Des annonces récentes indiquent que la municipalité souhaite aménager un accès public au fleuve sur le Domaine Médard-Bourgault. Selon les informations diffusées publiquement, ce projet pourrait inclure différents aménagements permanents destinés à faciliter l’accès de la population, comme un escalier, des bancs, des poubelles et un aménagement du terrain.

À première vue, l’idée d’offrir un accès au fleuve peut sembler positive. Mais dans le cas précis du Domaine Médard-Bourgault, cette proposition soulève une question beaucoup plus profonde : celle de l’intégrité d’un lieu artistique.

Un lieu qui n’est pas un parc

Le jardin situé au bord du fleuve fait partie d’un ensemble qui possède une valeur particulière. À quelques pas de là se trouve une petite boutique où Médard Bourgault se retirait pour sculpter, notamment lorsqu’il souhaitait travailler dans le calme, loin de l’agitation des visiteurs.

L’accès à cet endroit se fait aujourd’hui par un escalier de pierre discret. Cette descente fait partie de l’expérience du lieu : on quitte progressivement le domaine pour entrer dans un espace plus intime, plus silencieux, presque retiré du monde.

Transformer cet accès en aménagement public change inévitablement la nature de cet endroit. Ce qui était un lieu discret lié à la création artistique risque de devenir un simple passage vers le fleuve.

Autrement dit, le lieu pourrait rester physiquement présent, mais perdre une partie de son sens.

Le sens du domaine repose sur l’ensemble formé par les œuvres, la maison, l’atelier et les bâtiments qui composent ce lieu.

Le Domaine Médard-Bourgault appartient à l’histoire de la sculpture québécoise. Si cet ensemble est profondément transformé, la manière dont l’œuvre est comprise change aussi. Transformer ce lieu revient, en partie, à transformer le sens même de l’œuvre.

La question de l’usage du lieu

Cela pose la question de l’usage du lieu et de la manière dont il évolue dans le temps.

Passer d’un jardin lié à un lieu de création artistique à un espace aménagé pour la circulation du public n’est pas une transformation anodine. C’est un changement qui peut modifier l’expérience du lieu et la façon dont il est perçu.

Prendre le temps de réfléchir

Le Domaine Médard-Bourgault n’est pas un terrain comme les autres. Il s’agit d’un lieu directement lié à l’histoire d’un sculpteur majeur et à une tradition artistique qui dépasse largement les frontières locales.

Avant de transformer cet espace en accès public aménagé, il semble raisonnable de se poser une question simple : sommes-nous en train de mettre en valeur ce lieu… ou de transformer profondément ce qu’il représente ?

Préserver un lieu artistique ne signifie pas nécessairement le fermer au public. Mais cela implique parfois de reconnaître que certains endroits tirent leur valeur précisément de leur simplicité, de leur discrétion et de leur authenticité.

C’est peut-être le cas ici.

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Just going to be one of those days. I’m exhausted even after caffeine and just don’t feel well, so I’m going to just chase pain in low weight high reps.

I don’t think I have enough of a backbone or whatever you want to call it to decide whether or not some of the stuff that happened should be ok or not. I can understand maybe a little bit on where you were coming from with the thing that happened that first week. I still think it was not ok, and was handled horribly. I’ve somewhat come to terms with the idea that you could hate me, that’s ok because I’ve thought and at least right now I feel like my actions lined up with my values, and I’m happy with the person I am. I am the love I give, not the love I receive.

I think it’s a trap to think that there are a small percentage of the population that you could truly connect with. I think every person has enough depth and wideness to their character to make them more than enough for meaningful connection. But I do have that fear about just the lack of agency in the whole situation. Like I don’t know what I can do to meet someone who would be good for me. I know the things I can do to increase the odds, but nothing deterministic. And that fear sits on that last portion.

But also what would I do differently if I knew that in 6 years the problem would be for sure solved? Like by the time I’m 30 I’d be in a great relationship. I know I can’t guarantee that, but let’s just speculate. If I knew it would work out, would I be able to let go a bit more? Of this fear, specifically. And I think the answer is yes. But also what if I never find that person, or things just don’t work out. The first thing that comes to my mind is I wouldn’t get to be a father, and that is horribly sad. But the good news is I absolutely could adopt, and such. I also do feel like by that point I’ve scaled like crazy and I will absolutely be able to get married. So I guess if I do believe that, I do know that I won’t die alone.

So then the next part is how do I get comfortable with the prospect of being single for an indefinite amount of time? I think there’s no denying the fact it’s nicer to be able to have someone to be intimate with, share experiences with, and to be able to come home to. There’s no avoiding that, so whatever conclusion has to come in lieu of that. I guess an even worse outcome however is being with someone you shouldn’t spend your life with. That’s a very agonizing hell, to be in a situation of your choosing that hurts more the longer you don’t rip the bandaid off. I have so much sympathy for people who have to break up for “good” reasons, like right person wrong time, or after a long time, at least longer than these 5 months with E for me. That’s would be brutal. And a divorce? Holy shit. Especially if it’s because of work that needs to be done that’s damaging to the partner. I’m so thankful that I did not do something egregious in this relationship, because the guilt would murder me. But I digress.

I watched a vid on this a while ago, and they said that even if being single is miserable and lonely at times, it’s better than being in the wrong relationship, because that robs you of time and more importantly hope. What if I stuck to E, and we continued to try to work on the relationship, and then 30 comes around and I find that person I would have been with otherwise. I did feel like I was settling a lot with E, which is honestly cruel of me. I wouldn’t want anyone to ever feel like they’re the “settle for” option, and so that is shitty of me for trying to make the relationship work so much. But either way, I want a future relationship to feel like one where I’m not worried about how I’m going to present them to my friends, for them to find her impressive. I don’t want to feel like I have to hope they can lock in or not act in certain ways they normally do as to not embarrass me. I want to show them off and be overwhelmingly proud of. I did show E off a lot and I don’t want it to seem like she wasn’t an incredible person in her own way. But at the same time around my friends from work, she would get super self conscious and worried because everyone is super smart and successful and she is graduating late with an art degree. I would have loved to show her off if she had created art, but she just scraped by the degree and had nothing of substance to show easily. I want my future partner to be someone who beats me in different ways (see what I did there lol). I want someone who can grow my experience of the world in a more direct sense, not as the subject but as the teacher at times.

I guess it’s hard to think of someone this rare and wonderful and think of them as someone available, y’know? But maybe if they’re waiting for a relationship rather than just jumping at opportunities it would make sense. If someone is more deliberate with love as an option rather than a need, then waiting for the right person is natural. I do think serially relationship hopping is a bad thing, and this is the healthiest version of it. So I guess I should strive to be the same.

I do appreciate journaling like this rather than talking to an AI, since there are enough tools and building blocks in my mind that I can gain insights without external stimulation, just needs the work and analysis. And I do feel better.

There are chapters in the Bible that feel like they come close and speak softly to a wound, and then there are chapters that feel like they stand in front of you and tell the truth without stepping back. First Timothy 3 is one of those chapters. It does not feel decorative. It does not feel casual. It does not feel interested in helping people protect a polished image of themselves. It feels like a chapter written to keep something holy from being handled in an unholy way. At first glance, it seems to be mostly about bishops and deacons. It seems to be about church structure, leadership, and qualifications. But the longer you sit with it, the clearer it becomes that this chapter is doing more than explaining who should hold office. It is pulling back the curtain on what God cares about when a human life carries His name in front of other people. It is showing us that the hidden life is never really hidden. It is showing us that what a person is becoming matters more than what a person appears capable of doing. It is showing us that the church is not meant to be led by people who can simply speak well, look strong, or draw attention. It is meant to be served by people whose lives have been brought under the rule of truth.

That matters deeply now because this is an age that rewards appearance first. People are taught to notice the visible things. They notice confidence, delivery, verbal force, style, intensity, intelligence, and presence. Even in Christian spaces, people can become impressed by who sounds sharp, who carries a room, who seems bold, who builds quickly, and who looks spiritually powerful from the outside. But God is not pulled around by the same things that pull people around. He sees beneath the sound of the voice. He sees beneath the moment. He sees beneath the presentation. He knows whether the soul underneath the words is clean, sober, humble, patient, teachable, and safe. He knows whether the life itself can hold spiritual weight without cracking under it. That is why 1 Timothy 3 still feels so sharp. It cuts straight through the modern temptation to value gifts more than character. It reminds us that the deepest test is not whether a person can impress people. The deepest test is whether a person’s life can be trusted by God.

Paul begins the chapter by saying that if a man desires the office of a bishop, he desires a good work. That one sentence is already doing a great deal of work. It tells us first that desire itself is not the problem. There is nothing wrong with wanting to serve. There is nothing wrong with wanting your life to be useful in the church. There is nothing wrong with wanting to care for people, guide people, protect truth, teach faithfully, and carry responsibility in the household of God. A sincere desire to help the people of God can be beautiful. It can come from love. It can come from burden. It can come from a deep ache to serve Christ in a meaningful way. So Paul does not shame that desire. He does not call it automatically prideful. He does not tell people to distrust every longing to step into responsibility.

But he also does not romanticize it. He calls it a good work. That word changes the whole feel of it. Work is not fantasy. Work is not title. Work is not identity. Work is not applause. Work is burden. Work is labor. Work is weight. Work is showing up when things feel ordinary. Work is carrying responsibility when no one is praising you for carrying it. Work is being faithful when the task is not glamorous. Work is staying clean in motives when the role gives you chances to feed your ego. Work is caring for people when they are difficult, confused, weak, wounded, or slow to change. Work is being accountable. Work is being examined. Work is living in such a way that the truth you speak is not constantly being contradicted by the life you live. Paul uses that word because spiritual leadership must never be treated like a spiritual costume. It is not there to make somebody feel important. It is there to serve the church of God.

That is one of the first hard corrections this chapter gives us. Many people do not actually want the work. They want the feeling they think the work will give them. They want the sense of being needed. They want the sense of being known. They want the sense of having arrived. They want the emotional relief of feeling spiritually significant. They want the room to react to them in a way that makes them feel powerful, valuable, or chosen. But those desires are not the same as loving the work. A person can want attention and still hate service. A person can want influence and still hate accountability. A person can want the room and still hate the hidden life that makes standing in the room safe. First Timothy 3 starts by quietly exposing that difference. It tells us that the office is good, but the goodness of it is tied to the labor of it, not the image of it.

Then Paul begins naming the qualities required of a bishop. Blameless. The husband of one wife. Vigilant. Sober. Of good behavior. Given to hospitality. Apt to teach. Not given to wine. No striker. Not greedy of filthy lucre. Patient. Not a brawler. Not covetous. One that ruleth well his own house. Not a novice. A good report of them which are without. If you read that list carefully, one truth stands out almost immediately. The focus is not talent. The focus is character. God is not first talking about brilliance. He is talking about self-government. He is not first talking about public power. He is talking about the condition of the life itself. He is not first asking whether the person can attract listeners. He is asking whether the person has become someone whose soul is under enough rule that truth can live there without being constantly betrayed.

That is so important because people often look for what is easiest to notice. Charisma is easy to notice. Strong communication is easy to notice. Bold speech is easy to notice. A big personality is easy to notice. But integrity is often quieter. Self-control is often quieter. Patience is often quieter. The ability to stay honest, clean, sober, and humble under pressure is often quieter. Yet those quieter things are exactly what God keeps pressing on. He knows what people forget. He knows that a life can look powerful in public while rotting in private. He knows that words can sound strong while the heart behind them is ruled by hunger, pride, resentment, vanity, insecurity, or greed. He knows that a ministry can appear to be growing while the person carrying it is becoming less and less safe. That is why scripture keeps bringing us back to the hidden architecture of a life. God cares about what is underneath the surface, because the surface eventually reveals whatever is underneath it.

Take the word blameless. It does not mean flawless. It cannot mean flawless, because no one apart from Christ would qualify for anything if perfection were the requirement. Blameless means there is not an open, obvious contradiction that leaves the life vulnerable to rightful accusation. It means the person is not living in such a careless or compromised way that the witness of Christ keeps getting dragged through their conduct. It means there is a visible integrity to the shape of their life. Not sinless perfection, but real honesty. Not moral pride, but a life that is not casually fighting against the very truth it speaks.

That matters because contradiction does not stay contained. When a person claims to represent God and then lives in a way that openly dishonors that representation, other people get hurt by more than the action itself. Trust gets damaged. Faith gets confused. Weak believers stumble. Seekers become cynical. Wounded people begin to connect the name of God with the instability of the person who used that name while living falsely. First Timothy 3 is not being harsh for the sake of harshness. It is being protective. God cares about His people. He cares about how His truth is carried. He cares about the damage done when public responsibility is given to unguarded lives.

Then Paul says a bishop must be vigilant and sober. Those words do not sound flashy, but they matter more than many people realize. Vigilance is watchfulness. Sobriety is inward clarity and self-control. A vigilant person is paying attention to the soul. A sober person is not ruled by every feeling, urge, mood, or appetite that rises inside. In a distracted age, those qualities are precious. People now live under constant stimulation. Their attention is scattered. Their emotions are pulled in every direction. Their desires are constantly being stirred. They are taught to react quickly and examine slowly. That makes inward life very unstable if it is not guarded. But a life trusted with spiritual responsibility cannot be built on inner chaos. It must be built on wakefulness. It must be built on government. It must be built on enough stillness and clarity that the person notices what is happening inside before what is happening inside starts ruling everything else.

There is a deep beauty in a sober life, even if the world finds it less exciting. A sober soul becomes safe. It does not have to be fed by constant drama. It does not keep drifting into the same destruction and then pretending to be shocked every time. It knows that temptation usually arrives in subtle clothing. It knows that pride rarely walks in announcing itself. It knows that resentment can grow quietly. It knows that exhaustion can become an excuse if the heart is not watchful. It knows that applause can become intoxicating if the soul has not learned to stay low before God. A vigilant life notices these things. A sober life resists being carried away by them. That matters in leaders, but it also matters in all believers. Homes need that kind of clarity. Relationships need it. Churches need it. A great deal of pain enters the world through lives that never learned to stay awake to themselves before God.

