dailydj

[dailydj]

A Wild Storm of Hatred

Tornadoes, like snow days and convenient street parking, are a bit of a foreign concept to us who live in Los Angeles. Sure, you might see a movie star at a cafe, or a blazing inferno thirty feet away while you drive down the freeway, but the thing closest to what we might call a “storm” is a sprinkling of rain that forces us to turn our windshield wipers to the fastest setting.

Storms were just another one of those things that I might see on the news, happening in other places, feeling concerned about for the sake of others, but otherwise not really being my problem. And that’s analogous to my experience with police brutality and racially rooted violence in America.

Not that racism is in any way invisible in this city. If I walk in any single direction from my apartment, I’ll pass through several adjacent neighborhoods of wildly fluctuating socioeconomic status, and I’d have to be blind to miss the correlation between race and chain-link fences, boarded up homes, or expressions of safety and contentment on people’s faces. The tangible effects of systemic racism are written plainly on any map of my city, in the ink of poverty, gentrification, and unjust zoning policies. But, these are just light rains compared to what’s going on in other cities.

I’m talking about murder, of course. Power being abused in service of fear, rooted in a belief that we just can’t seem to shake as a nation, that somehow the status of being human has been distributed based on skin color. This is the storm.

Psalm 55. For the choir director: A psalm of David, to be accompanied by stringed instruments.

I’ll be honest; reading through the book of Psalms is super, super boring. They’re nothing like the exciting stories of war and royal drama or mystical symbolic creation myths that precede it. But every once in a while, a psalm creates an image in my mind so vivid and impactful that I have to write about it.

1 Listen to my prayer, O God.    Do not ignore my cry for help! 2 Please listen and answer me,    for I am overwhelmed by my troubles. 3 My enemies shout at me,    making loud and wicked threats. They bring trouble on me    and angrily hunt me down.

This week, I was so stressed, and I wasn’t really sure why. My daily quarantine routine of waking up, eating breakfast, watching Community on Netflix and playing games on Steam, then going to sleep, hadn’t changed. But I had read an article online about a CNN reporter who had gotten arrested at a protest in Minneapolis, just for being a bystander while black. The live television feed from the camera, lying on the ground, while the police led the reporter and his crew away, left a chilling impression. Something in the wall between my relative safety and the rest of the world started to crack, as wind and rain beat against it from the other side.

4  My heart pounds in my chest.    The terror of death assaults me. 5 Fear and trembling overwhelm me,    and I can’t stop shaking. 6 Oh, that I had wings like a dove;    then I would fly away and rest!

What would I do if I was there? What if I was that Asian cop, standing by while his fellow officer choked the life out of another man? What if history had played out just a little differently, or I was born just a few decades earlier in this country, when my people and I were regularly subjected to violence from powerful groups fueled by racism?

I don’t know. I would be so afraid. I don’t know if I would stay and fight for justice, or if

7 I would fly far away   to the quiet of the wilderness. (Interlude) 8 How quickly I would escape—   far from this wild storm of hatred.

Sometimes, I just feel so angry. I feel like the evil of racism is just too great for any of us to do anything about it, and I feel powerless and weak and prone to despair. Why doesn’t God just

9 Confuse them, Lord, and frustrate their plans,    for I see violence and conflict in the city. 10 Its walls are patrolled day and night against invaders,    but the real danger is wickedness within the city. 

The virus is attacking us from outside, corruption and division are tearing us apart from within, and sometimes it feels like

11 Everything is falling apart;    threats and cheating are rampant in the streets.

12 It is not an enemy who taunts me—    I could bear that.

No, how much better it would be if all the racists wore white hoods and name tags that clearly stated their philosophical position of which kinds of people deserve to live or die.

It is not my foes who so arrogantly insult me—    I could have hidden from them.

I might be able to stand my ground and fight, then, if I knew with such certainty that I was on the right side, that I was fighting for the side of good with all the good people and no one I loved would be caught up in the cross-fire, but

13 Instead, it is you—my equal,    my companion and close friend. 14 What good fellowship we once enjoyed    as we walked together to the house of God.

Everywhere on social media, they’re saying that if you side against the protesters, that if you tell them not to protest in the way they’re protesting, you’re just silencing their voices in the same way that cop silenced George Floyd’s. How do I respond, then, to the people that I know are good people who hate violence and want peace but maybe, just maybe, wouldn’t be so quick to advocate for peace if it was a white person killed, instead lauding the sacrifices necessary in war when fighting against a great evil? And what do I do when I find some of that in myself, too?

15 Let death stalk my enemies;    let the grave swallow them alive,    for evil makes its home within them.

16 But I will call on God,    and the Lord will rescue me. 17 Morning, noon, and night    I cry out in my distress,    and the Lord hears my voice. 18 He ransoms me and keeps me safe    from the battle waged against me,    though many still oppose me. 19 God, who has ruled forever,    will hear me and humble them. (Interlude) For my enemies refuse to change their ways;    they do not fear God.

20 As for my companion, he betrayed his friends;    he broke his promises. 21 His words are as smooth as butter,    but in his heart is war. His words are as soothing as lotion,    but underneath are daggers!

