The Beauty of Emotions

Lately, I feel like I’ve been inundated with “end of the world as we know it”-type entertainment. Okay, well, actually I guess I’ve just been obsessing over one particular “end of the world as we know it” movie. It all started last Thursday when I was reading one of my favorite magazines Entertainment Weekly. Thumbing through the pages, I came across an column regarding the upcoming Roland Emmerich film, "2012." The movie is supposedly based on the end of the world occuring in the year 2012 (as predicted thousands of years ago with some weird calendar/magic/math work) and centers around the destruction which follows. In his article, the author Mark Harris completely ripped apart the film – based on the clips he’d seen in its trailer – claiming that it “does little more than string together image after image of computer-generated cataclysm to stimulate the part of your brain that just wants to see stuff (and people) blow up real good (source: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20311060,00.html - Entertainment Weekly, Harris, 1).” Intrigued, and slightly disgusted by his references to the film’s apparently flippant take on September 11, I went to youtube to view this trailer for myself. Sure enough, after about 30 seconds I found myself in shock at the outrageous and gruesome images of St. Peter’s Basilica crumbling onto millions of people praying inside, highways and roads spontaneously exploding for no reason, and, my personal favorite, the ridiculously over the top, irony-so-subtle-it-might-as-well-be-a-baseball-bat-hitting-me-over-the-head image of a huge ship named “SS John F. Kennedy” floating over a giant wave and eventually capsizing directly on top of the white house!

(At some point, the utterly horrific images - like this of a ship crashing over the white house - devoid of any emotional context in the 2012 trailer caused me to become de-sensitized to the destruction and, frankly, bored! Image courtesy of: http://www.wildaboutmovies.com/images_7/2010_325_3.jpg)

At the time, I thought I was so disturbed by these images because they were so violent and, almost, inconceivable. However, after reading Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I can now put my finger on exactly why the trailer for this movie disturbed me so much. It’s because amidst all of the destruction and pain and death shown in that two minute trailer, there is absolutely zero semblance of emotion visible – neither on the characters faces nor in the narrator’s voice. Said Harris, “If you've seen Emmerich's earlier movies, you already know his MO: Forget about the millions of people who are dying, because what are they, in the grand scheme of things, but [ordinary people] (Harris, 1).” I don’t think that the director means to imply in his trailer or his film that if an apocalypse of such horrific proportions does actually occur, people will be emotionless about it. But the fact that he includes none of the natural emotions people would feel – such as fear, anger, desperation – in his film doesn’t make for a good film for the sole reason that it hardens the viewer to the circumstances and leaves us watching this “destructo-porn" (Harris, 1) without accessing our most important emotion – empathy.

Which brings me to my most recent “the world is almost unbelievably different from what it used to be” encounter, Dick’s novel. This book is, like "2012", set in the future. Unlike "2012", emotions are the key to this story. As I began reading it, I wasn’t sure how I could respond in a discussion board to something I could barely understand myself. Who is an android? Who is a human? Are there such things as “good” androids? How do the humans know which ones to kill? Why do they all have to have such weird and unpronounceable names?! But then I realized, it’s not so important that I understand every minute plot point, the thing I could write about was the thing I was most touched by – the inner-spirit and emotions of the characters. The thing I was struck most by when reading was how incredibly in tune the characters in the novel – humans and androids alike – are with their emotions. I guess because they are living in a world where everything that would inspire emotions like love and happiness has been destroyed, they crave it even more. This is made most evident in each human’s desire to own a real animal, not just an electronic version. When Rick Deckard sees what he believes to be a real owl, he realizes how much he needs an animal, thinking to himself that “an electric sheep was nothing – nothing at all. It had no feelings and didn’t even know that he existed (Dick, 12).” Rick wants not only to love but to feel that love in return, to feel needed by somebody. These human emotions are so basic that we ourselves take them for granted. It is unprofessional in the workplace or in public a lot of the time to make huge displays of affection or to cry uncontrollably, because society today often encourages us to repress a lot of emotions. I found this novel’s scary reality of living in a world where emotions are so scarce that people cling to them – and even make machines to allow themselves to “feel” in different ways – actually quite refreshing. (I never realized how absolutely essential emotions - especially "bad" ones like sadness, fear, anger, and desperation are to achieving empathy. Image courtesy of: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/brain/images/1-1-2-1-3-0-0-0-0-0-0.jpg)

