The Computer Lab

Over Spring Break, my laptop crashed. Yes it was my fault, but during that time, someone also stole my bike, which was not my fault. It put me in quite the pickle, though it was more like a gherkin than an actual pickle, tasting it for the first time and realizing it's actually a pretty pleasant experience.

I've been using the various computers around campus in the library and the computer lab, so now, as I type, I am in the company of other young people. And I must say... I like it. A couple nights ago, I was walking across campus and felt an unexpected and overwhelming sense of loneliness. Of course, once I felt it, I chased it out of my head like a bad dream and proceeded to walk to the computer lab, where my college counterparts were busily typing and chatting, working on last-minute essays, putting together procrastinated presentations, and cruising Facebook. And since this whole computer lab/library thing has become somewhat of a nightly ritual at the end of this semester, I found myself yet again in the same environment, this time working on an essay for English, a short manifesto assignment called "This I Believe." I titled it What Ties Us All Together.

Maybe the title spawned from my One Love spirit or just the simple fact that I had been unwittingly surrounding myself with people more frequently than usual over the past month. Either way, I felt inclined to talk about my love of humanity, so in essence, I briefly wrote about what I think makes humanity one big family. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy just typing about it, the voice in my head reading it out loud like a soft whir.

None of us are ever truly alone. If we feel that way, it's because our minds have tricked us into believing it. Yet, technology has brought us closer together and at the same time driven us apart. Ironically, social media has altered the way we connect with one another so dramatically that we forget how closely connected we actually are. It's easy to get lost in the endless status updates and picture posts. It's easy to feel alienated when you're not part of the "activities" happening onscreen before your tired eyes. A whole crowd of people could be "online" but no one talks to one another. Instead, we sit in silence, interacting with one another through Likes and Comments instead of one-on-one communication.

Think about all the contacts in your cell phone. When was the last time you spoke to one-tenth of them? I forget on a daily basis that my family is just a phone call, or for the most part, a twenty minute car ride, away. Where does loneliness fit into this equation? When I really think about it, it doesn't make sense. Why would I ever feel lonely when I: A.) live on a campus filled with people my age, including many of my friends, B.) have the means to instantaneously connect with virtually any of my friends or family anytime, or C.) am rarely within five feet of the nearest human being?

Sometimes, a mind can seem like a bundle of contradictions.

Frustrated Mother Syndrome

"My mom told me that, if I jumped off a bridge, she wouldn't care."

That's how my friend responded when I asked how his forced spur-of-the-moment weekend visitation with his ultra-conservative parents in California went.

By her logic, sending her gay son to straight camp is the ultimate act of love.

But... I thought that if you love someone, you let them make their own decisions. I thought that love was about giving, not getting. Helping, not hurting. Listening, not shouting. Remember that phrase--"If you truly love someone, you'll let them go"?

Everyone has his or her own parameters of what defines this word, but I think society has perverted the meaning of it. And by society, I mean the collective unit--the general population living under the same sky, breathing the same air, and receiving the same messages from major advertisement companies.

Behind this perversion is the commercialization of love. It's nothing new, in terms of mankind's history of existence. I'm simply expounding on some ancient observation made by Plato or someone like him who recognized this phenomenon way before me. Advertising corporations may try to convince you that love is something you can purchase. Religious groups may try to convince you that love is something you can earn. Scientists may also convince you that love is simply a mixture of chemicals in your brain.

If you agree with any of these ideas, I ain't mad atcha.

But if you think about the times in your life when you have felt most loved, you probably felt free, undeserving, and maybe even a little bit spiritual.

I think we'd all agree that love doesn't hold anyone prisoner. That's precisely the paradox presented in the Frustrated Mother Syndrome: A woman who knows her son to be gay but refuses to accept it feels powerless to change him, so she acts out of fear and ignorance (and promotes such fear and ignorance) by administering a punishment and calling it love.

