The first thing I want to say about this film is that it really did seem pretty even-handed. They don’t seem to have gone out of their way to make anybody look bad. I’ve known many people just like the ones in the film — and some of them I really good people.  Most dedicated Evangelicals would pretty much agree with the things said in the movie.

The film focuses on the ministry of Becky Fisher. She is clearly very dedicated to ministry with kids.  She’s  likable, and puts tremendous thought and care into her work.   I think a lot of her views are misguided and silly, but she has every right to them.  Some people who watch the movie get the impression that she is trying to teach children to be Christian terrorists, but I don’t think that’s what she has in mind.  I’m sure Ms. Fisher (it’s not clear if she is ordained) doesn’t expect her young audience to physically take up assault rifles and hand grenades to destroy the ungodly.

She’s right that youngsters in other countries and faiths are being taught to do exactly that, and I suspect she thinks the day will come when becoming literal soldiers for Christ might be necessary. The belief that “this generation will be the one that ushers in the return of Jesus to earth” includes the expectation that there will be some time of worldwide upheaval and civil disorder. But mostly, the war these children are being called to is a spiritual one — and being a soldier means having the courage to not swear or watch Harry Potter, and to tell your friends about Jesus even if they think you are weird.

This version of Christianity holds up a very demanding standard of focus on God, commitment to religious thought and activity, and abstention from things in the world around. You need a powerful sense of puprose to stay with all that.

Are these kids being brainwashed? Well, yes sort of.  But we all teach our kids what we believe. And if you have some very strongly held beliefs, you will naturally teach your children those things with more vigor. But they do grow up, and even the most sheltered kids must eventually be exposed to other people and ways of thinking.  It’s easy enough to wash things, but very hard to keep them clean. Brains included.

This doesn’t mean there was nothing that bothered me in this film. A lot is asked of these kids. To hear a nine or ten year old girl talking about a dance routine she does, saying that she has to be careful she is dancing for Jesus and not just for the flesh — well, that’s a pretty abstract concept. There is an awful lot of talk of sin and death and hell and punishment for imaginative young minds. And it bothered me most that the kids learned a lot about how abortion is wrong, and evolution is wrong, but apparently not very much about the more mundane duties of faith — being honest and helpful and considerate and humble.  Of course, that stuff isn’t nearly as exciting as being a warrior for God.

The thing that bothered me the most, though, was Ted Haggard. I wish I had seen this movie before the scandal, because I can’t be sure how much of my revulsion had to do with the knowledge of his hypocrisy. But I was shocked, actually, at a section where Rev. Haggard was introduced to Levi, a 12 year old who hopes to become a minister, and has already begun to preach (not half badly, either.) Rev. Haggard is very insulting and patronizing to the young man, who is clearly deflated by the minister’s comments.

Haggard is just creepy and gross. And to be clear, I don’t say this because he is apparently a homosexual (although he still denies this.) I don’t think homosexuality is creepy or gross at all. But this is a person so plainly arrogant and disingenuous — a person who has crassly taken advantage of the deep spiritual truths of repentance and redemption to maneuver himself out of an awkward and expensive bind — he’s just, well, creepy.  And gross.  I hope I don’t have to see him on my TV again.

I’ve driven by the house in recent years. It’s an average three bedroom tract home in a pleasant middle-class neighborhood. Built in 1955 or so, with a modest front yard and a walk-out basement which opens into the back yard. It looks like a peaceful home in a peaceful neighborhood. Once I saw someone working in the yard, and thought of asking if they would let me see the house, on account of it being where I grew up. They probably would — Minnesotans are nice and unsuspicious like that. But I didn’t. They would ask me if I had good memories, and I would have to lie, because it’s their house now and I wouldn’t want to make them like it less.

I was, by all accounts, a pretty good little child. In fact my mother said many times that she liked me a lot until I was about four. I had a quiet temperament — even before I could read she could sit me down with a stack of magazines and I would spend an hour looking through them. She could dress me up with a hat and little white gloves, and people would say what a cute little girl I was and she loved that. Of course, people say that about all little kids — I wonder if she realized that. Anyway, at this stage I had yet to disappoint.

Besides being adorable, the major task of my preschool years was learning to read. It was very important to my mother that we learn to read as early as possible, and apparently I learned when I was three. By the time I went to kindergarten, I could read second or third-grade books. This isn’t that unusual now, many kids pick up some reading skills in pre-school. But I didn’t go to pre-school, and reading wasn’t something I “picked up.” I remember long sessions of reading aloud. They seemed long to me anyway — but 10 minutes is forever to a preschooler. I can still hear my mother’s voice saying — sometimes yelling — “sound it out.” She was a big believer in phonics at a time when the schools were mostly using different techniques.

