You Only Live Once

One of the hidden benefits of teaching high school is an increased awareness of pop culture trends. That's how I came to know the slogan "you only live once" or YOLO. On the surface, it sounds like an updated version of "carpe diem." And as we passed through another anniversary of September 11th yesterday, such a motto seems not only reasonable, but perhaps admirable and even righteous.

But what I haven't shared yet is the context of my "education" about YOLO: a class discussion on the morality of teenage use of alcohol and drugs. You see, YOLO is the rationalization of the moment for young adult rebellion and experimentation. Which is why you're most likely to hear it being shouted by drunks at a frat party.

The problem is not with the phrase itself. I'm sure "carpe diem" was also used as an excuse for irresponsibility when it was first popularized. Living each day as if it were your last is a noble concept, if your definition of a good life is full of noble values. Part of what we memorialize each September 11th is the nobility of sacrificing one's life for the sake of others. We do this because it allows us to forget that every other day we are surrounded by a superficial culture, full of trivialities, that we have painstakingly created. Is it any wonder that our youth use YOLO the way they do?

What if YOLO was used instead to celebrate acts of service, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, mercy, and generosity? What if YOLO was used as a sign of honor for those who, on September 11, 2001 and every day before and since, lived the truth Jesus shared with us: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." I'd say that was the ultimate YOLO.

Weekly Reading (9/03-9/09)

"Finding a voice for Eva"
Deena Goldstone, Los Angeles Times

"Deportees to Mexico's Tamaulipas preyed upon by gangs"
Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times

"What Difference Listening Makes"
Matt Spotts, The Jesuit Post

"Dear Democratic Catholics"
Michael Sean Winters, National Catholic Reporter

"Faithful Citizenship: The Audacity of Responsibility"
Jessica Wrobleski, Catholic Moral Theology

BONUS VIDEO:
"DNC 2012 - Hope and Change 2"
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"Friday Night Lights" (2006-2011)

In keeping with my original theme for the week, I wanted to select something football-related for today. But "Friday Night Lights" is a TV series about much more than just playing a game. I think the spirit of the show is best encapsulated by Coach Taylor's motto for his teams: "Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't Lose!" The words speak of living with purpose and passion, but they are always spoken as a group, not as a lone individual. That is because, at its core, the show is about family: the ones we have and, more importantly, the ones we create.

There are certainly lots of great lessons to be found in the show's episodes: that grace doesn't always come in a pretty package, that life is a constant series of choices and they all count, that any relationship worth having requires work and compromise, that marriage is fundamentally an act of hope, that we all have dreams and every one of them is beautiful. But its story about family is what makes "FNL" sacred.

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

Check out this TV show on Grantland, IMDb, Wikipedia, or YouTube.

Accepting Responsibility

With the start of the college football season this past weekend, I was planning to write a comparison of two sports columns by Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times: one on the well-known failures at Penn State and the other about an unsung act of honor by Caltech. But when I read today's paper, I found a more significant example of what it means to accept responsibility for the consequences of one's actions.

The story came from Times columnist Steve Lopez, who wrote about John Whitaker, a former child actor and recovering drug addict, "addressing a rally to raise awareness of cartel violence in Mexico, and he started off by apologizing to the Mexican mothers he'd just heard speak about losing children in the drug wars."

One of the steps of his recovery, Whitaker said, "was to make reparations for the harms I caused."

... "One way I can make reparation is to meet with these families, and every time I heard a name — when a mother said this is my son Rudolfo, this is my son Enrique, this is my daughter Margarita — I felt a pain.... We people in recovery, and in the consumer world, are to blame for some of it, and we've got to take responsibility."

Lopez has written other columns recently about some of these Mexican mothers and the Caravan for Peace currently taking them across the U.S. to share their stories. But he also wrote in June about the rationalizations we Americans use to keep drug violence "conveniently distant." We hear the stories, but then push them out of our minds. We recognize our connection to them, but then minimize our culpability. It is a moral failure just as great as that of Penn State, and we should be no less ashamed of ourselves ... except for John Whitaker, and those like him, who recognize in these stories not strangers, but family, and who strive to be better siblings because of it.

Weekly Reading (8/27-9/02)

"Voting Against Intrinsically Evil Acts: A Working List?"
Jana Bennett, Catholic Moral Theology

"Dolan, Campbell at GOP/Dem conventions = bad idea"
Bryan Cones, U.S. Catholic

"God’s Work of Art"
Timothy Dolan, The Gospel in the Digital Age

"America: 'The Greatest Islamic Country'"
Katherine Infantine, First Things

"Dear Republican Catholics"
Michael Sean Winters, National Catholic Reporter

BONUS VIDEO:
"RNC 2012 - The Road to Jeb Bush 2016"
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart