Ramen Noodles and Occupy Wall Street

Remember Occupy Wall Street?  That group of capitalist-hating hippies that thought they’d be allowed to take down the system by camping next to it.  Those smelly, intimidating trespassers resembled a ten-year-old’s club rather than a serious group of people trying to affect change. 

The problem with them isn't their message that the rich are too rich.  The rich are too rich.  There are people who own more than they’ll ever need.  They are destructively rich.  They are Kardashian rich.  That’s my new word for ostentatious, arrogance, and tacky with a little fear of contraction aftertaste:  Kardashian.  

They’re too rich.  Dad has a plane company so the family gets a television show that has been going on forever and has never had any reality in it.

Too much money has been destructive to so many.  Country clubs have turned into yacht clubs, have turned into living in a building you own club.  Silver has turned into gold, into platinum.  Rubies were traded in on diamonds and now diamonds are so passay that they’re becoming bigger and bigger and now they’re coming in different colors.  The well-adjusted super-rich is the one with a good PR team.

The problem with the message is that it went to the wrong people.  The message was some people have too much money and we should take it from them.  The message should have been some people have too much money and they should try giving some of it away. 

Now wait one second you think you’re free.  You say I've never owned a building and I've never checked my bank to see if I could afford a trip to space.  You think you’re off the hook because you didn't have to build a bigger garage for your huge collection of cars.  Think again.

You semi-rich person, you may be too rich.  You may have too much stuff.  You may have eaten Spaghettios twice last week and still have been too rich.  Your paycheck may want to argue but I’ll win because I’m a human and can talk and so the pay check won’t be able to argue.

You may be late paying the power man.  You may be late paying the water bill.  You may be just on the verge and yet you, I, we all might have too much stuff and be too rich.  I’m not talking about how we’re the first world and our poorest people are richer than 95% of the rest of the world give or take a percent.  I’m talking about the possibility that you may be living a satisfied life.

Ecclesiasticus 18:30-19:3

³⁰ Do not be governed by your passions, restrain your desires.

³¹ If you allow yourself to satisfy your desires, this will make you the laughing-stock of your enemies.

³² Do not indulge in luxurious living; do not get involved in such society.

³³ Do not beggar yourself by banqueting on credit when there is nothing in your pocket.

19¹ A drunken workman will never grow rich, and one who makes light of small matters will gradually sink.

² Wine and women corrupt intelligent men, the customer of whores loses all sense of shame.

³ Grubs and worms will have him as their legacy, and the man who knows no shame will lose his life.

This is how Ramen noodles and a can of veggies and maybe a little bit of spam all mixed together can be too much.  He’s right, this Jesus, that opulence has a great psychological price that has to be paid.  He doesn’t seem to go far enough though.  It is the fulfillment of desires that makes you weak.  You got a special place you go to in the park every Thursday and eat a homemade bologna sandwich?  Take a few weeks off.  Do you let yourself get whatever you want at the dollar store thinking that here is where you can splurge?  Go in with a hard limit on four things, or three, or one.  Do you watch soaps and thinks it’s your guilty pleasure but it’s okay because you’re on the treadmill while you watch?  Take a week off.  Read a little on the treadmill.  Are you addicted to the treadmill?  Take a week off. 

Whatever you’re addicted to, take a week off.  It is your desires that trap you and ensnare you.  It is your routine that makes you less free.

In the interest of full disclosure, this one’s tough for me.  I like a lot of little habits.  And I love cheap stuff.  I like getting my money’s worth.  I like watching too much TV.  I think I earn a break from life after working a couple of 14-hour days.  I bargain with myself saying (Thinking them, not saying them out loud; I’m not a crazy person.) things like, “I can afford it.  I have earned it.  I’m worth it.  Why not?”  But are those the questions one should ask? 

Try asking your friends and family what you’re addicted to if you dare and take some time off.  It’s scary.  It may even be something good for you.  Take a break from your desires.

If you don’t want to do that then at least ask some different questions than the ones listed above.  Ask yourself if you need it or just want it, not CAN you use it.  Don’t ask if you’re worth it but ask what you could be worth without it.  Ask yourself what you've wanted to do all your life that you never got around to doing, this desire might be in the way.  Don’t go sit under a lotus tree and wait for desire to die inside you.  Become a detective get the facts quick and then attack your desires.

You know Jesus, the one who was the son of God, not the one who wrote this book.  Well Jesus asked some people to give all they have to the poor and follow him.  He wasn't saying that’s a universal prescription but he was recommending it to so with dire prognoses.  Are you one that he wants all of?  Yes.  Are you one that gives him all that you desire?  Probably not.  Don’t worry, you’re in good company.

