Greetings from Majuro... First Impressions

           My first impression of Majuro was from the sky.  As we approached I saw a very small Atoll out of the plane window that looked both desolate and beautiful.  Shortly thereafter I saw another Atoll and knew it was Majuro.  It was the right shape and I could see ships and the “downtown” area, but it was much smaller than I had imagined.  This excited both Janae and I as we were looking forward to living in a small community.  We banked left and headed in for a landing at the tiniest landing strip that I had ever seen.  At the end of the runway we took a slight left turn and arrived at the “terminal.”  This was by far the smallest airport that I had ever seen, but it was open air and very quaint.  The Republic of Marshall Islands’ customs office was built and supported by both the American and Australian governments.  It was a quick process to get in and if you simply turn around, baggage claim is right there.  It too is all open air and is a few guys empting luggage into large wooden crates and forklifting them the 150 yards to a small ramp where people hustle over to claim their luggage. 

(Baggage Claim in Majuro)

            We had checked 3 bags total and 2 came rather quickly, but Neyla’s pack n’ play hadn’t yet arrived.  It was looking as if it wasn’t coming, since we were one of the few people still waiting for a bag, but the attendant kept telling me there were more bags coming.  I quickly gave up on this promise as I saw the United 737-800 pulling away from the quaint terminal and back onto the runway to head to another Marshallese island called Kwajalein.  I filled out some paperwork and the kind Marshallese United manager, JC, promised they would deliver it as soon as it arrived or they found it or whatever.  Bear in mind that this whole process took well over an    hour in a tiny space.  We weren’t upset and it was really no big deal, but it was a quick introduction to Marshallese culture.  It’s just slower paced here and we are elated about that.  I’m sure the pack n’ play will show up and when it does, Neyla can have her own bed.  Until it does show, she can sleep in between us like babies have always done for most of human history. 

            On the road that runs the length of Majuro Atoll we got a sense of the people and community.  It is very poor.  And despite this fact there are many people out enjoying the hot and humid weather.  There really is only one road on Majuro and when we asked what the name of it was nobody seemed to know.  I suppose if there is only one road it doesn’t need to be named.  We went over the only bridge on Majuro, which was also the highest point on the island and we passed by the Marshall Islands Resort.  This resort was built by the Marshall Islands government years ago to host some Pacific conference or another with the thought that having it would then spur tourism to the country.  This never happened.  The hotel remains mostly vacant at all times and time has surely taken its toll on the resort.  The views are incredible and the beaches are phenomenal for sure, but it’s becoming a bit dilapidated without any visitors.  There is a state of the art gym built by the Japanese government, a bowling alley and a movie theater, but they have all been closed down in the last 5 years.  There is no money to keep them alive and this has a direct negative affect on the youth.  Because of this there is little for the Marshallese youth to do in their free time.

            As we arrived at Majuro Cooperative School, where I will shortly be teaching 8^th grade, there were wild cats, dogs and chickens all playing in the vicinity.  The school facilities were nice, but in no way compared to the suburban schools of Chicago that I was used to.  There were shanties surrounding the school and as we pulled in all of the people waved happily at us.  We arrived at our new house on campus and were blown away by the views.  Our bedroom windows look out over the Pacific and we can smell the salt in the air and hear the waves crashing less than 15 yards from our house.  It is small and cozy and perfect.  I went out with my Principal and her partner to get some clean drinkable water and bed linens.  The stores were like smaller versions of a Costco and actually had some good deals and more of a selection of goods that I’d have imagined.  We stopped by the electric company and purchased some electricity and headed back to our new home to settle in and unpack. 

            As I write this it is 1:29 in the afternoon in Majuro and I have the two windows in our bedroom wide open.  The ocean breeze is rushing through our home and the crash of the waves is music to my ears.  Neyla is sleeping on our bed next to me and too is enjoying the beautiful orchestra of the Pacific.  It’s only been a few hours, but this is our dream come true.  

Colorado Reflections

       

            Back in mid-September my wife and I and our little daughter Neyla made the journey to Colorado.  We have lived in Copper Mountain, CO now for about 3 months and tonight is our last night here.  Our time in the mountains has been peaceful, relaxing and refreshing and it has been a time that we will never forget. 

