Home Is Where the Mountains Look Normal

This week I drove up to Logan for a good friend's wedding. It was the first time I'd been up there since Christmas, and as I drove down into the valley from the canyon I was struck, as I usually am, by the excitement of getting to see my friends and being somewhere familiar.

Only...it wasn't as familiar as last time, in some subtle way. As I was driving around in Logan, I finally realized that my baseline for "familiar" now is Salt Lake. The mountains in Logan are not unfamiliar, but I kept expecting to see the shapes of the mountains near my house in SLC when I looked up. That expectation is in such strong contrast to even just last year, when going to Logan felt like going home. Without me noticing, something has subtly shifted.

Versions of Me

One of my senior pictures, summer 2004

Have you ever gone back and looked at old pictures of yourself? I do, sometimes. We spend so much time looking out from behind our eyes that looking into them can feel like you're looking at someone else. 

Hanging out in a friend's kitchen, summer 2007

Sometimes, I look into the eyes of these old mes and remember how innocent and hopeful I was. Innocent of all the hard and challenging things that lay ahead of me, innocent of the disappointment of not facing those challenges head-on and overcoming them the way I would like to think I can. Hopeful that things would unfold the way I thought they would, hopeful that all those things I'd dreamed of were coming to me just the way I'd dreamed they would.

In the Young Adult fiction nook of our town library (my favorite place), fall 2007

The old me could have never have imagined the current me. In some ways we're very different people, and in others we're very much the same. I wonder if parts of her still linger, or if somehow the current version of ourselves gets "saved" over the older ones, like drafts of a Word document, and the only hints of those old versions of ourselves are the moments captured in photographs.

In the MTC, winter 2007

A Few Musings on Beauty

As if anyone needs a reminder how genius John Williams is. The Memoirs of a Geisha soundtrack is one of the most beautiful I've ever heard in my entire life. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, arguably two of the greatest musicians alive, are playing the solo cello and solo violin parts. 

The whole concept of beauty is one that has fascinated me since I can remember. It's one of those things like justice we all agree exists, but we all have such different opinions about what actually constitutes it.  We say music is beautiful, we say people are beautiful, we say a view is beautiful. Why don't we have different words for objects and people and views? Socrates theorized about the Forms, the perfect embodiment of a virtue that exists in another place, of which everything that has that virtue here partakes. So the Japanese vase and the English countryside and the African woman all partake of the Form of Beauty - somehow. 

As with most things Socrates, I don't know if I buy that, but it's an interesting idea. 

I suppose the boring, "correct" answer is that we're conditioned to it based on our cultural norms and values and world views, etc, etc. But those don't spring from nowhere, so from where do they come? And is beauty truly a virtue to be sought after, or just something nice to look at and we're all wasting our time trying to pin it down? Why is one thing "beautiful" but another isn't? Why can ten people look at the exact same thing and come up with ten different answers to the questions, "Is it beautiful? Why?" Why does beauty even matter to us at all? Is beauty strictly a mortal matter, or does it exist (and matter) in the eternal scheme of things?

Good questions. Can't say I have the answers.

To Cherish

cherish |ˈ ch eri sh |
verb [ trans. ]
protect and care for (someone) lovingly : He cared for me beyond measure and cherished me in his heart.
• hold (something) dear : I cherish the letters she wrote. | [as adj. ] ( cherished) cherished possessions.
• (of a hope, idea, or memory) think of longingly or lovingly : We will cherish your memory.
ORIGIN Middle English (in the sense [treat with affection] ): from Old French cheriss-, lengthened stem of cherir, from cher ‘dear,’ from Latin carus.

People put a lot of emphasis on love. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for love, but it strikes me that you can love something (or someone) and still not treat it (or them) very well. I don't know what prompted the thought, but I've been thinking about the word cherish for awhile. I like it. I like the connotations of care and protection included in with love that are the definition of cherish. To me, it means more than just love. That's what I want to be one day, not only loved but cherished.

