making a difference. Justin Knabb's blog

Opening My Eyes Again

Since moving out of the Augustinian monastery in San Francisco four months ago, it has been a considerable challenge incorporating prayer and reflection into my daily life.  Life was so spiritual during my year in the monastery.  We started our days with mass at 6am and concluded our days with prayer after dinner.  Cooking was prayerful, cleaning was prayerful, and even social hours were prayerful.  My housemates and I maintained a conscious prayerfulness in everything we did.  Virtually all of our activities and conversations were ultimately geared towards our desire to constantly become better people and followers of God, celebrating the lives we've been given, and making a positive difference to others.  My year with the Augustinians in San Francisco was no doubt one of the best years of my short life.

With that said, I have really ached for the presence of God in my life again lately.  Finding God in my day-to-day work in our business, in my revitalized weekend party lifestyle, and quiet mornings without mass has not been easy while returning to the more "ordinary life" in Reading.

Then I re-discovered Villanova, my alma mater, this past weekend.  Villanova always feels like home to me.  Just after a late night out in Manayunk, I woke up thinking I had to do something extraordinary to get back on track.  Fortunately, the 10:30am mass back at Villanova with Father Rich O'Leary was a perfect first step.

Sunday's readings and Gospel were incredibly moving.  Jesus' message was an important call to humility:

Luke 18: 9-14 - Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.  "Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity -- greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’  But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed,'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'  I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted."

As Fr. Rich emphasized in his homily, we all need God and we all need humility.  We need to stray from judgments even in the midst of, well, judging others in day-to-day life.  In other words, we are no more righteous than the person next to us.  We might pray often, we might know Scripture inside-and-out, we might live in a monastery... even so, God and Gospel and LIFE humble us when we truly, truly, truly open our eyes.  I'm trying my best to keep mine wide open again...

Changing a Young Girl's Life

Talk about making a difference... I'm so proud of my younger brother, Tyler, who hit a big home run against cancer this weekend.  Since our mom died suddenly from cancer four years ago, Tyler has participated in various runs to benefit cancer research.  But over the past few years he has also envisioned starting a similar event of his own.  That vision became a reality yesterday as his cross-country team and many in our local Exeter Township community united to launch the first-ever "Project Endurance."  For 12 hours straight, students, teachers, coaches, parents and community members came to our high school track to walk, to run, to volunteer, to participate in games, and to donate money... all to help an 8-year-old Exeter Township student named Kat Touhill, who has Down Syndrome and is battling an aggressive form of Leukemia.

Before the day even started, Tyler and his team raised about $1,500 in pledges.  When the day was through, they raised well over $7,000.  All-around, this was such a wonderful, positive, uplifting event.  Students came together on an idle Sunday to support a worthy cause.  Teachers gladly stepped in the line-of-fire for pie-throwing contests to raise money.  Parents and coaches stayed the entire 12 hours to offer support.  There were baked good sales, live bands playing, and people running miles and miles in solidarity with those fighting the tough fight against cancer.  And local media showed up throughout the day to chronicle the extraordinary events that were uplifting a community, and in particular, a young girl and her family during a time of need.

Events like this give us all hope... hope in each other, hope in our community, hope that love does in fact prevail.  I often think the ideal world would be one in which communities around the planet would continuously unite for causes such as this.  We can all start by working to make events like this a reality, just as my brother did.

Thanks for Project Endurance, Tyler.  You made Mom proud on that one.

Photo courtesy of the Reading Eagle

iTunes alarm clock

Thanks to Nate DiSimone for making a better, simpler alternative to the typical alarm clock.  I set this on my laptop for the first time last night and it was certainly more exciting to wake up this morning to AC/DC rather than the regular buzzer (which leads me to hit the snooze button anyway).

iTunes alarm clock

Testimonial against a state-run healthcare system

This is definitely worth viewing before the upcoming U.S. presidential election...

Jealousy gets us nowhere

Al Gore just won the Nobel Peace Prize.  I, personally, am very excited about this and I am excited for him.  For starters, global warming is an urgent issue that threatens mankind and especially the planet that my children and grandchildren will one day inherit.  How can we not take issues like this seriously?  We owe Mr. Gore much gratitude for starting this worldwide campaign that challenges us to ask these very difficult and very important questions (ultimately this isn't even about Mr. Gore but about us, and the way we have chosen to treat our planet).

In addition, it is terrific that an American won the prize (and Jimmy Carter was the last to do so).  This is a victory for one of our own!  And as Americans, we could sure use some positive press as global citizens nowadays.  On the other hand, uberconservatives are mad as all hell since Gore won the Nobel.  This isn't a political reaction; this is absolute denial and complete ignorance and idiocity.   They, and all Americans, should be embarrassed that we not only failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol along with almost every other nation on earth back in 1997, but failed to ratify the treaty throughout the Bush Administration.   Unless, like Mr. Gore, they have researched thoroughly and worked and worked to tackle this difficult issue, they should be very embarrassed about the little they have contributed (and sure, Mr. Gore has his moments of hypocrisies... DON'T WE ALL).  And not only have these pundits likely contributed little, if anything, they actually have added more to their fire of ignorance but posting websites like these: Michelle Malkin and, from our favorite non-partisan news channel, Fox News.

