On Lives and Ships and Sealing-wax

Today, I sang a song with primary children about following God's plan for me. It was only in the final minute of singing time that I realized how much the song was pertinent to me. Right now.

You see, I'm starting a new job soon. I'm leaving the last remnants of my Utah County family and heading south to work in a library. It's not terribly far away, but far enough that a casual dinner visit is out of the question. I remember moving to Boston about seven years ago, and how I felt during the plane ride into the city. I wondered what on earth I had done. How could I possibly start out a new life by myself? What the heck had I been thinking?

Thanks to good roommates and a very fulfilling couple of years of school, Boston turned out to be a good experience for me.

And now, here I am. Leaving family again to set out on my own.

I've wondered if I made the right decision accepting this job. If I simply wanted to go because I've been kind of unhappy at my current job and was just desperate to leave.

And then this song today.

I brought along my patriarchal blessing to primary today as a kind of visual aid for talking about what the song meant. Now, my patriarchal blessing and I have had a bit of a bumpy relationship. Some things it talks about happening, things I've desperately wanted to happen, have not occurred. And so I've avoided reading it, to keep from reminding myself of the unfulfilled promises.

But talking with the children today about it, I felt an affirmation that my life, even if it isn't one that I would necessarily have chosen, is not a waste.

I think sometimes we get caught up in the details of our lives. Our days are occupied with the rough things that happen at work, or the person that cuts us off in traffic, or feeding the dog, or cleaning up after the kids, or wondering if you can get through one more episode of that show before you have to go to bed. And I sometimes think that this is all there is.

But I remembered today that our lives, each of them, do have a purpose. That the sum of our experiences matters. That even the humdrum details, the teeth brushing and nail biting and doodling, as well as the moments when we utterly connect with someone, or have a great phone call with our siblings, or give a wonderful talk, or hear a child say, "I love you," are all part of it, that each experience matters, that we are becoming something great and grand and glorious.

I don't know if the choices I've made have made my life the best of all possible lives I could have lived. (I rather strongly suspect the opposite.) But I think even when I mess up, when I make mistakes about where to live and what job to have and who to love, that it never, never, never is a waste. And that of my silly, erroneous, ephemeral life, God can make something grand. He can give it purpose.

And that is a great gift indeed.

On Beauty and Worth

This is a post I've thought about for many months. Actually, for well over a year, really. I think it may even be one of the reasons why it's taken me so long to write something on this blog. I've been mulling it over in my head, trying to figure out exactly what I feel about this, and how I can best articulate those feelings.

Let me start with an experience I had a bit over a year ago.

Women in our area of Utah County were asked last year to provide a choir for the General Relief Society Broadcast in September. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. For one thing, I got to sing with my sister (of whom I could write the most superlative things, and they would all be true), who also lives in this area. For another, the director of the choir was a woman who was possibly one of the most engaging personalities I've come in contact with. She managed to make every member of the choir feel as though best-friendship were an absolute possibility, if only there were enough time to spend with everyone individually. She was funny and wry and really, really loved us. Or, at least, loved us inasmuch as it was possible to love a room full of people that you didn't really know, but sort of knew because you were all Mormons involved in a really cool musical experience together.

Yep. It was awesome.

There was one event that troubled me though, just a bit. And it wasn't so much that I was troubled about the motivations of our director, more just what it told me about what we believe as a society in general.

Towards the end of our rehearsals, we were, naturally, doing pretty well, but still nervous that we would get up to the Conference Center and forget our notes, come in at the wrong time, or scratch our noses just right when the camera zoomed in on our faces. So, our director gave us a pep talk. It was, like her, funny and spiritually uplifting, and heartfelt and touching.

And she, like many people who are trying to help women to feel better, said to us something like, "You are all beautiful. You are all beautiful daughters of your Heavenly Father." (And you'll forgive me if my memory sort of...doesn't remember the exact wording. But that was the gist of it.)

Many women around me cried, and smiled through their tears, and I...felt troubled.

I so appreciated her effort to make us feel good about ourselves. I could feel that she did love us, and I felt that she was, really, connected to divine love, hooked into it and transmitting real charity. (Which is the only way you can, in my opinion, feel a deep and genuine love for a bunch of people to whom you have never actually spoken one-on-one.) I believe she expressed that love in a way that she felt would make us feel good. And I think it did work for most people.

But here is what troubled me: why should we need to feel beautiful in order to feel loved? Why does being acknowledged as attractive (and, really, isn't that what 'beauty' means?) make us feel valuable and valued?

I'm reminded of the many times (and I actually haven't heard it a lot in my current ward, which is kind of awesome, I think) when I've heard men get up during fast & testimony meeting and, during the course of their testimony, express their gratitude for their beautiful wives.

It's great, and we all feel good, and I'm sure the wives are aglow with the warmth of their husbands' regard, but...

But wouldn't it seem kind of strange if a woman got up to bear her testimony and said, during the course of it, "I'm so grateful for my handsome husband," or if women were instructed in the General Relief Society broadcast to be sure to tell their husbands that they are handsome? Because every man needs to be told that?

Not that I'm actually trying to argue from a feminism angle (although that wouldn't be a bad thing, just not the angle I'm choosing at the moment). It's more that I feel uncomfortable with this idea that feeling beautiful equates with feeling worthwhile.

There have been times when I've expressed to friends or family members that I don't really feel particularly beautiful. And, truth be told, I'm really not. I'm overweight, I have an oddly upturned nose (with pores the size of potholes), and my lips are kinda pale and weird (and let's not even talk about my ankles). These friends and family members have reassured me that no, I really am beautiful, and it's not external beauty that is important, it's inner beauty, right? And I do appreciate what they say, and the love with which it is offered.

And I believe what they say for a half hour, or maybe less. But, then, the belief fades, and I recognize the reality that I'm really not beautiful. Not that way.

Because guys, not everyone is beautiful. And I feel like that should be okay. A woman who has scars from years of horrible acne may not be considered all that beautiful. A man who's been burned, or is missing an arm, or teeth, may not be considered attractive.

(And I feel tremendously guilty having written the above examples, as though I'm denigrating the worth of these individuals, when in reality, I'm trying to free them from feeling as though they need to be beautiful in order to be loved. Or maybe, I'm trying to free myself.)