Kaleidoscope

Photo here

 Have you ever noticed that other people's lives are a lot easier to live than your own? By that I mean that everything is so much clearer to you when it's someone else's problem. As a general rule of thumb. You can tell yourself all kinds of things, things you'd say to your friends if they came to you and asked you for advice, but they're not very motivating or clarifying when you tell them to yourself.

I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but I think that happens to me because I get locked into a feedback loop of overthinking the situation. Something seems like a great solution until you're lying awake in bed at night, staring at the ceiling or the wall, with all the variables (real or perceived) running through your head on repeat. For me, it feels kind of like a kaleidoscope looks - the same basic pieces, tumbling over and around each other, morphing into a thousand different patterns as they twirl around at the end of a tube. Every time you look at it it's different, but somehow it's still the same.

Life and Love and Choices

On the walk back to my car this afternoon (which was lovely, by the way - the weather has cycled out of the constant rain-snow-sleet-and-gloomy-clouds phase into blue-skies-and-fluffy-clouds phase; we'll see how long it lasts), I was thinking about love and relationships, all kinds of them. I was thinking about how people get divorced citing "irreconcilable differences", about how people say they "fall out of love" or just "stop loving" someone else. And it reoccured to me that really all that is is laziness and shifting the blame onto to Fate or the Cosmos or whatever. Love is a matter of choice. Attraction is another matter, but love really is about choices, just like life is. The fact of the matter is that God has given all the priceless gift of agency. No one, not ever, can force you to do something. Your ability to choose exists outside of and independent from anyone else's influence, even God's. What you do is your choice, no matter what anyone else may be doing, to you or around you.

Now, there are mitigating circumstances, of course, but in general the principle applies to everyone. Your choice to smoke pot is still your choice, no matter how many people are pressuring you to do it. It was your choice to be in a place where someone would pressure you to smoke pot, in the first place. Your choice to divorce your spouse because you can't agree about how the money should be spent is a choice that means one or both of you have decided that money or the things it buys is more important than the person you've promised to spend the rest of life (and maybe eternity) with, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health - in short, through everything. It's your choice. No one else can make it for you, and no one else will have to live with the consequences of that choice. You will. If someone threatens you with a gun to your head and tells you to rob a bank or jump off a cliff, you still have a choice. If someone has something on you and threatens to reveal everything if you don't pay them off or do them a "favor", you still have a choice. There is always a choice. To say otherwise is to attempt to pass the responsibility to someone or something else. In the end, you're going to be the one held accountable for your choices. And it strikes me that, unlike most mortal judges and juries, God might not be persuaded that "it wasn't my fault" by pleas of "but I had no choice!"

Which is why I'd better stop procrastinating and get to work on writing these papers.

The Minor Third

Photo here

I've always been fascinated by the fact that one, small half strep down for the third takes the entire chord from major to minor. The interesting thing is that nothing really changes in the chord -- it's still made up of a fifth composed of a major third and a minor third. Only the arrangement of those smaller chords changes.

I'm not exactly sure what that says about music, or about life, or about attitude. It's just so interesting to me that one small little shift in the makeup of something can change its entire tone and our perception of it. It's even more fascinating to me that we understand many of the 'hows' of music, the "rules" that we've learned through thousands of years of experimentation, and yet we're not any closer to the 'whys' of music. Nobody really knows why music works the way it does. Nobody knows why it has the effect on the human brain and body that it does. And yet...it does have a profound effect on us. Music moves us in ways that nothing else can. And so much of that is the tiny little difference of a half-step in the middle of a fifth.

"But behold, my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy"*

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,

that thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

                                                   - John Keats, from Ode to a Nightingale

Keats' Ode to a Nightingale was the last poem we read in my language class my sophomore year at SJC. After we'd talked about the other stanzas for a while, my tutor drew our attention back to the first one, the one quoted above, and asked us to explain the lines "'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, / But being too happy in thine happiness". There was silence for a few moments as no one felt brave enough to venture an answer. As the silence stretched to the point where it was starting to become awkward, someone finally said something, and a brief discussion ensued. But none of my classmates seemed to be hitting on the feeling that those lines inspired in me, and most admitted they had no idea what he was talking about.

