Selfless vs Selfish Love June 16, 2008

So I just finished re-reading one of my favorite books, Till We Have Faces.  It’s a wonderful retelling of the ancient Cupid and Psyche myth.  C.S. Lewis took that myth and started with one important change to the plot.  With that one change he added so much more depth and meaning to the myth.  And then delivered it so well… in my opinion.

The original myth goes something like this:

There were three sisters, the youngest was the most beautiful girl anyone had ever seen.  So beautiful that a goddess was jealous and had her offered to the beasts on a mountain.  That goddess sends her son, Cupid, to her in the mountains and Cupid sees her and falls in love.  So Cupid takes her to a secret palace and fulfills her every dream.  But, he refuses to let her see his face or know who he is, because his mother is still full of jealousy and hatred towards her.  Her two sisters vist her at the palace and feast on amazing food.  They get filled with jealousy and convince her to use a lantern at night while he sleeps to see who he really is… and a knife to kill him when she realizes he’s a monster.  She turns on the lamp that night and sees how beautiful and amazing Cupid is, and wakes him.  So she gets sent in to exile and the sisters die.

C.S. Lewis’ twist to the story is that his sisters can’t see the palace.  They can’t taste the food or drink the wine.  So the older of the two sisters convinces herself that Psyche is mad, loopy, lost her marbles.  And that some thing or some one is taking advantage of her.  So she gives her the lantern with good intentions.

So now, instead of a story about jealousy and trust… it’s now a complicated and emotional story about faith, and different kinds of love.  A very selfish love is torn apart and examined layer by layer.  Until it’s fully exposed and can then be repaired to a much healthier love.

A 100% selfless love would be amazing.  I don’t know if I could honosetly claim to have ever experienced it.  I think most love people talk about is a mix of selfless and selfish.  The love fueled with jealousy and rage being more selfish.  So, as all good books do, it made me reflect on my life and experience with love.

I admit, I’m a bit of a hopeless romantic.  However, I don’t believe in love at first sight or that there’s one “soul mate” for everyone.  But I’m a sucker for love stories… the intese desire and pasion in Romeo and Juliet.  The extreme examples of selfless love in A Tale of Two Cities.  When Harry Met Sally… two friends slowly falling head over heals for each other.

I clearly remember my first thoughts on love.  It was quite selfish.  The feelings I was filled with most of the time were dreadful.  I was filled with jealousy and doubt.  “Does she like me as much as I like her?”  “She’s acting funny today, am I going to lose her?”  “Why’s she talking with that other guy so much… and she’s laughing a lot…”

From there I tried a more “Romeo and Juliet” approach.  Full of passion and staring and crooning.  That did not go over well.

After that I gave up.  I realized I had no idea what I was doing or what I wanted.  (It’s true, I do have a problem with over analyzing everything).  So… I became the only teenager I knew who wasn’t constantly thinking and worrying about who my next girlfriend should be.  And that is when I first experienced a more selfless love.  It was awkward and funny and ultimately I ruined it through over thinking.  But the thing is… it didn’t matter.  She was happy.  She moved on.  We stayed friends.  My love changed and I moved on too.  I didn’t have those horrible feelings of needing to be in control and needing her to be mine.  I just wanted her to be happy.

So time passed and my life moved on and I tried to keep the same outlook on dating and love.  I met another girl who proved to be a great friend and made me smile.  It was weird though, because she was several states away from me.  At the same time I met another girl in person who was also a great friend.  Weirdness and confusion ensued, but both of them are quite happy now.

And then, I met Jillian.  A purely friendship only relationship for a quite a while.  I never met another person that I’ve ever felt more comfortable with.  I could expose all my secrets and not fear judgement or mocking.   I fell in love.  We had a ton of good times togther and life felt incomplete if I couldn’t share it with her.  And I never worried about what she thought.  I spent no time wondering “what if she doesn’t like me?” or “why did she say it like that? does she not like me now?”…  I was filled with trust and respect for her.  And I still am today.

There was a level of comfort with her so unlike a comfort I had ever experienced.  I didn’t feel compelled to change who I was to impress.  I could be myself, 100%.  No compromise.

