“I’d love to go back to when we played as kids but things changed, and that’s the way it is.”
- Social activist Tupac Shakur
This past weekend my friend Amulya came up from Houston, TX to visit me, and see my new life in Portland. It was probably the best weekend of my life.
It was easy to plan because we more or less like the same things, so we basically did everything I’ve done in Portland that I thought was cool. This included biking everywhere in the rain, sitting on our laptops and chatting at coffee shops, perusing Powell’s bookstore while drunk, enjoying local beers at brew pubs, and of course, cute breakfast places.
At the end of the exhausting visit, we were sitting at the airport waiting for his delayed flight and drinking more tea. We were already reminiscing about the trip, and talking about deep things like soulmates and personal bests. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a young couple walking around with a kid.
That quick glimpse was Amulya and I’s future. Like much of modern society, we would probably get married, have kids, and not have the luxury to just drop everything one weekend and do nothing but drink coffee, talk shit, and burn through a ton of cash.
Amulya reminded me of a couple wise things:
When we were kids, we loved playing Madden 04 at my house. If he had told me that when we went off to college we wouldn’t be able to do this anymore, I would have been sad, and feared the change. However, when we actually got to college it was a ton of fun visiting each other and catching up on each other’s lives.
In the future, if we only see each other once every blue moon, and we sit around drinking tea while our kids play with oversized blocks, that’d be fun.
If we live in the same city, and get coffee every Sunday morning and talk shit, that’d be fun too.
If we work in the same place and argue over budget cuts at office meetings, well, that’d be fun too.
Any number of options would really work, but of course, the question is: are any of the options ideal?
It’s hard to say, but I guess I’m starting to internalize the idea that different isn’t better or worse, it’s just, different. They are all great, they just take different kinds of appreciation. I feel like I’d much rather accept whatever situation I get put into as the best, and get as much as I can from it rather than pine for some vague made up notion of “ideal.”
It’s pretty hard, if not impossible, to compare how “good” an experience is. This past weekend was definitely a ton of fun, and I plan on referring to it as “the best weekend ever.” But can I really say it was more fun than the time he visited me at Kenyon? Or more fun than the time I surprise visited him at his favorite coffee shop at his college?
Maybe life is more along the lines of an Eastern way of thought, accepting each day as a god, taking everything it has to offer, and also just appreciating the meaning of everything.
All that said, I am really hoping to have a roommate next June.
from ken
Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
Currently at church we’re doing something called advent conspiracy, where the idea is to give one less Christmas gift and instead donate that money to an international cause. Our church is getting at this point through creativity and art. My girlfriend painted something to contribute to this project, and so I shared an interpretation of her painting. We were supposed to discuss bible verses, Matthew 25:31 – 46, which to summarize: the blessed are those that help people.
Ok, now, this is what I shared (paraphrased and revised): I think in these verses, Matthew is getting at the core of social justice, and what it means to follow God. Simply put, helping those in need of help. So I wanted to start with something I heard the other day when I was at Danna and Katie’s bible study studying James 2.
James writes, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?” We talked a lot about how people should show what they believe through their actions. If Christians believe in God they should let their actions speak for themselves and love everyone, regardless of the social implications.
But interestingly, James only touches on faith with no action. He has nothing to say about action with no faith.
This lead me to the obvious question: If action is faith, then what is the point of Christianity? Should we all just stop coming to church and worship activist gods like Martin Luther King and Gandhi? Does this make Jesus irrelevant?
So for a while I kept thinking about this and I think my answer to that question is why I need God.
Christianity is relevant because helping other people is really, really, hard.
Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with people. I couldn’t live without people, and I am constantly blown away at how good people are to me. But at the same time, they ruin my plans, they cut into my time, and they just generally bring chaos into my life.
Because I hate people, helping people is hard. It’s easy to take on too much, it’s exhausting, and it constantly challenges you. Really, it’s just a pain to focus on other people. It seems way too easy to burnout in a life of following God and helping people.
But I think with God we have the ultimate pillar to lean on. God is an endless stream of living water to refresh us. When we lack discipline, God can help us. When we lack energy, God can help us. When we lack courage, still God can help us. And that’s why Christianity is still relevant to me.
from ken
Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
Sidenote to start: I struggled a lot with writing this post. Largely because it has a similar to tone to a previous post I wrote that I felt was too judgmental. However, I have a piece of paper taped to my door that says, “TODAY, BE TRUE TO YOURSELF.” I think this anger is a part of my voice, so I’m just going to trust, and let it come out… Recently there was a foiled terrorist attack at a downtown Portland Christmas tree lighting. link I was talking with some friends about how he should be thrown in jail and never see the light of day. How could someone say they wanted to kill as many innocent children as possible? One of the greatest thinkers of our time, Malcolm Gladwell, a columnist for The New Yorker, recently wrote a book called Outliers. In the book, Gladwell debunks the American myth of individual success being attributed to individual effort. Instead, he supports a societal perspective of success in which the privileged receive more opportunity for success, a theory called “The Matthew Effect,” named after a verse in the Gospel of Matthew:
“For unto everyone that has shall be given, and he shall have in abundance. But from him that has not shall be taken away even that which he has.”