I don't know whether the feeling Keats describes is a function of experience, or of passion, or maybe some combination of both. At the time, it seemed to me that at some point everyone experiences that feeling -- a feeling so overwhelming, so all-encompassing, that it tips from pleasure into something that is almost pain. But when I attempted to express that to my classmates, all I got in return were uncomprehending expressions. Only my tutor was nodding in understanding and agreement.

Class ended soon after, and all sixteen of us shoved our chairs back from the scarred wooden table with loud scrapes, spilling into the spring sunshine in laughing knots of two or three. But the memory of that class, and of that question, has stayed with me, and every once in a while comes up the surface of my mind to be reexamined and mused over. Why is it that none of my classmates knew the sensation Keats was trying to describe? Were they just too young? Most were barely twenty, if that. Had they just not had the opportunity yet? Again, their relative youth might explain that, and time might fix it. Or was it a matter of passion? Had lives of comfort and little challenge, of immediate gratification and too much time in front of the TV robbed them of sensation Keats was trying to communicate?

I don't really know the answer to my question. I have an idea that the real answer lies in some combination of all of those things; but I think that passion is the key. Passion is what elevates moments of mediocrity to sublimeness, what makes ordinary things extraordinary and regular people more than just the sum of their parts. But along with the highs come the lows, and I think most people are too afraid of the inevitable tumble from the heights of joy into the depths of sorrow to ever attempt the climb. They stay safely in the middle, hugging the average, never feeling too much pain, but never knowing much of joy, either. It is a tragic choice, I think, one that robs the world of much that it could be. Of course, unrestrained passion is more hurtful than it is of any benefit; but that is not what I am talking about. I'm talking about the courage to pay the price, to be willing to experience great sorrow to experience those moments of transcendent joy that teeter on the edge of pain, those moments when your heart is so full that it feels like it might burst, and you feel like shouting and singing and telling the whole world at the top of your lungs that everything is beautiful and wonderful. It is worth it for those moments, I think. It is worth it for those moments of perfect sadness, even, for those moments when your heart is breaking but at the same time so full of a lesson you never could have learned otherwise that you wouldn't have avoided the sorrow if you'd had the chance.

*Alma 26:11

Cognitive Reality

A Rorschach inkblot

"Every phone a human utters is necessarily different from every other phone in some way, although the difference may be minute. So, if any phones sound the same to you, it is never because they sound the same in real terms. It is only because your brain tells you they are the same. Likewise, if two phones sound differently to you, it’s only because your brain tells you they sound differently. As you learn a language, your brain optimizes your perception of sound to tell you which phones are different and which phones are the same in your language (see (N. C. Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2006)). It does this on the basis of the distinctions you must attend to if you are to distinguish the sounds of morphemes in your language. If you don’t need to perceive a difference between phones, your brain tells you they are the same. If your brain tells you phones are the same when they are really very different, you have practically no way of knowing what is true unless you fight back against the workings of your brain. It may be telling you that phones sound alike when they sound drastically different to people of another language, and the phones that your brain tells you sound obviously different may sound absolutely identical to other people. This will be contrary to your experience and you will doubt and reject the idea, but the idea will be true and you will be wrong. It is your experience filtered through your brain’s processing that is not concretely real. Of course, what your brain tells you is cognitively real for you, but you need to understand that people of other languages have different cognitive realities that make them think differently than you do, and their phonetic realities are not your phonetic realities" (emphasis added).

