Life at Warp 10

Holographic Technology and Virtual Reality on the Horizon

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

It’s no secret that I’m a huge Star Trek fan, and one of the technologies my husband and I desperately want to see become a reality is the holodeck. While it might not be exactly a holodeck, Microsoft’s hololens technology moves us one step closer. These are virtual reality glasses that seem to create a 3-D environment for the viewer.

I’m going to include two videos below. If you’re short on time, just watch the first one. The second one is a TED Talk, and it’s long. Or you can just skip the videos and come back to my thoughts on this and storytelling in the future below the videos 🙂

The growth in this area of technology has implications for how we’ll consume our entertainment in the coming years.

For writers, it means we may eventually have another avenue where we can sell rights to our existing properties. Susan Kaye Quinn, for example, has had her work optioned for Virtual Reality by Immersive Entertainment. I suspect, though, that producing a book for virtual reality will be expensive for the foreseeable future, and so selling your virtual reality rights will be about as common as selling movie rights.

As a reader, I’d never want to replace the reading experience with virtual reality, but it would be a fun way to experience stories I already enjoy. My concern is that this could eventually replace 2-D movies, which will be a sad day for me if it turns out that I react to virtual reality as well as I react to 3-D movies (which is to say, not well at all).

What do you think? Are you excited about the possibilities for virtual reality?

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Sadness Is Valuable Too

Sadness Is Valuable TooBy Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

A few months back, my husband asked me “Do you always have to be so cheerful?”

“Would you rather I were grumpy?” I replied.

He paused for a second, then nodded. “Sometimes.”

That started me thinking. Because sometimes I feel grumpy inside. I feel sad and angry, scared and worthless. I feel all those things, but I almost never express them.

I’m sure I wasn’t born this way, which means that somewhere along the line I learned that I shouldn’t have negative emotions. And if—heaven forbid—I had them, I’d better not let them show. Negative emotions were like dirty laundry. Everyone has dirty laundry, but you’d better wash it quick, and if someone is coming over and you couldn’t get it washed in time, at least have the decency to hide it. No one wants to have to see that.

The more I actually took the time to think about this, the more I started to see the subtle ways we’re trained to be ashamed of our negative emotions. I saw it happening to me and I watched it happen to others.

It happens when someone asks how you’ve been and what you’ve been up to, then halfway through trying to share with them the truth about your week, they’ll say something like “Okay, no more negative talk. Let’s focus on the positive.”

And you’re left thinking why did you ask me if you didn’t want to know? So the next time someone asks, you lie. You bundle all the fear and pain inside and you feel very alone.

It happens when you’re having a bad day. Maybe you’re tired. Maybe your body aches. Maybe you’re living in fear of what the doctor’s phone call will tell you. Whatever the reason, you’re not able to put on the happy veneer demanded by social situations in our society or you’re a little more quiet than usual.

And someone, who probably meant well, says something like, “Just relax and have fun” or “I like that so-and-so is always happy.”

Bull crap they are. Bull. Crap.

How do I know? I’ve been told I’m “always happy” and I can tell you there were days when I was smiling on the outside and inside I hurt so badly it’s a miracle I wasn’t crying tears of blood.

I have to wonder if the rise of mental illness, specifically anxiety and depression, isn’t at least partially connected to the fact that we’re shamed for expressing negative emotions. It’s like an infection that’s not allowed to drain. We’re holding it all inside and our body is screaming for a way to release it because it knows it can’t heal until it finds a means to purge what’s slowly killing it.

Let me be clear. I am a naturally cheerful person. I believe it’s important to find joy in life as much as we can, but trying to find ways to enjoy our life regardless of our external circumstances doesn’t mean that we should deny or ignore our equally valid negative emotions.

I loved the movie Inside Out because wrapped inside of a cute movie was this very truth—joy is essential to a good life, but it isn’t enough. The character of Joy in the movie constantly shoves the Sadness character to the side, not letting her touch anything or be involved in anything. But it’s Sadness who’s able to comfort and help another character who has experienced a tragedy because Sadness validates the importance of what he’s lost. It’s Sadness who’s able to strengthen the relationship between Riley and her parents.

