While I was flipping through a BrainQuest card deck with Chase today, I came across the card shown here. At once, I became speechless. It's supposed to be a learning tool for 2-to-3-year-olds, yet it's already trying to indoctrinate them with capitalism, consumerism, and materialism. How devious.

But we adults in the Western world have already succumbed to this. Recently my wife witnessed a family packing up their stuff in preparation for an overseas move, and she found stuff upon stuff all over their house. It took almost a week of constant packing, with people constantly visiting the house to take away free and unwanted stuff, yet still there's lots of stuff left over. Among all the stuff, my wife found 7 rolls of aluminum foil paper and 100 mugs for that small family.

Mind you, I'm not trying to point a finger at this family, because it's really just the same story for all of us living the suburban life. Personally, I dread the day that my family would move, because we too have been stuffed up with lots and lots of stuff. Most everyone I know are "stuff accumulators" to a certain degree, and some are even obsessive about getting stuff. I found this great quote from an article entitled "Possession Obsession", which aptly sums up our stuff-oriented lives: "I spend far too much time buying stuff, maintaining the stuff I've bought and getting rid of old stuff to make room for new stuff. A friend suggested I need a bigger house. What I need is less stuff."

An extreme case was a news story in which a 77-year-old British shopaholic died under a pile of her purchases. It took a search team 2 days to sift through all her possessions before they could find her body buried under a pile of suitcases and stuff.

Clearly, we fail to grasp the extent to which our stuff controls us. Westerners are well known for being "consumers", but most of us have horrible spending habits. In fact, I think that, instead of us being consumers of our stuff, it's our stuff that's consuming us. We are tricked into equating the ability to buy things to a feeling of success, prosperity, and comfort. In a thoughtful BBC News column, Matt Frei wrote:

So much of the prosperity we took for granted was based on consumption that was conspicuously conspicuous.

We did not need most of the things that we bought on credit and that were produced cheaply for us by China, Vietnam or India.

We were, if we are being honest, perfectly comfortable without them. We are living in a saturation economy in which demand was fueled by a combination of superb advertising, peer pressure and easy credit.

So, be honest, and look around your home. What are those things you possess that you can feel comfortable being without? After all, why do you need all that stuff? Why do we feel we need so much stuff?


Highly Recommended Additional Reading:
Making Spiritual Sense of the Financial Crisis by Dr. Paul Yin
The Hole In Our Gospel by Richard Stearns

I'd like to share with you a technique that I use whenever I'm reading a long book. It's a technique I call "double bookmarking".

I developed this technique based on inspiration from the documentary film "Touching The Void", one of my most favorite films of all time. The film was about how mountaineer Joe Simpson survived a fall down a mountain and eventually made it down the mountain and back into safety despite traveling for 3 days with a broken leg and without food. The way he did it was that instead of seeing the entire task as an impossible task, he set short-term goals for himself. He would aim for moving to the next piece of rock he could see. Once he made it there, he celebrated it as a small victory, and then aim for moving to the next rock.

My technique of reading a long book mimics Simpson's tactics by using two bookmarks. I put two bookmarks in a book like this:



The top bookmark is where I'm currently reading at. For example, I might be starting at chapter 1, so my top bookmark is at chapter 1:



The bottom bookmark is where my "next rock" or "next small milestone" is. If the next chapter is within 10-15 pages away, I would put the bottom bookmark at the next chapter. Otherwise, I might aim for the next sub-section. In this example, my bottom bookmark is at chapter 2:



Sometimes I set a time-based goal for me to get to the next bookmark, sometimes I don't. Once I get to the next bookmark, I "celebrate" a little bit by taking a break and doing something else. And then I move the second bookmark to the next short-term goal, for example, chapter 3. This way I've reduced the task of reading a long book to just reading a bunch of shorter segments of text.

I hope you can find this useful!

It's hard to believe that today is the 10th wedding anniversary for Wendy and I... 10 years together in matrimony! I just found out that it's called a "Tin anniversary" or an "Aluminum anniversary."

For some reason, my first thoughts about our anniversary have to do with some very discouraging articles I recently read, especially in the aftermath of the Jon & Kate Gosselin's marriage fiasco. When Jon & Kate Gosselin started going through marriage troubles, I started reading articles where people say that "traditional lifelong marriage" does not work. (for example: read "Jon and Kate Plus 8 prove traditional lifelong marriage is dead" in the San Francisco Examiner). And then I read an article in "The Atlantic" that seeks to debase the value of a "traditional lifelong marriage", and it contains many quotes that distress me. Among those distressing quotes that the author wrote include:


Sadly, we are frequently bombarded with irresponsible messages like these that reduce marriage to just a legal contract, or a flimsy description of "when two people love each other very much, and they want everyone to know, then they get married." No wonder it is obsolete. But what's really obsolete is not "marriage" itself, but those false understandings of so-called "marriage".

However, I would agree with one thing: it is not easy to be married. But that is also why marriage is so precious. Nothing that's easy to attain would be valued as highly as something that takes pains to get.

