As the adoption progresses, I’ve been introduced to things I probably would never have thought about otherwise. I’ve become aware of the awful reality of how many orphans there are in this world. They’re no longer just a number to me, because I know that soon one of them will become a part of our family.

This new knowledge pushes their situation right in front of us, and we wish we could do more. We find ourselves angry at what we see as injustices and inefficiencies that could make the situation better. It’s sad enough that there are so many orphans in Ethiopia, but it’s an outrage that orphanages can’t send them to families any faster and for less money. I don’t claim to understand the inner workings of the whole process, but what I see is a process that could be hugely improved upon.

Many things are out of my hands, but not everything. I know we haven’t been called to go through with this adoption, but I am grateful that we have chosen to. A decision that for me arose partially out of selfishness has expanded into something more. I feel an obligation now.

Image credit to babasteve

About a week ago, April and I returned from the MBA International Context Tour in Cambodia and Singapore. It was an experience neither of us will soon forget. I thought I would take a minute to get down some of my thoughts on what we saw.

Siem Reap

We stopped first in Siem Reap, Cambodia, where we saw some amazing ruins. My favorite was probably Angkor Thom (the smiling faces), though Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm were amazing too. The tree roots at Ta Prohm were just fascinating. They have grown so large that they hold up many parts of the structures and can’t be moved. And they were BIG. We could see how a some roots were just entering holes in the stone wall, while others were starting to get so big as to begin breaking the stone around it. And then some were so thick that they had broken through the wall long ago.

Looking up at the faces at Angkor Thom gave me the same feeling I always get when I visit other ruins. I feel this strong sense of the humanity of the place, as it once was. I wonder what kind of life these people led, that they would spend so much time carving these structures. Who walked at the very spot I was standing, and who carved the face? Why so many smiling faces? Whose face was it? I suppose that’s what I love about history; I visit these places and it’s more than stone and ruin. It was a place that I would love to just step back and observe, as it was at it’s peak.

Phnom Penh

In the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, we visited a children’s surgical center, a prosthetics manufacturer, and a artisan school. It brought us out of tourist mode and right into Cambodian life. It was tragic to see that a business like a prosthetics manufacturer has so much business, due to the frequency of land-mine injuries and child deformations stemming from the effects of gasses spread during the Vietman War. The artisan school showed us children learning a craft, and they were very good at it. Their products were beautiful, with prices to match.

Later in Phnom Penh, we visited the killing fields and S-21. The killing fields is home to the genocidal center that stands on ground once reserved for mass graves. The bones are gone from the graves, but they remain open as a reminder of what happened there. There’s a large monument in the middle of the grounds that houses the bones of many victims of the Khmer Rouge. Wooden signs were placed in spots telling exactly what kind of horrible things happened there. I was familiar with the Khmer Rouge before this tour, but I didn’t realize how many millions of their own people they killed in this genocide. It was sobering to say the least.

The neatest part about that day was when we got to meet one of the only seven survivors of Tuol Sleng, or S-21 prison. He walked us around the site, even showing us the very cell where they kept him. This man was kept alive because he had a skill that the Khmer Rouge wanted – he was a mechanic. Listening to him amazed us all because of our view that it would be too hard to talk about. But he told us that it was therapeutic for him, much like other survivors of events like this. They want people to know in hopes that it will never happen again.

Singapore

Our final stop on our trip was Singapore. What a difference it was to go from Cambodia to such a rich and advanced place like Singapore. While we were there, we visited a landscape architecture business and an electronic component manufacturer. Both very enlightening visits. We also got to see the sites; the Merlion and the Singapore flyer were among our visits.

The most interesting thing about Singapore is that so much of life is strictly regulated. It seems like there is a fine for everything you could possibly do wrong. Our tour guide did a great job of explaining how these things were just a part of life there. She also made it a point to assert that their city was advanced in every way because of the regulations. It’s true – they have a beautifully groomed, clean, and incredibly green city. It’s also very expensive. I wondered at what point would I tire of the regulations and want some good old freedom of the kind we enjoy here in the U.S. I agree with a lot of the strict rules they have there, but I agree with personal choice even more, and that’s something that I didn’t see much of in Singapore.

All in all, it was a great trip. I would visit each place again in a heart beat if given the chance. The people in Cambodia were very kind, and invited us all back again as soon as possible. We chose this trip because we weren’t sure if Asia would ever again be on our places to see list, but I liked it so much I think I’ll make it a point to go back.

Thomas Jefferson is surely rolling in his grave right about now. He wouldn’t believe, as I hardly can, that the Texas board of education has removed him from their textbooks. There was this part in the books that asked students to explain how Thomas Jefferson and others influenced later revolutions with their Enlightenment thinking. But because Jefferson advocated a separation of church and state, the board decided it would be better to include John Calvin in his place. They took this man, who authored the Declaration of Independence, and removed him from their history book because they didn’t like that he wanted church and state to be separate. What. A. Bunch. Of. Morons.

What of this quote from Jefferson regarding the separation of church and state?