Sadness is important too.

It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be frustrated or scared or hurt. Having those emotions is natural. And it’s in facing them, not in denying them, that we learn and grow as human beings. It’s in facing them that we develop empathy, compassion, and courage.

Ignoring those emotions doesn’t make us stronger or happier or better people. It makes us insincere. It makes us liars. And it isolates us from real connections with other people.

And that’s not who I want to be.

How about you?

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Image Credit: Blake Campbell/freeimages.com

Unbelievable Real Life: Underwater Art Museum

Image Credit: Alex Furr/www.freeimages.com

Image Credit: Alex Furr/www.freeimages.com

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

I’ve been to museums across the world, from Australia, to Europe, to Canada and the United States. I’ve never been to a museum under water. Until I saw this video, I didn’t even know something like this existed.

When I watched this video, full of fantastic images of how submerged sculptures are changed as the ocean reclaimed them, a few thoughts crossed my mind. I’ll let you watch first before I share my reactions.

My first thought was “how does someone come up with an idea like this?” It seems like a melding of creativity and a desire to change the world. Part of deCaires mission is to bring attention to the danger our oceans are in. Art is for entertainment, but art can also send a message. I believe it can change hearts and minds in a way that non-fiction never can. That’s a part of why I write fiction.

My second thought, I’ll admit, was much less deep. The sculptures were both beautiful and grotesque. I started to wonder what it would have been like if we’d found these sculptures, not knowing who put them there or why. What would we have concluded about the culture and people behind them? What would we decide about how they’d come to be there?

Perhaps there’s a story idea in there somewhere 🙂

What did you think when you watched this video?

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Will Humanity One Day Live on Mars?

Image Attribution: By NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Image Attribution: By NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

The next milestone in space exploration seems to be putting people on Mars.

NASA has mentioned plans to place human beings on Mars sometime in the 2030s. Non-profits like the Netherlands-based Mars One Project and private businesses like Elon Musk’s SpaceX intend to do it sooner than that.

While there are many scientific reasons for wanting to explore Mars, the reason for Mars exploration that earns the most press seems to be colonization. Many people see Mars as a backup planet to our own.

I’m a science fiction and fantasy girl. In theory, I love the idea of venturing out into the universe.

But I also have some questions about the feasibility and practicality of something like colonizing Mars.

Our planet is more hospitable than Mars, and yet look at the large portions of it that aren’t lived in because they’re not friendly to human life. Our vast stretches of desert. Mountain peaks. The depths of the ocean. Antarctica.

In an interview with The Telegraph, award-winning science writer Stephen Petranek responded to similar objections with this: “I suspect Antarctica’s a pretty good analogy of how we can build habitats in a hostile environment. The food’s pretty good, there’s a lot of entertainment, people have a lot of camaraderie. There are now several year-long stations at the South Pole. The French have one and they have fabulous food.”

While that sounds fantastic, I do think he’s overlooked a few key points.

No one lives permanently in Antarctica. The stations are there year-round; the people cycle in and out. There is no indigenous population.

It doesn’t have an infrastructure. While the science stations there do have hydroponics bays to grow some fruits and vegetables, most of the food still needs to be shipped in frozen, including all meat products. Clothing, medical supplies, and all the other non-edible necessities of life are brought in. They’re not produced there.

To put it another way, life in Antarctica is possible because it takes place on a planet that already provides for people’s needs. Life there isn’t sustainable in and of itself, cut off from the outside world.

It’s also on a planet with oxygen. In a region with plenty of available water (albeit frozen water). And where temperatures are concerned, Antarctica is actually a little bit warmer.

I’m by no means an expert on space travel. I’m not a scientist. I’m not an astronomer. I’m not a biologist. And I’m not saying it will never happen. Technology has changed so much in the past 150 years that only a fool would say that technology won’t continue to advance further in the next 150.

