Keeping the BP Disaster in Perspective

I was watching the news recently, listening to several stations continue to report on the BP oil-spill-disaster, showing countless pictures of oil covered critters, and diagrams with plums of oil filling up most of the gulf. Reporters over and over indicated that this event was the worst industrial disaster the world had ever seen. Reactions from many have been to consider boycotting BP filling stations, and donating money/time to the efforts to cleanup the animals, and the coast affected by the tragedy. Enraged by the greed of BP Execs and many engineers who “overlooked” certain warning signs focusing on a bottom line profit, many are calling for the BP execs to be tried in court, and held responsible for their actions. But is this really the worst case of greed and negligence the world has ever seen? Are these BP teams who are seeking profit really guilty of the worst case of disaster capitalism the world has seen?

In December of 1984 a Union Carbide (now owned by Dow Chemical) pesticide plant exploded in Bhopal killing over 5,000 people, and leaving over 120,000 others with a need for lifelong care. After the disaster, Union Carbide settled with the Indian government for $470 million….$350 million of which was the insurance sum…meaning that most of the victims got less than $1000 dollars each. When Dow purchased Union Carbide in 2001, there was finally hope that victims from the Bhopal incident when Dow announced that it would promptly “compensate victims of Union Carbide’s past negligence”. Dow promptly paid over $2 billion to… 14 asbestos plaintiffs in Texas, doing nothing for the victims who were continuing to suffer in Bhopal. Worse still, some 25 years AFTER the incident, some 390 tons of toxic chemicals abandoned at the UC plant CONTINUE to leak into the groundwater of the region affecting thousands of residents that depend on it. Not only was the area not cleaned up, and not only were the victims not taken care of, but the incident has continued to affect generations beyond the explosion due to the lack of concern for taking care of the area.

The BP incident in the gulf is terrible. The beauty and wildlife of that region have been destroyed, and may likely be affected for several generations to come…but looking at the numbers from the explosion itself, of the 126 oil workers who were on board the BP oil rig… 11 people went missing, and an additional 8 were critically injured. So well say that 19 people were DIRECTLY affected from the explosion of the rig… that is .000152% of the number of people who were affected by what happened in Bhopal.

A valid argument would say that as of now, we cant tell definitely how many people may be impacted by eating fish from the contaminated area, or drinking water from that area in the gulf. Very true. It’s also very difficult to compare the disasters based on the value of human life alone, when so many animals, and so much of the ocean has been destroyed by this disaster. But this is also not the first time we have seen greed take precedence over the value of the environment, and especially over the value of human lives. I don’t write all of this to say, “Get over the BP thing” or to try to say it isn’t that bad. I hate that animals are getting sick, I hate that the once beautiful coastline is being destroyed, and I hate that oil continues to leak into the ocean. I am saying that I believe we need some perspective on what is going on here, and we need to recognize that we have the opportunity to do something about it. Daily we have the opportunity to cast our vote for corporate accountability, greed, and/or negligence. With every dollar you spend, you are casting your vote…buying from a company that has ethical standards, and supporting what they do. BP is obviously not the first company to ever cut corners to lower costs and increase profits at the cost of the environment and human lives. Many of the products we purchase every day are made in less than savory environments for people working for well under what we would consider a fair days wage.

Should BP be held accountable for what went on? Definitely, but hopefully this will also serve as a wakeup call that above huge profits, the preservation of human lives, and the care for the environment deserve a value on a company’s spreadsheet. So vote. Do your homework; try buying a product that might be slightly more expensive if you recognize that the company’s values are in line with your own. Don’t let BP off the hook, we can’t let this be another Bhopal…Encourage social and environmental responsibility with the way you spend your $$.