'But wait,' you may say. 'These people are beautiful on the inside. They're still beautiful. Everyone can be beautiful.'

That is very true. But I wish we wouldn't use the language of physical attractiveness to describe the goodness of a spirit.

Beauty draws us in. It is engaging. There's a reason why we call beautiful people 'attractive.' They pull us to them; we want to be near them. And I think it's wonderful if people are beautiful. It's fun to watch beautiful people on TV and in movies. It's fun when folks get dolled up and look all lovely for a dance or a date or a night on the town. I don't want to suggest that beauty is bad. I don't even want to suggest that men and women stop telling each other they think they're good looking.

I just want it not to be connected to our sense of worth. I want women to say, when they are reassuring other women, "You are all good and kind and worthwhile daughters of our Heavenly Father." I want men (and similarly women!) to stand up and express thanks for their spouses with phrases like, "I'm so grateful for my loving wife, for her dedication to the gospel, for her service."

And I'm trying to do my part, too.

But most of all, when I don't feel particularly beautiful, when I feel like the ugly duckling who grew up to be an ugly duck, I want to still feel of value. And worthy to be loved.

When I see them letters on the page, I just know I've done something good with my life.

I love the act of writing.

Now some of you may have misunderstood that last sentence. (It is not your fault of course; it's really due to the inherent ambiguity of language, in which words can mean more than one thing, or can have wide variations within one meaning.)

You probably thought I meant 'writing' as in the act of forming words into coherent sentences which then can be heard, read, or otherwise ingested by other persons nearby (or far away), who then decode the structure of the sentence and the definitions of the words in order to come up with some meaning (which the author may or may not have intended).

But I didn't mean that. (Thus, the decoding process failed. Silly you.) Although, I do admit that I enjoy forming sentences for decoding. It's one of my hobbies.

Nevertheless, the 'writing' to which I refer is the act of forming words on a page using a pen, pencil, stylus, paintbrush, or a particularly grubby finger. I love watching letters form in swoops and dashes as my hand moves, just touching the page there to dot the i, lifting the pen there to finish of the r, making a great loop to form the y.

There's something so satisfying about forming letters. And I'm not sure why. Although here is what I suspect:

Forming shapes is fun at any time, but forming shapes that mean something plugs, I believe, into our ancient human tradition of creating words from permanent marks made in clay or on papyrus. I think every time we cross a T or form a bold downward stroke for a D, we're reconnecting with those who first invented writing by tapping cuneiform script into clay, or with the ancient Egyptians, whose written language resembled art more than anything, or the Chinese with their countless characters, or the Greeks, or the Romans, or every other human who has held an instrument in hand and marked something so that their influence could be felt far from their immediate presence. We declare ourselves part of that tradition. Part of this ancient human family.

When I write by hand, I can also feel the passage of time more acutely. Time moves us along the atom-thin knife-edge of now, unstoppable as the future moves from far to near to now to past, all inexorably, and so so swiftly. For the most part, we ignore it, or at least, always facing forward into the immediate future as we are, we tend not to focus on the rushing-pastness of time. We're like passengers on a train (not an original image by any means, but apt) as it rushes endlessly forward. Normally, we peer forward at the track, or sometimes behind us at the things we've already seen. But the act of writing is like turning your head to look out the side window while the world whips past at an unbelievable pace. Forming letters, you see that once was blank page is now covered in marks. Marks you've made. And you're still making them, a stroke here, a dot there, a loop, all in motion, all churning the way from future to past.

Eh. Anyway. I haven't quite captured the sense of this, at least the way I feel it. But that's what writing is like. (The other kind of writing. Codification. You know.)

And why am I going on at length about something so inconsequential (sort of)? Because I have written approximately 15 mailing labels for the boxes I will ship out tomorrow. I wrote them with a sharpie. And I enjoyed it.

And that is all.

So, why does this bother me so much?

Our lesson in Relief Society today was titled: "Establishing the Cause of Zion." Which, as interesting as it was, is important to this discussion only in a peripheral manner.

One of the sisters in my ward today had several family members who attended church with her, including her mom, and a couple of her sisters (at least one of whom is married).

You may think these two things may have nothing to do with each other, but they are, in fact, quite thoroughly connected. You see, during the course of the lesson, the teacher asked the class what we can do to help establish Zion. In response, this married sister talked about how she tried to help establish a Zion home with her children and husband, (which was all well and good), and then proceeded to gesture to her single sister (the sister in my ward) and said, "And, you know, even my sister [Gertrude] can establish Zion in her own home."

I felt my hackles raise, but it took me a bit of thinking to figure out why I was bothered so much by her comment. I kept asking myself, "Why is this hurtful?"

It was the 'even' that got me, I think. The 'even' implied superiority, as if she were saying that her own life was more valuable than the life of a single, that our lives were less meaningful, less important, and would never be as important until we were married and had children. As we are now, we could only achieve an 'even.'

I may be stating this too strongly. In fact, I'm quite certain I am; I seriously doubt that this sister had any idea that her comment could be taken in such a way. I am equally certain that she loves her single sister dearly and would never intentionally hurt her. And it's always, always too easy to judge from the outside. I also think that as singles, we can sometimes be hypersensitive to singlehood slights, eagerly taking offense where none was meant.

However, I really worry that there is an undercurrent in some of the thinking that goes on in the church, among both married and single members, that lends a subtle factual base to singles' defensiveness, and marrieds' (as perceived by the singles) smug superiority.

Maybe it's just that we're taught (at least as women; I kind of believe the men don't get this drummed into them) that being a spouse and parent really is the most important thing you can do with your life. The problem is that we all want to feel our lives our valuable, not just those who are lucky enough to have miraculously found someone with whom to reproduce. We all want to believe that we're making contributions, that we're not just treading water, or hanging out, or merely marking time until our Big Break. And for those of us who are single, (and I would guess for married, parent-ified folks too), we worry all the time that what we're doing just isn't important enough, that we'll be forgotten, that we're missing out on what our life calling is supposed to be.

And I ache for us.

And I don't have any kind of solution, either. I'm not sure if we could fix this by giving talks in church that read: "Every member is valuable. Singles, your lives are important. Married folks, your lives are important. And kids? Well, you can be important as long as you clean your rooms." Or maybe we should speak up when we hear comments that seem to invoke levels of worth. Or maybe we should just plunge our fists into our own hearts, root out the prejudice and fear, and drag them out into the open air to blow away, dissolved by their own insubstantiality.