The other piece of the book I knew I wanted to write about in my blog was the mood machine. First of all, how cool is that?! The first thought that came into my mind was about how much I wanted one for myself, especially now that I’m in college. Some mornings when I wake up at 5:20 and think about the freezing pool I have to jump into, I know I could definitely use the mood machine (I’d crank it up to whatever setting makes you joyful enough to actually want to wake up at such an ungodly hour to workout….) for myself. That’s why I found myself incredulous to read Iran Deckard say to her husband when he offered to change her machine to make her happier, “Don’t touch my mood settings, I don’t want to be awake (Dick, 1).” I could not understand why anyone with the capability to use these machines would not keep themselves constantly living in a state of unadulterated contentment. That was, until I read another point made by Iran when she decides to dial her mood machine to depression: “I was in a 382 mood at the time, so I heard the emptiness but I did not feel it. I realized that it was unhealthy not to react to the absence of life (Dick, 2).” Wow, how spot-on is Iran?! Empathy is something I had honestly not really considered before reading this book, at least in the sense of pondering its origins within us as humans. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Iran is right. Before I got a back injury, I always sort of took my swimming for granted. Sure, I was happy when I won races, but it took going through a very painful year physically and emotionally to allow me to really feel true joy and pride in swimming fast. You can’t experience truly “high” highs without experiencing “low” lows. D. Goleman writes in The Roots of Empathy that, “Empathy builds on self-awareness; the more open we are to our own emotions, the more skilled we will be in reading feelings (Course Anthology, 275C)”. What if Iran kept her mood machine on a “happy” level all the time, like I suggested? She would be "at a complete loss when it comes to knowing what anyone else around [her] is feeling (Course Anthology, 275C)." She wouldn’t ever feel empathy for those around her, wouldn’t ever feel ANY true emotions that make people, well, human. She is self-aware enough to recognize the importance of experiencing the whole spectrum of human emotions and this is what makes her human and not android in a world where the difference between the two is small but vastly important.

All I can say now is that I am very excited to continue reading Dick’s novel. I am excited, of course, to learn the fate of all the characters I have already come to love (and be confused by!), but mostly I’m excited to see other ways in which Dick’s future world shines a magnifying glass on our own choices, thoughts, and emotions.

(Below is the "2012" trailer I spoke of earlier. Warning: mass destruction with little emotional context. You have been warned... Trailer courtesy of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz86TsGx3fc)

Lewis Carroll's Magnifying Glass on Animal Treatment

Throughout elementary school and all the way through 9th grade I was the proud “mother” of my two guinea pigs, CJ and Laser. They were brothers but looked completely different – CJ was black and white and Laser was completely white with sharp red eyes (hence the name “Laser”…). Though they mostly ate, slept, and ran around in our garage, I absolutely adored them. My little brother and I would spend hours every night cleaning their cage, cutting carrots and celery to give them as treats, and creating obstacle courses made out of “Legos” around our garage for them to run through. I’m not sure how it started, but soon after we received the guinea pigs as gifts from a friend, my family and I began a strange ritual of making up voices for the animals since, really, they didn’t seem to have much of a personality to us at that point. We gave them both heavy Brooklyn accents (again, no clue as to what was going through our minds at this point…_) and made up little conversations they could be having with each other and with us as we watched them eating hay or “popcorning” (the phrase guinea pig lovers know as describing the way they jump around when they’re excited or happy) around the garage. “Shhhpinn,” (oh yeah, they also had a lisp…) my mom would exclaim as she pretended to be CJ, “please feed me! And not any of that gross celery either, I want apples!”(Me playing some kind of game with little CJ when he was about 4 years old). After we spent more time with CJ and Laser and learned more about their individual personalities, the “voices” we made up for them seemed less necessary, yet the habit stuck.