22 Give your burdens to the Lord,    and he will take care of you.    He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.

I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about what justice is and what it means. Sometimes, it seems so clear-cut. Be kind to homeless people, take care of those who have been treated unjustly, work to fix the systems that are broken. Other times, there are more questions. Will violence ultimately set back our fight for justice, or is it necessary to respond proportionately to injustice? Do we hold strictly to nonviolent moral ideals, or does tragedy inevitably beget tragedy?

But beneath all the questions, I think it’s much simpler. I’m afraid, when the National Guard shows up right outside my apartment building, and it slowly dawns on me just how powerful the enemy is that we’re fighting against. How can we possibly win a fight against a racist president who commands the world’s most powerful military, against a whole country of white people who’ve internalized their own superiority, whether conscious or not, against my own people who’ve been co-opted to believe they’ve won a spot among the conquerors? How can we win against an enemy that confuses truth by spreading propaganda, weaponizing Scripture, all while crooning a siren song of personal safety, complacency, and comfort? Every argument and counter-argument, every opinion and piece of information and angle to consider it from, I need to sort through to separate truth from lies, all while knowing that there are people dying because evil is winning, and I could be next.

23 But you, O God, will send the wicked   down to the pit of destruction. Murderers and liars will die young,   but I am trusting you to save me.

[dailydj]

No such thing as “overcomplicating”, in my opinion. :) You raise a really great question, of how we should define ourselves when the normal things and people that make us who we are get stripped away. Is it good in the first place to define ourselves by things external to ourselves, or should it come primarily from our internal convictions and values? Probably a mix of both, though like you I’ve been finding that these circumstances force me to explore more of the latter. And I agree, and have been somewhat surprised to find, that there is plenty to live for even in this stripped-down time! When every morning, we get to ask ourselves how we want to define ourselves, whether that’s getting back into blogging, making art or music, or binge watching a Netflix show -- all perfectly valid ways to define oneself for that day. Which feels like sort of a unique opportunity that we have right now.

Constructed Unrealities

Snowpiercer (2013). A great metaphor for why we shouldn’t put huge aquariums on trains.

~

Schizophrenia: “a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation”.

To Carl Jung (whom, you may remember, I had a falling out with two summers ago but have since made up with), schizophrenia was a pathologically extreme case of psychological introversion. The introvert/extravert dichotomy, as Jung saw it, was a difference in focus upon the internal objects of the mental world, versus the external objects of the physical world. Everyone conceives of both, but introverts tend to spend more time with and are more comfortable living among the daydreams, theories, stories, or mental palaces of the internal world, while the extravert is more comfortable existing among and focusing on the places, things, and actions of the external world.

I don’t know anyone who suffers from schizophrenia, and I can’t pretend to know much about this very real and serious disorder. I do, however, have a bit of experience with the mental condition of being an introvert, and this latest season of quarantine has led me to notice my tendency to, like a schizophrenic, construct mental unrealities to escape from my physical circumstances.

Okay, “like a schizophrenic” is probably an exaggerated comparison. But in this moment of social distancing and isolation, “withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion” sounds like an apt description of daily life for many of us, filled with Netflix, games on Steam, and long hours of reading novels or staring at the ceiling. Normally, these sessions of binge entertainment are forced to an end by the onset of deadlines from work or school, demands from other areas of life that drag us back into unhappy reality. But what happens when reality is put on pause? When government relief agencies boost my unemployment checks so I don’t really have to worry about getting a job? When I open my G-Cal for the week and realize, there’s really nothing that I have to do right now?

The first thing that happens, as it turns out, is that I play a lot of video games. But a second, slower, stranger thing begins to happen. I start to realize that my existence can’t be summed up in a description of the role I play in the accomplishment of some task, like “student” or “programmer” or “celebrated Tumblr blogger”. I find that when I wake up in the morning, the only thing I have to do today is “be”.

I also start to notice that the domain of the extraverts, the external physical reality, is not so scary as it felt back when it was demanding eight hours of work each day from me, forcing me to walk up too many g- d- hills to get to class, or trapping me in excruciating social situations where I had to talk to people I didn’t know. Back in those pre-quarantine days, my internal world was my only safe refuge from that deluge of responsibility and tasks and doing things. Sometimes I would take a nap just so I could retreat into my mind, a world where nothing could hurt me and everything was completely mine. Now, though, it’s like the world is a train that has ground to a halt, and I cautiously slide open one of the doors to take a tentative step outside.

That train metaphor was an example of a constructed unreality, the kind of internal metaphor I usually need to come up with in order to make sense of the external world. Now, though, I’m starting to learn to just experience reality for what it is, using my eyes and ears and nose and body to sense the world, to be a part of it. So far “the world” has mostly consisted of my living room and the routes I take when I run in the morning, but it’s been a huge start. It’s felt like sitting in the mystery, holding the unknown, because my senses tell me things about the world, but don’t usually give me enough info to let me understand everything about it.