The above is an exert from my Study of Language class handbook, written by my teacher. It illustrates through the metaphor of language a very absolute truth - that some things are relative to your experience of them. I do not subscribe to the philosophy that all things are relative; for one thing, that statement is an immediate logical contradiction, and for another, it is blatantly not true. However, many things in life are subject to our experience of them, just like how we perceive someone speaking the word "sink" and the word "think". To English speakers those words are clearly different, laughably so. But if you speak German, the distinction is not so concrete, and indeed, some might not even be able to tell the difference at all.

The world would be a much better place, on a personal, national, and worldwide level, if we would all just invest the time to uncover our own "cognitive realities" and stop reacting instinctively to others'. So much of the conflict in history, between people and nations, stems from misunderstanding. And misunderstanding results when we process other people's actions through our own cognitive reality when in fact they are acting informed by their own, separate cognitive reality. We throw around words like "normal" and "reality" and expect them to be absolute and everyone to know what we mean when we say them, but in fact those words are some of the most subjective and relative words in any language. What someone means by them varies, not just in different cultures, but within them as well.

Who you think you are and how you react to the world is very much (at least partly) a function of what experiences you've had as you've lived your life. Your family, your culture, your circumstances growing up, the people you've interacted with in any way, your beliefs, how much sleep you got last night - all of them contribute to how you view the world at any one moment. Which is why that ten people might have eight or nine, if not ten, different reactions to the same thing. The hard thing for us as humans to accept is that just because someone's reaction is different from our own, it does not immediately follow that it is wrong. Someone's logic for reacting the way they did might not be immediately apparent to us, but it is usually the case that when you put a little time into attempting to understand that reaction, some kind of logic will emerge. When that happens, you still may not agree with that logic, but at least you can attempt to persuade the other person now that you understand them.

More About Music and a Little Miscellaneous, Too

I don't know why, but music seems to be a common topic on my blog lately. Maybe because my life has an almost constant soundtrack. I was talking to my brother in the car the other day, driving down to Salt Lake for my cousin's wedding, and I asked him if he listens to music a lot. Almost never, he replied. How is that even possible? One day I accidentally forgot to switch my iPod from my purse to my coat pocket and went to school without it. I almost went crazy. I felt like I was missing a hand or something. It's worse than being without my phone, even.

Contrary to popular belief, I do listen to American music. Not much popular stuff these days, though. I'm really not into the "bump-and-grind-baby-let's-get-it-on vulgarity contest" that seems to be popular music these days. Nor am I into teeny boppers a la Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, or Selena Gomez (to name my eight-year-old cousin's favorite "artists"). I do like a lot of the alternative/alternative rock bands. Mutemath and Coldplay (yes, I know Coldplay is very popular, but they're not "popular") are probably my favorite, but I also really like Keane, The Afters, Jimmy Eat World, and most of what Pandora throws at me on my Mutemath channel. It's funny. I adore kpop even though most of it is autotuned out of existence and obviously electronic, but I prefer my American music to be instrumental. Hmmm. Maybe cute boys > autotune...? But anyway.

My brother and I had a good chat on the way down to the wedding. In the course of our conversation about how women and men communicate differently, he asked something that got me thinking. An age old question, really: How do you (a boy, that is) know when a girl is going to be receptive to maybe taking the relationship in a little more intimate direction? (I'm talking about hand-holding and hugging here; after all, this is my brother we're talking about.) Now, currently in one of my classes we've been discussing the different communication styles of the genders. Girls communicate a lot through body language and subtle hints and cues. Boys tend to be a little more direct, and so mostly seem to miss those subtleties; hence the question from my poor, beleaguered little brother.

Picture here

What I came up with in 20 minutes of discussion seems to boil down to two main points: 1) proximity, and 2) eye contact. That is, 1) when a girl willingly places herself fairly consistently within easy arm's reach, and maybe casually touches the boy's arm or shoulder during conversation; and 2) when a girl maintains pretty consistent eye contact (not staring; that's just creepy). I suppose I can't really speak for the entirety of my gender, but those two points are very true of myself. My bubble of personal space is quite large when I don't feel comfortable with someone, and I will very rarely make eye contact with someone that I don't feel at ease around. This involves a lot of edging away when the aforesaid uncomfortable person moves closer and/or staring off into the space over their left shoulder while making conversation if placed in a position opposite said person, or just never turning my head to speak to them if I am (fortunately) next to them. But I'm curious to see how well my hypothesis stands up to your reality. I'm not biased, I welcome male input as well as the female variety.

