College is About Trying New Stuff Right?

Last night and tonight I participated in my first ever formal audition.

To give you a little bit of background: I work as an usher at my university's Box Office and get to see all their theater performances several times during their run. Since before I even started school last year in the fall, I was pretty sure that I'd want to try out for a theatrical performance at some point during my time in the university setting, and I this last month I decided that sooner is better than later.

Outside the realm of academia, I'd already cut my teeth on the entire acting thing years previously under the watchful eye of the Great Duchess Olivia. Being a lowly, socially awkward homeschooler, I never had the opportunity to participate in school plays but the Duchess Olivia was kind enough to rally the troops of my church's homeschooling families together to give us all an opportunity we were missing out on. The Duchess exposed us to the world of theater, albeit informally so, and I discovered a whole world of interest for me.

All the way, way back in 2010 I played Peter in the Duchess's own rendition of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." That show was, to be quite honest, pretty silly and cheesy in many, many ways, but it was a new experience and opened the doors to a new realm of potential entertainment and learning for me and my peers. The roles in that show were pretty small, the lines undemanding, and the talent fairly minimal, but it was the first step toward going much, much farther.

The following year (2011) we took a huge leap and quit playing around with simple C. S. Lewis level stuff and moved into the big leagues. The Duchess believed that we were ready to take on the works of the master bard himself: William Shakespeare, and I got the role of Demetrius in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The difference in difficulty between Midsummer and LWW was night and day. The language was totally new, the lines much longer, and the roles much more intense/involved. Heck, even the swords Erik the Red blacksmithed for us were more legit. LWW was my first exposure to acting, but Midsummer was my first exposure to Shakespeare and I loved it. Whether it was because I had the opportunity to swing real swords around at good friend Lysander, or because I got to openly fawn over lovely young ladies, Midsummer was a spectacular experience. It most certainly had its downsides, and the skill level of our performers was still... pretty mediocre, but it was a vast improvement and the door was opened even wider. Mostly, it was amazing because we had pretty little kids (like 10 and 11) performing huge Shakespeare roles in almost their entirety.

Then we heard through the Grapevine that the 2012 homeschooler's acting extravaganza would likely be reserved for the younger kids. The Duchess wanted to work more with the smaller crowd and seemed to be thinking that some us older folks, while free to assist with the shows, should probably take a step back. Saddened, but not deterred, the Lovely Lena (Helena of Midsummer and the Witch of LWW) decided that us older outcasts would put on a smaller show of our own. She was only thirteen at the time if I remember correctly, but Lena made an exceptional director as she led a small rag tag group of teens through a shortened production of "The Taming of the Shrew." Wielding my cape, decorative marine sword, and fedora as Petruchio, I worked to tame the vicious Kate with my incredible charm and decency... Ahem, Taming was yet again an entirely new experience. Our director was half the age of the Duchess and was actually participating in the show with us. We had a small enough cast that a few people doubled up roles... and would play both characters on stage at the same time through method of a bit of funky costume work (you just wish you could have seen it). We did, however, maintain true to the original Shakespeare even if we cut a fair amount, and we did a pretty spectacular job (I think) for the goofballs we all were/are.

However, surprise surprise, the Duchess decided that she needed more cast members for the 2012 production of "Peter Pan" than she had originally realized and a bunch of us older folks got roped back into the "big" performance. I was cast as Hook and apparently reduced a child or two to tears during our actual performances. (Sorry kids... didn't mean to) Peter Pan's language was a step down from the difficulty in Taming and Midsummer, and I had a lot of personal stuff going on outside of the play at the time, but it was fun, it was silly, and it was yet another great acting experience. The distraction of the play actually turned out to be immensely helpful with all the other stuff going on, and it was our last play with some of our dearest and most talented actors. One of our homeschooling families ended up moving away that summer, and we were all quite saddened by the fact that we would be losing them. So, we made it the best play that we possibly could.