            In September we found our love of the mountains.  We came right at the time when the Aspen trees were a bright gold and juxtaposed to the pine trees and the rocky mountains made for a truly majestic landscape.  Each day when Janae was finished working, usually around 3 pm or so, we went for a family hike.  I would put Neyla in the Bjorn and we would hike around Copper or we would go to our favorite hiking spot, Breckenridge.  There were some stunningly breath-taking hikes in Breckenridge and we would make the 15-minute drive as often as we could.  Neyla loves the outdoors, especially hiking.  Either she’ll catch up on some much needed sleep or she stares at nature awingly singing.  I kid you not, it’s really quite adorable.  The winds were calm and the skies were clear for seemingly the entire month of September and we sure took advantage.  During our first few weeks here I was also trying to sharpen my golf game since I had qualified for the Colorado Mid-Amateur.  I would hit balls and putt at the Breckenridge driving range, while Janae and Neyla would play on the ground or walk around the beautiful golf course.  Our first month living in Colorado was splendid and culminated with me finishing tied for 3^rd in my first golf tournament ever in Colorado. 

            October came so quickly and those beautiful Aspen trees quickly lost their golden leaves.  I hung up the golf clubs for the year and we were preparing to ski come November.  But October at Copper Mountain is a strange time.  Nobody lives here and no shops or restaurants are open.  We felt like we were the only people here, and we may very well have been.  The beauty of this was that we had the whole place to ourselves; it felt more like Rusin Mountain than Copper Mountain.  We hiked anytime we could and since the weather was so fantastic that meant we hiked virtually everyday.  We discovered new hikes and blazed the Colorado Trail as often as we could since it runs right through Copper.  It was a beautiful month where the three of us spent almost every minute of everyday together and it was perfect.  October ended with Neyla’s first Halloween and her being carried around her cousins’ Broomfield neighborhood in her kitty cat costume. 

            November came and as it did my parents showed up in Colorado for a visit.  Janae and I were under no illusions; they were clearly here to see Neyla.  ;-)  Their visit coincided with opening weekend of ski season at Copper and although it was warm and sunny they had found someway to make enough snow to open several runs.  My parents loved hanging out with Neyla, so Janae and I got to spend some quality time on the slopes and at the pub together.  Their visit ended with a day in Boulder and a brilliant weather day it was.  We got to walk around and shop on Pearl St. and had a nice lunch with Janae’s family joining us as well.  The day after my parents left was Election Day and I am happy to say I finally had the privilege to vote in a swing state!  Shortly after Election Day, I found a job opening on Craigslist for an 8^th grade-teaching job in the Marshall Islands.  It was November 9 and Janae and I got our hopes up for relocating once again but this time to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  To make a long story short, I got the job and we are moving right after Christmas.  (For more info, see my “If you want to make God laugh” post).  Thanksgiving was down in Broomfield at Janae’s parents house and by that time I had gotten the offer for my new job in Majuro and planning had begun to move half way around the world.  November was a life-changing month to say the least. 

            By the time December snuck up on us we were deep into the planning stages for moving to Majuro, Marshall Islands.  We had sent several packages, booked our flights and bought plenty of sunscreen.  I had been spending any free time I could preparing to teach in January (or blogging) and was getting more excited by the moment. The second weekend of December will always be a memorable one.  It was when two of our great friends came to visit, Susie and Landon.  It was a special weekend, but it was extraordinarily cold!  For all the great weather we’d seen in our brief stint in Colorado, this weekend made up for it.  The one silver lining was the beauty of the snow, but when you ventured outside it was freezing and windy adding up to below zero wind chills almost the entire weekend.  Despite the blast of frigid cold, it was a fantastic weekend.  Susie and Landon are great people and anyone would be blessed to have them as friends.  This weekend was also the 40^th anniversary of Copper Mountain, so on Saturday afternoon there was a Neil Diamond cover band and 72 cent beers.  Many good conversations were had in the hot tub, but none quite as good as the final afternoon where Landon and I debated the meaning of Freedom.  I think he’s still frustrated with me over that conversation, and despite some semantic disagreements between us, we both became smarter people and better friends. 

            That brings us to today, December 15, 2012, our last night living at Copper Mountain.  It is again just the 3 of us and we have been reflecting on our time here.  We will miss Copper, Colorado and all of our friends and family in Chicago, but we are so excited to begin our new life in Majuro.  In just two short weeks from now we will be settling in to a new country, culture and life and we couldn’t be more excited.  We have loved our time in Colorado and who knows, maybe we’ll live here again after Majuro, but for now, so long Colorado.  

A New Education (Part 2)

           It is widely assumed today that the American Education system is broken and falling behind the rest of the world.  This is a false assumption, because there is no American Education system.  We are one of the few developed countries in the world that doesn’t have a National Education System.  In actuality the United States is a conglomeration of local education systems all independently following state and national laws, so that they can claim some funds from those respective institutions.  It’s a strange system that is unique to America and perplexing to other countries.  On one hand, it makes sense that a country so vast and diverse would have local school boards govern education, but on the other hand you have local school boards in Kansas mandating teaching of creationism in science classes and Texas school boards ignoring history professors and skewing history books to meet a political agenda that expert historians say doesn’t accurately reflect history.  The major problems within education today are a lack of qualified teachers, inequitable fund distribution throughout the country and a lack of respect for authentic education.  Norway has a unique model for education and can be a model moving forward for our local districts to look at for success in educating our youth. 

