Scarcity, Identity & Filtered Photos.

So the whole "girl blogger reader" thing seems to have a few requirements that I've noticed. One is a filtered photo of your coffee or tea cup. Cool, I can do that. Here goes. 

Anthropologie cup and woven blanket. Hipster win.

But we're also supposed to post pictures of the covers of the books we're reading apparently. Well I'm gonna lose my hipster cred by admitting that my current read is on my kindle app. You already know what an Ipad looks like. So I'll spare you the pic and just give you my stream of consciousness thoughts on it.

I'm reading Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. Her TedTalks are out of the this world, check them out.

The books is about vulnerability, but she starts by laying a foundation that I would never have connected to vulnerability. 

It starts with scarcity. We define ourselves by a particular attribute, it follows that we must perceive that attribute as scarce in order for the attribute to bestow on us any value. This leads us to feel threatened by others exhibiting anything that is similar to our attribute.

So mind mind jumped over here to how I don’t like the phrase “You can be anything you want to be.” You are not a thing. You are a person. You are not defined by your profession. You cannot engage in any profession you want. You will always, in some way, be limited by circumstances.

But you can choose who you want to be. You don’t have to be limited by other people’s boxes. You can be a Christian Feminist, a Blue Collar Yogi, a Philosopher Farmer. Mutual exclusivity really needs to be rethought. Don’t let anyone tell you that one part of your identity negates another.

We are none of us one thing. We are a mixture of so much. All the things that make up who are matter. They are equally true. Focusing on one is not healthy. Denying is not healthy. We have to understand that we cannot be summed up in sentence, or four letters, or a color, or a status, or google analytics. Those things are not who we are.

We are surrounded by choices. But they aren’t always either/or propositions, even though they are generally put to us that way. So many dichotomies are so fundamentally false. We forget that Truth is not scarce. Two opposite statements can be equally true. Humans are evil. Humans are valuable. You are fucked-up. You are enough, just as you are. You can be more. You will always matter.

We are so worried about becoming what we want to be that we forgot to consider who we want to be. If we want to be people who are brave enough to be vulnerable, people who matter to others, people who show others just how much they matter, we need to take a step back.

You can’t be anything you want. You can be anyone you want. Who do you want to be? Because that person will be who they are whether they’re working in a factory, on a stage, in an office, a hospital, or living in a van down by the river.

Don’t be afraid to be happy. The world tells you not to because you’ll lose whatever happiness you find. Maybe. Dare to be happy anyway. Nothing lasts forever, happiness is no exception. But that means sadness doesn’t last forever. Neither are they mutually exclusive. You can find joy in sadness, and happiness punctuated by grief. The presence of one doesn’t negate the other. 

You won't always be happy, and that's fine. But some happiness is better than avoiding from happiness because you know it's fleeting. That's not brave. And it doesn't keep you from being hurt.

You can be happy. You can be happy with the person you are and the things you do, even there's no one to validate. We are really obsessed with sharing. We can't just enjoy a photo or that witty thing we wrote. We have to share it with the world. This blog is a perfect example. 

Don't get me wrong, sharing is great. It can foster connection, let us know we aren't alone, and open us up to new things we wouldn't otherwise be able to experience. We need to share. But we shouldn't rely on sharing. We rely on others relating to the things we produce to validate ourselves. That is certainly powerful, but shouldn't be the only measuring stick we use. There's nothing wrong with appreciating your work just because it's your work.

There's nothing wrong with working on a project that takes time. Most of us can't really work on long-term projects because we can't immediately share it. We play draw something instead of actually drawing things. I think it's because we can share that immediately, we can get validation immediately. Just my thoughts. Here's a cute kitten dressed like Kermit.

Being a better person: Week 1

I have been doing fairly well at my goal of reading more, watching less crap, and generally being more thoughtful.

I have almost made it through Peter Enn's Inspiration and Incarnation, which is not really my style, but definitely worth the read. This is especially true if you really want to like the Bible, but find it super duper problematic.

I'm trying to read more literature, but have found myself drawn far more blogs at this point. Today's post is based off Rebecca Lujan Loveless' post over here.

She says a lot of powerful things, but what struck a nerve with me is her mention of how poor people are not involved in the discussion about how to alleviate poverty.

Just take at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos for evidence of this. While Davos is defnitely an extreme example, Ms. Lujan Loveless has a point. We don't invite homeless people to the homelessness discussion. We don't invite the single moms working two or three jobs. Sometimes we invite the pretty poor, or the formerly poor, but we sure don't invite the ugly poor.

We can feel sorry for the pretty poor. We can put their faces on our blogs and raise money to get them backpacks and shoes and stuff. I'm not saying this is bad, but it isn't the truth about poverty. We don't talk to the people who frighten us, we don't invite them in.

I think the reason is because they're still broken. We see poverty and poor people as one and the same. We don't invite poor people to tell us how to alleviate poverty, because how could they know, they're poor!

We see them as part of the problem. Only those who have overcome poverty can tell others how to do. Poverty is a problem to be solved. Poor people are a problem to be sovled.

We still see poverty as an individual failing. Some people have better excuses than others, but the fact remains that we don't invite a minimum wage worker to speak on poverty precisely because he or she clearly can't extricate him/herself from the minimum wage job (but they should still be happy to even have a job and just stop complaining already, but that's a post for another time).

Poor people are not a problem to be solved. Poor people are people. Sure, there are some who may have "put themselves in poverty", but there are many rich people who are rich simply by the virtue of being born to the right parents.

Poor people are people. And as long as we consider them to be "other," we can't do a damn thing about poverty.

I have lived on both sides of the poverty. I much prefer the one I'm on now.

I go to walmart and see overweight teenagers in pajams buying mountain dew and cheetos with wic cards and screaming at their children. These are the ugly poor. You can't put their face on a mailer.

They seem so different from me. I made better choices. I see why we don't invite them in. They are different.

But the difference doesn't make it right. I'm idealistic, and I'm throwing that out there to let you know I'm aware of how idealist what I'm about to say sounds: Maybe part of the problem is that no one has ever asked them. Maybe no one has ever valued what they say, so why even try to say something valuable?

I have seen people in Cambodia fall victim to the idea that only outside help matters, and I see it here. It's not because we have social safety net programs. While there are certainly people who abuse them, there are many who use them for the purpose for which they were intdended.

The reason many Cambodians relied on outside assistance was, in my opinion, because every told them they had to. Don't get me wrong, Cambodians certainly went through hell, and have needed outside assistance at various points throughout their history, but from the Colonial to UNTAC periods, they were not treated as people. To the French, they were resources, to the UN, a pawn in a much bigger political game.

I'm not going to talk about personal responsibility and poverty. I'm not going to talk about how systematic injustice impacts poverty. Those are too big for you or I to do anything about on our own. I will say that we can make better choices. We can choose to see the humanity in the people of walmart. We can invite them in. And we can be better for it.