When this spring rolled around, I was pretty sure I wouldn't actually be taking up an acting role again. I had become an adult and the Duchess's life was getting busy enough she was going to need an assistant director in order to get the show off the ground. It looked like I would be working on the other end of the stage for a while, but at the last minute on audition day my brother revealed that he didn't actually want to act and so I swapped with him and became an actor while he became assistant director. This show was to be the last with the Duchess before she completed her doctorate and moved out yonder to teach at some distant university, and so we wanted to make it the best show ever. So, naturally, we chose to do another Shakespeare. In both Midsummer and Taming we cut a fair number of lines, but for Twelfth Night we cut next to nothing. I took up the role of the infamous and totally ridiculous butler Mavolio and dove into my role like never before.

Twelfth Night ended up being incredible. Like all four of the other plays, it had plenty of drama offstage and backstage as well as onstage, and there were some tense moments, but it ended up beautifully. My role was a little bit... no, a lot of bit crazy, but I went with it and I got into it, and I went all the way. I loved the entire experience, and was very truly sorry to see our Duchess leave this summer.

Duchess Olivia (named so because she ended up playing Olivia in Twelfth Night for one of the performances), taught me how to act, to love to act, and to love Shakespeare. She gave me a talent and interest that will probably never really come into play in my professional life, but that has become a significant part of past and personality all the same. The Duchess is the reason I chose to go ahead and audition for my university's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

(Now we're caught up to the present)

This year, my school's theme is all Shakespeare. This semester the theater department just finished doing King Lear and in December they will be doing a three person play that is a compilation of all Shakespeare's works into one play (dunno how that will go yet), and next semester the Children's Show (a show for children not by children) will be a shortened version of Midsummer while the musical will be "Kiss Me Kate."

Knowing that I would never survive a musical, I went into auditions planning only to audition for A Midsummer, but discovered that regardless of what show you were interested in you had to do the same stuff for both.

On Saturday at noon there was an audition workshop for anyone interested in getting some extra help and advice before the actual auditions and despite the fact that it turned out to be three times as long as I was expecting, I'm really glad I went. For our first round of auditions we were all supposed to prepare two one minutes monologs and a 32 bar song. My understanding had been that the song would be sung without any accompanying music or anything. Well, I find out at the workshop that we would actually be having an accompanist playing the piano and that we would need sheet music.

Now, I've been told I have a decent voice, but if there is one thing I am terrible at (and I mean terrible) it is music. I cannot keep a tempo or stay in the right key to save me life. I can play some piano and flute, but I have no real understanding of music theory or... well, anything music related. So while I was pretty confident in my ability to just sing a song for the director, I was totally thrown off by singing along with a pianist.

Anyway, finding that out was... interesting, but at the workshop the twelve or so people that showed up would, one at a time, get onto the stage and deliver the stuff they had prepared for the Acting and Musical Directors. I was one of the people to go in the middle, and as soon as I got up on the stage I was totally thrown.

As I've already said, I've done acting before. I've done stuff in front of a live audience many of times and I'm even taking a speech class this semester, but when I got on the stage I experienced what I am pretty sure people typically call stage freight. Maybe it was because I felt unprepared with my song, or maybe it was because I didn't actually know the people watching me, but I felt instantly awkward, uncomfortable, and intensely nervous.  The Music Director ask that I sing my song for him even though I didn't have the sheet music with me, and he told me I had an amazing voice, but in the nicest way possible he informed me I don't know how to sing. (No surprises there.) He had me try several times and he said I sung in a different key each time (personally I didn't even notice), and I could tell I wasn't even singing as well as I usually do because nerves were making it hard to focus.

Really, I think it sounded quite awful.

Anyway, from the terrible singing I switched to my prepared monologs and those went neither amazingly or terribly. I only actually had time to go through one, and the director just told me to focus on involving the audience more when I spoke. After I was done with that I climbed off the stage, shuffled back to my seat, and watched the rest of the people there sing far... far better than I ever could.