Untitled

It fascinates me that just a year and a half in Korea has changed my taste buds so radically.

For example, take barbecue sauce. Before the mission, I hated it. I ate my pulled pork dry and put ketchup on my hamburgers. It smelled good, but the taste was, in the immortal words of every kindergartener, "ICK!" Same with orange juice. I never drank it because I couldn't stand the "metallic taste." At least, that's what I remember not liking about it. Breakfast in my house required two things of juice (and not just because one is never enough for ten people): apple for me, orange for everyone else. But now, I can't get enough barbecue and I love orange juice! In fact, I can't stand ketchup (even thinking about it makes me pull a face) and I never drink apple juice anymore because it's too sweet.

However, never once, not even in a dream of a dream, did I ever eat barbecue on the mission. There may have possibly been a point where I had orange juice, but if I did, I don't remember it particularly. How does coming to love kimchi and garlic affect your taste buds for barbecue and orange juice? I have no idea.

But I still don't like chocolate.

It Is Enough

Yesterday I was reading in Matthew when I read in chapter 14 the story of the feeding of the five thousand (vv. 15-21). Usually I love chapter 14 for one of my favorite stories in the Bible, of Jesus walking on the water, but yesterday it was the story of the feeding of the five thousand that struck me particularly. 


The thing that stood out to me was the response of the disciples to Jesus' command to give the multitude food instead of sending them away to buy their own. They replied, "We have here but five loaves, and two fishes" (v. 17).  But what they forgot what that they also had the Savior there. The Son of God. They'd seen Him perform countless miracles and yet they still told the Savior that what He commanded was impossible. They didn't expect a miracle. They hadn't yet learned to know with all their hearts, like Nephi, that, "the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them" (1 Nephi 3:7). Instead, they looked at the situation literally, at their five loaves and two fishes and the thousands of people around them, and said it couldn't be done. They responded first, "We can't" instead of, "Lord, how should we?"


Of course, I am guilty of exactly the same mentality. So many times, in one way or another, I have told the Lord, "It is not enough." That "it" might be my abilities, my time, my inclination, even. Instead of replying with faith, as the brother of Jared did, "I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power, and can do whatsoever thou wilt for the benefit of man. . . . Behold, O Lord, thou cast do this. [I] know that thou art able to show forth great power, which looks small unto the understanding of man" (Ether 3:4-5), I say with the disciples, 'What I have is not enough to accomplish what Thou hast required of me. I cannot do it. It cannot be done.'

But it can, and it will if you have faith, because God is a God of miracle (see Moroni 7:27-33). And then, if you have faith and trust that the Lord knows more than you do, and that all things can be accomplished thorough faith in Him, the Lord will make whatever you have -- time, ability, resources, motivation, faith, anything -- enough, and to spare (see Matthew 14:17-20).

"L is for the way you Look at me"

Vodka Rain - 그 어떤 말로도 (There Are No Words) (feat. 장윤주 (Jang Yoon-joo))

I've been thinking a lot about the 'L word' recently. Not because it's February and the month of "love", but because I think any major change in your life makes you examine things in a new light.


I heard a commercial on the radio the other day as I was driving home, for a jewelry store. The gist of the add was that if you buy your woman a diamond necklace, your sad pathetic attempts to be romantic will be well reinterpreted in light of the fact that the diamond cost a lot. Or that it has magical properties to convey more love than, say, a pearl. Or breakfast in bed. Or whatever. 