            Over the past decade countless organizations have researched what is the silver bullet in education, especially the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Time and time again the research is clear, the better the teacher is the better the education is. 

Good teacher = good education. 

In America today we have too many teachers teaching subjects that they are not qualified to teach.  In the better schools this rarely if ever happens, but in so many poorer districts this occurs most frequently in Math classrooms.  According to a massive and comprehensive study by Michigan State University, researchers found that the best results for students on international math exams was by those students whose teachers were the best trained in their subject.  States have tried to require all teachers to be “highly qualified,” but so much more needs to be done aside from legislation.  All this does is make the majority of qualified teachers to waste time and money jumping through burecratic hoops that don’t actually increase the education students receive. 

            Instead, what needs to be done to bring in more qualified teachers is to increase teacher pay and status in society.  In Norway, the best and brightest graduates from college become teachers and there is no higher respected profession in Norway than a teacher.  Both changes are difficult to make.  Concessions need to be made from teachers unions, tenure needs to be revised, teacher evaluation needs to be rethought and an all out effort to convince the brightest and best to join the teaching profession should be a priority. 

            What does a quality teacher look like?  In my just under a decade of teaching I see 4 qualities in the best teachers that I have seen. 

1.     Experts in the subject they teach.

2.     Experience using varied pedagogical teaching methods.

3.     Non-complacent.  Working hard each year to create new lessons and better old lessons.

4.     A deep care and concern for their students and their futures. 

The first and the second can be taught and ascertained through education.  The final two are part of who a person is.  The final two are what make the best teachers.  As a teacher you have to create a solid rapport and relationship with your students.  They have to trust you and you have to respect them.  Each day with your students you must learn who they are, what their passions are and what ways they will learn most effectively.  Too often today teaching is seen as a data driven science, when it is much more of an art than many think.  That is not to say that data and scores should be ignored, but the teacher should use that as just one of many tools to know and find out how much and what students are learning.  Great teachers with these 4 characteristics must be found and spread throughout our country if we are to get our system up to world standards. 

 

However, this proves difficult with roughly 15,000 districts across the United States it is difficult for them to agree on anything, especially teacher pay.  The bankrupt states can’t possibly handle this legislation and financing of schools, but we need to decide if education is a national priority or not.  Sacrificing one Bomber for $40 billion could go a long way in finding excellent teachers.  Some problems are clearly local, but if we want to talk about our education system in America we might need to actually have an education system.  I don’t mean a large national do-nothing bureaucracy, but an institution that sets minimal national standards, trains qualified teachers and distributes funds to schools.  If we are not willing to do this, then we need to stop complaining about “American education,” because it doesn’t exist.  If we keep our broken local system by which rich and middle class children receive quality educations and poor children suffer because they live in a poor community. 

            Too often people think that education serves only a practical purpose, so that an individual can find a job someday.  That is a minority part of education.  Education teaches people how do think, while indoctrination teaches people what to think.  If we want to give young people a quality education it has to go way beyond what the Standardized tests require.  We need to help students find their passions, talents and voice if we are to arm them for the 21^st Century.  Sir Ken Robinson, an education professor from England, has a famous TED talk that everyone should watch.  We have to foster children’s creativity and teach the whole person, not just this narrow view that is popular today that we should focus on math and science.  Again, don’t misunderstand me, math and science are critical and should be taught to every student, but so should art, dance and music.  By limiting our education to a narrow set of core classes, we are cutting out students whose strength may be in other arenas.  In some ways, we may need to start over on a blank sheet of paper with the education system and we could start by consolidating all school districts under a National System with new national priorities.  In part 3, we will look at what we can learn from Norway and how the difficult process of implementation would work.   

            

Teaching Again... (Part 1)

         In just a few short weeks from now my wife, daughter and I will be moving to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and I will be teaching again.  When I decided to take a year off and stay at home with my new daughter I was excited and didn’t think a year away would be a big deal.  In fact, I have missed it dearly.  I can’t wait to get to Majuro and meet my colleagues and prepare the second semester for my new students.  I’m very excited to meet my new students and begin our journey for the rest of the year.

