Christ and Cartoons (ish) #4: Black Panther

As I write this, I am slated to see Black Panther either tonight or tomorrow.

And yes, I realize I am very late.

The cool people (including the cool people in med school) have already seen the film one, two, three times. I have been that girl who ruins in-depth conversations about the movie because I haven’t seen the film yet. When I tell people that I haven’t seen the film yet, the reactions range from shock to scorn. You haven’t seen the film yet? What are you doing with your life??? I promise that by tomorrow, I will be in the know.

The reaction to Black Panther has been something to behold. Wakanda fever has hit nearly every black person I know! People showed up to the premiere and beyond wearing traditional African outfits, the kind of stuff they normally pull out for birthday parties and weddings. They performed large group dances in theaters and posed for endless pictures by the movie’s poster. The movie has made 940 million dollars in four weeks, more than any other Marvel film besides Captain America: Civil War and The Avengers. Even my ignorant self knows the Wakanda Forever sign; I did it as part of an African dance that my friends and I performed at the Keck School of Medicine’s annual talent show (see below).

All because of a movie made by a big-name studio with an all-black cast and an accurate portrayal of African civilization.

Let me be clear: I am very happy about Black Panther and I am very excited to (finally!) see it soon. And I don’t think anything about people’s reactions to the movie have been even close to wrong; everyone is happy to finally see some good black (and African!!!) representation on screen. And yet, when I think about Black Panther, and the way that people are obsessing over it, I cannot help but see a phenomenon that I’ve seen over and over in the past couple of years.

I think I first noticed this around 2012, when I first went to college; there, I ran head-on into a wave of Scandal obsession. From Facebook to Twitter to Tumblr, everyone was talking about Scandal. To me, people seemed especially excited about the main character, Olivia Pope, who was a strong black woman, much like the show’s director, Shonda Rhimes. (Having watched Scandal now, strong is probably an underestimation!) I had grown up watching and talking about a ton of TV shows (as you might have noticed by this series), but the way that my peers, especially my African-American female peers, talked about this show was different from what I’d heard. It was as if they saw themselves in Olivia Pope. They basked in the positive attention that Olivia Pope received, and if she received any negative attention, it was a personal affront. The amount of self-worth that people gained or lost from a character on a TV screen amazed me.

I noticed this again when ABC announced the show Black-ish in 2014. The title definitely caught my attention; TV had come up with a word for a feeling I’d had my entire life. But again, my African-American peers obsessed over this show and its existence like it was the most important show in the world at that time. It was as if black representation on TV was a vital component of their self-esteem.

And now, I feel that I’m seeing the same thing regarding Black Panther.

At this point, I have to admit something about myself. Growing up, as far as black representation, I was very spoiled. My father is a pediatric anesthesiologist, my mother a neonatologist. My sister is a general surgery resident, and my brother is about to be a dentist. Growing up, the notion of being a successful black woman wasn’t just a possibility; it was the norm, the expectation. Every two weeks, my parents would invite their friends over for Bible study. These friends were often doctors as well, and their children were held up to the same expectations as I was. I was continually surrounded by well-off black women who were raising families and advancing their careers. I was in continual contact with black peers who were not only staying in school, but doing extremely well therein. College was not an option, nor was having a productive life plan. So, as a child, even though I watched several TV shows with no black representation at all, I was able to counteract and supplement the messages I got from TV with the role models that I had in my real life.

My faith background also had a major impact on the way I watch TV and movies. Growing up, TV and movies were a special treat, to be watched only when we didn’t have homework to do. Furthermore, my parents were aware that TV did not always promote the morals that they wanted us to live by. They not only restricted us from shows that didn’t promote good morals, but they also taught us that Christian morality is very different from TV morality. My brother and I often found cartoons faster than my parents could scan them, but even when we watched shows, we watched them with the view that we were not necessarily supposed to look to the characters to represent us or to tell us what we could be. Instead, we were to look to Christ, and to other people who emulated him.

In my adolescence and young adulthood, I started to realize that I am a child of God, and that because he is the King of glory (Psalm 24, and many other sources), that technically makes me a princess. As a child of God, I have been made holy, righteous and absolutely flawless in Christ. I am settled in heavenly places, above any enemy that could come at me. I am fully able to do anything that he calls me to do, and I have an inner source of love, joy and peace for every situation. I’ve found that no person or TV character can validate my existence better than God can. He made me the way I am; he ordained my family background, my skin color and hair type. If he created me the way I am, and if every person that he created is good, then I am good. End of story.

So yes, I will be seeing Black Panther tonight, and I will probably enjoy it. But I will not look to it to tell me what I could be; I will see it knowing that I already am a King’s kid.

