Living Alone

When you live alone, your dwelling can be a safe and quiet refuge from the chaos of the outer world, or it can be a prison where you cannot escape your loud and rancorous thoughts. 

When you live alone, your dwelling becomes your head.  You live in your head both literally and figuratively.

Uncategorized

I Love Your Life

What activity in life most compels you to look up to the sky and say, “I LOVE MY LIFE!!”? What is that absolute thing or activity or accomplishment that fills you with sheer joy? This is the thing that makes you tick, the thing that puts you at the height of your element. Whatever it is, I want to be next to you when you’re experiencing it. I love that. It’s accessible. I’m sure you can easily think of the things that make your friends and family geek out. For some of us, it’s tied to our identities. And is there anything more real than experiencing time with a loved one when he or she is awash in a moment of pure bliss? To me that’s pretty much the point of life.

But this endeavor necessitates an open mind. In fact, it’s the practice of opening your mind. If you have a variety of friends, it’s inevitable that some of them will be into certain things that don’t necessarily tickle your fancy. It doesn’t matter, that’s exactly what you should do with them. Just because you’re not into something doesn’t mean you can’t empathetically understand the excitement it elicits in others—or respect it. Come to think of it, the world would be a better place if more people broadened their horizons. There are way too many elitists who frown upon anything that isn’t sophisticated, and way too many bumpkins who frown upon anything that is sophisticated. I’m fine with letting people be set in their ways; you can’t change people. But I can control what I do and how I see the world. I’m going to be the one who transcends petty labels and experiences things that make large swathes of people tick, regardless of activity.

It’s funny how relative this is. For some people, the full nourishment of the soul involves grandiose plans like summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, while for others, it’s walking down to the local coffee shop and having a great latte and an amiable conversation. Hey, either way, I’m game.

Lighthearted

The City

 As a genuine lover of cities, with a penchant for melancholy reflection, I found this paragraph description of the city from Haruki Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes to be one of the rawest and most cruelly accurate elucidations of city life I’ve read:

 This occurs to me while I’m riding the Yamanote Line. I’m standing by the door, holding on to my ticket so I won’t lose it, gazing out the window at the buildings we pass. Our city, these streets, I don’t know why it makes me so depressed. That old familiar gloom that befalls the city dweller, regular as due dates, cloudy as mental Jell-O. The dirty facades, the nameless crowds, the unremitting noise, the packed rush-hour trains, the gray skies, the billboards on every square centimeter of available space, the hopes and resignation, irritation and excitement. And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That’s the city.

Uncategorized

Thoughts on Faith

Faith is the keyword to Christianity.  The whole foundation is based on having faith that what Jesus said on earth will rein true in our lives after death.  Skeptics who don’t believe are said to lack faith.  Well-known Agnostics such as Bill Maher claim that they don’t believe because they don’t have enough evidence, and therefore, don’t know what to believe. This reasoning is easily dismissed by devout followers.  To them there is ample and abundant evidence of God revealed to us through the Bible.  But therein lies the problem. The Bible examined through an objective lens as a historical document reveals myriad inconsistencies, contradictions, omissions and subsequent additions—there’s no debating that.  People choose to respond to this reality in different ways, and a lot of it comes down to the concept of faith.

Here’s my beef: what is responsible behavior in life is rejected by religion, while behavior that can leave you screwed in life is endorsed by religion.  Here’s what I mean.  In life you must be highly skeptical of everything, you have to be.  If you believed every salesman trying to sell you something or believed every false prophet trying to get you to follow some dogma, you’d be flat broke, frightening, or dead.  You have to wade through the bullshit if you don’t want to be taken advantage of.  Con artists are ever present.  According to the church, however, you must rely on “faith.”  Ignore the previously mentioned incongruences with the Bible, the extreme fallibility of humans who wrote the Bible, the nasty and brutal acts carried out in the name of the Bible, the infighting about what the Bible even means—but just follow and trust and believe.  Ironically, people who blindly follow think the people who don’t follow are painfully misguided.  But what really makes more sense? In real life, it’s the uneducated, gullible people who blindly follow ideas sold to them.  Intelligent thinkers don’t take anything at face value and want to know the true backstory of significant events.

