Pride

I’m going to Uganda. The word excited doesn’t really do my current emotional state justice. Anyways, the blogs won’t be flowing while I’m over there but I’ll definitely be doing some writing that I want to share when I get back. I’ve been really interested in the concept of dreams and aspirations lately and I’m planning to write a lot about that while I’m over there. We know all about the American dream, but what is the Ugandan dream? What about the Dubai Dream? (We have a 20 hour layover there) And what really is the American dream? It looks like it’s different for different people. Maybe we can’t just put a blanket statement on an entire culture. Or maybe we can. I’ll try to find out. I think we can put one blanket statement over the entire human race though. We’re messed up and we know it. We look around the world and see it. There’s pockets where there’s more or less evil, but it’s everywhere. It’s expressed in pride. The idea that “I’m better than you and will act in my own self-interest no matter what the effect is on you or anyone else.” We all have a little of that. Some of us have a lot of that. Pride is basically sin, and I think it’s the root of most of the problems in this world. We have a sin issue. In writing about dreams and aspirations, I’ll trying to uncover that issue. We all have this pride but how does it express itself in different cultures? How do we put our goals ahead of others? What are these goals or idols? We’ll see. 

 

The Scientist

As graduation came and went, I’ve found out that there’s a whole lot of people who hate high school. But I’m actually enjoyed my time there quite a bit. So here’s my thank you note to Ames High.

Dear Ames High School,

Thanks for being pretty cool. You’re not perfect, you’ve got your issues, but I don’t think there’s a school I would have rather spent my four years at. Some people look at you with disgust. They reference your overbearing rules, ugly turquoise tile, and shushing librarians as reasons.

About 50% of your haters think that you are hopelessly unruly. The other 50% think that you are way too uptight. I think you’re just about right.

Sure, there’s some things I’d like to change about you, but your job was to prepare me for the real world and I think you did alright. I was able to avoid the cynicism that says that nothing will ever change and the naivete that says I can change anything. I learned that there’s always going to be someone better than me, because I wasn’t the brightest student or the best athlete.

You’re just a building, but you are the workplace of people who have influenced who I am and taught me quite a bit. So here’s for shout-outs, This list is not exhaustive, there’s plenty more. It’s also not in any order.

Coach Rial, or as I call him T$, was a constant during all four years. He made lifting fun, helped me transition to defensive end my senior year, and storytime with Rial will always be a highlight of varsity football for the entire D-line family. T$, you confirmed something that I believe is an absolute in coaching. Players work harder and have more success if they are having fun. If only some of the other Ames High coaches figured this out…

No teacher has invested more into my life than Mrs. Seibert. Ever since sophomore english I’ve had two moms. Any time I needed anything, ever, she was there with advice, support, or just a hug. She taught me plenty, but one thing that always stood out was the way she treated her students. I’m sure she has her favorites, but you’d never know it by watching her. She’s also works ridiculously hard and has really cute kids. Love you Seibz.

Mr. Mooney is just the man, plain and simple. He taught the class of life under the guise of american history. From moondawg, I learned that teaching isn’t about helping kids memorize facts, it’s about helping them learn how to think and ask questions about the world they live in.

Mr. Webb is one of those people who you could listen to all day. He’s the best storyteller I know, and his class was a lot of fun. But what I learned from Webb, besides all the helpful advice, was that I was responsible for using my God-given gifts. His class forced me to quit going through the motions and start writing at a higher level. He challenged me as a student and as a person.

Mr. Hill taught me the impossible, that statistics class could be enjoyable.

Mrs. Sullivan somehow got me to pay attention as she taught about European art and politics, which rivals Mr. Hill for most impressive teaching feat.

Mr. Brekke brought it every day. From the moment I stepped in his class, I realized that we were gonna write and we were going to write hard and it was going to be engaging and challenging and worthwhile. I loved that class.

Mrs. Telleen really encouraged me to write this blog and has helped so much with the writing process.

Spence Evans gets stuff done. ‘Nuff said. I was so blessed to have a principal who valued my input and gave other students and me the ability to put on aquapalooza and water bottle sales and everything. This kind of support simply doesn’t exist at other schools. Spence is the man.