I CUT MY OWN HAIR

Y'all...it is about 4 in the morning here in LA, and I just did something crazy!!! And I am SO happy with it.

Nota bene: it is a weave.

Backstory: I first started wanting a wavy lob (long bob) this past June, simply because I thought the style was really cute and different from anything I'd ever done before. There were several obstacles in the way of this happening. Namely, the fact that my real hair is super curly, and my parents (especially my dad) were adamantly against me cutting it.

That wasn't a huge problem though. One of the many wonderful things about being a black girl is that we can do so MANY things with our hair. Natural one month, braids the next...our hair is very versatile. So I tried a couple of hairdos, hoping to get what I wanted, but I was basically never satisfied. I decided to put that desire by the wayside and try some other hairstyles.

As the holidays rolled around, I decided to get a long, wavy crochet weave, and I took that style back to school. It looked really good and I liked it, but as the weeks went by, the ends started getting knotted and straightening, and I wasn't super satisfied with the way it looked.

Fast forward to this morning. I was having a hard time sleeping, and I woke up at around 2:30am. I decided, randomly, to look up "how to cut your own hair" on YouTube. I found a good tutorial, found some scissors, went to the mirror...and voilà! I was amazed when I saw the result--it was the style that I had wanted all those months ago!

I was so excited that, like a true millennial, I just HAD to post about it on social media, haha.

The whole experience does have me thinking, though. I liked this hair when it was long, and it didn't cause me any real problems. Certainly I have much bigger concerns in life than some knots in my hair! But after taking 15 minutes to cut off some extra inches, I feel SO much happier with my hair. Had I never dared to try it, had I never taken that shot, I wouldn't have the style that I've wanted for the past six months.

There are a lot of opportunities in my life right now that are like that. It won't ruin my life by any stretch if I decide not to take them, but it'll make my life that much better if I do. And there are risks involved, definitely. (There are so many ways my haircut could've gone wrong!) But no good opportunity comes without a little risk.

Just don't ask me to do a big chop.

A story I wrote in high school

Today I was digging through some very old emails, and I found this story that I published four days before I turned 16. It is loosely based on some of my high school experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Maybe (read: if I can ever find time or a good idea) I'll write a sequel.

***

There he was. Again. Standing right by the far right doors on the cafeteria, by the cooler where the lunch ladies kept the drinks for the deli line. His lunch was on the cooler, spread out neatly. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, sliced into two pieces. An apple. A large bottle of Dean’s milk. As usual. And he had not eaten a crumb. As usual.

Every day he stood there by the cooler alone. Every day he had his lunch out, and he never ate it. Every day he stood there, silently looking down while the rest of Hinsdale Central went about their business. Every day he made it his aim to go about unnoticed by everyone. Every day he failed, because I noticed him. And every day I would feel that nudge in my head, urging me to do something to help him.

Today had been a normal day. Thankfully, because yesterday was not normal. Yesterday, a girl had come up to me. She had snapped in my face. I hated that. Cody had done it all the time at my old school. I didn’t know what I was thinking, but my arm just lashed out at her face. She ducked as if she was some kind of Matrix actor, and then came up yelling, “Whoa! He responds!” He responds. As if I was some person who everyone could look at and notice.

And when they noticed me, they could make fun of me.

I couldn’t let that happen. I ran away from there before she could get anyone to notice, thankfully.

A car nearly ran into me while I was running. I could have died. I got out of that guy’s way, but I was contemplating that, dying. Maybe if I’d died in some secluded place, no one would find me. And then, no one would be able to notice me or make fun of me or throw crap at me. Or snap in my face.

I couldn’t get that out of my mind today. But otherwise today had been a normal day. Now it was lunchtime. I couldn’t eat. I was too busy contemplating dying.

From the middle of the room, among a plethora of old and new friends, I could see him. His name was Mark. Mark Knight. I knew that because he was in band with me. We played the same instrument, trumpet. There were eleven of us. It was marching season, and all of us either played first, second, or third parts. I played first since I love playing trumpet. Mark played third. He wasn’t awful, but he had no idea how to articulate. Perhaps that was because he never talked. Ever. Not even to himself. There were quiet people in band; I tried to be quiet but people kept on noticing me. But he never said a word to anyone. He hardly even responded when people talked to him. I’d never seen him nod, nor shake his head, nor smile. He just kept his head down, played when he had to, and sat there while everyone else had fun.

