Its Not For Me

Last night I was at an event in Tel Aviv in honor of the holiday of Tisha B'Av (the 9th of Av).  At this event there were various speakers, Rabbis and such. Now I know that we are all leading very busy lives, but it bothered me that there were so many religious girls who came late, sat in the front and were on their cell phones.

I feel that we are taking this constant contact a little too seriously.  And it is starting to just come off as rude.  One woman sitting behind one of these girls told her to put it away because the light from the screen was bothering her.  I feel that it should be common courtesy, you came to listen to this guy speak shouldn't you be listening?  If he is able to turn off for a few hours, surely you can too. Perhaps this is just the problem with the instant generation  Its not like when you are in school and you do not choose to be sitting there without your beloved cell phone. When you are a consenting adult and you decided to come to a lecture, especially if you are going to sit in the front row you should be paying attention.  I'm not saying any of this to convince myself that it is a bad habit because I know that it is and I am trying to cut back.  What are you doing to try and cut back?

ABC ran a very interesting article on the topic.  Sad to say that we may need someone else to help us curb our addiction to cell phones because just as one can be an alcoholic one can be addicted to using their cell phone.  I once heard a Rabbi speak about cell phones. He said that if you go one day without your cell phone on you and you still feel it vibrating or reach to your pocket to check then you are addicted. Looks like we're going to need some sort of rehab.

Life seems to stop

"Life's all about moments, of impact and how they changes our lives forever." - The Vow (2012)


We run through life so quickly, never stopping to think about what is going on until you hit a brick wall. I hit that wall this morning when I woke up to a status update that shocked me.  It was a status posted by a friend wishing condolences to the parents of an other friend of mine on the death of their daughter.  At first I didn't believe it, its hard to grasp when that a friend of yours even if you have not seen or heard from them in a while that you will never hear from them again.


She was a friend of mine, she had a way of being friends with everyone and had such a love of life, I remember she was always marching to the beat of a different drum.  We were chavrutas (learning partners) in Jewish Day school and we were both involved in the same youth movement and it was a very small school so our social circles overlapped. Her sister is my age and I cannot image losing a sister so close to me. There are so many things that you start to think about when a life is cut short like this. All the things that you want to do with your life and suddenly there are so many things that you can appreciate.


Hadas will surly be missed and my heart goes out to her entire family the world lost an amazing girl this week.

Happiness

Last week I was listening to some podcasts from Jillian Michaels and she was talking about happiness. There is just too much to say on the topic of happiness that I don't even know where to begin. Perhaps we should begin with the problem of happiness. She says, "problem with being happy is we're afraid for the bottom to fall out." This is very true, there are many people, myself included, who when they are faced with the emotion of happiness we are unable to hold on to this emotion for too long, there is always a fear of that the sky is going to be coming down on us.

She compared happiness to being a relationship, when you are with someone you really care about you want to hold onto it but still hold onto the fear that one day they will leave you. The problem with this approach to holding onto things is that we tend to drive them away.  Our fears become the reality and this makes it very difficult to be happy.  There has to be a way to break the cycle, to stop you from trying to predict the future when in reality you can't. One can never know what is going to happen tomorrow, you have to starts living for today.

This more easily said than done, how does one just up and change how they have been living their life until now?  Jillian had a good answer, it was to live in the moment. When something good happens savor it, when something bad happens think about something good thats going to happen later.  For example there was a day when things weren't going well for me, buses were slow, traffic was bad... but when I got to the bus stop in Tel Aviv for the bus to Be'er Sheva the bus I was sure I missed was still sitting there granted it was full and I had to sit on the floor, but in that moment I couldn't be upset anymore because I had made it. You just have to find more moments like this to focus on in your life.

Its funny as I write this whats coming to mind is the patronus charm from Harry Potter.  How the dementors try to bring you down but you have that one happy thought to focus on to drive them away. Its the same idea, but you have to hold on to it and tell yourself that you deserve it.  Most of the time when a depressed or pessimistic person has a moment of happiness they feel that they don't deserve it. I know this happens to me sometimes, something good will happen that I should be happy about but it just seems to bounce off me. We're not rubber, we are sponges. We take things in and hold on to them, why should we hold on stronger to bad feelings? Shouldn't we be repelling those and absorbing the good?

Mistake On The Radio

In today's world we expect such high stamdards from everyone. We expect that everyone will be perfect and not make a single mistake. What we are forgetting is that not everyone is perfect. This morning I was listening to the radio and the DJ was talking when suddenly he started talking in a voice that sounded something like sylverster the cat.

After a song played he came back on the air to talk about it and appologize for the mistake. Saying that he didn't know what had over come him, just that he knew that the intro to the song he was playing was only 12 seconds long. When I was taking a radio class our teachers always told us to keep going even if you make a mistake and to not even acknowledge that you had made a mistake. The DJ mentioned this in his rant about his mistake, but I feel that when they do make mistakes it makes the DJ seem more human and less of a machine. It boosts your own confidence when someone can get on the radio and messup. Granted this was the after midnight show so god knows how many people are actually listening.

