joshbastian

the waving man. a modern success story.

There is a road called lakemont that is on my normal route home. It is a normal two way street with trees lining both sides of the straight road. Nearly every time I drive home around 5:15, there is a normal old man who walks down lakemont and waves to every car that passes by. If a person in a car waves back, he gives the person a Presidential double-thumbs up, if the person does not wave back he just continues on and waves to the next car. Back when he started this routine, he very rarely gave the thumbs up because very few people waved back. Judging by the number of thumbs up he gives the passing cars these days, nearly all the regular lakemonters wave back to this old man. The reason I find this story so compelling is because here is a man who could spend his evenings sitting at home watching the evening news, it would definitely be more comfortable, his limping gait just looks painful. But he doesn’t. He does something many people would think to be crazy. He walks down the street and waves, simple as that. Because of this crazy, yet simple action, he has brightened countless peoples’ days, even becoming a kinda-famous icon that is talked about on social media and blogs like this one. 

This story gives me hope. Hope that the simplest and even the most bizarre actions can make the biggest of differences. But it takes going out on a limb and doing something that is not normal. What do we call not-normal actions and people?

We call them extraordinary.

everything will be alright.

The phrase “everything will be alright” gets thrown around a lot and I’m not sure it always has the desired effect. Let me be clear, I think everything will be alright and I’m certainly not picking on those that like to say the phrase, I say it myself with frequency, but I want to look at what the phrase should mean. 

My question is: couch or cliff?

Here is one effect of the phrase “everything will be alright”: if everything will be okay I can sit on the couch and stay comfortable because after all everything will be alright. That is what I call the couch mentality. To explain the other effect, humor me and imagine yourself in a survival movie. So imagine you’re on the edge of a burning platform with a 500 foot chasm below you and to get to safety you have to jump across a gap to get to another safer platform. Of course you’re super scared and don’t want to jump, so what does the person on the safe side say? “Jump! Everything will be alright!” You know you have to do something or die, and that hope that everything will be alright convinces you to make the jump off the cliff/platform. That is what I call the cliff mentality. 

A quick note before I go any further. I am not so ignorant to believe the world is black and white, obviously there is a broad spectrum of couch vs cliff with very few people being purely couch or purely cliff. Okay, that being said, moving on.

So if everything will be alright, the question is; how will it effect you? Will you hedge your bets and wait it out? Or will the belief that everything will be alright motivate you to take good and valuable risks? I will tip my hand and admit I don’t think much of the effortless, safe route. Everything will be alright, but what we do in between now and alright matters more than we know.

a letter to no one.

I hope you go far. I hope you prove all your enemies wrong. I hope you get what you want when everyone else is wallowing in self-pity. I hope you work hard. I hope you improve, everyday. I hope you find all sorts of adventures. I hope you are happy. I hope you become the best version of yourself. I hope that you show up everyone who said you couldn’t do it. I hope you leave the sins of your family behind. I hope you do things no one in your family has ever done. I hope you overcome all your faults and maximize your strengths. I hope you find love, and give love everyday. I hope you become one of the special ones, the ones who are the exception, not the rule. I hope you become the opposite of normal. I hope you don’t live in the shadow of your regrets. I hope the best for you, and I hope you do too.

journal post. (moving up?)

I won’t even try to make this neat with a takeaway, this is a journal post through and through.

If I had a list of ideas that I hold most dear, the ability to move up would definitely be on that list. The possibility of moving up from current circumstances has always kept a fire under me. Ever since I was little, moving up was something I wanted badly. Its not because I was born into a bad situation, I wasn’t, or because I need to move up to keep my ego stroked, matter of fact most of my motivation for moving up is so that I can make more money so that I can give more money away. Yes, honestly. Too many people are suffering for me to sit on my butt. But that isn’t my point here. My point here is to examine the art and act of moving up.

When I was a kid, I liked baseball, I wanted to be good at it, and play the best. So I kept moving up until I was playing at Nationals. That’s a true story. And there are many like it. I am not bragging, I am just saying that my life has a recurring theme of seeing what I want and then working until I get it. So that’s fantastic, yes, but more lately I have been seeing the downsides of this moving up. You have to delay what you want. You see friends who you walked with for a long time move on. You have to be disciplined. That’s vague, so this is what I mean: There have been so many people I used to know well who decided they had other plans. Or I want to throw some amazing parties, but there isn’t much time for them now. Or while my friends are sitting around doing nothing, I have to work. So the classic economic question comes into play, is delaying certain things made worth it by what you get later? And that’s assuming that I will be able to continue to move up, but I realize that might not be true. 