There was a kid in my band class. His name was Murray, and he looked like Cody. Both had dark brown eyes, and both would sometimes look out of the corners of them at someone, and then turn to that someone and talk to them right then and there. Both had wide, confident grins, with perfect teeth. Both were shorter than me—Cody was 5’7’’, this kid wasn’t any taller than 5’6’’—but they both carried themselves in a manner that said, “Yeah, I’m confident. You’re wasting your time making fun of me, because I’m confident.” But this kid was more dangerous. Cody was outright mean to me. He and his friends wouldn’t stop bullying me for five years. But this kid was much more smooth. He played the piano a lot in band, and he had a way of making that enticing, pleasing sound. His voice was lower than Cody’s, and he spoke a little less. Cody was a typical jock, but this boy was a virtuoso, playing trumpet and piano and four other instruments. He was popular without even trying to be. He seemed nice, he talked nice, he acted nice. But under his skin, I assumed that he was very mean. He hadn’t done anything yet that I knew of, but I knew that if I let him notice me, he could bully me in ways that Cody’s peabrain could have never dreamed of. From my place by the deli line, I could see him with his friends. He kept on looking back towards the deli line. Every time his head turned, I looked down.

You could never get his face to change from that solemn expression. He never smiled, never even let the shadow of a smile penetrate his face. He never really frowned too much either. He just kept that solemn expression and didn’t look at people most of the time. No one, including me, had a sliver of an idea what he was thinking. He could have been thinking of nice things or bombing the entire school. He could’ve been addicted to something, or in general just doing bad things. I was stepping into completely uncharted territory when I went up to him. It had been my excuse for the last few weeks, this fear of the unknown.

And yet I knew that was a lame excuse. Mark was taller than me by at least four inches, but his head drooped, his shoulders sagged, and he looked almost bent over. He wore glasses, but I had seen him take them off to clean them once, and he’d noticed me. That was the only time he’d ever looked at me, and about the second time he had ever looked at anyone besides Mr. Kurinsky, our band teacher. His eyes were grey-blue, and even in that short glare, they betrayed a sea of deep sadness and a clearly broken heart.

I thought of the Bible verse, the one in Isaiah that talked about the Spirit of the Lord. As my friends ate lunch, I remembered the specific verse, Isaiah 61:1, which said, “The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken…” Heal the heartbroken. Heal the heartbroken. It played in my head over and over again. The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me…to heal the heartbroken.

There was a heartbroken person a good forty feet away from me. I was a Christian. I believed in all of that stuff.

If I didn’t go up to Mark, maybe God would forgive me, but I would have never forgiven myself. I got out of my lunch table and started making my way towards that cooler.

The boy who looked like Cody got up. He was still looking towards the deli table. I was hoping that maybe he wanted a sandwich or something. I didn’t know how much virtuosos ate, but Cody and his friends had eaten at least two sandwiches a day. He walked, in that smooth way, towards the deli tables. I looked down again.

But instead of hearing that low, glib voice ordering something, I heard footsteps growing louder and louder. They stopped, and I felt the presence of a person in front of me.

“Mark?” I turned. It was him.

I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t run behind the deli line and make a scene. There was no way I could get him away from me.

Unless I told him to go away.

But if I told him to go away, he would hear me. He would hear me stutter. Because I was so nervous, it was certain I would stutter. And once he heard my stutter, that would be the end. He would turn the masses against me.

So I stood there, staring at him, my neck tight, my eyes wide, waiting for some kind of glib confrontation. But then he looked down.

He was scared of me. When I said his name, he looked around, and when he saw me, instantly his neck muscles tightened and his big blue eyes widened. He could not move, he was so scared. As if I would attack him or something. It was an unexpected response. I looked down, pondering. I thought of my friend Emma, a very pretty and nice girl who sat at my lunch table. Why hadn’t God sent her? I wondered. Maybe he’ll be much less scared of a girl. And yet God chose to pick on me. The thought lingered in my head but I had no time to develop it; I had to talk to Mark. When I looked up, he was still scared, but his muscles weren’t so tight anymore.

He had looked down. There was a huge difference from Cody. Cody never looked down, unless it was on someone. Like me for stuttering, or my sister Niamh for being clumsy. He always had his eyes on the target with that perfect grin, sure of victory. This kid did not look so sure. He was thinking and rethinking, uncertain of the outcome of this talk. He did not look like a glib mastermind when he looked down. My tension went down, but I was still suspicious. Maybe he was an actor too.

I smiled, though a little nervously, on seeing him in that manner. “Hey, Mark,” I said, failing to hide my nervousness.

No response, as usual. He stared at me, scanned me. As if he would find anything other than a scared, short freshman who was doing this because of a guilt trip.

When he greeted me, he sounded as if he was trying to hide his nervousness. I’d never dared to act before, but I knew that it was hard to act like an unnerved person pretending to be a nervous person who was pretending not to be nervous.

He then asked me, almost stuttering himself, “Do you sit—I mean stand—here every day?”

What the heck? I thought. You know I sit here every day…don’t you? I nodded slowly.