After the individual work we all gathered together to learn part of the dance routine for the show that we would be doing in the auditions today (Tuesday). I've also done some dancing before, but that was all country/contra dancing and the new stuff was not coming to me very well. It was kind of intimidating working along side theater/dance majors who knew the kinds of steps were doing already, but I was doing my best and kind of flip flopping my way through it.

Once the workshop was done, I went through the rest of my day feeling pretty pessimistic about my chances in the actual auditions. I figured I'd perform my song even worse when I sung along with someone playing, and the dancing really had not gone over well for me either.

Then yesterday (Monday) night I showed up for my actual audition. It lasted about five minutes and was... awkward. First off, the pianist playing for me was my coworker from last year in the Box Office, and secondly I was spot on about singing terribly with the pianist. My timing and my tune was off and it... wasn't great. My monologs I felt went pretty smoothly, but I was kicking myself all the way home for my vocal performance.

I kept telling myself that at least I had given it a shot, and it was worth it for the experience, but I was pretty disappointed in myself overall and was highly, highly skeptical of having any chance at all of actually getting cast with a part.

Then tonight we had the "call backs" where everyone who had auditioned came to participate in learning the dance, singing a song from the actual musical, and then worked in groups on cold readings from the scripts for both "Kiss Me Kate" and "A Midsummer."

Well, tonight was a complete different side of the coin in so many ways. Maybe it was because I'd already convinced myself it was fine if I didn't get a part as long as I had fun enjoying the new experience of auditioning, but I was so much more relaxed and into the stuff we did tonight than I was last night. We started off learning the dance as a group (there were somewhere between thirty and forty of us) and somehow I'd gained the ability to actually dance between Saturday and today, because while I wasn't anywhere near the best, I wasn't doing half bad. Several of the people from the workshop told me I improved vastly in the dancing, and I was able to concentrate less on the moves and more on simply enjoying the experience. We did the same intense footwork (we were moving fast and hard) for about an hour and a half as we danced in a large group, and then split into smaller groups and it was a millions of fun.

After the dancing we split into odd and even numbered groups, and the actors with odd numbered tags went to go work on cold readings for Midsummer while the evens began working on Kate. We learned the opening piece from the musical and, once again, singing was my weakest part of the night, but it went well enough and from there we got into cold readings. The girl I was working with is one of the better actresses in the theater department and we really got into playing Kate and Petruchio. In the few short scenes we were given to do we screamed at each other, stomped around, mocked each other, and she even slapped me in the face (with permission). It was a ton of fun, and brought me back to the good ol' days of when the Squirrel was playing Kate and I was playing Petruchio in Lena's version of Taming of the Shrew.

Eventually we switched with the even numbered actors, and started working on Midsummer stuff. We had some time before we actually were called upon for auditioning so I started working with a few of the others on practicing the slates we were given for the cold readings. I got to try out being both Puck and Oberon, and it was really interesting getting to know some of the people I'd been watching on stage for the last year. Some of them were pretty cool, and all of them were quite different from the characters I'd seen them play on stage. (Also, Martyr, the guy that looks like you looks less like you close up.)

When I left school a little after 10:00 pm, I felt much more optimistic about the entire auditioning experience. I still have no idea if I'll get a part or not, but I believe my chances are better now, and even if I don't I'm very glad I took the time to go through this whole thing. It was yet another new experience and step in the world of theater, and I'd never would have had the opportunity to try in my homeschooling acting.

Mostly I am happy with myself for trying, and for sticking to it even though I was feeling pretty pessimistic last night. It was something new and exciting, and it added yet another fun bit of history to my life that I will be able to call upon in years to come. I got to meet some interesting new people, and I learned some fun new things, and that's part of what college is all about right?

Now longer it is no longer even Tuesday, but I haven't gone to sleep yet so I am going to pretend it is. I should probably go through and edit this, but I'm afraid "ain't nobody got time fo' dat" right now. As I wrap up this latest addition to "The Opinion Section," I just want to thank the wonderful Duchess again for all the time, effort, and attention she put into planting the interest in theater that got me to even go out and try this.

Thanks Olivia, it was great.