Despite being a generally cooperative child and a reasonably quick learner, I think even before kindergarten I was willing to work around requirements I found unreasonable. I distinctly recall one day working with some flashcards. There were three words that I could not figure out, so my mother gave me those three cards and sent me to my room. I was not to leave my room until I figured out the three words, and I was not to cheat and look at the pictures on the reverse of the cards.

Well, duh. As soon as I was alone I looked at the line drawings on the front of the cards. I don’t remember what two of them were — but one of them had a rather strange drawing and I couldn’t figure out what it was a picture of. I puzzled over it a long time. I did other stuff. Finally, I was saved. My dad came into the room to put up a new shelf or some dad-like thing of that sort. The very picture of innocence, I went over to him with the mysterious card.

“Daddy, what is this word?”

“Oh, that word is ‘cookie’.”

Aha! Of course I thanked him, and then, not being stupid, I waited for him to leave. He went to the basement or the garage or where ever dads go on the weekends. I gave it a little longer to reduce suspicion and went out and read the three words to my mother and was released. I think I must still remember this incident because it was one of my rare victories. It may have been my only victory for a long time.

To be fair, I was and am an excellent reader. And I hear people mispronounce words because they don’t “sound them out” and I always smile and feel just the tiniest bit superior for a second. And, despite the painful process, I learned to love reading and spent a good deal of my childhood years escaping into a hundred alternate worlds. Of course, I would have learned to read anyway, and I probably would have learned to love it. It’s too bad that in learning to love books, I learned to like my mother a little less.

A big part of Milan’s “training” of dog owners is teaching them to project the right attitude, the right energy, the right expectations, to the dogs. Dogs are pack animals. People say dogs can smell fear, but I suspect it isn’t so much a smell as how you carry yourself that the dog picks up on. Week after week Milan meets a dog that is fearful or aggressive or just uncontrollably rowdy, and in minutes he turns them into calm, compliant companions. And he does it mostly by how he walks into the room. The dogs know, often almost at once, that he expects to be in charge, and that he is not to be trifled with. (And the dogs don’t resent that. Usually they seem relieved. At last, someone is in charge!)

The thing about this is, it works with people too. We are also pack animals. The odd thing about us, compared to other social creatures, is that we often like to deny or minimize this about ourselves. After all, we can think for ourselves! We can use words, create art, invent stuff, fly to the moon even! We aren’t going to change our ways just because someone walks in the room and gives us a certain kind of a look.

Except — we do. We intuit what people want from us, and we respond. Not always with compliance, but we respond. What does it mean when someone is a “natural leader”? I think it largely means that they walk into the room with the bearing and manner of a person in charge. Not necessarily bossy, but as Milan would say, Calm Assertive.

Many of the things people think of doing when they need to take charge of a dog, or a child, or an employee — those things are all wrong. Yelling, hitting, and pleading don’t work. They make things worse, actually, because they all sound rather desperate. Getting upset just shows that you aren’t really sure you’re the leader.

Several people who report to me are, themselves, supervisors, and I encourage all of them to watch Cesar Milan. When you are in a position of leadership, the Calm Assertive attitude sets the stage for success. It isn’t quite the same as dominance. Milan respects the dogs he works with — as dogs — and does them the courtesy of seeing them as they are, instead of anthropomorphizing them. He considers what they actually need — exercise, rules, affection — and provides those things. He lets them know what he expects in return, so they know what to do. Everyone is happy.

We are social animals, even those of us who like to think of ourselves as independent. On some level, just like we can’t succeed by focusing on what we fear, we can create a type of success by simply expecting it, and acting accordingly.

When I was first learning to drive, like many novice drivers I found it all a bit overwhelming.  You have to be aware of what is going on in front of you, to the sides of you, behind you, on the sidewalks and nearby driveways, and even inside the car.  At one point, driving along a residential street, I saw some kids playing with a ball in their yard.  I watched carefully to make sure the ball wasn’t going to roll into the street in front of the car — and in the process I nearly drove onto the sidewalk.  The instructor said, with remarkable composure, that it is important to be aware of what is going on around you, but you need to keep your focus on the road ahead of you.  In fact, most of the time you should be looking well down the road ahead.  If you focus on something else, he pointed out, your hands will instinctively turn the wheel in that direction.