I don’t think my love for Jillian is 100% selfless, I’m sure I’d be hurt if she found hapiness greater than what she has with me.  But it’s the closest I’ve ever been.

And then we had kids.  And I was introduced to the most selfless love I’ve ever experienced.  And what’s funny is that the love that I dreampt of when I was growing up… the “hopeless romanitc” in me that was searching for such a strong, eath shattering, powerful love… was finally realized in an amazing way.  At one of the first “Daddy Daughter” dances that I went to with Janelle, her face lit up with such pure hapiness and joy when in walked “Princess Aurora” to the dance hall that I immediately started crying out of my own hapiness for seeing her so happy.

So, the more pure and true the love, the more selfless the love.  Jealousy and worry and mystery and secrets… to me… those are all impurities involved to some degree in all forms of love.  A true love will thrive and live  no matter what the circumstances, as long as the one you love is happy.

Give yourself to the one you love.  Don’t expect to get the one you love in return.

Happy Father’s Day To Me June 15, 2008

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From the my kids are still cuter than yours file… June 4, 2008

Janelle + Fairy wings  + Denver Botanic Gardens.

Going lazy green May 26, 2008

While we do believe in conserving resources and look up to people who truly do go “green” in large ways…  The fact is that going “green” is most of the time expensive.  Expensive in either time and/or money and/or effort.  We’ve recently made some changes in our lifestyle that have made our lives greener… and more convenient.

Ditch the paper towels

We actually did this on accident.  We normally notice when we’re about to run out of paper towels and make sure to pick up another giant cube of them before that happens.  The last time we had them though, I think the kids got to them or something, they went down fast.  So there we were with stuff to clean and no paper towels…  We had two babies with reflux, so we have collected an unhealthy number of cheap burp cloths.  Problem solved.  We haven’t bought paper towels in about 2 months now.  We were lucky though and already had invested in an alternate for other reasons.  But cheap burp cloths are easy to find in the baby section of Target or Walmart.

Remove light bulbs

This we also did on accident.  For some reason our entire kitchen is wired with about 25 lightbulbs in various spots.  Turns out we only need about 6.  Seriously, I see no difference in the amount of light in our kitchen with only 6 vs the 25.  We used all the lights for a while, but then they started to burn out.  I’m not sure when they did, because it was hard to notice.  So out of laziness and forgetfulness (too lazy to make a special trip to buy bulbs, too forgetful to remember to buy bulbs while out) we have reduced the amount of light bulbs in our kitchen by over 50%.  I’ve actually read tips about unscrewing every other bulb on the bathrom vanity if you have a line of them.

Reusable shopping bags

This one actually took some minimal effort.  But in the long run it still saves us time and effort.   Most grocery stores sell them at the checkouts now for 99 cents or less.  We found them only and I think got 15 of them for something around 80 cents a piece.

And they rock.

Take the amount of groceries you can fit in paper/plastic bags… and you’ll need half the number of reusable bags for it.  They’re just so much sturdier and spacious.  Just today I bought a 6 pack of pop, a watermelon, a honeydew, grapes, hummus, pita, peanut butter and a pineapple.  TWO BAGS.  Everything was bagged and easy to carry.  Why haven’t these been available all along?  They are FAR superior to paper/plastic!

Paperless billing

I hate sending mail.  I hate buying stamps, keeping stamps, finding stamps, realizing they’re too old and not worth enough, adding extra stamps, making a trip to a mailbox, etc.  So when all of a sudden all the places that want my money either offered online bill pay or over the phone bill pay… I was very happy.  There’s not a single bill that I pay through mail anymore.  All the bills are handled either online or over the phone.  So incredibly easy.  Some companies even offer “paperless” billing options where you get an email bill instead of a snail mail bill.  So then it’s wins all around!

So… while we are far from hippie green.  We have found some ways to be more green.  Ways that are easy for us to follow, with our laziness and short attention spans.  We also try to use public transportation/walk to places when possible.  The kids love public transportaion for some reason.  And here in Colorado it’s easy to heat/cool your home just by opening/closing your windows (at least for us… I’ve heard other people in CO have other experiences).

Going green in some areas has made our lives easier, cheaper, and more pleasant.   Never would have thought that possible.