Honestly, that really bothers me. Honestly, I think buying your girlfriend, or wife, flowers and chocolates and diamonds on Valentine's Day is something of a copout. I'm not saying that there aren't those women who love those things, but if you put no more thought into picking up some flowers than, "Oh, it's Valentine's Day -- guess I better get some flowers and chocolates" I think that you've completely missed the point. It becomes less an expression of love than it is an expression of social conformity. Take me for example. I have nothing against flowers, per se, but I don't like chocolate. If someone gave me chocolate, for any occasion, one of two things is true: 1) They've probably only known me for about a week, or 2) They haven't paid attention very well, or just don't remember. If I got chocolate from an admirer, I'd actually be pretty disappointed. As in all things, the intention and spirit in which you do things is what's important. 












Over the last few years I've come to realize more and more that love is a language -- and sometimes we're not all speaking the same one. What says "I love you" to one person isn't really anything special to another person, or it could even have an entirely different message all together. There are so many things that go into expressions of love, verbal and non-verbal, mental, emotional. Any one of those things could be misinterpreted. It's why we have dramas, and drama in our own lives. Love takes a lot of faith, I think. The more you love someone, the more they have the power to hurt you, even inadvertently. Some people aren't willing to take that risk. Others are much too eager.

Of course, love isn't limited to just the romantic kind. Our lives would be incomplete and rather emotionally monochrome without the love of family and friends. But I think the same principles apply: mutual respect, sincerity, trust, communication, and loyalty, to name a few. And constant nourishing and cultivating. Relationships are a lot like houseplants: leave them untended too long and they wither and die.

Sometimes I Don't Make Sense to Myself

Korean indie band 10cm - I'm Scared of the Dark Tonight (오늘밤은 어둠이 무서워요)

When I reflect on what I know about myself, I realize that it's not really all that much. "Know thyself", one of the only useful things Socrates ever said in a life and career that was unfortunately verbose, is a much harder thing than people understand sometimes, I think. I don't know why it is that sometimes I'm happy in certain circumstances, and in similar circumstances sometime else can't be bothered to be pleasant or polite. Why is it that one person has me all aflutter and another doesn't even cross my mind when they're out of sight? Why do I love riding the subway so much but yet want to live in the country? Why do I love Korea so much? Why is it music and not sports that gets my heart racing? Why don't I like chocolate? Why am I so much like my dad?

The older I get, the more complicated the world seems to be. I don't think that that's necessarily what's actually happening, despite some rather sobering developments socially, religiously, internationally, etc; rather, it's a function of me getting old enough to comprehend the complications that have always been there. And they have always been there, it's just that at one time or another they might have been buried below the surface of the social awareness. I doubt there are very many truly unique problems troubling us today. Those problems and challenges might have manifested themselves in different ways or through different channels, but the at their root, I think most of the challenges facing us today are ones that all of our ancestors faced as well. 

One O'clock AM

I was trying to be good today. I made a special effort to be in bed before midnight. I even limited myself to one drama episode! I set my iPod on a timer (love my new toy ^_^) and snuggled down into my new sheets on my comfortable queen-sized bed (which I am very excited about) and waited to fall asleep. That was an hour ago. *sigh* One am is a good time to think, because there aren't too many things to distract you. Unfortunately, if you're thinking, you're not sleeping.

Today I've been reflecting on myself a little bit, and it has occurred to me anew that I am an avoider. Avoidance is my method of coping. If I don't like something, or it's too hard or too difficult, or I just don't want to do it, I just ignore it or put it off until "later"...but when "later" rolls around, it's that much more stressful and unpleasant for being put off. I wonder how long I've been this way? I don't remember how I was when I was little, but I've definitely been doing it since high school. It's not a healthy coping method.

The thing about me is, I really dislike asking for help. Unless it's about stuff I don't care about particularly, like anything to do with money or the government. But all the important stuff, the stuff that can really mess you up if you're not careful, if it's too big for me to deal with myself, or if I just don't like it, I shove it into a little corner of my brain and go humming off to read a book or watch a drama.