Pax

P.S. Here's a picture of me being Mavolio in Twelfth Night for your enjoyment... or terror. Whichever.

I'm Never Going to Use This

"Why do I need to learn this stuff anyway? I'm never going to use it in real life." is is a pretty common complaint/justification I hear used by students taking a subject they aren't enjoying. I have actually used it myself a number of times in the past, like back when I was taking Algebra I, but the older I get the more I realize that the "I'm never going to use it in real life." complaint is a pretty presumptuous and pointless one to make.

For one thing, to say that you will never use something at any point during your life is to say that you can predict the future. Never say never is a pretty good mantra for a lot of things, but it seems especially relevant when it comes to education. Presumably, you are being educated so that you will be better prepared for a future career and for future life in general. The reason you need that education is because you don't actually know what you need to yet. Once you have been working in a particular career field for a few decades you might be able say with some certainty whether or not a bit of knowledge you covered in college/high school was actually worth learning, but while you are still going through school you are continually being exposed to newer and more complex information and there is no way that you can say with complete honesty and confidence that something is never going to be useful.

It is entirely possible that you must learn a very abstract, seemingly useless concept, before you are capable of understanding, appreciating, or utilizing a more advanced one. Already I see this happening over and over again in everything I've been doing with math and business. At first you have to make a lot of assumptions and work with a lot of abstract ideas that seem to have no real value to them, but that is because once you get deeper into the subject matter, you won't be able to understand what you are dealing with if you hadn't already juggled and mastered the more abstract basics. There really are often real and concrete applications to abstract conceptual theories, that cannot easily be explained when you are first learning those theories.

The fact is, as a student, you just have no way of knowing whether or not what you are learning will be applicable in later life. However, the chances are very high that they wouldn't be teaching you the stuff that they are if there wasn't a good reason for it.

I had a conversation with a professor that I am working with as an in-class tutor this semester about the personalities of some of the students in our class in comparison with our own approaches to education. The class he is teaching, and that I am helping with, is a very low level math course and the students taking it (by and large) really seem to lack any real motivation. It is a class that have to take and so they'll try to pass, but passing with a C is just as good as passing with an A in the class, because they don't really care about the content and they're "never going to use it in anyway."

The thing is, as the prof and I were talking about, is that education, at its heart, isn't/shouldn't be about simply getting a passing grade and moving on. Education is supposed to be about expanding our intellectual horizons and gathering about us new and exciting information. Especially at the Gen Ed. stage of your college career, you might feel like you are taking a lot of irrelevant and useless classes, but the key is to ask yourself not "When am I ever going to use this?" but "How can I use this experience to improve myself?" There is always the opportunity, in any class, to learn something and to find a way to apply that knowledge to your everyday life. You might be able to argue that the knowledge you can gain isn't worth $400 a credit hour, but you can still learn something.

It might be directly related to the class material or it might be related to learning how to function around other people. It might be learning how to jump through hoops in order to pass a philosophy class with a professor that has a very different view of truth than you do. It might mean learning how to organize a group project with lazy and incompetent group members. Even if you come across a concept that seems useless and impossible to understand to you, the process you undergo to teach yourself the concept and work past the mental block you've developed is a real life skill that you will almost definitely have to employ outside the classroom. Even when the material might not be applicable to your career and life, every class, every professor, and every problem you are given during your education is an opportunity to learn and acquire skills that will most certainly prove useful to you.

The moment you are able to approach your classes and educational experience, not as a burden to overcome, but as a opportunity to make yourself a better person and expand both your horizons and you capabilities, is the moment when everything is going to become a lot easier. When the final is coming around, asking yourself "Why do I need to know this?" isn't going to do you any good, but the question "What can I learn from this?" will forever and always serve you well. We, as selfish human beings, always perform better when we can see some good for us in something, but the reality is that there is always something good you can get out of anything if you are just willing to look for it.