Paul also says that a bishop must be given to hospitality and apt to teach. Those qualities belong together in a way many people miss. Hospitality is not just polished hosting. It is the willingness to make room. It is the posture of receiving people instead of merely managing them. It is openness of heart. It is generosity. It is a willingness to be interrupted by the needs of others. Teaching, meanwhile, is not just the ability to explain information. It is the ability to handle truth in a way that serves other people’s growth. When those two are brought together, you begin to see something deeply Christlike. Truth is not being carried in a cold way. It is being carried by someone whose life has room in it for people.

That matters because teaching without care can become sterile or cruel. A person may know doctrine and still use truth like a weapon. They may enjoy being right more than they love helping souls. They may speak accurately while leaving people bruised. But Jesus did not teach like that. He did not compromise truth, but He did not carry it as a man irritated by weakness. He saw people. He had room for people. He could tell the truth without losing the spirit of mercy. First Timothy 3 protects that same pattern. It says that a leader must not only know what is true. He must be the kind of person through whom truth can come without being distorted by coldness, pride, or distance.

Then Paul starts naming restraints. Not given to wine. No striker. Not greedy of filthy lucre. Patient. Not a brawler. Not covetous. The question under all of this is simple, and it is one of the most important questions any believer can ask. What rules this person. Because whatever rules a person in private will eventually shape what they do in public. If appetite rules them, appetite will leak into leadership. If anger rules them, anger will shape how they handle people. If greed rules them, then even holy opportunities may become chances to feed the self. If the need for control rules them, they may use spiritual language while still trying to dominate others. God is not naming random disqualifications here. He is protecting the church from lives that are mastered by things that should have been brought under the rule of Christ.

Greed is one of the clearest examples. Greed is not only love of money. It includes money, but it reaches farther. Greed is hunger without surrender. It is the restless urge to gather, enlarge, hold, secure, and consume for the self. A person can be greedy for money, but also for attention, influence, comfort, admiration, emotional control, or the feeling of being central. In religious settings, greed often hides behind better words. It can call itself vision. It can call itself effectiveness. It can call itself growth. But underneath the language there may still be a hungry self feeding on the work. That is dangerous because people stop being people and start becoming assets. Opportunities stop being stewardship and start becoming self-expansion. That kind of hunger is not safe near the flock of God.

Then there is quarrelsomeness. Some people are drawn to conflict in a fleshly way. They enjoy proving others wrong. They enjoy the strike. They enjoy the sense of power that comes from standing above others in argument. They may call it boldness, but often it is insecurity holding a Bible verse. Holy courage is not the same as fleshly aggression. Holy courage may confront error, but it does not feed on the confrontation. It can speak strongly while remaining under the government of love. A brawling spirit cannot shepherd well because it creates fear, tension, and harm even when it uses the right words. First Timothy 3 will not let us confuse combative energy with spiritual authority.

Patience, by contrast, is a sign of deep strength. Patient people do not need everyone else to grow at the speed of their frustration. They do not become harsh the moment someone is slow, weak, confused, or still healing. They remember how much mercy they themselves need. They know that transformation is not immediate. They know that souls are not machines. Patience is not passivity. It is strength that refuses to become cruel. That matters enormously in the church, because authority without patience quickly becomes oppressive. Truth without patience becomes sharp in the wrong way. Leadership without patience becomes a place where weak people feel crushed instead of helped.

Then Paul brings the matter into the home. He says a bishop must rule his own house well, having his children in subjection with all gravity, and then asks a piercing question. If a man does not know how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God. That question cuts through religious image because the home is one of the places where the truth about a person comes into view. Public life can be managed. Home life often reveals what is really there. At home, tone appears. Patience appears. Selfishness appears. Tenderness appears. Agitation appears. Control appears. It becomes much harder to live on performance when the same people are with you day after day.

This does not mean a family must look perfect. It does not mean children never struggle. It does not mean churches should become suspicious inspectors of every household. Human beings are complex, and families are full of real pain, real process, and real imperfection. But Paul’s point still stands. Before someone is trusted with the household of faith, what kind of life are they already building in the household they have. Before they guide many, how do they live among the few who know them best. Before they stand in front of others speaking for God, what kind of atmosphere follows them through their own front door.

That principle reaches farther than official leadership. It speaks to all of us. Many people want to know their calling while ignoring their current stewardship. They dream about what God may do through them one day, yet they treat ordinary faithfulness as though it were too small to matter. But heaven does not despise the ordinary. Heaven measures it. The meal matters. The tone in the room matters. The way your faith touches the people nearest to you matters. Your speech when tired matters. Your self-control when frustrated matters. The repeated ordinary places of life are not separate from spiritual life. They are where much of spiritual life is proven.

Paul then says a bishop must not be a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. That warning is painfully relevant in every generation, but especially in one where visibility can come quickly. A novice is not just someone young in age. It is someone newly planted, newly formed, not yet tested enough. Why is that so important. Because early visibility can twist an unformed soul. Praise can become intoxicating. Influence can become identity. A person may start well, but if their roots are not deep enough, recognition begins feeding parts of them that have not yet been surrendered. Soon they are not simply serving. They are being fed by being seen as a servant. That is dangerous because the work slowly becomes about preserving a self-image instead of honoring God in truth.

This is why hidden seasons matter so much, even though many people resist them. Hidden seasons expose motives. Hidden seasons show whether a person loves Christ or merely loves being seen doing things for Christ. Hidden seasons drive roots down. Hidden seasons teach a person to obey without applause. Some delays are not punishments. Some delays are mercies. God does not always withhold visibility because He has forgotten you. Sometimes He withholds it because He loves you enough not to give you something your present soul cannot yet carry safely. First Timothy 3 reminds us that speed is not always kindness. Sometimes slow formation is the deepest kindness God can give.

That same warning about not being a novice also exposes something many people do not want to admit. A person can be gifted and still be unready. A person can be sincere and still be unready. A person can love God and still be unready for a certain kind of weight. Readiness is not proven by desire alone, and it is not proven by the fact that other people respond strongly to you. Sometimes the strongest reaction comes to the very thing that would hurt you if it expanded too quickly. That is why the hidden test matters so much. Can you stay faithful when no one is praising you. Can you keep serving when there is nothing in it for your ego. Can you keep growing when the room is small, the work is repetitive, and the life you imagined is not arriving at the speed you hoped. Those are not small questions. Those are the questions that often reveal whether a life is actually being formed by truth or only dreaming about the feeling of significance.

Many people think obscurity is a sign that nothing important is happening. Scripture often suggests the opposite. Some of the most important things God does in a person happen where nobody is clapping. They happen in repeated obedience. They happen in the battle to stay honest. They happen in the choice to keep your conscience clean. They happen in the surrender of appetite. They happen in the learning of patience. They happen when a person discovers that they still matter before God even when nobody else is reacting to them. If a soul never learns that lesson, visibility can become spiritually deadly. It can become the thing that keeps them from ever being able to hear the truth about themselves again. So when Paul warns against placing a novice in leadership, he is not speaking from suspicion. He is speaking from wisdom and mercy. He knows pride can destroy in ways that are not obvious at first. He knows how quickly the self can begin feeding on sacred things.

Then Paul says that a leader must have a good report of them which are without. That matters because Christian credibility is not only an internal church matter. The world outside may reject the gospel, but there should still be something about the conduct of a godly person that has the shape of integrity. This does not mean everybody outside the church will approve of Christians. Jesus Himself was hated. Faithfulness can bring opposition. But there is still a difference between being opposed for righteousness and being discredited because your behavior is careless, harsh, deceptive, selfish, or unstable. Scripture does not tell believers to ignore their witness among outsiders. It tells them that witness matters. A leader should not be known outside the church as a manipulator, a liar, a reckless person, or someone who treats people badly while hiding behind spiritual words. That matters because the world is not only hearing what believers say about God. The world is also watching how believers live while saying it.

That can be uncomfortable because some people prefer to call all criticism persecution. Sometimes it is persecution. Sometimes speaking the truth does bring hatred. But sometimes the reproach is earned. Sometimes the damage to witness comes from the believer’s own conduct. First Timothy 3 does not let us hide from that. It forces a harder kind of honesty. It says that if the church is going to carry the truth of God in the world, the people handling responsibility in that church must not live in a way that keeps making the truth look hollow. They will still be misunderstood at times. They may still be disliked. But their lives should not be handing the world obvious reasons to mock Christ because of their own hypocrisy or disorder.

Then Paul turns to deacons, and what is striking is how similar the pattern remains. They too must be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. They must be tested first. Their family life matters. Their integrity matters. Their self-control matters. Their sincerity matters. That repetition is important because it tells us something about how God sees His church. Character is not only for the most visible role. Character is for every place where trust is given. The church is not meant to be held together by one strong personality while everyone else gets to be casual. The life of the body depends on a wider culture of truth, sincerity, self-rule, and tested faithfulness. Wherever responsibility is carried, character matters. Wherever trust is given, character matters. Wherever Christ is being represented, character matters.

That means 1 Timothy 3 is speaking much more broadly than some readers first think. Yes, it is specifically about bishops and deacons. But the spirit of the chapter reaches the whole Christian life. It reaches anyone who wants to serve. It reaches anyone who wants to be useful. It reaches anyone who thinks faith can remain a matter of words while the life beneath the words goes mostly untouched. This chapter says no. The gospel is meant to go deeper than that. It is meant to enter the life. It is meant to change the structure of a person. It is meant to touch speech, appetite, habits, relationships, motives, home life, conscience, and response under pressure. If it does not begin to touch those things, then whatever else is happening may still be loud, active, or impressive, but it is not yet carrying the weight God is describing here.

The phrase holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience is especially powerful. It reminds us that Christian truth is not something to be handled only with the mind. It must also be handled with the life. A pure conscience does not mean you have never sinned. It means you are not at peace with falseness. It means you are not making a home out of contradiction. It means you are not constantly stepping over what God is showing you and then continuing on as if it does not matter. A conscience can be softened or dulled. It can become tender through repentance, or numb through repeated compromise. One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a believer is that they continue speaking truth while their conscience grows quieter and quieter under the weight of what they refuse to face.

That danger becomes even greater when someone has responsibility. They may still sound strong. They may still be active. They may still be helping people in some outward way. But inside, the split gets wider. Their mouth keeps speaking things their inner life is no longer really yielding to. That is why Paul joins the mystery of the faith to a pure conscience. Truth is not meant to be carried by a self that is continually dividing itself in two. It is meant to be held by a life that remains open to correction, confession, and cleansing. God does not only care whether His truth is explained accurately. He cares whether it is being carried honestly.

The warning against being double-tongued ties directly into that. A double-tongued person is not just someone who says inconsistent things. They are someone whose speech changes shape according to advantage, fear, approval, or self-protection. They are not steady in truth because they are not steady in self. Their inner allegiance is unstable, so their speech becomes unstable too. That kind of life is not safe in the church because trust cannot grow where words keep shifting with the room. People need to know that those serving them are not performing different versions of themselves based on what each audience wants. They need to know there is a real center there, something honest, something governed, something under God.

Paul also says these servants must first be proved. Again, that tells us something important about the kingdom. Time matters. Testing matters. Reality over time matters. Excitement is not enough. Desire is not enough. Even visible ability is not enough. Patterns must speak. Ordinary faithfulness must speak. The ability to remain sincere when the work is not glamorous must speak. The willingness to keep showing up when nobody is celebrating you must speak. God is not in a hurry the way people are in a hurry. People rush because they are impressed by what they can see. God waits because He cares about what they cannot see yet. He knows that roots matter more than noise. He knows that speed can hide weakness. He knows that some things only reveal themselves when time has done its work.

That is why this chapter can also comfort people who feel stuck in quiet seasons. Maybe you have wondered why life feels small. Maybe you have wondered why the doors have not opened faster. Maybe you have felt overlooked. Maybe you have struggled with the sense that your usefulness would finally begin if only you were more visible, more recognized, or placed in something larger. But 1 Timothy 3 reminds us that quiet seasons are not empty seasons. Hidden seasons are not worthless seasons. The proving matters. The forming matters. The unseen obedience matters. A person who is learning how to stay truthful, patient, sincere, and faithful in small repeated places is not behind in the kingdom. They may be doing some of the deepest work of all.

Then Paul tells Timothy why he is writing. He says these things are written so that people will know how they ought to behave in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. That sentence should stop us. The church is not described as a crowd gathered around preference. It is not described as an audience. It is not described as a brand, a movement of personalities, or a machine for spiritual content. It is the house of God. It is the church of the living God. It is the pillar and ground of the truth. That means the church is meant to uphold something sacred in the world. It is meant to embody, guard, and display truth, not merely talk about it in theory. The church is supposed to stand in history as evidence that God is real, present, holy, merciful, and alive.

Once you see that, the seriousness of the chapter becomes even clearer. If the church is the pillar and ground of the truth, then the lives of those carrying responsibility inside it cannot be treated as a side issue. Conduct is not separate from witness. Character is not separate from doctrine. The church does not serve the truth only by saying the right things. It serves the truth by living in a way that does not keep making those right things feel hollow. Again, this does not mean perfection. It does mean reality. It means the people of God are called to a kind of life where what they confess is increasingly supported by what they are becoming. The church is not just a place where truth is announced. It is supposed to be a place where truth takes visible form in human lives.

And then Paul ends the chapter by taking us to the center of everything. Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. That is not a random ending. It is the heartbeat under the whole chapter. Paul has been talking about leadership, character, conduct, and the house of God, but he does not leave us with a list floating in the air. He roots everything in Christ. The reason godliness matters is because Christ has come. The reason the church must take holiness seriously is because holiness has taken human form. The reason truth must be carried carefully is because truth is not an idea alone. Truth became visible in Jesus.

