This Is Dave Place

There is “Good” in Everyone

This is going to be one of my favorite posts. I’m excited to write it, and for you to read it.

A famous preacher named Rob Bell from Michigan wrote a book called Velvet Elvis a while back. In the book, he says that he believes that you can find “Jesus” in everything and everyone. Now I know that not everyone reading this believes in God or Jesus and I’m sure that some of you are completely turned off by those words. So instead of using the word Jesus, I will use the neutral word “Good”. Because Good is simple, friendly and universal. (Christians, take away an “O”, non-Christians, leave it as “Good”. Cool? Cool!)

I really like the thought of being able to find the Good in everyone. It’s really nice. But I want to say that my thoughts on this aren’t as cheesy as they sound. I swear! Just hear me out…

Take a guy like Eminem. Eminem is one of the most famous American musicians of all time. He’s sold tens of millions of albums. He’s spent the last decade selling out arenas. He is so big, that the spell-check on my computer knew his name. Anyway… Eminem proclaims in his songs that he is hated by middle-class parents all over America. And I’m sure he is right. A lot of parents can’t stand Eminem! They think his music is out-spoken, angry, negative, rude, malicious, hateful, obscene, and just plain wrong. They think it is “Bad”. But as Rob Bell said, How could someone created by God not have God inside of him? I know why people hate Eminem, but personally I think he is a genius. I think Eminem is wise, witty, realistic, and honest. Think about the many Christian and non-Christian musicians and speakers who are so clean on stage, but are terrible people in real life. These people live lives that aren’t authentic and aren’t Good, but they claim to that they are real and true. They lie to themselves and lie to everyone else. Now take a guy like Eminem. Tell me, who is more real and authentic than that guy? He admits that he’s crazy, that he’s abusive, that he had a very troubled upbringing, that he is a menace to society, and that he is very far from a perfect father, a perfect son, and a perfect person in general. That’s real. That’s Good.

I’m sorry to have shoved Eminem down your throat and I don’t mean to overly glorify the guy, but to me he is a great example of a “bad” person who truly has a lot of “Good” in him. Think of the worst person on earth and you can still find good. Because, though we are all flawed humans, we still have Good inside of us. All you have to do to see the Good in someone else is take the blinders off and truly look for Good. Stop looking for all the bad! Look for Good. One more example, Intelligence is a Good trait to have, right? It’s never considered a bad trait. The most “evil” of people are usually the most intelligent. Hitler, Stalin, Attila the Hun, all highly intelligent individuals. I’m not saying we should give these guys a break. We all know that they were terrible human beings. All I’m saying is that I’m sure somewhere, no matter how minuscule, we could find the “Good”, the “Jesus” in anyone.

That is all. Have a Good day.

Don’t Ever Take Life Too Seriously

The people that know me well may tell you that I am a pretty serious guy. But the people that know me best will tell you that I have a very dry, awkward, and sarcastic underlying humor to everything I say and everything I think. People often comment on my morals or my positive attitude, but few comment on my sense of humor. I’m ok with that, because I know that I don’t have to be that outwardly funny all the time, as long as I know that inside I am not taking anything too seriously.

I hear a lot about people having very depressing and very dark thoughts. Often in our lives, we come to the realization that life can really suck. Life Sucks. We have broken hearts, bruised egos, terrible family relationships, boring jobs, crushed ambitions, and none of us feel like we are good enough. We just want to veg out on our couches while the mountain of stuff we have to accomplish and people we have to talk to gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And the whole time we are so worried, so depressed, so stressed, and so ………… AHHH! Just so annoyed at everything.

See, this is a good time to realize that life is meant to be lived humorously. Find the humor in all of it. Even in the messed up stuff, just laugh at it. I have come to the realization that everyone is insane in their own way. We all are messed up. You. Me. My friends. Your family. All of us, screwed up. So take every day with a grain of salt. Don’t let it all bother you. Just laugh, just find more stuff funny. I say this because most things are funnier than you think they are. And if you don’t believe me, just watch some comedians point stuff out that you generally wouldn’t find funny (they are usually good at that).