He gave me a very slow nod, his eyes never moving from my eyes, his expression never changing. I had made a tiny little dent in his wall. I had to follow up, but what was there to say?

I racked my brain. “Yeah…this cafeteria’s really big,” I said. And then, all of a sudden, I was on a haphazard, yet fairly fluid rant. “You look kind of lonely sitting—I mean standing—here all alone. I mean, I don’t know if you enjoy it or not, but…”

“I just wanted to say, in case you want to sit with people, you can sit with me and my friends. We sit over there”—he pointed to a long table right next to the snack bar—“by the snack bar. None of my friends are mean people. I sit with Jack Bruin, remember him? From band? And also…”

There was no slyness in his voice, no hidden smirk, nothing that would identify him as a bully or even a cold person. He went on about his friends. I knew all of them; Jack Bruin, Emma Christensen, Vince Porreca, Roy Morrison. None of those people seemed mean either.

My instincts wanted to nail me to the ground, keep me safe from this intruder and his friends. And yet there was also a lingering possibility, that made my heart jump. This kid may really want to be my friend.

“I’m not making you do what you don’t want to, Mark,” I continued. I looked at my watch; the lunch period was about to end. “And honestly, I don’t know what you think about standing over here every day, but it seems kind of lonely over here. So, if you want to come sit with us, you can come tomorrow. Remember, we sit right there, by the snack bar. OK?”

He nodded. His facial expression never varied.

The bell rang, and everyone dispersed. Mark gathered his lunch and slipped away. I sighed. Urgh, that was so disorganized! I thought angrily. And yet I heard what I’m pretty sure was God saying to me, That’ll work just fine. You’ve done well, Murray.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned around to see Emma. She looked serious. “You saw me, didn’t you?” I asked.

She nodded. “What did you say to him?”

“I…asked him if he would like to sit with us. Tomorrow,” I said, stammering almost.

She smiled. “That was really brave of you. He didn’t seem to react, though. Do you think he appreciated it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think I convinced him that much. Whatever, though. If he wants to sit with us, then he’ll come. If he doesn’t, let him be a hermit. It’s up to God now.”

On the way to class, I remembered having been to church once, and hearing a story about some guy. The guy had felt a gust of wind, felt an earthquake, saw a huge fire. But God was not in any of those, according to the story. He had been a still, small voice. I thought of Murray. His voice was very still, calm, and unimposing. There had been nothing grand about his rant, nothing slick, nothing that would win a forensics contest. And yet it had obviously gotten to me, for I could not stop thinking about it.

I wondered (way in the back of my mind, because I thought church was baloney) if God had used Murray as his still, small voice.

Hillsong Conference

In 2015, I told God that one day I wanted to go to a Hillsong concert, and that has been fulfilled in more ways than one...

One of those was that last night, I got to attend the tail-end of the US Hillsong Conference. The Hillsong Conference is a series of three-day conferences where you get to hear speakers, do breakout sessions and worship and jam with the Hillsong worship teams. They had conferences in Australia, the UK, and the US, and I was fortunate that the US conference happened to land in LA this year! (It's usually in New York City.) 

I wasn't able to attend all the conference, but they were gracious enough to be selling tickets to all the night sessions for a pretty fair price, so I went to the Saturday night one. And it was LIT!

Due to a lack of preparation I missed a large part of the first worship set, but the rest of the program made up for it. The sermon, preached by a pastor from Georgia named Jentezen Franklin, was relatively simple, but it was worth hearing. Basically, he said that if we continue to depend on ourselves and how much we deserve blessings from God, we won't get anything. The whole point of the Gospel is that Jesus and his sacrifice is the only thing that made us pure and gave us the right to receive anything from God. Several times during the sermon, he stopped preaching and directed the crowd to stop and worship for a moment. I think he really wanted the crowd to direct themselves towards God and to look to God rather than to themselves.

I got a similar sentiment from everything else that happened that night--that the point of the whole conference was for us to look to God, not to ourselves, Hillsong or any other human establishment. At one point during the night, the lead pastor of Hillsong Church, who is definitely not a singer, started singing the song that the worship team were playing. After a moment of confusion, the crowd joined him in singing the song, and we literally led ourselves in worship; the team just played the melody while we sang. Though it seemed a little awkward at the time, I actually enjoyed that moment immensely. I sensed that Hillsong were trying to bring out the worshippers in us, instead of having us look to them for a good worship experience.

I've had the privilege of attending a couple of big Christian conferences in my life, and until recently I had a little problem with them. The conferences were always great, the messages were wonderful and relevant and life-changing, and the worship would always be good; but when the conference was over, I'd come back home to my normal life, and almost forget that it all happened. Because I was looking to the preachers, to the crowd, to the conference to inspire me and to bring me something new, I found myself unable to perpetuate what they had given me for the most part. But at this conference, I sensed that everyone, including the worship team, the preachers, the staff, and the crowd were all looking to God together for inspiration. 