That changes how we read the whole chapter. Without Christ, 1 Timothy 3 can start to feel like a cold checklist that either crushes you or tempts you to compare yourself with others. But Paul will not let us leave it there. He takes us to the mystery of godliness, which is not first our effort to climb toward God. It is God coming near to us in Christ. He was manifest in the flesh. That means holiness is not abstract. It has a face. It has footsteps. It has a voice. It has been lived in our world. Jesus is the one who shows us what a blameless life really looks like. Jesus is the one who shows us what power under perfect self-control looks like. Jesus is the one who shows us truth carried without vanity, authority carried without cruelty, and holiness carried without pride.

Every qualification in the chapter finds its deepest expression in Him. He is the true blameless one. He is perfectly sober, perfectly vigilant, perfectly pure. He is the one never ruled by appetite, greed, insecurity, envy, or the need to dominate. He is the one who welcomed people without compromising truth. He is the one who taught with authority and tenderness. He is the one who carried the weight of God without ever using it to exalt Himself. He is the one whose private life and public life were perfectly one. In other words, 1 Timothy 3 is not just describing what leaders should imitate. It is pointing beyond all leaders to the One in whom the mystery of godliness is fully revealed.

That matters because honest readers will feel the searching edge of this chapter. If you read it honestly, you may feel exposed. You may think about the places where your life has not fully matched your confession. You may think about the ways you have wanted influence more than inner truth. You may think about the ways your private life still needs more surrender. You may think about your impatience, your reactivity, your hidden motives, your inconsistency, your desire to be seen, your appetite for comfort, your unfinished areas at home, your speech when tired, your tendency to protect image instead of coming into the light. The chapter does not let us hide comfortably. But that exposure does not have to end in despair. It is meant to drive us toward Christ, not away from Him.

Because Christ is not only the standard. He is also the Savior. He did not come only to reveal what holiness looks like from a distance. He came to forgive sinners, cleanse consciences, break pride, restore the divided, and transform people who could never make themselves whole by effort alone. Grace is not a permission slip to stay false. Grace is the power of God entering the false places and telling the truth there. Grace humbles. Grace cleanses. Grace trains. Grace makes it possible for real change to happen in a life that had grown used to hiding. So when 1 Timothy 3 searches us, the answer is not performance. The answer is repentance. The answer is not trying harder to look like the chapter. The answer is coming honestly to Christ and letting Him go deeper than image.

This chapter also gives the church a desperately needed warning against charisma without character. Many congregations, and many believers, are too easily impressed by power, force, eloquence, and momentum. They want someone who feels strong, decisive, brilliant, or larger than life. But God keeps asking quieter and more important questions. Is this person patient. Is this person governed. Is this person sincere. Is this person honest. Is this person safe. Does this person’s life hold up the same truth their mouth speaks. Better a slower work with clean beams than a fast work with rot in the walls. Better a quieter servant with a pure conscience than a louder one whose hidden life is feeding on the very ministry they claim to love.

At the same time, this chapter quietly honors hidden faithfulness. It honors the person who is learning to be truthful in ordinary life. It honors the person who keeps their conscience tender before God. It honors the home where faith is being worked out in patience, self-control, and real care. It honors the person who is not famous, not platformed, not widely seen, but whose life is becoming more trustworthy under the quiet rule of Christ. That matters because many people think significance must look large. Scripture keeps telling a different story. Some of the most spiritually weighty lives are not the most publicly visible ones. Some of the strongest believers are the ones who have learned how to stay faithful in rooms the world would never notice.

So when you read 1 Timothy 3, do not only ask who qualifies for office. Ask what kind of life God values. Ask whether your own life is becoming more governed, more sincere, more patient, more truthful, more safe for others. Ask whether your Christianity is touching your actual habits, your speech, your conscience, your home, and your hidden motives. Ask whether you have confused being useful with being surrendered. Ask whether you have wanted to be seen more than you have wanted to be formed. Let the chapter slow you down. Let it bring you back to what matters. Let it strip away the lie that appearance is enough.

Because in the end, this chapter is not really obsessed with titles. It is obsessed with the life beneath them. It is obsessed with whether truth is being upheld by people who are actually under its power. It is obsessed with whether the church of the living God is being carried by lives that can bear the weight of that holy name. It is obsessed with whether spiritual responsibility is being given to people who have learned to be ruled before they try to lead. And it is obsessed with all of that because Christ is real, the church is His, and the mystery of godliness has already appeared in Him.

If God ever gives you influence, may your character be able to carry it. If He keeps you in a small place, may you know that the small place is still full of holy meaning. If He exposes what is false in you, may you not run from the light. If He delays the thing you thought you wanted, may you trust that what He is building in you matters more than what He is building around you. And if this chapter humbles you, may that humility not become shame that pushes you away from Christ, but honesty that pulls you nearer to Him, because the One who shows us what godliness is also the One who makes it possible for sinners to begin walking in it.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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Voorbijgaande Ridders in en op Orde op Aard [VVA Lintjes dag]

Ik had tijdens de vorige periode wat denk energie over en besloten deze te besteden aan mijn voltallige personeel en de miljoenen leden van de Van Voorbijgaande Aard omroep. Ik zocht een rede voor een rede om personeelsleden en leden onderling te scheiden, om een ander zomaar eer te gunnen en alle anderen daar voor te laten klappen. De oorzaak voor de eerbiedwaardige scheiding tussen a en b zijn, geparkeerd staan in mijn tijdelijke waarheid zone, rondom verzonnen waardigheid, uiteindelijk besloot ik een al bestaand proces te copy pasten, en dan toe te passen op u, mijn dappere leden.

Het is dus vers hergebruik van een oude lang toegepaste traditie om leden te voorzien van een glijmiddeltje voor volgens mij voorbeeldig omroep gedrag. Ik ga aan de dappere willozen mooie glimmende lintjes uitdelen, omdat zij mij en de omroep door zo te zijn ontzettend hebben behaagd, het perkje leuk opgetuigd. Altijd leuk om te zien wat zoiets met een lid doet. We leven nou eenmaal ieder etmaal, elk rondje om de bol, in een groot aanhoudend experiment voor eindeloze aandacht, een periode waarbij u van geboorte tot aan de dood het lijdend voorwerp bent, de persoon op wie elk etmaal met allerlei middelen op vele manieren dingetjes worden uitgeprobeerd om te kijken, horen, voelen wat er na zo'n ingreep met u gebeurt, wat de gevolgen zijn van de uitgevoerde oorzaak, de spuit of de pillen voorgeschreven, de operatie ondergaan, het veel omvattende strategische plan. U bent immers iemand die beheerd moet worden, voorzien van plichten en rede om te horen en zien, het volgen of ageren op iemand anders invloed methodiek, een mens waarop eerder al drug op is geoefend en al doende een (on)behaaglijk type is geworden, een horige, ongehoorzame, volger, vandaal, een beheersde of onbeheersbare.. Als Van Voorbijgaande Aard omroep baas zie ik graag, personages die iedere rondje doen wat de omroep nodig heeft voor het welvarend invloeibaar voortbestaan en liever niet iets anders doen waardoor de vaart er uit gaat. Ik heb liever niet dat u zinvol bezig bent met u eigen regels want dan moet ik daar weer iets mee aanvangen.

Lintjes zijn uitstekend materiaal voor ongeremd onderdanig gedrag, bonussen werken ook goed maar mijn omroep is extreem krenterig, en zoiets is alleen goed voor toch al ruim beloond personeel, zoveel personeel heb ik eigenlijk niet meer over sinds de laatste reorganistie, alle VVA levensbronnen komen inmiddels van out. Ik beloon mijn hoopje echt hoognodige medewerkers zo nu en dan al met een plakje ere metaal tijdens de befaamde en gevreesde omroep spot en spelmiddagen en eerlijk is eerlijk na zo veel leuks op een anders sombere dag eind November heb je geen gouden handdruk meer nodig.

Dus vanaf vandaag worden de lintjes uitgedeeld aan de door mij uitverkoren leden, volgend jaar laat ik alle leden andere leden voordragen zodat er gemeenschapszin zal ontstaan als ook wedijver, hardnekkige nijverheid om de omroep te plezieren. Ik ga dan ook het land in om zelf vijf of zes lintjes te spelden op de jasjes van goed gekeurde leden, de organisaties verantwoordelijk voor de voordracht van deze o zo goedwillende personen zullen op deze dag alles doen om het mij ontzettend naar de zin te maken zodat ik wordt voorzien van een geweldig leuke omgeving om in te zijn en daar dan mijn unieke VVA lintjes te verspreiden onder de beste volgers ooit. Er hoort ook een titel bij Voorbijgaande Ridder in en op Orde op Aard. Super concept, goed strategisch ondernemen lijkt mij dit. Pure verlakkerij, typisch machtsvertoon. Zo gezellig.

Dit eerste jaar zijn er maar liefst 24 uitverkorenen voor deze Voorbijgaande glim lintjes.

4 Personeelsleden, scribenten met uitzonderlijk behaaglijk omroep gedrag. Zeer harde werkers, vlijtig, net, goed samenwerkend met mij en andere best belangrijke omroep managers, zoals (Voorheen) en Deelnemer 11. Personeel dat zich alle vier seizoenen vrijwillig voor ons multi medie roep, zwaai en joel instituut inzet heeft onze voorkeur maar ook standvastig onder betaald niet zeurend personeel, zij die al vele jaren bij ons de beste periode van alle etmalen gevuld met levensenergie hebben gegeven aan ons in plaats van aan iets of iemand anders, voor ons doel van bestaan, hun eigen lange werkzame leven hebben weggecijferd, speciaal voor onze kijk, lees en luister nummer, de writeas few teller. Onze onuitputtelijke bron van inkomsten dus, en zij daarvoor dus een pluim verdienen, nu, een jaar of half jaar voor het pensioen. De dag waarop ze beginnen te ontdekken dat ze hun leven hebben vergooid aan iemand anders wil, hun vrijheid ingeruild voor een mager maar effectief loon, hun dagen omgezet in werkdagen, slaaf van geld gever Aard, nou als dat geen lintje waard is dan weet ik het ook niet meer.

Deze vlijtige, nette, altijd tijdig inklokkende personeelsleden krijgen hun lintje tijdens de vaste maand vergadering. Dan roept de dienstdoende vergader manager hen tijdens de meeting op, van hun draaistoel achter aan de lange rechthoekige tafel, en speld hun dit mooi opgedirkte glimmende stukje stof op de mouw. Onder luid applaus van hun minderen en gelijken natuurlijk en bijna onzichtbaar geniepig lachje van een paar verplicht aanwezige Voorbijgaande Aard hoofd task managers. Een dooie mus is namelijk een waardig geschenk als je iets maakt van de schenking, een show moment. Toneelspeld.

De andere uitverkorenen krijgen het leuke nieuws te horen op de dag voor Aard dag, de giga leuke landelijk ingevoerde feest dag ter ere van de Voorbijgaande omroep, de dag van de zimaar omzet rondom hypothetisch eigen ruimte, op eigen gemeenschap straat, dag vol vlag vertoon, zwart en wit, de kleur van omroepland Smægmå, mooie blije zon omwenteling voor de legale handel in verdovende middelen rondom oor verdovende herrie in een kerk tent, bij het omroep jubel koor festival, het Vrete op Aard festijn wordt nog feestelijker met deze glimmende behaag lintjes voor Voorbijgaande Ridders in en op Orde, zeker weten van wel

20 geprikte leden op 17 miljoen Smægmånen is wat pover maar dit is slechts het begin. Het moet ook uniek overkomen alsof je echt iets meer bent dan een brave gehorige domoor. Dankzij een magistraal met behulp van Netify ontwikkeld algo ritmisch gymnastiek nummertje zijn er twintig niet helemaal willekeurige maar wel zo goed als namen van leden op mijn scherm verschenen, 20 echte ridders, unieke mensen, parels van de omroep, de top van Smægmåånse staat en zijn ware koning, ik Aard.

Kant en klare verhalen p.p. bij geleverd over het hoe en waarom zij zo geweldig zijn, meer waard dan andere normale inwoners, die lui bij lange na niet slecht maar ook niet uitzonderlijk goed, zij nog lange niet ridderwaardig aldus het algo ritmisch rek en verstrek werk. 20 stuks super uniek volk omdat ze zo veel zo vaak deden voor het goedAardse volk, voor de huidige staat der omzet, zij die buitengewone inzet toonden, altijd dingen regelden die geregeld konden worden, of dingen organiseerden om te regelen, ze stonden paraat, zetten de tent op, een luifel er voor, brachten mensen en hun recht op staats lot dicht bij elkaar, lieten zien hoe geweldig het leven hier is onder mijn bezielende organisatie, gedoe, te leven voor mijn doelen, dit zijn mensen die extreem goed in het door mij bepaalde perk konden behandelen derhalve verdienen zij een de ridder orde.

Indien het niet een mens was maar een samen ouwehoerende en knop indrukkende mensen club is verdienen ze zelfs een extra titel, Aardelijk, de mens en zijn kliek verheven in de Aardelijk stand of een Aardelijk voor de naam van de mensen samen op pad voor winst doeleinden. Zoals Netify namens ons heeft geregeld voor Vape makers Neomijder, nu dus De Aardelijke Neomijder. Gewoon omdat ze zo goed bezig zijn de onderdanen in mijn staat te voorzien van de hardnodige Vapes, nou in zo'n gefabriceerde, verwerkelijkte situatie krijg je van mij en Netify het volle respect, de naam Aardelijk.

Vape van Neomijder al acht jaar sponsor van Van Voorbijgaande Aard is deze grootse omroep erkentelijk voor de hulp die het kreeg om het Vape product in de consumerende mens en rondom die mens te deponeren. We zijn blij dat de omroep heerser zijn dankbaarheid daarover op dergelijke wijze kenbaar heeft gemaakt. Wij heten vanaf nu vol trots de Aardelijke Neomijder voor alle Vape overal om u.