I believe “The Matthew Effect” is real. I have a first hand recollection of it. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a suburban world, taught general rules of politely interacting with other human beings, and without being that motivated, I found myself binge drinking Keystone Lights while receiving a degree from a competitive liberal arts college. At said liberal arts college, I encountered several incredible mentors: Coach Duane Gomez, Campus Minister Jeff Bergeson, and Professor Joan Slonczewski. They were all painstakingly patient with me and waited for me to come into my own, but also supported me when I wanted to push. In all three cases, they just randomly fell along my path. In addition to outstanding mentors, at an impressionable stage, the people that fell into my life weren’t drug addicts or manipulative pimps, but a girl that opened my eyes to the global atrocities of the have’s and have-not’s, and slowly got me to think outside of my small selfish mind.My story of individual success is due to this incredible environment. It gave me sufficient time to be coddled so I could develop into my own. Which begs the question? What did I do to deserve all this? And better yet, what did other late-bloomers do not to deserve this? That’s fucked up. It’s easy to get guilt-tripped about falling ass backwards into success. Gladwell, a New York Times best-selling author who was also surrounded by a great developmental environment, says about his book, “Outliers wasn’t intended as an autobiography. But you could read it as an extended apology for my success.” I don’t think guilt is the right response. I don’t think such opportunities exist in the world so we can feel bad about our success, apologize, and hide in our shadows. So what is the right response? Well, the Gospel of Luke has additional ideas about those privileged few.“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
The Outliers framework suggests that society is responsible for individual success, but I want to extend the idea and claim that society is also responsible for individual failure.
I believe the failed terrorist attack in Portland was not an individual failure, but a societal one. This failure is not the responsibility of this poor 19 year old. It falls squarely on the shoulders of the society that puts violence, war, and power on a pedestal. It falls on the mentors that weren’t in place to teach him moral values. It falls on his peers that weren’t there to love him, and show him the incredible value of even a single human being. It falls on all of us. It’s up to each individual to take what they like from the Gospel of Luke quote. But I believe for those privileged few in this messed up world, like it or not, we are the leaders of society. It is a lot to ask to fix the world. It’s super fucked up. But recently I’ve been hearing the stories of a lot of people who got the short-end of the society stick, and I think it’s our responsibility to capitalize on our opportunity and rectify societal failures.
"And Quenton Cassidy moved out into the second lane, the lane of high hopes, and ran out the rest of the life in him."
- John L. Parker, Once A Runner
from kenAre you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
So I recently updated my about page.
The "about this blog" section is still vague because, to be honest, I really don't know what this blog is about. Primarily, it's just a vehicle for me to practice my writing. I really see writing as an important part of my life in the coming days. If people want to read it, I'm thrilled to hear comments, but if not, I'm just happy to have the opportunity to write. I'm not sure why, but it feels like the right place to be.
The "about me" section is a little more solidified. I read a cool book called What Happy People Know by Dan Baker, a happiness psychologist. He outlines what qualities he sees in happy people, and one of his important ones is that happy people know where they are in life and where they want to be headed, if only vaguely. Basically, he suggests knowing your "life story" in a three sentence version or so. I've seen various permutations of this idea - a six word life summary, a word to summarize your life, etc. So anyways, that's what I tried to do the about me section, copied/pasted:
My name is Ken Noguchi. There are two things you should know about me:
1- I want to change the world.
2- I don't have a middle name, but I always wished it started with E, so my initials could be KEN.
I just graduated from Kenyon College, a rural school in Ohio, and moved out to Portland, Oregon to work as a lab manager at Oregon Health & Science University. Our lab studies the signaling mechanisms behind iron homeostasis. My dream is to manage a holistic health organization that takes a radical interdisciplinary approach to empower people to take care of other people.
I try to spend as much time as possible: being with people so I can learn to hate people less, reading and writing so I can learn to better communicate truth, and hanging out at coffee shops so I can be trendy.
If you are reading this blog for the first time, please start with the first post, "In the beginning..."
from ken
Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