Even beyond selfish motivations though, there is another branch of value to be found in carrying yourself through a class that seems useless, frustrating, or pointless. Every bit of knowledge that you acquire for yourself is a bit of knowledge that you can pass onto another person somewhere down the line. What may not necessarily hold a direct pay off for you, could be a life saver (or at least a little useful) for someone else, and there is an honest and true value to that.

For the very reason that we should not completely obliterate the forests of the planet or behave economically recklessly, we should not allow knowledge to be lost to the world. As long as there is even the slightest potential for future generations to benefit from something, we should cling to it and preserve it as much as humanly possible.

As someone who hopes to one day assist in the homeschooling of his children as he was homeschooled, I want to learn as much as I can regardless of whether or not it will aid me personally. Why? Because the benefit of imparting fruitful and helpful information to my future children and grandchildren far outweighs whatever cost I may have paid to acquire that information.

"I'm never going to use this!" is not the comment that a forward thinking individual uses. It is the complaint of somehow obsessed with their present satisfaction and well-being. Someone with their eyes on the distant horizon seeks to learn everything they can regardless of its present worth. I am from a generation obsessed with the present, but our educations are not about the present. Our educations are about the future, a future that is forever uncertain, and the best way to face uncertainty is to be prepared for everything, not just the ideal.

Pax

Grandpa

It is a cruel truth indeed.

It is a cruel truth that we never really fully appreciate or understand that value of what we have until it is taken away. Liberty, health, food, clothing, friends, family... life. Day after day we progress through our routines and duties handling and interacting with countless blessings that we have been given without truly understanding what it is we have. At times we even becomes scornful of or careless towards those things that matter most to us, because we forget how precious they are. Close friends and family drift into the background as we progress through life and move onto "bigger and better things." The demands of the present like our work our education, and even our entertainment take precedence over other people and things that are significant simply because we begin to believe that they will always be there for us to return to at another point in time when it is convenient for us.

We don't develop this mindset consciously and we do not necessarily look down up the people and things we have been given, but neither do we lift them up and give thanks for them as we should. They're true worth is unappreciated and ignored, albeit unintentionally most of the time, and we miss ever so precious opportunities as a result.

Opportunities that become lost to us forever when we finally receive or wake up call and find out just how broken this sinful world real is.

Over the last few years my grandfather's health has been failing fairly rapidly. Time and time again I have told myself that I needed to call him or send him a letter and not once did I actually follow up. This afternoon he died and I will live the rest of my life regretting that I never, not once during the entire period of his decline, took the time to actually contact him.

My grandfather was one of the most compassionate and loving men I have ever known. He loved me, and my siblings, unconditionally and he needed no reason to do so beyond the fact that we were his grandchildren. It mattered not that I only I got to see him once ever year... or two... or three... or four. I never once doubted that my grandpa loved me and would continue loving me for as long as we both lived.

Growing up, my grandfather's house was, to me, one of the most interesting and magical places ever. Full of interesting and unique antiques and nick-knacks too look at all throughout the house, it was fascinating to just look around at all there was to see. From the chandelier in the living room to the wall of china cabinets, there was not a boring room in his house. The wagon wheel utensil rack hanging above the island in his kitchen with the sign "Grand kids eat free" will always be one of my favorite pieces of household decor ever... second only to the locks. My grandfather loved clocks and his walls were covered in them. Rooster clocks that crowed, a cuckoo clock that I never catch "cu-kooing," clocks that actually went ding-dong, clocks that tinkled like chimes in the wind, a clock whose pendulum rocked  back and forth in the hands of a small statue, and of course, a majestic grandfather clock.

Among my fondest and dearest memories are those of my lying across the couch in the living room while everyone was going to sleep and listening to the clocks all go off together every hour in the dark.  When my grandpa had to move last year because it was getting too hard to move around in his house, a few of his clocks made there way across the country to my parents house where I am able to appreciate them still... but it isn't the same as when I was there.

My visits to my grandfather were relatively few, far too few as I am sure I will realize more and more as I age, and many of them were when I was too young to have a clear memory of them, but they are still precious to me and exponentially more so now that I will never be able to add to them again.


