Brain Dump (I'm Procrastinating)

It's snowing outside, and I'm grateful for the moisture. My hands are dry and almost cracked. The grass is yellow, and everything is dry. We have needed the revitalization the snow will bring. Yet I still dream of warm summer and spring days where I can go outside, where cold is just an unpleasant memory.

Provo has mixed up winter and spring. The weather has been so pleasant these past few weeks.I have taken naps and worked on homework outside in the sun. Everything was bright and decidedly not icy. And yet, the past few days, it has been overcast. Snow falls intermittently throughout the day, but doesn't stick for long.

What is it about snow that makes us perceive it as so magical? Even as someone who dislikes cold and winter, I still look at snow with wonder. It may create dangerously icy roads and inconvenient blockades, but at least it's pretty right? It falls from the sky in thick white flakes, like meteorological dandruff. The gentle dance of the ice as it descends creates a sort of swirl. It reminds me of Christmas, of fun, and stories of magic- but why? Is it because it is so pure and white, because of it's sparkling refraction of sunlight? Is it the slow fall from the clouds? Is it just memories, of snowmen and snowball fights? Why is snow so magical?

Hopefully my windshield doesn't freeze over.

This Day

Cicero's words swim into my mind through my eyes, duties, philosophies, and morals. The floor is uncomfortable, but there is only one couch nearby, and it is filled with another student. So around the corner I sit. Part of the wall juts out, and then just as quickly recedes, and it is here that I have built my nest of papers and highlighters.

Something in the walls, in the ceiling, is thrumming. It pulses against my spine, never constant, like wind, or thunder, or perhaps a heartbeat. This notion catches me by surprise, and now this corridor becomes a throat, but where is the belly of the beast? Is it the center? Or do we simply pass through, back outside, and it feeds on our motion, our stress and frantic pace?

This nook is cozy. I slept, for a minute or two, and dreamed of storms and open plains, of friends sticking together though the world was against them. Friendship, when done right, can be just as stunning as the sky, and as powerful as this earth, which hurtles through space, strong, yet gentle, so that we do not even feel it turn.

The thrum grows, and I wonder, perhaps a prisoner is kept in these walls. A being that spends its days beating on them, until his hands are raw and mind is empty of hope. Getting out is the only desire he knows. I got out of something like that once. My heart was raw and angry for many months afterwards.

This morning I looked at the clouds and thought "Humans are always getting stronger." From the moment we're born to the day we die, all we do is adapt. Skin once soft and delicate grows rough through wear, and so we buy products to make it smooth again. Wounds heal to scars, blisters to calluses, and hearts just harden against the pain. At birth, we keen with hunger, we can't stand the agony, and yet now, we can put off eating for far too long.Our minds have learned that they are stronger. Heartbreak, too: each one seems to chip away at the inner idealist all people have, or once had.

The ceiling is humming and I wonder if the beast within feeds on our pain, the stuff we have learned to ignore. Perhaps it knows that we aren't using it.

Song Lyrics and Pantoums: There Is No Superman

In Creative Writing, we were asked to take lyrics from our favorite songs and to combine them into a meter poem. I chose to do a pantoum. This is two different favorites of mine, "This Is The Story Of A Girl" and "Waiting For Superman." I like it a lot, but I can't take credit for the awesome lyrics I had to work with!

This is the story of a girl
Who cried a river and drowned her world
She looked so sad in photographs
But I love her when she smiles

She cried a river and drowned her world
She's waiting for Superman to pick her up
She doesn't know I love it when she smiles
She'll smile in his arms someday

She's waiting for Superman to pick her up
An imagined mythical perfect man
She'll smile in his arms someday
I'll watch him take my light away

There's no imagined mythical perfect man
She settles with someone who only pretended
I watch him take my light away
One abuse at a time

She settled for someone who only pretended
And he tore away her shining smile
One abuse at a time
But I know she can find it again someday

That man tore away her shining smile
And hurt her until the day she finally ran
I know she'll find her smile someday
Maybe she'll run back to me

He hurt her until the day she finally ran
Now she's gone, searching for her happiness
Maybe someday she'll come back to me
And I'll see her smile again

She's long gone, searching for her happiness
She used to look so sad in photographs
Now she glows once more
This is the story of a girl

Sunday Series: He Has No Sin

How can a Savior who never sinned truly understand the pain of one who has sinned? He never had to repent or experience a change of heart....right?