As I read Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and took note of the way he anthropomorphizes the creatures in both books to the point where they can talk like humans, walk like humans, and basically are humans, I was immediately reminded of what my family and I did with our guinea pigs. Why does Carroll give the animals in each story the ability to talk? Well, why did my mom choose to have Laser the guinea pig ask me about how a history test went as I fed him? The sad truth is, we as humans find it difficult to relate to animals on even a basic level. Especially, I think, is this true with pets, for we feed them, we keep their environment clean, we control much of their lifestyle. We are in a position of power over them to the point where it is difficult to put ourselves on their level and truly understand what is going on in their minds. This is not to say that we do not bond with them, as Alice does with her cat Dinah. Yet Alice’s relationship with Dinah is one of master and pet, she scolds and speaks to Dinah as though she is nothing but….well, her pet. But if animals could talk in real life, as they do in Wonderland and the Looking Glass world, it would certainly be easier to see them as having the same feelings and basic rights as we do. We begin to think, subconsciously I would hope, as Carroll suggests, “that man is infinitely more important than the lower animals.” (Course Anthology, 324). Alice, even, treats the animals she comes in contact with in both stories much the same as people in the real world do. There are instances where she talks down to the animals, as she does when she argues with the Pigeon in Wonderland, instances in which she insults them, as she does when she cruelly asks the mouse “Ou est ma chatte?” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 26). For me, the most obvious example of Alice considering these animals to be “lower” than herself, is when she chooses to kick Bill the lizard, “…to see what would happen next.” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 43). Carroll uses the narrow-minded lens through which Alice views the animals around her to make obvious that treatment of animals as if they are worth less than we as humans, or as if their feelings are any less real or important as ours, is simply wrong. I believe he emphasizes this by making these animals as human-like as possible – so we as readers could take out the descriptions of the animals, replace them with human descriptions, and read the book never knowing that Alice was kicking a talking lizard named Bill but rather kicking a talking person named Bill. Would Alice kick a man named Bill for no obvious reason? I doubt it. Carroll’s human/animal parallel is drawn effectively in this way.
While reading Carroll’s works, I began to ask myself what I thought about animal cruelty and, more importantly, what defined it. One of my guinea pigs, CJ, had to be put down after he suffered a sort of stroke. At the time, I couldn’t understand how my parents could condone the murder (as I saw it) of my little animal. Of course, I now understand the act of putting animals out of pain to be a reasonable and good practice. Jude, from Thomas Hardy’s “Jude the obscure”, felt the same way when he “could rest no longer until he had put [the rabbit] out of its pain [… and so] he struck the rabbit on the back of the neck with the side of his palm, and it stretched itself out dead.” (Course Anthology, 222).

(Since you are all familiar with my LOST obsession by now, I thought I'd share this clip in which the character Ben displays several unnecessary forms of animal cruelty [assuming you count stuffing an animal in a bag, giving it a sedative with no cause, and possible murder via fright as animal cruelty...] - quite the opposite of Jude's treatment of a rabbit in his life!) The issue of animal cruelty starts to get messy when it comes to things like hunting, eating, capturing and enclosing animals in a zoo, and more. Carroll touches most on is the eating of animals, as referenced in the scenes in which Alice is scolded for eating a piece of mutton with whom she has had a conversation of, “Mutton– Alice: Alice – Mutton.” (Through the Looking Glass, 262). Carroll chooses to capitalize the word “Mutton” in another attempt to anthropomorphize an animal in order to further his feelings that the eating of animals is a practice he does not approve of. I'd be willing to bet that, were Alice introduced to a live sheep, she wouldn't even consider eating it.

(Hmmm....before....image courtesy of http://www.recollections.nma.gov.au/shared/libraries/images/temporary_exhibitions/farmers_stories/mitchell/pet_sheep_large/files/17634/Pet-sheep_w480.jpg)

(...and after. Think I've lost my appetite. image courtesy of:http://img.chinaa2z.com/uploadpic/AboutChina/20070924/200709241114171574/2007071101394132849.jpg))

Overall, I was most touched and impressed by the way in which Carroll allows the reader to sympathize with the animals in his story by showing them cruel or, at best, hypocritical behavior on Alice’s part. Certainly the strength of his convictions have caused me to look deep into certain decisions I make regarding animals that do not usually cross my mind; decisions like eating meat, sitting idly by when my brother goes hunting, or even picking my cat up to play with while she is sleeping comfortably in the corner. I think that was one of Carroll’s goal with his Alice books – to allow us to examine our own convictions and question our own ideals, especially with respect to animals.

Learning to be a Leader With Alice

Prior to entering college his fall, I had fancied myself a leader, of sorts. I never held any huge titles of leadership, but I felt confidence in myself and my surroundings to the point that I unofficially took on the role of leadership in many settings. As a member of The Hockaday School swim team, I found myself placed in a role of leadership by my peers because of my abilities in the pool. I took this role on with pride, knowing that it was an honor to be looked up to by my teammates. In swim meets and practices, I always tried to make myself available to answer questions, help with stroke technique, or just be on the sidelines cheering my team onto victory. (Me with part of my high school team after helping lead us onto a 1st place relay finish at the state meet. By the way, recognize anybody in on the far right? 6 degrees of separation, people. It's real.)