So here is what I need, I need a person or group, a league of extraordinary people wannabes who are determined as I am to move up. (let me know if you want to start a moving up club ha). I don’t know why this is so difficult to find, but it is, so many of my peers would either rather not move up or are just not willing to put in the colossal amount of work. I need someone to push me, I need someone who is willing to move up with me. This isn’t a desperate thing, make no mistake, I will try to move up regardless. But its like climbing a hill or climbing a mountain, both are difficult, but one is much more so. If you read this, you must be bored or just like to read long, crappy posts about someone else, don’t worry I don’t judge.  

complicated.

No, this isn’t about Avril Lavigne’s huge hit Complicated, I’m sorry if that disappoints you, it kinda disappoints me too. Regardless, I was thinking today about how complicated everything can be. For instance, I was browsing Facebook today and I saw one of those chain posts, ya know the ones that start with “you’re a horrible person if you don’t share this post.” At first I rolled my eyes and lamented the loss of intelligent life on earth and then had a second thought, “should I be putting someone down for trying to start a movement for something they care about?” The answer of course was no, maybe their methods were not the best, but darn it at least they are trying to be helpful. Another such complicated situation is the whole Invisible Children debacle. I have read the critics’ arguments, and some of which make good points, but hey at least Invisible Children is trying to start a helpful movement, again maybe not the best methods or plans, but darnit they just created the most viral video of all time and it had a great intention, I really believe in their hearts they just were trying to stop killing and suffering. I realize good intentions can sometimes have devastating consequences, but that’s another post, these are just examples of complicated situations.

See what I mean? There are a lot of complicated things in life, I haven’t even touched on complicated relationships or complicated religions or complicated formulas. I have finally reached the end of trying to figure everything out, I still want to get smarter but smart people rarely try to figure out everything. I just want to love and be a better version of me everyday. I want to live simply, yet profoundly in a complicated world. Some of the smartest people who ever walked on the earth advocated simplicity. I will still think, thinking is what I do best, but I will use that thinking to help me live simpler, not add to the mess of complicated. I am not arguing against intelligence or the search for intelligence, far from it, Leonardo said it best: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” - Leonardo Da Vinci

want/love.

Want kills love. Its a simple matter really. For example, if you want something from somebody, in other words you have expectations for that person, you can’t really love them. Because eventually that person will not meet expectations and that will cause anger, sadness and a whole host of problems. At that point what happens? You will be in such a sour mood, you won’t be able to love them. Or lets go in another direction, if you want to love someone by serving them, but want something in return, doesn’t that kinda defeat the purpose of loving them through serving them? All of a sudden a one way act of service becomes a transaction, that isn’t love. Love is about sacrifice, not about selfishness.

The situation doesn’t even have to be related to the other person at all to effect the way you love them. Lets say you want a big TV and lets say either you can’t get the TV and are mad about it or you have to work more hours to be able to afford the TV, either way you can’t love the people around you because the want for something becomes more important than loving others.

On to the practical. In life, if you want a lot of things, it will kill your ability to love and steal your happiness, mental health and a bunch of other things. In a relationship, want, either in the form of expectations for the other person or for things you don’t have will kill the love. I have been here many times, enough times that I don’t want to want anymore. The good flip side to this want/love relationship is that if you can eliminate want from your life, it will fuel relationships, power service and most of all increase your ability to love. And who doesn’t want love? As a test, really examine the negative feelings and moods you experience and then see if there is a unfulfilled or nagging want behind it, my guess there will be. By eliminating those wants, you can eliminate those bad moods or feelings and take you one step closer to being unstoppable.

combinations.

Are you ever baffled by how all the combinations of talents, likes, dislikes, fascinations, wants, thinking style etc etc that make you who you are? In high school most of us were taught to fit in. I remember, almost fondly, being made fun of for the way I stood out, my home education, my propensity to use big words and just my general view of the world. I also remember, not fondly, of how I tried to fit in. I dropped the big words, started wearing the name brands etc. I look back now and see how messed up that was to try to be like everyone else. I am starting to find that if you ever want to be something special, you have to become more of yourself, not less. The great and fantastic Ryan Gosling was interviewed on Ellen exclusively on exercise bikes, handing out onesies to the crowd. The equally great Will Ferrel was interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel speaking only in broken Spanish and making an entrance on a plastic life size horse. Steve Jobs, one of the truly great people of our age, made a name for himself through innovation and making products so uniquely his that no one else could copy or match them. Our own greatness is tied to just how much more we can become ourselves. 