But I wonder. I wonder if we’re searching for answers off-planet when maybe we should be searching for more ways to save this one. Because the more we look at the universe, the clearer it becomes how unique and special Earth really is.

What do you think? Am I wrong? Will future generations colonize Mars? Would the time and resources being spent on reaching Mars be better spent on finding solutions here on Earth?

(I welcome disagreement and discussion on this blog as long as it is polite and well-reasoned. Open discussions help us all grow. Name calling and assertions without logical arguments to back them up serve no one. If you want to engage in those, you’ll need to find another place to do it 🙂 )

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Be the Hero of Your Own Life Story

Image Credit: Ben Smith/www.freeimages.com

Image Credit: Ben Smith/www.freeimages.com

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

Those of you who regularly read my blog might have noticed that I disappeared for over a month. That’s because 2015 went out worse than it came in. After driving to the hospital every day for a week to be with my husband, and another week full of follow-up appointments, I was easy-pickings for a Goliath of a cold/flu bug.

I ended 2015 tired—the deep kind of tired that settles into your bones and your soul because it’s only partly physical and mostly emotional.

Since the start of 2015 my family has faced a car accident (the repercussions of which we’re still dealing with nearly a year later), a fractured pelvis, a sinus infection made worse by a previously unknown allergy to the prescribed antibiotic, pneumonia, sick pets, mental illness, and a stroke.

And that’s not even all of it. That’s the abbreviated version.

Boy do I wish I was joking. When I write it out that way, it sounds more like a poor man’s version of Downton Abbey than someone’s actual life. But it is my life.

Although I managed to maintain my regular editing schedule in 2015 and even taught a few classes in the latter half of the year, I only published two books of the five I’d scheduled and my blogging and social media interaction suffered greatly. As in, Facebook and Twitter died on the vine, my blog and newsletter are on life support, and we won’t talk about my email inbox.

All I could think when I sat down to decide on goals and plans for 2016 was “I hope 2016 is better than 2015.”

Unfortunately, the things that knocked me down were also things that were outside of my control. I can’t guarantee this year will be any better or any easier. All I have control over is my reaction to what comes.

So I decided that since my life has gained a frightening resemblance to fiction, I’d figure out how to become the hero of my story. What do I know about writing a good story that can help me weather this weird stage of life?

Heroes Need Allies

Want a slow, boring book? Let your hero spend unhealthy amounts of time alone, thinking. It’s not any smarter to do in life either. The more time we spend alone in our own heads, the more opportunities we give unhealthy thought patterns to grow.

Allies give us someone to discuss our options with. They provide fresh perspectives that we might not have thought of on our own. We grow our view of the world when they disagree with us.

But allies provide more benefits than simply keeping us from becoming the scary person who talks to themselves all the time.

Our allies—our friends—are the ones who watch our backs. Who hold our hands when we’re scared. Who tell us they believe in us, they’re proud of us. Who have skills that make up for our weaknesses. Who say, “I can’t fix this for you, but I can make sure you don’t have to go through it alone.”

And, in return, we have to be their ally when they need it.

No one can do it all alone.

The Cavalry Isn’t Coming

When life goes sideways, it’s easy to wish for someone or something to rescue us. We dream about winning the lottery. We wish for miracle cures. We fantasize that someone will come in and make the best possible decisions for us and take care of all the problems we’d rather not face.

But books where the cavalry sweeps in at the end and solves all the hero’s problems are unsatisfying and unrealistic. The truth is that in life we have a better chance of getting cancer than we do of winning the lottery.

The cavalry isn’t coming.

No one can fix our problems for us, not even our allies. They can help us, but we have to be willing to help ourselves too.

A hero isn’t going to ride in on a white horse to save us because we are the hero. Or, at least, we have the potential to be.

Unless we want our life story to be a tragedy, we have to make choices and act. We have to pull it together and find strength we never knew we had. We have to take responsibility for our lives and for fighting to make them what we want them to be. We have to be brave enough to find joy in the small things even when we’re broken and bleeding and terrified.

