Danny ChaiI don’t think I’m ever going to get to write about any of my trips. Eventually, it will happen.
So, I’ve decided I’m never living in Houston. Well, that’s maybe too strong. But the thing is, by now I’ve been to a lot of places in the U.S. And hands down, Houston has the worst weather. Without question. I’ve heard bad things about Pittsburgh also, but in a different way. I don’t know, I just don’t know if I could take it. I think the road trip just reminded me how bad the weather in Houston is.
Especially at night. The room I sleep in is the only one in the house without a fan, so it’s hot. And my parents like to keep the A/C at times at 85 to save money. Anyway, I wake up sticky. It’s not pleasant.
The strange thing is, I love it at home. It’s just a time to rest and refocus. Mostly rest. The past couple days I’ve gotten up at 3 PM and 4 PM. It’s great.
Anyway, tonight I hung out with Naomi Lee and her assorted friends, including Jenny Huang and Dave McCants. We all went to see the Houston Symphony Orchestra (I believe) at the Miller Outdoor Theater. It was a really pleasant evening, actually. The weather was quite nice, especially for Houston, and I enjoyed the music.
The crazy thing is this. Like, there were about 8 people there, most of whom I didn’t know, and I think all but me were either in med school or going to med school. I don’t know, I just think it’s crazy how many medical doctors I will personally know. Growing up, maybe it’s just the company I kept, but I didn’t know a single doctor personally. I mean, none of my friends’ parents were doctors. Not a single one. It’s just insane to me how everyone I know is in medicine. Crazy.
Anyway, what I kept thinking the entire time is how different groups interact differently. It just interests me. So you know, after college, you kind of end up keeping in touch with and hanging out with people from your own fellowships. I’m talking about Christians here. So like, for the most part, FiCS like people keep hanging out after school, IV people hang out with each other, etc. You know, just generally, not like a rule.
So what happens is that these cultures just perpetuate, and that’s fascinating to me. Like there’s this little community of Stanford IV people from like 5 years ago in San Francisco, and I’ve gotten to see glimpses of it on way or another, and they’re just very Stanford IV. This probably makes no sense. I’m just saying it’s very different from the FiCS culture.
And you know, I think with our class also there’s this perpetuated IV culture that kind of hangs out together, and I think it’s very IV, even if they all eventually left IV. Again, I don’t know if I’m making sense, but all I’m really saying is that it’s different from FiCS/KCPC culture.
It’s the same thing with the Crusade culture. I don’t know, I’m making this up, but those very few times I hang out with Naomi and her friends, I kind of feel like it’s the Crusade culture, especially tonight with Jenny Huang there, and it’s just different. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s almost way more polite. That sounds really weird, but that’s how it feels. Same thing with the SF IV culture – it just feels a lot more polite than with the FiCS culture. Not that either is nicer or more genuine or anything like that, I just feel like the non-FiCS Stanford Christian culture just has this air of being more polite with one another that’s just different.
I don’t know. It’s just that, being out of school, pretty much the only culture I get to see regularly is the FiCS culture, so I get used to that, so when I see glimpses of other cultures, it just strikes me. It’s just interesting. It’s also interesting how these different Stanford cultures are perpetuated even after graduation.
At any rate, it’s interesting. I act differently because of it. It’s weird.
Another interesting thing is how many med school people I know have been taking a break in the middle of school. Like, a friend of mine at Stanford Med is taking a year off. Jenny Huang is also taking a year off, as is Leo. I think Linnea is planning to also. I didn’t realize it’s so common. Or maybe it’s becoming more common.
I attended a funeral a couple days ago also. It was the first one I’d been to since I was a kid, and it just made me think a lot. First of all, that life is short, and and idea that I talk about too much, that we’re all going to die.
It made me think about a lot of other things as well. Like, a common theme was how they will be reunited in heaven. You know, that hope is just kind of comforting, and people need that. But I kept thinking, what about people for which that’s not true?
I don’t know, but a lot of times you’ll hear non-Christians say stuff like he/she is in a better place, or I know they’re looking down on me from heaven. I actually both of those things recently, one on sports talk radio, and one as a dedication on Casey Kasem’s countdown to a guy that committed suicide. I don’t know, I think we all want to think there’s more than this life, even non-Christians, when they take the time to think about death, and like I said, they often say stuff like, they’re in heaven now, and we’ll be reunited.
But I was thinking about it, and that makes no sense. If everyone gets into heaven. I mean, if heaven is populated by the exact same people that are down here, what kind of heaven would that be? It would suck. It would be just like down here, with all its pain and sorrow, just perpetuated for eternity. That would seriously suck.
Unless people were changed so they weren’t as bad anymore. But then, if everyone made it to heaven, what would the point of this life be? Why not skip this step, and go straight to the heaven step?
I don’t know, I just think people instinctively believe in heaven, and not just for comfort reasons. I think instinctively, when people contemplate death, they think there’s more than this life, because that’s the only way this life kind of makes sense. I don’t know, I’m not really explaining myself well, but I just think there’s a reason why instinctively, when people think about death, they think about there being more after this life. It’s just strange that it’s such a universal instinct.
The thing is, logically, it doesn’t make sense that everyone gets into heaven. Either that heaven would suck just as much as this earth, or there would be no point to this life, and I just can’t believe either of those things – it just doesn’t make sense to me.
I guess all I’m saying is that in my mind, a lot of Christianity just makes sense. If there is a heaven, an idea that’s somewhat instinctual, it can’t be that everyone gets there. There has to be some sort of selection for everything to make sense. I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t make sense to you, but it makes sense to me.
I’ve never known what to say to friends when their relatives are not believers when they pass away. I remember one friend in particular when his grandmother died it was really hard on him, since she wasn’t a believer and he had actually hoped to spend time with her to witness to her one day. I don’t know; my heart just grieved for him. I still don’t know what to say.
Maybe it’s lame, but what I do pray kind of is based on C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. Seriously, that book changed my life. Anyway, he writes about how Jesus is the only way to heaven; that’s pretty clear from the Bible. And that believing in him is one way to heaven. I mean, you know what I mean by believing in him. But he writes that there may be other ways to get to heaven through Jesus. This is how I think he explains the problem of the remote peoples who have never heard of Jesus. That there may be a way to heaven through him, although they never heard of him.
I don’t know, but that idea’s interesting to me. Peter does write that Jesus preached to the dead. In situations like that, I’ve just prayed that somehow God might have mercy on their soul. Because who knows what happens after death. I don’t know; it can’t hurt to pray for them. But it’s hard.
Umm, this entry probably didn’t make any sense whatsoever, and even if it did, it being late, I’m not even sure if I mean what I wrote. Oh well. I’ll try and write about the road trip soon.