Scuba, Young Life, Caribbean...and being Lazy?

I love to relax. I have this picture in my mind of being out in the Caribbean. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is out and there is that picturesque cloud cover; big puffy clouds providing the perfect amount of shade at crucial moments of the day. And I’m sailing with friends. On the back of the boat we have scuba equipment but for now we’re all content to sit in the sun, on the boat, in the turquoise water, surrounded by small green islands and enjoy each other’s company.

The flip side of that picture is that I struggle with laziness. Not all the time, but lots of the time. The temptation usually comes around after I accomplish something. Instead of enjoying the accomplishment and moving on I find myself “taking a break”. Usually it begins with the idea of a week off. That week turns into a couple weeks and before I realize it has been three months and I find myself staring at the TV wondering why I am so depressed.

I believe we are created to enjoy relaxation, but, as with everything else, relaxation can quickly be tainted with our love for excess and transform into laziness. I ran across a blog yesterday which reminded me that we are “hard-wired to create”. Laziness is a failure to engage that innate pull towards the creation of something unique. It leads us towards complacency.

Complacency is not rewarding. In fact, for me, it leads to disintegration of self-esteem. I see myself as worthless in the world. Someone who is reaping all the benefits of the position I have been born into but giving nothing back.

A spoiled brat.

Nine weeks ago I woke up and headed to a testing center on Burton Rd in Grand Rapids, MI. It was nice out, one of those cool, clear mornings where normally I would have wanted nothing more than to grab a cup of coffee and sit down to write or read. This morning wasn’t going to allow that. Instead I headed out and at 7:30 sat down to take the MCAT. For five hours I struggled, swore, and slaved over the test. Finally I was done. My decision to take one of my “breaks” was made before I entered the testing room. “Once this test is over” I thought “I’m going to let myself relax”.

Up until three weeks ago that’s exactly what I did. For six weeks I sat around and “relaxed”. What I discovered was that a) addiction to TV is a whole lot less exciting than it sounds and b) I was a lot happier studying up to 6 hours a day.

While studying I was able to create. I could make connections between subjects, come up with random ideas, and engage my mind in new ways every day. My time of relaxation dulled my brain and ruined my creative streak. It placed me in a 20 meter deep hole on the beach. I had a ladder, something to help me climb out, but instead of put forth the effort I sat down and turned my back. I was content to sit in the mud and make mud pies while the ocean was beckoning 20 feet above me. (Thank you CS Lewis)

Three weeks ago I went to a Young Life camp as a counselor. The time at camp was the “relaxation” I needed. It broke the spell of complacency I had put on myself and reinvigorated my desire to be influential. It gave me the energy to get up, turn around, and climb that ladder. What I found was that the ocean is a whole lot better than mud pies.

And ironically the trip was anything but relaxing. It was tiring, frustrating at times, but extremely rewarding at others. I spent a week with some pretty legit high schoolers and discovered that while I was relaxing, I was also rediscovering my love of relationships, of sailing, tubing, zip lining, and loving on people.

Since being back I have talked with numerous people about volunteering overseas, about writing books, and about doing something here in Grand Rapids that is of lasting impact. I’ve come up with insane ideas that excite me and push my mind into new areas. I’ve found my creative writing streak again and my passion for medicine and relief work has returned. As has my confidence.

So yes, I long to be on that boat in the Caribbean enjoying the weather, the diving, and the company of my friends. But I want that to be true relaxation, the rediscovery of things I am passionate about, not a continuation of laziness. I want to be there, smiling, looking up at the sky, under the realization that when I return I have things of meaning waiting for me. I have new, exotic, crazy ideas to pursue, people to love on, and lives to change…instead of a few TV shows to catch up on.

Lamentation

"...and he saw how a lamentation could become a hymn."~Lamentation by Ken Scholes

Kinda feels like thats what our call is doesn't it? Let's make this lamentation in which we find ourselves into a hymn.

My Essay

Just for the heck of it. Maybe I'll get some interesting responses.

Throughout history humanity has sought one thing: knowledge. The pursuit of these elusive ideas has spanned time between people as distant as Plato and Einstein. During this span two main camps have emerged surrounding the avenue for the pursuit of knowledge. One camp believes that, above all else, knowledge is worth obtaining. The second camp would beg to disagree.