Never Ending Pong

As anyone who has read more than one of my blog entries may realize, I don’t exactly paint the most attractive picture of myself on here. I mention how I can be materialistic, I that I ‘might’ have a slight problem always buying, wearing, coordinating lots of different shoes and watches, and I mentioned that as a young white male, I listen to quite a bit of hip-hop music even though I’m a Christian and work in IT. I make myself sound like a real catch and this entry is no exception… To add to my list of extremely desirable qualities, I admit that I play(ed) a lot of video games growing up. While I did surprisingly well in High School and College, I easily admit that I spent more time playing Halo than I did studying on any given year…especially my Junior and Senior years of college. Something about belittling a 12 year old boy after beating him in a taxing round of Halo- slayer via my Xbox live headset never seems to quite get old; an exigent task, but someone has to build up and break down the leaders of tomorrow. As a videogame connoisseur, I have played from the newest systems and games, all the way back to the originals on Atari like the fine game of pong. So somewhere between getting my first Nintendo before I attended first grade, and mastering online multiplayer games like Halo through college, I became quite practiced at beating people at video games, and then ruthlessly rubbing their faces in it afterward…And at the same time when/if I lost, I would be the first person to throw my controller and leave the room/be mad at the person who rubbed it in my face the exact same way. Exactly what the call of Christ is for men right? No?

At first glance, the call of a Christian seems pretty simple and straight forward; yet when digging a little deeper, unfortunately things don’t pan out as simple as they seem. When asked by the Pharisees for the greatest commandment in Matthew 22:36, Jesus replied “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ‘This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself”. So, loving God…doesn’t seem so difficult right? He made me, He gave me everything I have, He sent His Son to die for me…He seems like a pretty logical guy to love. Loving other people? That’s not so bad either right? I love my family, I love my friends, I love the people I work with, so that’s not that bad either right? And sure, I occasionally love people who are having a hard time, and I love orphans because they don’t have anything, and I love poor people from other countries, and that seems all fine as well because I have very little contact with those type of people, so it’s easy for me to say that I love them. What about the person that has hurt me though? What about the person whom I trusted with my heart and they let me down? What about that guy/girl that I let into my life who left me? What about the person who sits across from me at work who was talking about me? Where does Jesus mention the clause that I don’t have to love them in the Bible? He does doesn’t he? No? So by ‘neighbor’ he really meant EVERYONE?

Something that God has really put on my heart recently is the idea of forgiveness. I am the first person who is willing to accept forgiveness, either from God, or from other people when I have done something wrong, yet I am also the first person to hold on to a grudge and not let someone go when they have done something to wrong me. I don’t think I am the only one who is like that. We like that feeling right? Letting someone else feel how we’ve felt after doing something dumb. Letting them suffer a little bit like we suffered, while hanging on to that “you owe me” feeling. Colossians 3:13 says “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” So I feel like I am at a place where God is showing me that in continuing to grow in His image, I need to learn how to forgive others, the way that He has forgiven me.

In thinking about my reactions to being hurt, and how others have treated me when I have hurt them, I believe we generally respond to hurt in one of 4 ways. 1) We give it back – this is the easiest and most common way for us to deal with our pain. This is revenge. This is where we say, with regards to our hurt and pain, “I don’t want to live this, so I will do ________ to give it back to them”. We pass it back; you hurt me, so I will hurt you back, probably a little worse than you hurt me just to make sure you feel it. Ever play the game of pong growing up? The white bar hits the little white ball over to the other white bar, and the ball keeps bouncing back and forth. Revenge is relational pong. Revenge is hitting the ball back, but banking it against the wall to put a little English on it just to make sure it sneaks bye their white bar. Revenge is saying “God, I don’t fully trust you to deal with this, so I’m going to do this my way, and I’m going to make sure it makes up for what they did to me.” 2) We pass it around – The second way we can choose to deal with our hurt and our pain is to pass it around to those who live among us. This includes other friends, family members, children, employees, roommates, etc. Someone hurt us, and maybe because of our position (employee to boss or member to organization) or our situation, rather than throwing our hurt back at the person who caused the pain, we choose to spread that pain around to those who come in contact with us. This reaction to hurt is normally inadvertent. We don’t normally choose to take our frustrations and our hurt out on our families and friends, but sometimes we find that in those situations where we don’t/can’t strike back, we spread the pain out on those who are close to us. 3) We carry it – I think our third option for dealing with hurt and pain is to carry it. Load it up, and add to the emotional baggage that we may already be dealing with. “I don’t choose to strike back or I may not feel like I am in a position to hurt that person back, so instead I will just carry the pain”. We bottle it up, we don’t let it show, and we keep on going. This on the outside may seem like a somewhat healthy reaction to the hurt or the pain, but on the inside, it is tearing us apart. We dwell on it; we continue to think about what was done to us, and in some situations, that pain and that hurt can consume us. 4) We forgive – The final response to hurt dished out by someone else is for us to forgive the person that has wronged us.  Forgiveness means refusing to make them pay for what they did; refusing to take control of making things “even”, and turning that hurt, and that pain over to God. With forgiveness, you are absorbing the debt. You own it….and it hurts. It can hurt terribly. Taking the cost of that pain, the price of that hurt on to you instead of taking it out on the other person. Surrendering our right to get even, and taking a step of faith that through that pain, and through that hurt, that God will come through. Do I trust God enough to handle this, rather than me making things even in my sight? Forgiveness is the opposite of relational pong. Forgiveness is taking your hand off the joystick and saying “I’m not going to get caught up in this; I’m not going to be a part of this cycle anymore”

