Point of View

I am giving you (the reader) fair warning. What you are about to read may offend you. If you are offended by religious beliefs, or lack thereof, then read no further. You have been warned.

Often life throws things at you in such a manner you just can’t believe it happened. But that is the essence of each of us and how we live our lives. Things are thrown at us, we react, and sometimes come out the better person than when we started, but sometimes not. What we do get is more experienced in life as we know it. I have lived my life in a way that I always felt was the right way to live it. Were there bad choices made? Certainly there were, but I learned from them and moved on. I didn’t trust in someone else to get me out of whatever that bad decision was. I did it on my own through perseverance and hard work.

This brings me to my topic for this session. Religions and the power they hold over each person on this Earth of ours. As a boy I was raised in a Christian home to worship God and, “you will be rewarded with eternal life in Heaven with him.” I will tell you that as a small boy, or any small child, to hear stories of Heaven and God were awesome! It made you feel like anything was possible and no matter what you went through in life here on Earth, you were guaranteed eternal life and happiness after death or when God returned to take his followers home, whichever came first. Then something happened. I grew up and became educated and realized it was all stories based on other stories or made up by other men.

This is when I realized that the belief in an entity greater than mankind itself has little to no chance of actually existing. Sure, people can argue that science is speculation on the scientist part and I will agree with them but it still does not change my stance on religion.

I once heard someone say, “Religion is used to help control the masses and provide a sense of hope to those that have none.” When I first heard that statement, it never made sense. It wasn’t until years later when I got to thinking about that statement and began observing how people that follow religion interact with others. They all have the same foundation: You believe in something and trust in it to the level that everything revolves around that belief and anything that goes wrong in your life is left for your “god” to help with.

I suppose my overall point is asking the question of how can there be a “god” of any kind to help with a problem? Case in point, there was a boy that went missing yesterday in the city I live in. Thankfully he was found the next morning safe and sound and all the postings on Facebook^© said were, “Thank God!” and “Praise the Lord!” I could hardly believe my eyes when I read this. Can a person seriously thank a “god” for keeping someone safe after they disappear? Where was this “god” when they went missing? It is just absolutely ridiculous in my eyes. If an entity truly loves their creations, then why would they torture them? To see if they can get more love from them? Preposterous I tell you. Sounds to me like nothing other than something made up for others to believe in to make themselves feel better. Hmmmm, I think I may have said that before. (Or something similar)

Anyway I think you get my point so I will jump off of my soapbox now and see how many of you are now offended and ready to burn me at the stake. Just remember, if you are ready to ensue violence against me, you are no better than the “devil” you hate so much.

Shiyan out!

More of me Part 2

The rest of me.

Father:

This is sort of a new thing to me. Even though I was married once before and was responsible for two young boys this is the first time I felt a connection with the kids. Before my son was born or even conceived, I had a hand in raising two beautiful girls. When I first came into their lives, the youngest girl was 2 and the oldest girl was 7. It was really cool because they were both fun to talk to. The oldest would tell me about her day at school and the pure excitement she shared was amazing. It was always so fun to watch her tell me how her day went.

The youngest girl really didn’t talk much but she liked to play so I would try to play with her as much as I could. But having to work and make sure they had what they needed kept me from being able to play a lot with her. Especially when I started school.

Then one day I came home from school and was sitting at the dining room table doing some homework or research or something when my wife came over to me and gently placed her hand on my shoulder and told me, “Well, it would seem that your man parts work.” Honestly I didn’t know what to make of that at first. Then she followed that statement up with, “You are going to be a dad.” I was in total shock. This was something I had wanted but wasn’t sure if it would ever happen. I quickly jumped up and hugged her and tried so hard to show her how happy I was. Just wanted to scream it to everyone but she made me promise that I wouldn’t until a doctor said it was true.

One day I was out dirt bike riding with a friend of mine and we were having a great time. On the way home, my cell phone rings and it is my friends wife calling from my home phone. She was asking when we’re coming home because my wife was not doing too well. We rushed home and found my wife in the bed not feeling well at all. Sadly, that night, she miscarried and we both sat and cried together. It was one of the hardest days of my life and I can still remember every emotion that ran through me. Anger, hatred, and sadness. (I won’t go through each one because it pains me to even think about them.)

