Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world

Tag: decisions

Panic! — November 24, 2025

Panic!

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Today, I’m listening to Panic! at the Disco (that strange, misplaced exclamation point is not a typo on my part – though it was dropped for the 2nd album, as they attempted to become the Beatles, and the Beatles didn’t have a strange, misplaced exclamation point. Then, when that album wasn’t as commercially successful, they brought that punctuation back for the rest of their existence. Maybe people just were disoriented & confused, maybe there were 2: Panic! At The Disco and Panic At The Disco, and we couldn’t like them both.

I don’t hate that 2nd album, Pretty.Odd, and in fact, it has one of the songs I listened to most for a several year span (according to my iPod), “Nine In The Afternoon.”

I know we aren’t supposed to love them, for some of the same reasons we aren’t supposed to love Fall Out Boy (pretense, ridiculous song titles, etc.), but whoever decides what we’re “supposed to” love is wrong. That person (or group, or board) is always wrong, incidentally. There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.

Guilty pleasures are those things we like that we “shouldn’t” like, like the Bravo Network, Growing Pains, Matchbox 20, and cargo pants. Nonsense. If you happen to like ‘80’s Kirk Cameron (actually, if you happen to like ‘20’s Kirk Cameron, for that matter), then who is anyone to tell you you’re pleasure is misplaced or shameful? Cargo pants are the coolest and Mad Season is a GREAT album.

I recently discovered that Panic! At The Disco is problematic, and that might be a reason to move away from them. Apparently, they’ve been accused of being sexist, transphobic, homophobic, and/or racist. I think there might be more, but I didn’t go any further than the AI headline.

The truth is, I don’t know if I care.

I’ve asked a form of this question before. Does “Baby Be Mine,” by Michael Jackson, suffer under the weight of a mountain of allegations? Is the “Himself” stand-up special from Bill Cosby stained so badly that the jokes are no longer hilarious? What about Kevin Spacey and Seven or The Usual Suspects? And what are the transgressions that warrant a reconsideration of the artwork? I think Hemingway was a terrible person, now what? Brandi Carlisle was absolutely awful TO ME, personally, and that did totally change the way I hear her output. But that seems a little selfish, that it only counts if it happens to me.

I’m listening to the Vices & Virtues album right now, and if I was forced to decide now, I guess I don’t care. I can’t help from dancing (a completely involuntary response!!) to “Baby Be Mine.” Maybe that makes me a bad person. But I bet, if you listen to “Trade Mistakes,” you’d be a terrible person, too.

I think I do care, though. I want to care. I want to expect more of humanity, of my neighbors, of us. I want us to love and take care of each other. Is that too much to ask?

And is this similar to shopping at Walmart or buying Nike’s or anything from Shein? If we want our corporations to behave better, shouldn’t we withhold our money until they do? And wouldn’t that make sense to carry that into our record stores and theaters?

Is this what a guilty pleasure is? In that case, maybe it’s not so nonsensical, and maybe it requires even more thought. (But maybe that consideration shouldn’t happen while I’m dancing to Panic! records…)

Cause Or Effect? — November 10, 2025

Cause Or Effect?

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A very particular kind of person loves Morrissey and his first band, the Smiths.

In the neighborhood of 35 years ago, I worked at a renaissance faire, selling baked goods like breads, cookies the size of your face, and broccoli & cheese pocket sandwiches. That was not my favorite job, but I did get to work with my sister, and we were next door to a Filipino stand run by the coolest family you’d meet. I suppose they noticed how beautiful my sister is (it’s sort of easy to notice), and began to ingratiate themselves to her and her little brother. Back then, one way to do that was to make and give mixtapes – a cassette tape created with a nice variety of intentionally sequenced songs, 2 of which were “Interesting Drug” and “Suedehead.” These were amazing, sounding, feeling, being completely different from top 40 radio. Then, I quickly moved into the entire Smiths collection. (They had already broken up, by then, so I had the totality of their existence at my fingertips immediately.)

I would say these songs saved my life. Well, the Smoking Popes have a line, “I don’t know if you actually saved my life. But you changed it, that’s for sure.” So, maybe they didn’t save the life of that sensitive, insecure, depressed 15 year old, but he was sure different, afterwards.

So as I was listening to The World Won’t Listen (a Smiths album that is a little more like a greatest hit collection than a standard release) as a 50 year-old who is less depressed, hardly insecure at all, and perhaps even more sensitive, I was wondering something I wonder about a lot (and have probably written about several times before). I wonder if those songs had a giant hand in forging the me that I have become, or was I already predisposed to be this person, so I found the songs & artists that a me like me would love.

Did Morrissey find me or did I find him? Why do we love the things we love? Are we paving the roads to get to them, or is it like a toy train,where the only track we can drive leads to only one direction? Could I have heard The Queen Is Dead and decided that I’d rather listen to Warrant or Whitesnake, and if I had, what kind of person would I be right now? “Cherry Pie” and “Girlfriend In A Coma” are different, the Venn diagram is just 2 circles standing on opposite sides of the room, curiously regarding each other.