We have to keep the faith, keep hoping, and never give up. Ever. It’s the only way we’ll have a chance to win.

Crises Force Growth

Change is hard. The old ways and old patterns are easier and feel safer. Often it takes struggles to bring us to the point where we’re willing and able to change. The hallmark of a satisfying, memorable story is a hero who learns and changes for the better because of the challenges they face.

We could be the anti-hero with the negative character arc, but is that really the way you want your story to end? It’s not what I want for mine.

I want to come out better than I went in. Stronger. Wiser. Kinder. Braver.

I never want to stop growing as a person.

So that’s how I’m heading in to 2016.

How was your 2015? Feel free to share the good and the bad. Have you set goals for the new year?

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The Inevitable Truth of Life–Things Go Wrong

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

How do you face the difficult times in life?

Over the weekend, my husband and I went to see The Martian, and this is the question I walked away with.

In The Martian, Mark Watney is part of the team of astronauts who went on a Mars mission. Due to a storm, they had to leave the surface of Mars before their allotted time was over. During preparation for lift off, Watney was injured and lost in the storm. The team thought he was dead and had to launch without him–leaving him stranded on Mars, a planet where nothing grows, with no breathable atmosphere, and extreme weather conditions.

I don’t want to spoil too many of the story details for you, but Watney doggedly manages to survive on Mars until he’s able to be rescued, years later.

Once back on earth, Watney becomes an instructor, teaching astronaut candidates. In his first class, he tells them the one inevitable truth of space travel.

At some point, everything will go wrong.

That’s not an if. It’s a when. And when everything goes wrong, there’s really only one thing you can do if you want to survive.

You have to focus on one problem at a time.

The movie was talking about space and what you face there, but it’s also the one inevitable truth about life.

At some point in your life, everything will go wrong. Horribly, heart-breakingly, hope-crushingly wrong.

And there’s only one thing you can do if you want to survive. You focus on one problem at a time.

The big picture—that’s going to be more than we can handle when life blows up in our face. Because if we look at the big picture, it’ll seem impossible to overcome. We’ll feel too weak, too unprepared, too alone. Too everything.

But one problem at a time…well, we can find the strength for that one small thing. Just that thing. Only that thing.

And then the next one.

And the next one.

And one day, we’ll look up, and we’ll have made it out the other side. We’ll have survived.

And if we’re really brave, one day we’ll do what Mark Watney did. We’ll take what we’ve learned and use it to help teach others how to survive. Because at some point in their lives, everything will go wrong.

And what will matter most if they want to survive is knowing how to face it without giving up.

Have you faced a time in your life when everything seemed to go wrong? What helped you through?

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Helpful Ways to Deal with Dream Crushers

Dream Crushers

Image Credit: Len Nguyen

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

Definition of a Dream-Crusher: A person who attempts to discourage or stands in the way of someone else pursuing their dream.

This isn’t a post about The Fantastic Four movie (which was mediocre at best), but I started thinking about dream-crushers because of a scene at the beginning of that movie.

A young Reed Richards gives a presentation to his elementary school class about the scientific break-through (teleportation) he wants to invent when he grows up. When he finishes, his teacher tells him he didn’t do the assignment properly. He was supposed to write a report about a real career.

I felt that reprimand.

I’ve been that kid.

No, I never dreamed of inventing teleportation, but I can still remember sitting in the guidance counselor’s office in high school for my “career counseling session.” I already knew then that I wanted to be a writer, and I didn’t see the point in lying about it.

My guidance counselor pulled up some numbers for average writer income, and strongly advised me to go a different route. With my grades, I could do anything I wanted. He made it clear that writing wasn’t a good career choice.

I know he meant well. He was a kind person. As graduation drew closer and it was time for university applications to be sent, many of my teachers—from my Calculus teacher to my history teacher—kept me after class to recommend I go to university for whatever their subject was. And their disappointment was clear when I told them what I intended to turn into my career.

When I was younger, those types of reactions to my career choice hurt me and made me angry. I felt judged and criticized.