Through forgiveness I believe that we are experiencing in full what God has for us. When we forgive, we turn things over to God’s hands, and we let him be in control. We acknowledge that “getting them back”, is not love, and not how we experience Christ in our lives. Forgiveness also allows us to grow. The full redeeming love of God allows us to see those we have forgiven as well as ourselves in a different way. That hurt, and that heartache can either destroy us, or transform us…but it will never leave us the same. I believe that as we begin to allow God to intervene in our pain, and as we begin to forgive others, he begins to change our hearts. In that process of forgiveness, we are transformed. Where we used to see ourselves as victims, we start to see ourselves through the eyes of Christ. Our hearts are changed, our views are change, and we don’t have to live like victims anymore. Where we used to see those who hurt us as evil, we see them as broken people, living in a broken world just like us. Romans 12:2 asks us to be living sacrifices to the Lord and speaks to this point; “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Rather than passing it on, or spreading it out (the ways of the world – passing it back/on just like everyone else), by forgiving others we are transformed by the renewing love of our Savior who wants the best for us. May we not miss out on the fullness of life that God has for us by getting involved in the never ending battles of relational pong. May we be constantly renewed and built up in our pursuit of our Savior as we seek to live and love like Him in our relationships. May we be transformed and take the path that says “I can’t fix it, I cant make it better, so I give it to You Lord and asking for your healing”…and may we not yell profanities at 12 year old boys who are better than us in video games, because who knows? They may choose to pass it along and yell at my kids one day.

Where Im At

To be completely honest, I have had a crippling couple weeks. Things have just not gone my way recently. By reading my most recent entries, its clear that things have gone in a direction I wouldn’t have really guessed. Its weird too, because normally things are kind of mellow for me, and I lead a pretty laid back life. And even though I have been pretty bummed about a lot of what’s going on, I’m not mad about it. It happened for a reason, that reason, im still trying to figure out. I honestly believe that a lot of times God will use situations in our lives, as well as circumstances to bring us closer to him. To strip us down, and make us rely on him alone. He’s a jealous God, he doesn’t do well when we start to worship other things. Fortunately hes also loving, and rather than just ditching us for ditching him, he still chases after us, and he is still there for us when we screw things up and have to come back with our head down. I don’t have clarity on all of it yet. Ill be honest. I’m not sure where all of this is going, but I really felt like I needed to take the time, and do some reading and writing tonight to get some things off my chest. I normally have an idea behind where I am going to take each post that I write, and tonight when I started to do that it just didn’t feel right, it felt forced. So I decided I would just start writing and see where things took me. I pray that in this time in my life, where I find myself at the end of my own means, that God would take control, and lead and direct my paths. Revealing to me His desires for my life, and displaying His glorious excellencies through me.

 

I end with a piece of Gold; a few lines from the song “Split-Screen Sadness” by John Mayer. It seems to amazingly capture my mood recently.

