The Clown and the Lion Tamer

Send in the clowns they say, but

do the clowns really fare any better than the lion tamers?

One appears more serious and defies death every day;

The other pretends to laugh at life and faces inner death at every turn.

The difference is that the lion tamers are constantly on guard and

they know the danger of not paying attention.

Every day they are not eaten is a gift.

The clowns must continue to keep the fake happiness plastered on their face,

no matter how much they hurt underneath and no matter how much they hate the crowd for their soft devotion.

The clowns are the entertainment; after the show they clear off the paint and

blend into the crowd, never taking their painted smiles with them.

For the lion tamer, the night holds no fear, for the beast is in his cage.

Death is around every corner for the lot of us, but the lion tamers

know that they are one bite and one hungry lion away from eternity.

No one is surprised when the lion tamers leave too early—it is the nature of their beasts.

May we see beneath the painted smiles and hold the hand of a clown today,

for every night their paint comes off and they are left with no one to entertain but themselves.

Both clowns and lion tamers must face death, but it does not have to be timely;

            Show love to those who hide beneath their painted smiles. 

For Robin Williams 1951-2014

A Human Being: Being Human (A Poem)

Into a sea of faces I march each day, intrigued by the interactions of people.

The world tells us we are so different:  religion, gender, who we love, our skin color, our language.

Sometimes I like to imagine the world in monochrome with the volume off.  When I see the world that way all I see is billions of souls who laugh, smile, hurt, cry, and long for the touch of another soul.

Are we that much different from each other?

Are the barriers created by man or machines, by God or by governments, by disorder or by distance?

I follow Jesus because he loved them all; but how did he accomplish something that we fail at every day?

If He was human just like us, don’t we have the same power to love and show compassion, to cry with the lonely and hurt with the broken down?

So I move forward, putting steps between me and the clamor of the world, between the world’s negativity and hate and the powers and distractions that beg for my attention.

I choose love, as simplistic and boring as that sounds.  Love that covers a multitude of sins; that moved Jesus to compassion and to pity for those who lived without it.

The sea of faces longs for this love.  May they find it and be thankful with each breath for the gift of life; each rise and fall of our chest a reminder of the journey we all share. 

May love be the last thought on our minds as we slip the bonds of earth and move toward our common destiny, knowing that love will show us the way there. 

Body Check: Dealing with Persistent Problems of Body Image

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Hello.  My name is David and I have a body image problem.  I have always been too skinny or too fat or too big around the middle.  I am never “just right” and I am never lean enough.  There are many reasons that I am a big guy: my genetics (all the guys in my family were big), work ethic (I do just enough at the gym to maintain), and general insecurities that I never have gotten over from childhood.  I also love to eat, refuse to be a vegan, and I don’t really want to work out six hours a day (four or five times a week for about an hour is plenty). Oh, did I mention I REALLY LOVE to eat?

I succumb to all the same media hype that brainwashes many women. For them, it is the supermodels, Victoria’s Secret angels, and the fit actresses. For men, it is the Ralph Lauren cologne models, the athletes with six-pack abs, and the bodybuilders.  Men will not admit it, but they are influenced by the “ideal” body image more times than they want to admit.

This is a problem that I will undoubtedly deal with the rest of my life. There are a number of ways to address this issue. The first is to give up hope and let your body run into disrepair, give yourself some slack, and let nature take its course.  You can look at the people in your family and just resign yourself to the fact that you will look like your older relatives someday.  Cancel your gym membership (that’s a waste of money anyway).  Eat whatever you want. You may still exercise, but just enough to keep up with your food consumption.  If you run a mile, that means you can get a double cheeseburger instead of a single and don’t have to feel guilty about those second helpings.

A second option is to put your training regimen into third or fourth gear.  Hire a personal trainer and completely change your eating habits. Only shop at the health food store. Take enough vitamins every day to hear yourself rattle when you walk. Never indulge or treat yourself.  Stay away from all bad foods and beverages and work out incessantly. Sadly, after six months, you will look in the mirror and probably still not be happy. There will always be the person at the gym with lower body fat or more developed muscles.  You may have an amazing body, but other body image issues will take over.  For women, certain body parts will give in to the effects of gravity. For men, your hairline will continue to recede no matter how fast you try to hold it back.

There has to be a middle ground and I am constantly searching for it.  I want to challenge and push myself, but also know that it is impractical to work out three hours a day. Sure I could do it for a few months, but there is no way I could keep it up for years. I want to find exercises that keep me in shape, add variety to my routine, and continue to improve a little each year.  I am a person that likes to set goals, so I have chosen to run a couple of 5Ks a year and walk one or two as well.  As far as food goes, I want to start eating cleaner and continue to keep away from fries, buffets, and opportunities to overeat. But I must learn to give myself a few days a month to indulge. I will occasionally have the fries, but very rarely. I will teach myself to stop eating when I want to keep going. I also want to work on my body fat and bring it down to a reasonable level.  I will probably never have six-pack abs, but that’s alright.

The key is learning to be discontented with your body without choosing either extreme. I think a slight unhappiness with your body is a good thing, but only as it compares to your personal motivations.  Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to look a certain way.  Be your own personal trainer and push yourself, but find a few friends that can give you a nudge when you need it. Get in shape and stay in shape for the right reasons, mainly for your health and to be able to have an active and productive life.

My name is David and I will always be unhappy with my body.  As long as I don’t reach the point of obsession, that is a great problem to have. I just have to stay balanced, but always choose to keep changing, moving, and pushing myself forward for a long and healthy life.

The Summer of My Discontent

“Intention, good or bad, is not enough.”