As soon as I left home, however, and joined the UT women’s swim team, all of that changed. Suddenly I was not the fastest swimmer in the pool. Not only was I the best in the pool, but I found myself unable to participate in activities like weight lifting and dryland training with the rest of my team. I am young, injured, inexperienced in the ways of college athletics, and completely out of my element. The confidence I had maintained throughout high school was replaced with a sense of inadequacy and any semblance of leadership I carried with me to school was left outside the locker room, along with the rest of my self-esteem.

(My new team, with their goal of 'turning the tower orange' has proved to be a somewhat intimidating environment to enter into. image courtesy of:http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3537/3952989980_48b60726d0.jpg)

Thusly, I found that I could thoroughly relate to Alice’s struggles of falling into a completely new world when reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Though we do not know much of her life before she falls down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, we do see a snippet of her self-confidence prior to entering her new world in her statement, “and what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?” (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 11). She is assured enough in her intelligence to ask probing questions such as this one. However, as soon as she enters the world of Wonderland her confidence is shattered piece by piece by the creatures who tease and argue with her.

What Alice quickly discovered, though, is one very important key to surviving in almost any situation: she learned how to adapt. Early into her journey in her new world Carroll says of Alice, “[she] had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.” (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 19). With this skill, Alice is definitely on the right track to become a leader. As we learned from Robert Brickley, “the world’s body of knowledge doubles every five years.” (Course Anthology, 173F). I think in Wonderland, Alice experiences a form of this – though the “body of knowledge” in Wonderland is certainly skewed at best – and is able to adapt accordingly by choosing to learn from those around her rather than cling to her beliefs no matter what. For example, were she to speak with the caterpillar in Wonderland prior to falling into this new world, she might not have put up with his condescension long enough to listen to or take his advice. Yet, she decides to listen his instructions to eat different sides of the mushroom as “one side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter,” (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 53.) and is able to manipulate her size to her advantage throughout the rest of the story. She manages to maintain humble in her dealings with the creatures and proves herself to be a thoughtful and good listener, and she “seeks first to understand, then to be understood,” an attribute Covey highly admires in a leader (Course Anthology, 220). However, as her confidence grows and as she soaks up enough information about how the creatures and the entire world she is living in operates, she feels the need to speak up when something does not sit right with her. Most memorable of these instances is when she responds to the Red Queen’s instructions to “speak when you’re spoken to!” with the well-thought out and logical remark of, “But if everybody obeyed that rule […], you see nobody would ever say anything!” (Through the Looking Glass, 251).

(Though kind of an... odd band, this song by Freak Kitchen actually supports the Queen's argument to Alice of only speaking when spoken to. Alice grew confidence from listening and learning from her surroundings, disagreed with this statement, and voiced her opinions politely and logically - the way a leader does.) Video Courtesy of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc329X_8bFo

By the end of Through The Looking Glass, Alice has absorbed an incredible amount of knowledge from those she has encountered in this other world. She has exemplified many traits generally seen in leaders and feels, I believe, confident living in any world. Reading about Alice’s struggles with leadership has encouraged me to employ the methods that she and Covey utilize; techniques such as listening to and learning from the faster swimmers around me, accepting that this is the world I live in now and I have no choice but to adapt to it, and remaining humble even when I feel that I am working harder in the pool than others. Alice has taught me that there is more than just one type of leader – and that the definition of a leader in the pool doesn’t have to be the fastest swimmer. I can learn to use my position as a young team member with an injury to be a good listener to others going through the same thing. And, hopefully I can follow Alice’s path and gain confidence in my ability and myself. With such a combination as this, I hope that leadership will come naturally to me once again.

A Passion for Television

My dad claims that, to this day, he can still remember the first time I discovered how to “make believe.” I was four years old, music from the Disney movie on the television wafting over me as I lay with my father on the couch. Suddenly, my father remembers, I jumped up and started to dance around the room, imitating the princess in the animated movie. Then, I looked up at him expectantly and motioned for him to join me, “Papa, I’ll be Beauty and you be the Beast!” I exclaimed. And so it began: my love affair with “make believe”.

