Humans of New York and The Death of a Dream

If you ever want to learn more about people, I highly recommend Humans of New York, a project where a photographer takes a picture of various people on the streets of NYC and then asks them an interview question like, “If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people, what would it be?”

The results are sometimes humorous, often profound, occasionally a bit off-color, and always fascinating.

A few days ago, I saw this picture.

This is the caption that went with it: “I had a whole vision. I wasn’t a pro, but I could film from different angles and stuff. I was going to have a whole YouTube channel with different kids doing rap battles. I worked really hard at it, but nobody except my friends ever looked at it. And all the adults in my life told me that I was wasting my time. So one day I got mad at life, and started deleting, deleting, deleting, until it was all gone.”

One commenter wrote, “This is one of the saddest things I’ve seen here.”

Other responded to this comment with disbelief and anger, and I could understand why. Sometimes people on Humans of New York talk about their five-year-old child’s death or about a family situation full of abuse or about the hardships of moving to the US from another country with no friends or family. All of these things are incredibly sad, and have a much deeper impact than a few deleted YouTube videos.

In my head, I know this. But my heart agreed with the original commenter.

You know why? Because in that man’s words, you can hear the death of a dream.

Why We're So Cynical

This is funny. Why? Because it’s true, and we like the fact that someone was willing to say it so directly.

We laugh because in this artwork the cliché kindergarten advice: “You can be whatever you want to be” is shown to be a cotton-candy fluffpiece of rhetoric that melts away in the dreary rain of reality.

Guess what, kids? Cinderella’s castle is mostly just an empty façade, constructed entirely for its commercial value. And that pretty woman in the ball gown? She’s not really a princess, either.

And this is a good thing. It would be delusional to live in Fantasyland. So we laugh at cynical drawings like these.

But sometimes I think we laugh because it hurts and we don’t want to admit it. We have seen dreams die. We have told ourselves we will never be good enough for something—marriage, a career, a goal, a eulogy filled with purpose and impact. We know people with the potential to be something great who have been shoved down by circumstances of life. We are surrounded by broken things and failures and big blank pages of our future stories that we have no control over. And it scares us, but we don’t know how to be scared.

The Pearl and the Keychain

One of my favorite of Jesus’ parables goes something like this, “There was a man who hunted garage sales looking for treasures. One day, he found one, and he sold all that he owned to get money to buy…a plastic keychain that lit up when you pressed a button on it.”

No, you’re right. That wasn’t it. It was a bobblehead doll of the last American Idol winner.

A magnet from Sea World?

An embossed stationary set?

A toothpick used by Lady Gaga?

Fine. Okay. Apparently no one is going to believe my version of the story. In the real story, the man sold all he had in order to buy a pearl of great price.

Makes sense. Sure, he went a little crazy, but at least he was blowing all his cash on a real treasure, something that mattered. No one would value a plastic trinket that highly, enough to make it worth everything they had.

Except, you know, me.

Last week, I promised a behind-the-scenes explanation of what you learn from having a book published. I decided to focus on just one thing, because it’s something that very few people talk about: the danger of putting your dream for the future and desire to please others above God.

How to Get Published, Part Three: The Book Contract

You know when someone asks you a question, and the only answer you can think of is, “It’s a long story….”? Well, this is one of those long stories. When people ask me how I got a book contract, I’m never sure if they really want to sit down and hear everything. So I’ll say it here instead, where hopefully only people who are interested have to suffer through it.

Things don’t always (or, actually, often) work this way. My story is not typical. Then again, if there’s anything I’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that no one’s story is typical. But you can still learn from other people’s experiences, even if your own experiences won’t look the same.

Around Thanksgiving during my senior year of high school, my twin sister Erika, a future elementary education major, was reading a lot of kids’ fantasy series. She didn’t like a lot of them because they were predictable and used random bursts of magic to solve whatever problem happened to come up. “You got poisoned by a snakebite? Don’t worry, we happen to have a venom-reducing emerald on hand.” (No, that really happened. Honest.)

So she did the only reasonable thing to do when your sister is a writer. She said, “Hey, Amy, I know what I want for my birthday. A book.”

And I said, “Well, it’s six months early, but okay. What book?”

“I don’t know. You haven’t written it yet.”

Silence. “Um…what do you mean by that?”

Write What You Love

Have you ever seen parents with children who don’t like children?

Sometimes it’s the mom who dresses up her little girl like a doll and tries to cover up her scratches and bruises with tights and makeup. Or it’s the dad who doesn’t have time to play right now and probably never will. Or the couple in the ice cream shop who figures it’s easier to give in to the tantrum and buy the chocolate sprinkle cone than to face their five-year-old’s wrath.

These people like the idea of kids. They usually love their own kids. But kids in general? Not so much.

And you can tell.

Guess what? There are writers who don’t like writing.

Sabbath Reflections: Stop Killing Isaac

Occasionally, I get this strange idea that I should write newspaper articles or promotional materials for a ministry or slasher horror screenplays.

You know why?

Because I don’t want to.

That’s right. There’s this weird complex I have: I feel guilty for enjoying writing fiction so much. I feel like studying professional writing is too much fun to be considered education. I wonder if God wants me to do something else, something that feels a little bit more like sacrifice, to serve Him.

Here’s the rule I’ve landed on: don’t kill Isaac if God hasn’t told you to kill Isaac.