How Not to Lose When You're Alone, from my former high school self

The moon glows over the lone warrior, the lone Wolf, standing on the hill amidst the fallen lying in mounds, in rivers flowing down from his feet. Waiting, watching—IT will come tonight. Again—and this time, IT will be stronger. And this time, there is no support team, no back-up—just raw fate and feat, just muscle and wit and chance. When you are the only other person for 300 miles, you cannot run away.

Anyone who has fought for a worthy cause has experienced some aloneness or some sense of desperation—if not in the past, or now, it will happen later. Just as the only way to keep from experiencing pain is to tear out your sensory neurons, only people who avoid living altogether can avoid that place on the hill.

However, every person can prepare himself for conflict. “Iron sharpens iron”—we can become strong by becoming “we.” You can sharpen your iron on a rock, or rub it against a tree, or heat it again and again in a fire, but ultimately, you will benefit your cause more when you allow other people to help prepare you for your battles. Integrity and steadfastness are forged alone, in the silence and heat of the human heart—but the strength to wield them and the hope to maintain them comes from working together with other people.

After working and playing and solving problems with our group, when we find ourselves flung out into the world alone we discover that we have talents and answers that we did not have before. We may surprise ourselves. One person may be strong and clever—from a friend they may learn gentleness and wisdom. If we are humble and willing, we can accumulate the wealth of the world from the minds of our groups.

IT has arrived. IT tosses the bodies away as it runs up the hill. A swipe—blocked by that incredible technique picked up from training with Warrick. A downward slash—blocked by Luari’s scythe, followed up with a stab from Tansra’s gift spearhead. IT’s power is not to be underestimated—IT dodges, swirls, flies, leaps, rolls. Wolf ducks, hurls, twists, stabs. Suddenly, a slip of the foot on the wet evening grass, and the warrior is lying flat, facing the defeat he had expected but hoped so fiercely to overcome.

IT raises up, shining metal, glowing claws shimmering red in the shadows. IT strikes—

And rolls away dead. Wolf rises, grasping the hand of his Friend with astonishment, relief, and gratitude. She smiles and shrugs, “I learned that one from you.”

Because until the moon wanes completely and the hills become valleys, no one is ever completely alone.

And even then…

How Not To Be Depressed, from a former self of mine

A child shivers in the freezing nighttime temperatures of the deserts of Southern Sudan.  A sister turns to prostitution to keep her family alive while her father is in prison for his religious beliefs.  A man is beaten to death with electric rods for sharing his faith with a friend.  A starving mother sings a song of hope to her child as she feeds him close to her breast for the last time before she dies.  The world around us, outside us, burns with the fires of pain and passion. 

One would think that the poverty and persecution of other human beings, of entire peoples on this planet, outside our nation, would motivate teens as individuals to action, or at least to deep gratefulness for the grace that has allowed us to live daily without fear of dying for what we say or for lack of sustenance.  American teenagers wallow in freedom and power.  We can freely write to our elected officials without worrying about arousing their wrath with our words.  We are largely educated.  We usually have extra money on our hands.  We are young and strong, fruit trees planted by the coolest spring, not yet worn by the seasons of life.  We, out of all the teenagers of the world, and possibly out of all the people in the world, have the most capacity for good, and also the greatest worldly resources to inspire contentment.

Yet American teens seem to be among the most hurt and desperate people in the modern world.  Depression is the number one psychological disorder in the western world and by 2020 will be the 2nd most disabling national illness next to heart disease.  The increase is higher in kids than in adults--twenty years before now, depression in adolescents was virtually unknown. (Clinical) Teenagers also spend an increasing amount of time writing about their lives on personal blogs (Kumar).  The American blog is an informational, communicative, and effective innovation--however, how helpful is it to a teen if he spends all his online energy writing about the tragedies of his daily life?  Furthermore, if a teen devotes a large portion of her spare time to writing about herself, how much of her spare time could possibly be spent helping anyone else?

When we focus so much on ourselves, and how we do or do not measure up to today's standards, or how we wish we had kinder families, or better jobs, or whatever, we lose time and energy that could better be spent focusing on someone else.    Teens have committed suicide over losses as small as the transfer of a boyfriend's affection or a lower GPA.  Things like these are serious to us as human beings and important to our self-understanding and relational health.  However, when our own performance and personal lives become THAT important, we are not only binding ourselves to a vicious cycle of uselessness, we are depriving someone else of the aid we could have given had we cared enough to devote the time and the energy. 