This is not an anti-conformity post. This is not a pro-hipster post. By all means, if you like a trend or fad of the moment then partake, wear the “it” style of the moment if it suits you. This post goes deeper than just the external factors. It’s not about style or music tastes, although it could be, its about nurturing the things that make you uniquely you and running full speed with them. There is so much more life in being who you were made to be, instead of being who everyone else thinks you should be.

I hope we all can embrace the things that makes us ourselves, grow them, nurture them, and go out on a limb if need be. Because it might just be out on that limb that we will find the thing that we find what we were put on this earth to do.

conversation 15.

I was talking to some people the other day about their dream lives. After we all shared we came to the quick conclusion that none of us were living our dream lives yet. 

The question soon became how do we get to live our dream lives?

I am always so baffled by those people who think the world will just drop in their lap. Dream lives takes lots of work. But the flipside isn’t good. Every time I feel myself embodying my parents’ worst qualities I cringe, every time I see my friends  slowly turning into worst parts of their parents it makes me sad. We all swore we would never be like “them”, but the truth is humans drift south without work. The tide is swiftly pushing us towards the things we don’t want to be and the only antidote is swimming faster in the opposite direction. Maybe I am an idealist and dreamer, but I want to see all my friends be the brilliant, kind, loving and good looking people they all want to be, I think its possible, but I know it only comes with working hard every day.

Maybe I am just trying to justify working till exhaustion, but I only get one shot at this, so do you. What do you want to be? How hard are you willing to work? What are you willing to sacrifice to get there?

humility.

I am more and more perplexed with what makes a winsome “religious” person and what makes a bad “religious” person. Before you hang me, let me explain what I mean. By the winsome religious person I mean the people who serve, love and are magnetic because they are so amazing to be around, like people just literally love to be around them because they are so full of life. What I mean by a “bad” religious person are people who are mean, judgmental, exclusive and not only a bore to be around but more often than not, just downright toxic to be around. I’m sure you know some bad religious people and I’m hoping you know some winsome religious people as well.

On to my point.

What I have discovered is this: while there is probably more than one trait that separates the two kinds of religious people, humility is a huge part of it.

Humility says, I see you as more important than me, therefore I will serve and help you in any way possible

Humility says, I will extend grace to you no matter what because I know we both need grace to survive.

Humility says, I do not consider my own personal agenda to be important, I will shift it all around to be more helpful to anyone.

Humility says, we are in the same boat, not “you’re not good enough for my boat”

I could go on, but I think you get the point. The spirit of humility is not viewing yourself as less, no far from it, its viewing everything in the right way. It’s realizing the goal is to “be perfect as your Father is perfect”, therefore knowing that I gotta work super hard and yet knowing that I do not have it all together and I never will. There is no room for pride or thinking you’re superior to others if you take Jesus seriously. We all need grace and therefore we all need humility. I can’t tell you how many stories I have heard and experienced of people getting super hurt by “religious” people, probably in part because those religious people didn’t understand what humility meant. I probably have even been that bad religious person more than I would like to admit. But no more, my goal is humility, my goal is perfection, I may never make it, but darn it I am going to work on having plenty of humility. Because I know what is at stake and I know what is possible.

what I knew.

So much of what I thought I knew is being turned on its head and I love it. People who have closed minds never get to experience the feeling of their minds being refreshed. I am learning so much more about what it means to be human. 

Here is the summary:

Life isn’t about me. Or what I can do. Or what I can contribute. I am so quick to think “what should I do next?”, I think that is flawed, I should be asking “who can I serve or love?”

Believe. This is so cliche. But this is a common theme in my life. Every six months I am reminded that it is the crazy people who believe the impossible is possible and because of that belief they bet the farm and go after something that is impossible. Sometimes they fail… but the crazy thing is, sometimes they do the impossible. Look at the life of Martin Luther King Jr. 

In order to be effective I must be graceful. And in order to be graceful with others, I must be continually aware of how much grace I have been given.