For instance, I’ll be sitting on the grass outside my apartment, looking up at the trees, and start to wonder, what makes the breeze that rustles the leaves again? Something about uneven heating of the earth’s surface? And a step back, if God really does control every detail of what happens on Earth, does He manage the movement of each leaf, orchestrated by the wind, driven by the sun’s heat, which is fueled by splitting helium atoms? At what point exactly does God intervene, in order to have any degree of control over this system that seems to run on self-sustaining mechanisms, and…

…And then I need to remind myself to stop, close my eyes, and feel the breeze roll over my skin, and listen to the gentle applause of the rustling leaves overhead.

[dailydj]

Constructed Unrealities

Snowpiercer (2013). A great metaphor for why we shouldn’t put huge aquariums on trains.

~

Schizophrenia: “a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation”.

To Carl Jung (whom, you may remember, I had a falling out with two summers ago but have since made up with), schizophrenia was a pathologically extreme case of psychological introversion. The introvert/extravert dichotomy, as Jung saw it, was a difference in focus upon the internal objects of the mental world, versus the external objects of the physical world. Everyone conceives of both, but introverts tend to spend more time with and are more comfortable living among the daydreams, theories, stories, or mental palaces of the internal world, while the extravert is more comfortable existing among and focusing on the places, things, and actions of the external world.

I don’t know anyone who suffers from schizophrenia, and I can’t pretend to know much about this very real and serious disorder. I do, however, have a bit of experience with the mental condition of being an introvert, and this latest season of quarantine has led me to notice my tendency to, like a schizophrenic, construct mental unrealities to escape from my physical circumstances.

Okay, “like a schizophrenic” is probably an exaggerated comparison. But in this moment of social distancing and isolation, “withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion” sounds like an apt description of daily life for many of us, filled with Netflix, games on Steam, and long hours of reading novels or staring at the ceiling. Normally, these sessions of binge entertainment are forced to an end by the onset of deadlines from work or school, demands from other areas of life that drag us back into unhappy reality. But what happens when reality is put on pause? When government relief agencies boost my unemployment checks so I don’t really have to worry about getting a job? When I open my G-Cal for the week and realize, there’s really nothing that I have to do right now?

The first thing that happens, as it turns out, is that I play a lot of video games. But a second, slower, stranger thing begins to happen. I start to realize that my existence can’t be summed up in a description of the role I play in the accomplishment of some task, like “student” or “programmer” or “celebrated Tumblr blogger”. I find that when I wake up in the morning, the only thing I have to do today is “be”.

I also start to notice that the domain of the extraverts, the external physical reality, is not so scary as it felt back when it was demanding eight hours of work each day from me, forcing me to walk up too many g- d- hills to get to class, or trapping me in excruciating social situations where I had to talk to people I didn’t know. Back in those pre-quarantine days, my internal world was my only safe refuge from that deluge of responsibility and tasks and doing things. Sometimes I would take a nap just so I could retreat into my mind, a world where nothing could hurt me and everything was completely mine. Now, though, it’s like the world is a train that has ground to a halt, and I cautiously slide open one of the doors to take a tentative step outside.

That train metaphor was an example of a constructed unreality, the kind of internal metaphor I usually need to come up with in order to make sense of the external world. Now, though, I’m starting to learn to just experience reality for what it is, using my eyes and ears and nose and body to sense the world, to be a part of it. So far "the world” has mostly consisted of my living room and the routes I take when I run in the morning, but it’s been a huge start. It’s felt like sitting in the mystery, holding the unknown, because my senses tell me things about the world, but don’t usually give me enough info to let me understand everything about it.

For instance, I’ll be sitting on the grass outside my apartment, looking up at the trees, and start to wonder, what makes the breeze that rustles the leaves again? Something about uneven heating of the earth’s surface? And a step back, if God really does control every detail of what happens on Earth, does He manage the movement of each leaf, orchestrated by the wind, driven by the sun’s heat, which is fueled by splitting helium atoms? At what point exactly does God intervene, in order to have any degree of control over this system that seems to run on self-sustaining mechanisms, and...

...And then I need to remind myself to stop, close my eyes, and feel the breeze roll over my skin, and listen to the gentle applause of the rustling leaves overhead.

[dailydj]

rainy LA day vibes. also, week 9 vibes.

(new MIDI keyboard!)

Made in FL Studio.

[dailydj]

Wu-Tang Rapper Name Generator

Childish Gambino

Childhood Friendino

Child’sish Playino

Child Molestino

Childlike Faithino

Childless Wombino

Mildish Jalapeño

Tiledish Kitchen Counterino

Compiledish Programmino

Stylish Flamingo

Whitish Filipino

Side Dish at Peppino’s

Chai-ish Cappucino

Flying Fish Casino

Irish-Latino

Scientist Neutrino

Wild Risk in Reno

Sonofabitch Quentin Tarantino 

[dailydj]

Psalm 15: Evocations

LORD, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?

Like a giant cloth iceberg, the tabernacle juts above a sea of tan Israelite tents. Off in the distance, there, can you see it? The faint outline of Mount Sinai, out on the hazy desert horizon, where they say God’s glory burns more brightly than the sun. Just entering either of these spaces for a brief moment is a nerve-wracking, death-defying experience. No one would ever dream of trying to stay for longer than a few minutes, let alone try to live there.