I know that there isn’t an answer, there is no way to tell. And probably it’s a combination, where the sort of person I am heard “Interesting Drug” on a mixtape from a cool Filipino and recognized myself, then listening to it hundreds, thousands, of times just reinforced those characteristics that make me so awesome.

I think those people who pretend that they are not influenced by advertising or external stimulation are either lying or deluded. No one goes to McDonald’s because the food is delicious, commercials have convinced us that it’s a cultural mandate, that we have to eat that garbage (which they have convinced us isn’t garbage at all, no matter how sick we get) to become the type of person that the corporations decide we all really want to be. My questions about Morrissey ultimately aren’t meaningful, but asking them is very important. If we decide that we want to be affected by pop singers or fast food marketers, that’s one thing, but too often, that choice is made for us and we’re too busy or distracted to know.

This isn’t ok. What if you wake up one day and find that you’re painting your face while Gene Simmons siphons all of your savings, charging a ransom to be a member of some silly “army?” Then how would you feel? The line between intention and manipulation is thin and fuzzy, maybe we could take a look around and make sure we’re exactly where we want to be.

Helpful Lies — June 30, 2025

Helpful Lies

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Before we begin, I just want to state out loud how soul-crushing a salad can be. Even a “good” one. Today’s lunch was a pre-packaged apple walnut chicken salad. Maybe the “pre-packaged” was my mistake. Or maybe it was the apples or the walnuts or the feta cheese. Or maybe it just was nothing more than that it was a salad. I’m trying to make good choices with the things I put in my mouth (is a salad a good choice???)…baby steps.

I can be so disciplined in some areas of my life, while being a 6 year-old in others. I wonder how both can be true. I can go to the gym at 5am every day but I can’t seem to not eat the garbage that I know will make me sick. I don’t always like the gym, but it’s so much a part of me and what I do that I don’t even consider if I want to. But in the kitchen, I want, therefore I eat.

When you look up discipline, much of what comes up in definitions is related to punishment. That doesn’t seem like a truly transformative practice. People don’t usually make healthy changes from a negative posture, from the “Do/Don’t…or else,” school of thought.

This is what Wikipedia says: Self-discipline refers to one’s ability to control one’s behavior and actions to achieve a goal or to maintain a certain standard of conduct. It is the ability to train oneself to do things that should be done and resist things that should be avoided…Self-discipline can also be defined as the ability to give up immediate pleasures for long-term goals…Self-discipline is about one’s ability to control their desires and impulses to keep themselves focused on what needs to get done to successfully achieve a goal. It is about taking small, consistent steps of daily action to build a strong set of disciplined habits that fulfill your objectives. One trains themselves to follow rules and standards that help determine, coalesce, and line up one’s thoughts and actions with the task at hand. Small acts allow one to achieve greater goals. The key component of self-discipline is the trait of perseverance…Discipline is about internal and external consistencies.

I think Wikipedia is more right than the rest of the scholars out there. The root of discipline means “to teach,” but the root of punishment means “pain.”

I wonder what my problem is, using this definition as our guide. I do have the ability to train my oneself to do things that should be done and resist things that should be avoided. Maybe I don’t use it when it comes to Oreos, but it is something I have in my repertoire. Focus? I don’t have a disorder or anything. I can focus for long periods. Sometimes, though, my focus drifts to focusing on Oreos, and then that positive trait isn’t quite so positive. I can be very consistent. Maybe I lack perseverance? When I take personality tests, they always tell me I lack follow through. Is that the same? But as I get older, I follow through, maybe what they mean is that I lack the desire to follow through.

Wikipedia also says this: An action conforms to a value. In other words, one allows values to determine one’s own choices.

An action conforms to a value. That’s awesome. In many, many contexts. There’s a cliché, when people show you who they are, believe them. Because actions conform to values. Maybe I simply don’t value eating properly. Why not? I think I do.

But when the couple comes to me and the boy says, “I love her, I just treat her like trash sometimes,” we all know the action supersedes the hollow words. He doesn’t love her, at least not in any meaningful way, not in any higher definition of love. He loves how she makes him feel, or the idea of her, or the idea of being with someone, or whatever.

So, you can be forgiven for saying I don’t value healthy eating. You’re right, I suppose. Maybe I value the idea of eating good, or saying I do. The action is conforming to the value, isn’t it?

How do I change a value? When I searched that, it tells me through introspection and reflection. If that was enough, I’d be the foremost authority on healthy eating habits. I do not lack in introspection or reflection. Every article just says more and more of the same, think about it, visualize what you want, and on and on.