I thoroughly enjoyed every trip out to see grandpa and every trip he made out to visit us, but now that he is gone I feel like it wasn't enough. I feel like I should have been able to see him so many more times, and that when seeing him was not possible, I should have called him or wrote to him just to let him know how much I loved him.

Last summer was the last time I saw him. My whole family went our first vacation to visit far off family in a very long time. I wasn't even a teen yet on our last visit before that and last summer I was rapidly approaching adulthood. Already at that time I could feel that the wonderland I had loved so much as a wee little lad was changing, and not necessarily for the better.

The garden that had always impressed me with its rampant growth and wildness had been dismantled once my grandfather wasn't able to keep up with it anymore. All but one or two of the main clocks had been allowed to run down and when I fell asleep on a mattress in the living room it was not to the sound of ticking clocks. Most significantly though, I could see my grandpa growing weaker. I'd known his health was not the best before we went out to visit him, but it became all the more apparent actually seeing it for myself. On oxygen and not able to move about much without considerable effort, he was in constant pain and for years now sleep has evaded him most nights.


He was still grandpa though. He was still the same amazing, compassionate, loving, and dedicated man that had always showered me with affection.

One of the first nights after our arrival grandpa and I stayed up talking after everyone else had gone to bed until somewhere around the vicinity of two or three in the morning. I don't even remember what all we talked about, but we talked about girls, we talked about school and my starting college that fall, we talked about growing up, and we talked about the importance of family and of friendships. Much of what was said in that conversations escapes me now, but I remember as we were getting ready to finally call it a night he said to me that he was proud of me and would always love me no matter where I went in my life.

I will never have the opportunity to have a conversation like that with my grandpa again, but at least I will always have that memory to hold onto and treasure when I think of him, and I hope that, going forward, I will be able to learn from him and never again pass up the opportunity to let another person know just how much they mean to me. 

The world lost an incredible man with an incredible heart today, but his legacy will live on through the love he gave his children and grandchildren.

I'm sorry I didn't get to tell you one more time before you left grandpa, but I'm love you and I'm proud of you too.

An Entirely New Perspective

(It is pretty good sign that you are too tired to be blogging when after posting you realize that you made several mistakes within the first paragraph.)

Recently I finally, after almost exactly two years of holding my permit, obtained my driver's license.

For a long time there wasn't any real reason for me to get my license. My family didn't have an extra vehicle for me to drive, I didn't need to be able to transport myself anywhere on a regular basis, and the cost of insurance and gas wasn't something I had the income to cover. Since starting college the possibility of hauling myself to and fro became a much more promising prospect. My father also replaced his rapidly aging vehicle with a slightly less aged vehicle and I started working two jobs. Once all those things kind of fell into place, we started working on getting my required driving hours down and a few weeks ago I finally reached the point where I had the opportunity to take the driving test and I passed.

Until kicks the bucket or becomes too expensive to maintain, my dad's vehicle is more or less mine to use. It is technically still the property of my parents but I bought its new set of tires and am responsible for keeping it full of gas and covering any future repairs costs (Oh the joys of adulthood!). I have dubbed my little blue means of transportation the Rickety Cricket Nickety Mobile and thus far it has done a might good job of getting me around to where I need to be. (I'm praying it won't be in need of any major repairs any time soon...)

For the most part I've just been making the same drive from home to school day after day but since I got my license I've made to "major" trips. I drove myself to the Fortress of Solitude (or My Home Away From Home) two hours away the weekend after getting my license so I could spend a few days hanging out with some of my very closest friends. For that trip I had a passenger to talk with and serve as another responsible driver in case some kind of an emergency occurred. Then this last weekend I made the hour and a half drive to and from my brother and sister-in-law's place so I could spend the day hanging out with my older broski and that time I made the trip by myself.

I know for most people by the time they reach my age/college have been driving for at least a year already (usually more) and it isn't any big deal, but having the power to get myself where I need to be and the flexibility to decide for myself that I am going to take a weekend trip to visit my friends is still a spectacular phenomenon in my eyes and I've been thinking about it a lot recently, especially as I returned home from spending the day with my brother.