 

“Cause I can’t wait to figure out what’s wrong with me

So I can say this is the way that I used to be

There’s no substitute for time”

Patience is a Virtue

After two more run-ins with the said hot-tub, I finally figured out that the cause of my problems was not because of a lack of alignment of the stars, or my dis-favor in the eyes of God…it turns out you turn the hot on by pressing the button once and turn the hot tub off by pressing the button again. Once you press it, you have to give it 30 seconds or so to actually see any bubbles and another 20 to get started. When you just keep pressing it, you are just turning it on and off. I guess I was expecting to see some results immediatly; which led me to realize…there is a reason why God let’s me screw things up.
This lack of patience has an obvious role in my life. I work in computers, so if I make a programming change or install a hardware component, I expect those changes to take place immediately. That’s fine for computers, it’s not always fine for my spiritual life. Unfortunately I think I might have a slight control problem in some things. Not that I have to be in charge, but I need to be in control, so that I’m the one setting the schedule and things happen on my terms. If I pray a couple nights in a row, I should be able to pretty much hear God audibly, and if I can’t, I impatiently try something else. The same goes with the way I deal with people. I’m still very young in my career, and while I want to be taken seriously even though I’m young, I should never be talking down to people or putting the blame on others all the time to make myself look good. Instead I need to be honest, and dilligent to earn their respect.
We live in a society where the best thing is to get what we want and get it now, and I am one of the most guilty of that. I pray that I would learn patience and perserverence that can be applied to every area of my life.

The hot tub that made things rough for me. Farfield Inn, San Jose, CA

The Weight of it All

I have to admit, 1 year ago I would have never guessed that I am where I am now, doing what I am doing. I travel around the country, teaching system administrators and developers how to work with InputAccel Image capture software. Every little boy’s “When I grow up…” dream. I have to admit, the transition from college to the “real world” was not an easy one. It would have been nice to have almost like a mentor during the whole thing you know? Someone who I could ask when I had stupid questions about the whole life change. No such luck, I guess it ended up being a good thing though, because I ended up having to figure out a lot of stuff on my own. How much money should I be saving? What on earth kind of healthcare plan should I be signing up for? 401k? I don’t get it till I’m How old??? It’s a big difference. In college you just kind of show up, go to class, and play a lot of Halo in between. Now I have to actually go to work everyday, and its not like skipping a class if I just randomly forget to show up.

 

That being said, I wanted to write in summing up a few of the keys that I have learned that helped to make my transition a little more bearable. Even if only one person gets some benefit from this, then I guess it was worth my time during the long flight back from the East Coast.

 

1. Turns out saving money IS sort of a big deal. No matter what you earn right out of college, it’s most likely a lot more than you were making while attending school. Its weird at first to suddenly have money to buy things you couldn’t really afford in school; likewise it is also very easy to go off the deep end and just buy everything in sight. My #1 suggestion for preparing for your post college life is to at least try to structure our some type of budget. I know it seems impossible since I never really knew how much it would be for bills, and how much I would expect to spend on gas and everything like that, but again, this is just a basic structure. This can help you plan out how much you can afford to start paying back on your student loans, and also give you some idea of what kind of salary you realistically would need to live. I strongly suggest trying to live on the frugal side. Lots of hidden expenses can come up that you didn’t expect (car repairs, getting cable, buying new furniture), and it is MUCH easier to adjust to having more money if you life kind of like you did in college. If you come out and start trying to make it rain all the time, you will most likely have to tone down your lifestyle at some point which will be much more difficult than being able to spend a little extra. (note: rain- (verb) to make money fall everywhere as if it was falling from the sky). I know all of that is kind of vague, I just wanted someone to tell me straight up “ you need to save $X per paycheck and you should be good” unfortunately that is going to be different for everyone. My suggestion would be to take advantage of the company matching 401k (up to company matching max) and stock options if they are available. This is the closest thing there is to free money, so not taking it is pretty dumb. Yea you don’t get it till you are an old man, but its going to be a lot easier to start it out of college, than to scramble once you are 40 to get one started and still expect to retire at all. Plus, once the are already out of your paycheck for a couple iterations, you hardly notice you are still contributing. As for the saving on your own, I try to put away %20 of what I take home towards long term savings, and then the rest I kind of split up between my monthly expenses, and just throwing it in the bank.