Not as Democrats or Republicans, and not just as Americans but as all mankind, we must unite around this hope of cleaning up our planet.  We could continue to siphon resources from our planet at current rates and continue to pollute at current rates, but overall it is good practice and good principle and good business to focus efforts on greening ourselves.  We can debate Mr. Gore's Nobel win as much as we want, or we can join in the efforts of Mr. Gore or others to actually change our lifestyles for the better.

Beauty pageants rule

This might be one of the most entertaining acts I've ever seen...

The Wonder Years are history... now we have the "Odyssey Years!"

Thanks to my friend Travis McMenimon for forwarding me this article from the New York Times.  I think David Brooks' column is dead-on target regarding a new, common life phase called the "Odyssey Years."  In today's world, our generation has sparked the evolution of this new phase that now fits in between adolescence and adulthood years.  During this phase, 20-somethings live in uncertainty, and almost proactively engage in a struggle to find their way professionally, personally, socially, spiritually, etc.  The standard years for entering marriage have gotten pushed back, the years for buying a home have gotten pushed back, and the old practice of finding a position at a company to ride until retirement is ancient history.

For better or for worse, this new phase is changing our culture, or today's culture has created this phase... whichever came first.  Facebook, MySpace, movies like "Knocked Up," volunteer corps, Craigslist apartment rentals, and even those cool and attractive recruiters selling you on cool and attractive jobs with the Big Four accounting firms or Goldman Sachs... in some cases these are products created by this generation, in some cases created for this generation, and most likely, they are feeding off each other.  This is no doubt an interesting time to be 25 years old.  I feel I am, in fact, in the midst of a major societal/cultural shift.  For example, twenty-something career girls are constantly on the move and I find myself even struggling with the idea of deeper commitments.   Social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are empowering in that they help maintain connections with friends across the globe.  At the same time, they create an impersonal barrier where individuals merely communicate behind barriers (that would be their computers)... ironic, considering we call these social networking sites.  And for a professional example, I'll draw on my brief experience in public accounting.  KPMG, my Big Four firm, strived very hard from the moment they started recruiting me to convey the image that they were a very cool company in which to launch a career.  Key word being "launch" because, as everyone knows, people last little more than 2-4 years with the firm that gave them their start.  But compared to my prior experience working with Johnson & Johnson, where it was more appealing to ride out your career there (but have the chance to bounce around their 200+ affliates over time), at KPMG it was more about gaining the skills and experience there but not so much working there forever.

Some days I really don't know how to feel about living in this era.  Perhaps I feel like our Odyssey generation lacks many wholesome principles that prior generations held dear.  Perhaps I feel like the world moves too fast around me.  Perhaps the information-overload that the Internet provides deters me from focusing on my true passions and interests.  Perhaps I need to just take advantage of this happy dilemma but better adapting to my world as Chris Anderson offers in The Long Tail-- a world where mass marketing is less prevalent and offers a greater supply of niches catering to more specific groups of people.  l suppose all the worldly things that speak to my interests are out there waiting, just for me, and I need to simply focus on those things and avoid the rest of the noise around me?

Until I figure this out the "odyssey" will simply continue...

Into the Wild

The other night I watched the most remarkable movie by Sean Penn: "Into the Wild."  It was based on the bestselling book by Jon Krakauer, based on the extraordinary, short life of a young man named Christopher McCandless.  Frustrated with his family and society in general, he donated his $24k of life savings to OxFam and traveled from his Washington, DC home to the western states for adventure and absolute freedom.  McCandless would soon abandon his car somewhere in an Arizona desert, cut up all photo identification, ceremoniously burn every last dollar in his pocket, and change his name to Alexander Supertramp.

This was all occurring in the early 1990's, and "Alex" was about 21-22 years old as he embarked on this kamikaze, never-to-return adventure.  He lived out of his tent, killed small game for food, and slept in the woods and between train cars.  He once kayaked down the Colorado River into Mexico, then after crossing, convinced the border patrol to let him back into the country where he would subsequently hitchhike from the Mexican desert all the way north to South Dakota.  His ultimate destination was the Alaskan frontier.  Alex truly and fully ventured into the wild, carrying just a rifle for hunting, books, and some basic possessions.  There he survived just over 100 days, where he died of starvation somewhere along the Stampede Trail.

From what I gather, Alex has become a legend among backcountry backpackers, and understandably so.  He is a new icon... a sort of pissed off Thoreau for the 20th century.  He avidly read his works as well as Tolstoy's and Jack London's.  His heroes where those which chose the path of simplicity and poverty.  His story is so counter-intuitive to anything we could grasp.  Some of us value job security to the extreme and believe heartily in racking up university degrees (which McCandless had, by the way... he graduated from Emory U).  And on the other side of the continuum there are free-spirits somewhere bouncing around Europe and Asia in backpacks... but Alex was simply in a league of his own.  I believe that we have much to learn from such people, who live life on the wild extremes.  Alex experienced life in its rawest form.  He lived to survive; and he survived to live.