Last but not least, just because something is true, doesn’t mean it should be said right away or even at all. Our main goal should be to build each other up, not tear each other down, so I have to ask myself “is this a good time to say this? Will this be helpful?” If not, I shouldn’t say it.

nostaglia.

Tonight I’m feeling extra nostalgic. Every season of my life has had good parts and bad parts and I had to learn to marry the two in order to enjoy what is happening at the moment. I just think back and I remember how much I loved playing sports in the bitter cold, going to the movies with friends in high school, playing with the game on the line, sitting and talking in the bitter cold because no one wanted to go home, going on roadtrips and all the firsts along the way. Some people hate the past. I don’t. I love the past more than I love the present. For some reason I always see the past in this romantic way, forgetting all the bad of the season and just fondly remembering the good. I might just be really good at selective memory, but I wanna go back and relive certain things again and again. It’s such a crying shame that after the split second moment passes it will never come back. Things are rarely as good the second, third and nth time. So tonight I just want a time machine.

In the immortal words of LOST- “We have to go back, Kate, We have to go back!”

break-fast.

I took a few days off of posting on social media sites, it was a nice break to be sure. Here are some thoughts from the time offline.

• If you aren’t happy without X, you still won’t be happy with X. X could be anything. Usually for most of us, me included, X could be a new job, new housing, relationships etc. It’s one of the biggest lies of our culture that we need all this stuff to be happy/fulfilled/at peace/content. Here’s my take, ya only need one thing to be happy/fulfilled/at peace/content, just that one thing, stop buying into lies that say you need more. (hint: that one thing is closer and gooder (yes, gooder) than you think.
• A full belly and plenty of sleep is super helpful.
• Getting in shape feels so good. I am not in great shape by any means, but I am getting closer to my goal every week and each week I feel (and look) better.
• I started to listen to Harry Potter. I like it a lot.
• Gotta focus on what you’re good at even if it hurts. Often it means giving up, sometimes just for a season, things that are in the way. 
• Started a book of quotes, first quote is this: “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step”- #MLK
• first impression is so important.
• I feel like a broken record, I always write about the same things.
• #buzzfeed is an amazing site.
• wikipedia goes down for one day and everyone goes crazy. I understand.
• Tough life decisions are realllly difficult.
• Ya gotta make peace with your weaknesses or ya won’t get anywhere. If you let your weaknesses rule you, they will.

finite creatures.

We have a limited amount of time, talent and energy. It’s just a fact of life. I hate boundaries, I fight them when I can. But lately my own talent boundaries have been on my mind. I think, that’s what I’m good at, thinking has made me good at work and school and other things, but the flipside is that thinking makes me bad at other things, like communicating and relating. I frankly hate that my thing is thinking, don’t get me wrong, I love my talents and gifts, I just don’t like that it makes me bad at other things. I also don’t like that if I will be special in any way, it will be through thinking, so therefore I need to spend the necessary time to grow that gift and nurture it. Which means even though I love adventures and extraordinary things, partying will never be something I do 24/7, and that makes me sad. I want it all. I don’t want limits. I don’t want to miss out on things just because of how I’m wired. But its a fact of life I’m afraid, I will never be anyone other than who I am. And I need to be okay with that.

positivity.

I’m so glad my parents believe in the power of positivity. In other words they believe that if a kid is not acting the way they should, the best way to correct that is to call out the good in the kid, encouraging or calling out what is good about the kid. I think its so much better than yelling, belittling, calling names, punishing or just being negative in general which I see a lot of parents resort to. Because lets be honest, none of us act exactly the way we should or even the way we want, and we don’t need someone to always call out the bad in us, we need someone who will see the good in us we don’t even see. In a way, by calling out the good in someone, you are calling something into existence that wasn’t really there before. You are creating good where bad once was. Try calling out the good in someone close to you and see what happens, I bet you might just make their day.

And that is undeniably good.

tired.

This is not a complaint post.

This is not a negativity post.

This is a fact of life post.

Sometimes I get tired. Not the kind of tired that can be solved by a venti no whip 7 pump toffee 3 shot low foam breve latte (note: I have never ordered that and never will.) Its the kind of tired that is a full body, heart, mind and soul tired. The kinda tired that is solved by a vacation, a getaway, a miracle, something extraordinary, in short something that says keep fighting and running hard because EVERYTHING matters. Something that reminds me life is too short to waste worrying, thinking and getting caught up on things that don’t matter. I need one of those things. I need one of those people. Do they exist?