During WWII many different types of people were taken to concentration camps. These camps were places where people were forced into manual labor, starved, and even experimented upon. Those experiments often took the lives of the unwilling prisoners, their bodies discarded in mass graves to make room for the next batch of participants. The second group of people, those who disagree with the idea that knowledge is worth obtaining no matter the cost, find the foundation for their belief in stories such as the above. Knowledge is not worth obtaining when it is the cause of someone’s unwanted death.

Ethics, then, is the determinant between when the pursuit of knowledge is good, and when it turns humanity into a self-destructive species. The questions one should ask, before starting on the path towards a new discovery, surround those who will be involved in the process. Can one predict a participant being hurt during the course of an experiment? Will the experiment end in death? Or even on a less intense level, will the experiment lead to foreseeable, but unwanted, struggles for any person part of the process? If the answer to any of those questions is yes then perhaps a different avenue to the discovery of this new idea is in order.

Knowledge is a worthy goal. But the path taken to obtain that goal must be without reproach. As history has shown there are examples of groups who, through the torture of others, have learned new things about our world. Yet those groups are looked at with distain by most of society. Those who look at the former with distain see the only knowledge worth pursuing as that obtained through ethical means.

I wrote that in 30 minutes off the prompt: The pursuit of knowledge is always justified.

A few Interesting Things

Just as a reference, everything I am about to talk about and consider came from the book "Phantoms in the Brain" by VS Ramachandran a MD and PhD in neuroscience out of UCSD.

I could make you think that the table in front of you (or chair or couch or lamp or...well you get the idea) is an actual part of your body. In fact, this isn't some sort of innate ability I only possess but something anyone can do. The experiment needs two people, some type of object to which you are going to project a persons body image (the table, chair, another persons arm, etc), some type of divider to prevent the two people from seeing each other, and at least one of the two has to have a good sense of rhythm. For ease of writing I'm going to assume that what you use is a table. Place the divider in the center of the table (it can be as easy a blanket between the two people). Have the person who is going to experience the table become like a part of their body place a hand below the table. The second person will then push one hand through the divider and the other below the table. That second person then begins to tap or brush the first's hand and thetable in synchrony. Now the synchronous part of this experiment is key, if the taps and brushes are not in synchrony against the table and the hand the experiment wont work. If you both are lucky (this only works with maybe 50% of the people its done on) after about a minute the first person will begin to feel as if the tabs and brushes are arising from their own body, even through their logical mind knows this is completely bogus.

This same idea was experimentally used to project a person's consciousness outside of their body, essentially to give them an experimentally induced out of body experience. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5841/1048 (specifically the paragraph after the image)

It can also be done to completely place one persons sense of being into another person's body, all through visual stimulus.

This has some interesting implications, but before we get to that there's another extension off of this idea which will allow us to better engage the implications I will bring up later. This idea of being able to project ones body image onto inanimate objects (or even objects outside of your own body) is pretty radical. But when you think about it a bit more, its not all that crazy. Everyone has something which they incorporate into their extended body image. Whatever that object is, its something which they become infuriated about if it is hurt, dented, or otherwise damaged. Yet to say that the object is part of their actual body might be a stretch for lots of people. So Ramachandran set out to experimentally test this "extended body image as part of your own body image" idea. In order to do that he hooked up patients to a machine called a GSR (galvanic skin response) which measures skin resistance; just a fancy way of saying it measures your response to a visual stimulus which threatens your body, such as a heavy rock being held above your foot. The GSR is tied with your body's sympathetic reaction to dangerous or threatening situations. So, theoretically, if someone were to threaten an object which you consider to be part of your body image, say your car, then there should be a readable GSR to that threat.

Ok, so the experiment. Ramachandra took a few patients, and in a somewhat unethical manner, preformed the table experiment on them. When they had begun to feel the table as part of their body he took his fist and slammed it against the table. Every patient experienced a significant GSR.