Two things:

First, have you noticed how the way people write and the way people talk don't always coincide? I mean, I think of myself and see the way I put words together while speaking to someone face to face, and I so often stumble and backtrack and hesitate. While, for some reason, when I sit down to write something, I'm usually able to at least approximate how I feel. I wonder why it's so different. I wonder how I can have these two different voices that are both somehow mine; it makes me wonder which is my real voice.

The second thing is this: it doesn't matter how often you're reminded that wishing for something doesn't change reality; there's always something convincing about the power of longing when it comes over you, as though it should bend the world around you until it's shaped to the form you wish it. You become convinced that there's something to it, that all that power must change some corner of the world and surpise you with goodness.

Once, when I was very young, I drew a picture of a fantastical animal. I named it, and wrote the name beneath the drawing. I became convinced within myself that if I just remembered to put the picture into our mailbox on my birthday, that animal would become real, and would come to me and be my own forever and ever. Of course, when my birthday came, I forgot about the drawing amidst all the festivities of the day. And afterwards I always wondered what would have happened if I had left the drawing in the mailbox.

Longing is like that; it convinces you that reality must somehow conform itself to the shape of your hope. And then it doesn't. And you remember that you really are just one solitary human being, whose feelings, though powerful and real to you, are confined wholly within your own frame, that others cannot sense them, and that the world must function according to its own rules, and cannot change itself for one individual.

What a selfish thing it is to have these feelings. What a selfish and foolish and vain and wonderful thing.

And I still can't help hoping that I'll walk around the corner someday and see that strange and beautiful and completely make-believe animal waiting just for me. I know I never will, but it doesn't change the longing. Not even a little.

What guilt will drive you to:

Did you know that feeling guilty will drive you to do all sorts of things?

Like, for instance, typing something into a post when you have absolutely nothing to say?

Nothing except, perhaps, that I think I try to talk like I'm more wise than I really am. Because I get all philosophical (not real-philosophical; only Lizardbreath-style, which usually ends up being as philosophical as toast, which, while delicious, does not necessarily help you understand the world any better) and write things, thinking I'm saying something meaningful and insightful and really I'm just stuck here trying to figure things out and mostly changing my mind while still wanting to talk about whatever and wherever my opinion is at the moment.

I'm like a mixed-up bundle of me-ness, which often just doesn't feel like it's quite good enough.

But.

Daffodils are wonderfully yellow.

And library school is awesome.

Especially when I'm only three weeks away from summer break.

It's all such a mix, isn't it?

So, I could use a swear-word to describe yesterday, but since the readership of my blog consists of people who would probably not want to read the word, I will refrain.

But oh, was it ever that word.

I talked to my boss in the morning and realized that I had holy-hecka messed up at work the previous evening, (BAD), so of course I felt horrible about that, and then later that evening I spent from about 7 or 8pm until 3am this morning working on an assignment that was due at 8am. My neck ached, I nearly fell asleep at the computer, and I think I hallucinated something about spiders that turned into library patrons (not really).

Yesterday was also FABULOUS.

Before talking to my boss at work, I had a chance to participate in a national book drop for teens in hospitals (and medical clinics) sponsored by YALSA. One of my professors asked for volunteers, so the five of us (four students and the professor) went down to a local adolescent clinic to drop off several boxes, bags, and a cart full of books. It was, to be frank, quite awesome. (Even though I did have to be in some pictures. Urgh.) Also, the guy-who-was-once-bearded came and he was very nice, but then I was all sad because he's not LDS and thus It Can Never Be.

The best part of all this, though, was that as we walked back to campus (the clinic was only about a 15-minute walk away), I had the chance to talk with my professor, who has this vast amount of experience working directly in the field, teaching in the field, and just generally being this amazing advocate in the field of services to youth. She's pretty much my hero, now. Later that day, when I was at school listening to a faculty candidate give a lecture, that professor came and sat next to me. I felt so priviliged! (Haha! I feel like I have a teacher crush, except it's not really a crush, just a 'I really like this teacher' feeling.) Yeah. I'm kind of a nerd.

Um. And then there was another reason why the day was fabulous, which took place after I finished the assignment at 3am, but I won't go into that.

So, then, this morning, I walked to class, feeling at one with the world, with the pains of the day before safely buffered by 5 1/2 hours of sleep, loving the breeze, drinking in deep draughts of the blossom-laden world. Then I got to class.

And I remembered that I was supposed to bring snacks to class today.

And that the nearest grocery store was a good 10-minute brisk walk away. And that class was going to start in 15 minutes.

So, I briskly made my way to the store and briskly made my way back with a bag of Sun Chips mashed into my backpack, and made it to my seat just in time to catch most of The Dewey Rap.

And I realized that life is just all mixed up.

I don't mean to say that life is crazy confusing (although it can be); what I'm saying is that it's a hodgepodge, a jumble, a clothing rack at a discount store, where you'll find the designer jeans next to a mumu your grandmother would scorn.

So maybe being happy really does mean learning to pick the little pieces of life that are enjoyable, and choosing to learn from the bad parts, while still not letting them make us unhappy. Or maybe even just choosing to be happy, whether life throws you librarians rapping about classification systems, or yet another broken fingernail.

Is it okay to just give up?

Lately I've read a lot of excellent blog posts about the whole LDS singlehood dating situation. Along with attendant comments, these posts offer a lot of insight into the problems, pains, hopes and frustrations all tied up in LDS dating life.

And let me tell you: it ain't pretty.

The other night, my roommate and I had a member of our ward over and the three of us talked together for hours about the things that are wrong (like really, deeply wrong) with LDS dating culture. I realized during the discussion just how much pain young single adults feel about this. I mean, I know I've felt pain about this before, and I'm sure I'll feel pained again, but this talk made me realize that pretty much all of us are really dealing with some really wrenching feelings, here. There's a lot, a LOT, of deep-rooted unhappiness. Or rather... It's not really unhappiness, just... Just pain. That's the only word that really fits well.