Alle personen uitgekozen waren vooraf door netify gescreend op welwillendheid betreffende ontvangst en grote dankbaarheid, Het was zeker dat ze dit lintje en de orde vol trots zouden ontvangen en het ervoor, tijdens en daarna zouden gaan rond bazuinen als ware het hun beste dag ooit, beter nog dan hun geboorte dag zelfs die van hun kinderen. Zelf promotend enthousiasme is de beste reclame voor een groot omroep rijk. Daardoor hechten mensen zich makkelijker aan hun geweldig deugdzame zelf min of meer gekozen leiders, het aangeboden man en machtje uit de ijdele hoop Met dergelijke creatieve positief overkomende interventies blijft de twijfelachtige almacht bijna overal onbesproken, zeker overal binnen de ruime perken van deze omroep, organisatie VVA met overal wel een vingertje in de pap, bij iedere landelijke krant, elke zender met licentie, een centrale positie inneemt in het hele staatsapparaat waarmee het berichtgeving kan controleren, aanpassen, iedere uitzending de juiste kleur geeft, zwartwit, elke andere vrijere media club voorziet van sterke of juist zwakke signalen, de geldkraan naar alle organisaties op elk moment open en dicht kan draaien, regels altijd overal naar eigen rede kan aanpassen, elke tegenstand kan reguleren met duizenden behulpzame, aan de omroep schatplichtige personen volop aanwezig in het omroep vriendendienst bestand, via deze mensen en hun nijvere organisaties, kanalen, aanwezige lijn verbindingen, persoonlijke connecties, de mogelijke kracht van elke oppositie kan slopen met het middel juist voor dit doel gemaakt, het geld, de buidel deur open en dicht trekken.

Het uitdelen van lintjes is daar gewoon één van, een methode om leden te beheren door ze, de volgzame, de veel en vaak producerende, te eren met een werk titel, een titel die volgens ons, de rol spelend van spreekbuis der gemeenschap, een ere titel, geeft aan dat persoon x van uitzonderlijk nut is voor iedereen omdat ze zo nuttig zijn voor VVA, zeer bekwame lieden zijn het, voorbeelden voor de anderen, zodat dit soort ambities en bijpassend gedrag de norm gaat bepalen, datgene zal zijn waarnaar men streeft, het juiste type lid van de VVA omroep maatschappij. Het is bewezen effectief, zorgt voor berichten, artikelen, gesprekken op straat, een echte ere titel is absoluut een herinnering van het maken waard, een invloed, experimenteel getest en het resultaat is zichtbaar daar, hier, overal waar titels voorkomen.

Bij de omroep smiezen wij dan ook altijd, zacht en onduidelijk, “Let Them Bake Cake” want als ze dat doen dan doen ze wat wij willen. Organiseren, Iets regelen voor Participeren, ondernemen, vergaderen, stichten, strijd maken om een beker ring of vaas met grote gehorige oren, een volgzaam heden brouwen, iets ergens ontwikkelen, een werkproces stroomlijnen, als het maar iets is dat wordt gebakken met hete lucht, want dat vinden wij geweldig mooi, onze Aardlingen zo nijver, net en sociaal bezig te zien met onder hoge druk behandelde bedrijvigheden.

Our Father Who art in Heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

O profess this star to David’s war

And a quarter there and under Olive of a man to peer review A raining day and wonder The need of this esteem The chart of Cross and with A pen to runny see The opposite of horn but truth For Molly to esteem the view in year A channel for the bitter days of last And what and rhyming day Menner to the witness for the near Apostles wrecking one to see between New homes to behold the running here And the merry grapes of wonder what will last The behemoth of our go to sunny course and then to free The criticism yew for Molly saw A fire on the course of Earthen ground We stake to corner few of roxen peer And better gain of man the jets for simple new A past to know and far for tandem ours beget The madrigal in peer and let us by No accident of source to May us wreck But forty pieces by and earthen key A Prince in locking fold in proper gain To know a stay of fortune best is here And never casted as her premise for each day Folding four and fifteen ever and a raise The mud and forest keep our bound And savely spirits go to deep protect Our year is worth.. and solid way to Rome Whose essence view at all The new begin in rain- a time is here What course is land conflict and cause between April wars asunder to our kneel at solemn word And Navy will respect upon return This duty fear is gone And men suspect a high and glaring dew The lines of fortune day and never that entrain And back to spirits go This day upon elect and finding go The simple year and Man.

There are moments in life when the wound is not only what happened to you. Sometimes the deeper wound begins after the event, after the loss, after the injury, after the collapse, after the diagnosis, after the catastrophe, when people begin deciding what your future must now look like because of what they have seen. That second wound is quiet, but it can cut deeper than many people know. Pain is one thing. Trauma is one thing. Grief is one thing. Physical challenge is one thing. Neurological damage is one thing. But there is another kind of suffering that arrives when the room changes around you and starts speaking to you as if your life should now be arranged around what looks manageable to other people. You can feel it even when nobody says it directly. You can feel the lowered expectation. You can feel the reduced imagination. You can feel the silent decision that the horizon over your life must now be smaller than it was before. That is a painful thing to carry because while other people are adjusting their vision of you downward, you are still standing there with a heart that knows there is more in you than what they are prepared to imagine.

That experience leaves a mark because it does not only challenge your body or your circumstances. It challenges your identity. It makes you fight on two fronts at once. You are fighting what happened to you, and you are fighting the meaning other people assign to what happened to you. There are many people alive today who know that tension very well. They know what it feels like when the bar gets lowered in front of them. They know what it feels like when practical voices begin offering small futures in calm tones, as if the most mature thing to do now is to stop expecting much. They know what it feels like when a room full of people slowly organizes itself around the idea that their life should now fit inside a reduced script. And one of the hardest parts is that those voices are not always cruel. Sometimes they are gentle. Sometimes they are educated. Sometimes they are sincere. Sometimes they sound caring. But sincere people can still be wrong when they begin measuring a destiny they did not create and cannot fully see.

That is why the message in the talk above matters so much. It matters because so many people are not only carrying pain. They are carrying interpretation. They are carrying other people’s conclusions. They are carrying old ceilings that got built over their life during one of their weakest chapters. They are carrying words, assessments, assumptions, projections, and atmospheres that taught them to think smaller, expect less, and protect themselves from disappointment by no longer standing near their own dream. There are people who have survived devastating things, but inwardly they are still living inside the reduced future others prepared for them years ago. They are breathing, functioning, working, showing up, and doing what they have to do, but something larger in them has gone quiet because too many voices around them agreed that the horizon should now be close. This is what makes reduced expectation so spiritually dangerous. It does not only describe your current struggle. It tries to train your imagination to stay small.

The imagination matters more than many people realize because you can lose the future there long before you lose it anywhere else. A person does not always walk away from purpose in one dramatic collapse. Sometimes they slowly adapt to a smaller life. They stop saying what they really want. They stop naming what still matters to them. They stop imagining what their life could become if the grace of God kept unfolding over time. They begin editing themselves before anyone else has the chance to question them. They make their desires more reasonable. They make their calling more socially acceptable. They turn their dream into something softer, quieter, and safer until it barely resembles the thing that once lived in them so strongly. And after a while they may even call that wisdom. But in many cases it is not wisdom. It is grief mixed with fear. It is pain trying to become the architect of the whole future. It is a person trying to avoid being hurt again by staying away from the very thing God may still be calling them toward.

That is why the sentence if I can do it, so can you carries so much weight when it comes from a life that has truly walked through devastation. It is not just a line. It is a hand reaching backward. It is a witness from someone who knows what it feels like when the room lowers the bar and speaks to you like your future should now be arranged around survival and convenience. It is not arrogance. It is testimony. It is not pride. It is solidarity. It is one wounded person saying to another wounded person that the room does not always know what it thinks it knows. It is someone saying do not let your hardest chapter become your permanent identity. Do not let the language of reduction settle over your spirit until it feels normal. Do not assume that what others find easiest to imagine for you is the truest thing available. That kind of voice matters because it makes belief feel morally possible again. It tells the person listening that reaching for more would not be foolish. It might actually be faithful.

The world has a powerful habit of mistaking visible limitation for total truth. When people can see damage, they often think they can now estimate destiny. When they can see weakness, they start drawing conclusions about outcome. When they can see interruption, they begin speaking as though they understand the full map of the future. But no one who is not God sees that clearly. Human beings look at what is in front of them. They interpret from surface conditions. They calculate from present evidence. God does not see that way. He sees arc. He sees process. He sees hidden strength. He sees what pain has not yet finished revealing. He sees what grace will do over time. He sees what endurance will become. He sees what is still alive under the rubble when the room is already talking like the story has narrowed for good. That is one of the most beautiful truths in Scripture and in real life. God keeps refusing to let visible weakness become the loudest word over a person’s future.

You can see that all through the Bible. Human beings are forever rushing to conclusions based on what appears obvious in the moment, and God keeps overturning those conclusions. He chooses the one others overlook. He uses the one others hesitate to trust. He works through the weak, the interrupted, the outsider, the late bloomer, the one who does not look like the obvious answer. He keeps speaking destiny into places people had already explained away. He keeps drawing life out of situations that looked too damaged to hold promise. That pattern matters because it shows us something essential about divine vision. God does not wait for a life to become visually impressive before He decides it still matters. He does not consult the room’s reduced expectations before speaking purpose. He does not surrender His imagination because the moment has become painful. He keeps seeing deeper than the visible break.

That truth becomes intensely personal when suffering lands in your own body, your own mind, your own path, your own plans. It is one thing to believe God uses weak things in theory. It is another thing to need that truth yourself when people are already adjusting to a smaller version of your life. That is why the atmosphere after catastrophe matters so much. Some people survive the event but almost lose themselves in the explanation of the event. The stroke happens. The accident happens. The breakdown happens. The loss happens. The injury happens. The professionals enter. The evaluations begin. The practical pathways begin. The future starts being discussed in terms of what seems safe, simple, and manageable. And often what gets lost in that moment is wonder. What gets lost is the possibility that this life still carries a scale no one in the room can currently measure. What gets lost is the awareness that while some things may have changed, destiny itself has not automatically been canceled. Human beings can become so eager to stabilize the situation that they forget they are standing in front of a life, not merely a problem.

There is a certain humiliation in being gently prepared for a life that feels far too small for what still burns inside you. It is difficult to explain that humiliation to people who have never lived it. It is not only that others are underestimating you. It is that they often do it while sounding caring. They do it while expecting gratitude for their realism. They do it while acting as though they are offering a merciful version of the future. That makes it harder to resist because the reduction comes in soft language. Yet soft language can still carry a false ceiling. A person may be encouraged toward something they can manage rather than something they are called to become. A person may be steered toward what fits the room’s fear rather than what fits God’s larger intention. That is why discernment matters so deeply after a devastating chapter. Not every voice that sounds calm deserves authority over your future.

The talk above matters because it breaks through that calm reduction and says something many people need to hear. Other people do not get to decide the final scale of your life. Your pain is real, but it is not the ruler of your future. Your diagnosis may describe part of your reality, but it is not the total truth about who you are. Your limitation may be visible, but visibility is not sovereignty. The room may have become comfortable with a smaller script, but the room is not God. This is the kind of truth that does not merely comfort. It confronts. It forces a person to ask whether they have been living under a ceiling heaven never built. It forces them to ask whether the life they now call realistic is actually the life fear handed them while they were too weak to challenge it. That is not always an easy question, but it is an important one. Too many people are mistaking emotional self-protection for wisdom and do not even realize it.

This is why the dream matters so much in this conversation. A dream is not always some flashy ambition. Sometimes a dream is simply the shape of purpose still trying to breathe. Sometimes it is the way calling whispers through the ache and says there is still more here than what the room is prepared to believe. A dream can be the desire to speak, build, write, lead, create, teach, influence, encourage, serve, innovate, or reach people with what God has placed in you. The problem is that dreams become very vulnerable after humiliation. When enough people lower the bar around your life, you begin to feel almost embarrassed by what still stirs in you. You start treating your deeper longing as if it were immature. You keep it quiet. You step farther from it. You begin protecting yourself from it because to stay close to it would mean standing in the painful gap between what still lives in you and what others have already assumed about you. That is one of the ways the dream gets buried without ever fully dying.

But buried is not dead. Quiet is not gone. Hidden is not finished. This is one of the great mercies of God. Sometimes He lets the dream keep breathing underneath the rubble because He refuses to let the reduced script become final. Sometimes what remains restless inside you is not a problem. It is a witness. It is evidence that something in you still knows the horizon was measured too small. It is evidence that your spirit has not fully agreed with the life fear offered in place of faith. That restlessness can be painful, but it can also be holy. It can be the beginning of awakening. It can be the signal that the soul is ready to stop pretending the smaller life is enough.

That is where responsibility begins entering the story in a very serious way. It is one thing to recognize that others misread your future. It is another thing to stop obeying what they got wrong. This is where many people get stuck. They may understand intellectually that the room was too small, but inwardly they still organize their life around it. They still speak in shrunken language. They still downplay what they want. They still wait for every fear to disappear before they move. They still treat the old verdict as if it deserves emotional loyalty. That is why the talk above pushes toward action. Only you can make your dreams happen. That line matters because it places the responsibility where it belongs. God gives grace, breath, strength, mercy, wisdom, and open doors, but He does not force your step for you. He does not live your obedience in your place. At some point, you have to decide whether your life will keep orbiting old reduction or whether you will start walking toward what still feels alive.

Many people wait too long because they are waiting to feel completely ready. They want confidence before movement. They want clarity before obedience. They want the road to feel safe before they take the step. But meaningful futures are rarely built that way. More often, the step comes first. Courage grows while moving. Clarity sharpens while obeying. Strength meets the person in the act of motion, not always before it. This is why the next step matters so much. It may not look dramatic from the outside. It may be deeply ordinary in the eyes of the world. But spiritually it can be enormous because it breaks agreement with despair. It tells the soul that the old room will not go on deciding everything. It tells fear that it no longer gets final authority over imagination. It tells the dream that it is no longer being treated as a relic. It tells God that the preserved life is willing to answer back with movement.