What irks me is that within the Bible itself there’s something seen as wrong with nonbelievers who claim they’re not sure about all of it.  It’s oxymoronic.  It’s like the person who isn’t gullible and actually uses his brain is the dumb one.  Jesus in the Bible addresses this directly.  In John 20: 24-29, St. Thomas, who claimed not to believe in Jesus’ resurrection until he felt his nail wounds, was able to do just that when Jesus arrived and placed Thomas’s hands in his wounds.  Thomas then believed and Jesus said, “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”  But that’s exactly my point.  What’s wrong with wanting some concrete evidence before putting your whole entire being behind something?  Can you really fault Thomas? When someone claims he’s the fastest runner, you don’t just believe him.  You watch him race.  If he wins, you agree.  No intelligent person invests money with someone who simply claims she’ll make a nice return on it.  The intelligent person wants to see numbers and positive indicators.  But again, blessed are those who don’t need to use their brain and just follow based on fear of the unknown?  That logic rewards stupidity and ignorance.

My final point is that faith today is miles apart from faith at the time of Jesus.  From today’s perspective, these events took place 2,000 years ago and were written about decades later.  These events occurred before modern record keeping and during a time of widespread illiteracy.  These events occurred during the time lightning strikes were believed to come from the heavens and sickness was punishment from the gods.  And this is supposed to be an accurate, reliable document?  Especially when it’s about something as important and esoteric as what happens after we die? Hmmm.

But imagine living at the time of Jesus.  If everything in the Bible really occurred, it wasn’t even faith in the first place— it was real.  Think about it, Jesus was walking around curing people of blindness, raising people from the dead, transforming water into wine.  That’s not hearsay and folklore, that’s concrete real world evidence right in front of your face.  That’s why I don’t understand why the prophets get so much credit for “believing.”  They weren’t relying on a 2,000-year-old book that billions of people interpret differently and that millions of people have been slaughtered over.  They were witnessing miracles happening right in front of their eyes.  If someone appeared on earth right now bringing my dead friends back to life and turning all the beverages in my fridge into wine, believing would be easy.  Unfortunately, when was the last documented and certified example of the laws of physics being suspended?  I’ll wait…  We get to rely on folklore tales that can in no way really be proven or disproven.

And let’s add in events we’ve seen since Jesus’ time: countless divisions of Christianity, decadent and evil Popes, bloody Crusades, dismissal and rearranging of gospels centuries later as desired by kings, rampant child sex abuse, and the reality that two-thirds of the world’s population is not Christian.  I mean, I don’t understand how God himself could blame young people in 2013 of looking at the whole thing with severe skepticism.  God gave us profoundly active brains.  Blindly following anything with so many question marks and opposing outcomes is the antithesis of using a profoundly active brain.  Reward the lazy who simply follow, but punish the thinkers who question?  I don’t get it.

Philosophy

The Route to the Pinnacle

I’m fascinated by people who sit atop their respective fields – the people whose names are synonymous with the very field itself: Mohammed Ali with boxing, Miles Davis with jazz, Meryl Streep with acting, Abraham Lincoln with politics, Michael Jordan with basketball, Picasso with painting, and so on. But truthfully, I’m not as fascinated by the individual people themselves as much as I am by how they achieved such status.  I wrote a previous piece called “What is Greatness?” where I espoused my ideas of what makes people great.  I ultimately asked more questions than I answered, but I hypothesized that a large portion of elite success is hereditary and timing.  As this topic is constantly swirling through my head— and through ample amounts of daydreaming— I formulated an idea that can further test where you may stand on the issue.

There are famous people throughout all times of human history: Plato, Aristotle, Columbus, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Elvis, Martin Luther King Jr., Michael Jackson, Rihanna, etc.  The test is where you come down on this question: Were these people famous due to their time and place or were they famous because they had something individually special? For the latter part of the question, do you think Justin Timberlake or Charlie Sheen would have still been famous if born in the 19th century?  Do you think that Mozart or Ernest Hemingway would still go on to be famous if they were born today?  I am aware that in reality it’s a mix of both individual uniqueness and drive and time and place, but for the purposes of this exercise, if you had to side with one, which one would you choose?

There are many issues that arise when attempting to formulate an opinion about such a hypothetical scenario.  The shorthand version of the question is circumstance versus individual.  Some initial things to examine would be the field of greatness and the times and places of the greatness relative to the individuals.  For example, it’s easy to imagine Mohammed Ali still being great boxer today because boxing still exists today.  Conversely, Christopher Columbus or Martin Luther King Jr. couldn’t achieve the same level of recognition in their fields today because those fields don’t exist on the same level anymore.  Pervasive, large-scale racism in America no longer exists, and nobody is sailing to new lands in 2013.