Aaron, the high priest, was packing up his things and getting ready to go home for the night, when out of the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of candlelight in the Holy of Holies, the center room of the tabernacle. Cautiously, Aaron crept back into the tent, and he noticed the shadow of a man was cast upon the dividing curtain of the holy place. The man was sitting and praying, and then he began to laugh, rising to his feet and swaying to and fro, dancing with complete, pure enjoyment and freedom. "Who’s there?” shouted Aaron. A great wind blew through the tabernacle, the candlelight was extinguished, and the tent fell into silence and darkness.

The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous.

He’s talking to a sick old woman, touches her, and life and health immediately spread across her entire body. He is settling an argument between feuding Pharisees and commoners, and standing up for the oppressed. He’s standing before a crowd of thousands, speaking words of such resounding truth and inspiration that the people are enraptured, unable to turn away.

Who speaks the truth from their heart.

“Truly I tell you,” declares Jesus, “Unless you give up all that you have, to follow me, you will never inherit the Kingdom of God”. The rich young ruler falls to his knees, distraught, conflicted, torn apart inside. Jesus’ look of compassion is warm and sincere, but also firm, decided, and His message is clear: what He’s asking for is hard, but undeniably true.

Whose tongue utters no slander.

Jesus pulls a coin from his pocket, and tosses it to the two old Jewish men smirking at Him from the front of the crowd. “Tell me, whose face is inscribed on that coin?” he asks.

“Caesar’s,” replies the Pharisee.

“Then give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give unto God what is God’s,” answers Jesus.

Who does no wrong to a neighbor, who casts no slur on others.

Jesus was tired. His cousin had just died, beheaded at the hands of a foolish king. He couldn’t help feeling the tug of guilt, couldn’t help but wonder, if John hadn’t been out there stirring people up about Him, the coming Messiah...would he still be alive? There was so much suffering, so much evil and hatred and cynicism here...humanity had grown to be so broken, and it broke Jesus’ heart. He needed some time away, just to spend with His Father, to be reassured of why He was sent here. The bottom of the boat scraped land, and Jesus stepped out into the shallow water. He settled on a rock, sitting cross-legged, watching the sun drift lazily towards the horizon, and let out a huge sigh of relief. Jesus closed his eyes, and murmured, “Father, I —”

“THERE HE IS!” came a shout from the bushes behind him. Suddenly, the undergrowth was rustling with the sounds of dozens of people, eagerly wading their way through the trees and shrubs to swarm towards Jesus. A woman carrying her baby had cuts on her arms, where tree branches had scraped them, but was nearly in tears of joy and ecstasy as she ran down the beach towards Jesus. Two sons panted as they stepped out from among the trees, the older one carrying their ailing father on his back. They smiled at one another, bumped fists, then made their way down the sand with their father between their shoulders. A familiar voice cut through the noise and excitement, as one young man shoved people out of the way to sprint down the beach. “Jesus!” yelled Peter, flailing his arms wildly to get his attention. He ran up to Jesus’ rock, gasping for air. “Phew...aah, I’m so sorry man, I really tried to stop them, but they’re relentless!”

Jesus smiled. “It’s okay,” He said. “Let them come.”

Who despises a vile person.

“You snakes!” He screamed. “You filthy thieves!” He grabbed a man by the shoulders and flung him into a table of birdcages, sending a cloud of money and doves floating up into the air. “What have you people done!” He roared, “This is my Father’s house! But you…” He towered over a quivering salesman, who was still clutching a purse of money tightly to his chest, as if it would protect him from this raving lunatic. “You have made it into a den of fucking robbers!”

But honors those who fear the Lord.

Jesus smiled, watching His friends toss food into each others’ mouths across the table. Quietly, He got up, took off His shirt, and tied a towel around His waist. He tapped Peter on the shoulder, who was trying to see if he could fit a whole apple into his mouth. “Hrnghhff?” asked Peter, who turned and saw Jesus, then immediately started choking and spitting out his food. “Jesus!” he angrily whispered, “What’re you doing, where are your clothes??”

“Your sandals, please.”

“My...what? What are you doing?”

Horrified, Peter watched as Jesus took Peter’s feet in His gentle hands, and began washing off the dirt caked between Peter’s toes, stuck to his soles, under the nails. The disciples looked on in awe and wonder.

Who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and does not change their mind.

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew never forgot those words, as long as he lived.

Who lends money to the poor without interest.

Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give to you.” The crowd gasped as the lame man rose to his feet. Dang, that sounded good, thought Peter. I feel like I remember Jesus saying that somewhere before.

Who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.

Jesus stood on the hill outside Jerusalem, gazing at the tiny people milling about, pondering to Himself. I might be able to help them, He thought. I could write new laws, which treat all people with perfect justice. I could reorganize their economy, so that everyone has enough to eat. We could raise a military, conquer neighboring territories little by little, and invite everyone into a great new empire. I’d be ruler over them all, a beautiful, perfect Kingdom. And it wouldn’t be so hard; all I’d have to do is just…

Jesus stopped, laughed to Himself, and said, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’ Thanks for the offer, Satan, but I think I’m good.”

Whoever does these things will never be shaken.