This is one reason the language of the talk above feels so alive. It does not merely say believe in yourself in some shallow modern sense. It says something more grounded and more sacred. It says do not let the smallest thing ever spoken over you become your permanent address. It says do not let the voices formed in your weakest season determine the reach of your strongest one. It says your dream is not going to walk itself into reality. It says the life God preserved is not meant to remain hidden inside fear forever. It says there is a point where the person themselves must rise and begin moving toward what still calls their name. That is not self-salvation. That is stewardship. That is a human being taking responsibility for the gift of continued existence.

There is also something deeply beautiful about the fact that this kind of life, when it keeps moving, becomes more than a private story. It becomes oxygen for other people. Someone else who has been living under reduced expectations begins hearing the testimony and feels something open in them again. Someone else who quietly accepted a small future begins realizing they may have agreed too quickly with fear. Someone else who had started treating their own longing as embarrassing begins feeling permission to stand near it again. This is why testimony becomes ministry. A real testimony does not merely say look what happened to me. It says let this break something loose in you. Let this show you that the room does not always know what it thinks it knows. Let this remind you that God’s vision for a life often exceeds what current circumstances can reveal.

This is especially powerful when the person speaking is not untouched by the cost. The world has plenty of polished voices, but what people are starving for is weight. They want to hear from someone who knows what the lowering of the bar feels like. They want to hear from someone who understands humiliation, survival, reduced expectations, and the long discipline of refusing to disappear. That kind of voice carries authority because it has been formed under pressure. It is not performing wisdom. It has paid for it. And when such a voice says if I can do it, so can you, people can feel that the statement was born in reality, not branding. That matters because it reaches the person who is tired of theory and is desperate for evidence that a life can still widen after it looked like it had narrowed for good.

This is the deeper invitation in the talk above. It is an invitation to reexamine the ceiling. It is an invitation to notice where you may still be speaking about yourself from inside old fear. It is an invitation to ask whether the future you have accepted is truly the future God is holding over you, or simply the future that seemed easiest to imagine after pain entered the story. It is an invitation to begin believing again, not in a naive way, but in a way that understands pain and still refuses to worship it. It is an invitation to stop waiting for the room to approve your horizon. It is an invitation to take the next step even if your confidence is still healing. It is an invitation to realize that the dream may not be dead at all. It may simply be waiting for your courage to stop apologizing for its existence.

That is where we need to go next, because the great challenge is not only exposing the lie of reduction. The great challenge is learning how to actually rebuild a life once you stop agreeing with the reduced version of your future, and what it means to move from surviving what happened to fully stewarding the life God still kept alive.

Once a person stops agreeing with the reduced version of their future, the real rebuilding begins. That is where the journey becomes both more hopeful and more demanding. It is one thing to recognize that people measured your life too small. It is another thing to actually live beyond that old measurement after carrying it for so long. Human beings adapt to atmosphere. If the room around you has been filled with caution, lowered expectation, and the quiet assumption that your life should now remain contained, then even genuine possibility can feel strange when it starts returning. A wider horizon can feel risky. Hope can feel exposed. The dream can feel almost too vulnerable to touch. Not because it is false, but because disappointment taught you to protect yourself by staying away from what still matters most. This is why rebuilding after deep interruption is never only about outward progress. It is also about inward permission. It is about recovering the right to want a meaningful future again without feeling guilty for wanting it.

That recovery matters because many people outwardly move forward while inwardly still living beneath the old ceiling. They begin doing things no one expected, yet part of them continues speaking in the language of the old room. They downplay what they want before anyone else can question it. They soften their vision. They make their desire sound smaller, safer, and more manageable than it really is. They do not always stop moving, but they move with their own imagination half-muted. This is one of the hidden effects of being underestimated. It trains a person to edit themselves before the world has the chance to do it. It teaches them to apologize for seeing farther than fear once allowed. That is why the deepest healing has to reach identity. If the body progresses but the person still believes they should remain emotionally loyal to a reduced horizon, then the life may improve externally while still staying spiritually confined.

This is where God begins doing some of His most tender work. He starts reintroducing the person to themselves through His eyes instead of through the eyes of the people who misread their weakest chapter. He reminds them that they are not fundamentally the catastrophe that happened to them. They are not merely the one who was limited, delayed, injured, silenced, or redirected. They are still someone He sees by purpose. They are still someone He sees by calling. They are still someone whose continued existence carries meaning. This does not erase the event. It does not insult the pain. It does not flatten the seriousness of what the person has survived. But it does refuse to let pain become the highest authority over identity. That refusal is holy. It is part of redemption itself. Redemption does not merely comfort a wounded life. It restores that life to its deeper meaning so the wound no longer has the right to interpret everything.

This shift often begins quietly. A person may simply notice that something in them is no longer willing to fully submit to the old script. They may realize they have been using the language of smallness out of habit, not out of truth. They may start seeing how often fear has been dressed up as maturity. They may recognize that some of what they called realism was actually an emotional agreement with despair. This is not easy to face. It can be painful because it means admitting that you have been helping maintain a ceiling you never consciously wanted. But that honesty is freeing. You cannot rebuild a wide life while speaking about yourself through the narrowest terms ever assigned to you. At some point, you have to notice the pattern and break it. At some point, you have to stop treating your old reduction like wisdom. At some point, you have to admit that something in you still knows there is more.

That something matters. It may be quiet, but it matters. It may not yet know exactly what form the future will take, but it matters. Sometimes all that remains at first is a refusal to fully disappear. Sometimes all that remains is the ache you feel when you imagine spending the rest of your life inside a future other people built from your pain. Sometimes all that remains is an uneasy sense that the reduced version of your life cannot be the whole truth. That does not mean you are delusional. It may mean your spirit is still alive enough to resist settling into something that does not fit what God has preserved you for. A restless soul is not always a sign of confusion. Sometimes it is a sign that purpose is still knocking from the inside while fear is trying to keep the door shut.

That is why the dream matters so much. A dream is often the early language of calling. It is the form purpose takes before it has fully entered the world. It may be a body of work you are meant to create, a message you are meant to carry, a field you are meant to shape, people you are meant to strengthen, or a kind of life that still calls your name even after pain tried to bury it. The tragedy is that many people treat the dream like a dangerous thing once they have been humiliated by lowered expectations. They start acting as if wanting more is itself a risk. They keep distance from their own calling because to stand near it would mean feeling the old contradiction again. But distance does not heal the wound. It only keeps the wound from being touched as often. The dream remains, and because it remains, the ache remains too. This is why so many people feel quietly unsatisfied even after they have supposedly accepted the smaller life. Their acceptance was never rooted in peace. It was rooted in fear.

That is where responsibility becomes sacred. God may preserve the life, place the longing, open the door, and breathe strength into the person, but He does not do their obedience for them. He does not take the next step in their place. He does not force them into the future while they remain emotionally loyal to the old room. This is why the line only you can make your dreams happen is so piercing. It is not about isolated self-reliance. It is about stewardship. God can give grace, but you still have to answer grace. God can keep the dream alive, but you still have to move toward it. God can call, but you still have to say yes. At some point, you must decide whether your future will continue orbiting around the smallest thing ever spoken over you or whether it will begin orbiting around what God still seems to be drawing out of you.

Many people stay stuck because they are waiting to feel completely ready. They want total confidence before action. They want every fear quiet before movement. They want certainty before obedience. But life with God rarely works that way. More often, courage grows while being exercised. Strength meets you in motion. Clarity sharpens through faithfulness. A person discovers that the next step did not require the absence of fear. It required the refusal to let fear make the decision. This is why the next step matters so much. It may not look dramatic. It may be deeply ordinary by public standards. But spiritually it can be enormous because it breaks agreement with paralysis. It says I am no longer willing to let the old ceiling determine what I do with today. It says I may still be healing, but I will not make healing an excuse for permanent disappearance. It says the life God kept alive will not be handed over to passive reduction.

This is one of the reasons small faithful actions matter more than people think. A life is usually not rebuilt in one sweeping moment. It is rebuilt through repeated acts of holy defiance against the script of fear. One day of showing up. One day of working. One day of learning. One day of trying again. One day of letting yourself speak again. One day of refusing to call the dream unrealistic just because it survived a hard chapter. These things can look unimpressive from the outside, but heaven knows what they cost. Heaven sees the history inside them. Heaven sees how much pain had to be walked through inwardly just to make one honest move. The world admires outcomes, but God sees obedience. The world celebrates arrival, but God honors movement. This is why no step taken in real faith is small, even when it looks modest to people who do not understand what it took.

That should be deeply comforting to anyone whose pace feels slow. A person rebuilding from major adversity cannot measure their progress by the standards of those who never had to carry what they carry. The road may be different. The timing may be different. The emotional cost may be different. That does not make the journey less meaningful. It may make it more sacred. Some of the most courageous movement in the world is hidden inside lives that continue forward while still managing realities most people around them cannot even fully see. God sees that. He sees what it costs you to keep showing up. He sees the discipline hidden in your ordinary day. He sees how much resistance to despair is present in your continued effort. Never call your pace worthless because it does not look dramatic enough for public admiration. Heaven understands what faithfulness costs when it is carried through a scarred life.

There is also something deeply important about what happens to a person when they begin moving this way. They stop organizing themselves primarily around what happened to them and start organizing themselves around what they are now responsible to become. That shift changes everything. It does not erase the event, but it changes its position in the story. The catastrophe is no longer the center of gravity. Calling becomes the center of gravity. The person is no longer only asking how do I cope with what happened. They begin asking what am I meant to build, steward, speak, create, learn, or offer because I am still here. That is a profound change. It awakens dignity. It awakens agency. It awakens a healthier kind of seriousness. A person starts realizing that their continued existence is not just a fact. It is a stewardship. Their life was preserved, and now there is something to do with that preservation.

That is why excellence becomes such an important part of this story. A person who was once measured too small should never feel ashamed of becoming excellent. There is nothing wrong with deepening your skill, expanding your knowledge, mastering your craft, shaping fields, building meaningful work, and carrying unusual substance if those things are rooted in stewardship. In fact, excellence often becomes one of the clearest ways a life exposes how false the old reduction really was. The very person others imagined inside a narrow script may become intellectually rich, spiritually weighty, creatively strong, and publicly influential in ways no one early on could have seen. This does not happen because pain is good. It happens because God is able to bring weight out of what tried to diminish you. He is able to create fruit from a life others treated as though it should mostly remain in maintenance mode. He is able to bring long-term consequence out of someone whose future was once quietly arranged in small terms.

That matters because the world often expects adversity to lead only to modest survival. It may praise resilience in general language, but it still assumes the horizon should stay limited. Yet some of the most meaningful lives in the world are lives that came through devastating interruption and then refused to live permanently inside its smallest interpretation. Those lives become more than inspirational examples. They become living contradictions to the lie that visible weakness tells the whole truth. They show that a scarred life can still become a profound life. A delayed life can still become a fruitful life. A wounded life can still become a powerful source of blessing for others. And when that happens, the impact extends far beyond the individual. It begins creating possibility in other people who had quietly agreed to their own reduction.

This is why testimony becomes ministry. A real testimony does not only say look what happened to me. It says let this show you what may still be possible in your own life under the grace of God. It tells the person who has been staring at a lowered ceiling that the ceiling may not be sacred. It tells the one who has stopped naming the dream that the dream may still matter. It tells the person who has been speaking to themselves in reduced language that there is another way to live. It tells the one who has been waiting for complete certainty that the next step can be taken in trembling and still count as faith. This is one of the beautiful ways God works. He takes the life that was nearly arranged into smallness and lets it become oxygen for many others who are still trapped in the earlier room.

That overflow is part of why public work can become so meaningful after adversity. The very voice others may have expected to quiet down becomes the voice that strengthens multitudes. The very life people assumed would now remain limited becomes a life with reach. The very person who was once measured by damage becomes someone who brings clarity, encouragement, innovation, leadership, and hope to people all over the world. This is not merely success. It is redemption made visible. It is God overturning the terms of the earlier room without needing to argue with it directly. The room can keep its old opinion. The fruit answers for itself. The work answers for itself. The life answers for itself. And that answer carries weight because it was born in a place where many would have expected permanent reduction.

Still, there is a caution here. A person should never waste their future trying to emotionally answer every old voice. That is too small a goal. Revenge is not the highest use of a redeemed life. Fulfillment is higher than vindication. The deeper freedom comes when you no longer need the room to change its mind in order to move. The deeper freedom comes when the room stops being your inner reference point. You do not build your future as an argument with the past. You build it as a response to God. That shift matters because it releases enormous energy. Instead of spending your life proving old people wrong, you spend your life becoming what God still sees. That is the stronger path. It is more peaceful. It is more stable. It no longer keeps revisiting old humiliation for motivation. It simply obeys.

And obedience is where the dream becomes real. Not in theory. Not in wishful thinking. In practice. The next step may be small, but it is where the future begins taking shape. It may be creating the first piece of work. It may be publishing the first message. It may be studying the thing you were once told would be beyond you. It may be making the application. It may be beginning the ministry. It may be launching the business. It may be learning how to speak again, trust again, and build again. Whatever form it takes, it becomes the hinge between old reduction and new stewardship. A life opens on hinges like that. Not all at once, but through enough moments where a person decides that fear will no longer be allowed to narrate their destiny.

This is why the line only you can make your dreams happen must be heard with both tenderness and force. It is tender because it respects the reality that this step may cost you a great deal emotionally. It is forceful because no one else can take it for you. Other people can encourage you. They can love you. They can pray for you. They can support you. But they cannot inhabit your calling on your behalf. They cannot offer your obedience for you. At some point, the life God preserved must be answered by you. That answer may be quiet. It may begin with trembling. It may begin while your confidence is still healing. But it must begin.