If you believe these people’s “it-factor” weighs heavier, that would lead to the conclusion that maybe they would excel in whatever field is “in” at the different time period.  Maybe Miles Davis is a famous DJ today.  Maybe Shakespeare is a James Cameron-type movie producer today. These people were going to be famous either way.  On the other end of the spectrum, if you believe time and place weighs heavier, then the conclusion would be that those people simply wouldn’t exist without the perfectly formulated forces that were present at their time.  Without the hippy counter-culture of the 1960s, the Beatles are just some garage band today.  Without the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln is one of those presidents you’ve never heard of.

I want to think the individual plays the more significant role.  Some people are just born with incredible gifts, things that can’t be taught: humor, swagger, intelligence, speed and coordination.    Michael Jackson was not like you and me.  Lebron James is not like you and me.  Einstein was not like you and me.  These are exceptional beings.  Granted, it goes without saying, time and place and luck provided the avenue for these people’s success.  Look at race relations. Would Will Smith have been famous in 1810? Umm, try a slave – end of story. The ultimate conclusion would have to be that you cannot realistically distinguish between circumstance and individual, as both are obviously necessary.  Nonetheless, it’s still fun to ponder.

Philosophy

Tired

A sight, a smell, a gesture— takeoff

Reality dims, the destination illuminates

Resistance futile, all options are off

The black hole’s merciless pull accelerates

 

Torment overtakes upon final descent

The turbulence intensifies, the end inevitable

Shot out raw and naked, feet buried in cement

The scab is peeled off, the pain inescapable

 

Loves lost, failures, missed opportunities

Burning, stinging—upright and exposed

Humiliations, defeats, insecurities

Straight into the heart, it cannot be closed

 

Tired of this—does it ever go away?

Time heals all wounds— succor in a saying

But it festers, more infrequent, still preys

Rips at your core, sturdy footing fraying

 

You’re here, a barren wasteland of sadness

Straightjacket, strapped to a chair, restrained

Mouth pried open, eat it! Your world is ashes

Eyelids stapled open, see it! You can’t refrain

 

As the daunting reality of eternal suffering sets in

When the torment and aguish seem to overflow

The honking of a horn ushers reality back in

The light turned green, cars are waiting, time to go

Uncategorized

Home, Sweet Home

There is no denying that Denver is a city fast on the move.  Any casual perusing of “Top Cities” lists usually finds Denver firmly nestled atop the leaders:  Business Week’s “Top 50 American Cities”— sixth; Travel and Leisure’s “America’s Best Cities for Hipsters—tenth; Smart Planet’s “Top 25 Greenest Cities”—fourth; Forbes’  “Best Places for Business and Careers”—fifth; Shape’s “Top 10 Fittest Cities in America”—fifth; GQ’s “The 5 Best Beer Cities in America”—second.  And so on.   These lists are infinite and easily challenged, but they still provide insight and are above all amusing.  Denver also has the newest and most modern major airport in the country (of which is already undergoing $1 billion in further development), the largest public transit project in the country (Fastracks), and is located in one of the fastest growing and most educated states in Colorado.  But just watching Denver’s transforming urban fabric is amazing.  Fastracks is extending its light rail lines like tentacles from the Union Station Hub, 100-plus unit apartment complexes are popping up from parking lots like dandelions, and idle buildings are morphing into posh restaurants, bars, and breweries.

I heard someone joke that since everyone comes to Denver, he wanted to know where people from Denver go— as that place must be crazy awesome.  From my Denver experience as a twenty-something, I’d have to agree.  Saying you’re from Colorado seems to put you in the minority.  I think I know more people from Des Moines and Chicago than I do Denver.  Moreover, I can’t think of any transplants from my graduate program in Denver who went back home.  Most of the Midwesterners and Coasters I know set up shop in Denver, bought houses and got jobs here.