And, I don't know; I keep reading these posts and comments about trying hard and pursuing happiness and working on life plans while still at the same time retaining hope that your someone is still out there, that somehow with all the things that are messed up about the whole dating culture, you'll find each other, get to know each other well enough to have a friendship and fall in love and you'll get married and at last move out of the single state (into the, in some ways, way more complicated and difficult (but also wonderful) marriage state). These people who are writing really haven't given up hope that it will still happen for them.

Sometimes, I feel so old. Not old like a senior citizen; not by any means. I'm turning 30 this year, but it doesn't mean I'm getting into retirement age. But honestly, the thought of starting a marriage and family at this time in my life, with me being who I am: shy and reluctant to talk to people and awkward and too too flawed and really not remarkably attractive, I just...

Guys, I just don't see it happening.

I just don't.

And the thing is, I don't feel too sad or bitter about it or anything, so I don't want you to think I'm typing this while at the same time sobbing into my keyboard.

The way I'm approaching it now is this: It's just easier now to not hope for a marriage in this life. It means that I don't have to deal with the pain of fiercely expecting something that hasn't happened yet and doesn't show a real strong likelihood of happening at all. I think that's where a lot of the pain comes in: when your expectations of how life should be and how life really is are really disparate.

I actually feel pretty calm about this, like I'm taking a step forward. And I want to feel that it's okay to feel this way, that I don't have to keep up the pretense of hoping just so I can feel like I'm being a righteous person.

I love what I'm doing; I love it with an unanticipated strength. I feel that I've found my calling in life, or at least a calling. And if I never do get to have children of my own, at least I can help encourage the ones I meet to feel a love for learning about the world around them, to help them want to explore unfamiliar worlds, to get behind the eyes of people who live in books, to reach out and become part of a community of individuals who are interested in making the world better for everyone in it.

And I want that to be okay. And I want that to be enough. And I want to be able to say, "If these blessings come, I will gladly accept them. But if not, I will still trust in the Lord."

I'm not saying that every young single adult should give up any hope of marriage--that they'll be happier that way. I still hope that the majority of them will go on to marry and have children and experience those unique joys.

But not everyone gets the chance to marry.

And for those of us who never do, I want to be able to say that our lives are still okay. And it's still okay for us to be perfectly happy with them.

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P.S. Please, please, please don't be sad if you read this post. I'm not. Really and truly. And that's why I wanted to write it.

Endless Universes

So, I've been reading the book Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang over the past few days (and yes, I am trying to impress you all by letting on that I'm reading cosmology theory (in NOVA-type very diluted form)) and (although I have this unfortunate tendency to fall asleep while reading it, which partially contributed to my missing 1/3 of church this morning) I have to admit, I find it rather wonderful.

Basically, the book takes a look at both the commonly taught model of the universe (the inflationary model) critiques it, and also introduces a new model (the cyclic model of the universe) that fits with the same astronomical observations and yet has (they claim) fewer problems than the inflationary model.

While I am certainly no cosmologist (I have trouble really visualizing some of the more intense theoretical stuff, like Higgs fields (which apparently make it possible for elementary particles to differentiate into the types we know today)), still the idea of the cyclic universe appeals to me much more than the inflationary model, simply from (oddly enough) an aesthetic and theological perspective.

The inflationary model claims, essentially, that time and space began at the Big Bang, that the universe rapidly expanded, then slowed, and now is undergoing a period of increasing expansion because of dark energy (all of which was explained in the book in a way that made me pretty much understand what dark energy is supposed to be, thank goodness). This increasing expansion will continue forever, until the universe is basically dead: all burnable fuel used up, all matter so widely distributed that space has become a virtual vacuum. And this state lasts forever.

While the cyclic model incorporates the same idea of the current universe as the inflationary model (that of rapid expansion after the Big Bang, gradual slowing and cooling, and a relatively recent period of increasing expansion due to dark energy), it differs from the other model in essential points. Instead of the universe being created at the Big Bang, the model claims that the event was only one in a series of cyclical events or periods that are endlessly repeating. Basically, the model makes the assumption (and I haven't yet discovered how the theorists provide a good reason for supposing this assumption is valid, but I'm only halfway through the book) that dark energy eventually decays when the universe is fairly homogenous (vacuum-like) in nature, and that then the universe gradually contracts until it reaches another Big Bang event, matter and energy are once again concentrated and distributed throughout the universe, and another period of creation begins.

So.

Here is why I prefer the cyclic model: firstly, it's just plain more hopeful. Thinking about the universe cooling and dying and expanding forever and ever and ever with no end is just plain depressing. It means that the majority of the creation of galaxies and other major astronomical structures is pretty much over and entropy wins in the end. That's a pretty bleak view. Whereas the cyclic model provides for an endless repetition of periods of creation. That's an inherently hopeful view, one I find fits more with my idea of how the universe should be. It's efficient (as opposed to the seemingly wasteful inflationary model) with no loss of matter/energy as the universe undergoes these cycles. That's the aesthetic appeal.

I also find that the cyclic model fits very comfortably indeed with my theological views. In the LDS scriptures, the phrase "one eternal round" comes up frequently and is always related to God, and always related to his course. I find it wonderful that there's an idea of the universe that plays into this idea of endless creation. Endless. Which means that God's work is wonderfully, beautifully, joyously, never finished. Which fits so much better into the cyclic model than the inflationary one. While I suppose the inflationary model could work with this idea of God (He'd just move on to another universe when this one was burned up, I guess), still, again, it feels inefficient and just wasteful. Using the same universe over and over again for works of creation seems to be wonderfully simple and beautiful.

So what does all this mean?

Nothing much.

I doubt I'll be able to tell after reading this book which, if either model, is more reliable, fits more with the astronomical evidence, or is more mathematically viable.

But I know which one I like, which one I'm rooting for. And whichever model is true (if either) the universe is more grand and strange and gorgeous and complex and simple than I can comprehend. And that's kind of wonderful in itself.

I wonder.

Emotions fly across my surface like the shadows of wind-driven clouds.

Which leads me to wonder:

In my dumb simile, what am I?

The patterns of light and dark?

Or the shape of the earth beneath,

Soil and rock and fire?

It never does feel different.

It's 2008.

And, like every year, we get together as a family and drink sparkling cider and watch about the last 60 seconds or so of the countdown to the new year and then we all shout, "Happy New Year!" and then my parents go to bed while the rest of us play video games for another few hours. (And blog.)