After the sermon (and our singalong moment with the lead pastor), the worship team did another set, and it was awesome. Most of the songs were newer, but there was one song in there that had been a part of my teenage years. Singing that song along with the huge crowd and with the team was the fulfillment of a dream that had been in my heart for years, and I definitely let out my best little-girl scream when they played the first note. The worship team was incredible, and they put their hearts into the set, but there were points where I could barely hear them above the crowd. Again, we were leading worship together. 

Overall, it was a great night and I'm really glad I went! Next year's conference is in New York again, but the year after that (2019) it will probably come back here. I hope to be able to go again before medical school ends. In the meantime, I get to go to Hillsong's campus in downtown LA today. God is good! 

Christ and Cartoons #3: Pokemon

More than two years later, I return to this blog to write. I guess, just like God, that this blog is not dead.

As a short update, I graduated from Harvard in May of 2016, a year nearly to the day after my last post on this blog. I returned to Chicago for a gap year where I learned many more things about God and myself, and traveled and did interviews for medical school. I was privileged to get into the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and it is from that campus in Los Angeles, California (!!!) that I write to you today.

Of all the topics that I could have chosen to write about in two years' absence from this blog, I came back to continue my Christ and Cartoons series. Perhaps that makes me lame, but continuity is good as well. I hope to write many more of these. And now for the third installment: Pokemon.

***

My parents actually banned me and my siblings from Pokemon when I was about 7 years old, as they didn't think that the show promoted good morals. Fifteen years later, for a reason that only God knows, my brother asked my mother to lift the Pokemon ban, and to our pleasant surprise, she did. (To my parents: thanks, and I'm sorry.) Despite the ban lasting more than a decade, we never really did forget the adventures of Ash and Pikachu and their friends, and we were happy to catch up on the whole thing in our free time.

Around the same time that our Pokemon ban was lifted, I got into another habit: listening to sermons from my favorite preachers in the morning before the day started. This has really helped me grow in my faith and become more emotionally stable as changes and trials come. Whenever I listen to a sermon before starting the day, I feel like my whole day goes better; it's like spiritual breakfast in that sense. I was listening to a sermon this morning called "I Am The Plan" by Jarrod Wells. He talked about the Triumphal Entry that Jesus made into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, a week before his death, and he focused on the animal that Jesus chose to ride into the city that day:

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.

Of all the animals Jesus could have used to come into Jerusalem as king, he chose a donkey. He could have chosen any other ridable animal on earth--horse, pony, camel, anything--and it would have probably seemed better or more fitting for a king than a donkey. I can only imagine what the first Palm Sunday looked like as crowds stood on the streets of Jerusalem laying palm branches in front of a carpenter from Nazareth riding both a donkey and her colt. It would have been an interesting sight. But Jesus said that he needed that donkey and her colt. He had committed himself to that animal, and no other one would do.

As I was watching the pastor preach about how the donkey was central to Jesus' plan at this point in time, it reminded me of the first episode of Pokemon Indigo League. (I know what you're thinking...where is this girl's mind!? Stay with me.) The first episode begins with an excited Ash Ketchum heading straight to his mentor Professor Oak's house on his tenth birthday. Ash is finally old enough to get his first Pokemon partner and to start competing in Pokemon tournaments. Sadly, he wakes up late, so even though he heads to Professor Oak's house as fast as he can, he finds that all the other young trainers have come and taken all the other Pokemon except for a small, yellow, mouselike Pokemon by the name of Pikachu.

Cheerful as ever, Ash adopts Pikachu as his partner and starts going out into the world of Kanto to train. But as soon as he starts, he quickly finds out why Pikachu was everyone else's last choice. Pikachu is very rebellious; he won't listen to a word Ash says, and he and Ash are constantly at loggerheads. Pikachu will not get in its PokeBall (a ball where Pokemon are usually supposed to stay for transport), doesn't follow Ash's battle commands and continually uses its electric powers to shock Ash. Despite the pain and frustration, Ash doesn't give up on Pikachu and continually tries to get it to like him. Towards the end of the episode, Ash and Pikachu accidentally draw the wrath of a group of bird Pokemon, and these birds chase them and end up injuring Pikachu. As these bird Pokemon are relentlessly attacking them both, Ash begs Pikachu to get into its PokeBall so that he can protect Pikachu from any further hits.