I’ve always had a passing desire to experience living in a different city.  And you constantly have to answer those questions when you’re living in the same state you grew up in: “Would you live somewhere else?  Do you think you’ll stay in Denver?”  As open as I would be to living in another cool place, there’s a lot going on right here in Denver.  As the picture below illustrates, Downtown Denver circa 2016 will be almost unrecognizable—in a positive way.  It’s going to be a city of the future, a test tube where urban liveability ideas come to fruition.  As a genuine admirer and student of cities, I think it would be neat to watch this city cement itself as one of the best in America.  And with the other commonly established Denver perks: 300 days of sunshine a year, beautifully distinct seasons, nearby world-class skiing, all major professional sports teams, great night life, and most importantly—the passing of Amendment 64 (just kidding), I’d have no problem permanently settling here.

 

Uncategorized

Dolla, Dolla Bill Y’all

Alex Rodriguez recently signed a ten-year, $275 million contract with the Yankees, while the median salary for a typical public school teacher in the United States is $50,835.  Leonardo DiCaprio earned a cool $59 million for starring in Inception, while the median salary for a typical fire fighter in the United States is $42,136.  Is this not an absolute and complete and utter travesty of what we prioritize in our society?  How can you possibly justify such a substantial disparity in compensation for entertainment to hard-working occupations that function as the backbone of our society?  Well, I’m about to.  I love the salaries of athletes and movie stars, and I think they’re warranted.  This might sound a wee bit odd coming from a person who is usually a fan of the little guy, but I have three reasons for my position.

First, it’s a numbers game.  When talks arise about how wrong something is with a society that rewards a Floyd Mayweather, Jr. with $85 million in one year for two boxing matches, while the average police officer makes $50,406, notice how the number of each is conveniently left out.  Recent estimates show that there are roughly 800,000 police officers in the United States—800,000! Floyd Mayweather Jr. is one person.  And how many professional boxers are currently raking in millions of dollars?  Maybe a handful.  If you throw in just a few of the professions perpetually designated as selfless, essential to society, and underpaid (nurses, teachers, fire fighters), you’re talking about millions of people.  An NBA team has 15 players on the roster.  An NFL team has 53 players.  And sports such as professional golfing or fighting are individual sports where only the premier participants are collecting astronomical amounts of money.

The second point is the reason for the first: these people are special.  They are not like you and me.  Again, there are millions of teachers and police officers.  Almost anybody can become one if they stay clean and go through the requisite education and training.  How many people can hop on the Broncos and throw touchdowns like Peyton Manning?  How many people can jump into the director’s chair and create classic blockbuster movies like James Cameron?  Almost no one.  These people are extremely rare.  I simply see the market at work.  It’s classic supply and demand.  When one comes along who can do something so extraordinary that he is a once in a generation type figure, the sky should be the limit on his compensation.

Lastly, these athletes and movie stars are our royalty.  We follow them, talk about them, and idolize them.  They pave the way for dreamers.  They show us anything is possible.  And the compensation is inextricably tied to the allure.  Would the same fascination surround Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie if their combined yearly income was $95,000?  Not a chance.  Would the Mike Tyson era have been as intriguing if he was making $15,000 per knockout?  Absolutely not.  We love the enormous payouts.  They create excitement and allow for a daydreaming escape out of the doldrums of our everyday lives and into their fantasy worlds.  America needs that.  It is America.  And what’s the alternative? Capping income to celebrities and athletes? What, no red carpet glamour?  No Beverly Hills mansions? No multi-million dollar divorce settlements to read about? No pictures of fabulous parties?  What kind of world is that? Boring!!  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a dreary world where all we worship are communist despots, work in factories, and get our equal ration for survival—in the rain.  I know that’s a tad dramatic, but where would the fun in America be without stars and celebrities? When I hear Kobe Bryant signed a $136 million contract with the Lakers, I love it!

Philosophy

Text Offenders

Texting sucks.  I think it might be the worst technological invention we’ve ever had to suffer through.  It’s no secret that old people despise it.  We’ve all heard their complaints: “You kids these days don’t know to have a conversation.  All you kids do is text.  You kids are always on your phones.”  I have to reluctantly agree with my elders on this one.  And this is ironic coming from a millennial who is constantly on his phone and who undoubtedly uses texting as his primary form of communication.  But to my defense, I’m not going to try to buck the evolution of technology and be some kind of Neo-Luddite.  That kind of resistance is initially cute, but how cool do people look today who still try to resist getting a cell phone or using email?  They’re definitely not winning.  But nonetheless, why exactly do I hate texting?  The answer is simple: people freakin’ suck at it.