Let me translate:

"I'm sending you to behavioral therapy" means "I think something is fundamentally wrong about you, so much so that you should change it"

And

"I've done all I can do to help you, but if you refuse to change, I won't know what else to do" means "I don't recognize my own insecurities which cause me to feel angry towards you, so I'm going to abandon you in order to ease my own pain"

But a more precise translation might be,

"I blame myself for this quality in you that I loathe, and I'm too afraid to look past it, so I need a period of solitude in order to remember that you are my son and that a mother would give up her life for her child, as well as a moment to gather the strength I need to accept the things I cannot change about you, push past them, and continue loving you no matter what"

At the end of the day, next week, or even ten years from now, what will have actually mattered in your life? Whatever the answer is, THAT is what deserves your energy.

Waging War On Anger

The last thing you want to hear when you're angry is "You need to calm down." I rarely hear that because I'm rarely angry. In place of anger, I feel loneliness. Loneliness is like the bully in elementary school; if you don't address it, it follows you everywhere, forcing you to live under its shadow, but if you face it head on, you begin to understand it and thus grow smart enough to conquer it.

I guess a lot of problems are like that.

When the clouds cluster and cast a shadow on we, the tiny people of Planet Earth, idiosyncrasies modern psychology has dubbed "disorders" begin popping up like premature spring daisies from our hearts and minds. Really, though, it all starts in the mind, in my opinion. From there, the heart follows.

Today I was walking to the cafeteria after my noon class and saw a freshman guy I've seen a thousand times before. I silently noted his handsome features, just like every other time I see him on campus, and continued walking. Then I thought of the guy he's seeing. Then I thought how nice it would be to have a boyfriend.

Then I wondered why I was telling myself a lie like that. I know for a fact it would no sooner increase my livelihood and overall happiness any more than getting a haircut would, which I did last week (and yes, it gave me a little boost). So why do we feel compelled to reach out for comfort and acceptance from others? What makes us so uniquely tied to one another despite how much we may deny the fact?

Then came the shocker.

"What if I took that love I desperately crave and gave it to everyone around me?" I thought to myself. An idea so incredible and simple and beautiful I almost wept from the time it took me to spot freshman guy to walk the fifty steps to the doors of the cafeteria.

It's remarkable how easily our brains can shift their usual modes of operation when we tell them to. When we take conscious control and begin steering them in the right direction, we take control of our lives... our surroundings... our circumstances. We begin to shift from the victim mentality to the victor mentality.

It's almost like refusing to give into temptation. Yeah, yeah, yeah... I want that chocolate bar/new pair of shoes/case of beer, but if I tell myself that there is no longer room for compromise, I won't give in.

I want to wage a war on anger. I want to completely reverse my primal order of self-serving emotions, which as anyone knows is no easy process. The world works in many mysterious ways but also in ways that are embedded in our very own fibers. I am a part of this world, so I must function as an extension of nature. I must give before I receive. I must work in harmony with others. I must view myself as a member of a larger work of art, not an entire self-sustaining galaxy on legs. People inspire me, but it's easy to get lost in inspiration and fail to act on what I've been taught or what I've witnessed. The longer I stand staring at myself in the mirror, the less I remember about what I look like. Because what is knowledge if it goes unused?

Mad Hatter Mad

Time flies when you're having fun. It flies more quickly when you're working hard.

The thing is... I haven't been working hard these past two months. Not as hard as I should have been, anyway. Two months ago, I got knocked down a couple rungs on my Jacob's Ladder of Life Progress when I let myself get too comfortable and consequently got in serious trouble with the law and my school. An impending court arraignment, more money owed in fines, a meeting with the Dean of Students, multiple scheduled drug tests, probation to last the rest of my academic career at OCU, and one family intervention later, I finally realized that it's time to get serious.

But realizations take time to settle in for me. It's a daily struggle. When it comes down to it, I'm my own worst enemy. I can either choose to be strong, stay positive, and keep believing in myself, or I can abandon those ideals and fall victim to the deadly trio of lethargy, apathy, and self-criticism. When I get down in the dumps, I still wear a smile on my face when I'm around the people I love, but it's only a half-smile, masking the pain I hold inside that I think I'm hiding from everyone else, when in reality it's written all over my face for those who are fluent in the language of Luke to read clearly.

I remember talking to my sister after my first DUI charge, when I admitted that I had driven drunk since the arrest. She laid it out plain and simple for me: "You obviously haven't learned your lesson, then, Luke." She was right. I hadn't. I got a second one less than a month later.

It hurts to be honest with yourself when you're trying to make up for past mistakes, but I've discovered that the only way to get better is to be brutally honest with yourself as well as with those around you, because they're the ones who most deserve the truth. The hardest part about recovery is remembering how far you've come while still remembering how far you have to go. It's all part of this tricky balancing act we call life.

Strangely, I feel more like my high school self now than ever before since I've been in college: constantly sulking, wearing out my social mask, and running around in circles of self-pity. Such things don't allow creativity to flourish. They don't foster peace. They don't celebrate life and anticipate the wonder of change. They don't let you be truly happy.

I have to go now. My brain is telling me to stop looking back and start looking forward.

That way, I don't have to think about being happy. I just am.

Scientific Creatures

This entry is inspired by an e-mail sent to OCU upperclassmen by our academic adviser. She asked us to explain, in a short 15-20 sec video response form, what we wish we had known as freshmen, so she can, in turn, show the responses to the incoming music students at their freshman orientation.

Great idea, Rachel. I applaud this endeavor toward helping the freshmen get the most from their college experience. I think it's plainly optimistic, but I'd be a plain hypocrite to label it futile.

Getting back to the question...

I haven't made my video yet because I'm still formulating a compelling response in my head.

"What do I know now that I would have wanted to know as a freshman?"

Well I'm only a junior. In fact, I haven't even got through my first full day as a junior yet. I'd say I'm more of a recovering sophomore. Still, my first two years of college taught me MANY things about myself, about others, and more importantly, about life.

Hindsight's 20/20, no doubt. Anyone can tell a freshman that. I could talk for days about what I wish I had known beforehand or what I wish someone would've told me. I could try and draw inspiration from all my past mistakes--my broken promises, drunken hookups, wasted time, wasted money, wasted behavior, failed endeavors, general pissed-off-edness, shallow relationships, and overall not-so-smart life choices, but that would be pointless.

I think back to high school, before I had ever touched a drop of alcohol, before the thought of smoking anything had ever crossed my mind, sitting next to my best friend in a dark auditorium full of half-asleep teenagers watching a 15-minute tearjerker about the dangers of drunk driving, and I can remember how surprisingly unaffected I was.

Out of fear, authority figures invest so much time and energy into warning their future leaders of America that they hardly give them time to experience life in all its terrifying glory. No parent wants to see their child ruin his/her life because of one bad decision. I get that. But doesn't it stand to reason that, no matter how difficult this may be for a parent (or any other authority figure) to accept, the most effective way for an individual to learn is through trial and error? Let's be honest, 99% of the time, kids are going to do what they want regardless of what their parents tell them. The same is true for freshmen in college. It's like we're all born with this inner antagonistic drive to behave completely opposite of how we're told we should. We're all rebels at heart.

The most valuable piece of advice I may have received to-date was from a girl named Katie, who was a senior musical theater major when I was a freshman. I accompanied a couple of her senior recital rehearsals, and as a thank-you for my piano playing, she gave me a handwritten card with a beautiful nugget of wisdom inside:

"Cherish your time in college, because it will fly by before you know it."

I'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist. This simple adage applies to more than just college. Sometimes I feel like replacing "in college" with "on Earth" just to better integrate the idea into my daily thinking. Because it's true. While I've made some fantastic discoveries in the past two years, like how to shower in a space the size of a coffin or how to make lifelong friends, I've also wasted fantastic amounts of time engaging myself in dead-end experiments, one after another.