Pikachu is overly aggressive, rebellious and lazy; there is seemingly no good reason for Ash to keep him. Ash's choice of Pokemon seems just as wrong as Jesus's choice of royal procession animal. Pikachu and the donkey were both stubborn, small, and not ideal for what they were about to do. And yet Jesus chose that donkey. Small as it was, the donkey ended up being integral for revealing Jesus as the promised Messiah, the one who would save the world. Many, many years before, the prophet Zechariah had predicted that the Messiah (Hebrew for "the anointed one") would come in exactly like Jesus did that day:

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 
(Zechariah 9:9 NIV)

When Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, he showed himself to be not just any king, but a king who would meet his people at their need and who would choose the marginalized to become part of his plan. He had been doing this his entire ministry: eating with tax collectors and prostitutes, reaching out to people across gender and racial boundaries, healing blind and lame people he found on the street. The crowds flocked to him not just because he had claimed to be King, but because they knew that he was a king for the people, that he would help them. Within the week, he would be sentenced to death, crucified, and resurrected from the grave as our risen Savior. Everything he did that week was of utmost significance for revealing God to the world, and it all started with that donkey.

Have you ever felt like Pikachu, or that donkey? Have you ever felt insignificant, forgotten or thrown by the wayside? Let me ask another question: have you gotten used to being thrown by the wayside? I'm not asking if you like it, I'm asking if you've ever felt resigned to being marginalized, like it's all the world has to offer you. You've been in that corner so long that it's become part of your identity. You're scared to leave that corner because you're afraid of getting hurt. I think this was Pikachu's problem in the episode. We don't know how long he was in Professor Oak's house; he could have been there for years getting passed up by every single trainer. By the time Ash came and actually chose him, he was probably so resigned to the fact that he would never get to fight like the other Pokemon that by the time the chance came for him to fight, he was ready to forfeit. He believed he was made for that corner of Professor Oak's house!

Okay, you're really passionate about Pokemon, you might say to me at this point. This doesn't just apply to Pokemon. I heard a story one time of a doctor who moved into an inner-city neighborhood in Chicago to work at a clinic. This doctor was white, and his neighbor was a 64-year-old black man. They got to know each other over the next few years, and like any good neighbor, the white doctor eventually invited his neighbor over to his house. The man looked at him like he had been asked to blow someone's brains out with a gun. This scenario was repeated over the next couple of years with the same response, until finally the older man accepted. The day the older man finally came to the doctor's house, he made it into the doctor's foyer. He stood, frozen, for several minutes, visibly scared until finally he burst into tears, he said, "I'm not supposed to be here", turned, and walked out.

It is an incredibly scary, yet sadly common thing, where people get beat down for so long, pushed into a corner for so long that they no longer can envision a life for themselves outside of that scenario.

Love can pull you out of that corner. Love (not puppy love or erotic love, but sustained, real love; the love that is not a feeling, but a choice made every day to be patient with people, kind to people, not envious, not boastful, not seeking their own benefit but looking out for someone else as well) will free you from the prison of low self-esteem and empower you to have a vision for your life. Love will enable you to give yourself a chance, and it will bring out things in you that you never even thought possible before.

I know this to be true for myself. Four years ago, I was a sophomore in college who had lost all hope for herself. I wasn't doing well in school at all, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and I was intractably lazy. I contemplated leaving college probably on a daily basis. Sometimes, I thought of giving up on life itself. My parents prayed and prayed and prayed and refused to believe they had lost their daughter. At one point that fall I realized that they would not let me give up college or life because they loved me too much to let go. A couple months later, I went on a medical missions trip to Senegal, and that entire week, I was surrounded by the presence of God and the love of that entire team. In that atmosphere, I became a person I thought I'd lost forever, a person who really loved people and countries and whose dream was to travel the world and empower people. I came back from Senegal a totally different person. I realized that I was a child of God with many, many dreams and purposes that he would help me carry out. Four years later, I have a college degree from Harvard and I'm now in medical school! I am living proof of what love can do!

If you get anything from reading this post, I want you to get that God loves you, and (at the expense of being corny) God chooses you. He has wonderful plans for you, and they're good plans, not bad ones. He can take your mess and make your life beautiful. You just have to ask if he can help you. If you don't know how to ask, here's a template:

"God, I recognize that I have not lived my life for You up until now. I have been living for myself and that is wrong. I need You in my life; I want You in my life. I acknowledge the completed work of Your Son Jesus Christ in giving His life for me on the cross at Calvary, and I long to receive the forgiveness you have made freely available to me through this sacrifice. Come into my life now, Lord. Take up residence in my heart and be my king, my Lord, and my Savior. From this day forward, I will no longer be controlled by sin, or the desire to please myself, but I will follow You all the days of my life. Those days are in Your hands. I ask this in Jesus' precious and holy name. Amen."


(from allaboutgod.com)

If you do end up doing this tell me! Comment here, or message me on Facebook (my name).