I’ll give you an example in my life. If I’m taking a test for school and I get a good grade, I laugh to myself and think, “Done son”. If I take a test and I fail, I laugh to myself and think, “Well that blows”. Either way, I’m smiling because a part of me thinks its funny. The successes and the failures both have a place in this humorous ride we call Life. So live laughing.

As one highly intuitive philosopher once put it, “Why so serious?”

Perception Is Reality

I talk about this a lot, but I can never stress it enough: You are what others perceive you as. That’s a confusing sentence so I’ll word it differently… Who you are is not what you think you are, it is actually what people perceive of you. So I may think I am a nice guy, but if my friends, my family, and new acquaintances say that I’m kind of a jerk, than I am actually a jerk.

If you want to communicate something to people through your words, your body language, and your actions, make sure you keep in mind their perspective. If you don’t, you are eventually bound for a rude awakening. Save yourself the trouble and open your eyes now.

The Shadow Proves The Sunshine

I love the band Switchfoot. They amaze me. They have a song called “The Shadow Proves The Sunshine”. You should listen to it. It’s been one of my favorite songs for the last 7 years. It never gets old to me.

I love the metaphor that the song portrays. You see, we all have shadows in our lives. We have so many things go terribly wrong around us. Even worse, things go wrong inside of us as well. There have been so many times when useless depressing thoughts just consume me. But in life you need those shadows, those dark times, to make the good times feel so good. It’s that contrast that allows us to truly feel… alive. We need the bad times to show us how wonderful the good times can be. Our shadows prove our sunshine.

Think about it: If you always had it your way, how would you really know what “good” feels like? We’d be stuck in Pleasantville wishing for true reality. We’d be numb. If you always had sunshine, you wouldn’t know what sunshine really is because you wouldn’t have anything to compare it to! For example, my cousins live in Hawaii. When I visited them, I asked them, “How good does it feel to live in paradise?” They say, “It’s alright I guess. We really don’t have anything else to compare it to.” They live in paradise but they aren’t truly enjoying it because it’s all they’ve ever known. You can’t have good thoughts and good experiences all the time. Believe me, you wouldn’t want it that way.

We need those bad times to grow, and to show us how great the good times truly are.

In your life, the shadow proves the sunshine.

Find Inspiration, Then Go For It

What am I supposed to do with my life? Go to college? Travel the country? Find a career with a salary? What should I do!

I think most of us ask ourselves this question often. The answer comes from another question: What makes me feel inspired? This is something you really need to find out about yourself. What do you love to do? What comes naturally to you?

I love writing music. But I also love crunching numbers. When I am bored, I add and multiply different numbers in my head. Seriously. Like for example, I just saw Blink 182 play in front of 20,000 people. I then went on their website and saw they had about 40 tour dates. I realized that they are playing to 800,000 people this summer! That is about 1 in every 400 people in America. That is insane! If I wasn’t in a band, I wouldn’t mind being a mathematician. Weird right?

The point is that it doesn’t matter what you love, as long as you realize you love it! And then you go for it. By “Go for it”, I mean pursue it somehow. Look for a job, a college, another person who has the same inspirations you have. Don’t sell yourself short and follow a path that you don’t believe in. Don’t do it. Work hard to find what inspires you. Then work hard to follow your inspirations. I doubt you will regret it. I know that I haven’t yet.

Trust and Respect

Many of us have trouble giving others trust and respect. However, trust and respect are both pinnacle in any healthy relationship with friends, families, and anyone else close to you in your life. Look at the people closest to you and ask yourself if you trust them and if your respect them. You don’t have to respect all of their actions, but you do have to respect them as people, to the best of your ability. You may ask, “What if I can’t trust or respect my friend because they have caused so many problems for me and have done nothing to earn my respect?” Well then I’d answer with this question: Why do you consider them a close friend?