So if I could tell my freshman self one thing, it would be this (The final quote of this blog entry, I promise!):

"Find out what makes you the happiest and pursue it with a vengeance."

No person has tangible control over another person's actions, thoughts, or opinions. All anyone can ever do is offer their words, be they harsh or harmless, and wait. Humans are notoriously strong-willed; we do what we want to do when we want to do it. And that is what the freshman experience is all about--finding out what works and what doesn't.

They don't call it experimenting for nothing.

p.s. About that final quote statement I made earlier... I lied. Here's the actual clincher, from the mouth of Therese Hofferber, my AP Literature teacher in high school, when I tried to argue the value of naps.

"There's always something to do."

The Book of Love

How to create your own religion:

- Try a new pattern of drying off when you step out of the shower.
- Expand your vocabulary.
- Phone a friend you've fallen out of touch with.
- Recycle.
- Watch something on TV that interests you the least.
- Revisit your hometown.
- Study the way strangers walk.
- Understand why something makes you uncomfortable.
- Take a moment to listen to the radio station you usually skip.
- Take something apart and put it back together, just to see how it works.
- Take a detour.
- Pick a memory, embrace it, and let it make you laugh.
- Create a new alter ego with each new day. (Don't be afraid to laugh at them, either.)

The In's and Out's of What's In and What's Out

I don't think people give pop music enough credit.

While the industry is, like any other business on the planet, fueled by the all-powerful dollar, I contend that there are just as many authentic artists expressing themselves just as creatively in the pop music scene as any underground neo-soul electro house indie alternarock setting.

Just because something is popular doesn't mean it doesn't have depth.

Michael Jackson. The Rolling Stones. Cher. Stevie Wonder. Eminem. Bono. Alicia Keys. The Beatles. David Bowie. Enya. Foo Fighters. Ke$ha. No matter how you feel about any of these artists, it's impossible to deny that, at one point or another, they've all been considered popular music. Why? Because they were so damn.... popular.

But why were they popular? Rock & Roll Hall of Fame aficionados, step down now; I'm no expert. One could argue that people like Ke$ha become famous merely by chance and good looks and don't deserve stardom at all, while others, say, John Mayer, who have "worked" for their fame fully deserve it. The bottom line is, you don't become famous by doing nothing, unless you happen to be born with your legs fused together like Mermaid Baby on the Discovery Channel. You have to DO something in order to earn success.

Ke$ha actually wrote songs for musicians like Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, The Veronicas, and Miley Cyrus before any casual radio listener knew who she was.

I'm not saying that pop music doesn't have its bad eggs. In fact, the entire shiny golden scale of the music industry is full of them, constantly weighing bad egg against good egg trying to find the hottest and most popular sound for mainstream listeners. I'm not trying to convince anyone that "Drop It Like It's Hot" will go down in history for its exceptional contributions toward society, nor am I saying that Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" is about anything more than laying in bed, hungover, shuffling through the leftover fragments of one helluva party the night before.

What I'm saying is that everything and everyone deserves a fighting chance. Arguably, one of the trickiest tasks a consumer can complete is to judge each and every bit of music, literature, art, fashion, film, controversy, or all of the above for him/herself, as independently as possible.

The world is quick to judge and even quicker to move on, which leaves social figures in the same sinking boat of trying to please the masses. Pop culture, if nothing else, represents a sort-of "fun house mirror" outlook on society. Throw progressive movements, trend-setting fashion, front page news, nationally syndicated television programs, public controversies, and chart-topping pop songs into one giant blender, and you'll gain unedited insight into not only your own life, but the lives of everyone in your neighborhood, school, state, and country, a vivid picture of who we are collectively, because we truly are the same from sea to shining sea.

What catches our attention is what evokes our emotion... good, bad, or strange. If something fails to do that, then it isn't pop.