“The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg . . . . Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”

I don’t get the rational behind this textbook decision. You don’t have to get rid of Jefferson to prove you are religious – I am very religious, and I’ve always had a profound respect for the man. Thanks to the separation of church and state, my church was founded and allowed to thrive. At that time, there was no state run church that threatened to squash dissenters who held different beliefs. Ironically, but luckily for Texas, people can believe what they want and put whatever they want into textbooks. Maybe they should thank Jefferson that their brand of Christianity doesn’t offend some all powerful religious state, prompting a little holy war.

It really is a shame that we still fall victim to viewing history without considering how circumstances have changed. That some arrogant school board members can presume that their ideas of what is Christian excludes the possibility of appreciating Jefferson’s ideas is just pathetic. All I know now is that I will look very carefully at what my child’s school teaches before I let him step foot inside. I won’t have people like this teaching my kids. I will be responsible fore teaching him religion and values, and I’ll expect his school to teach him what this nation was founded upon. If that includes Enlightenment theory, separation of church and state, science, etc, then all the better. Better that my child accepts or questions Thomas Jefferson’s ideas with his own little reason than there be no mention of Jefferson at all.

Never in my life had I thought I would end up adopting a child. I knew one family who had adopted a few, but I never looked at them and thought that my family might look like that someday. I always believed that life would take its typical course, few variations if any. So I guess you could say that that the adoption process that I now find myself in the middle of constitutes one of life’s good curveballs.

I can’t even remember when the talk started, but I’m certain it came from April. I’ve benefited from a wife who was raised by an adopted father. Adoption must have been talked about as normal in their family. Because it was never spoken of in my family, my resistance to adoption at first could be expected. I always thought of fatherhood as biological.

Slowly, my resistance began to wear down. It’s not that I was ever flat out anti-adoption, but I needed some convincing. My wife started to think about Ethiopia early on, gathering bits of information over time. She started watching adoption videos to see how other families experienced it. A while after that started, my sister adopted a baby from Tennessee. Not so suddenly, it became acceptable and even desirable to me. It was no longer about giving up and settling for an adoption. It started to be about giving a disadvantaged child a chance. Then it became more a question of children’s equality in God’s eyes, and our responsibility to start a family no matter the method. It’s really a mix of both those things. Now when I think of adoption versus other methods we could have tried with a fertilization specialist, all I know is that there is 100% certainty that we could bring a child out of a poverty-stricken nation and give him a better life here.

I’ve been at this point for a while now. We won’t be a family who couldn’t have “our own”. We will have our own. Like I wrote above, parenthood isn’t about DNA – it’s much more than that. I hope people get that. My sister who adopted last year has told us of people who don’t. They stand in grocery lines, seeing the attention that the little black girl gets, and feel they have to make snarky remarks about how Brangelina has made adoption trendy now. I’m sure we’ll get a few of those, but you can bet I’ll speak up if I need to. It’s just one of those things not everybody understands fully, but that’s ok.

My wife and I will be posting updates throughout the process at TheRealBlairFamily.com.

Sometimes I get this feeling that our country is at the edge of some important precipice that will determine our success or failure sooner than we think. Being a religious person myself, I believe that morality is at the root of it. When the majority of us have lost all sense of what is decent and right, we are in trouble as individuals and as a country. On that note, I want to share this very good George Washington quote. The man knew what he was taking about. Here it comes:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens… Let it simply be asked, where it the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education…reason and experience both forbid us that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

It seems clear enough for me. Morality can’t be maintained without religion, and our country can’t be maintained without morality. I guess we’d better rethink that quest to get rid of all things religious in our culture.

It’s funny how things just work out.

You can anticipate what you think will happen, maybe justify why you want it to happen, and then it happens in an entirely different way.  You can tell yourself that certain things shouldn’t have happened, but then you see that they actually happened for your good.  You can puzzle and puzz, till your puzzler is sore, only to one day realize that the pieces fit together like you never had imagined.

All these “you cans” are pictures of my experiences, of course.  All too many times I’ve found myself wondering why something had to happen the way it did.  Why was I supposed to learn that the hard way?  Did I learn anything at all?

I’m beginning to change the questions I ask because I want an answer that is forward looking.  Those other questions dwelt too much on the past, too much on the why’s.  I am beginning to acknowledge that things happened the way they did because…well, just because.  The fact that I know something more about myself now, because of what happened, is enough for me to move forward.  So what do I know?

I know there’s something to be said for playing to my strengths.  I have been given certain talents and abilities.  Others I was most emphatically not given.  Why, I don’t know, but I really no longer care because my strengths are enough to take me precisely where I want to go.  So maybe I still feel this occasional need to prove to myself that I can do something whose gift to do so was so generously bestowed upon everyone except me, but that doesn’t mean I have to pursue it.

I know that others know better than me.  Most of the time, April.  All those ideas, certainties, and pieces of ‘undebatable’ knowledge tend to jumble around so much in one’s head that the dust clouds one’s vision.  Sometimes you need  someone to rain on your dust cloud (in a good way of course), and identify what should have been obvious.  There is untold value in an intelligent second or third party in one’s life.