The movie was tremendously thought-provoking, but offered one particularly remarkable quote... one of those that when you hear it, it seems to echo and echo through the night.  Perhaps the quote was found in Alex's journal after his death, but regardless, I'll never forget it: "Happiness is only real when shared."

Wow.  This world has seen many brilliant philosophers which have lived in solitude... among my personal influences is Father Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who wrote some of the most remarkable journals from his personal hermitage in the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.  But here is a young man who abandoned his family, who shunned any and all societal norms, who abandoned many individuals along his journey (as described in his journals) who loved his presence and helped him tremendously.  He was grateful for the friendships he established but he ultimately rejected it all and died alone in the wild of Alaska.

As someone who has camped alone in Montana several times and has traveled nearly 20 countries in Europe alone and with merely a backpack, I can relate to Alex's intense desire to seek solitude and adventure.  I can relate to his desire to go against the grain of society.  However, I crave the connection with the larger world around me more than I probably even know.  Somehow (and I thank God for this), I feel just as comfortable at a cocktail party, talking with hundreds of people in a night as I do sitting alone in thought by a campfire in the Grand Tetons.  But, through these experiences, I believe this simple statement is quite true... that true happiness is that which we share among each other.

Perhaps this is because life is so crazy to begin with that we can only begin to make sense of it together, as a family, perhaps, or as a church.  Perhaps God exists as much, if not more, in our conversation with each other as He does in the relentless silence of the night.  Regardless, Christopher McCandless/Alexander Supertramp went not just into the wild physically but into the wild as a spiritual quest.  His quest for answers took him so far to the abyss that he ultimately paid the price--his life-- early in his journey.  His death was a tragic one but for the courage and the curiosity he possessed, listened to and answered, I thank him for the mark he has left on this world.

Movie poster courtesy of imdb.com

"You Will"... Have we? Will we?

It was fun looking back at these ubiquitous AT&T commercials from 1993:

It's amazing to think some of these prophecies came true, yet a majority of these predictions have yet to come to fruition... and at least not by AT&T.

If a major tech company would make another commercial like this today, what would it look like??

City of Perennial Losers

The city of Philadelphia has been in baseball hysteria this past month, and especially this past week.  As of this past Sunday, national and local stations alike have replayed again and again Brett Myers striking out Washington's Wily Mo Pena to clinch the Phillies first division title and playoff berth since 1993.  Our city is so used to losing in every sport-- or actually anything for that matter -- that this miraculous sports comeback is worth savoring.  ESPN's Jayson Stark captures the spirit of this pennant run quite well with this article.  As a long-time Philly sports fan, this whole Phillies hysteria has swept me off my feet too.  No matter what, you can NEVER take away the tremendous work this club has accomplished in coming from 7 games behind with 17 games remaining to steal the NL East crown from the Mets.

But what does a division title really mean, in the whole scheme of things?  As the Colorado Rockies are starting to prove (as of these last 2 days), pretty much nothing.  This club has won 16 of their last 17 games and have absolutely bulldozed the Phillies over in the first round of the playoffs.  After the Phillies' incredible 162-game juggernaut of an emotional, roller-coaster season, we're about to watch our World Series hopes-- and possibly fond memories of this team-- slip away faster than we can say "Matt Holliday."  Starting this Saturday we face a humiliating, swift playoff elimination and this entire city--myself included--is bracing itself for the worst.

Ah, Winning..... true glory seems so elusive.  Whether it's the fact that one true champion of 30 overall teams will be left standing in a Major League Baseball season is one example.  Or how the overwhelming majority of start-up businesses fail within months of inception.  Or how finding a great future soulmate of a girl is such a seemingly impossible task for many guys.  Winning--in sport, in business, in life-- is an art of human life that few can ever master.  I often refer to Vince Lombardi's #1 Speech on my office wall and wonder how he really did it, how he really got things done while doing it all better than anyone else.

Along with the rest of diehard Philadelphians, it looks like I'll find myself wondering this weekend how this city has been not much more than a bunch of losers since, well, 1776 when we signed the Declaration here and kicked British ass (the 1980 Phillies are exempt as well).  But the fact that our Phillies franchise has lost over 10,000+ games (which tops the losses of ANY sports franchise probably around the globe) is just at the essence of the perennial loser-status that this city somehow maintains.  Maybe I'm just overly frustrated right now and need to wait until this series finally ends, the disappointment subsides and I think rationally again in a few weeks.

As Lombardi says, winning is not a sometime thing, but an all-the-time-thing.  In Philadelphia, unfortunately, it seems we're always striving for even just a taste of that "sometime-thing."

"Some time" I really hope this changes.