So let this land deeply. If the room lowered the bar, that was not the same thing as God lowering the horizon. If the people around you planned a smaller life, that was their limitation, not necessarily yours. If the dream still breathes, honor it. If the next step feels small, take it anyway. If fear still speaks, do not let it make the final choice. If your hands shake, move anyway. If your confidence is not complete, obey anyway. The future does not belong to those who wait until every feeling is settled. It belongs to those who refuse to let the smallest interpretation of their life become the truest one.

And if you keep moving with God, even slowly, even imperfectly, even while scars remain, something beautiful happens. The horizon starts opening. The dream starts gaining shape. The old room starts losing emotional authority. Strength begins meeting you in places where fear once ruled. Identity deepens as you walk. Purpose sharpens as you steward it. And one day the life that others once misread through a broken moment will stand in the world as its own answer. Not because pain was denied. Not because the struggle was exaggerated. But because you refused to let a broken moment become the total measure of a living future.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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Adedapo Adeniyi is a promising 20 yo abstract SF author from Ilorin, Nigeria.

Disclaimer: you should read The Dilemma of the He and His House, House? then Mosquito Farm before reading the interview.

Which Nigerian city do you live in? Can you describe it for us?

I live in Ilorin, it's in Kwara State. I think Ilorin is great, I've lived here all my life, it's claustrophobic and surreal, simultaneously very big and very small, like it's breathing, there's also an eerie air here that a lot of the artists that live here can attest to. My favorite part about it is that we're in what I like to call Ilorin's renaissance era, where the youth are becoming more sensitized to art and exploring themselves in relations to the emotions and mindspace of the city.

In your Abstractism Manifesto, you mention God multiple times. What is God, from your perspective, and what role does He play in your life?

(note from SFSS: Abstractism is a term coined by Adedapo, defining it as a genre/philosophy that functions as an amalgamation of solipsism, surrealism, psychedelia, psychology and the subjectivity of reality; he proposes the dissolution of form into true abstracts.)

I like to think of God in many ways, of course as the ultimate entity, divine, the creator of all, and also as an expression of our true selves.

I grew up Christian, I'm still Christian. I have a very different relationship with God now where I'm constantly asking who He is in me, and not just who. He is like I'm trying to study Him.

---

Gemini's synopsis of The Dilemma: This is a story about a man who is confused about his identity. It discusses his house and its origins. The man tells others the story of the house, but he cannot remember it. He eventually realizes that he is the house.

In your story The Dilemma of the He and His House, House?, that we'll call The Dilemma for brevity purpose, you write at one point: “I will stop trying to encompass it in words. It is the truth”. What do you mean by that?

I like to think that there are certain symbols or aspects of my work that can't be expressed through familiar language, because there are no words to use to describe them, they're otherworldly, true, void of the taints of this reality.

What does “void of the taints of this reality” mean?

A psychedelic trip, an orgasm, a feeling of being possessed by the Holy Spirit. There's a lot of ways you could try explaining how they feel, but the language we know doesn't have all the words to express these feelings, these experiences. They're religious.

In The Dilemma, the hero is being told: “You are closed to the knowing, you should open yourself”. Is this a reference to the word Ephphatha in Mark's Gospel? Can you explain what this means to you?

(Note from SFSS: Ephphatha, which means open yourself, was said by Jesus to a deaf-mute man in the book of Mark)

Huh, I had no idea what that meant, I just googled it, funny how these things work. When the main character, The He, is told that phrase, it's because he's still in doubt that he's the God figure in the story, and for him to realize that, he has to kill the doubt and start thinking in maybes and what ifs.

It's solipsism logic, open yourself to the knowing that all exists because of you and it becomes so, close yourself to it and you remain oblivious all your life.

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Adedapo's synopsis of Mosquito Farm: Mosquito Farm is a story set in futurist Nigeria about Jomi, an enforcer who after making a grave decision, descends into insanity and faces the conflict of the fact that he's been living a lie.

Mosquito Farm reminds me of Philip K. Dick stories. He's an influence of yours, right?

Yes, PKD is my favorite writer, I love how he revolutionalized paranoid fiction and the idea of subjective reality in science fiction, so Mosquito Farm is in a sense a product of that, but with Nigerian sensibilities.

Funny how you mention “air addicts” in Mosquito Farm. I always thought that my addiction to oxygen was healthy

I'd say it's healthy right now, but when we consider pollution and the amount of toxins we're exposed to every day, it isn't far off to say that the air we're breathing casually now can in decades become toxic and hallucinogenic.

I think it's my duty as a sci-fi writer to consider worst case scenarios in the future over best cases.

At the beginning of the story, two characters have a simultaneous thought. This happened to two friends of mine (one of them was my best friend and died last year)

Oh I'm so sorry to hear that.

The idea of simultaneously having a thought with another person came from my belief that us humans are evolving towards telepathy, it's happened multiple times to me with people very close to me.

Of course, the root of the thought they're sharing is revealed at the end of the story as a shared obsession amongst people in Eko Futura.

Your description of people addicted to air and hallucinating reminded me of people I know who suffered from mental illness as a result of Covid lockdowns

The story definitely grew from my perception of a post pandemic world and how it affected consciousness.

With us being in lockdown for almost a year, it affected our mental health, and that was us not interacting with infected air, I flipped that and made the insanity air borne.

At one point of the story, one of the characters say: “Thank God for Western medicine”. I don't know how Western medicine is perceived in Nigeria, but in the west there is for sure a growing mistrust for it, especially since the Covid vaccines

There's a growing mistrust for it here as well, but the idea of the story was that the people in Eko Futura have a complex against the infected people living outside the utopia, and when they say “thank God for Western medicine,” they're thanking God for its accessibility to them.

At another point of the story, someone has to decide whether he should kill a child or not. I know an Irak veteran (not the vet I interviewed here, someone else) who had to do it, he got PTSD

Oh yeah, the blueprint of the story is this fast-paced PTSD, where what he's done starts to haunt him as soon as he does it, just because he's never been confronted with something as grotesque as killing a child before.

In your story, a character makes a prayer. Here is how I pray: I talk to God spontaneously, and it helps me clarifying what I'm living/doing

That's kind of what he does too, he asks God for clarity.

At the end of the story, the hero has to make a tough choice. I think he'll make the right one

I guess we'll never know.

I have trouble understanding abstracts, that's why I didn't really understand The Dilemma. I understood Mosquito Farm, though, because it's much more concrete

Mosquito Farm is definitely more accessible, but The Dilemma was the first story I wrote after the manifesto and it perfectly encapsulates abstractism ; Mosquito Farm leans more towards Africanfuturism and paranoid fiction with abstract sensibilities.

On your X account, your pinned tweet says death to poetry. However, I think that this story is full packed of poetry

I grew up around calculative, systematic poetry, my work is a rejection of that.

What are you currently working on?

Well, I finished my first novel a couple months ago. I'm currently doing research for my next one and learning how to make short films and experimenting with visual language.

Where can we buy your novel?

It's not out yet, sadly.

A lot of my readers are atheists. What would you say to them?

I don't think anybody's really an atheist, I think we all have a strong connection to some entity, albeit ambiguous, but yeah I think I'd ask them what they think is out there, or who.

If you had one Nigerian tune to share, what would it be?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsWYR4e0ubo

You're very gifted, please keep practicing, one day you'll be famous, maybe

Thank you for this. I really believe it too. I want to reinvent literature and cinema as a Nigerian, always been my future.

Thank you for this interview, Adedapo

Thank you as well, Guy.

#adeniyi #shortinterviews

All the differences being the same is quite a conundrum in determining the efficacy of modernity.

In the grand scheme of life, I believe I am quite young. I have spent a terrible amount of my youth hunched over, frying my brain with dogshit iterations of the same content—this content is what one may call 'slop.'

People use the word slop as a means of shame; slop via social media is something so egregious that it is deplorable to even appraise its components in any capacity outside the cleavage of the internet from which it came. This criticism, however, is another weak talking point. All that we consume is slop.

We used to have individual personal phones, calculators, cameras, notebooks, etc. When IBM created smartphones and Apple popularized them, the euphoria of simplicity changed humanity's brain chemistry forever. Nearly two decades after the release of the first iPhone, we have, for some reason, come to accept the same mush gilded with 'innovation' every year. We refuse to accept that even the euphoria of innovation has its limits.

We have become Kierkegaard's worst nightmare. We have become too accustomed to simplicity that we no longer even hold the ability to lift our frail necks up and shout for it; we just lie down in expectation.

Everything is turning into slop. Our technology, our modern arts, our humor, our food. Once a week, I wake up to scroll on social media, eat a bowl of mush that was promoted as 'Protein Packed,' look away as I'm struck by an onslaught of outright bigoted farce, all while wearing clothing that will become unwearable in less than a year, just to sit on the earth forever, impossible to disintegrate.

I fear that we will continue to live like this, willingly and happily consuming slop. For now, or forever, we have been damned to swallow the regurgitations of our own incapability all in the name of ease.

I ache because I care. Do you?

Sejnas

Reclaiming Manhood with the Iron Giant and Mr. Darcy

“What is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.”

— Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2.

When I was in college I decided to start a faith-based discussion group for men, about well, being a man. For some strange reason, I felt that it had to be very early in the morning, because getting up early was manly. In my campus-wide emails I also resorted to tasteless jokes about going out to chop down trees and break rocks with heads. Whatever this says about my social development is less relevant than the question that I was attempting to answer, however foolishly, with that group and those jokes: What does it mean to be a man?

This is a question that has tortured me since my adolescence, and tortures me still. Whether this essay will provide any relief remains to be seen. My small group, unsurprisingly, was not very popular, even with my Christian friends. Not many undergraduate guys were willing to get up for a discussion group that started at 6:30am on Friday mornings; or if they were willing, the flesh was weak. This does not mean that the group was a failure, because I had one regular attendee who I was able to talk quite deeply with, and I still think about him today. I was also told by a few people that they would have attended if it was at a less inconvenient time. This showed me that I was not the only one tortured by the question.

So, what does it mean to be a man? We will find out together, dear reader, whether I am any better equipped to answer this question than I was over a decade ago. But first I must define exactly what is meant by it. We could try to answer it by taking a survey of the men in our lives, and saying, “These examples show what it is to be a man.” But despite confounding us with wildly different conclusions, this method also reveals to us our bias. I think that most of us, consciously or unconsciously, have already taken a survey of the men in our lives, and the results have made us uneasy. That the question occurs to us reveals an insecurity about manhood that cannot be assuaged by the simple truth that no men are perfect. We would not be asking if there wasn't something resembling a real crisis. What I believe we really mean to ask is, “What does it mean to be a good man?”

In order to save myself and my readers a great deal of confusion and time, I will confine myself to defining “good manhood” in the context of two relationships that a man forms in his life. The first is a man's relationship to society, and the second is a man's relationship to women. I must also point out that my perspective as a straight, white, Christian man shapes this conversation, because in these great gray social topics, it is only our own examined experience that counts, as flawed and subjective as it is. If you would like to discount the application of the following words because of that, go right ahead, this is just one man's attempt to deconstruct and redeem his gender, and keep it interesting.

I must also note that these two relationships leave a great deal of territory open and unexplored. This openness of the question is partly why it is so torturous. The feeling a man gets, when he surveys his life and the lives of the men around him, is that we have all been pushed out into a roiling sea with no map. If we have been given compasses, they all point in different directions, because postmodern society, in destroying (perhaps rightly) the traditional framework of manhood, has not troubled itself to supply a replacement. If we take data about social outcomes and measures of happiness as a compass, we may end up 'better' in life, but we will have no way to describe why it is, in fact, 'better' to be socially and economically stable and happy about it. And we must be very careful to know what we mean when we talk about social and economic success. Is that stable job with a good income, in fact, ethical? Is the stability it provides in allowing you to give a comfortable life to your family worth more than the lives that the corporation or company you work for may or may not be destroying? If you do have an ethical job, are you hacking at the leaves of evil or the root of it? Does it pay well? Are you sacrificing your own well-being and time with your family to be a justice hero? Why are teachers paid less than lawyers? Are you involved in the lives of your kids? Is that involvement positive or negative? What about your wife or partner? Do you still cherish and value them? Do they love you? When was the last time you looked at porn? How wrong did it feel? Even if you have never looked, when was the last time you fantasized about another partner? If you are not the breadwinner, do you do your share of chores? If you do, does your partner have to remind you to do them? Do you do them well? Could you sleep easy at night if you were not the breadwinner? If you are a bachelor, do you clean your room? Can you cook? Do you care? When was the last time you volunteered for charity? Why is that relevant? Does anyone take me seriously? What makes life worth living? Do you feel lost yet?

This spiral of rhetorical questions is an example of the spiraling questions that torture me as a result of the first question. It feels almost impossible to say anything definitive, because any of the positive statements I might derive from the men that I admire—”Real men are patient.” “Real men are humble.” “Real men restrain their violence.” “Real men use their strength for the good of others.” “Real men sacrifice themselves for others.“—can also be applied to women. Is there anything gendered about patience and humility and strength and sacrifice? Indeed, if we take an honest look at the roles women have been forced to play throughout history, a patient and honest man should be somewhat overawed by the patience and humility and strength and sacrificial love of women. And even if we admit that men are, in general, physically stronger than women; how does that help us? Please do not misunderstand me. I believe that there are key differences between men and women, but I do not believe they are as easily defined as I once did. I do, in fact, do chores differently than my wife. One can tell the difference between how I fold laundry and how she folds laundry. But those differences are irrelevant. What is relevant is that so far from men and women changing, it is our society that is constantly shifting and changing around us, so that we must define ourselves in the face of the claims it makes. Society is the “atmosphere” of which Virginia Woolf speaks in Three Guineas:

“Odour then—or shall we call it 'atmosphere'?—is a very important element in professional life; in spite of the fact that like other important elements it is impalpable. It can escape the noses of examiners in examination rooms, yet penetrate boards and divisions and affect the senses of those within [...] It is true that women civil servants deserve to paid as much as men; but it is also true that they are not paid as much as men. The discrepancy is due to atmosphere” (Woolf 95).