Us immoral atheists. May 16, 2008

My wife participates on several parenting bulletin boards and sometimes shares the more interesting threads with me.  The other day she let me know that, since we’re atheists, we have no morals.  You evidently need to be Christian to have morals.

So I started to google about some bible passages I remembered from when I was a moral Christian.  And I discovered some differences between my morals and the morals the bible teaches me:

• Slavery.  By slavery I mean: purchase of another human beings life against their will.
  • Bible is pro slavery.  In some cases all descendants of one person who committed a pretty minor offense were forced in to slavery.  Not only is the Bible pro slavery, but it has many rules for slavery.  Such as beating your slaves.  As long as you hold off on your slave beating just enough so that the slave doesn’t die for 2 days, God’s OK with it.
  • I’m anti slavery.  And I’m anti beating anyone at all.  Even if it takes 3 days for them to die.
• Sex
  • The Bible has some weird rules about sex.  Not much of it is actually explicitly laid out.  One story I find interesting is Genesis 38.  In this chapter we learn that Judah marries some girl and has 3 sons.  He arranges a marriage with the first son and a woman, but for some reason God didn’t like him and killed him.  So Judah makes his next son take that woman for his wife and demands kids.  His son has respect for his brother though and “spills his seed on the ground” instead of inside his dead brothers wife.  Well… God will have none of that, so God kills him!  Later on we find that this same woman, who was married to two of Judah’s now dead sons, dresses up like a prostitute and Judah pays her for the goods.  Well… what do you know, Judah gets the ex-wife (a prostitute he paid for) of his two dead sons pregnant.  And…. God kills him?  No.  God’s OK with this.  So what do we learn from this?
    • Unprotected sex with hookers is OK.  God will not kill you.
    • Taking precautions to prevent pregnancy is not OK.  Having sex WITH YOUR WIFE and trying to prevent a pregnancy will piss God off so much he might just kill you.  But… when was the last time you saw God smote someone?  When was the last time you saw God do anything?
  • I say educate and be safe. Sex has many possible consequences and as long as you’re ready to deal with the possible consequences you’re probably ready for sex. Keeping in mind that no birth control/condom is 100% effective. Also unprotected sex with a hooker who is the widow of two of your sons is NOT OK.
• Equality
  • All people are clearly not equal in the bible.  No equal rights for everyone.
  • I believe all people are equal and should therefore have equal rights.  Color of skin, religious beliefs, sexual preference, whatever.  We’re all equal.
• Animal Sacrifices
  • Bible is pro them.  God often request animal sacrifices in the old testament.  He seems to lust for spilled blood and the smell of burnt flesh.  He even goes as far as convincing one of his loyal followers to sacrifice their OWN SON.  Sure, he stops him right before he actually does it, but that doesn’t make it any less of an asshole thing to do.
  • I like eating hamburgers/chicken/steak etc.  I’m not a vegetarian or anything.  But sacrificing an animal in some sort of ancient blood ritual and burning their flesh… yeah.  Not for me.

Now I know that the new testament changes many things.  But remember it’s the same God throughout all of time.  The same God that Christians worship and call loving is this same God that kills individuals for minor infractions, the same God that wipes out entire populations of people, the same God that kills innocent babies in Egypt because of something the Pharaoh did.  So if we’re talking about Morals instilled upon us from the Christian God, you have to look at the whole bible.

And I know that these are not the morals that Christians today stand by.  Well… some of them are.  It’s hard to find a Christian that believes we’re all equal.  I have some wonderful friends that are Christian and I don’t think any less of them.  It’s just that for me it goes against my nature to follow these rules in the bible.  For me I felt more like I was sinning when I tried to follow what the new testament told me.

I’m just nicer than what the bible will allow me to be.

Now, I said,  “than what the bible will allow ME to be”.  Not that I’m nicer than all Christians.  I fought hard throughout college with what I felt the bible told me was right and wrong.  Others have different views on what is literal and what is not.  Or how one passage translates.  Or what is still valid for our modern culture.  You can come to many conclusions about what it means to be a Christian.  For me, the conclusions I have came to, I will never be Christian again.