(This blogpost is too long already...I didn't tell you how the episode ends! I guess I won't give you spoilers. Several seasons of Pokemon are available on Netflix, and since it's the very first episode of one of the most iconic children's animes of the '90s, I'm sure YouTube has it too. Enjoy it!)

Thoughts on a middle school graduation

Yesterday, I went back to my middle school to watch a close family friend graduate from eighth grade. Other than a cursory tour that I'd given my cousin a couple of years back, it was my first time stepping into my middle school since I myself had graduated seven years ago. The whole experience gave me so much to think about that I had to write a blog about it.

I arrived about ten minutes late and to my chagrin, I missed the processional. I came in through the back of the gym where the graduation was taking place, and I saw that the bleachers, which are small to begin with, were almost empty. There were chairs set up on the gym floor and almost all the attendees as well as the band were in the chairs. It was the smallest graduation I'd been to in a while. I'd forgotten just how small my middle school was. As I came in by the bleachers, some of the sixth and seventh graders looked at me (naturally), and I suddenly felt very awkward. Thank God, my friend's dad showed up around the same time as me, and I found him and a seat almost immediately after that.

I arrived just in time for the student speeches. A couple of students spoke about all the good memories they had of elementary and middle school (since everyone in the middle school went to the same elementary school). As expected, they sounded very fond of their time there. As I recounted my own memories of middle school, I felt awkward again. The students spoke of a strong community, of having good friends for life, while I remembered feeling excluded almost all the time and wondering if I would ever have any friends. What made it worse was knowing that my poor friend hadn't fared much better than me. Not much had changed in seven years.

It certainly wasn't all bad, though. I loved elementary school, so it made me happy when the students talked about memories from there. I happened to sit behind a couple of teachers from elementary school who still remembered me and were eager to hear about how my life had been going. It was really nice to see them. Also, one of the student speakers talked about the various achievements of my middle school's sports and academic teams over the past year, and it was funny to listen to because again, nothing had really changed in seven years. The basketball teams were still terrible. Cross country, volleyball and wrestling were decent, and an eighth grader had to miss graduation because he was competing at the National Spelling Bee. Same academics and athletics.

They presented a couple of awards, and then they called up all 48 students to get their diplomas. I was so proud of my friend. Many of the girls impressed me by wearing fashionable short dresses and extremely high heels that I can't even wear now at age 20, but my friend wore a silver-grey floor length dress with gold jewelry and her hair up in a bun. She looked so unique and elegant and classy. When I took pictures with her, she looked a lot better than I did.

After the graduation ceremony, we went to a nearby hotel for the after party. When I'd graduated, I hadn't even gone to my after party, so it was all new to me. As it happened, my friend's family and I ended up next to the new principal and the new superintendent, both of whom were very nice. After dinner, we watched a special movie that some students or the PTA had made, showing memories and the students answering various questions about their experiences. One of the questions they asked, naturally, was what the kids wanted to do with their future. Everyone had pretty high goals, which was good, but my friend made me proud again when she said she wanted to do something that made her happy and helped people.

After the movie, the dancing began. At first it was awkward to even watch the middle schoolers dance, let alone get on the dance floor. But as time went on and they played songs that the adults and I liked (namely the Cuban Shuffle), I got onto the floor to dance, though I generally kept my distance from the graduates as it was their night. Around this time I met a former classmate whose sister had graduated that night. I believe we were the only twenty-somethings who stayed for the dancing, so I was happy that neither of us would have to be alone. We got kiddie cocktails at the bar (she doesn't drink much and I'm not 21 yet) and had fun together.

The graduates danced in a very tight circle which didn't even take up the entire dance floor. My friend alternated between dancing in the circle and coming out to dance with her mom or me and my classmate. At one point, she was with me and she was looking at the circle but she wasn't sure if she could enter in. On the outside of the circle, I saw another girl in a beige dress and shorter heels who had won three big awards during the ceremony and had given the first student speech. I recognized her immediately. The girl looked back, and when she saw my friend hesitating, she took my friend's hand and pulled her into the circle to dance with the others. You don't forget people like that. The girl was quite the big shot, and she could have easily blended in with the popular group, yet she was still nice to people who weren't as popular as her. There was a girl like that in my graduating class who always at least tried to make me feel included. Her name was Katherine, but everyone called her K.K. I haven't forgotten her to this day, and I don't think I ever will.

I drove my friend home that night, and after I got home I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was quite the bag of mixed feelings. Memories flooded my head throughout the ceremony and even the dance, and it was interesting how that same themes of awkwardness and loneliness that had defined my middle school experience came back to see me again, as if they were old friends. I'm certainly not nostalgic for middle school at all, but I'm not angry about my experience either; I think it gave me a lot of compassion and made me stronger, and I can see that in my friend too. Also, I made friends in high school and college, so that awkwardness phase was definitely past for me. Coming back, it just felt like looking through a scrapbook and thinking through all the memories, good and not so good. My biggest hope now is that my friend has a wonderful high school experience so that if she ever comes back for a graduation ceremony, she'll feel the same way as I do.