Drip, drip, drip. Blood plinked out a slow rhythm as it slid down the bridge of His nose, into a small puddle forming at the base of the wooden cross. Stabs of pain shot up Jesus’ feet as He pushed himself up to draw a ragged, desperate breath.

Curse him, whispered a voice in His ear. He has abandoned You, He does not care for You any longer. Why should you remain faithful to Him now?

Jesus lifted Himself for another breath, shuddering as the pain tore through His body again.

He is disgusted with You. You have made Yourself hideous in His sight. Surely His favor has departed from You. Curse Him, and worship me instead, Son of God. I can end Your suffering, all You have to do is one little thing.

Jesus said nothing, simply heaving Himself up once more for another breath. This went on for several hours more, just the tempter and Jesus, breathing, hurting, dying.

[dailydj]

(click on the post title to follow the link! ^)

Check out a few new tracks from Wandering Minds, a new SoundCloud page I’m hosting together with a few friends to upload our musical sketches. Mine are the ones with my face on them. I’ll prob be posting both here and at https://soundcloud.com/dittojam so be sure to follow both! 

[dailydj]

My highlights from PAX West 2018! 

For those who don’t know, the Penny Arcade Expo is an annual event that started in 2004, to showcase cool video games from both indie and AAA developers, lend out a huge collection of board games, and invite speakers to talk on panels all across the wide spectrum of gamer culture. My high school friends and I flew all the way up to Seattle, and had a great time!

[dailydj]

I killed Carl Jung

See, this is why I killed him. Doesn’t he kind of just sound like an obnoxious, unlikable person?

There is a big house in my mind, with dozens of rooms, maybe even hundreds; I haven’t peeked inside all of them yet, so I can’t know for sure. One of the doors is made of heavy, polished oak wood, and has a shiny brass doorknob. It creakily swings open, and reveals a room dimly lit by a stone fireplace, and a few oil lanterns scattered about. Tall bookshelves line the walls, the faded books coated in a layer of dust. The floor is wood as well, but mostly concealed by an ornate Persian rug, red fabric with gold trim and designs. A grandiose desk sits on the other end of the room, silhouetted from behind by a grimy old window. Amidst the books and papers strewn across the desk, I see the shadow of an old man.

The man looks up from his work. He’s wearing a white-collared shirt with a gray vest on top, the chain of a gold pocket watch snaking out between the buttons. He is tall, balding but with a trimmed white beard crowding in around his lips. His eyes are sharp and piercing, the brows narrow and suspicious, and his gaze flicks up to examine me.

He’s Caucasian. Why is it that so many of these rooms are filled with old, white men, anyway?

“Um, sorry,” I stutter, feeling like I’m intruding even though, actually, it’s my house. “Who are you?”

He inspects me in silence, then leans forward, resting his chin on pale, bony fingers arranged in the shape of a steeple. “You may call me the Professor. Please, come in. Sit.”

I walk across the room and sit in a tiny wooden chair that’s way too small for me, facing the Professor across his desk. He gazes down at me, and I feel an uncomfortable tingling at the back of my neck, like I’m a museum exhibit pinned under glass. It’s like he’s reading into my mind, which we are, of course, both still inside. The silence ferments unsettlingly for a few minutes. The sweat on the back of my shirt is making it stick to the chair, and I anxiously wonder if I’m supposed to be saying something.

Finally, the Professor clears his throat, and says, “You are more comfortable using logic than listening to your emotions, hm? Yes, and you tend to get lost in your thoughts, and have trouble remaining aware of your surroundings. I’ve seen that you often lose your belongings, and can’t be on time for even the most important engagements. Being around other people makes you uncomfortable, you’d much rather stay inside on your computer all day. Hrmm...let’s see now...I would have to say you must be an INTP. A Logician. People like you have an enormous capability to take in information, and synthesize it into complex systems. Some might say you’re more like a robot than a human; but who says that has to be a bad thing? The weakness of human emotion just doesn’t apply to you like it does to everyone else. With your incredible mind, if you train it properly, you can one day come to know all that there is to know.”

I sit listening in wonder. His words seem to flow into an empty region of myself, filling up some vacant receptacle called my identity. It feels so comforting, so fulfilling to have four simple letters I can hold on to that encapsulate who I am. All the things that I thought were wrong with me, all the ways I’d failed to measure up in the past, seem much less painful with the knowledge that there are others with this label on them, just like me.

A sudden twinge of guilt pangs at my chest. There’s someone else, in one of the rooms upstairs, who I was supposed to let fill my feeling of identity. He promised that He would give me a new identity, that He was transforming me into a new and perfect creation. But His work has been taking forever! I need an identity now, because in my first month at university, I’ve been meeting people who are so unique and interesting and confident in themselves, and I feel so boring by comparison.

I come back to visit the Professor the next day, and the next, and keep coming back for weeks, which eventually turn into months. I sit at his desk in my tiny chair, and he teaches me all about his classification system, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I learn more and more about myself every day, the things I can and can’t do, the people that I can and can’t be in relationship with, and slowly learn to love this new identity I’ve been given. Sometimes, I miss the old me who was allowed to love and care for people just because they were inherently valuable. But INTPs only value information, and people simply as a means by which to acquire more of it.