When we get behind the wheel of a car we are taking a lot of responsibility into our hands. The lives of ourselves, our passengers, and anyone else out on the road is placed in our hands. When someone gets into a car with you they really are giving you control over their fate for the duration of that trip. It is easy to consider driving, especially that trip from home to work/school that you make every day, as a routine activity as normal as walking or eating, but it is really much more significant than that.

In order to get a discount on my insurance I, among other things, watched a video created by my family's insurance company made up of interviews with various young people that had been involved in fatal car accidents (obviously they were not the fatalities). In some cases they were the drivers and in others they were the passengers, but each in case the lives of some of their closest friends or family members were ended. One girl was in an accident where four of her best friends died because her boyfriend thought it would be funny to yank on the steering wheel while she was going somewhere around thirty miles over the speed limit.

In the video, every accident occurred when the driver was going at least twenty miles of the speed limit and in one of them a guy was going close to 90 miles an hour in what I believe was somewhere between a 40 and 50 mph speed limit zone. In one case the driver and passenger had both been drinking even though the driver was under the legal blood-alcohol limit.

Going that fast and drinking while driving are irresponsibility that are easy to shake our heads at, but on a regular basis almost everyone breaks some kind of road law or another. Speeding between five and ten miles an hour over the limit is done so frequently it is ridiculous. Some people apparently never learned how to use a turn signal. Certain individuals seem to be under the impression that "left turn only" can be read as "right turns are allowed here" and every once in a while stopping at lights and signs becomes optional.

Now, I am far from guiltless in these regards. I've just begun my driving career and I am already fully aware of the temptation to take that 25 MPH speed limit as more of a suggestion than the law, but the fact is that laws exist for a reason and it is not up to us to decide whether or not they apply to us.

When we take risks with our driving we put the lives of everyone around us at risk as well. No matter how talented of a driver we might think we are it only takes one slip up to do something that can never be undone. Obeying the rules of the road not only helps to prevent you from making mistakes but it serves as protection against other, more reckless drivers too.

It is incredibly easy for even those of us who typically strive to be more conservative drivers to let our standards fall to the wayside when we are running late to work, school, or some other appointment but the potential for disaster far outweighs being late to wherever you are supposed to be. I have being late as much as the next person, but when we speed or make a reckless/sudden lane change for the sake of trying to save a little time we are saying, not consciously necessarily, that  our timeliness is more important than the safety of yourself, your passenger, and everyone else on the road. If you are supposed to turn and your in the left lane and you only have one block till your turn then maybe you just have to miss your turn and find a way to get back where you need to be, because it is not worth swerving in front of other drivers who will not be able to react in time.

I am not a very good driver, at least not yet, and so I try extra hard to be sensitive about using my turn signals and clearly indicating to everyone around me what I am going to be doing (sometimes I fail), but even if you are an expert driver with decades of experience and you think that you can easily shift lanes without causing any problems you should still use your signal. What if the person you are turning in front of was getting ready to speed up and pass you?

I should probably stop ranting because it isn't actually going accomplish anything and the purpose of this post wasn't meant to be a lecture about driving safely...

What I wanted to get to address was mainly this change in perspective that driving has given me. I see vehicular transportation in a whole new light now that I have the ability to actually control the vehicle and make my own decisions. For one thing, I feel significantly more interdependent and having to power to get myself where I need/want to be is pretty incredible. The problem is that I every time I drive I become more aware of how appealing compromising what you know is right becomes when you have the power to call the shots.

It is truly a mark of humanity's sinful nature when, as soon as we are presented with the power to do something good, the wrong we could do with that power moves to the forefront of our minds. Good men turn sour when put into positions of high authority and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Having the power to do something seems to give us the impression that we suddenly have the authority to dictate what is right or wrong. We start to delude ourselves into thinking that we are smarter than the people that established the rules in the first place and that if we can get away with it we should be allowed to do it. We see it in others all the time, but we never want to accept it in ourselves. We fume in rage at the person who pulls in front of us without a signal but when it comes time for us to turn we frequently and conveniently forget that.