Guess that brings up the question, “where do morals come from?”  I think it’s just a sense of what’s right and wrong instilled in us to keep order.  Some evolutionary scientists probably have some theories on it.  But if we all had no morals, no feelings, no empathy… we wouldn’t make it very far as a society.

And morals clearly change throughout time.  Which to me is a clear sign that morals are NOT from a divine superior unchanging perfect being.  Slavery used to be moral.  Racism used to be moral.  I know most people consider homosexuality to be immoral.  But some day I bet the majority of the world will accept gay marriage as equal to straight marriage.  Some day homosexuality will be moral.

I like to think that I don’t just follow the masses.  Who knows though, maybe there’s something in my life that I find “morally acceptable” will be so obviously not acceptable to future generations.

______ programming language sucks! May 1, 2008

Fill in the blank.  I promise you it sucks.

PHP sucks.

Perl sucks.

Java sucks.

Ruby sucks.

Ruby on Rails especially sucks.

.NET sucks.

C++ sucks.

Python sucks.

While I do get quite a kick out of picking on my boss’s favorite, perl, I do recognize that each language sucks and each language doesn’t suck.  Personally, you’ll probably never see me start a project in perl, c++ or anything Microsoft only.  Mostly because there’s too big of a learning curve in it for me.  I definitely favor PHP for most projects, but that’s soley because of familiarity.  I could see myself choosing Java/Python/Ruby for some specific task over PHP.  And Ruby on Rails just works in ways my brain refuses to think, it’s like trying to teach myself a new way to breathe.

So my personal favorite is PHP.  I like that I can code up things in a flurry of creativity.  If one night I’m feeling especially inspired I can crank something out fast as a proof of concept.  Unfortunately for me, my interest vastly drops after I prove the concept and the proof of concept code is often used as the real code.  So the ability to code “bad code” in PHP is both a good and a bad thing to me.  I mean… I even wrote TweetWords while mostly drunk.  Even though the code worked and didn’t have any glaring issues… it was ugly and hard to extend and maintain.  That underwent a 75% rewrite to get most of the drunken design out of it and has been being improved weekly by my friend Ben and me.

So I know PHP well, I write a lot of spontaneous crap in it, and PHP is used in many open source web projects.  This is why I tend to lean on it so much.  And everything perl can do PHP can do, which is why I’d never start a project in perl.  And I  understand that some of the reasons why I like PHP are the reasons others hate PHP.  Oh well.

So what is the right language to use?  All of them.

You have to look at your situation and choose the proper language for the job.  Some important factors off the top of my head are:

1. Who is going to be writing it and what are they strong in?
2. How complicated is it?
3. How important is the ability to scale it?

I’ve seen extremely simple concepts implemented with massively complex designs and frameworks.  They took 100 times longer to implement than they should have taken and any modifications to them took extra time too.

I’ve also seen more complicated concepts attempted to be done with too basic designs.  They failed to scale and were a pain to modify and extend.

So pick the language that is right for the situation.  And don’t be afraid to venture outside your comfort zone, you’ll never improve or learn anything new.

And lastly, here’s a handy chart using google and monster data.

Of Black, White and Gray’s. April 22, 2008

I was remembering the other day of the early days of Internet Chat, you know, when it was easy to get a 7 digit ICQ number. I was a High Schooler and a newly born again Christian with a thirst for debate. Back in those days all chat clients had a button to press to find a random person to chat with. When it was 2:00 AM and all my friends were in bed it provided some entertainment.

I really only remember one of the conversations I had with a random person. It was a random middle aged guy from Australia. We got in to talking about life, religion, and growing older. I was of the opinion that I was right, Jesus was awesome, this was good, that was bad, etc. He was of the opinion that, well… I was just a kid and I’d see that as I grew older my vision would change. All the things I saw as black and white (and there were many things I had strong right/wrong opinions on) would become multiple shades of gray. The world is just too complicated to be black and white.

I wish I still had those chat logs. I remember very assertively stating that he was wrong and if anything I’d just discover more details about what was right and what was wrong. If anything the black/white would become sharper, not duller.