This turns out to be a general principle in life.  Whatever you are focused on, you will tend to bring about, even if the thing you are focused on is something you don’t want.  In fact, probably the worst thing you can do is to be focused on whatever it is that scares you.  A classic example of this, which we’ve all seen both in movies and in life, is the person who is so afraid of being rejected and unloved, that they consistently behave in ways that annoy and upset the people close to them, bringing about the very rejection that they fear.  (And then of course, they use this outcome to justify their fear and reinforce the negative pattern.)

I’ve been particularly aware of this lately because I work with someone who is a striking example of this principle.  This person was once laid off from a job — twenty years ago, more or less.  That was understandably upsetting, but my coworker has made it her mission in life to be sure that it never happens again.  Each day at the office, her main objective is to be on the lookout for anything that might contribute to eventual termination.

This is more counter-productive than you might expect.  She does the minimum of work, since doing anything extra increases the risk of error.  When there is an error, her focus is on blame shifting rather than problem solving.  She treats her coworkers with suspicion and remains as detached as possible.  As a result, she is regarded as a rather difficult employee.  She doesn’t work well with others, she doesn’t take responsibility, she is resistant to learning new skills.  Of course, these are the very factors that increase the risk of being laid off, should there be a need to reduce staff.

Of course, if you focus on a positive goal, you tend to bring that about too.  For example, if my coworker would come to work each day with the objective of making themselves as valuable as possible, there would likely be a noticeable improvement.

The problem with this sort of principle is that people try to overextend it.  And there have been many overextensions of this idea, from the mostly harmless Norman Vincent Peale to the insidiously cruel versions of Christianity that insist all difficulties in life are a result of inadequate faith.

This is not a law of nature, like gravity.  It is possible to look in one direction while steering in another — for a while, anyway.  It is possible to focus on a positive goal and still not achieve it.  Positive thinking is not a guarantee that your dreams will all come true.  In fact, I know a number of people who have messed up their lives quite thoroughly by focusing on unreasonable dreams.  That can be as destructive as focusing on an expectation of failure and unhappiness.

It’s not an absolute law.  It is a principle, a tendency, a way of stacking the odds.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s God, or the Universe, or our own subconscious energy — or some combination of those.  The fact remains, though.  If there’s something you want to avoid, don’t stare at it.  Be aware of what’s going on around you — but keep your focus on the road ahead.

I have only one memory from before I was three years old. I was in a crib, it is night, and I see the light under the door from the hallway — and I hear voices. My mother, who is just getting home from something, greeting my father, who must have been staying home with me, since I never had babysitters until several years later, and not often even then.

As a toddler, hearing my mother’s voice, I feel…tense. I feel that she’s going to come in and find that I’m not asleep yet, and I will be in trouble. Now, how much of that is a real memory and how much of it is tacked on through years of other experiences? There is no way to know the answer to that. And I don’t think it really matters. Feeling that I need to be careful, that I’m probably going to be in trouble at any moment, and possibly for reasons that I did not predict, or that don’t make much sense — this is the defining condition of my entire childhood.

Except that I’ve had the flu, so even though I’ve been up to doing some reading, I haven’t done a lot of writing yet. In the meantime, I highly recommend that you visit McSweeney’s. It’s a wonderful compilation of mostly clever stuff written by — well, I have no idea who writes all of it, but it’s darn funny , anyway.

You might start with Catcher In The Retirement Home, in keeping with the recent theme of aging. This is a sort of sequel to Catcher in the Rye, in which Mr. Caulfield finds himself an elderly man, and not that much changed, really.

There are several reasons, but the real main reason is that I have been in a World of Warcraft addiction phase.  I’ve played the game pretty steadily for about three years now, and there are times when I can barely tear myself away from it, and then times when it begins to seem like a chore.  Lately, I’ve felt compelled to acquire more gold coins, find better magical armor, and learn to make more powerful elixirs.  if you haven’t been there, it will seem silly.  Frankly, it seems silly to me, too.  And every day I tell myself “tonight after work I will do something more useful, more mature, more — well, not geeky.  But then I get home and think, maybe tonight I’ll find that epic magic wand of healing and be the most powerful night elf priestess in all of Azeroth!  And at the time, it doesn’t sound so ridiculous.

For those of you who are not familiar with video game addiction, it might seem odd.  What, you might wonder, is so compelling about them?  Well, I’ll tell you.

First, video games are designed to give you frequent rewards.  While there are larger goals that may take hours or weeks to achieve, you generally get some sort of reward every 30 to 60 seconds or so.  I’ve noticed that when I’m spending too much time gaming, my attention span gets a lot shorter.  I jokingly (or not) told some of my friends that I would be able to concentrate much better at work if they paid me in, say, five minute increments, instead of twice a month.  (“Oh, you called that unhappy customer?  Good!  Here’s five dollars.  Now, do your monthly budget report, and you’ll get an epic coffee mug!  Loook, it holds 15% more coffee than a regular mug!”)