           

            I feel so fortunate to teach.  Being able to have had the colleagues that I have had and the former students that I have had is a genuine blessing.  Being able to participate in the education of a generation is humbling.  It is clear that a good education makes a positive impact in the future of countries, communities and an individual’s life.  A good education lowers crime and poverty, increases tolerance and citizenship and ultimately creates better people.  Education isn’t just about finding a job someday down the road.  That is part of it to be sure, but if we give into the idea that education is only for practical purposes then we have lost what the purpose of education truly is.

“Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.”  -  Thomas Jefferson

            One of our greatest Founding Fathers is pointing to the fact here that our freedoms and in fact the sustainability of our country depends on creating an educated citizenry.  We may think that is over exaggerated and a bit silly, but history shows us that when a citizenry becomes manipulated and dictated to and loses the qualities of a good education anything resembling democracy ceases to function. 

“Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.”  -  Martin Luther King Jr.

            Education is about more than reading, writing and arithmetic.  It has to be about creating better people and better citizens.  It has to be about encouraging our students to be the best versions of themselves that they can be and to find truly where their gifts and passions lie.  If education is merely about facts and data then we have given into the silly notion that everything can be quantified.  Math and science are extremely important disciplines to learn, but we can’t treat our students like they are merely a data point on a chart.  We have to care for our students and, as one of my mentors taught me, “…every moment in the classroom can be a life changing moment for one of your students.”

           

Fundamentalism, nuance, interpretation and pride... This should be fun!

           After the death of Jesus and for centuries to come, Christianity would be an outlawed religion in the Roman Empire.  If you were a caught practitioner death would often be the punishment.  There were massive propaganda campaigns against Christians and the spread of Christianity by the Roman Empire and one of the most successful among these was the charge that Christians were cannibals.  You may be thinking, how could they have lodged such a campaign?  It is pure lunacy to label Christians cannibals.  That’s true, it is a ridiculous argument, but the way that the Roman Empire did this was by taking a passage from the Bible literally.  In Matthew 26:26 it is written:

26 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”

According to the Roman indictment it was clear, Jesus ordered his followers to eat his body and in a later passage to drink his blood.  This is cannibalism.  We, of course, would look at this and have a more nuanced approach to this and realize that Jesus was speaking in metaphor.  His words were a way of explaining the sacrifice that Christians believe his death symbolizes, not a command to eat flesh and drink wine.  He wanted his followers to eat bread and drink wine so that they would not forget the sacrifice that he was going to make for humanity. 

            My point in saying this is that we have to be very careful how we read all sacred scriptures and how we interpret them.   It is all too easy to take the Bible, Koran or Gita completely out of context and frame people or a religion in a certain way.  It has happened all too many times that Christians are said to believe in 3 gods, or that Jihad is a “holy war” or that Hindus are polytheistic.  All these “claims” are not true.  Christians use the trinity as a way of understanding their one God with three distinct roles.  Jihad means struggle and is used in the Koran to represent primarily an individual’s struggle, not a mass movement or war of any kind.  And no, Hindu’s are not polytheistic; technically it is a monistic religion, this belief being that all is one. 

So often however many people read scripture and find different meanings or messages, and each one believes they are right no matter how contradictory other interpretations might be.  The Bible is written in about 10 different forms of literature and is almost impossible to be read “literally.”  Many people would shutter at what I am saying now, but it is true.  Belief and interpretation surrounding all sorts of sacred scriptures have evolved so much since their writing that it is difficult to discern if there actually is one particular way of interpreting certain passages.  This way of reading scripture and unequivocally believing your view is the only right view is called fundamentalism.  In religious terms it is the unwillingness to consider alternative views on the meaning of scripture or religious teaching. 

            In our world today you will see fundamentalists in Islam perverting the meaning of the Koran for their political purposes, all while there has never been much agreement at all on how to read it or what meaning can be discerned from particular passages.  The same goes for Christian fundamentalists who believe that the world is 6000 (or something like that) years old.  They have a total disregard for science and interpret one part of Genesis literally while “interpreting” and rationalizing other parts such as “do not kill your enemies, but pray for them.”  The three major monotheistic religions of our times all say that human beings were created in God’s image, but the problem is that we create God in an image that suits us through the narrow prism of our political beliefs or interpretation of ancient sacred texts.  What fundamentalists foolishly are unwilling to do is say, “I don’t know” or even think about another perspective than their own, proudly thinking that they have the answers. 

            Fundamentalism erodes our scientific accomplishments and simplifies extraordinarily complicated matters.  For fundamentalism to be dangerous and harmful to our society it doesn’t have to be violent.  Often times in America today fundamentalism shows its face through arrogance and ignorance of things we know to be. 