Surround yourself with people you can trust and respect. I’ve met enough people out there to say that it is a very possible thing to do. Everyone makes mistakes. Understand that and let trust and respect make your relationships grow stronger.

Don’t Run Away

Our band just released our first single of our new CD. It’s called “Don’t Run Away”. You can listen to it here http://HearTh.is/h66SUU and you can buy it off of iTunes. I wrote the lyrics below. I haven’t written songs blatantly about myself in a long time. I felt for the last few years that writing vague songs about different subjects was the way to go. With this CD I dropped that notion and just wrote a bunch of songs for me. They are much more personal. They are slowly starting to become like this blog: I am writing about my thoughts and feelings and inviting you to come along for the ride.

Tell me now
Would you stay somehow
I have made mistakes
But I’ll learn to change

But I can’t stop the world
I can’t control the rain
I’m helpless to your tears
But I need you in my veins

Don’t run away
There’s something in the air that says
You’ll turn, I’ll say
I’ve been waiting all my life

Say I’m wrong
So we’ll move on
I’m a living shame
With myself to blame

So tell I’m in love
I never believed in it
But with you I don’t regret
There’s nothing I regret

I’ve been waiting all my life
To get this right
Is that alright?
For a boy who thinks instead of ever feels
A broken heart’s the only that’s real

So tell me I’m in love
I won’t believe in it
But everything can change
This world is proof of that

I’ve been waiting all my life
To get this right

Long Winter

I haven’t wrote on here in a while. It’s been a long, weird, rough winter/spring for me. Nothing tragic happened in my life, it was more of an internal thing. I want to write on here daily again. However, I just haven’t felt stable or sound in a while. I’ve been struggling with some important beliefs, thoughts, and understandings and I’m looking for answers that make sense to me. I guess that is what you do when you are a young adult.

I don’t want to write on here without feeling safe and sound. I want to help you. I want you to be able to comfortably tell a friend to read this blog without feeling nervous about what the next one will say. I want to make you feel like I am a stability you can count on. So until I feel like I can be that for you, I am going to keep on hermitting it up!

I plan on posting our lyrics for our new CD up here pretty soon though. I also want to post personal explanations and meanings for the lyrics. I feel like that will help you enjoy them more. This album is much more personal than the last so I want to explain where I was coming from when I wrote each song. I am glad that you support me and my band and are willing to listen to what I write, both in song and on here. You are a great human being. Thank you. I mean it, thank You.

Help Support

Since the music industry has gone down the drain, it’s become harder and harder to make a career out of being a musician. Record labels used to put money into promoting bands. They would receive that money back from album sales. Now, every record label is hesitant to invest in promoting bands because not as many people buy music. So, it is still possible for musicians to become successful, however it is harder to get labels to put money into promotion since there is a smaller chance they will see that money back. That is why you see so many bands that are touring the country, but not really getting much promotion elsewhere.

Our band is putting out a new album soon called “Live. Love.” To help fund promoting the CD, we set up a donation program for our fans. We figured, since we gave our last album away for free on Facebook and Purevolume for a year, it wouldn’t hurt to ask for some help in funding the next album. In a way, this is the new “music industry”: Fans don’t buy CD’s from bands now; instead, bands give away the CD online for free and fans give a donation to help support them. The world is a weird place. So, if you’d like to help, go to this link:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/phonecallsfromhome/phone-calls-from-home-live-love-album-release-and

Live Your Dream

When I was in high school, all I wanted to do was play music for my career. It was such a constant need that it would be all I thought about when I was in class. I would pay attention to the teacher and then slowly daydream away about being on stage and touring around the country.

Now at 21 I’m doing it. It’s exciting and perfect.

People say, “I want to live the dream” like it is some vague optimistic thing. What is “the dream”? I have no idea. We are all different, so the real question is what is Your dream?

You have the freedom to dream anything you want. And you have the power to live that dream. Just do what you love and don’t let anything stop you.