Wrong. He did experience it. More than any of us, he knows how it feels. He did not sin or repent for Himself, that is true. But that was so He could atone for us. He knows exactly how it feels in our hearts when we sin, and when we repent, because He has felt our hearts. He has experienced all the pain the world ever offered to anyone, and He came through it, glorious, to redeem us all. Because of Him, we can get up after we fall, and heal, as if the fall had never happened. The only evidence is our own memory of it. 

The visiting teaching message for this month is titled "The Attributes of Jesus Christ: Without Sin." The message's focus is on how this attribute of Christ can guide us. It says that "Understanding that Jesus Christ was without sin can help us increase our faith in Him and strive to keep His commandments, repent, and become pure."

How do we do this? We are imperfect mortals, with a tendency to regress. Elder D Todd Christofferson said that "As we endeavor day by day and week by week to follow the path of Christ, our spirit asserts its preeminence, the battle within subsides, and temptations cease to trouble." How do we "endeavor?" 

Mosiah 5:2 reads "And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually."

This change is also a promise, to do our best to live the Lord's way. Yet it is not a one-time promise. We are imperfect mortals and so we constantly sin, and regress. So we must make this promise over and over again. We recommit every day to living how the Lord wants us to. And when we fall, He can help us get back up, so that it was like we never fell in the first place.

I heard a valuable insight while visiting teaching today. One of the girls I teach referenced a talk that spoke on how sometimes the Sacrament prayer has to be redone. Perhaps a word is out of place, or the phrases were mixed up. Yet, even though it had to be blessed again, once it is right, it is just as perfect as if it had only been done once. Even though we messed up, if we repent, it is as if we never fell. And if we change, truly, to Christ it becomes as if we were never the way we were before, but for the memories that we have. 

Christ was without sin because we are sinners. Christ was without sin because He is our Savior. He lived a life without sin in order to save us. He lived the way He did so that we could live better. Christ is our constant. He sacrificed Himself for us, so that when we repent, it is as if we never sinned. All that remains is the memory of it, and that memory holds no weight in the eternities. 

Christ knows and loves us just the way we are, and He will guide us to be better.

Small Kindnesses

-the kind old couple missionaries at the event I catered on Wednesday, who read my nametag and bothered to make conversation. This job could get pretty boring without customers like you.

-the (cute) guy in the JFSB basement who picked up something I dropped as I came in and made sure I got it back.

(It was one of these things...they have a tendency to fall off)

-my coworkers for just being awesome, friendly people

-my roommates......

-just the general epic-ness of everyone I've met at BYU

For Valentine's Day

I'm standing here with my heart in my hands
Desperately reaching for you
I'm pleading and falling and see how I land
I lay crumpled, just one, and not two
Because desperation never works out
In matters of love and the heart
It's too needy, too ready to shout
And often over before it can start
But what if it's more than just the weakness inside
That's saying that we could be something
What if there's a reason for "you and I"
To have a chance to be more than a wondering?
Can desperation be silenced to find
The voice of one greater above?
Who placed us here, in this place, at this time
So we could find someone to love?

Even these wide eyes can see that it's hard

And that we'll each have to play certain parts

But it would be worth it, I think as I fall

To have the chance to join these two hearts

Sunday Series: To Proclaim Liberty To The Captives

There is a Messianic prophecy in Isaiah that touches a chord in my heart. It is found in Isaiah 61 , and there are two phrases in particular that stick out to me. I believe I have written about one of them before- "beauty for ashes." It is the second phrase, though, that made a point in Sunday School yesterday.

As you might have inferred, the phrase is "to proclaim liberty to the captives."

In Sunday School, we specifically discussed what it might mean, and I wish that I had raised my hand and said what I was thinking. Because of course, it does mean the literal freeing of captives, of Israel and the Jews, but I wondered if it might mean something more. If it might mean, say, the freeing of a cripple from a body that cannot walk. The freeing of the blind from a life without sight. The freeing of the disabled, bringing their minds in true harmony with their bodies, bringing them to their full potential. The freeing of the depressed to happiness, the freeing of the down-trod to hope. I wondered if "proclaiming freedom" was more than literal.