The station this happened on was 94.7 the country giant, I do not know who the DJ was but I commend you for making the mistake, catching it and even pointing it out to listeners. That takes a lot of courage to point it out on live radio. It was definitely the fist time I've heard such a thing. Good job and kep up the good work, now if only we could all stand up and take the fault for our mistakes.

Have you ever made a big mistake in public and then admitted to the mistake with out just letting it go?

The Gift of Giving

If you are always giving you are not giving from a good place
This is an idea that I have never really put too much thought into.  This morning I opened up a note book that I had been taking notes in when I was going to lectures a few months ago.  Now I didn't write any more on this topic in my notes, this is all that the notebook has to say so I am sure that I wrote it down for a reason.

After sitting with this statement for a while I have begun to see that it is true.  I am not saying that every person who gives all the time will not be giving from a good place, but there are those who give as a part of a daily routine and it seems to lose its meaning. For example I know a girl who is always giving to others, she will drive people places and lends money to people like there is no tomorrow.  On the outside everyone may think that she is a great person.  But there are cases that if you look closely you begin to see that she is not really doing it from a good place, like if she offers someone a ride and they are not ready to go the second she wants to leave she glares at you and taps her foot like she is in a rush. There was even a time when an other friend asked to borrow something from her, she said yes but when she thought that no one was listening she complained to an other friend about this girl asking for so much from her. Clearly these intentions are more out of an attempt to be polite because her parents taught to act like this, but not out of her true deeper feelings.

On the flip side of this statement there also the counter example of "The Giving Tree." In Shel Silverstein's book the tree gives everything that she has to the little boy and enough is never enough. I'm sure there is much to be said on the receiving end of this situation, but the tree is clearly giving from a good place. She wants to boy to have everything in the world and to be happy that she ends up sacrificing her whole being to the boy but she is still happy.

This seems to be a really heavy topic when you think about it, perhaps a little too heavy for a children's book.  I think that we need to figure out our bearings and what the right balance is. It can be hard to say no sometimes, but you can't give everything all the time because then you lose yourself and the giving no longer comes from that genuinely good place. We have to be willing to take something for ourselves, but not be selfish and give but not be a push over and give everything.

For an interesting approach to looking at this book I recommend checking out Luc Reid's Blog.

Instant Generation

We are living in times that are moving quickly. The days seem shorter, and thus life seems to fly by.  I know that I cannot believe that this year is almost over, seems like I just blinked and an other year is gone. That is not the point I am trying to make here. What I am trying to say is that we live in a society where decisions are made on a dime.  In my Communications Culture and Society class the lecturer called this generation the "Enter Generation." We live for things happening the second we want them to. Push power the TV turns on, press send the message goes and we get an answer... Even in my apartment I will turn the air conditioner on at 27* and in a few minutes the whole apartment feels cooler while my roommate will come home turn on the air and turn the temperature all the way down to 18* so that we freeze. She needs it here and now.

For the past few months I have been on the hunt for an apartment. Granted I do not plan to move until October I have been trying to plan ahead to avoid said decisions made on a dime.  Just this afternoon I received a phone call from one of my current roommates telling me that she has some friends that are looking for a third roommate and they are planning to sign a lease in August and not move in until October. Now to me this just seems ridiculous. Is it not possible to find an apartment in October? I don't plan to come back to school with out an apartment but I do believe that if I have to stay over somewhere for a few nights before I get myself together is not the end of the world. But to everyone else that I have spoken to they make me feel like I'm insane to wait longer than 10 minutes to make a big decision like this. I think that I will wait out the storm and see what happens it makes life exciting and also the past few big decisions that I have made in this manner have not ended the way that I would have liked them too, so I'm going to take my time here.

Product Placement

Its a funny thing when you think about brands. Has it ever occurred to any one that when you wear a T-shirt with say the Nike logo, and the picture is posted on your Facebook, that you are giving them free advertising. Not only that but you even PAID to get the shirt, so in a way you as the consumer are paying the company to display their logo. Seems a little backwards to me. Usually its the company who pays people to do advertising for them, think about TV
commercials or billboards. Kind of makes me not want to buy those Nike sneakers or that American Eagle sweatshirt that clearly points out to the world that I personally endorse this brand and think that you should to even if I'm not getting a cut of the profits from them.

Its psychological when you see a friend of yours wearing a certain brand you get the feeling that they endorse it and therefore you should buy it. This idea works really well for the brands that are trying to sell more... whatever. But I still want to know why I have to pay $15 to show the world that they should get Old Navy T-Shirts when Old Navy is perfectly capable of putting ads in magazines and on TV. Wow I think I have spent too much time studying for all these communication exams, all I can think about when I open Facebook of watch a movie is "PRODUCT PLACEMENT!"

But I guess there is some benefit for product placement in you life that is if you use it well. Viral video make Devin Graham is making it work for him.

(image is from the movie back to the future as seen in the blog "Brands and Films")