So here I am today, with a vision full of multiple shades of gray. Who knew the random ICQ Australian stranger was right? I’m not going to be so foolish again and say this is who I am and who I will be for the rest of my life, and I can’t believe I was ever OK with thinking that I had it all figured out. How could anyone have it all figured out?

When it comes to morals/religion/whatnot… I pretty much go by this logic (although, I don’t expect it to hold true 100%):

1. Does it make you happy?
   1. No? Stop doing it
   2. Yes? Continue
2. Does it hurt anyone or anything else directly or indirectly?
   1. Yes? You should in most circumstances stop doing it then.
   2. No? Continue
3. Does it hurt you?
   1. Permanently? Stop doing it.
   2. Temporarily? Really gotta make a judgment call here to stop or continue yourself.
4. Hey, you found something good, you can most likely go ahead and do it.

For me, being a Christian violated this simple logic. I had an amazing friend my last couple years of college. He was one of the kindest, funniest and smart guys I’ve ever known. He was a Christian too, and he was gay. We developed a strong friendship and I was one of the very few Christians he came out to. I think it was good for him to have me to talk to, I think it ate at him inside.

I did a lot of reading and studying on the subject of gays and what the Bible says about it all. The conclusion I came to was that it was wrong. It’s a sin and you should not do it. But after knowing my friend so well and what he felt and goes through daily… I didn’t understand. How can you not do something that you are? It makes no sense. But I believed every word of the Bible and it had to be the truth.

One night he asked me.. he told me that there was a guy in his life he was crazy about. And there was a girl in his life that liked him. He had a choice he could make. Happiness or “the right thing”. I told him that it was not OK to be with a guy. I told him to try a relationship with the girl. I believed I was doing what was right. Inside me I felt like I was doing the most wrong. Especially the look on his face when his own best friend told him to deny his own happiness.

He did not choose the girl. And we didn’t really talk about those things much any more after that. He knew I lost my faith years later. As far as I know he was a strong Christian till the day he died in 2002. I still wish I could apologize, tell him I was an idiot. I know that he didn’t need me to, but I think I needed me to.

So, the meanest, worst, most wrong thing I have ever done, I did because it’s what God wanted me to do. I did it because I believed the world was black and white, there were very little gray areas.

My kid is cuter than yours.

I know, I just posted pictures of the kids. But I had to post these too. Kincaid, who’s 4, took Jillian outside yesterday because he felt he needed his picture taken. Jillian let him do whatever he wanted and got some great “caid” moments.  Go here to see the full set.

Spring Time in Boulder April 20, 2008

We had quite a nice weekend here in Colorado. We went out to explore some more of Pearl Street in Boulder. Here’s some pics of the kids being cute, oh and flowers.

Of God, love, hate, and apparently Oprah April 15, 2008

Last night I stumbled upon a post on this dear-god website and found the conversation interesting.

The gist of the post is that everything in the world is going so wrong so where in the world is God? It’s very obviously talking to the Christian God, even though it is addressed to Buddha and even Oprah. I know all the typical Christian responses to her questions/complaints, since I was a Christian and even went to a tiny Christian college for 3 years of my life. It’s not so much her complaints that I found interesting, but the responses.

All the Christians are responding with the same basic response: “that’s not God’s fault, that’s sin’s fault. We sin because of free will. Free will is a good thing. God is love, not hate.” Here’s one quote in particular: ‘god’s will is never hatred. in fact the scriptures say that “god is love”.’

It’s that part that caught me: ‘god’s will is NEVER hatred.’ And I think that has a lot to do with the whole losing faith, becoming agnostic, drifting closer and closer every day to atheist. The statement is clearly false. The Old Testament in particular is pretty damning evidence that God’s will does involve hatred.

Instead of looking for examples, I googled some. Now I know, this website is clearly biased and full of crazy anti-christian loonyness, but just use it for the scripture references. Please again, just use it for the references to scripture and what God did in that scripture. Warnings over, here’s the link.

Anyway… those are my late night thoughts while I waited for my oven to finish self-cleaning so I could sleep without worrying about the apartment burning down. As random and jumbled as they may be, my point last night was that God is not just love. God is pretty damn mean and cruel at times and the Bible has plenty of examples of him being mean and cruel.