Also, our struggles in our earthly marriages is perhaps a lesson for us who are believers in God. Christ's second coming is described as the bridegroom (Christ) meeting the bride (the church), and it is a joyous event because of "the readiness of the bride": "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready" (Revelation 19:7). I believe that some of the lessons I learn from my marriage not only help me become a better person, but also help me understand how I can be ready and be pure (2 Corinthians 11:2) in anticipation of Christ's return.

So as Wendy and I celebrate 10 years of marriage, my thought should not be: "Whew! Made it to 10 years!" Instead, I hope my attitude would be: "We've only just begun! There's so much more to learn!" In every marriage, there are eternal rewards waiting for us to discover.

"I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." (Luke 13:5)

Once upon a time there was a kid who grew to be an amazing musician. His ascent to fame started in Motown, where he was a part of many hit songs and records that we still listen and love today. Then he went solo and made a landmark album that was so groundbreaking that it completely revolutionized his genre of music. His artistry influenced so many musicians that everyone wanted to be like him. However, while he was at his peak musically, his personal life started to crumble. He went through failed marriages, was diagnosed with mental disorder, exhibited lots of eccentric behaviors, engaged in a long period of substance abuse, spent away much of his money, and lived a reclusive life before his tragic death. After his death, a star-studded memorial service was held in which his former friends celebrated his life and artistry.

The person I'm talking about is Jaco Pastorius (1951-1987). Who is that, you may ask? If you are a bass player, you would probably know Jaco as one of the greatest bass player that ever lived. His self-titled album revolutionized bass playing, and his songs still amaze many who hear him until this day. But despite his brilliance, he was a lost soul in the last few years of his life, and he died beaten to death outside a bar after a night of binge drinking.

Jaco's story somehow sounds eerily similar to the the life and death of many celebrities, including recent dead celebrities like Michael Jackson and (to a lesser degree) Steve McNair. When a brilliant person passes away, people usually say things like "I choose to remember so-and-so as an amazing person who contributed so much beauty to the world" or something like that. However, I think that with the passage of time, people will inevitably forget about the messy stuff in a dead celebrity's life, and all that's left are the good memories. That's ok, that's natural, but when a celebrity dies, I "choose" to try to learn from the celebrity's failures from his/her life while the memory is still fresh and untainted.

Last week, after learning of Michael Jackson's death, I tweeted that "Michael Jackson's death tells me that some people die and leave behind a lot of debt, bad influences, and another example of a life wasted"... I should have known that a 140-character limit on Twitter is not going to be enough to talk about such a complicated thing as someone's life, and I received a few responses via Twitter and Facebook, one of which was a particularly angry response saying how I can talk about a dead person that way.

The truth is, like I said, I was trying to learn lessons from Michael Jackson. In fact, I really love Michael Jackson's music -- one of the reasons I love English songs so much while growing up in Hong Kong was artists like Michael Jackson. But today I look at him again with fresh eyes. One day my family was at a friend's house, and they were playing old Michael Jackson music videos on the TV. When I saw that my 3-year-old son Chase was watching those dance moves by Michael Jackson where he was thrusting his groin area toward the girls and incorporating "grabbing his crotch" as a part of the dance moves, I had to ask my friend to turn off the TV immediately. Until that day, I hadn't realized how obscene Michael Jackson's dance moves were.

In fact, Wikipedia's entry on Michael Jackson said that he probably had a condition known as "body dysmorphic disorder, a psychological condition whereby the sufferer has no concept of how he is perceived by others." That's a terrible condition to have, and it probably explains why he could be such an "entertainer," because he could dangle a baby outside a window or danced on top of a car in the middle of his child molestation trial. I feel sad for Michael Jackson, because I can imagine how he struggles with his own identity, leading him to undergo numerous cosmetic operations and just feeling lost in the world.

I'm also reminded of a passage in Luke 13:1-5, where someone asked Jesus about some current events (during that time) about some people dying. Jesus' response was a table-turning response: "I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." (Luke 13:5) The reflection of the recent celebrities deaths for me is that I need to watch my own life too. At times, I feel like I abused my liberties and sinned against God, and at times I've been living as a lost soul. So I guess learning about and thinking about dead celebrities is a good thing for me -- because it's a lesson that I also need to watch how I live my life and my legacy to my children and to this world.

"Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller is one of my most favorite books written by a Christian about Christianity but there's nothing "churchy" about it.

Steve Taylor is one of my most favorite Christian artists/singer/director/filmmaker that is a funny guy and he's bold with his work and his lyrics. His 1993 song "Jesus Is For Losers" is still one of my favorite songs of all time.

I'm glad to learn that Donald Miller and Steve Taylor are coming together to make "Blue Like Jazz" the movie, expecting to release it some time next year. See this funny discussion video about the upcoming movie:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rXzSMZsO-4
Tim's thought is simply: "I can't wait to see this movie!"

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