Finally, I know that things will work out as designed.  Thankfully, I know that they have been designed by a Master Architect, and now I just need to follow the drawings as best I can.  None of this “what might happen if I go that way instead of this way”.  Just more of “this seems to be the best way, now I’ll make the best of it”.  Wow, it sounds so easy.  What might have happened if I had always thought that way.

Wrongo.

I was about to fall into that trap again,see.  What matters now is that I knows what I didn’t knows, and that’s good enough for me.  So here’s to the knowledge that things will work out, that they have worked out, and that I can make them work out if I stay true to myself and the Designer.

Word.

]]> http://www.theblairswitchproject.com/work-it-out/feed/ 0 http://www.theblairswitchproject.com/work-it-out/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheBlairSwitchProject/~3/i1an1b2zCGg/ http://www.theblairswitchproject.com/generation-me/#comments Fri, 08 May 2009 19:31:11 +0000 Nathan http://theblairswitchproject.com/?p=347

This will be a short post. I want to post a few links to some articles that touch on the ‘me generation’ and the the related problem that is the oversexualization of young girls. I thought the articles were good enough themselves but it was even more interesting to read the comment sections, especially on the generation diva article.

There is a lot of argument going on out there as to what causes these problems, what we can do, and so on.  I don’t think anyone will debate that there is a huge problem though.  It’s so bad that some mothers  are dressing their daughters like prostitutes for the sake of pageantry, some kids think that teachers and professors exist to make life easy, and some Hollywood stars’ plastic surgery has turned them into something akin to disfigured Marvel comic villains.

I’m not the kind to worry about how bad things are out there, but the articles do serve to show where our society is going with its standards.  I read them more as a case in what not to do and what to try to protect my future daughters from.

Ok, I’ll admit that the plastic surgeries make me laugh a bit.

Here is the one on “Generation Me”.

The one about “Generation Diva”.

Plastic faces that may or may not make you cringe.

Tags: plastic surgery, generation me, generation diva, superficiality

I have been using my Zune for a few months now, and it has impressed me so much that I need to make a small commentary.

The first and most important thing I have to say is that once you get used to the Zune version 3.0 software, you will never go back to itunes. Microsoft has created an interface that is so much clearer and easier to use than that mess of boxes that Apple sticks with. Here I refer mostly to the respective marketplaces, but the main music user interface on Zune 3.0 still seems much more user-friendly.  You can arrange your music how you like it – by genre, artist, playlist, and so on.  Then you can sort artists, songs, and anything else, to your liking.  And it’s all so much easier than on itunes.

When you get into the marketplace to buy songs, Zune really outshines itunes.  Especially if you take advantage of Zune Pass, which I decided to do a few weeks ago.  The itunes store is a jumbled mess of information, in my opinion.  Zune marketplace breaks down genres, popular artists, and new releases in a nice clean format.  When you go to buy, Zune shows you the albums of the artist along the bottom of the screen and the songs in the center.  No mess to wade through.

Zune Pass has its detractors, but I love it so far.  You can now keep 10 songs per month and download as many as you like as long as you pay the monthly fee of 15 bucks.  I’ve found some great artists already that I either didn’t know existed, or just never got around to buying their album.  Zune is an awesome tool to discover new music and Zune Pass makes it even better.

So while I’m on the subject of new artists, I have to share a few I have discovered that I’ve taken an immediate liking to.

Conspirare:  Beautiful choral music.  If you like a real choir and really nice compositions, you really must check them out.

Anna Netrebko (with or without Rolando Villazon):  Amazing pipes on this woman.  She’s done a few things with Villazon which are also truly amazing, but she’s still very good on her own.

Army of Anyone:  I had no idea that a few guys from STP teamed up with Filter’s lead singer to form a supergroup.  Got to love the second song “Goodbye”- it’s a repeat listener for sure.

Kyuss:  I started listening to some of their stuff and wondered why I wasn’t listening years ago.  Good guitars, good vocals, and just different in a really good way.

Lacuna Coil:  Love them.  First heard their two songs on two Guitar Hero games and checked out their other stuff on Zune.  I could do without the guy screaming at times, but for the most part they have great melodies and guitar riffs.

Paramore:  I think their song on the Twilight soundtrack came up on the front page of marketplace one day and I liked it so I downloaded their album.  Surprisingly, not disappointing at all.

And finally, Shinedown:  These guys rock.  Heavy guitars and amazing vocals are a surefire recipe for success. It’s so fun discovering all these new artists that I never knew I liked.

The moral of this story is that Zune 3.0 and Marketplace are much better than itunes.  I know most people will scoff since they are attached at the hip to their iphones or their microscopic ipods that talk, but can you really justify using crappy software for a device you like?  I mean besides touchscreen, which is great if you don’t need any space to store your music, Zune offers players that are better than ipods.  (Again, in my opinion)  I’d say try out a buddy’s new Zune and see if you like it, but more importantly, download the software and play with it for a few days.  You just might become hooked.

Tags: Microsoft Zune, Zune Marketplace, Apple, ipod, itunes