The older I got, the more I understood that this wasn’t a personal attack, even though it felt personal. Anyone who wants to follow an unconventional dream seems to provoke the same reaction from people. I’ve heard people say that they’d never allow their child to go into a creative career.

I started to wonder what causes these reactions. Millions of people enjoy the fruit of those creative professions. They watch TV, read books, listen to music, attend plays, visit art galleries, and watch shows like So You Think You Can Dance. Yet when it comes to the creators of those fruits, they’re so often viewed with disdain.

I’m only one point of view, but I think the cause lies in three different reasons. And when we understand those reasons, hopefully we can start to find productive ways to deal with them.

Cause #1 – Misunderstandings about the profession and the people in it.

There seems to be a misconception about creatives that we’re lazy. That we sit around all day, excusing our lack of output with claims of waiting for the muse to strike or writer’s block. They think we simply don’t want to put in the effort a real job requires. We’d rather play than work.

They see us as slothful addicts, prone to drinking too much of our beverage of choice and unhealthy eating that leads to unhealthy bodies.

Or they think we can’t make good money. (True, some creatives don’t. But some creatives do.)

They think anyone can do it, and they talk about how someday they’d like to learn to paint or play an instrument or write a book. When they retire. When they have more free time. Because those things are really more of a hobby.

As a creative myself, I can’t claim to know or understand all the misconceptions out there.

What I can do, what we all can do, is tackle them when we run into them. We’re partly to blame for these misconceptions. We can take care of our health. When we talk to non-creatives, we can make sure they understand that this is a business as well as an art. We work hard. We put in long hours. We all know of creatives who’ve been successful and can serve as good examples even if we’re not there yet ourselves. We can share the hours of education and training that actually go into what we do. We can treat our dream career with more respect and confidence and fewer apologies.

Cause #2 – The feeling that creatives are judging them or looking down on non-creatives.

Let’s be honest here. It’s easy to (incorrectly) think that people in more standard jobs aren’t living their dreams. And when we have that mindset, it comes across to people.

Non-creatives have dreams that are just as big and just as valuable. Two of my best friends are perfect examples.

One wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and homeschool her children. That’s her dream. That brings her fulfillment and joy. It’s her dream, and no one should belittle her dream.

My other friend is a teacher. She started out her university years with the intention to become a doctor, but what she loved, what she really wanted to do, was to teach young children. So she chased after it. It’s a beautiful, valuable dream. She makes a difference. And she’s happy.

For some people, their dream doesn’t involve a job at all. They’re happy with going to work simply to make money because their dream involves being able to spend their off-hours at their cottage or creating pottery in their garage.

We, inadvertently, sometimes convey the idea that we’re “better” somehow because we’ve bucked tradition and chosen to walk our own path as creatives. We expect people to show interest in and support for our career, but we don’t always show the same for their passions.

Here’s what I’m trying to do instead. I’m trying to ask people what they’re passionate about and what they love to do, rather than what they do to earn a living. It levels the playing field, and it allows me to invest in them before I expect them to invest in me. My dream might be different from theirs, but it’s no better.

Cause #3 – Failed dreams of their own.

This is the saddest. The most troubling.

Some people try to crush us and make us conform because they gave up on their own dreams.

At times these people are so easy to spot that I want to cry for them. Talk to them for very long and you’ll be able to learn about that dream they didn’t chase because they use it as an example of why you shouldn’t chase yours. Their reasons for giving up their dream are varied. They don’t even always recognize their motivations for giving it up. Maybe they were scared. Maybe they truly weren’t capable of chasing their dreams—the need to eat, the need to put someone else first, or the lack of talent became an impenetrable barrier.

You can often spot these people because they chose their career for practical reasons, and now, a few years in, are disillusioned and dissatisfied with their work. They live for their vacation days and complain about their jobs regularly. They’re jaded with the work they do. They can’t wait to retire.