It’s much harder to visualize, “I want to eat better, so I can be a healthy man, inside and out,” than it is to visualize abs. I don’t really want abs, too much. I’ve never had them, so I don’t miss them or anything.

I’ll be 50 this year. It’s important, and it probably starts with transforming the way I think about salad. Today, for lunch, I had a terrific apple walnut salad and it was so satisfying & delicious!!! (Maybe transformation can begin with a helpful lie, and continue until it’s not a lie. Who knows?)

— April 2, 2025
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I know, I usually write that there aren’t any monsters, that we often draw our battle lines with the false belief that “they” are so different, so wrong, and “we” are so different in our goodness, our right-ness. Republicans aren’t monsters, people who voted for them aren’t monsters, and neither are Democrats and the people who voted for them. (I could use any examples of enemies, but that one seems to always connect.)

Having said that, maybe Sean Combs, “Diddy,” is a monster.

We’ve all heard the story of his rise, lifestyle, and spectacular fall. We all know about the thousands of bottles of baby oil and “freak offs.” We probably all wish we didn’t.

I love documentaries, and there are several on Diddy. Last week, I finally watched the one on Max. You might have thought I’d have watched one before now. I would have thought that. It has most of the elements I instinctively move towards: culture, excess, media, image, lies, absurdity.

It also has violence against women; manipulation, sexual assault, rape, abuse, perceived power dynamics, and lives ruined simply because some animal thinks they can/are entitled to.

As my instincts pointed me, my soft heart and nausea led me away. I finally did watch it, and I’m very sorry I did.

I’m not too interested in this story. A self-obsessed maniac who preys on those he deems weaker than, less than, him is pretty boring. There have been countless before him, mostly all the same. There isn’t one thing unique about P. Diddy. So, now I’m left wondering why I selected what I knew was abhorrent to me, what I knew would tear my soul & spirit to pieces. Why?

I guess we all do things that we know aren’t good for us. We eat food that isn’t healthy for us, and will make us sick. We stay in jobs & relationships that crush us. We keep pushing on our bruises, and tonguing the sores on our gums. And we watch details of the disgusting behavior of rappers.

There are a million psychological reasons to explain this, I’m sure. But I wonder, in this case, if they matter. Maybe it would be easy enough to simply say no and scroll on by the things that mean us harm. Sometimes, there doesn’t have to be a reason, or, I don’t have to know it. It can certainly help to know when & why I eat the foods and spend time with people that/who are mean to me, but is it really necessary?

I should have continued to watch episodes of The Residence or Reacher instead of this horror show. I sure will next time.

Decisions, Decisions — October 8, 2024

Decisions, Decisions

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I think, if I had to pick one sentence from Sunday’s message that was the hardest to say, and to hear, it would be: “If he chooses to honor her, if she chooses to honor him…” Whatever comes next, those words are so charged with meaning and possibility. What if he did? What if she did? Then what?

I also wanted to share what I heard in a video on Instagram. An interviewer asked a woman if she was married, and she said yes. At this point, it was very light, she was smiley and easy-going. He then asked her if HE was happy. “Is he happy?” This was surprising, to her, and to me. She restated the question, making sure that she heard correctly, then said, “I thought you’d ask me if I was happy.” He said he wanted to care for him, too. I know, right!??! The mood between them changed, as if he attacked her. She became silent and sullen, finally saying, “**** you,” which I guess, answered the question without answering the question. 

I wonder what we’d say if we were asked the same question about our relationships. More than just our marriages, would our friends say they’re happy and valued in our company? Do they feel important, heard, cared for, by us? How about our children? Just to be sure, I told the Angel, if anyone ever asked her, that yes, I was awfully happy. She told me she was, too.

If you had the courage to ask your husband/wife if he/she was happy, what would he/she say? Do you know the answer? Would they tell you the truth? How would you react if the answer was no? Would you be offended, would you pout and make them feel like they shouldn’t have answered so honestly? Would you respond the way that woman in the video did?

Of course, I want all of us to say “Yes,” but I am fully aware that many of us would not. In that case, would the answer change IF he chooses to honor her, IF she chooses to honor him? 

One last observation. What is the only requirement to changing the environment between us? Or our environment anywhere? Our choice to act. If we knew we could change the space in our homes with one choice, would we make that decision? Would we stop keeping score, cutting with our words, detaching, punishing each other with our tones or disconnection? Would we speak positively, encourage, and support each other? 

And, apparently, what I meant was 2 more observations. The 2nd is…what would our lives look like IF we chose to honor ourselves? Maybe that’s an even bigger ask. We often speak to us in a more destructive manner than we would ever speak to another. We commit such acts of violence towards ourselves, whether it is staying in abusive relationships, acting as if we are absolutely worthless in countless ways. 

…And all (I say “all” fully knowing it’s a Herculean “all”) it takes is a choice. And then another, and another, and another. Until everything is different, a whole new creation.