Since that moment, I have lived in two worlds: the world of reality and a world of fiction. “Our thoughts are always happening,” writes Ram Dass and Paul Gorman in How Can I Help, “They arise in the form of sensations, feelings, memories, anticipations, and speculations.”[1] Growing up, this was especially true for me, as my imagination was my best friend. School and friends and normal life were secondary to the adventures my imagination would take me on as a kid. I could walk into my backyard and suddenly turn into Pocahontas, sneaking around our dog kennel looking for John Smith. Staying alert during a typical 2^nd grade spelling lesson was next to impossible when it was so easy to daydream about myself starring on the kids television show Zoom rather than listen to my teacher drone on. Instead of asking for flowers or unicorns or some kind of doll decoration, I instead requested Flotsam and Jetsam (the evil eels in Disney’s The Little Mermaid) to be painted with icing onto my cake for my 6^th birthday, thus fulfilling my obsession with becoming the great Octopus villain of the movie – Ursula. And, of course, there was that one unfortunate incident in pre-Kindergarten that involved a fire drill, the teachers calling me by the incorrect name (Spindrift, rather than Ursula as I requested), a strong kick to my principle’s shin, and a long and terrifying wait in the office while my mom was called up to school. Suffice it to say, I was passionate about these alternate realities I created for myself.

As I entered late middle school and early high school years, the imaginary games and visions faded away, replaced by nothing, it seemed. Life just got too busy, too eventful, for me to enter these fantasy worlds. Besides, I told myself, I was far too old to do the whole imagination thing anymore. There was only one world to live in and I’d better start living my life – not one I had made up for myself. I began spending more time with my friends and family, never enjoying myself as much as I did in my imaginary world but trudging on nonetheless. That’s when I discovered Judging Amy.

One of my attempts to spend more time with my family was watching a weekly television show with my mother. That show was Judging Amy, a one-hour drama that aired every Tuesday on CBS.

(Left: Amy and Maxine Gray, played by Amy Brenneman and Tyne Daly, portrayed two of my favorite characters in Judging Amy)

A story about three generations of women living together, the program portrayed the life of a Juvenile Judge from Connected who, as the series progressed, eventually became a highly respected candidate for the US Senate. My mom and I began watching when I was in 7^th grade and, before I knew it, I was hooked. I would rush home from school to watch an episode before swim practice; wondering about what would happen to the main character, Amy, in previous seasons plagued me so much that I found a way to set up my own system of burning DVD’s from the show’s syndicated re-runs airing every night at midnight. I had found a new world to occupy – and I loved it. However, on my last day of middle school, I came home to discover that CBS had cancelled the series I had come to love. I was so irrationally upset that I couldn’t even explain to myself or others why the cancellation affected me so much. The feeling was eerily similar to my dismay at leaving behind my world of “make believe” as a kid.

What followed was my search to re-capture the feeling this tv show had ignited in me. Sure enough, time and television healed my wounds, and I found myself catapulted into the world of every single series I picked up. On any given day of the week, I could find myself enthralled in the prison escape of a genius and his convict brother on FOX’s Prison Break, cheering on the romance of two typical, ordinary, yet perfectly-made-for-each-other paper salesmen on The Office, biting my nails while a bomb scare rocked my favorite hospital drama Grey’s Anatomy, or cringing at the unapologetic corruption of a law firm in the Glenn Close series Damages.

The thing was, I wasn’t just watching television like most people. I was analyzing every move the characters made, writing down quotations from the series I found particularly poignant, daydreaming constantly throughout the summer primetime TV hiatus about how each season finale cliffhanger would be resolved come fall. I joined online message boards for each of my favorite shows and found cyber-friends just as enthralled with these made-up characters and their lives as I was. I cultivated a long-dormant love of creative writing by making up my own stories for the characters and putting them to paper in the form of scripts. (Below: A real script I was given during a trip to a Los Angeles talent agency; one that I modeled my own "scripts" after)I learned to use Windows Movie Maker by taking clips of my favorite scenes from each show, and putting them to music.