But I am happy to say that we didn’t give up and after nearly a year, we were blessed once again with the news that we were having a baby. This one went to full term and on April 13^th 2008 at 5am we became parents of a healthy baby boy. We named him Haeden Joe Robert. Haeden, because we both loved the name and wanted it to be different than Mike or John or Chris. Plus as you can tell we changed the spelling a bit to make it even more unique. Joe is one of his middle names and that was something I wanted because it was my grandfather’s name and he is the one man that I grew up around for a short time that always showed me love and whom I loved back. Robert is the name of his grandfather and the name of my wife’s dad. Of course he got my last name because he will carry on the family name.

Now I come to the last part of me, the engineer.

I never thought I would become an engineer. In fact, I never thought I would do anything that had to deal with mathematics. All through high school I hated math and anything to do with it. Even though I did fairly well with it.

While working at a job with some engineers, I started to understand what was going on in the work being done and found that I rather enjoyed it. After some discussion with a few engineers, I decided that I could do what they were doing just as well as they could. But I didn’t have the education to get into it. So I set my sights on college. For nearly 5 years, I worked day and night at 11 week intervals. Would have 11 weeks in school and 2 weeks off then the cycle would start all over again. This went on from April 2005 will graduation in December 2009. I was one quarter shy of 5 straight years of school. During that time, I was laid off 5 times and we welcomed our son into the world. Never once did I take a quarter off or lose interest in finishing the program. The day I walked across the stage and obtained my diploma is one of the happiest days of my life. The only things that trump that day is the day my son was born and the day my wife married me.

Now here I am, writing this for all to read and thinking how lucky I am to have the life I have today. To think that I came from being just a poor country boy to what I am today is simply amazing. It has been a long road and I wouldn’t change a thing.

They say that every event in life makes you into the person you are and nothing can change that. Well, I will say that I am happy with who I am and people that don’t like it don’t have to associate with me. (You just knew that was coming. Didn’t you? HAHAHA!)

When I set out to write this up, I never intended it to be so long. But I felt this is better to describe me so that anyone that is interested in reading this can get a better understanding of who I am and where my priorities in life truly lay.

Shiyan sends!

More of me Part 1

I made an earlier blog about myself and promised that I would try to explain more about the man behind the keyboard and this blog. Since I said that a few years ago, I suppose it is time that I try to fulfill that promise. (This is very long so I had to break it into two parts.)

It is always hard to tell someone about yourself as a person. Always easy to talk about others but try to really explain “you” to someone that may not even know you. That is sort of what it is like when you are doing a job interview. They always tend to ask you something about yourself, from both a positive and negative way. But in this sense I am going to try to tell you about me.

I am a Husband, a Father, and an Engineer. The first two I take very seriously and do the best I can at those. The latter I am still learning and slowly advancing in my career and knowledge base. (Truthfully I am still learning on all of them.) So now I will break each one down to try to give some insight into me and my personality. (I hope I can do that. HAHA!)

Husband:

Where to start on this? I would say that I would have to start at my wife. She is my foundation in life and means everything to me. Many times I have to thank her for being there for me and even after I say thank you I honestly don’t think she realizes how important she is to me. Before we started dating we were friends. I would say close friends because we could share anything with one another and knew that the other wouldn’t judge. She was a shoulder to cry on when I needed it and I did my best to return the favor. There were many days that I wasn’t sure I could go on with life. It seemed like everything was crashing down and the world would be much better off without me. Yes I will openly admit that I contemplated suicide. (On more than one occasion too.) But when I was around her, it gave me a meaning to be there. Not just for a short time but it was as if I had a purpose and she was that purpose. Even though we were only friends at that time.

After my divorce was finalized, we talked about taking our friendship to the next level and try dating. Both of us were recently divorced and we were both afraid of doing the whole “rebound relationship” thing. We took things slow and we both found we were comfortable when we were together. Felt safe and appreciated. So after a time we moved in together and now we are where we are.

But I suppose I need to get more to the point of being a husband. I have done everything I can do to make sure my family is provided for and that my beautiful wife has what she needs to take care of this crazy house we live in. Over the course of 5 years, I attended college to earn a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering. (Making me the first engineer of my family and only one of a handful that actually graduated from college.) During that timeframe, I was laid off from 5 different jobs. At one point, I was unemployed from March to the first part of August. But at no point did my family do without. I made sure we had food on the table and a roof over our heads.

So in the end, I guess you could say that I have been a damn good husband and provided for my family in the way I should.

End of Part 1