So now onto the implications. And all I want are responses to this quote I write out because this post is long enough already. Here's what Ramachandran speculates about the meaning behind these phenomena:

"...If this argument is correct, then perhaps it's not all that silly to ask whether you identify with your car. Just punch it to see whether your GSR changes. Indeed the technique may give us a handle on elusive psychological phenomena such as the empathy and love that you feel for a child or spouse. If you are deeply in love with someone, is it possible tot you have actually become part of that person? Perhaps your souls--and not merely your bodies--have become intertwined" (Phantoms in the Brain pg 61 bolding added)

Interesting idea...

Clear and Hazy

I was at the Grand Canyon about seven years ago. It was my first time there, with my family, and it was in the middle of December. We were on our way to Michigan from California, moving back from our 4 year hiatus over in Sacramento. My parents thought it would be a good idea to take a couple weeks to travel through the national parks between MI and CA; mainly those surrounding the four corners of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.
So we found ourselves, on a cold, crisp December morning, with snow falling all around us, standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. We were surrounded by clouds and trying to figure out what the big deal was with this national monument. We were attempting to understand this because the clouds had filled in the canyon, along with the entire area around us, and reduced the magnificence of the monument to white, puffy, nothingness. But this white nothingness was, in the end, what made this specific trip unique.
As we walked along the edge of the canyon we began talking, not about anything specific but just small family talk. As we were doing this I was looking over the edge, trying to see this "canyon" which was apparently right next to me. And then the clouds opened up. Just a small opening, but enough for me to catch a glimpse of the vastness of the canyon. It was incredible.

Four years later I found myself back at the Grand Canyon. This time I was there with friends during the summer. It was a hot and clear day; polar opposite from my previous visit. It was also the first time I saw the Grand Canyon in all its glory...and it looked like a postcard. It was like my mind couldn't wrap itself around how large the canyon was, so it just fell back on an understandable object: a postcard. The canyon looked 2-D. It was weird.

I think sometimes this is why God only gives us glimpses of where we're going in life. Like he did for me a few weeks ago. Once we get that glimpse, that view of how epic things could be, he takes it away.

Because we won't understand the full picture.

And only a view gives us a hope of what could be; it spurs us on to take risks we may have not taken otherwise.

I think that's what has happened in my life. A glimpse followed by a hazing over of the path that could be mine. What's frustrating me now is the roadblock I'm coming across in getting to that place I glimpsed.

We'll see what happens.

Rain

Half asleep. Rain pounds the ground outside a window in front of me. The song Forever Young. Seattle. San Fransisco. Research. Life. Relationships.

Dark sky. Rain drops hitting the ground and splitting according to specific laws. Physics.

Forever Young. Endless possibilities. Unquenchable curiosity. Biology. Protein interactions in formins. Rain. Outside. Fun. Thunderstorms.

Music. Flowing. Remembering experiences. Spain. Morocco. Fez. Hotels. Friends. Tapas. Siesta. Cafe con Leche. Ronda. Grazalema. El Camino. Forever Young.

Thunderstorms on the ocean. Lightning. Bahamas. Scuba. Family. Hope Town. Scrubs :). Medicine. Marine Biology. Science. Forever Young.

The present. Friends. Playing in the rain. Young Life. God. Complexities of the world.....Forever....

Something Good

I was just at a young life leader weekend. As always we talked about community, what it means to accept others, beyond their failings, and what it means to show kids the life Jesus came to show to us. Finishing that weekend off I read something from Velvet Elvis written by Rob Bell. It begins to identify what I believe the starting points of a "Christian" community should be. So here's the quote:

"...To begin, Christians are people learning who they are in Christ. We are being taught about our new identity. Do you see how deeply this new identity affects the life of a community? I heard a teacher say that if people were taught more about who they are, they wouldn't have to be told what to do. It would come naturally. when we see religious communities spending most of their time trying to convince people not to sin, we are seeing a community that has missed the point. The point isn't sin management. The point is who we are now."

I think that's what attracted me to Young Life in the first place. The idea that we accept people for who they are when we meet them, not who we think they could become. We walk with them, and through our interactions with our community, we show others around us what it means to be a "little Christ".

Oh and another good metaphor for the distinction between trying to sell Christianity vs just showing it to people and letting what they see speak for itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPKtBM99kAc&feature=player_embedded
vs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdsmh6gBB9Q&feature=related

which one would you rather display...or more to the point, which one would you rather others observed from you?