I still go to the room upstairs to visit my friend every once in a while, but I don’t tell Him about the Professor. He wouldn’t understand it, He’s always talking about each of His creations being perfectly unique, no two exactly alike. One day, about two years after I meet the Professor, I am visiting my friend upstairs, and He stops me in the middle of our conversation. “DJ,” he says, “I think it would be good for you to leave the house for a little while. Go outside, see what’s out there. I know how much you love learning; maybe you’ll find something new!”

I reluctantly comply, and pack my bags. I get on a bus, and find myself sitting next to another guy, a Chinese-American boy about my age, with a wide grin always plastered across his face. “Ah, you know about the Myers-Briggs?” he asks me. “I took a test online once. I’m an INFJ!”

It takes me about fifteen minutes of talking to him to decide that he’s wrong. He’s loud, overbearing, always trying to start a conversation when I’m trying to sleep. He can’t entertain complex logical systems the way I can, oftentimes getting impatient and resorting to simpler conclusions. I smirk at him with a skeptical glare, filled with condescension at this boy’s lack of self-awareness. We ride together for what feels like forever, and eventually he realizes I’m not looking for a conversation and falls into silence. The next couple hours are much more peaceful, and I’m free to retreat back into my head and wander through the halls.

We arrive at our destination, I’m not even sure where, but I’m forced to share a bunk bed with the boy from the bus. I groan inwardly. It’s late, though, and I go straight to bed without a word to my new roommate.

I dream that I’m on a tiny fishing boat, in the middle of the ocean. There are four other guys in the boat with me, laughing and having a good time. I sigh, and look out across the water bored out of my mind. I squint at the line where the water meets the sky, and see a great darkness suddenly rushing up out of it. Soon it has completely enveloped the sky, covering up the sun. We’re in the middle of a huge thunderstorm, and the waves are a hundred feet tall on every side. Rain is pouring down on us, and my companions are panicking, trying desperately to paddle through the current and bail out our tiny boat with a bucket.

Through the rain and whipping wind, I see a man, in shining white robes, walking on the water towards us. Everyone in my boat shouts with joy when they see him, and one by one, nervously step out of the boat onto the waves to walk towards him. He grabs each one by the hand, pulling them to safety close by his side, and soon I am the only one left in the boat.

I try to stand up, but I can’t seem to move my legs. I look down; they’re frail and shriveled, numb to any feeling, and completely useless. I cry out to my companions, to come and help me out of the boat, and one of them turns around. It’s my roommate, the boy from the bus. I scream and wave my hands, but he only looks confused. He’s looking as hard as he can, but it’s like his gaze goes right through me. I’m invisible.

Desperately, I try to drag myself over the edge of the boat with my hands, and splash into the water. I’m sinking, sinking, and as I stare upwards I see the bright light from the man’s robes fading, and I fall further and further from the surface. Finally, my body comes to rest on the ocean floor, and I’m completely

Alone. Dark shadows float around me, silhouettes of seaweed and looming sea creatures. There’s no breath passing between my lips, and I feel resigned to my fate, to sit there in silence for all eternity. My head is resting uncomfortably against a rock, the icy water chilling me to the bone. I dig my fingers into the cold sand, and feel them brush against metal. I lift a small object out of the ground, and feel it to find its shape. It’s a small revolver. Perhaps this is the only way out of here, I think. I lift the gun against my head, and --

I open my eyes. There’s sunlight streaming through a window beside me. I can breathe again. I rub my eyes, and stare at the underside of the top bunk bed above me. After a few minutes of hesitation, I get up and peek over the side of the top bed. My roommate is already gone, though, the sheets neatly folded back into place. I sigh, and sit back down on my bed.

A few days later, I’m back on the bus, ready to go home. I make sure to be the last one on board so I can find a seat by myself. I stare out the window the entire time.

When I get back to my house, I hurl my bag onto the floor of the entryway, and go straight to the Professor’s study. I knock on the solid oak door. “Come in,” he says.

I walk up to his desk, but don’t sit on my tiny chair. “Didn’t have a good time?” he asks snidely. “Figures, after all, you are a--”

I snatch the revolver out of my pocket, point it square against his forehead, and pull the trigger.

BANG! His body hits the floor, blood spilling out onto the red and gold carpet, and I drop the gun and run upstairs in tears.

So, that’s the story of why I killed Carl Jung. His body is still there, in case you’re wondering, in that dusty old room in the house inside my head. I hear his ghost murmuring sometimes, saying stupid stuff like “Ah, see, he can’t get any work done because of his inferior-Te” or “She’s being really obnoxiously energetic right now, must be an Se-dom”. Don’t get me wrong; I think MBTI is really cool, and it really did help me connect with people, and to understand myself and others through one season of my life. But recently I’ve just realized that it’s become a vehicle for me to just criticize people and be okay with that, disguising it as “trying to type them”. So I decided I’m taking a little break from the Myers-Briggs -- sort of like “fasting”, if you will. That room in my house will remain unoccupied, for now, though maybe God will someday bring me a new occupant to fill the room who’s a little bit less of a d-bag.