And the only way to make themselves feel better about their choice is to make sure no one proves them wrong. Seeing someone succeed at their unconventional dream hurts them deep inside, in a place they’re not brave enough to admit to or face.

We can’t change these people. All we can do is pity them. Pity them and show them more kindness than they show us and hope that, someday, they’ll find something that makes them happy too.

Have you run into dream-crushers before? How have you handled it? What do you think makes people try to crush the dreams of others?

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It’s Okay to Be Angry

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

Too often we’re made to think that anger is a negative emotion, one we should avoid because it’s weak or shows a lack of self-control.

You can see it in The Avengers in the way Dr. Bruce Banner is treated. His character is a personification of anger. If Banner gets angry, he turns into a giant green monster capable of breaking an entire city. 

When we first meet Banner in The Avengers, he’s working as a doctor in the slums of Calcutta. S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Natasha Romanoff tricks him into coming to a deserted hut on the edge of the city. The hut is secretly surrounded by snipers just in case Banner loses control.

Banner ducks inside, and she steps out of the shadows.

“For a man who’s supposed to be avoiding stress,” she says, “you picked a hell of a place to settle.”

Banner turns around. “Avoiding stress isn’t the secret.”

“What’s the secret then?”

Banner doesn’t tell her how he’s managed to go a year without turning into the Hulk, and throughout the movie, that becomes the question.

The others either tiptoe around him, try to provoke him to expose his “secret,” or they take protective measures in case he does get angry. (Measures that include a giant cage that will drop him from the sky.)

We treat anger the same way in our lives. We block it off, pretend we aren’t angry when we are, or try to learn techniques and tricks to keep from getting angry.

But the secret isn’t to keep from becoming angry.

At the end of the movie, the Avengers line up to fight the alien army set to invade earth.

“Dr. Banner,” Captain America says, “now might be a really good time for you to get angry.”

Banner strides toward the aliens. “That’s my secret, Captain. I’m always angry.”

Everyone thought that Banner had discovered some way to keep from getting angry and that was how he prevented himself from becoming the Hulk.

The truth was he hadn’t purged his anger. He’d learned how to control it. By the end of the movie, he’d even learned how to harness it and redirect it for good.

Feeling angry isn’t wrong. Anger is merely an emotion. Sometimes it can even be healthy if we’re angry over injustice or true evil. And denying it or hiding it won’t make it go away.

It’s what we do with anger that matters. (Click here if you’d like to tweet that.)

Do we allow our anger to hurt and destroy? Or do we channel it into righting wrongs?

It’s the difference between a father who goes out and murders the drunk driver who killed his only daughter and a father who finds a way to bring about stricter punishments for drunk drivers and establishes a safe ride program in his town. Both were justified in their anger. But one used it for evil while the other used it for good.

It’s the difference between saying something cruel back to a person who’s hurt our feelings and using that anger to remind us how not to treat other people.

It’s the difference between screaming at our spouse because we feel like they never help us around the house and letting that anger be our cue that it’s time to have a painfully honest talk about weaknesses in the marriage that we need to work on.

What do you think? Is it alright to get angry? Or should we work on trying to purge ourselves of anger?

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I Miss Old-Fashioned Values

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

Avengers: Age of Ultron comes to theaters this Friday, and because of that, I thought I’d take a look at some of the lessons hidden in the first movie. A couple of the posts I’m going to share in this Tuesday series are flashbacks (I posted them when the original Avengers movie released), but I’m going to be adding a few new ones as well. Hopefully, I’ll find as many gems in the second movie as I did in the first. So here we go…

Do We Need to Be a Little More Old-Fashioned?

If you woke up one day to find that 70 years had passed, would you be excited or would you mourn for lost friends and family and the way of life you’d known?

When we meet Steve Rogers again in The Avengers, he’s still struggling with this very thing. Back in 1942, a special serum turned him into Captain America, and in the middle of fighting a rogue group of Nazis known as Hydra, he accidentally ended up in suspended animation. He wakes up in the “present day.” The world has changed a lot since 1942.