And for that .0001 percent out there, I’m not going to take your stuff but an accounting of what you did with it is going to be taken from you and Woe to you on that day if your desires have run amok.  To you who can do great things like buy yourself a helipad, please consider that what you have doesn't have to belong to you.  Please believe that ‘tis better to give than to receive.’

Words are a Balm

Once upon a time someone said something to you and you felt glorious. 

One time my grandmother said I was more well-read than her.  This is more amazing when you meet the woman.  She was a Librarian at a school and now she volunteers at a library annex.  Once a week she takes her cloth book bag that in a simpler time would be called a nap sack and she fills it up with pulp fiction.  Mysteries and cop dramas all, and I mean all make it into her bag.  She’s read everybody who’s anybody.  She could put away the history of the Oprah book club in a couple months.  She reads and reads and reads and because my tastes are little more eclectic she laid that whopper on me.  It made me feel like the word compliment was all of a sudden out of style.

One time a man who is known as God Jr. because of his encyclopedic knowledge of the scriptures read my book.  He said, according to his wife, mid-read, “Drew is a better writer than me.”  This man who had written a thousand theological treatises found my literature not-wanting.  He had written a book and had alongside of a healthy sense of arrogance and hubris made the judgment that I was good at writing.  He said that I had a message, a voice.  The word compliment just doesn’t do it. 

Someone has told me I looked handsome.  Someone has told me that I’m smart.  Someone has tried to explain that the crazy stuff I say really makes them feel less crazy.  Someone has complimented my shoes and hat and pen-in-my-hat.  I’ve been told I look like Tom Cruise and Matt LeBlanc because I guess to Asians WE all look the same.  Compliments can be ho hum.  Compliments can make you think that people are messing with you.  Telling the whale that gray makes them look slim; they know is just a veiled insult.  Telling the squirrel that a lot of chicks like them because they’re little is wrong because it’s just so condescending.  Telling the rat that it’s industrious for getting in the trash isn’t a mercy it’s fake sincerity and that’s just insulting.

¹⁵ My child, do not temper your favours with blame nor any of your gifts with words that hurt.

¹⁶ Does not dew relieve the heat? In the same way a word is worth more than a gift.

¹⁷ Why surely, a word is better than a good present, but a generous person is ready with both.

¹⁸ A fool will offer nothing but insult, and a grudging gift makes the eyes smart.

Here’s a special passage you don’t have to think too hard about to KNOW it’s true.  Like these two compliments I’ve mentioned I’m sure there are some hum-dingers that you’ve tucked away into your good things about you bank.  I know that there is something that you remember so that when Peter demands a reckoning at the pearly gates, you’ll be ready.  So-and-So said I was blah blah blah.  It won’t work, but you’re cataloging the good stuff anyway for fear of the Bad and the Ugly.

This blog started because I wanted to spend a little extra time paying attention to wisdom.  I haven’t been doing a good job posting because, I guess, I haven’t been paying attention to wisdom.  I’ll try to remedy that situation soon.  For now, why don’t you think of 10 really good compliments to pay someone? 

Rules for Compliments:

1      - Pick your significant other.  Duh.

2      - Try to pick very few or your closets and most loved.  (Add them to the completed list of ten if you feel you should complement them more.)

3      - Do not decide on nice things to say and pigeon hole your list into those compliments.  (Design a perfectly tailored compliment for each person on your list.)

4      - Choose something based on their character or their God-given ability.  (Don’t tell someone they always know what to wear.)

5      - Give it to someone who needs it.  (I don’t want you to tweet how Lebron James is good at basketball.  He knows.   Trust me; he knows. 

Remember this is about making you wiser not making the world a better place.  While this has the opportunity to improve your relationships with friends, acquaintances, and family its purpose is to help you grow in wisdom.  And how does this do that, you ask?  I’m not sure that I’m not fully invested in the first benefit.  If you however, wanted another reason to believe that this is good for you rather than just other people, nay even the rest of the whole world.  If the term, ‘pay it forward’ is no longer enough, maybe this will help.

Wisdom is knowledge that is used to an end.  And watching for the really valuable stuff in the lives of others is going to teach you about them.  Learn what a woman wants to hear and say it for crying out loud.  Christ is a great example of wisdom coming from watching people.  Christ is a great example of telling people what they needed to hear not what they wanted to hear.  Christ is an example of omni-everything made flesh and you’ll find him among the people giving them great compliments like, ‘You can follow me.’  ‘You can be reborn.’  ‘You can meet God.’  ‘You are perfectly crafted, the handiwork of the creator of the heavens and earth.’  ‘I love you so much that I’d lay down my life for you.’

Of course I know the making the world a better place would be good enough reason to compliment others but to actually follow in the footsteps of Christ Jesus while he follows the advice of this Jesus in Chapter 18.