Kai’s bday blog: The ramblings of an asian man at the end of his 30s

Greetings friend, thanks for having a read.

Hitting the midpoint of my life has led me to reflect on what it all means and what’s valuable for the next chapter. I hope you can relate with my bouts with ambition, ego, idealism and mediocrity.

I suppose I’m giving my insecurity about aging an uppercut to the scrotum by laying it all out on the internet, so here we go!

Over the past 20 years of being a ‘grown up’, I’ve encountered my share of trials and tribulations that have helped me to realise what I find meaningful (and what I should focus on) for the remainder of my life. 

The back story

Nearly 6 years ago (wow) my ex of 12 years left me, which simultaneously led to me leaving the Evangelical Church. I began traveling solo around the world as a way to cope with the loss of losing both my ex and Jesus.

When I was in Vietnam in 2015 I met Hannah, a Brit living in Beijing. About 2 years after that encounter she moved to live with me in Orange County. (My story with her is way too much awesome, so I won’t go further into that now.)

Today I’m still running my music education academy, Tritone Music. I’m about halfway through an MBA at Cal State Fullerton, and most importantly, Hannah and I had a beautiful daughter named Aili (pronounced Eye-Lee). She will be one-year-old on Nov 21, 2019.

Having a child has been the big game changer in my life to date, as it’s allowed me to see morality and my purpose for existence in a new light. 

The meaning of life

For years, Evangelical Christianity offered a simple explanation for meaning and purpose on Earth. Now that I am postchristian (more on this term later), I’ve been confronted with redefining who I am and what I wish to live for. 

Around the time of my divorce, I dunked myself into a baptism-by-Bourbon.

I entered a dark and self-destructive space that, along with my solo world travels, made me question what I’d do to fill the void left by my ex and Christianity.

Through years of deliberation I boiled down a new morality—three defining principles—that I have decided to live by:

1) Experience as much as I can in life, with the caveat of moderation

In other words, I want to continue to travel as much as I can and not limit the breadth of my experience on silly dogma. And moderation, so I don’t burn out.

2) Procreate 

Now that I’ve come late to the evolution party (yes, I believed in creation for 18 years of my life), I see how amazingly miraculous my gene code is. Despite my flaws, I want to keep it going, alongside my culture and all of the bells and whistles that come with that term. 

3) Improve the world for all the bebes. 

This is the important one. My daughter didn’t choose to be in this world; I chose to bring her in. 

I am obligated to improve the world she’s growing up in as much as possible. I cannot stand idly by as the society around her becomes less moral, more hostile to the needy and the refugee, and more indifferent to hatred and violence. 

The United States is bursting into flames and Evangelical Christians have buckets of water and petrol at their feet. Guess what they’re throwing on?

When she’s old enough, my daughter is going to look up at me and say, “Dad, your generation was the last generation that could have done something about climate change, why didn’t you do something about Extremist Christianity, and how could you have let Trump serve two terms… like, WHAT THE FUCK?!?” 

I want to be able to look her square in the eyes and say: “I tried.”

Yes, I believe in the hippy dippy shit that every time I give someone a god damned hug I’m improving the world. But it’s just not enough for me. 

From my travels, I’ve seen how influential the US is on the rest of the world’s cultures, policy and morality. What I do as an American voter can have very real international repercussions, which is why I’ve chosen to focus on two projects to hopefully change the world for the better. 

postchristianity

The United States is bursting into flames and Evangelical Christians have buckets of water and petrol at their feet. Guess what they’re throwing on? 

Christianity in the US is radicalizing. A few decades ago, a relatively moderate Islam started dramatically shifting rightward and groups like Al Quaeda started popping up.

So goes the way of Christianity today. 

Most will argue that we are so far away from that level of extremism and that it would never happen in America. But the most concerning thing is not the acute acts of white terrorism or the caging of refugee children, it’s moderate Christians’ staggering silence as the church tiptoes, unimpeded, toward radicalism. 

I believe Christianity needs a new reformation, as it is no longer an effective vessel of Christ’s message. I’ve started a blog to call out the heresy within the church: the worship of wealth, the condemnation of the refugee, the tolerance of immorality for the sake of criminalizing abortion…

I know what Evangelicals believe, I know what it means to ‘take up your cross’ and follow Jesus. If Evangelicals could just start throwing the right buckets of liquid onto the fire we could be out of this mess and the US could be a better place for Aili to live. 

Semi // art // omatic

Imagine a world where children are regularly murdered in their schools, and the adults who can do something about it prioritize their own rights and comforts and do nothing. Imagine a world where dozens of people die every day for preventable reasons and people just scroll past the news, not feeling, not doing. 

After the Parkland shooting I had enough. Children were being slaughtered in their own school and I knew that we as adults would do nothing. I decided to do something. 

I’ve started a project that buys AR-15s from private sellers, cuts the guns into pieces, then turns those pieces into works of art.  I purchased my first gun and cut it up. And now I’m asking for your help to get this project off the ground to make a difference.

This is me. 

I have come to the conclusion that I became a Christian because I am a moral person, NOT the other way around. My passion right now is to manifest this morality and improve the world for everyone, for the sake of Aili. 

The only thing I grieve for as I turn 40 is that I don’t have the time to do everything I’m passionate about. So with the little time I have left I want to do something risky, meaningful, and all-in. And I need your help. 

Like my Facebook pages postchristianity and semiartomatic. Comment, interact and share. I humbly believe that my voice and this art project may help the world, but I need your help to get it out there. 

Perhaps these attempts at improving the world are futile. But together: well, at least we tried.

Thanks for reading,

Kai.