I've always liked to think that I was a brave person, but I think I'm not. There are a lot of things I'm afraid of, and I'm not good at facing those things in spite of my fear.

Communication, Or The Lack Thereof

image found here

The frustrating thing about writing -- or any kind of creation, really -- is that it never turns out the way it was in your head. Sometimes this can be a good thing; the inspiration of the moment may hit and change everything in one fell swoop, or a serendipitous happening could send you off in a more productive direction. But often, at least for me, what actually appears behind the blinking cursor is but a pale immitation of the idea that captivated my mind.

Whenever I complained about papers or essays in high school, my dad would say someting along these lines: "The ability to communicate effectively in the most important thing you can learn. If you can write well, if you can make your ideas and your opinions understood by other people, that will help you more than almost anything else." And you know, it's true. So many of the problems in the world are because of miscommunication in one form or another, problems all the way from the personal to the global. God wasn't messing around when he cursed the people at Babel. Understanding each other is difficult enough even in the same language, but add in the language barrier and differences in thinking born of different cultures and BAM! You've got all kinds of wars and conflicts. All because we either couldn't, or didn't want to, understand each other. Ponder that for a bit. And then think about the abysmal state of language education -- both English and foreign -- in the majority of this country. All the science and the math in this world will be of no use to us if we can't talk to and understand each other.

"Why can't you fly now, mother?" "Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way." "Why do they forget the way?" "Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly."

I've been thinking a lot about growing up lately.

I turn 24 this year, exactly four months from today, actually. 24 is a pretty grown up age. My mom was 24 when she got married. A friend of mine had two kids before she was 24. People have careers at 24. Keats was in his last year of life at 24. Mozart wrote symphonies before he was 24.

This week is the five-year anniversary of my graduation from high school. High school doesn't feel like it was the long ago. Middle school doesn't feel like it was that long ago. I remember the apartment I lived in when I was three years old. I remember the boy I had a crush on in second grade. I remember when my little sister and I used to lie awake in bed and giggle and make up silly stories and games. I remember when my family only had four kids. I remember when I felt so big and grown up because I was 12. And now I'm almost twice that age, and suddenly I don't feel so very grown up anymore.

I never could understand Peter Pan when I was younger. Why wouldn't you want to grow up? Grown ups are the ones who can do things! And why would you want a mother? Moms just nag you and make you make your bed and clean up your room and they never let you do what you want. I think I understand Peter Pan a little better now, on both points. Sometimes I wish I could go back. Not so that I could live my life over again, although I've done some pretty stupid things in my time that I'd like to take back; no, I think I'd like to be five again just so I can really appreciate it this time. It's good to be five. Everyone thinks you're cute, you're old enough to tie your own shoes and feed yourself, but no one expects you to do much more than that. Five-year-olds never feel insignificant, because everything is about them. When you're five, your biggest worry is that Christmas takes so long to get here, because your mom takes care of everything, all those things like bills and insurance and food and the mean kid at kindergarten.

You know, I think Peter Pan was on to something.

Loneliness is a solitary coffee cup on a bare counter

Image can be found here

As I was searching for an image to go with my post, this one stood out among all the other angsty offerings Bing drug up for me. It struck me much more than the moody black-and-white shots of people curled up in corners. This image paints a much better picture of what loneliness is, at least for me. I'm not unhappy, I don't (usually) feel sorry for myself, I don't spend my time huddled in corners cut off from the rest of humanity -- it's just that, eventually, my life comes back to the solitary coffee cup on a bare counter.

My loneliness is not a loneliness of the kind that is characterized by a lack of social connections, or by a dearth of people who love and care for me. No, I have friends and acquaintances, and above all I have a family that I know loves me deeply. So what is it, then?