The thing is, all of our power and all of our influence is given to us by someone else. We might claim driving as our right as U.S. citizens but the government could easily take that right away from us. The same goes with all of our "rights" and all of our "power." No matter how high you go up there is always someone hire who distributed that power. Power, influence, control, leadership... all of them are gifts that we have a responsibility to use in a particular way.

Along with the right to drive we are given a series of rules to follow. We are given a speed limit, we are given traffic signals, and we are given instructions to take care of other drivers and of pedestrians. If we break those rules than we forfeit our right to our power. When we start acting like everyone else on the road, whether they be in a car, on a bike, or on foot, needs to cater to our wants and desires we have allowed our power, which is no more than a gift, to go to our head and inflate our egos to something beyond what they really are.

There is a lot to be said for being dependent on others. It teaches us humility and it helps us to understand that everything we have is actually a gift, and that goes far beyond legal matters of this world. Abuse of power and freedom was what caused the fall of man.

Everything we have and everything we are is a gift given us from God. Our families, our wealth, or power, our influence, our status and everything we ever achieve in life comes from what God has granted us. He gives these gifts to us freely because he loves and cares for us, but that doesn't mean we have the right to do whatever we want with them.

When we have been abundantly showered with gifts and privileges we somehow start to think like we have a right to them and that for whoever is supplying them to stop handing them our would be wrong, abusive, and/or negligent. There is an honest appreciation and gratitude the blessings we have in life that is lost when we reach a certain point of comfort and success in our lives. This is so blatantly visible in modern American (and probably many European) culture where not only are all our needs met but we live in a land full of excess and plenty. Our entire world becomes centered on what we have a "right" to and what our government and "privileged" members of society owe us. Forget the 1%, the remaining 99% is still better off than those living in mud houses and starving in various developing countries across the world. Our self centered, power blinded attitudes extend far beyond our driving habits. You can see them in our masses scrambling for free benefits and hand outs from the government, you can see them in the business and political realms where people clutch their wealth and influence to their chests as if their lives depend upon it, and you can see it most prominently, in my opinion, in our wanton slaughter of unborn children for the sake of sexual freedom and convenience.

We have power in this county. Not just those living in New York Penthouses, but everyone with food on their plates and clothing on their backs. We have power and we have been exceedingly blessed, and yet instead of being thankful for that and taking the blessings we have been giving to live in love and kindness towards our neighbor we shove each other to the ground in order to demonstrate that we are deserving of more. It happens everyone on every level from driving to our views of religion.

Maybe it is true that going thirty-five in a thirty mph zone isn't going to do any harm. Maybe that is true. But there is a problem in your understanding of what that speed limit and our right to drive means. The Law is not a suggestion for us to follow when we feel like it. We have been granted truly incredible gifts and opportunities, but with those privileges come rules Those rules may not make any sense to us. They might seem unfair or ridiculous, but their power comes not from how much sense they make to us but from the entity that creates them.

Again, I fail in this regard all the time and I am regularly guilty of self-centered actions and pretentious decision making, but I will still confess what I believe to be true regardless of how often I fail to stand up the standards I believe to be right. I may not be able to confess my beliefs and thoughts eloquently or entirely coherently, but what that which is true will stand up on its own regardless of my attempts to support it.

Following the Law to the letter is always what we should do, and bending or breaking it will always be wrong. Thankfully the Gospel and the Resurrection will always be there for us when we mess up, but even the fact that our sins our forgiven doesn't change the fact that they are still sins. The gifts we are given may be ours, but when we abuse them or take them for granted we are at fault.

Anyhow... that is probably enough drowsy ranting for now. I hope, as always, that this is benefit to my readers and not merely incoherent ramblings.

This is the kind of stuff I think about when I'm driving. 

Pax

"I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them.
He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.
He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil.
All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him."
(Luther's Small Catechism meaning of the first article of the Apostles Creed)