Not surprisingly, Steve feels like he and his values are obsolete. He doesn’t understand Tony Stark’s cavalier attitude or circumvention of the rules, or Bruce Banner’s scientific mumbo jumbo, or any of the pop references the others make (except for one about flying monkeys—and he’s almost pathetically excited about finally “getting one”).

It doesn’t look like there’s much that can break up the gloom surrounding what should be a golden boy character. But on their way to the flying ship, Agent Coulson tells Steve that they’ve updated his Captain America costume.

“Aren’t the stars and stripes a little old fashioned?” Steve asks.

Agent Coulson looks him straight in the eyes. “With all that’s going on in the world, people might want a little old fashioned.”

Throughout the movie, Steve comes to realize that Coulson was right. People are starting to not only want a little old-fashioned, we’re starting to need it.

And it’s not about the evils of technology. Technology isn’t evil. It’s not about needing to reconnect with nature and unplug. It’s not about retro becoming the latest fashion trend or collecting records or bottle caps.

It’s about reviving some old-fashioned values. I suspect that, like me, a lot of people long for the return of some of the things we’ve lost.

I’m only 30, but when I was a child, stores in my town were closed on Sundays. Was it an inconvenience if you wanted to buy something? Yes. But didn’t we always manage to survive until Monday? And wasn’t that a small price to pay to give everyone a day of rest, a day focused on friends and family?

I miss the idea of a day of rest. And a 40-hour work week that gave you enough income to live off of. Not only live off of, but raise a family on.

I miss when a handshake meant something, people did what they promised, and you could leave your doors unlocked.

I miss teamwork. Days when it wasn’t about getting ahead as an individual by stepping on others, but rather about working together to make sure everyone achieved their goals. We didn’t feel the need to shout to be heard. We didn’t feel the need to sing our own praises because we knew that if we did a good job, someone else would sing them for us.

Those are the type of things that made the good old days good. Those are the things that are now old-fashioned, and those are the things I think we need to fight to get back.

I’m an optimist, but even I know that I can’t turn back time. I can’t change society to make stores close on Sundays again, and we can’t safely leave our doors unlocked even in small towns anymore.

Captain America couldn’t force Tony Stark or any of the others to accept his values either, but he chose to act on what he believed, and by the end of the movie, however subtly, it was his example they followed, even Stark. The man who “didn’t play well with others” worked as part of a team, and even risked sacrificing himself to save the world.

While I can’t change the world, I can change me. Like Captain America, I can still live by those old-fashioned values.

I can refuse to work seven days a week because my body and my relationships need that day of rest. My handshake and my word can still mean something. And I can support others and let my actions speak for themselves. I have control over me.

And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us change ourselves, the world will one day follow.

What old-fashioned value do you think needs to be revived? How are you helping to bring it back?

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Why I Hate the Jedi

Why I Hate the JediFor those of you who missed it, I’ve been having an…interesting few weeks. You can catch the pertinent details in my post I’m Having One of Those Weeks. Thank you to everyone who sent me kind messages and helped to cheer me up. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. Unfortunately, since I wrote that post, my grandma fell and fractured her pelvis. Because I’ve been caring for her, my wonderful husband (and resident Star Wars expert in our house) offered to write a guest post for me to prevent my blog from sitting dormant. So I’ll hand my blog over to him…

(P.S. For those of you who were wondering about the results of the poll I took last week, the results were overwhelming. Over 75% of you like both the writing and the “other” posts and don’t want me to change this blog. So I won’t 🙂 )

Why I Hate the Jedi

And Why I Love the Mandalorians

By Marcy’s Husband Chris

For many Star Wars fans, Luke Skywalker is a hero. He’s the hometown boy who discovers himself and goes on to save the galaxy, starting with a two-meter-wide exhaust port on the Death Star I. But what makes Luke Skywalker able to do these things is that he’s a Jedi, maybe one of the greatest ever. In my mind, it’s quite possible that Luke Skywalker—not Darth Vader—was the Chosen One of the Jedi prophesies.