I’m beginning to see the very tiny beginnings of a new mindset I think God is leading me into - one in which every relationship is built on a foundation not of perfection, but of grace. A view of people in which each person is actually created perfectly and uniquely, and where, underneath all the layers of brokenness and scarring and sin corruption, there is a true identity that reflects a small part of the full, boundless glory of God. I don’t know what it’s gonna look like for me to get from here to there, and I still don’t even really know what “grace” really means, but I’m confident that He’s making something new in me. And sometimes, in order for something new to come, something old needs to die.

[dailydj]

1 Kings: Old People Advice

How do you decide who to take advice from?

Whenever I’m feeling like a little bit of self-inflicted torture, I like to read about current political issues. DACA for college students, net neutrality, illegal immigration, marijuana legalization, Asian-Americans in media...the list of dumb things people are arguing over is endless. It seems to me that a common divide in these debates lies between the younger generation of liberal, idealistic, social justice warriors, and the older conservative bastion of cynical, resigned party poopers. I feel this divide on a personal level, inundated by the former group while I’m away at university, but confronted by the latter every time I come home and discuss politics with my dad.

As Christians, but also just as intelligent human beings, I think it’s important for us to understand this divide, because it affects almost all other areas of life too, including the church. There’re two interesting stories from ancient Jewish history that illustrate this conflict pretty well: 

The first involves King Rehoboam, the son of the wise yet idiotic King Solomon. Solomon screwed up by letting Israel turn to idol worship yet again, after all the hard work his dad David put into finally getting them to commit to the whole God thing. As a result, God is going to rip his chosen people apart into two kingdoms, Judah and Israel. Rehoboam’s first big decision as king is whether to lighten the load of work Solomon had put the people under (to build his fancy temple and house and other house and idol sites). The older advisors, who had served with Rehoboam’s father, tell him to go easy on the people and in so doing, earn their loyalty. The younger generation of advisors, however advise him to increase the workload and slave labor, and flex on the Israelites to show how much power he has. Rehoboam’s decision?

“But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him.”

‭‭1 Kings‬ ‭12:8‬ ‭ESV‬‬

He listens to his peers, and as a result the people rebel and the kingdom is torn in two, just as God promised.

So the message from the Bible is clear: old people are always right. Listen to your elders, because they have all the wisdom. Even though, from a political science-y kind of perspective, either decision seems like it could’ve worked out -- many leaders since have had to ask the same question of how to manage and keep power. Regardless, the Scripture’s message is simple and clear -- young people are foolish and don’t understand reality; God always speaks only through those with more life experience.

Unless, perhaps, we choose to read on. Later in the narrative, a young, unnamed prophet arrives to tell the king to stop worshiping idols. God instructs the prophet not to eat or drink anything while he’s there. But then, as he’s leaving, the young prophet bumps into an old prophet, and an interesting interaction takes place:

“And he [the old prophet] said to him, "I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, 'Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water.'" But he lied to him.”

‭‭1 Kings‬ ‭13:18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The young prophet goes and eats with the old prophet, thus disobeying God. Then he leaves, and gets eaten by a lion. The old prophet finds his body, and mourns the loss of the young prophet, vowing to be buried alongside him.

I have no idea what is going on here. Like, was the old prophet was trying to test him, or did he lie to actually lead the young prophet astray? Is it supposed to show how even the prophets had become corrupt liars?

Whatever it was, it doesn’t really matter. What we do see is that negative consequences arise from blindly following this older and wiser person. Let us view the situation from the younger prophet’s perspective: there’s this other spiritual leader who really seems to know what he’s doing, and he gives a simple, seemingly harmless instruction -- come eat with me! Perhaps at this point the younger prophet starts to doubt a little bit, whether he heard God correctly. Maybe I misunderstood God’s instructions, he might think. After all, this guy is a prophet too, and he’s been doing it for a lot longer than I have! I’d better go with what he says, just to be safe.

Indeed, following the well-worn path of our elders often feels like a safer decision. But that, I think, is exactly the young prophet’s sin. He decides to obey a man, instead of God, and pays the price for it. He doubts the authority he has been given from God, and instead chooses to define wisdom by his own terms. His fear of being wrong was greater than his fear of God.

At my university, I’m involved in a student Christian fellowship called Intervarsity. As a result, I’m often interacting with Christians that are just a little bit older than me, but who seem way wiser and more experienced from my perspective. I’m really grateful to have all of them in my life, but recently I’ve been noticing an unsettling trend arising -- when I find myself in a crisis situation, my mind immediately turns to my friends for salvation, instead of to God. I think, I need to talk to [insert nearby friend’s name] about this; I need to process with them so they can point me to God; I know God is there, but I’m just not in the right state of mind to hear from Him by myself right now. Yes, even my internal monologue uses semicolons.

Whatever the old prophet’s motives were, one thing is still abundantly clear from Scripture and from our experience in the world: all humans fall short of perfection. When faced with a situation of uncertainty, it is not wrong to ask for advice; ultimately, I believe this is a sign of true wisdom. But I think that relying on human wisdom, whether from our peers or our elders, will fail either way. The question of whose advice is superior, I think, is not “young vs. old”, but rather “humans vs. God”. God is here, and we have authority to ask him directly, as crazy and difficult as it is to believe. Difficult political issues are simple and trivial from His perspective, and I’m pretty sure He could care less about what old conservatives and young liberals think that He thinks. Will I step into the authority I’ve been given when He gave me His Spirit, to go directly to Him for advice? Or will I keep myself in the endless cycle of blind leading blind, perpetuating confusion, turmoil, and injustice?