Over the last couple months, I’ve tentatively made plans to someday be a teacher. I’ve felt the difference a good teacher makes in the lives of his students, and don’t believe there is a career out there where more of an impact can be made. Thanks to all the teachers who have made an impact in my life at Ames high school.

Ames high aims high.

I thought graduating would be a really emotional and sad experience. It wasn’t. Maybe it hasn’t sunk in, but I think I’m just too excited about what lies ahead to be sad. But regardless, it’s good to thank the people who have made you into who you are.

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.  Proverbs 27:17

Commencement

So I haven’t blogged in a really long time. I was too busy hanging with my childhood amigos for some of the last times, and I had a blast. Today, I graduated. It wasn’t as moving as I thought it would be. It just kind of hit me that the people who meant something to me during my high school would be people that I’d see again. With them, it’s not goodbye, it’s see you later.( cliche I know) Anyways, I gave a commencement speech that I worked really hard on and that is reason number #2 for why I haven’t blogged in forever. Here’s the transcript.

To the class of 2012, here we are. High school graduation. Some of you loved high school. You’ll look back on these four years as the best of your lives. Others, not so much. You hated high school and you’ve been looking forward to this day since freshman orientation. But I think it’s fair to say that most of you are like me, you’re somewhere in the middle. It’s bittersweet. You’re excited to leave high school and acquire more freedom but you’re anxious about starting over in a new environment, with new responsibilities and big decisions looming on the horizon. But regardless about how we feel about this day, it is here. We are graduating. The first chapter of our story has been written.

When you think of the word story you probably think of cinderella or maybe a book your mom used to read to you. But the reality is that every single one of us is living out a story. Our lives are a story and our story is shared with the people around us. It’s shared with our family, our classmates, anyone we come in contact with. High school graduation is a milestone in our story. This ceremony marks the closing of the first chapter. And the closing of a chapter is a natural time to ask, How do you want to live the next?

Because it’s easy to live a small story. The last four years, we’ve gone to school, made ourselves busy with extracurriculars, logged on facebook, gone to bed, and then done it all again the next day. But next year, our schedules are going to change.

According to the latest statistics, 99 percent of you will go on to the workforce, college, or the military. Approximately one percent of you will join a protest movement and claim that you are, in fact, the 99 percent. Exactly four of you, and I’m not at liberty to say which four, will spend the majority of your adult lives on your parent or guardian’s couch watching reruns of The Office on TBS. This is a statistical fact. One of you, specifically, Adam Maher, will promptly move to Boulder, Colorado following graduation and spend the next twenty years playing Bob Marley songs during open mic night at local taverns.
Again, these are purely statistics.

But in all seriousness, our lives are going to change drastically in the next year. And in our new schedules, it will be just as easy to slip into the monotony of life, to slip into patterns and task-lists and self absorption, which all ultimately lead to small stories. Is that how you want to live?

If I’ve learned one thing in high school, it’s that life goes by incredibly fast. It feels like yesterday when we came in for high school orientation, walked the halls and wondered how we would ever find our way around that place. And now it’s over, we are graduating. The brevity of life forces us to ask the question: Ultimately, what kind of a story do we want to leave behind?

The biggest stories left behind are the ones that were lived for others. Martin Luther King Jr. left behind a big story. He once said that “Everyone must decide whether they will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” Since I had to look up a couple of those words on dictionary.com, I’ll try to put that into simpler language. Everyone has to decide who their story will be lived for. Do you want yours to read like Martin Luther King Jr’s
, full of purpose and meaning or Kim Kardashian’s, full of vanity and self-absorption? Will your story be lived for others or yourself?

See I believe that we are innately wired to find purpose and fulfillment in the service of others. And I encourage you to never let your story become only about yourself. Look around at the state of the world.

884 million people drink dirty water and more than one billion people go to bed hungry every night. But despite these horrific numbers, more disturbing is the fact that our own society has clean water, an overabundance of food and all sorts of wealth yet our country has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and North America, the wealthiest continent scores the lowest on “happiness” and “satisfaction” polls.

Our materialistic American dream and our worship of fame, fortune, and self simply are not making us happy. It’s time we look outside ourselves for purpose and meaning.

Look around you at the need, both near and far. People need to have their physical needs met. They need food, they need water, but they need more than that. They also need a friend, a word of encouragement, or just someone to talk to. They need someone that cares.