I’m going to categorize three types of texters.  Instead of coming up with pithy little names and coming off like I’m trying too hard, I’ll simply say there are people who go overboard with a rapid fire, always-get-the-last-text-in style; people who play it just right; and people who are the cause of the problem—the ones who treat getting a text like getting a hand-written letter in the mail, where a two-week response time is the norm.

We all know the super texter.  They can type paragraphs faster than you can type LOL.  They’re already responding to your next text before you send it.  And they always get in the last smiley face or “HAHA.”  But as bad as these people are for the culture of texting, they’re reliable for getting ahold of—you can rest assured that your text will be responded to in less than three minutes, anytime of the day or night.

The just-right texter is just that—acceptable response times, good tone, and to-the-point information.  I like to think the majority of people fall into this category.  I mean, it’s not that hard.  When someone sends you a text, you respond to it in a timely manner and engage him on the level of conversation he’s seeking.  It should play out like a quick, amiable phone conversation.  Again, easy.  But this isn’t so easy for some people.  The last category of texters drives me nuts, and we all know them.  But before we dive in, what’s an acceptable response time to a text?  A few minutes? A few hours? A few days?  Hell, a few weeks? Understandably, there is not one set time frame.  There are too many variables that have to be considered:  What time of day is it? What’s the relationship of the parties? What’s the subject matter?  These are valid questions that can vary the potential response time. But c’mon! You know damn well who absolutely sucks at texting under any conditions.

From my experience, shitty texters suck under all circumstances.  I’m tempted to drop some names on here but I’ll refrain.  So where to begin?  I could fill the pages of a three-inch thick book with a run-on diatribe, but again, I’ll refrain and aim for brevity.

It’s got to be universally agreed upon that texting sucks in the dating game.  It absolutely sucks.  Is there anything worse than sending a text to a new love interest and getting no response?  That’s the emotional equivalent of being repeatedly water boarded.  But it’s the assholes on the other end that make it unbearable.  People are able to take “playing games” to a whole new level with texting.  Oh, maybe I’ll wait two or three days to respond.  Maybe I won’t respond.  Maybe I’ll claim I didn’t see your last text that I left you hanging on.  It’s terrible.  And nowadays, there’s that extra decision that has to be made between sending a text or calling, which wasn’t there in the past.  To some people, sending a text as initial communication is immature and effortless, while to others, it’s completely acceptable.  I can semi-let off the hook the poor texters in the dating game because it comes with the territory.  Back in the day when you had to call and leave messages every time, you could still be ignored or have to wait a week to receive a return phone call.  But with your people, friends and family? There’s no excuse!

Cell phones and texting are ubiquitous in our day and age.  It’s not unusual for a homeless person to have a cell phone.  Non-smart phones are about to go the way of the cassette tape.  Everybody is on their phone, all the time.  So please tell me how the hell I can text a buddy of mine and not get a response for three days? What the hell are you doing?  And it’s not a one-time occasion.  It’s every time.  The busy excuse can kiss my you-know-what.  Let’s add facts to this situation that make it even worse (I’m using a singular example to represent many people I know, both male and female).  This text offender is always on his phone.  All he does is text other people when we hangout—thumbs driving like pistons nearing the redline.  This dude doesn’t delay probing the contents of a new text more than three seconds after his phone chimes.  So when you finally get a response three days later, you know damn well he got that shit three seconds after you hit send.

Then there are those friends you know are not busy.  You know them well.  They don’t do anything.  They sit in an office with their phones right next to them.  When they get home they watch TV with their phones right next to them.  But when you send them a text they take three days to get back to you.  Go to hell!  There’s Facebook evidence.  Within that three-day span of silence you see numerous mobile Facebook posts.  Hmmm… You’ve been busy, huh?  Yeah, ok.  You’re an asshole is what you are.  Once you know someone is a texting flake you can categorize them as such, and not take it personally.  But you still can’t help but to feel that they view you with a cold indifference, like you’re not that important to them.  It sucks all around.