And I don't know why, but every time that final countdown rolls around and we spring over into the new year, I always expect to feel just a little bit different, and always inevitably feel pretty much the same as I felt at 11:55. Or 8:42. It's like waking up on your birthday morning, knowing you've just put a +1 onto your age, and finding yourself astonished to still be indisputably you, only older by the night of sleep you just had.

I wonder why I keep thinking I should feel different, why I keep expecting these tiny moments to seem significant. My experience over the past (nearly) thirty years has made me realize time and again that moments, while you're in them, rarely feel significant at all. It's usually only in looking forward to moments or looking back on them that things seem to gain weight.

I'm not sure why that is. Is it wishful thinking that makes us think moments ahead will feel important? Is it hindsight that allows us to perceive our pasts as significant? And why do we not feel it at all in the present?

I don't know any of it. And my Boston clock says it's 4:41am, and my Utah clock says it's 2:41am, and my biological clock simply says it's DARN late/early/aTimeIShouldBeInBed, so I probably won't meander any longer tonight. Er, this morning.

But...well... Happy New Year anyway.

And happy 400th post, while I'm at it.

So, while we're on the subject of controversial topics...

Today in library school we talked a lot about intellectual freedom.

Which, basically says that censorship is never a good thing. And also that, as librarians, we should not restrict anyone's access to any information, whatever we happen to feel about that information personally.

I find this topic very interesting, and the discussion in class was wonderfully enlightening and very stimulating.

However.

That is not the topic I'm going to address in this blog post. (Although, I suppose you could argue I've already addressed it.)

The topic I'd like to discuss is much more controversial and much deeper and much more important and stuff. It is this:

Why do I feel I am a woman who can not pull off pink? Or even that I am a woman who does not want to be able to pull off pink? Who would, if she could, pull off pretty much any other color including dark browns and olive greens and rusty reds along with pale blues and teals and bright dandelion yellows, but who is unfortunately unable to do so due to her being an 'autumn' and thus not really looking all that hot in blue-toned stuff. Apparently. (As if she looks hot in 'autumnal' colors, but whatever.)

But seriously--what do I have against pink? I mean, pink is fine.

I sometimes think of it as a bit frou-frou, a little too much a blond feminine cutesy sort of girly girly thing, but then, I'm a female. I'm a girl. Why should I object to girls being, well, especially girlish?

I guess I've never really been into the whole girly thing, even when I was a kid. You see, as children, my siblings and I loved play-acting, and because we had no brothers (then) the four oldest siblings (all girls) would play together and I would usually play the boys. Because they got to do the cool things like rescue people and swing swords and go dashing over hillocks and stuff. (Lucky boys. With their lucky hillocks.)

I rather scorned the girl toys. While I still played with dolls, I preferred the toy monsters our next-door neighbor (a boy) got to play with, or the He-Man action figure said neighbor also posessed, or the cool transformer toys and...the toy my cousin had: some big machine type thing made up of little cat machine type things that all fit together...something. Anyway--that was cool too.

And not pink.

Or. Well, I think maybe one of the cat machine things was pink because it was operated by a female character, but STILL. That's my POINT. Right?

Or maybe it's not. Because if this female character was hooking up in her little pink machine with all the other machines to form one big machine (part of which, necessarily, was pink) then that shows that pink, and thus a pink-loving female, has power, even if it's a power that's part of a larger male-dominated entity.

Yep.

So, the reason why I'm even writing about this is that I have a pink coat. It was left by the gal who lived in my room before I moved in. And it's a very nice coat. It's warm, and it fits pretty much perfectly (which--hey--a FREE coat that fits PERFECTLY is not anything to shake a stick-sword at) and it's pretty much winter here in Boston now, with its icy sidewalks and its skin-slicing winds. Aaaaand...

The coat is pink. It is pink. It is pink it is pink and...wearing it...I just feel like a pink girl. And I've never really been a pink girl. So...

I just need to wrap my mind around it. And appreciate the pinkness. And find joy and power in being pink-coat-wearing-girl.

That's nothing to be ashamed of.

Right?

P.S. I also read banned books. And they rock.

I've been thinking.

I've been thinking a lot.

Seriously.

About a whole lot of things.

Things like what it means to be open-minded and whether that's a good thing and trying to discover what other people around me value and what they see as right and wrong and whether their rights and wrongs are things that I should incorporate into my own moral code and I've been shifting and stretching and wondering and trying to find out what's really, really real and True.

TRUTH.

That kind of thing.

And I've been wanting to take all of these things that I've been learning and add them to all of the things that I've always believed and thought so that I have some kind of master list of Truth, something that somehow incorporates both the restored gospel and temple ordinances and also things like seeing each person I encounter as a whole individual and not see them as 'other' if they happen to believe different things than I believe, or do things that I would consider wrong. I guess, I don't even want to see people as 'wrongdoers' or 'non-Mormons.' I don't want to walk around seeing the rest of the world's population as befuddled and ignorant and sinful. I just want to see people, you know? People like me. People who are trying to do things as well as they can and get through this life with as few mistakes as possible and who are working out their own rights and wrongs and making choices and really trying to be good people.

And I also want to see things in a clearly moral sense, to see that things like abortion and sexual immorality are absolutely not good. And yet still be able to look at a person who has had an abortion or who is living with a boyfriend and not just see them as 'the person who has had an abortion and is living with a boyfriend.'

And I'm having a hard time, you know? I'm having a hard time making it all balance and all fit and all come out so that I can see things really clearly.

I guess maybe I just want the best of both worlds: both the comfort (and, dare I say it, the half-suppressed sense of moral superiority) of having a clearly black & white morality, and also the comradeship and acceptance of a shades-of-grey morality.

How do you try to reconcile these things? I'm really curious, because I'm really trying to work this out right now.

Talk a lot, pick a little more

Okay. So, this time, not in keeping with my usual method of preparing talks, I pretty much wrote out everything I was going to say beforehand. While the actual talk I gave was different in some ways from what you'll read below, (mainly due to time constraints), this is pretty much the original talk I came up with. If you'd like, go ahead and read it. For me, I think it was an appropriate exercise in reminding myself of things I personally need to hear again & again.

Which perhaps is the real point of talks after all.