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins and for people to presume to know as much as they claim to about an infinite all knowing God is a prime example of this deadly sin.  We need to be willing to ask questions and then be even more willing to accept the answers without them destroying our world and our understanding of it.  Without this our world has no hope.  By no means am I saying that we ought to throw out our faith and religion and replace them with puritanical science, but I am saying we need to achieve a balance.  We need to be able to keep our religious beliefs all while realizing that no scripture is an historical or scientific text.  There is supposed to be meaning to these writings, deep meaning that will explain the unexplainable and for us to presume that we have it all figured out is pride.  When fundamentalism of all kinds rears its ugly head it turns the world from a place of beauty and intrigue to a place of death and destruction.  We need to be able to keep an open mind all whilst not losing our soul

.  

If you want to make God laugh...

            Back in late August my wife and I made a decision to move to Colorado.  I had decided to take the year off from teaching and stay at home with our daughter Neyla.  This decision just made the most sense for our family, I worked 35 miles away from our home and Janae worked 2 el stops away (about a 7 minute train ride for you non-Chicagoans).  However, Janae’s company had just allowed her to work from home and we thought, “This means we could live anywhere.”  We knew that this job of Janae’s wasn’t going to last forever, so we thought about moving and we very quickly decided that moving to Copper Mountain, CO would be a great temporary decision.  When I say temporary, I mean to say that it would be less than a year, but there was no telling where we would be after a year. 

            We moved to Colorado in mid-September and Janae’s job wasn’t going too well.  There’s not much market anymore for the type of product Janae sells and she was beginning to become disheartened and was thinking of looking for a new job here in Colorado.  She went on interviews and looked extensively, but strangely for someone so intelligent and qualified, nothing seemed to work out.  One night Janae and I were eating dinner and she said, “I’ve tried to find a good new job, it’s not working.  You need to start looking.”  I tried to calm her down and tell her I would, but the problem is for teachers it is virtually impossible to find a job in the middle of the school year, one would need a minor miracle for this to happen.

            So…. I woke up the next morning and while drinking a cup of coffee I started on Craigslist, never expecting to find anything, but I thought I’d try.  I looked in the education, writing and non-profit sections in Denver and Boulder, but did not really find much.  There were a few ads that I responded to, but they were either part time jobs or sketchy postings.  Around this time Janae had joined me eating breakfast and drinking coffee and I notified her that me finding a job wasn’t looking too good.  Then I clicked on the Ft. Collins, CO craigslist, even though we lived about 3 hours away from there.  I had been there once during college and really liked it and thought that we could move there if they had a good job opening.  I didn’t find much, but I did find an ad for an 8^th grade teacher in “Majuro, Marshall Islands.”  I clicked on it curiously, looked at Janae and said, “Hey, here’s a job in January.  Do you want to move to the Marshall Islands?”  She asked me where that was and when I told her it was about halfway between Hawai’i and Australia she said, “that sounds amazing.”  So on Nov. 9 at about 9:00 am, I responded to the post never thinking I would ever hear back.

           

             A few hours later I received a reply to my email.  It was a quite extensive email from the K-8 principal at Majuro Cooperative School giving me all sorts of details on the available position and the school.  The principal ended the email by saying that if I was still interested I should send her a resume, cover letter and letter of recommendation.  I quickly told Janae about the email and we began getting really excited.  Ever since we had started dating one of our dreams was to live abroad together.  When I told her 2 years ago about how it’s not terribly difficult for a good teacher to find a job abroad, she said that is was something we needed to do.  We thought the chance that I would get this job would be very low, since I’ve never taught Middle School, but I took the next two hours and got all of my documents together and carefully crafted a response email.  I still didn’t think I’d have a real shot.

           

(Majuro Coop School)

         Later that day I decided to go skiing for a few hours.  When I got back I had yet another long email from the Principal, and after reading this we started to entertain the possibility that they may actually be interested in hiring me.  She sounded very positive after reading through my documents and wanted to schedule an interview via Skype ASAP.  By the end of that day we had a Skype interview scheduled and Janae and I were both extremely excited, but we didn’t want to get too excited. 

            That next weekend I was visiting friends in Chicago and had to go to a coffee shop to do the interview via Skype.  After chatting with the Principal for about an hour I knew that this was definitely something that I wanted to do and theory went from reality pretty quickly.  In theory, Janae and I always wanted to live abroad and I always wanted to teach abroad, but now it was seemingly becoming more realistic to move to this small Island nation in Micronesia.  We slowly started telling our close friends and family about this opportunity and so many people were so excited for us.  Of course, they were going to miss us and we them, but this was the opportunity of a lifetime and our close friends knew that and that we had always wanted to do this. 