I’ve been focusing primarily on time as the underlying determinant of texting quality, but plenty of other obstacles add to the list of why texting sucks.  These are content related.  Reading comprehension is a big problem.  Nothing like sending a text saying, “Hey man, what time is the game and where are you going to watch it?” And the response you get is, “Six o’clock.”  Cool man, but did you not see the part about where at?  Like the most important part?!  And then you have to ask again.  Or there’s the classic “left hanging” situation.  You send them a text of an observation or a rant and they don’t respond at all.  Granted, you didn’t ask them a question, but shouldn’t they at least acknowledge receipt?  To me that’s natural, normal conversation.  If a friend texts me venting about how much his fantasy football team sucks, I’ll at a minimum respond with an “I feel ya man” or “that sucks, dude.” Is it really that hard you bastards?

Call it the school of hard knocks or maturing enough to know you cannot change people, but I don’t harass—or I should say usually don’t harass—the repeat text offenders anymore.  All I can do is keep up my end of the bargain.  “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” right?  When one texts Danny, he or she will receive a timely response, all questions answered, all statements acknowledged.  Nonetheless, I feel like people would classify me as good texter as I am.  If I leave someone hanging, it’s generally an isolated and sincere mistake.  I guess it’s not texting that so much sucks, it’s the people who text that suck.

Lighthearted, Rants

Unwarranted Heroism

The hero moniker is overplayed.  If you digest any amount of news you know that everything that everyone does is heroic and that every profession outside of Wall Street financier or porn star agent is filled with heroes.  If someone jumps into a heated four-foot pool on a summer day to help a kid having trouble swimming to the side, she is the Hero of the Day on 9news.  I was jokingly thinking that instead of honoring “heroes,” we should shame the extremely small percentage of people who wouldn’t jump into the four-foot pool.  Maybe call it Coward of the Day.  But on a more serious note, while watching the local news the other day, with its blind, unconditional praise of members of the military and sufferers of unusual diseases, it got me to thinking about what exactly they’re praising.

A little disclaimer before I proceed: I am not—and I repeat NOT— bashing people in the military or dismissing people plagued with horrific diseases.  I simply see different realities that run counter to the standard boilerplate news coverage of such topics.  The news and common public opinion: everyone in the military is brave, heroic, and expressing a deep-seated desire to protect and serve the country.  Everyone with life-threatening or odd and unlucky diseases who hasn’t died is brave, heroic, and doing something courageous by getting involved in efforts to eradicate the disease.  I don’t see it that way.

Let’s look at the military.  Obviously, what you do in the military is serve your country.  But that can be miles apart from why someone joins.  Is it heroic of an individual to join the military, not to defend the country per se, but to make money or pursue an interesting career (self-interested reasons)?  I don’t think it is.  At that point, it’s based on the same reasons why someone might want to become an accountant or play football or start a business.  There is nothing wrong with that, but spare me the heroic allusions.  For instance, I contemplated joining the military (along with about every other possible thing one can do) after college.  But to be honest (and I probably shouldn’t admit this), I wasn’t motivated by a desire to serve my country.  I was looking for an avenue to give me experience, education and skills, something interesting to do, and prestige.  Would I have been a hero if I joined for those reasons but unfortunately got sent to war? I don’t think so.

There’s a similar dialogue with disease sufferers.  The news eagerly pushes the feel-good story of the wheelchair ridden, exotic disease sufferer who is active in the leading said disease fighting organization, attempting to inform the public about the disease.  But truthfully, if you’re not going to kill yourself or give up, what else are you going to do?  Of course you’re going to undergo the necessary procedures to survive and possibly become involved in organizations and efforts to raise awareness and funding to fight the disease.  To me, it seems more like a situation of someone reacting to his new reality, not of him necessarily doing something extraordinary.  You live within the circumstances of your life.  A rich person contemplates whether to buy a Ferrari or Lamborghini.  A poor person contemplates whether to buy groceries or pay the utility bill.  I like to run races.  If I lost both of my legs in a freak accident, I wouldn’t be concerned with running anymore and would probably get into wheelchair racing.  I don’t think I’d necessarily be more of a courageous person than I was when I had legs; it’d simply be a painful new reality.

Spare me the cheesy local news stories about people who are basically just coping with their new unfortunate realities.  Spare me the blanket “hero” statements about a line of work that millions of people do for millions of different personal reasons.  Spare me the hero talk of actions that 95% of other people also would have taken if in the same situation.  Let’s save the hero talk for people who really are heroes, for people who really choose to do extraordinary things.  They do exist and should be honored.

Philosophy, Rants