**********************************************************
I’m going to talk a little bit today about some of the things I feel deeply, not in a desire to expose my soul to you to some uncomfortable degree, but in the hope that some of the things I relate will speak to the deep inner part of your own souls. Because I think we all tend to feel the same sorts of things.

Personally, I tend to feel discouraged rather a lot. This discouragement doesn’t always come on Sunday, but sometimes it does. I don’t feel it continuously, but I feel it often, usually when I’ve failed to live up to my expectations in some way, or the expectations of other people. It’s when I’ve ignored someone who needed help, or withheld the truth about something, or felt angry at someone, or have done one of the myriad of things which causes us to feel guilty and cut off from God. And so I distance myself from Him.

I think that’s how it starts.

And then I get a wedding invitation in the mail, or hear from an ex-boyfriend, or see that my sister has blogged about her wonderfully adorable children, and I begin to feel that I’m going to be alone and unloved forever and ever. And I try not to wonder, but I really do in my heart of hearts, how God can possibly love me if He hasn’t gotten a spouse for me yet. (Don’t deny it; you do it too.)

And that’s how it escalates. (And that’s also how chocolate binges begin.)

And then, naturally, I feel guilty about having such thoughts, and I distance myself from God a little bit more, because I don’t think He’d want to hear from such a disobedient, faithless daughter.

And I feel alone and sad, cut off and distant, my soul grated down and raw, sensitive and stinging.

Some of you may be feeling this way right now. I know I have, often, sitting where you’re sitting now, trying for all the world to appear normal and happy, but feeling this internal, unshakable darkness inside.

I wish I could reach in and pluck out of my insides this knowledge and feeling of the love God has for you, for each of us, and give it to you, whole and untranslated. I wish I could give it to myself a week from now, or in a month or 100 days, when I’ll need it again. And then again. And then again.

We so often forget the love God has for us, the infinite value He places on us. But God is merciful and will remind us again and again, each time we need it, if we can just get ourselves to the point where we can feel it, just hear the message that He’s trying to give us.

My mother loves to find pennies on the sidewalk. It’s not that she has a thing for copper; it’s not even that she loves to add to her change jar. She loves finding pennies because, to her, finding a penny on the ground is a little indicator that God loves her and wants to remind her of that. I love that. I know another woman from my home ward who loves finding feathers for the same reason. She says that she always seems to find a feather on the ground when she’s feeling particularly lonely or discouraged.

Pennies and feathers are certainly not the only way we can feel God’s love for us, but they show that Heavenly Father seeks to bless our lives often in small ways that we simply don’t see. Like the fact that you just barely caught the T that one time you were running late, or when the shape of that cloud caught your eye and you wondered at the great gift of being able to see beauty in the natural world, or you found that perfect red leaf on the ground, or your best friend emailed you to tell you how much she loves you, or when Elder Holland addressed in his talk something you’d been worrying about for some time.

Sometimes the reassurance of God’s love for us comes through the scriptures. The scriptures are littered with references of His love for all mankind.
-3 Nephi 17. Read it. And then reread it. And read it again.
-1 John 4. Let’s look specifically at verse 16: “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”
And sometimes His love is manifest to us in quiet, intensely personal moments of prayer, when we kneel before him with our broken souls open and vulnerable and aching and raw, and He pours into our wounded souls the conviction that He cares for us, that we are infinitely valuable to Him.

Why is it so important for us to feel God’s love for us? Why does it heal us when we finally feel it? I think, for myself, I tend to place too much value on the way other people see me. I worry that I’m too awkward or too ugly for anyone to love. And so, when my sense of awkwardness or unattractiveness feels confirmed by interactions I have with others, I then feel I don’t have value at all.

But when I feel, really feel Heavenly Father’s love for me, carried with it is also the conviction that if in all the world only God valued me, what value that would be! And is!

But does Heavenly Father want us to feel His love simply to make us feel better? In part, yes! He is our Father, which means that He. Is. Your. Father. You are His immediate descendant; He is not your grandfather, or your great-grandfather, or your uncle. He is your Father. And He loves you and wants you to be happy because you. Are. His. Child.

But I think the Love of God does serve another purpose: it motivates us, both to be better people and also to love others and seek to serve them.
-1 John 4:11 – “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
-Mosiah 4:21 – “And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another.”

And I would even go on to say, “And if that God, who has shown you his great mercy, doth fill your soul with his love, to such an extent that you cannot feel the greatness and power of it, O then, how ye ought to love one another.”

Brothers and sisters, I guarantee that the same method that can fill our hearts with the love God has for us can also fill us with the love He has for others, that earnest prayer and longing will enable the Spirit to flow charity and compassion into your souls, as great and overwhelming as the flow of Heavenly Father’s love for you.

We are all equal in the sight of God.
-2 Nephi 26:33 – “For none of these iniquities [murder, stealing, whoredoms, etc.] come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.”

It is my belief that as we come to feel the great love our Father in Heaven has for us, we will begin to see both ourselves and others as He sees us: as precious beings, each individual of infinite and eternal value.

I know I have only felt a small part of the infinite value and love God holds for me. And yet that small part overwhelms me.

I pray that I, that each of us, will feel His love more fully, both for ourselves and for all those around us; as we do, we will find ourselves becoming more and more as our Father would have us be: like Himself.

My senses are overwhelmed.

My friend Christian just sent me a link to a site that may make you sit down on the floor and weep from The Sheer Beauty of it All.

I've already been to two of the libraries they show: the Boston Public Library (the one with all the cool green desk lamps and that amazing arched roof) and the Library of Congress Main Reading Room (a circular room a little over midway down the page).

I think the best thing ever would be to take a trip just to visit all the beautiful libraries in the world, particularly those located in Great Britain, particularly those in Ancient and Awesome University Cities.

Maybe once I've finished my Master's program and have started working a Real Job I'll be able to save enough (even with the ginormous monthly payment on my student loans) to afford such a trip.

However, in the meantime, I've got a lot of gorgeous libraries around to visit. And swoon in.

Speaking of, I've now taken a tour of the library at Simmons, where they have oodles of comfy chairs and, get this, an ENTIRE section of books in the 'Biblio Mystery' category, in which libraries (or librarians) are involved somehow with the crime or the solving thereof. So. So. So. Cool. I cannot even tell you how cool that is. (I want to read a book where the librarian done it. (Er. Because I think that would be empowering?))