But he’s also whiny and indecisive. He spends too much time meditating and trying to peer into the Force to find guidance. He lacks the killer edge needed to finish a fight against a deadly enemy.

But the main reason I dislike him is simple–he’s a rotten, stinking Jedi.

You might be wondering whether I’ve had too much ale if I have such a view of the Jedi, and maybe on some counts you’d be right. But I’ve read too much about the Jedi to continue to have a view of them as heroes. So here’s a list of why I hate the Jedi—and why I love Boba Fett’s fellow Mandalorians.

Why I Hate the Jedi

They’re only special because of a random genetic manifestation. The Jedi are only able to do the things they do because the Force manifests itself in them. Take away the Force, and the Jedi are just regular beings like you and me. They generally do nothing that makes them special in the grand scheme of things—they don’t cure diseases, they don’t avert wars, they don’t create inventions that revolutionize the way the people of the galaxy live. In short, they’re only special because of their genetics, and that doesn’t make them very special in my book.

They rely too much on their feelings. From the time they’re young, Jedi are taught to trust the Force, to rely on their feelings. They aren’t encouraged to think for themselves or to develop their brainpower. They don’t know how to effectively analyze a situation and come up with the best solution. And they allow their feelings to drive them, rather than trying to strike a good balance between emotion driving them and logic directing them.

They are hypocrites. This point goes hand-in-hand with the next point. The Jedi profess to holding all life as being sacred, but they don’t seem to live up to that mantra very often. They’re too quick to pull out their lightsabers and lop off limbs or sever heads from bodies. With all their powers, they too often resort to violence. But the worst part of this was the way the Jedi accepted command of the clone army at the start of the Clone Wars. The clones were bred to fight; they had no choice. The clones had no rights, no freedoms, no possessions. The Jedi unthinkingly accepted command of this army, despite having little to no training at leading troops, and got untold numbers of clone troops killed during the war. And none of the members of the Jedi leadership cabal stopped to ask where the army came from, or questioned the use of the Jedi as generals in fighting a pointless war. This is the biggest reason I hate the Jedi.

They aren’t held accountable for their actions. Too many times, Jedi caused massive property damage or loss of life and weren’t held accountable for their actions. When they commit crimes, they don’t have to go to prison the way anyone else would. It’s almost like they feel being Jedi gives them a blank slate to do what they want without thinking about the consequences of their actions or having to deal with the consequences of their actions in any way. They’re above the law, and that makes them selfish and cavalier with the lives and possessions of others.

So there you have it: four reasons why I hate the Jedi. Now I’ll give four reasons why I love the Mandalorians instead—even though they’re almost universally considered to be thugs.

They aren’t afraid to love. Mandalorians love strongly and unflinchingly. They willingly adopt people as their own children, including those they would otherwise hate. They aren’t afraid to wear their emotions on their sleeves, but unlike the Jedi, they don’t let their emotions guild them. Emotions are the Mandalorians’ power source, but their brains remain the pilot. This is how the Jedi should operate.

Family is paramount. Mandalorians are very family-oriented. Their families and their clans are all that matters to them. Fathers take their sons out to teach them their trade, and everyone contributes to the effective running of the homestead. It is also common for a Mandalorian to formally adopt the child of a comrade that was killed in battle—no Mandalorian should be without a family to love them and care for them.

They are a united front. Regardless of their personal feuds, Mandalorians put aside their differences when facing a common enemy or threat. Antagonists become allies, and they apply all of their considerable ingenuity and martial skill to defeating their common enemy. Nobody wants to mess with a combat-ready force of Mandalorians—not even Jedi.

Cin vhetin. This is a phrase meaning “fresh start.” Regardless of who you are, no matter what your past is, once you join the Mandalorians, nobody cares about who you once were. You are now a Mandalorian, and that’s all that matters. This also applies to settling feuds between Mando’ade; once cin vhetin is declared, those two might become the best of friends.

What do you think? Do you still love the Jedi? Do you still think the Mandalorians are violent thugs? Or do you maybe think I’m right?

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