Perhaps if we, as able-bodied, capable youth, spent a little more time volunteering, giving, writing to officials, lobbying the governments of our world about human rights, and striving to encourage and bless the people placed in our daily paths, we would find that we had less depression simply because we had less time for it.  Perhaps if we took our lives into our own hands, rather than allowing our feelings to control our hearts, this world would be a better place.  Perhaps that child would have a blanket.  Perhaps the sister could find gainful employment.  Perhaps that man would be allowed freedom of religion.  And perhaps the mother could watch her baby grow into a healthy young person with a passion for life, rather than seeing him shrivel before her eyes as she takes her last lonely, starving breath.

[center]
"For...years have I come searching for fruit on this fig tree and have found none...Why should it use up the soil?...If it should bear fruit next year, well and good, but if not...cut it down."--Luke 13:6-9[/center]

References
Clinical Depression. (http://www.clinical-depression.co.uk/Depression_Information/facts.htm)
Kumar, Ravi. "Structure and Evolution of Blogspace" [u]Communications of the ACM  archive[/u], Volume 47 ,  Issue 12  (December 2004) Pages: 35 - 39, Year of Publication: 2004, ISSN:0001-0782

Thoughts from a former self of mine...on Guns.

Pleasing the Pacifists, Contenting the Killers

     Our society is plagued by malcontent murderers. A husband shoots his wife and children over a simple household issue that could have resolved itself with marriage counseling. Two teenage boys rob an unloved old neighbor woman of a few bucks for fun and gruesomely murder her when she does not comply with their wishes. A man and a teenager drive through the DC area and shoot people down in the parking lot for literally no reason at all. Some politicians say these events could have been prevented with a little counseling and some stiff gun control, and that the Second Amendment does nothing to stop these killings, but rather tacitly sustains them. Let us see—perhaps fairytale happily-ever-afters and Greek Deus ex machinas do occur in real life America, and that banning guns will create one. Or perhaps they do not.
     Affluent politicians such as John Kerry hold that because people kill with guns, without them crime rates will be dramatically reduced. We must assume, then, following our Senators’ infallible logic, that without guns people cannot effectively end each other’s lives. An angry murderer may tell you otherwise, however. I have been trained to kill an attacking rapist with female accessories such as a bra and sunglasses in a relatively short amount of time. I do not need a gun—neither does a powerful teenage male murderer with the potent combination of rage and adrenaline flowing through his veins. The two teenage boys in the introduction killed the woman by throwing her over a bridge. They did not use a shotgun or a Colt .22 or even a stolen AK-47: a piece of cement several meters below them worked just fine. In order to truly protect society, then, we must rid the world of bras, sunglasses, and bridges as well as guns. Large kitchen knives have already been outlawed in Australia following this basic logic. Stopping at guns does not pull the crime rate down—all dangerous weapons must be completely removed from society, even if it means sending Victoria’s Secret and Panama Jack out of business.
         Of course, we can completely remove something from society, correct? Everyone will obey the government and turn over their possessions without a fuss, right? In a society that bans guns, we know that all law-abiding citizens will obediently turn their guns over to the government. What about the murderers, however? Go ahead. Order a drug lord or Mafia henchman to hand over his Uzzi. I suggest that you start running as soon as you have finished making your demands—or that you at least have a loaded M-16 in your hands. Outlaw firearms, and only the government and the criminals will have them. Who do you trust more to protect you—yourself, Charles Manson, or Senator Ted Kennedy?
A gun-ban, then, would only affect innocent citizens, leaving killers free to enter any home without any fear of being shot through the head by a woman who does not want to be raped and murdered. No matter, the police will save the unarmed, helpless citizen, correct? Actually, no. The cities in our country with the highest crime rates (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco) also have the tightest gun control laws. Police are not supermen, faster than a speeding bullet. They can only rescue you as quickly as the distance they must cover. The introduction mentioned a woman and her children shot by their father. That unarmed woman called the police the instant her husband came to the door. The police did not get there until half-an-hour later. By then, it was too late, despite her son’s valiant efforts to fight off his gun-wielding father with a baseball bat. It takes thirty seconds, not thirty minutes, to pull a trigger thirty times.
            Our heaven sent defenders will protect us. We do not need guns. These are words similar to those of President Idi Amin, who buried alive the people of other ethnic tribes and shot little boys outside cathedrals. He banned guns and effectively prevented his people from rising up against his tyrannical rule. Hitler did the same thing. One of his first acts in office tightened gun control laws. Without guns, the Jews could not escape arrest. Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Jew-hider sent to the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, writes that only three young Nazis with guns could easily keep an entire train of women under control. How different it could have been if the Jews had had access to armaments.
               It has been said that the Second Amendment right to bear arms protects all the other rights. There are hundreds of news incidences of law-abiding citizens over the past few years, many of them women, protecting their rights to liberty and property using legal firearms. Most of the time, the criminals did not even sustain injuries, suddenly becoming complacent when the victim had the ability to defend herself. In one case, an 18-year-old armed male invaded his 80-yr-old neighbor’s home to rape her. She managed to get out from under him and grab the pistol she kept by her bed. She fired and wounded her attacker and the police apprehended him when he turned up in a hospital a few days later. Her gun saved her life. No matter, however, that guns in the hands of intelligent citizens have saved lives. No matter that without guns we cannot protect ourselves from armed tyrannical governments. No matter that outlawing guns practic댫涞┳캢禱獱皘?ួ껇䷍蕴睵⼧縝簚寿몐?ﳡ챖껭ῇ蜵垜䄃?ຢ㧞Ẓ鿜塿囥痧윲㼡効녫ﺥὺ揦肢㺄敏⋁ｎ᤭䞯褴儷閁⢠✳⵾. After all, our wondrously loving, beneficial government will protect us!