And also, I've now attended my first class, which, oddly enough, seemed a lot like an undergraduate class, except that the people were a little older. And much smarter than I am. And also they used a lot of acronyms I don't know. YET.

I have to confess: I've always rather admired people who've gone on to do graduate studies, as if pursuing a course of education after they've gotten their four-year degree made them smarter than average, or at least more determined. I never thought that being a graduate student would feel so much like being me; so much like not knowing much at all; so much like wondering if there's been some mistake, that surely they couldn't have meant to admit me.

I wonder if I'll feel like this all my life; if there will ever be a point in my accumulation of experience when I'll look inside myself and say, "Ah. Now I am wise; now I can see why I looked up to people in my position before," or if I'll always feel a little like a beggar who's somehow been mistaken for a lady, hustled into the castle, washed up, dressed in silks and thrust into the court without any idea of what to say or how to behave. Always a little like an interloper. I rather suspect that it's the latter, that the real reason why we look up to people who are older than we are is that we see that they have more experience than we do, but we can't see the large amount of anxiety and self-doubt they've still got stored up from their younger years.

I never thought that being a graduate student would feel so unlearned. I never thought that being twenty-nine would feel so young.

And I suspect it will be the same when I'm thirty as well as when I'm seventy-one. But that's okay. From what I can tell, all other thirty and seventy-one-year-olds have already felt the same way before me.

So...what to do with the rest of my life?

Sometimes, I wish we could just pick a single spot we love and then stick with it.

Heck--I'd even take the ability to pick a particular kind of spot, say suburbia or The Big City or the plains states or coastal dwellings.

But instead, we have to move around a lot, liking bits and pieces of the places we live, longing for bits and pieces of the places where we used to live, never quite entirely content.

At times, I find myself feeling that there could be nothing better in the world than to live by myself in Boston for the rest of my days, perched in some apartment or other, dashing in to collect the mail from the boxes in the entrance, hastening up the stairs and collapsing in front of the TV with a microwave meal heating up while I indolently flip channels.

At other times, I think there could be nothing better than to buy a small house in Utah County somewhere near where my parents live and use my time off during weekends and holidays to drive so far up into the canyons that the sound of coin-leafed aspens murmuring to themselves almost makes me forget civilization even exists.

I find myself thoroughly enjoying myself here and wondering what life would (or will) be like once my program's finished and I'm left to my own devices as a young professional. I can feel the appeal of this place: the sometimes frenetic vitality that surges through the city, imbuing all its inhabitants with a sense of friendly urgency.

But I miss the quiet nights looking up at the milky way as it swings over mountain peaks and valleys; I long for the sight of the horizon, the rising and falling of the land.

Why is there always something in us that keeps itself aloof from full happiness, as though our full measure of contentedness is something we simply can't attain here? I wonder if it's simply that there are so many places on Earth to love, but they're always off; they never quite mirror the home we knew before; they're always just imperfect copies of a perfect standard.

And we, after all, are imperfect folks who try to love these imperfect copies.

All in all, I think it's a pretty fair accomplishment to love any corner of this world as it is. And I have to confess: I'm learning to love it here.

And what a difference a year makes.

I've thought a bit about what I wanted to write about in commemoration of my 29th birthday.

But, I don't know... How do you summarize the experience of 29 years into a succinct, relatively readable online mashing of thoughts?

I guess the truth is that I don't remember much about what I've learned over the past 29 years. I don't remember much about what I've learned during the last 5.

I think that what you learn in life begins to diffuse down into your soul, so that the lessons there aren't something you can easily separate out into their own separate entities; they've meshed and mingled together, forming new insights, new layers of meaning, making up who we've become.

I'm an accumulation of experiences from the time I was a slightly annoyed, reddish-haired, 5lb 12oz baby (many thanks to Mom for particulars) to now, where I sit with toes tucked into the creases at the back of my knees, hair unbrushed, glasses slightly smudged, eyes dark with too much reading in too little light, fingers poised over my keyboard, wondering what to type next.

And what does that make me?

What person am I now because of what I've experienced, what I've done?

I'm not sure. I'm asking myself those things even as I type them here.

I wonder, often, if I'm the kind of person God wants me to be right now, if His forming of me has taken hold, if His moulding hasn't melted by my indignant straining against Him. I can feel that in some ways, I'm very much the person I need to be right now. And in other ways I fall far short of the mark. If sculptures could shift their shoulders to throw off the Master's blow, would they? Just to prove they were the ones forming themselves?

I don't even know what I'm saying.

I sat down to type a bit about the changes that I've had in my life this past year, changes which have not been insignificant, mind you. I've moved to Boston from Utah (a loooong ways, lemme tell you), I've lost oh-so-close-and-yet-not-close-enough to 100lbs, I've had crushes and new friendships and I've stared at the ceiling and the mountains and the stars, wondering how I can possibly fit, how I can possibly matter, and then realized half-wonderingly that I do after all.

I don't know.

That this year has been eventful, I am sure. That I've learned things, I'm certain. That I'm still as much of a pretentious fool as ever, I am convinced. But what it all means? Ah. Now that is the thing that leaves me flummoxed.

I think that, in the end, when our separate experiences distill themselves before God when we account for our life, that we'll see how each bit of our life here shaped us into the being we have become. As a being-in-process, I don't know how I'll end up. But I have faith in the hand that holds the chisel. And I'll try not to wiggle too much while He's working.

Oh, don't stop talking on my account.

So...this confession may make me seem a little bit more like a scary-stalker-like person than I actually am, but...

I really like eavesdropping.

I've realized this before (and usually blushed after said realization, most becomingly) but I was reminded of this little taste of mine today while riding the shuttle bus up to work.

During the ride, I noticed two twenty-something women talking to each other on the bench opposite the aisle to where I sat, purse in lap, hands clasped securely over said purse, eyes staring politely (i.e. vacantly) ahead, ears (obviously) wandering freely. As we passed one of the many schools in the area, one of the women commented to the other that she was thinking about a grad program there, but it was kind of expensive. They talked about other programs and I discovered that they were interested in pursuing vocations as early childhood educators, that they were both either married or in semi-permanent relationships with men, that they were both pretty well informed about the costs of private schools and that one at least was pro-private school and decidedly against living in the city.

(I know I gleaned other bits of information from the conversation, but that's all I can remember at the moment.)

