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Colorado has absolutely nothing to be proud of, yet people from Colorado are proud of everything having to do with their state.

When did being honest ever become mistaken for a cry for help? If what I am is really that bad, I would think that the whole world is so incredibly messed up. For some reason, I hope that that's true.

When my brother is in a bad situation interpersonally, he tries to make it better. My mother calls him a schmoozer… and she means that as a compliment. Me? When I'm in a bad situation, I try to make things worse. I don't know why. Maybe I just get bored with being nice. Maybe I just respond in kind: when people push, I push back harder.

What I really want to have happen is to get knocked to the floor and just stay down. When someone says something that they shouldn't have said, I want to know how to just keep my mouth shut and say nothing. When someone thinks ill of me, I want to think nothing of it.

Summaries act as a true matter of convenience, yet they commit a disservice when utilised improperly. How often do we neglect to truly read a book because we've already seen a summary of it? Imagine the disservice that results when we summarise a human being? Too often, there exist mechanisms to summarise and categorise people. The result is an attitude that as soon as I know your summary, I know all I need to know about you.

You are not your obituary. You are not your résumé. You are certainly not your Myers-Briggs type, and you are definitely not your world view. You are not your racial stereotypes. You are not your religion. You are neither your ancestry nor your nationality. You are not just the clothes you wear. You are certainly more than the food you eat and the drinks that you drink. You are not an abstract thinker. You are not a sequential thinker. You are not a Greek thinker. You are not a Hebrew thinker. You certainly do think, and you certainly do have thoughts. You are not your alma mater. You are not the neighbourhood that you grew up in. You are not the grades you got nor the awards that you received.

How many people really know you as opposed to have merely summarised you? How many people do you really know?

What someone said on a shuttle in Downtown Denver on Thursday:

One time, our youth pastor brought us down here to let us see the way that things are down here, and we later all got together to discuss the worldliness that we saw down here.

What I heard:

One time, our youth pastor brought us down here to teach us how to judge people.

It's been said that an ocean lies between what's said and what's done. I was thinking last night about another ocean: what could be and what is. In my mind, to even call the ocean a stream would be overstating the difference. That's because, in my mind, there is no difference.

The traditional view of possibility is that just because an action is possible does not imply that that action occurred. I'm thinking otherwise.

If a person lacks legs, we say that he can't walk. It's not something that we need to put a lot of thought into. He lacks the instruments necessary to walk (in this case, being legs), so we say that walking is an impossibility. Now, consider a man who has legs, but he's so fatigued that he lacks the energy to walk. Again, not a stretch to say that this man cannot walk either. He also lacks an instrument necessary to walk: energy.

Now, consider a person who has legs and energy. However, he is not walking. He'd rather be sitting watching television or typing away on his laptop. He lacks another important instrument to walk (perhaps the most important instrument): a reason. Traditionally, we would say that this person can walk as there is nothing hindering him from walking, but we never consider that lacking a reason can be a hindrance just as valid as the rest.

Consider fire: if you have heat, fuel and oxygen (in the proper amounts), you will have fire. If you lack any of those elements, you cannot have a fire. It's a biconditional relationship: one implies the other. This is how I view possibility and reality: not just what cannot happen will not happen, but also what can happen will happen.¹

What does this mean to you and me? Remember the ocean that lies between what's said and what's done? In order to cross it, one must have a reason or a desire to cross it. The whole “Yes, we can!” mantra might be a lie. I prefer to say: “If we could have, we would have.”

1. As much as I believe that possibility biconditionally implies reality, you will still hear me talk of possibility in terms of its traditional view. If you hear me use those terms contrary to how I describe them here, do not correct me.

Every time that I walk by Colfax and Broadway, I have that stupid song stuck in my head.

Someone hates me, and I'm kind of thrilled this time.