This controversial Pro-Life ad in Soho, New York was taken down the other day. The group who put up the ad stands behind it, saying that they expected and wanted the ad to cause controversy:
‘Our message is one that’s provocative,’ Reverend Broden responded via the New York Daily News. ‘It’s true and it’s accurate and it’s real.’
What do you think? Should the ad have been taken down?
Posted in Other Rants
Everyone knows the couch potato doing nothing with his life has a problem. But I want to talk about someone a little closer to home. Let’s talk about that student in high school with mostly A’s and a few B’s:
On the surface, this student looks like she is doing great. Her grades are above average and she is on track to get into a decent four-year college. When she gets in, she’ll continue to do well in her classes, and maybe when she graduates she will use her bachelor’s degree to get a decently paying job to support herself. She’ll move out on her own and, aside from maybe getting a few promotions and pay raises every now and again, for the most part, that will be that.
Isn’t that, more or less, the kind of life we are all working towards?
I write about that girl because for most of my life I think that girl has been me. I’m pretty good at school and I get good grades. It’s not that it comes without hard work; but I don’t mind the work so much because it yields a result that I am comfortable with.
But for me, comfort alone has never really felt like enough. Maybe you can relate…
I think the answer to why it never feels like enough has something to do with the fact that no 5-year-old, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, answers, “I just want to support myself,” or, “I just want to get good grades in school.” Yet for some reason, as we grow older, it becomes more and more acceptable in our minds to settle for this answer. We settle for comfort as opposed to greatness.
It’s not that achieving comfort is easy or that it requires no work. It’s not easy to make it through four years of college, or to stick with a job and get promoted. It takes hard work and dedication. So why is that not enough?
The truth is that deep down, whether we are brave enough to admit it or not, we all have a desire to be great—to somehow use our life to make a difference in the world, and not just “get by”. That desire is not meant to go unanswered. You may not have the most important career in the world, but no matter what you do, that call to greatness never goes away.
Greatness is more difficult than comfort because, in addition to it taking hard work and dedication, greatness mostly means being uncomfortable. It means stepping outside of your normal comfort zone to stand up for something that matters. Whereas the ends of comfort are merely food, sleep, and leisure, greatness is so much more than that. It’s about making sacrifices for and believing in something greater than yourself. We are all called to be great.
So how are you going to answer the call?
“The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness”
-Pope Benedict XVI
Posted in You & God
Tagged catholicism, comfort, experiences, faith, greatness, vocation
“Sometimes, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.”
That’s kind of a cute saying, isn’t it? I think women like it because it permits us to still have hope for the Prince Charming at the end of a long story of nothing but dwarves, evil stepsisters, and dragons. “It will all be worth it in the end,” we tell ourselves.
But I think the emphasis in the saying should really be on the “sometimes”. Because let’s face it: we don’t have to kiss anyone.
There’s this horrible piece of advice floating around there that, in order to know whether or not you really are into someone, you have to kiss him or her. You’ll know the relationship is meant to be if, when you kiss them, you “feel something”, or “see fireworks”, or some other bizarre cliché that no one actually knows what it means.
It’s not that I think kissing is wrong, or that everyone should wait until they are married to kiss, I just think that this little kernel of relationship advice is cheapening the true beauty of a kiss. A kiss should be an expression of love and caring, not a device to answer the question of whether or not you love and care for someone.
In reality, if you’re not sure if someone is meant for you, kissing him or her isn’t going to clear anything up. It is just going to make things much more complicated. Why? Because contrary to what we may tell ourselves, it is possible to have feelings for someone who isn’t right for you. And a sure way to confuse those feelings even more is to get physically involved.
So I propose a shift in the way we think about kisses. I have never known anyone who regretted NOT kissing someone who is no longer in his or her life. I have, on the other hand, known a lot of girls (and guys) who do regret a kiss or two in their past. Let’s go back to a time when we believed in the true power and beauty of a kiss. And let’s stop wasting kisses on frogs.
Posted in Dating & Relationships, Youthful Antics
Tagged dating, kiss, love, relationships
“People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.”
Did You Know…
A lot of emphasis is put on those in our society who feel “trapped” in relationships that lack the passion they once had. This is all well and good, and romance and passion are important parts of any romantic relationship; but what about those couples trapped in relationships by the very passion we too often mistake for true love? I think the situation of couples like this is much more serious because, more often than not, these couples don’t even realize they are “trapped”; they think they are “in love”.
We all know those couples that seem to break up every month and a half only to wind up back together within a week or two because they are just “so in love”. The people who were so sure in one instant that they needed space suddenly realize, after an hour or two apart, that they “can’t live without each other”. And isn’t that what love is—not being able to live without someone?
I think that’s what most people today think love is. We think that love is just this intense and magical emotional connection that binds us together and we don’t really have a say in the matter. “You can’t choose who you love,” we say.
I think this is a cheapened definition of love. Of course there is a necessary emotional element to love, and you can’t (for the most part) choose whom you are attracted to. You need chemistry. You need passion. But love is not made up of merely chemistry and passion alone. This is because for love to be real love, it has to be freely chosen.
This is something we already know. We don’t consider it a real act of love when a man marries a woman if he only does it because her father is threatening to kill him if he doesn’t. This man would be acting out of fear and, because of his fear, he would not be free to make his own decision.
This seems like an extreme example, but we do the same thing when we become trapped in relationships by passion. We may know when we are thinking clearly that a certain relationship is not good for us, but the fear of being without that feeling of closeness, of being without that romance or passion, is too much to handle. So we tell ourselves we must be in love because we can’t imagine being happy without the other person. But real love isn’t motivated by fear of the unknown or the uncomfortable. Real love never coerces; it lets you decide for yourself.
This is something we ought to all be wary of. Let’s not make the mistake of confusing intense passion with true love because, despite popular belief, they do not always go hand in hand.
Posted in Dating & Relationships, Youthful Antics
Tagged dating, faith, love, passion, relationships