Secondly, games offer mental stimulation, without risk.  If you don’t succeed, you try again.  Even the less talented will eventually get to the next level.  If you keep trying, you make progress.  If you do well, you have a feeling of accomplishment.  If you do poorly — well, heck it’s just a game.  It’s challenging, but there is nothing at stake.  For many of us, this is the opposite of work, which is monotonous, and failure can mean real disaster.

Television is similar in this respect, and that is probably why it can also be addicting, especially for us naturally sedentary types.  But since i started gaming, I’ve found it much easier to manage and moderate my television viewing.  Also, I’ve gotten old, and watched a LOT of TV, and there isn’t that much anymore that seems to be very different from the thousands of hours of programming I’ve already seen.  Even though many people in an online game are stupid and obnoxious, there is a quality of unpredictability and randomness there which you don’t find on television where even “reality” shows are pretty well planned out and few things are truly unexpected.

Anyway, the addiction phase seems to be passing, or at least moderating a bit, and I was at least able to tear myself away tonight long enough to write about gaming.  So that’s a start.  This weekend I’ll try to write about something else.

That’s right, time seems to fly by, and yet when I look back over all that’s happened, it’s amazing I could fit it into just fifty years. Not that I’ve had such noteworthy adventures or anything, but, that’s a lot of days.

On one of those many, many days, I watched a TV show where Oprah was interviewing Michael Jackson. I think it was Michael’s 35th birthday. (Michael Jackson is the same age as me!). She asked him, “After 35 years, what do you know for sure?” And he said he didn’t feel sure of anything. That always sort of bothered me — do we ever know anything for sure? Things I thought I knew for sure at 35 I’m not sure of any more.

So recently I started making a list. It turns out I’m sure about quite a few things. Too much for one post, but you’ll be seeing some of them soon.

Meanwhile, I read earlier this afternoon that life is just a series of days. And in the long run, I think, it’s the little ordinary days that contribute the most to the meaning and happiness of life. Turning fifty is a big day — so is getting married, having kids, graduating from school, days like that. There are lots of difficult big days too, funerals and breakups and the day I left my parents’ home. Those are the days that anchor the years, that mark off eras.

But the depth of experience, the real good feelings, are in the ordinary days. Like when one of your favorite songs come up on the radio. Those rare meals that make other food seem like imitations. Watching Star Trek with the boys. The smell of roses from flowers that grew in my own yard. Watching the sun set over the lake when I was a kid. The way the dogs get so excited to see me, even if I’ve just been in the bathroom for a couple of minutes.

It’s kind of lucky that those days are ultimately so important, because there are a lot more of them.

Well, there are things I hate more than that. Child abuse, for example. And actually…calamari.

Anyway, I’ve started a bunch of posts and they keep coming out all rambly and pointless. Rather like my last post. I’m glad my last post was thought-provoking, but it isn’t a particularly well-structured bit of writing.

My main problem with that post is that I’m not sure I made clear why I thought “Change Your Life” is in some way related to the war museum, or war in general. And, it isn’t related, in any precise or logical way. Kris made the good point (she’s known me for years) that my taking and keeping that picture, and the fact that it evoked such a response in me, is not strictly logical, and it’s rather unlike me to follow an emotional, intuitive and non-logical course of action, even in such a small matter as a picture. (I know, she didn’t exactly say that, but she was thinking it. I’ve known her for years too.)

“Change Your Life” was outside the war museum, but I saw it and took the picture before I went in the museum. It struck me for some other reason. I’m not sure I can articulate the reason, or that the effort is all that useful. But I’ll try.

Tom made the point that it isn’t enough to change your life, you have to make the right changes. And that’s true, of course. I think it’s not really the problem, though. If you ask most people, and they answered honestly, what changes they need to make in their lives to be better people — most people could answer that question. This is the problem with psychotherapy. Most of the time, people know what they need to do to solve their problems and enrich their lives and make better contributions to the lives of those around them. We know. We just don’t want to do it. We want easy, painless, fun solutions to our problems. The real work of actually solving our problems is a drag. That’s why we stop living our lives, as Kris said, and retreat into our various overweight, alcoholic, TV-addicted corners.

So, yes, I think “Change Your Life” is the right message. You know what you need to do. So do I. And if everyone made the changes they know deep down they ought to make, well, maybe there would be fewer wars and fewer homeless people and better education.