For Virginia Woolf in 1938, atmosphere was denoted by the resistance that women faced when trying to enter the the professional spheres from which they had traditionally been denied access. As a straight white man in 2026, I cannot fully understand that atmosphere, but I will be bold enough to say that the bewilderment I tried to illustrate with so many rhetorical questions is how I perceive the atmosphere that men live in now. It is perhaps not as potentially damaging to the mind and body as the atmosphere that people of other genders live in, but that is not for me to say, and I do not think a competition about who has it worse would be productive. All metaphors have limits. We would do well to keep those limits in mind as we move from this long, confused preamble, to the body of the essay.

Man Vs. Violence: The Iron Giant

The Iron Giant is a 1999 animated film about a robot who crash lands off the coast of Maine during the Cold War. The Giant suffers damage to the head, and is diverted from its original purpose of destruction. The principal human character, a boy named Hogarth, discovers the Giant near his house and befriends him, but the military comes to investigate the crash landing, and Hogarth finds himself trying to hide the giant.

We are given two men (other than the Giant and the general) to compare in this movie. Dean, a beatnik junkyard sculpture artist; and Kent Mansley, the government agent investigating the crash. Hogarth's father died before the start of the movie, so it can be said that he is searching for a father figure. He is also living in an atmosphere of fear. The students are 'educated' in class with a film that superimposes a mushroom cloud over a peaceful town. “Suddenly,” the narrator says. “Without warning, ATOMIC HOLOCAUST.” From Kent, the rude, take-charge, slugger/bucko/chief/champ, we are shown the 'manly' response to fear of the Unknown Other. He says, “Who built it? The Russians? The Chinese? Martians? Canadians?! I DON'T CARE! All I know is we didn't build it, and that's reason enough to assume the worst and blow it to kingdom come!” This quote reveals that Mansley's fear, masquerading as bravado (he steals cars and ogles women and threatens to separate Hogarth from his mother in the name of national security), is based on the fear of losing power. This is the familiar demon that drives competition among men and the basis of that buzz-phrase, 'toxic masculinity.' Whether based on the violence of our ancient past or not, I have observed that, in general, boys are groomed to train in violence. And if not violence, some skill or specialization that can be used to gain or defend power. This, I believe, is why so many video games (most of which, in the early days, were made by men), involve fighting and big boobs. Why were atomic bombs built? To defend power. What justifies cruelty in conquest and racist policies? The defense of power. Viewed from this perspective, it is no surprise to me that white men have been the main perpetrators of the toxic male defense of power, because they have been the principal beneficiaries of that power. This is what I believe is driving the cruelty of Trump's politics, as well as the complicity that allowed him to get where he is.

James Baldwin once pointed out that the majority is not the group that is most numerous, it is the group that has the most influence [^1]. In other words, white men are afraid because our influence is eroding, and our cruel and cowardly politicians are desperately trying to hold onto it. When I watched this movie with my wife, she commented that Kent Mansley is a little unbelievable. After all, he disobeys direct orders after the general realizes that the Iron Giant only reacts to violence, and orders a nuclear strike on his own location. But having observed men throughout my life, and having observed the self-destructive impulses in myself, I can easily (sadly) imagine a Mansley. “I can do anything I want, whenever I want,” says Kent. This is the unspoken belief that drives the actions of even the most gentle of men. The fear of losing the license to do whatever a man wants is what leads to complicit passivity and self destruction. It is only by confronting and defeating this fear, over and over, that a man can walk the path to true manhood.

I must also take time to point out that so many of the movies and video games and books that we imagine to be found in man caves are full of heroes who are defined by their ability to commit violence. Heroes like John Wayne, John Wick, John McClane, John 117 and all the other non-Johns that are really various incarnations of Odysseus would not be in our media if they didn't have some violence to commit. The noblest of them use their violence to protect the innocent, and there is certainly nobility in putting oneself in harm's way, but it bears pointing out that it would not be necessary for them to do so if men were not so violent in the first place. Haley Bennet's character in Antoine Fuqua's The Magnificent Seven would not have to say “These men are here to help us,” if there were not already hundreds of men there to kill and rape them. I like watching Denzel Washington dish out justice as much as the next guy, but we must not lose sight of why that dishing out of justice feels so cathartic, and where it might lead us. In fact we can see where it has gotten us. The cowards who find their way to power spend trillions of our tax money on instruments of murder and death that they can drop on people from three thousand miles away. They are not putting their lives on the line when they can buy a Rolex and pretend to be James Bond. And so far from having a just cause like Sam Chisolm's, their cause has mostly been money. Perhaps, because I cannot muster enough empathy to understand their actions, the root cause of it is a Mansley-like terror that the great stolen horde they are sitting on could one day be stolen back, and they are willing to do anything to keep it all to themselves. What a pathetic way to spend one's life. What a pathetic failure of manhood, which ought to be marked by a willingness to sacrifice power for the beloved community.

The other man we are given to examine is Dean. He owns the town junkyard, is something of an artist, listens to jazz, drinks espresso, stays up late, has a cool bathrobe, lets Hogarth and the Iron Giant hide out at his place. He's cool, man. Dean is a counterpoint to Mansley, and as a white man on the lower echelons of privilege, he is able to show a better reaction to the threat of violence and the loss of power. When Hogarth spills his insecurities after drinking Dean's espresso, Dean responds with decent advice, “Who cares what those creeps think, you know? They don't decide who you are, you do. You are who you choose to be.” This advice is more relevant to the Iron Giant's journey, but it also reveals the all-important fault in the Mansley way of life, which is that a man does have a choice. As Steinbeck so gloriously represented in East of Eden, “Thou mayest” is the antidote to sick fear and cowardice. Yes, confronting the fear of losing power means confronting the fear of death, but we must all face death whether we want to or not. “Ultimately,” wrote Martin Luther King, “One's sense of manhood must come from within him.”[^2]. But Dean is not the most heroic representation of this confrontation because he is not the hero of this movie, the Iron Giant is.

When we first meet the Iron Giant he is devouring a power line near Hogarth's home. Hogarth is home alone because his mom has to work late, and hearing the noise, the boy picks up his BB Gun and goes to investigate the noise. The Giant gets tangled in the lines and seems to be in pain. Hogarth starts to run away but decides to help him by flipping a lever to turn off the power station. In the scuffle, Hogarth drops his gun and the Giant stomps on it before passing out and waking up. This crushing of the gun is symbolic for the Iron Giant, because the Iron Giant, quite literally, was supposed to be a gun. He comes from an alien planet and later in the movie he decimates the US forces with futuristic weaponry. But because he was damaged, and because of his relationship with Hogarth, the Iron Giant realizes that he can choose who he wants to be. Perhaps the most affecting scene that explicitly confronts violence is the scene in which Hogarth and the Iron Giant meet a deer in the woods. The Giant is moved by the deer's beauty, but a few moments later we hear a gunshot, and the deer is dead. Two hunters come and are terrified by the Iron Giant. One of them drops his gun as he runs away. Hogarth explains that the deer is dead, that he was killed by a gun. Later that night Hogarth and the Giant have a heart to heart about death:

HOGARTH: I know you feel bad about the deer. But it's not your fault. Things die. It's part of life. It's bad to kill. But it's not bad to die.
IRON GIANT: You die?
HOGARTH: Well... yes, someday.
IRON GIANT: I die?
HOGARTH: I don't know. You're made of metal...but you have feelings. And you think about things. And that means you have a soul. And souls don't die.
IRON GIANT: Soul?
HOGARTH: Mom says it's something inside of all good things... and that it goes on forever and ever.

It is the Iron Giant who is confronted with the choice between violence or death. His programming tells him to destroy, and he is ultimately the strongest 'man' in the world of the movie. He could, if he chose, completely conquer the world. But Hogarth convinces him to reject his violence. The climax of the movie then builds, as Mansley disobeys orders and tells the ship to launch the nuke, and the Iron Giant chooses to collide with it in the air in order to save the town.

Shortly before this climax, Hogarth and the Iron Giant are playing in the junkyard. Hogarth is pretending that the Iron Giant is Atomo (a robot sent to destroy earth). Hogarth uses a toy gun and it activates the Giant's weapons, and he fires a laser. Dean saves Hogarth and yells at the Iron Giant, calling him a “big gun.” The Giant tries to refuse, but he is scared of hurting Hogarth and runs away. We cut to two boys on a roof on the lookout for the giant metal man. The railing breaks and they fall. The Iron Giant makes a diving catch to save them in the middle of town. When Hogarth and Dean find him, the Giant smiles and says, “I am not a gun.”

I cannot tell you exactly why this line stuck in my mind for so long after watching the Iron Giant for the first time as an adult, but I think I can now. As I envision what happens immediately after the Iron Giant says this (he is shot in the back by a tank), I feel as though I am watching a vision of what it feels like to be a man with good intentions. The world, as much as we would wish it were not so, does not exist to validate our dreams and best hopes. The world of men is mostly indifferent and randomly hostile. Moved by my better angels, I have made declarations of intent, only to be shot in the back and induced to reach for my weapons (for me, some plan to be profitable and the comfort of video games or worse). This is the same note that resonates with me when I watch Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi, in which a guitar player (a mariachi) is induced to pick up a guitar case full of weapons instead of his instrument. Goodness and beauty do not simply come about, they are fought and sacrificed for. They are missed by fateful decisions which rely on safety and the lie that the highest good we can do for our families is make them comfortable and happy. They are sacrificed for in the middle of the night, in the most mundane ways, by giving up what you and the world once thought was glorious. Normal guys like me don't get to go out by blowing up a nuke (I hope?), and one of the hardest struggles I have faced (embarrassingly), is admitting just how much I want the glory of doing something as impressive and heroic and easy to praise—and giving that up for goods that are far greater than glory.

We are off the rails now, blown apart in the pieces of my life experience, much like the Iron Giant at the end of the movie. But now, let's try to bring those pieces back together. It is time to turn to Jane Austen and Mr. Darcy.

Man Vs. Woman: Mr. Darcy

“What are men to rocks and mountains?”

— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch 27.

If we are confused by a man's relationship to society, there would seem to be little hope that we can find ourselves in his relationship to woman. What topic has been written about, dreamed about, sung about, lied about, more? But enough excuses. Why, of all people, are we turning to Jane Austen? Perhaps it is because outsiders are sometimes the most suited to bring insight to a muddy relationship. Perhaps because Mr. Darcy is famous. He, by the most warped of all consensuses (memes), is an ideal man. Why? It is because Mr. Darcy, when confronted with evidence of his pride, takes proactive steps to fix himself and his harmful actions.

When we first meet Mr. Darcy there is no doubt of his pride. He snubs Elizabeth at a ball and passes the evening rather grumpily (Ch 3). Darcy is described as “haughty, reserved, and fastidious, and his manners, though well-bred, were not inviting” (Ch 4). Through a series of misunderstandings, Elizabeth comes to despise Mr. Darcy almost as much as if he were her worst enemy. She hears and readily believes rumors that he disowned his innocent god-brother, she is disgusted by his cold and haughty manner in their social interactions, and she is utterly shocked when he proposes to her. It is important to note that Elizabeth's family, though not poor, is in need of a male heir because the father's estate is entailed. His five daughters, none of whom are allowed to inherit the estate, will be destitute if he dies without a male heir, and he and his wife are now too old to consider trying again. Since Mr. Darcy is exceedingly rich, many a woman in Elizabeth's position might have sacrificed her happiness for her family. But she is our heroine, and she is also somewhat prejudiced:

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense” (Ch 24).

She refuses him outright. Indeed, even a woman prepared to sacrifice her happiness would be put off by the way Darcy presents his proposal. “His sense of her inferiority—of its being a degradation—of the family obstacles which judgement had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.” It is in spite of his better judgement that he proposes; in separating the kind (and also rich) Mr. Bingley from Elizabeth's sister, he “has been kinder to his friend than himself”; he asks (not unjustly, for Elizabeth's mother and younger sisters are quite ridiculous) if he should be expected to rejoice in the hope of relations “so decidedly beneath” his own.

There are not many readers who do not sympathize with Elizabeth when she refuses Darcy, but when we learn from Darcy's letter the truth about his god-brother (a prodigal who tries to seduce Darcy's teenage sister for the fortune), things get more complicated. Add to this the fact that Darcy's behavior is not so rude as it seems to our culture. Darcy, like Elizabeth, is surrounded by rather ridiculous and haughty acquaintances (except for Mr. Bingley). And his grumpiness might be caused by a perception of just how preposterous British aristocratic society was. As a very rich man, he would probably have been treated with a great deal of flattery and sycophantic adoration (typified by the attentions of Ms. Bingley). His attraction to Elizabeth seems to be based on her willingness to converse with him honestly and intellectually (and her “fine eyes”). I say seems because Austen, like Shakespeare, leaves a great deal of interpretation up to the reader. To me, it seems that Elizabeth engages him on subjects that he has never been able to talk about with anyone else (Ch 11). This kind of intimacy is “dangerous” because it is the type of intimacy on which true connubial felicity is founded. But at the time of his proposal he is still too proud not to assume that Elizabeth would be happy to say yes. Her refusal exposes himself, to himself. And he is probably saying, at the same time Elizabeth is saying, “Till this moment, I never knew myself” (Ch 36).

