How all of life is like a DJ Khaled snapchat

Because I interface with millennial students on the daily, I use phrases like "on the daily" and think I can hang. When really my students just humor me enough to answer my questions about the snapchat platform. In fact, that sentence I just wrote? Embarrassed them. They would never permit themselves to say that, The Snapchat Platform, which is why I'm apt to say it all the more. It's also the reason why I love me some DJ Khaled on snapchat because he posts on the daily and teaches me all sorts of meme-worthy expressions so that I can better hang. So I can win more. So I can show my fan luv.

If you are not acquainted with DJ Khaled and his place in the snapchatosphere, allow me to introduce you. Or if you are acquainted, tell me whether we the best.

How DJ Khaled's Snapchat is an Everyman Story

1. When you're the hero, you're DJ Khaled.

DJ K's positude is irrepressible. He never goes negative. Every other snap is dedicated to a positive lifestyle (weekly mani-pedis, thinktime in the hammock) or a pep talk in which he appears to be coaching both his fans and himself on the keys to success. When you're the champion of your own narrative, when you're so convinced of your own comeuppance, you are DJ Khaled.

2. When you're the enemy, you're the They.

DJ K knows They are always lurking. They don't want you to enjoy your balanced breakfast (and of course, water). They think you're fat. DJ K never thinks about that evil force, he says. His positive energy is so persuasive that you can almost forgive him for saying things like "Stay away from They," (and printing a line of clothes with this motto to boot). We all know it should be "Stay away from them." If you gravitate too close to the They, though, or you gaze too far into the eyes of They, then the abyss may become you. Stay away from They.

3. When you're the accomplice in the story, you're Chef Dee.

The script for DJ K's personal chef, Chef Dee, does not shift too much. Her lines are fairly easy to memorize. Responding to the question, "Chef Dee, What's good?" She simply recites the menu du'jour which always looks amazing and mostly healthy indeed. But you can tell this woman does not mess. She has no time for play. Her affect is pretty flat because she is the all-important hero sidekick. Hustling. Helping our hero win more.

4. When you are the backdrop, you are Lion. The garden statue, Lion, is iconic to the DJ Khaled snapchat featurette. Whenever DJ K needs to issue a lion order--which,...whatever--he visits upon this great cat of the garden. Everyman's story needs a Lion. It needs a setting. A backdrop. A place where you can look over your dominion and consider how it is so verdant.

5. When you reach the Everyman's destination, you've blessed up. Once again, I would otherwise be opposed to superfluous prepositions but DJ K just snatches me aboard on his proverbial jet ski (or literal jet ski would be fine, too) on the journey to success. He knows that our ultimate goal is to give glory to God, and to bless up. Even if that's inviting all of your fans to cash mob a restaurant you own--which,...whatever--is part of blessing up.

Show up. Show fan luv. Stay away from They. Bless up. Win more. And of course, water.

Photos from Fusion Snapchat takeover by DJ Khaled, Chef Dee's Twitter

Why is Quiet so Loud?

Basically every single night of Little Man's life, he has fallen asleep in the company of his parents. The voyage to dreamland is not a solo one for him. We went from co-sleeping to rocking him to sleep and, now, every single night for as long as he was too big for the rocking chair, we sit in his room, playing soft piano music until the boy is KOd. Sometimes it is so annoying and I'm done with enabling this arrangement but mostly--it's the best. It's peaceful and bonding and meditative and there is something quite awe-inspiring about being there each night for the graceful drift another human makes from the conscious to the unconscious state. I notice it's also a time when Baby Girl is engrossed in narrative play with her dolls, setting up micro-living rooms where they discuss the latest in American Girl Doll fashion, I assume. This time of quiet, it does something for our son to have one of us there and it does something for our daughter to have us both undisposed . I realize now as I am typing this: it does something for us as parents, too.

Which is to say that I am pretending to discover land that is already well-inhabited territory. I've stumbled upon a thing that is, for all intents and purposes, an element in the periodic table of life that everyone knows about already, that everyone has memorized and understands its usage. So why is the messaging around Quiet so loud?

The magazines tell us how to structure our Me Time, as if it were a bureau dresser from IKEA. Spas tantalize with promises of peace for the price of an hour-long massage. Quiet has been commodified, luxurified. But oxygen is not a luxury, nor are clothes a fringe benefit. Quiet time should not be something that is reserved as in four-star dining. Quiet is a need, a necessary ingredient in wholeness. It is not simply the absence of noise but the intentionality around whatever creates a haven for reflection. So, again, why is the messaging around quiet so loud?

Because we have allowed it to be so. We pretend to steal away private moments to pray, to meditate, to breathe, all the while worried that there might be a gaping hole in the universe we will have to replenish with our busy-ness and idle small talk.

I am here to say that Quietude does not affect our carbon footprint, my friends. The messaging will tell us that to seek a quiet life is a radical act of surrender and even selfishness. But it is one of the very things that we need more of, that we need to drink in and breathe out and become better and braver because we have been quiet.

What if the work to stay relevant was less prized than the work we must do to preserve ourselves in irrelevance? What if Donald Trump relaxed his face for a few minutes, what if Marissa  Mayer took a radically longer maternity leave? What if umpires and baseball managers, instead of squaring off on the mound in disagreement, took a full minute of silence before they tried to settle a dispute about a fly ball? What if we changed the expression "For crying out loud" to "For crying in my corner!" What if quiet were less of a library standard and more the atmosphere of our world?

One of the coolest things I heard a business woman say in the last year was "Sleep is an act of worship." Ruth Simons, an entrepreneur and mother of six boys said that, as an exhortation about leaning in too much to the din of social media and online hyperactivity. Sleep, and in effect, quiet, are extraordinarily ordinary acts that glorify the Heavens for their providence -- in spite of all that we fancy ourselves able to do here as mere mortals. I can tell you that I could use a few more nights of working the evening shift with my little man. While I am supposedly Waiting him out to fall asleep, I am also Becoming Quiet, committing a random and necessary act of worship.

Keeping secrets

I figure now, in the season where we are reminded how the desire of ages was fulfilled in a cold barn long ago, that I can tell y'all about a little desire of my own that has been fulfilled. After a long road of trying to find a home for my memoir on our intercultural family, I'm thrilled to pieces that one Kalos Press has made an offer on my book and is eager to welcome "Mixed: Combining cultures, families, faith and awkward laughter" into its fold. I can't wait to tell you more about it.

Basically my feelings:

The title may shift but I am committed to this small press that has shown a strong dedication to new voices of faith --an attribute I was hoping for all along in a publisher. I'll look forward to sharing with you how this offer came to fruition and I'll be honored to share more about the prospective release of the book.

If you want to join in the ring-around-the-rosie: Be sure to keep up with me by Twitter @Kendraspondence or subscribe to our mailing list (on the right panel where it says "Be Cool, Subscribe") if you give two toots about the book ;) Even if you don't, I appreciate your readership here and your friendship on and off this matrix which privileges me to write out some of the crazy rattling around in the ol' head.