            Within a few weeks we had relocated from our beloved Chicago to the mountains of Colorado and now within a few short days we had gone from thinking about where in Colorado we wanted to live and work to realizing the next year and a half of our lives could be spent in Majuro, Marshall Islands.  A week after my first Skype interview I had another Skype interview with the Principal and two other teachers with whom I would teach.  It was very casual and again I perceived it to go very well, and now we had to wait for either an offer or not. 

            

(Majuro Atoll from above, yes it's small)

            The next morning I woke to an email offering me the 8^th grade-teaching job at Majuro Cooperative School.  I was elated.  It seemed that this was something that Janae and I were destined to do.  Too many strange things had occurred over the past 3 to 4 months that seemed to conspire to this amazing outcome.  Janae had been trying now for almost 9 months to find a new job, and nothing worked out.  We went to our pediatrician and amazingly she had lived in Micronesia for 20 years and told us we would love it.  And I apply for one job via Craigslist and it works out amazingly.  The only thing Janae and I could conclude was that this job and Majuro were where we are supposed to be now.  I accepted the job and all of a sudden we were moving halfway around the world within the next 6 weeks.  Excited does not begin to describe how we felt.  This is not to say that we are not going to miss our friends and family, but we are supposed to be there.  I’m not the type of person to make plans.  I try and let things in life happen.  I love that quote, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”  We live in a society hell bent on making plans and controlling things.  The problem is that when you do this you close off so many chances and opportunities that maybe you should take. 

            This opportunity has presented itself to us and we are going to latch onto it whole-heartedly.  We can’t wait to start our new life in Majuro. 

            (Marshall Islands Int'l Airport, no that's not photoshopped)

Truth is Cool...

“They say young is good and old is fine
And Truth is cool but all that matters
Is that you have your good times
But their good times come with prices”

            The Avett Brothers wrote the lyric above and it comes from a song entitled, “Ten Thousand Words.”  These brothers, Seth and Scott, are brilliant song writers and eloquent musicians.  Very few bands today write with such gravitas and play with such simplicity and soul.  I have been listening to them a lot lately as I ski and hike, and few musicians go better with the beautiful creation that I am surrounded in here in Colorado. 

            The song is musically brilliant and when they sing harmony it’s truly beautiful.  But the lyrics are where the real power of the song lies.  The above lyric is not only wise, but can sum up our current materialistic and consumerisitc culture that has little depth and substance to it.  People want to be young.  We value youth, but we don’t value the wisdom of age and we are all too scared of growing old and dying.  Fear drives us away from experiencing and valuing the things that truly matter.  Fear prevents us from living in the beauty of the moment and not worrying about past faults or a future of which we can’t yet affect. 

            Truth is cool.  People don’t hate truth, they just don’t value it.  Everything is relative or left up to the market.  Truth is not valued today, but power and wealth are.  Nobody seems to know or care what is good and true anymore and if they do know, they’re become amazing at rationalizing it.  Too many people just want to have a “good time” as the Avett Brothers say, but do not stop to think about the repercussions or the long view.  On all levels our culture tends to ignore long-term effects of our actions and we can only see through such a narrow prism of our immediate selfish wants or desires.

The simplicity of this song and its wisdom is what strikes me.  The humility at which they can write a song that pokes fun at themselves, all while sharing a brilliant message that they have clearly learnt the hard way is refreshing.  It’s a great song and this is a fantastically stripped down version of it here.  I hope you’ll watch and listen to the song and I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

            

...And I will hold on hope...

And I will hold on hope

And I won’t let you choke

On that noose around your neck

And I’ll find strength in pain

And I will change my ways

I’ll know my name as it’s called again

This is a bit from one of the best songs I’ve heard in the past few years.  As many of you may know it is written by the English Folk band, Mumford & Sons.  Ever since I first heard their debut single “Little Lion Man” this band’s lyrics and music have blown me away.  I was fortunate enough to see them play live in Boston 2 years ago and I can honestly say after all the concerts I’ve seen, this was the best.  Their passion for their art is infectious and their music is pure genius. 

These lyrics are from the song “The Cave.”  They are about a man who has his priorities straight.  He knows that hope can never be abandoned.  Hope is what keeps so many people going.  Without hope we have no direction, no meaning and no purpose to continue.  Not only do we all need hope, but also we need others.  We are meant to live in community with others and for others.  We weren’t meant to live lives of lonely desperation.  This man is there for his close friend and he wants her to know it.  When I hear these lyrics it moves me each and every time.  There is someone in a desperate situation and he is pleading with her not to give up and to allow him to help.  He knows that pain is a reality, but that if we so choose we can find strength in that pain and allow our character to be molded into that person we should all want to be. 