Lessons from cartoons and video games #2/?: Digimon

My brother and I watched a lot of cartoons and played a lot of video games as children...and that hasn't changed as we've grown up. We still watch cartoons and play video games, and every so often, I find something within a cartoon or video game which I think is insightful and should be written down somewhere. Thus, this series. This is the second post, and it's all about Digimon!

UPDATE: You can now read a slightly edited version of this on the Harvard Ichthus!!!! This is the link to that: http://harvardichthus.org/2015/04/christ-and-cartoons-how-a-digimon-imitated-jesus/. What you're reading below is the original version.
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Over winter break last year, my brother and I found the second season of Digimon on Netflix, and we decided to watch that season all the way through. Note: for those who haven't seen the second season of Digimon, this blogpost will have spoilers. So if you want to watch it without spoilers, go watch it on Netflix and then come back here. It was fun to relive those Saturday mornings when we would wake up early to watch shows like Digimon as kids, and it was fun to see how we reacted as adults to some of the stuff we watched thirteen (!!!) years ago.
One thing that didn't change much was of the six main characters, my favorite character was Ken. I couldn't really explain why when I was a kid, but as an adult I figured it out. In the first part of the season, Ken was the Digimon Emperor, an evil genius who took over the Digital World (the place where all the Digimon live) and ruled it with an iron fist. He was a very cruel Emperor, making the Digimon work for him as slaves, making them evil by taking over their minds with Dark Rings, and punishing those who didn't obey. For most of the first part of the season, the five other main characters were trying to stop Ken, and everyone knew he was a jerk...except his Digimon partner, Wormmon. (People who have never watched Digimon must be finding this very weird to read! I hope you all get this.)
Wormmon had been assigned to Ken as a Digimon partner before he became the Emperor, and he remembered that before Ken became the Emperor, he was a very kind boy. However, a series of events including his brother's death and being infected with a "dark spore" made Ken very spiteful and evil. Ken even treated Wormmon like a slave, and at one point, he rejected Wormmon as his Digimon partner and tried to create a new Digimon partner for himself, one that was bigger and stronger than Wormmon. This new partner was a monster, and he eventually went mad and started destroying everything. When Wormmon realized that Ken's new partner was going to destroy everything, he finally told Ken everything he thought about him, but despite Ken's treatment of him and all the other Digimon, Wormmon told Ken that he still remembered the kind boy that Ken used to be, and that he hoped that Ken would become that person again. He then gave all of his life energy to defeat the monster, saving Ken and the other main characters. That event made Ken realize the error of his ways, and he stopped being the Digimon Emperor after that. Eventually, he joined up with the other main characters to save the Digital World. It took time for the other main characters, but eventually they were able to see Ken like Wormmon saw him: as a kind and noble person, and a hero.
I just retold a major subplot of a kids' TV show from fifteen years ago, but there are themes in that subplot that are for people of all ages in real life now. Figuratively speaking, we have all met a Digimon Emperor. Perhaps that person doesn't go around killing people and controlling their minds, but the person does have fundamental flaws that end up hurting them and the people around them. And if I'm speaking that way, about people who have missed the mark and hurt other people and have flaws and scars that they can't handle very well, then I can say with certainty that we have all been the Digimon Emperor at some point.
But I can also say, daring to hope, that there's a Ken in all of us too, someone who is kind to other people, ingenuous and has something good to share with the world. Not everyone sees it, and it may be buried beneath all the flaws. But it is there, in all of us. And we need someone, kind of like Wormmon in this plot, to see that person and never stop believing that the good kid is there somewhere. We need someone who can deal with all of our flaws and help us find the inner kindness. We need someone to take on our burdens so that we can be helped. And if we can find that person--that exceedingly rare person--they will usually succeed in bringing the good out of us, not because we were good enough to find the good, but because we know how much it cost them and we want to repay them.
People like those are hard--nay, nearly impossible to find. There's no greater sacrifice for a person than to give his or her time, energy, and even his or her own life to see a friend gain life. I dare say that there's nothing that messes with your head or your heart more than realizing that someone believed in you so much that they were willing to give your life to see you find your dreams. That's why Christianity still continues to grow today, though people's actions throughout history have sullied its name--because in Christianity, Jesus is that person. If you find a person who believes in you so much that they can bet their life on it, it might take a while, but eventually, you start believing in yourself and wanting to do better for yourself, and you don't want to go back to the way you were, because if someone gave their life for you, then your life must be worth it.