My introverted personality had always made it difficult for me to interact with lots of people or enjoy normal, everyday life like most people did. Television, I began to realize, was becoming my new creative outlet and my new version of “make believe.” When I was accused by my mom as being a spectator of life rather than a liver of it, I took a step back to analyze what my TV obsession really was. That’s when I realized – my imaginary games as a little girl almost always involved a character from a Disney movie. My current relaxation methods of listening to music, writing, or even just thinking was usually connected to television in some way. I was more comfortable imagining myself living the lives of the characters on the TV screen than I was in living my own life, just like I was more comfortable floating around my backyard pool pretending to be Ariel the mermaid than I was jumping off the diving board with my friends as a little girl. My passion had gone too far, I decided. So, as when I was in middle school, I shut myself off to the thing that made me feel the happiest. It was unhealthy, I told myself, to be so invested in the (fictitious, no less!) lives of others.

A year passed as I became a “casual viewer” of the shows I used to fanatically obsess over. I found myself more bored and less happy than ever before. I was hyper-sensitive, however, to the fact that television, as my mom reminded me, was not suitable for the role of my passion I had made it into. It was unhealthy for me and unhelpful to those around me. After all, what good does television do for the world or anyone around me other than rot children’s brains and distract them from more important, beneficial things like reading and studying? A series of random events led me to watch a show called LOST and soon enough, that question was answered.

LOST – a series centered on a group of survivors who crash-landed on a mysterious island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean - was different than anything anyone had ever seen on television before. But for me, what was different about this show wasn’t necessarily the content, but how I viewed it. My strict adherance to the unofficial rules for tv watching I had laid out for myself prohibited becoming ultra-involved with this series, and for once I did not envision myself living in the mysterious world of the characters while I watched each episode. However, something new happened. Instead of putting myself in the show mentally, I began to apply the themes of the show to my own life. LOST deals with themes of good and evil, free will vs. destiny, and makes probably the riskiest choice on primetime today by exploring religion throughout the series. This series has a way of challenging viewers to question not the ideals of the characters, but of themselves. Instead of wondering whether or not the Iraqi former-torturer will repeat his long-buried past of torturing on a fellow plane-crash survivor, we find ourselves questioning, “what would I do in a situation like that?” I still remember the first time I literally found myself stopped in my tracks by a scene in the show – during an argument by the show’s two main characters, Jack Shepherd and John Locke (oh yeah, the historical reference in the name is intentional and utilized often in LOST, another of my favorite intricacies of the series) over coincidence versus fate.(Left, Locke and Jack argue - one of my favorite scenes of LOST). I went to sleep the night after watching that scene wondering not about what terrible misfortune would befall the characters next week, but about whether I believed in fate or coincidence myself.

Professor Walter T. Davis Jr. of San Francisco Theological Seminary once said, “Under the guise of entertainment, television has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience.”[2] I found this quote while writing a high school research paper entitled “God on the Small Screen: the Battle Between Secular Hollywood and Religious Viewers over Religion in Scripted Primetime Television.” I had begun, at that point, to realize that my passion for television had morphed from an escapist fare into what I wanted to do with my life. For me, television is indeed the format for the representation of experience. Since watching LOST, I found myself more confident, capable, and curious about the world around me. I literally felt more comfortable around people than I was prior to watching the show. As insane as it sounds, it took watching a show like LOST to get me to live my life – and enjoy it. LOST taught me by example to “think about my life story and its recurring themes, [to consider….] the events in [my] life that have inspired [my] passion,” as Robert J. lee writes.[3] I also think a part of my inner peace came not just from grappling with the all-encompassing, fundamental questions of life that LOST posed to me, but in the discovery that I could allow myself to consider television a passion. Why? Because if a good television show could help me become the person I want to be, then it can help others. I have since begun research on the TV industry (hence my high school paper regarding religion on television) – all aspects of it including writing, directing, producing, and learned about the politics of a network, ratings, advertising – everything I would need to pursue a career in my passion.

Television, as I have written before in a discussion board, aims to challenge, to inspire, and to cause us to question our own ideals and beliefs. Watching, enjoying, and living TV is truly my passion, one that I hope to use my own experiences and struggles with to create the type of quality Television that will inspire others as it did me.

Word Count with quotations (not including image/movie captions): 1,910

Word Count without quotations (not including image/movie captions): 1,853

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[1] Ram Dass and Paul Gorman, “How Can I Help?” in Composition and Reading in World Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copy & Binding, 2009), 269.

[2] Walter T. Davis Jr., Reresa Blythe, Gary Dreibelbis, Mark Scalese, S.J., Elizabeth Winslea, Donald L. Ashburn. Watching What We Watch: Prime-Time Television Through the Lens of Faith. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 9.