The self knowledge that intimacy with another can prompt is one of the greatest benefits of marriage. It is also one of the greatest destroyers of marriage, for if either partner is not prepared to change and admit their own faults, they will drift away because the other partner will be a reminder of that fault that they wish to run from. What makes Darcy remarkable as a male literary figure is that he allows this encounter to change him. When Elizabeth meets him later by chance, on a trip with her aunt and uncle, his manners are remarkably warm. He is friendly and deferential to people “decidedly beneath” his own station. He invites her uncle to fish, and leaves Elizabeth (who also allows intimacy to change her) somewhat astonished. “It cannot be for me, it cannot be for my sake that his manners are thus softened. My reproofs at Hunsford could not work such a change as this. It is impossible that he should love me” (Ch 43). Then comes the climax, in which Elizabeth's flirty younger sister elopes with Darcy's awful god-brother, and Darcy saves her by a significant sacrifice, a sacrifice which he wishes to remain secret and for which he expects nothing from Elizabeth.

Mr. Darcy is legendary because he shows very simply just what love for a woman can mean for a man:

“I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit... Such I was, from eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased” (Ch 58).

So far from being an unrealistic ideal (except for the money), he is a picture of how men really ought to act (accounting for differences of culture and personality) towards a woman. While it is true that two partners in a healthy relationship ought to give, it is very important that love be given without expectation or record keeping. Elizabeth, indeed, is also changed and allows her love to forgive and honor Darcy without compromising her ideals. This is, I think, really what that most misquoted of Apostles meant when he wrote “submit to one another,”[^3] for 'submission,' perhaps not the best translation of the Greek word, is one of the highest forms of love. Just as two partners in a dance must yield even as they propel and support each other, so must lovers.

Man Vs. Himself: Sacrifice and Active Love

“I can give her everything, but not my male independence.”[^4]

— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.

Where does this leave us? What conclusions can we draw? What does it mean to be a good man? The only theme I can draw from our survey of The Iron Giant and Pride and Prejudice is the theme of sacrifice. The Iron Giant sacrifices himself and his violent purpose to save Hogarth and the town, and Mr. Darcy sacrifices his pride to properly love Elizabeth. This is an ancient theme, that might not bear repeating if it were not so necessary to repeat. We have come a long way, and part of the crisis of manhood that we can all smell is, I think, the subconscious terror that men feel when they sense that the foundations of society that once upheld their Power and their Pride are crumbling. Perhaps now that there is less power and pride to give up (though we still have a long way to go), it is the concept of manhood itself that must be sacrificed.

When I was in high school, I was a big fan of the original NCIS with Mark Harmon's Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Gibbs, though not exactly macho, is nonetheless something of a man's man. He catches criminals, works on boats in his basement, and only drinks black coffee. There was something about the image of him that I wanted to emulate, so when I started drinking coffee I drank it black. Did I like it? Quite honestly, not really, but I stuck with it and still drink it black today. This is the power of 'atmosphere,' it quite literally changed my taste buds. How much more powerful can it be, then, when we consider issues more important than taste. What can this atmosphere do to how a man treats women, where he goes to work, who he seeks friendships with, and what he values? Atmosphere, in shaping these things, has the power to shape almost the entire course of a man's life. But only if we let it.

When I say that the concept of manhood must be sacrificed, I do not mean that all concept of gender ought to be thrown out. There are physiological differences that we ignore at our own peril, but these differences have nothing to do with what we wear or where we work or how much we can bench press or who cooks dinner or who does the laundry or what sort of movies we watch. So much of what has been spoken of as 'manhood' throughout my entire life has been entirely cultural. When I say that the concept of manhood must be sacrificed, I mean that a man ought to do things simply because they are the right thing to do and not because they validate a meaningless social vanity.[^5] This means that I ought to care for my family as best as I am able because I love them and it is my duty as a parent. This means that I should place the needs of my wife's body over the needs of my own. This means that not being the primary breadwinner should not be a source of shame. I have struggled for years with my self esteem as a stay at home parent because I did not realize how much I wanted a career until I didn't have one. All I can say is that because the culture I move in accepts Moms into the role of homemaker more readily, I have found myself between worlds, and I would be lying if I said I did not have to face my envy and strangle it far more frequently than I would wish. Every friend and acquaintance I have talked to concludes that being a stay at home Dad is really noble and practical for our situation, and indeed this is a conclusion I have come to over and over, but knowledge and true belief are two different things. Knowing that the air is bad does not help you breathe in it. This is why I say the concept of manhood has to be sacrificed. This does not mean trading in your truck for a minivan, but asking yourself, every time you must move in the atmosphere of culture, why am I doing this? Do I really want this thing? Do I really enjoy this activity? Is my sense of self worth coming from outside of me, or from within?

In Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf points out the ridiculous outfits and baubles that the military (and then a strictly male) world uses to distinguish itself: “Your finest clothes are those that you wear as soldiers.” She also does not fail to include the academic world, with its robes and wigs and titles, and illustrates the vanity of men by providing a counterexample: “A woman who advertised her motherhood by a tuft of horsehair on the left shoulder would scarcely, you will agree, be a venerable object.” She then concludes that the best way for women entering professional life to discourage war (a major topic of her essay), is to “refuse all such distinctions and all such uniforms for ourselves.” In a similar way, I believe that the path to true manhood is the refusal of meaningless distinctions and uniforms. Whether they be video game skins, medals, watches, clothes, trucks, social media statuses, likes, competitions, hobbies, Strava times, podcast views, church leadership positions, or Magic decks. In short, any thing, even any good thing, that a man can use to give them self the appearance of good needs to be examined and held with an open palm.

The second, and perhaps more practical application, is the importance of rejecting passivity. The Iron Giant restrains his violence, but he chooses to expose himself in order to save the kids and the town. Mr. Darcy, rather than letting things run their course, actively fixes his mistakes with a prompt from anywhere but his own conscience. I believe that cowardly passivity has been the cause of more evil than any other sin. Where was Adam when Eve was with the snake? Structures of oppression have been allowed to persist because millions of men have silently watched and gone with the flow. Only when the current deposits them in a stagnant pool, and they realize that their cowardice might be exposed, does the bottomless terror grip their stomachs and propel them to desperate cruelty. To be a man is to sacrifice vain desires and to love actively. As a father, I believe it is my duty to seek out my kids, engage them, and teach them the values that are important to know before they ask. This is to be done with love, gentleness, and full respect for their humanity and agency. If they do not have the skills or the moral fortitude to engage with the world by the time they graduate high school, I bear a great deal of the blame. To be a man is to prevent disasters before they happen, and not expect a medal for it. In my role as a husband, I am to seek out my wife not for comfort or validation, but to love and honor and woo her as a woman “worthy of being pleased.” As a citizen, it is my duty to engage with society and act for its benefit instead of trying to squeeze everything I can from it. These concepts of sacrifice and active love can be applied to friendships and family. Indeed they must be applied by the man to his own life, because no one else can do it for him. It is, tragically, much easier written than done, requiring constant humility and grace. For me, this involves a great deal of prayer and grit, in order to pick myself up and keep trying when I fail over and over and over. But it must be done if a man is to reclaim a sense of manhood that comes from within, and by living and breathing out that sense of self, change the atmosphere that has stifled all genders for so long.

Footnotes

[1] “Now, what I have been trying to suggest in all this is that the only useful definition of the word “majority” does not refer to numbers , and it does not refer to power. It refers to influence.” You will notice that I use influence and power somewhat synonymously. I believe Baldwin was trying to make the distinction that whoever is “in power” (elected or un-elected officials) is not necessarily the one with the influence. For the scope of my essay, I think that my point has been made. Majority does not have to do with numbers or even representation, but with who can influence the decisions of those in power.

[2] “I think the aura of paramilitarism among the black militant groups speaks much more of fear than it does of confidence. I know, in my own experience, that I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that, as a teacher of philosophy of nonviolence, I couldn't keep a gun, I came face to face with the question of death and I dealt with it. And from that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. Ultimately, one's sense of manhood must come from within him.“

[3] Ephesians 5:21: “...submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.“

[4] This line is thought by Vronsky, the man that Anna leaves her husband for, when Anna is starting to become jealous. Vronsky is unable to give up his “male independence” to be a truly devoted partner.

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#essay #JaneAusten #TheIronGiant #VirginiaWoolf #JamesBaldwin

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Bibliography

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Act II, Scene 2.

Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Hogarth Press, Mecklenburgh Square, London, 1943. Accessed on Internet Archive.

The Iron Giant. Directed by Brad Bird, Warner Bros. Feature Animation, 1999.

Baldwin, James. “In Search of a Majority: An Address.” Nobody Knows My Name. Collected Essays. Library of America, New York, NY, 1998.

The Magnificent Seven. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, 2016.

Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. Penguin Group, New York, NY, 2002.

King, Martin Luther Jr. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. “A Testament of Hope.” Harper Collins, 1986. Page 323.

El Mariachi. Directed by Robert Rodriguez, Los Hooligans Productions, 1993.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Arcturus Publishing Limited, London, 2011.

Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Part Six, Chapter 25. Penguin Group. New York, NY. 2000.

NCIS. Created by Donald P. Bellisario and Don McGill. Bellisarius Productions, CBS Studios, 2003-present.

time heals the old wounds / only if you allow light / into your dark heart

Finished reading Greenblatt's THE SWERVE. It's good, but not as good as it started out. The first half is quite superb, but the second half is far less interesting. Many good historical tidbits in there, but it does suffer from a terribly myopic view of history and scientific development while pretending to possess a grand scope of things. Not so much actually. Still worth the read.

Couple days left in Houston before my return to Cairo. Snatched SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE from my storage unit to reread on the flight (a full decade since I read it), and am abhorred by the sheer quantity of my possessions. Too much of it is stuff I just can't let go of, but I think I can probably—with some effort—do away with half (after having already done away with a lot).

Last day with my kid, “the plan is to do nothing but look at Pokemon cards and eat ice-cream and watch three toons” according to him. Obviously, that's not how things will go down, but it'll wholesome and sweet nonetheless as the world outside grows more insane and stupid and inhumane.

#journal #reads

here I am again / repeating emotions fill / my heart with despair

— Tu ne dors pas ?

— Non. Tu n’arrives pas non plus ?

— Non, ça doit être la lune.

On a commencé à parler, à la lueur de cette jolie lune, à la table de la cuisine.

Moi, c’était pas la lune. Je lui ai déballé, toutes les petites piques, toutes les exclusions, les humiliations. C’était comme au collège avant que j’en change pour être avec ma copine. Cette même copine avec qui on était ensemble ces vacances-ci. Mais pas dans la même équipe. Harcelée par son équipe à elle, par une cheffe d’équipe qui m’aimait bien. Elle et ma cheffe, juste devant moi, ont rigolé qu’elles auraient bien voulu nous échanger.

Me faire hurler dans les oreilles par la coconne de l’équipe. Dire à une fille qu’on lui a parlé derrière son dos (jamais faire ça, jamais) et elle revient avec l’hypocrite en question qui dit que je mens. Les filles qui viennent me demander des comptes parce que sur mon pyjama il y a une étiquette (10 ? 12 ?) ans alors que j’en ai 13.

Les cheftaines, adultes, qui ne calculent rien. Chaque jour un petit laïus inspiré de la Bible et des règles des Guides de France, en mode ravi de la crèche aimévoulézunlézotres. Cinq minutes après, comme si ces mots n’avaient aucun sens, moquons-nous les uns des autres.

Ah si, les adultes ont fait une réunion d’équipe, une fois. Les filles ont râlé sur moi. J’étais pas très camping à la dure, un peu plus enfant qu’ado, pas du tout intéressée par Di Caprio, complètement autiste. Est-une raison valable ?

Je n’ai pas souvenir de ce qu’ont dit les cheftaines, qui avaient maximum 22 ans. Mais ça n’avait pas arrangé la situation.

— Papa, les Guides, c’est fini pour moi.

My last obligatory Chuck Norris joke:

Chuck Norris didn’t die. He was busy roundhouse kicking all the demons straight to hell before resting in heaven.

#chucknorris #rip

#blog

I wonder what it's like to grow up with 2 parents in the home that love you. I wonder what my life would be like if I was not an only child. I wonder what it would be like if I was good at sports instead of being bullied because I was smart. I wonder what I would be like if I was born in white society instead of broken home black society. I wonder what it's like if I actually felt part of a community instead of an add on. I wonder what it's like to actually enjoy high school instead of forgetting most of it. I wonder what its like to actually enjoy college instead of forgetting all of it.

I wonder what its like to not be depressed or traumatized.

I wonder what it's like to actually want to be part of a fraternity.

I wonder what it's like to have a normal first time girlfriend experience. I wonder what its like to not be yelled at or considered an enemy by your girlfriend's fathers. I wonder what its like to actually be on the same page with someone instead of being misunderstood.

I wonder what its like to be physically attractive and not have wake energy that pushes everyone away so you are lone because you are fucked up.

I wonder what its like to consistently have positive thoughts.

I wonder what its like to not have to be your own cheerleader to get things done. (My inner cheerleader passed out. I got tired of rooting for myself today.)

I wonder what my life would be like if i could go back in time and just change random shit for fun.

I wonder what its like to leave your house and not have anxiety that society will disappoint you.

I wonder what its like to not have an insufferable mother. I wonder what its like to actually find your partner that truly cares for you in your late 20s like everyone else. To build something from nothing. To come out better. I wish i knew how to spot a narcissist sooner. I wonder what its like to talk to people knowing that they won't expect anything from you in return.

I wonder what its like to actually want to be around people outside of the internet.

I wonder what it's like to have someone you can accomplish goals and dreams with, and work with.

I wonder what its like to be educated about finances so you don't make dumb decisions.

I wonder what it's like to have a family.

I wonder what life would be like if I could find moments in the now that don't feel like I'm fighting my own inner demons.

I wonder what its like to value people, relationships, and family over porn. I wonder what its like to have people, relationships, and family that actually pour into you so you don't shun their very existence for porn.

I wonder what it's like to wake up and not be triggered by couples, families, other people that live in situations you think are totally shitty and backwards but they are happy and fine.

Some days I wonder why I choose to stay here. Some days I wonder why I think dark things. Some days I wonder what it would be like to totally let go. I wonder what it's like to be alive and not dead on the inside. I wonder what it's like to not have to constantly remind yourself to stay alive.