(There it is again with the rhetorical question ending. If anyone has any better ways to end a blog post, please drop it in my suggestion box.)

[dailydj]

i’m learnding

These last few weeks I’ve been learning a lot about this super Christian-y idea called grace. I’m kinda shocked and a little disappointed in myself that I’ve been able to make it this far in my “Christian” life without first understanding what this word means. But everything in God’s timing, I guess.

Merriam-Webster defines grace as: “a : unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification; b : a virtue coming from God; c : a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance.”

As a side note, I find it really annoying when people use dictionary definitions to start off essays, sermons, or blog posts. It’s uninteresting, and rarely seems to contribute anything relevant to the rest of the content (and why should we let some dumb book tell us what all of our words mean?). As such, I’ll do my best to entirely ignore this definition in my discussion of grace.

In my experience of it, this idea of “grace” has embodied a weird sort of tension between knowing that the things I have done should wreck everything around me, and observing that somehow, they don’t. Life goes on beyond my failures, and I am permitted to get back up and try again by some force or mechanism beyond myself. To this unknown principle, I give the name of grace.

New knowledge is a powerful destroyer of old lies and untrue beliefs. Grace is also falsifying my beliefs that I am in control over certain things in life. I cannot control the outcomes of some situations and circumstances that are greater than me, nor can I control what my friends do or the things they say or the differences between them and me. I do have control over whether or not I want to accept these differences, and believe that God made people with individual gifts and that he calls each person to a different purpose.

Perhaps the reason it’s so hard for me to show grace to others is because I’m out of practice in receiving it from God, myself. Do I accept the differences I see between myself and others, and view my unique traits as gifts for usage in my unique calling? Or do I constantly berate myself and strive to live up to standards of perfection that are human-generated, and thus necessarily incomplete? I think deep change usually starts more from how I become something, rather than when I do something. What if I were to become the person God created me to be, whatever that may look like?

As another side note, it also irritates me to see paragraphs that end with obvious “what if” rhetorical questions. This kind of sentence structure is unnecessarily confusing, and a weak call-to-action which can really only be answered with something like, “Uh...I don’t know?” Which is maybe appropriate, because, really, I don’t know what the consequences of embracing this dumb liberal “self-esteem” crap will be. Maybe I’ll end up as a self-righteous, free-loving, “live and let live” millennial who believes in universalism and writes blog posts on tumblr.

I don’t know. All I know is that something has to change, because I can’t move on in my faith until I learn what grace really means.

[dailydj]

A few years ago, I started making music for fun, and I quickly found it to be a very therapeutic and enjoyable hobby. It’s a good creative outlet, like drawing (but you’ve all seen how that’s not really been working out for me).

This particular track is one that I started about two and a half years ago and just never got around to finishing. Once I write anything that’s longer than like thirty seconds, I suddenly get really attached and perfectionistic, feeling like it’s never good enough to post. I think, though...that with things like this, it’s probably best to declare a project finished, even if you’re still dissatisfied, because that’s how we learn and grow!

Let me know what y’all think. If you wanna try making music yourself, you can download the program I use for free at https://lmms.io/download/#windows 

[dailydj]

For all you Ne users out there, something I find helpful to remember. Yeah, I think it's true that Truth resides everywhere, but some places are swarming with insidious lies, which are made to have the outward appearance of truth. I think the height of ego is when we have decided that we can understand all things.

[dailydj]

8ams :l

[dailydj]

This week's personal challenge: I lost my phone charger. How many days can I survive bumming off other people's chargers?

[dailydj]

2017: 2

Another defining characteristic of 2017 has been the differences in my relationships with others. I think that for most of my life, I’ve had very discrete, segmented groups of friends; I had my “church” friends, “school” friends, and “fetus” friends. My personality was very different among each of these groups, and any problems I had were pretty contained within their respective realms. I was insecure about who I was; as a result, I was afraid to change anything about the way I was perceived, for fear that people would reject me.

But as I grew to understand myself better, I saw my relationships changing as well. At the beginning of 2017, I entered into my second quarter as a freshman at UCLA. Happily and surprisingly, I was able to find many good friends, and I was really enjoying being in what felt like one of the first places I could truly be myself.

Maybe I let myself get a little high off the experience, though. I needed MORE, more friends, more popularity, more emotional depth and intimacy. I had tasted from the cup of life and saw that it was good, but ravenously craved for more. My hunger knew no bounds; my every thought was consumed with needing to be a good friend, hounded by the constant fear of losing all that I had come to gain.

Eh, just kidding. I’m just being dramatic, it wasn’t really that bad. But, in 2018 I’ll try to better appreciate the friendships I have, and have gratitude for what I’ve been given.

[dailydj]

My last day of work celebration lunch 🔥🔥feat. Del Taco dollar menu