The song is incredible and I would highly encourage you to give it a listen.  It’s a beautiful song about someone going through an incredibly difficult situation.  Someone close to them is pleading with them not to give up and not to give in.  They are begging them to allow them to help alleviate the pain and suffering that they are experiencing.  This song seems to be about the human condition.  We all go through horrible times and we all need those people closest to us to get through the hurt.  He says, “I’ve been there, I know how to get out of this.  Let me help you.”  He desperately wants the Truth to be known, knowing that it will set us free.  He knows that we each have a sort of calling.  Despite that fact that we are uncertain and often scared, we must be true to who we were made to be.  He says that we need to come out of “the cave” that hides the truth from us.  We need to look at the world with empathy and compassion and see how others view the world and then we can see the bigger picture of not how things are, but how the ought to be.  None of us can do life on our own.  We all need help and “The Cave” is a brilliant song about helping those we love. 

Lately I’ve been spending time skiing along in the amazingly beautiful nature that Colorado offers and many artists have kept me company.  I have given a lot of thought to these songs while on chairlifts and I thought I’d share some of my favorites on my blog.  I hope you can enjoy this song and that is will inspire you as much as it has me.  

Are more choices better?

I love TED talks.  If you have never been to www.ted.com and been mesmerized by some of the most brilliant people in the world, then you need to visit.  This TED talk by Barry Schwartz challenges something that we take for granted in Western culture, the assumption that more choices are better.  Dr. Schwartz has done significant research on this and his simple conclusion is that more choice actually makes us feel worse.  His analogy on jeans is priceless.  I highly encourage you to watch.   

What are your thoughts on Schwartz's thesis?  I think he is really onto something here.  In theory, freedom is a great thing and we all want it.  But total freedom would be anarchy and I don't know anyone who wants that.  We all must realize that whether we like it or not our choices affect other people and all too often we simply don't believe this.  Are more choices really better?

Are we a family friendly country?

Lately I have been writing quite a lot, but can’t seem to get any of my posts to a concluding point where I would actually want to post them.  I currently have about 5 open Word documents on my computer and keep bouncing back and forth between writings on war, Nelson Mandela, Millennials, genocide and Hope.  None of them are really going anywhere, so I started writing this.  As I sit here in Copper Mountain, Colorado at a coffee shop trying to write, my little girl sits next to me in her stroller sleeping and carefree.  I have loved these past 6 months with Neyla and it has truly been a blessing not to have to work and be able to spend so much time with my wife, Janae, and our little daughter Neyla.  We took numerous walks on the beach in Chicago and countless hikes in the mountains in Colorado.  All three of us have cherished this time together and it is a shame that this is not something that is prioritized in our culture. 

            In Sweden new mothers get up to 420 days off paid at 80% of their salary and full benefits and in Denmark women get 1 year paid at 100% of their wages.  These are countries that clearly have their priorities on their families and find it important for parents to be with their newly born children.  At the other end of the spectrum is the United States that grants a pathetic 12 weeks to new mothers with no benefits, though some states to allow women to claim “disability.”  How sad is that?  There are so many reasons to be proud to be an American, but this is one area that I am ashamed at my government.  Our priorities are way out of balance.  The United States spend $711 billion each year on military spending, that is 41% of all money spent each year by governments around the world on the military expenditures.  We spend more on the military each year than the next 10 countries combined.  I’m not saying that we go the way of Costa Rica and outlaw the military, but this has gotten way out of hand. 

            Our superpower status has gone off the deep end and given us a national ego and arrogance that is extremely unhealthy.  To spend over $770 billion per year trying to find new and better ways to efficiently kill people and spending $0 on helping parents raise their children through those all important early years is a social sin if I’ve ever seen it.  We have let our wealth and power go to our head and created yearly spending that is unsustainable and ridiculous.   Everyone in our country knows that government spending has to decrease, but the problem is that nobody seems to want to cut anything.  This is not necessarily a political failure in my view, but endemic of a cultural flaw.  We are seemingly ok with the government spending what it spends on the military and corporate welfare, but the government shouldn’t help our families become stronger.  We were ok with spending $6-$8 billion a month on a War in Iraq that has had no victor and no evident reason for even fighting, but we dare not spend more money making it easier for people to support their families. 

           

(The sad truth in the USA today)

  I have given a lot of thought to this over the past 6 months.  My wife took 3 months off after giving birth to our daughter and was paid a fraction of her salary from the state of New York for “disability leave.”  Any company that does not take it upon themselves to pay for maternity leave for a new mother for at least 3 months should be ashamed of themselves.  This is exactly why we can’t leave this up to the free market, but we should have a national law, like every other developed country, that mandates that women must receive a large portion of their salary and full benefits when they go on leave.  Furthermore, if we want to be a family friendly country, then we ought to give men full paid leave as well for at least 2 months to assist while their wife/partner is recovering from a traumatic medical procedure. 