All information presented here were gathered from news stories I had read. Unfortunately, I was too young to know proper citing. But you can look them up!

How Not to Die

According to this page which references the Nat'l Vital Statistics Report and all that good jazz, one of the leading causes of death is falling. That's right, falling kills more Americans each year than drunk driving, homicide, or drowning. Oh, and home accidents kills even more at a whopping 18,048 per year! When I said, "aw, come on, stop being so afraid, you could die by falling down the stairs" I never knew...I suppose it shows the celestials have a sense of dark irony. "Oh, he survived a mugging and a drowning, let's have a bookshelf fall on his head."

I am here to tell you, THAT is not the way to go! Here is a comprehensive list of ways not to die:

1. Accidental Poisoning
So with 19,457 Americans dead per year, what have we learned today? Apparently, Americans can't cook. Twenty-seven minutes from now, someone else will fall victim to an American's bad cuisine. Maybe Emeril should become required watching.
2. Dying while fainting from filling flasks full of liquid nitrogen
This happened. Now honestly, my heart goes out to whoever dies this way, because I assume you're doing it for science, and dying for science is awesome. I would applaud you except...he died from not opening the windows. Please people, don't die this way. Open the windows so you don't suffocate in evaporating nitrogen, and if you start to feel wheezy, stop what you're doing.
3. Pesticide deaths
In addition to being very painful, this particular death is completely preventable. Read the labels, wash your food, don't spray a whole can on your tomato...Imagine this tragic conversation in heaven: "Yeah, I died trying to kill a bug." Well, as long as the bug dies, I guess.
4. Alcohol poisoning
So six kids die every year from trying too hard. You could almost call these "peer pressure deaths." Chug chug chug could translate to die die die, but I suppose you could say "I died happy." However, in addition to being completely pointless, this death comes with a pricey pain tag, and while alcohol is a good thing, it's not worth dying for.
5. Death by blogging
Yes, I went there. Just read this article, and don't die this way. Two deaths preventable by exercise and eating healthy (honestly) are two deaths too many.
6.Dying of a dead man's bite
In some ways, this death is awesome in its uniqueness and zombie-esque revenge quality. However harmless strapping a dead man's head to your saddle might seem, take precautions to ensure that his teeth aren't scraping against your leg while you ride. The infection his nasty plaque gives you may be his post-death victory over you. By the way, 90,000 Americans die of infections in the hospital each year. So don't go there.
7. Beer flood
Enough said.
8. Death by shameless plug!
Last night, or rather, today, at about 2 or 3 in the morning, impulsive and frustrated Jake Howard found himself convicted of a crime he did commit...accidentally on purpose. Jake claims he stopped his murder victim from assaulting his timid sister, but no one's talking, and his attorney insists that he plead insane. When he begins to see FBI agents in his prison cell and wakes up with apparently self-inflicted cigarette burns on his body, even Jake's family suspects his mind has gone down the drain of the broken dishwasher. Jake finds insanity defined in a lonely mind as he struggles to plead his case against the newspapers and the lawyers fighting over him, but its hard to be the man who accidentally killed the president. Interested in reading this short story? Contact me.

So what if you don't die from any strange random unnatural causes? For you, there is always the death clock. The great Chinese Historian Sima Qian once said, "A man only has one death. It can be as light as a feather or as heavy as Mount Tai." My hope is that my death will have meaning and make a difference, and that it might add to my life rather than take away. How about you? What are you living, and dying for?

"For it is appointed to man once to die, and then the judgement."