I realized a couple of things from this encounter: firstly, that it's easy to pass along information to those around you even when you're not engaged in direct conversation with them. And that it's definitely best to be cautious. (You never know when a stalker-like blogger like me is sitting supposedly innocuously in a seat next to yours, mentally taking note of your semi-private conversation.)

Secondly, that it is (as I mentioned before) fun to eavesdrop. And a little wistful. I will (most likely) never see these two young women again. And yet, during a span of about 25 minutes I was able to learn things about them enough to tell that I'd probably enjoy getting to know them, that I'd probably have things in common with them, that we could (in short) become friends if the circumstances were right.

And that's probably the oddest thing of all. Most of the encounters we have with people during the course of a day are brief one-time deals: you see someone, you may say a word or two (or not) and then the moment is over. For good. And yet the possibility always exists that with each person you encounter you could build a potentially lifelong relationship. That man in a business suit jogging past you could have been your best friend; the elderly woman with a poodle might have given you art lessons; the smoking man in a ballcap sitting on the curb could have been the first man ever to tell you you're beautiful. And yet they're not.

I feel amazed at all the relationships we do develop with people, and sometimes at how chancy and random the circumstances that create those relationships seem to be. And yet, for my part, the people I've had in my life seem to have been just the people I needed at just the time I needed them. And that, more than anything, seems to indicate to me that the people we know when we know them are not accidental. Not in the least.

And that when eavesdropping on conversations really does (as unlikely as it may seem) lead to friendship, there's a reason for that too.

You really ought to give singlehood a try.

It's really not so bad.

No, really.

Once you get past the point where you want someone to hold hands with, someone who thinks you're beautiful (even when you're not wearing makeup), someone who somehow shares all your hopes and aspirations and is so like you and yet so marvelously different, and once you decide that being an aunt is so much easier than being a mom so why not just stick with it, you're pretty much set.

Because really, there are all these things about being single that are great! For instance, you don't have to work on a difficult and perplexing marital relationship. You don't have to try to form a family unit with someone who has differing (and sometimes opposing) views of what it means to be the heads of a family and raise children. You don't have to put up with someone else stealing the covers or wanting to turn the air conditioner in the bedroom up or down. You don't have to try to sleep next to someone who snores. Or grinds his teeth. Or has chilly feet.

And all the heaps and scads of money you're making right now? Yeah. It's all yours! You don't have to spend it on diapers and formula and multiple car payments (well...not usually). And, if you're pretty careful, you may manage to save just enough to travel a bit to those places you've always wanted to visit. Like England. Or South Dakota.

So really, in the face of all these great things about being single, wouldn't it be the most intelligent thing to just kind of let go of any desire to get out of the singlehood state? To interact with young men in a friendly but unconcerned fashion? Because you don't really care whether they'll like you or not, since you're perfectly happy with staying single for the rest of your life?

I keep wondering when exactly it's going to sink in, when I'll finally say to myself, "Okay, I guess it's never going to happen for me," so I can finally get rid of this 20% hopeful 80% despairing feeling every time I meet and/or interact with young men? Will it be after I turn 30 (in a week and one year)? 35? 40? 50? How long will I wait before I give up all my internal hope of marriage?

I search all these blogs of single women, looking for some sort of answer about how to be content right now, even when I'm alone, but I haven't found it yet.

Maybe there isn't really an answer for it. Maybe it's one of those things in life that you just have to bear, the way some people have highly allergic reactions to nuts, or children with congenital health problems, or really bad relationships with family members. It's just something that will always give you a small ache, no matter what else you may do with your life. And that's okay. Everyone has small aches they live with, and as mentioned previously, there are a lot of really great aspects to being single: even just the ability to retreat into my room and shut the door so that I can have complete peaceful solitude, something that would be impossible if I had children.

I just wish I could feel more actual contentment with this state, wouldn't feel lonely or long for someone to rub my shoulders after a difficult day or someone to kiss me in the early hours of the morning when the as-yet unseen sun is just starting to lighten the sky, wouldn't long for children who are my own, my very own, for the incomparable joy of being a mother. But I do have these feelings. And while part of me wishes I could just turn them off, another part tells me that doing so would somehow lessen me.

So with that, I will take the sorrow and loneliness that are part of being single in a married culture and I will continue to hope for a chance to marry if possible. And in the midst of the sorrow and loneliness I will enjoy the freedom to go where I please when I please, to spend all day reading if I like and to make a peanut butter sandwich without a husband carelessly asking me to make him one too.

Mirror, mirror

Yesterday, while staring at my face in the mirror with light coming in from the window to my left, I realized that I could see the way my face will look when I am much older.

It was a strange experience, as if somehow the intervening years between me and my sixty-year-old self had vanished, leaving me face to face with this familiar stranger. I thought I could see that her frown lines were a little too deep, the laugh lines not quite deep enough and her eyes seemed tired and a little sad.

It made me wonder what the next thirty years will bring. Since I'm rapidly nearing my 30th birthday, (holy goodness--only thirteen months away from now), not quite halfway to senior citizen status, suddenly my life seems to be rushing towards me at an alarming pace.

Not that I'm that old--I just can't help feeling that I have little to show for the years I've been here.

I suppose that we all make contributions to the world around us in small ways; I think for me my contributions have been really quite small: developing friendships with those around me, being a decent auntie, trying to be a good daughter and sister. They're not showy contributions by any means, but they're meaningful to me anyway.

I mean--there are times I definitely wish I could have done more with my life, like producing a world-altering novel by my twenty-fifth birthday or creating some other artistic masterpiece, or that, like my wonderful sisters, I could have contributed to the world by becoming the mother of sweet children.

But I'm slowly coming to the realization that my life's path is a track that's different than what I envisioned for myself as a long-ago six-year-old who wanted to be a mom when she grew up. Maybe I haven't made huge world-shaking contributions yet in my (not quite) thirty years. But maybe all that means is that the footprint I leave in the world is sometime in the future, that I'm still trying on shoe sizes, figuring out what fits.

And I think I feel okay with that. I think that the next few years of my life will see me past the many turns in my life path that I can't see beyond at the moment. And even if I still don't make the kinds of contributions I'd like to make, I can feel comfort in knowing that the very small differences I am making are important, and are maybe what God wants me to do here in the first place.