 

1. Work will be overwhelming, that’s just all there is to it. If its not, you probably got a job that was below your potential. This was a huge thing for me. Like I said, my job is to be a trainer….so I always felt like I had to know absolutely everything there was about any possible topic with our software. Quite an overwhelming task in itself. Beyond that, I have trained people who have been working with our software for over 10 years! (Note: 10 years ago I was 14 and probably still thought I had a shot at making in the NBA and marrying Jennifer Aniston). So, not matter what your job, we’ve established it will most likely become overwhelming at some point; what’s really important here is how you deal with it. Some people get overwhelmed and just quit. Those are the people who end up living with lots of regrets in their lives. Other people become overwhelmed, and try to hide behind things. Some look to alcohol to allow them to hide from their problems, others turn to the opposite sex so they can at least control some area of their lives, while still others just try to fake their way through it and hope that no one finds them out. For me, this was a difficult one. At a certain point, I just came to the end of myself. I had tried faking it, I had tried just not thinking about it and hoping it would go away, but at a certain point, I just had to deal with the issue head on. I saw God do some amazing things in my life at this point. Once I had stopped kicking, stopped flailing my arms and trying anything else, I had to just come to him with my tail between my legs and admit that I could do it alone. Why I didn’t do this from the get go, I’m not sure. Pride got in the way and I just tried to deal with things and not appear weak. God wants to be the God of your work, the God of your money, the God of your relationships, and the God of your life, not just the God of your eternity. I had to ask myself “Would I accept life the way it was, or would I escape, pretend, numb, or run?” That’s life, things will not always come as easily as they did in High School and College. Face them, don’t hide…you’ll find a life that is so much more fulfilling than any of the other outlets or options.

 

1. People still care about you, and still need you even if you don’t live as close to them as you once did. Don’t completely ditch your friends and family just because you think you are a big shot and have moved out. They still need/want you in their lives and you need/want them the same. I still call a lot of my friends from college/high school just to see how things are doing, and try to encourage them. The main key I’ve learned here is be more than just someone who calls to talk about themselves. God gave you two ears and only one mouth for a reason. Call/email to encourage others and be engaged in what they are doing, not just waiting for your turn to talk about your life again. No one wants to hear from that guy who calls just to talk about what he did that day or the awesome girl he met/things he bought. I want to call people and genuinely be happy to hear that something has gone right for them. I always want all my friends to succeed and always try to do whatever I can to help them if possible. That doesn’t make me a big person, or even mean that I always get this one right, but I’m still trying to work on it.

 

So I guess in looking at this list, these should be kind of all obvious things that maybe I just forgot to pick up earlier in life. Or its just maturity….yuck.

 

 

 

 

 

My Comfort Zone

Do you have dreams that remain unfulfilled in your life? I know I do. There is tons of stuff I want to do before I die, and yet some days I don’t feel like I am getting closer to conquering those dreams. I still would like to play in the NBA, buy a moped, make some girl the happiest/unluckiest/unhappiest bride in the world, box a live kangaroo in front of my friends, have a positive influence on someone else so much that I can somehow save them from something terrible, surprise my dad some exotic sports car I bought for him, own a spider monkey, have an incredibly intimate relationship with God, see an NBA game in every arena around the nation etc. Some of those dreams are somewhat unlikely and some I think are very illegal. Some however are very attainable; they just have yet to be done. What is keeping me from completing those dreams that ARE feasible?

I think I am guilty of sometimes becoming too comfortable. I know a lot of people would think the exact opposite of me, but I think I can be too comfortable at times. Granted, I am the guy who lived in France for 3 months, and the guy who moved out to California when I knew absolutely no one, but I think even still I am guilty of becoming too comfortable in my life. I get satisfied with the ordinary, everyday and almost give up on pursuing some dreams. They seem too hard, or they seem like something that would take too much time or effort. Realistically speaking some may be too hard, and that requires a thorough evaluation. NBA players work a lifetime to get where they are, so realistically at 5’10” and 155lbs, no matter how much I work, I just wont be able to make it. Check. But being able to help someone from falling into some trap that I fell into, or being able to positively influence the lives around me is definitely attainable.

I need to step out of the comfortable, and into the uncertain. Not that I need to give up my house/job/bicycle/all my money to pursue these things, but I can start with just making a small change in my daily activities to see the change it has on my life. As I begin to see the result of these small changes, I will be able to make bigger changes and begin pursuing the things I really desire. And maybe that means NOT taking that new job, but making the one you have work, or maybe that means NOT breaking yourself out of a relationship, but fixing the one you have.

I believe that as we all start to take small changes out of our comfort zones for the purpose of positive change, we will start to see our own dreams become a reality. We cannot expect the outcome to be different, when the input is the exact same thing it always has been.