the outcome of my life will be the same. I try to make it appear as if there is something I am actually giving in return, like my personality or advice. At the same time, I show my gratitude for such benevolence.

You’re bound to have awkward moments in your life. You can either say “awkward” and act the part, or you can try to find a strategy to make yourself a little more comfortable.

Fear Mongers

I’ve never petted a squirrel. I try to chase them around often, too. I stand there and wait for them to trust me. I bend down and show them that I’m friendly. I’ve tried just about every tactic. The only way to get a squirrel to stay is to trap it, or to distract it with food. Squirrels will stare at you out of the corner of their eyes, ready to move if you move. They just don’t want to be within 10 feet of a human if possible.

There isn’t a reason for squirrels to not trust human beings. We do typically kill everything we see, but squirrels don’t know that. They can’t tell that we are dangerous. They don’t know why to be afraid of us. They can’t comprehend their death or the possible consequences of human interaction. Guinea pigs act in the same way, only they’re much slower. Both animals live in fear, not because they have anything to fear but because it’s in their nature.

Fear is in our nature. The media provides us with plenty of things to fear. We need it. If the media didn’t create things for us to be afraid of something else would. The government would create a potential threat. Some random blogger would make up a rumor. That rumor would catch on quick. Our neighbors would create something, or maybe we would just be afraid of our neighbors. We would create dragons and demons, hell and eternal suffering. It’s in our nature to be afraid and strangely enough the only way to overcome our nature is to find something we can all be afraid of.