In addition, this freedom is a freeing from sin. Christ is the Mediator, the forgiver of sins. He knows our hearts, and through His Atonement, He brought freedom to our spirits, from sin, and also from death.

There is support for this idea- did not Jesus live His life healing the sick and mending the broken? His life was full of  miracles such as this. There is a famous story in Luke about a paralytic who was confined to his bed. This man's friends carried him before Christ, who proceeded to free this man in two ways, both from sin and from his bed. With the simple words, "Rise up and walk," Christ brought a new freedom into this man's life- a freedom of movement.

Christ can free us from everything that holds us captive. He can free us from fear, from doubt, from pain and loss. He can free us from heartbreak or longing. He has freed us from sin and death. He can free us from all that binds us, and keeps us from living to our full potential, if we just choose to follow Him.

Ramble

I will epistolize this feeling, defenestrate my meaning

And send a paper airplane wending towards the sky

Your name is the only one I wish to hear today

TBT: Bent But Not Broken

Take all the poetry
Take all my time
You take what's yours
I used to think it was mine
Take what is left of me
Broken and scarred
Take it and fix it
This wild card
Take all the pieces
I've scattered on the ground
And make something beautiful
You can do that, I've found
Can you make me more worth it?
Less awkward and strange?
Stronger and sweeter
So the others don't run away?
(They don't think they will now
But they always do one day)
Lord, make me eternal
And gentle and kind
Let me be a mother
I'll do my best, you'll find
Just don't leave me stranded
Broken and bent
Don't leave me out here
Hung over a fence

TBT: Tragedy Of The What?

Found this in my old stuff...don't think I ever finished it! From an essay I read for a biology class at some point.

"The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy. As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, “What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?” This utility has one negative and one positive component. 1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1. 2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1. Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another....But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons.Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons." (Herdin, The Tragedy Of The Commons)

Hardin's basic claim in his essay The Tragedy Of The Commons is that freedom in the commons brings ruin to the population as a whole. A commons is defined as an area where all may partake of its various benefits without disadvantage to them, as in the situation of the fields and the herdsman above. Evaluating benefits is done on a case-by-case basis (the individual herdsman deciding whether to add a new animal to his herd) rather than looking at the benefits and detriments such an action would bring to the group or area as a whole.

It is my belief that the problem does not lie with the issue of freedom, but rather the issue of what we do with it. How do we choose to act, and how do we teach our children to act? I think the problem is the perception of what that freedom means.

It starts at birth- or, rather, sometimes it doesn't. It starts with watching a potential mother agonize over the decision to see it through. It starts with deciding that a body, a lifestyle, a trip, a figure, is more important than that life. It starts with ripping a small growing being from where it first began, keeping it from ever experiencing anything besides conception and death. Because the advantages offer so much more than the disadvantages- to the mother. But to the world? What would that child have become? But that isn't something that crossed her mind, when she decided. It was all about her.

In childhood- which toys belong to which child? Who gets what, make sure it's fair unless it's in your favor. Children are the least susceptible to the tragedy of the commons, but nonetheless are a part of it. Watch them. Watch what they fight about- aren't they the most angry when they don't get their way? When the game doesn't go how they wish it to, when they don't get the toy they wished for.

And teenage years. Oh the sweet, sweet torture. The years of me. Am I pretty, handsome enough? Do they like me? What are they thinking about me? I bet they talk behind my back and say mean things. Does this look good on me? In some ways, this is an important time of self-discovery, of learning and growing, but in other ways, it is an epitome of the tragedy. This time that is more full of sadness and exuberance than any other, but also so much more self-centered. It is a rare person that will do something that doesn't benefit them in some way. "What's in it for me?"

This is the issue: What we teach them. How we live. What do they see? We are all the same at heart. We are all self-interested, with that nagging hint of virtue. But if we let the virtue rule, what a world that would be. Yet self-interest keeps it from happening. Self-interest destroys relationships, destroys people, destroys worlds. This is the true tragedy of the commons.

A Short Poem About College Life

need sleep
want sleep
don't have sleep

need time
want time
don't have time