[3] Lee, Robert J., “Discovering the leader in you: a guide to realizing your personal leadership potential” in Composition and Reading in World Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copy & Binding, 2009), 255.

Images/Videos:

Picture #1: http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/tyne/daly/amy.jpg

Video #1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vx7-QX4HXQ

My Ideal Leader

As I began to read the Course Anthology and Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People assignments on “leadership”, I immediately knew what I would be writing my discussion board entry about. With each definition of leadership, each classification of what makes a leader effective, each story of the empathetic, fair leader, one person’s face continued to pop up in my mind: my dad.

["Papa" (as I call him) and me one Sunday before Church]

Whether it’s within our household as the organizer of most family activities or at his job overseeing thousands of employees and different offices in the double-digits, my father is my own personal idea of what a truly exceptional leader looks like.

My father is the CEO of The Beck Group: a construction, architecture, and engineering firm.Leadership is in his job description – the very idea of managing on such a large scale implies this – but that’s not what makes him such a role model for leadership in my eyes. I admire my father not because he leads but for how he does so. Covey speaks about “seek[ing] first to understand, then to be understood,” and explains that “when we’re communicating with another, we need to empathize (Course Anthology, 220).” Empathy, I would say, is one of my father’s most admirable and evident qualities. I have had the opportunity to watch him at work, to hear him on the phone with clients and employees, and even to watch him prepare speeches. Inextricably laced throughout each interaction with those he works with (which, by the way, is the phrase he uses rather than saying “those who work for me” – phrasing Covey would probably commend) is an empathy for others and a deep sense of understanding of each person’s thoughts and feelings. He has an acute awareness, I think, of the fact that a company is much more than its managers – and if he cannot understand his employees' various methodologies of working and be able to keep his co-workers happy, then the entire operation will fall apart. Also evident in his dealings as a leader of his company is his humility. Covey calls humility “the mother of all other virtues” and I am inclined to agree (Course Anthology, 221). So much of the respect I – and, I would assume, those who work with him – have for my father stems from the way he carries himself. No person is too “lowly” to receive his full attention, no client is too small for him to bother with. Growing up, I especially appreciated the way in which his sense of humility allowed for me to correct and teach him – for nothing is more exciting and gratifying for a little kid than feeling like you’re teaching your father how to play an imaginary game. Covey explains in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “through our human endowments of self-awareness and conscience, we become conscious of areas of weakness and areas for improvement (Covey, 92).” My father does an excellent job of this: he is not afraid to be wrong and, more importantly, not afraid to admit when he is.

The Beck Group’s brand is: Better Buildings, Better Built. On their website, they list the promise behind that brand as follows: “Beck is a full-service Builder for decision-makers seeking a creative partner who excels in delivering their dreams. When engaging our clients, we promise to always be trustworthy, innovative, passionate, proactive, collaborative and fun. We ceaselessly seek to portray our clients as enlightened leaders who value lasting relationships and achieve superior results (www.beckgroup.com).” As I read this promise, the Greek philosophy of influence that Covey refers to came to mind. The Beck Group promises ethos, pathos, and logos to their clients with this statement. The words “proactive” and “trustworthy” invoke a sense of ethos as they fulfill the “personal credibility, the amount of trust or confidence others have in your integrity and competency” that Covey explains defines ethos (Course Anthology, 238). The words “collarborative, fun, passionate” all imbue the empathetic quality that is pathos and, finally, the word “innovative” represents the company’s logos. The firm’s mission statement and brand promise is something that was created by my dad (I still remember the day he came home so excited, holding new business cards inscribed with “Better Buildings, Better Built!”). That, to me, further exemplifies his grasp on what it takes to be an effective leader.

[The "Hunt Building" in Dallas, Tx. One of The Beck Group's - and my dad's - proudest and most beautiful architectural accomplishments, would never exist were it not for the company's inclusion of ethos, pathos, and logos in their brand.]

I have always been in awe of my father for his incredible leadership in his business and I have always appreciated the same qualities he exemplifies at home as our family’s chef, chief advisor, and go-to problem solver. However, I never before realized how closely my dad fulfills what Covey maintains are the main points necessary to be a great leader. I hope someday, as cheesy as it sounds, to be able to follow in his footsteps in terms of leading with empathy, humility, and understanding in whatever profession I pursue and in my everyday life.