~John Steinbeck, from The Winter of Our Discontent

For many years I was taught that being discontented is a bad thing.  As Christians, I was told, we should always be filled with joy and that discontent is a sign of weakness. I was told we should never be unhappy with our life because we have so much to be thankful for, especially in America.  Maybe it is a defect in my personality, but I have always disagreed slightly with that philosophy.

For years, I was continually fighting my weight.  I was in a constant struggle with food that I always lost.  At some point, I resigned to the fact that I had no control over food, that I could not exercise regularly because of a plethora of reasons, and that I just needed to accept my life in its current state.  It was the same with my job.  I had dreamed of getting my doctorate and teaching at the college level, but more than once I gave up on that dream as well. In a sense, I was content with the person I had become, but hating that person at the same time.  Because that was my present reality, I felt that would be my reality for the rest of my life.

Then the age of 40 reared its ugly head.  Forty is a magical and terrifying age.  It is not the age to look back and have regrets or look forward with dread. I had done many great things: successful teacher, loving father, active in my church and singing regularly, and a seemingly happy husband. But under the surface bubbled an insecure person that was bursting at the seams to get out and do something different.  This was not the person I wanted to be and I felt I had to make a change for the sake of my sanity. 

Now I am happier than I have ever been, and one reason for that transformation is because of my discontent.  I want to be a better professor next year than I was this year.  I want to learn more every day, gain more skills, teach different classes, improve my writing, and open up a part of myself that I never knew existed.  I want to continually improve my fitness level and find new challenges to pursue. I kept most of my weight off in the last five years, ran a whole 5K, and pushed myself in the gym every time I went.  But that is not enough.  I know I can do better, push myself harder, run faster, or make changes that will make me feel better about my body.

I know skeptics will say: “How do you know when you have reached the point where you are happy with yourself?”  If they say that, they have missed the whole point. I never want to be content with where I am. I know someday I will look back and applaud what I have accomplished, but I hope that I will still be pursuing new challenges until the day I die. I want to be like Betty White, still acting in her 90s. I want to be Willie Nelson (minus his obvious bad habit), who got a Black Belt in Karate at 82.  I want to be like Bill Cosby, still active and extremely funny well into his 80s.  I don’t want to worry about death at every corner, but I want to naively pretend I will live forever. 

Yes, I am an idealist, but that is the way I choose to live.  I want to always be looking for the next challenge, reading the next book, or wondering what is around the next corner.  I want to continually be striving to improve myself, as well as taking care of the ones I love, supporting my children as they transform into adults, training my body into submission, becoming a more effective college instructor and mentor, and seizing ways to make a difference in other peoples’ lives every day. 

Will you join me? The only limits you have are the ones you place on yourself.

Let’s get going!  It is a long summer, so we better get started.

For the Love of Nature, Part II

“We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive.”~Aldo Leopold

Part I of this story began almost 20 years ago.  I was teaching an environmental unit with my middle school science students called “Mission:  New Earth”.  We decorated the room, had guest speakers, worked in teams, and recorded video commercials to promote starting over on a new planet after ours was left desolate and depleted.  It was Project Based Learning before I even knew what I was doing; back then we called it interdisciplinary learning. I truly enjoyed teaching the unit and had it published in Science Scope in 1997. 

After teaching that project for four years, I moved to a different middle school and conducted field trips to a local watershed with my seventh grade science students.  In 1998, Gary Endsley and I started the Environmental Technology Camps with Texas Parks and Wildlife and I became involved with River Basins Institute. We conducted the camps for five years and they were very successful.  During that time, I also taught High School Biology and Environmental Science in Queen City and even started an outdoor learning center.

The summer camps featured field trips and science activities in the morning and technology applications in the afternoon.  We offered day camps for middle school and elementary students, including Creepy Crawley Critters, Archaeology Academy, and Junior Master Gardener.  We learned about forestry and tested water and took field trips to local water treatment plants and the Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens.  The highlight of the summer was a three-day trip to Caddo Lake, where we met with Wildlife Biologists, took boat rides, tested water, and stayed in cabins. 

The camps eventually lost their funding and my time at River Basins Institute ended, but my love for nature never did. Gary and I got busy with other interests and I began working on a lifelong dream of getting my doctorate and teaching at the college level. Now that I am settled into a job preparing science and math teachers, my love for nature and environmental science has been rekindled. I am currently working on strengthening a partnership between UTeach and River Legacy Living Science Center in Arlington. I will also attend an environmental camp this summer sponsored by Luminant Energy.

As I walked today on a local nature trail in DFW, I was struck with the connections between man and his local environment.  On my left side was the Trinity River, wetlands, and fields of wildflowers.  I could hear the chirping of birds, saw a turtle getting warm on a log, watched a majestic Great Blue Heron take wing, and saw a long garter snake race across the sidewalk.  On my right, I could hear the roar of cars and diesels moving across George Bush Tollway (Hwy 161).  It seemed like such a contrast. Some would think it is sad that man has encroached on nature and taken away the luster of the natural world. But I see it differently. I am blessed that I can experience a place where people recognize the eternal interplay between man and nature.  It is not an either/or scenario.  It will always be a balance between the needs of mankind (transportation, housing, etc.) and the magnificence of nature. I want to teach students that we must create harmony between the two.  But we must also teach our children the importance of nature and let them see its value, beauty, and necessity.

I hope I can instill a wonder for nature and a love for the environment in my future teachers.  It is not a distraction, but a necessity if we hope to protect this wondrous world that we have been given, as we gently pass it to the next generation.