            After my experiences of the last 6 months I have no idea why the United States of America is lagging so far behind on this critical issue.  I’m not sure if there is just no political will or if it is our ridiculous reliance on the private sector and capitalism to make bad cultural and moral decisions for our country.  Why do we continue to have blind faith in a system that has created such a discrepancy in our government policies?  I’m not advocating getting rid of a free market system, but I am saying that we should make sure that our system in simpatico with our morals and ethics.  What do you think?  Should we have a national policy giving paid time off for mothers and fathers?  

Wisdom of Jesus, Confucius and Gandhi

Things just work themselves out if you let them.  A major disease in our culture is pride.  People think that their “hard work” and “effort” is to thank for their good fortune, but there are factors responsible well out of our control.  Many want to control the uncontrollable and this leads to stressful days and sleepless nights.  I attempt to avoid this as much as possible and I feel like I have been rather successful in this.  Our culture may think of me as lazy or not motivated, but in fact it is just that I realize my limitations and trust things will work out.  If there is something you can do solve a problem, then do it.  If not, then nothing you do, especially stress, will solve it.  Typically in the West it seems that people think that they and others can do a lot more than they actually can.  (This is a paraphrase of what Confucius taught)

 

            Our culture is desperately lacking in wisdom.  I teach History and my favorite quote is from historian Jakob Burkhardt, “We do not study history to be smarter next time, but to be wiser forever.”  We do not study people like Confucius, Jesus and Gandhi enough.  These men were wise.  They knew that to be human, and a good human at that, was much more significant than gold or silver. They knew the limitations of man, but also the great power that we have to collectively make this a world in which we could all hope.  These men sought wisdom and taught its values.  Our country has sadly bought into the myth that what’s in your bank account is worth more than knowledge, soul and love.  It’s not that we don’t value these things, it’s that we de-prioritize them in an effort to attain power and wealth.  I wonder what our world would look like if we could somehow rearrange the priorities in society and individuals. 

            All major changes start with individual action, but swimming against a tsunami is impossible.  We need more than just a few dedicated individuals; we need wholesale change in our communities and world.  How does that happen?  I don’t mean to sound like a total downer and cynic, but I’m not sure it can.  People have tried, with mixed results at best. 

            About 1/3 of the world and much of the West claim in one way or another to be a follower of a man who lived on Earth 2000 years ago and claimed to be God.  He was Jesus of Nazareth, I’m sure you’ve heard of him.  He lived in what we call Israel today, which at the time was controlled by the Roman Empire.  His message was wise , but it was amazingly counter-cultural for his time.  Roman culture at this time was very self-indulgent, materialistic, militaristic and proud.  Sound familiar?  He told people that they should not kill their enemies, but pray for them.  He told people that if they were hit in one cheek, they should turn the other to be hit as well.  He said it was the duty of people to care for those that needed care the most.  He said that we should look after the widows, orphaned and imprisoned.  He said that you should never worry, especially about money.  He said that we should never judge others and worry about our flawed actions first and help those who need our help. 

These are very difficult things to put into practice for any human being, but it seems the worst part is that very often we don’t even attempt to do these things.  It seems our culture and world are very much the opposite of what the wisest men ever to live actually thought our world could and should be like.  It seems that we have given up on the possibility to make our world wise and given into economic data, political infighting and unbending ideology.  The irony is that if we emphasized wisdom more in our culture, daily lives and educational systems our economy, political system and irrational beliefs would all work themselves out naturally.  One can’t solve economic problems, political crisis or seek truth without seeking wisdom first.  Our priorities are backwards and the callous way at which we treat those who are different from us shouldn’t shock us.  We love those closest to us but do not worry about those that exist far away.  We typically see them as victims of their own lack of success and fail to ever see our role in creating dictatorship, hardship and poverty across the globe. 

I’m looking for new ways and ideas to get our culture and society to reprioritize wisdom that will lead to more value on wisdom for the sake of bettering all of our situations and not lead us down the dangerous path that we have chosen of rugged individualism, which has led our society to be extraordinarily wealthy and powerful, but empty of wisdom.  Gandhi encouraged people by emphasizing individual action that would better the community.  Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  I couldn’t possibly agree more, but how can we then swim against that tsunami of self-indulgence, pride and greed and create a more empathetic and wise society.  Any thoughts on how this change could be achieved?