Now look at yourself. Look at your desire to feel purposeful, to be wanted and loved. Now find out, to quote writer and theologian Frederick Beuchner, “where your deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet.” Class of 2012, our future success will not be defined by pay checks, diplomas, or doctorates. No, our future success will be defined by the lives we touch, the love we show, and the way we live. Everyone writes a story, make yours a big one.

This song has been the theme of these last couple weeks. Josh Garrels just knows how to make me feel.

God bless

Tennis

Last November, I started playing tennis for the first time in my life. Football had just ended, I wasn’t going to play basketball, and wrestling didn’t sound like a lot of fun. So I started tennis, mainly because I didn’t want to sit around all day. It’s been incredible to see something that I started to avoid the post-football fifteen become one of the highlights of my four years in highlights.

Tennis season was a more rewarding experience than I could have ever dreamed. The guys on the team were incredible. The coaches were amazing. The practices were by the best I had experienced in any sport: the perfect combination of challenging but fun. And the game itself was baffling. Tennis is bipolar. I know, tennis can’t have a psychological disorder, bad metaphor, sorry. But seriously, it is. Some days you’re placing your serves, smashing overheads, slapping forehands all over the court. Then the next day you double fault, frame every volley, and fold the like buffalo bills in the super bowl.

Senior meet against Mason City, I was playing 6 singles and 3 doubles. Since I was borderline varsity all year, this was a big step up in the lineup, but my serve had made big strides and I was feeling it. I then proceeded to lose both matches in third set super tie-breakers by a combined four points. For those who don’t know tennis, that’s like losing by a point in overtime. We were down 4-9 in the 10-point tiebreaker in doubles, and then fought off five match points to tie it at 9-9. I then proceeded to double fault and then blow an overhead and we lost 9-11. I threw my hat on the ground and had a pained look on my face in the senior photos after the match. I felt physically sick.

But this tennis nightmare told me something. I cared. I loved my team and I loved the game of tennis and I hated letting my team down. Over the course of a season, tennis went from being a recreational activity to a sport I loved, all thirty of my teammates went from strangers to close friends. Oh, and I accomplished my goal of lettering. Forget the losses. I’m chalking this experience up as a big W.

Mr. Weber

Reminisce- to indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events

In 8th grade, I had a math teacher named Mr. Weber. Mr. Weber taught math, but he also taught life. At the end of the year, he gave us an envelope and had us ask those closest to us to write letters to put in the envelope. We would put the letters from our friends and family in the envelope and then he would get them back to us at the end of our senior year.

I got my envelope back today. I quickly read through five of the twenty-some letters and then set the envelope down. They were too good to be sped through. I felt like I found a time machine and took it back four years. Of the five letters, one of them was from someone that I still talk to. It’s crazy how things change over time. It’s not like I became enemies with the other four. They just moved away or we didn’t have classes together or we just didn’t keep up for one reason or another.

These last few weeks of high school, I want to reminisce. High school and middle school and elementary school and pre-school have been good. They’ve been a journey and a road and a rollercoaster, but they’ve been good. I want to think back on them. I want to spend time with the people who made them good. Because, as Mr. Weber has indirectly reminded me, the people in my life right now won’t all still be there in four years. So I better enjoy them and love them and cherish them.

My 8th grade football, Coach Logston said it best:

Embrace your friends; for this will be the last time you see them all together again. Many you will forget, others you will cherish. Stay connected the best you can.

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” James 4:13-15

My life is a mist. I’m here for a little while. I want to do what is the Lord’s will.

Dreams

As the horrendously catchy Eurythmyics song tells us, everybody is looking for something. I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of dreams lately. Not the ones we have at night but the ones that direct and define us. What do we really want in life? It’s a very cultural question. The American dream is different than the Ugandan dream. The former looks more like fancy cars and a screened-in back porch while the Ugandan dream looks more like seven children and a school-house. I encourage you to think about what your dream is. What are you living for and looking for? Personally, I’ve been very challenged by a quote from Leonard Ravenhill.

Are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for?

If I believe that Christ died for me, I better live a life worth living. Who am I living for today? Who are you living for?

The comments on that video are worth reading. Beautiful song.