KNOW THYSELF

How much can I really say about myself? How much do I really know about myself to begin with? I think I know things, but then I think of other things that seem to contradict the first things. Maybe personalities function, not in a 2D world like I thought, but rather in a 3D world where the interactions of the various elements that make us up tangle and twist around and through each other.

The question of what exactly "I" is is such a fascinating one, and so complex. So many things have gone into who "I" is: my parents, my siblings, my teachers, where I lived, my friends, what I was like in the preexistence... I used to marvel, when I was younger, that Heavenly Father knew us better than we know ourselves, but as I've gotten older, I've come to understand how that can be -- and why it needs to be. Sometimes you just don't understand yourself, whether it be because your perspective is too tied up in the situation, or because you're too complex even for yourself to comprehend or make sense of. Isn't that a great comfort, knowing that He knows you? All of you. What a mercy and a blessing that is.

That being said, I've been thinking about myself lately, trying to get a handle on myself. Think of the staggering number of roles I play in my life, all simultaneously: I am myself, I am my father's daughter, my mother's daughter (those are different, I think), my sisters' sister, my brothers' sister, friend to some, indifferent acquaintance to others, roommate, that girl in seminar who won't be quiet, employee, colleague, confidant, that friendly salesgirl from that one shoe store, the person walking down the other side of the street, student, teacher, potential wife, future mother, childhood playmate, the girl waiting at the bus stop with a book and an iPod, return missionary, no one at all to many, many people. Am I what I am, or the sum of what people see me as? I'm inclined to believe the first, but people's perceptions of me still must be taken into account, surely, in the definition of who I am. The only one who really sees the who of me is God -- I certainly don't. Fascinating. Will we know someday?

Perspective

It's been awhile since I've been in the same place as a legitimate snow storm, but I think this one qualifies. It's been snowing now for more than twelve hours, and I hear it's not supposed to stop until tonight around ten. We're already knee-deep in snow (literally) -- how much more are we going to get? At least they finally closed the mall. Now I can spend today writing my logic paper and starting on my sophomore essay.

The real reason I wanted to write today was because of something that popped into my mind while I was perusing my logic book, trying to come up with a topic for this paper. I'm not sure why this wiggled its way into my consciousness, but I remembered one particular instance that happened when I was still a greenie in Anyang. At this point in my mission, talking to anyone took an enormous amount of courage, and my poor trainer was probably at her wits' end trying to get me to do it. We were out on the streets not too far from our apartment, in an area that was fairly busy with foot traffic. It must have been sometime in my second transfer, I think, because I was talking to people on my own. I approached an older woman, maybe in her late 50s or early 60s, and 인사'd to her -- in other words, I bowed and asked her 좋은 하루 보내세요?, something along the lines of, "Are you having a good day?"  The woman looked at me kinda funny and said the Korean equivalent of, "What?", so I tried again. 좋은 하루 보내세요? No luck. Once more, a little more clearly and slowly: 좋은 하루 보내세요? She waved her husband over, made him listen, too: 좋은 하루 보내세요? "I can't understand even one word she's saying, what's she trying to say?" she asked her husband. My face burned with shame and embarrassment.

It's funny, but I don't remember how this encounter ended. I think I gave up after a point, just bowed and said, 안녕히 가세요, Good-bye, have a good day, and retreated.

This was really a unique experience on my mission. Even when I was very young and still learning Korean (young in the missionary sense, I mean), I didn't have too much trouble making myself understood, at least so far as my accent was concerned. I have a good accent, I know I do. People (Korean people) have told me that I sound like a native speaker at times, and at all the other times, I'm certainly understandable. I think this case was a function of 1) my saying something that's not really a common way of greeting someone in Korea, 2) her surprise at being addressed by a foreigner, in Korean no less, and 3) her not knowing what to expect from me. There are so many reasons communication breaks down, but I think these three are pretty universal, even if you're speaking the same language. It's funny, too, how dismayed and depressed I was about this experience while I was living it, but now, two years later -- has it really been two years? -- I look back and laugh.