Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

This was me, 25 Christmases ago.

I'm hoooooooome!

Not jiggity jig, though. Stephen and I left Logan Saturday morning (after pulling a late night doing laundry, packing, and cleaning) with my cousin and his wife. We stayed the weekend at my aunt and uncle's house and had a fun time visiting with the cousins we don't get to see as often. I also got to go to church with my trainer - she goes to the Korean magnet ward in SLC, and so we went to Sunday School in Korean. I was thrilled to realize that I could follow the lesson on the book of Revelation; there were only about twelve words that I didn't know. Radically different from when I used to go to church in Korean, whew! My mission president and his wife only live about a half-mile from my aunt and uncle, so I was able to go over there Sunday evening and have a nice chat with them, too. All in all, a good weekend.

Monday morning we woke up long before the crack of dawn to go to the airport and catch our 7:10am flight. Everything went smoothly until we were on the approach to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where our flight was scheduled to land before we got off in Houston to catch our flight to Nashville. We made the approach, but weren't able to land because visibility was so bad. They rerouted us into El Paso, where they had us switch planes to a flight going from El Paso to Nashville, while our first flight flew back to Albuquerque. Thankfully, that meant that we didn't have a layover and landed in Nashville only a half-hour later than we were originally scheduled to land. On the downside...we had no layover and landed a half-hour later than we were originally scheduled to land. Which meant that all we had to eat between 5am and 3pm was juice and peanuts. Suffice it to say, we were very, very hungry.

The worst part of getting home is never flying, though. It's the three-hour drive home after we've already been on the plane for six hours. By that time you're just impatient and tired of sitting, plus, let's face it: driving the highway in the dark in Tennessee is not the most interesting thing to do. Thankfully, though, Heidi came to pick us up, so the company and the conversation was good. And of course, actually getting home and having all your little siblings run out of the house screaming your name with joy and launching themselves into your arms more than makes up for not eating for ten hours.

It's good to be home.

The Paradox of Mankind

"The great deceiver knows that one of his most effective tools in leading the children of God astray is to appeal to the extremes of the paradox of man. To some, he appeals to their prideful tendencies, puffing them up and encouraging them to believe in the fantasy of their own self-importance and invincibility. He tells them they have transcended the ordinary and that because of ability, birthright, or social status, they are set apart from the common measure of all that surrounds them. He leads them to conclude that they are therefore not subject to anyone else’s rules and not to be bothered by anyone else’s problems.

...

Another way Satan deceives is through discouragement. He attempts to focus our sight on our own insignificance until we begin to doubt that we have much worth. He tells us that we are too small for anyone to take notice, that we are forgotten—especially by God.

...

The Lord doesn’t care at all if we spend our days working in marble halls or stable stalls. He knows where we are, no matter how humble our circumstances. He will use—in His own way and for His holy purposes—those who incline their hearts to Him."

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

October 2011 General Conference

There's a powerful principle in that - the sin lies in the extremes. God would have us cultivate balance in all we do, and especially in how we see ourselves. It is true that alone we are nothing, and it is also true that each of us have a divine potential - the potential to become like God. But that divine potential can only be realized in a partnership with our Heavenly Father, through the power of the Savior's Atonement. 

[Source]: Picture here at ThingsToLookAtHigh.com

10 Things I Hate to Do

* Clean the kitchen

} Fold laundry

# Scrape ice off my windshield in the morning

@ Smile for pictures

$ Wake up in the morning

^ Write papers

& Explain myself repeatedly

% Clean up other peoples' messes

+ Make my bed

= Wash the dishes

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.

The Zombie Song

I feel like everyone needs to see this, because it's genius. 

Chapstick, Chapped Lips, and Things Like Chemistry

On Living Alone in a Large House

Sometimes,
loneliness is a loud, silent ringing in your ears,
one you try to drown out with music
or the TV.

Sometimes loneliness is
a tingle along your skin,
as you feel someone's eyes on your back,
but turn to find no one there.

Sometimes,
loneliness is the solitary scent
of just yourself on the sheets
when you wake up, blinking and bleary-eyed, in the morning.

Sometimes loneliness is the sour taste
of nothing on your tongue,
as breakfast and lunch have come and gone
with no one to remind you to eat.

Sometimes loneliness
is a flash of movement
at the corner of your eye,
forever elusive, evading you.

Sometimes loneliness 

is a heavy feeling in your chest, 

an ache that sits on your heart 

and makes it hard to breathe.

[Source]: photo here

The Definition of Me

Why are we so quick to embrace the worst about ourselves? Where does it say that who we are at our worst is a more valid who I am than who we are at our best? Aren't we more often somewhere in between? Why is it that when I do something truly good or self-sacrificing, I brush it off as an anomaly, but when I lose my temper and yell at someone, I wallow in how horrible I am for days?

I've been rolling around this idea of identity for the last week or so. Is who I am defined by what I do? I balk at saying a child is "bad" simply because they misbehaved. But I think most would agree that Pol Pot or Stalin or Hitler were bad, if not downright evil. Obviously these are two sides of the extreme. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle.

I think the relationship is more complicated than a simple one-to-one correlation between being and doing. Intent has to weigh in there somewhere, too. Isn't intent the whole distinction between manslaughter and murder one? The outcome is the same no matter what you call it: someone is still dead. But in the eyes of the law, why you killed them is just as important as the fact that you did.

There's no denying that what you do impacts who you are, but I don't think it defines you. I'm not sure exactly what it is that does define you, but I'm sure it's not as simple as one aspect of life.

Boys and Girls Are Different

My cousin James and me when we were both babies

In my marriage prep class we've spent the last couple of weeks talking about how boys and girls are different. Is this really news to anyone? It shouldn't be, but I think what we do need reminding of is that our differences are meant to complement each other, not make us antagonistic towards each other. 

Today we were talking about how we think differently. And by "think", I don't mean your opinion on something, I mean it literally. This is something I never knew until I took this same class last semester, and I gather from my class's reaction that it was pretty much news to them, too. I remember a few months ago, I was talking to my little brother about some things that were bothering me. I can't remember exactly how the conversation went, but at some point he asked me if I ever just thought about nothing. I looked at him strangely and thought about it, and I realized that my brain never shuts off. I've never made a really concerted effort to not think about anything, but just normally, during the day, something's always knocking around in my brain. Usually several somethings at the same time. When I told him that, he looked at me sympathetically and said that that must be very exhausting.

And you know? It is. 

I think that that fact is one of the reasons I watch so many dramas and read so many books. With no "off" switch to keep myself from ODing on thinking, instead I've developed a strategy to switch my brain onto another track. Which is not a bad thing, per se. But it becomes a handicap when it turns into a crutch for not confronting and coping with my problems in healthier (and more effective) ways. Because as a friend of mine once pointed out to me, your problems are still there when you get back from your little "mind vacation", and now you have even less time to deal with them.

We also talked about how girls internalize things. That's a very true truth, too. Not all girls are the same in the extent to which they do this, but in extreme cases some girls take responsibility for everything - everything negative, that is. Rarely are girls with this problem as quick to internalize success as they are to internalize failure. It always seems like a very silly thing to do when you're talking about it in the abstract, but I've done my share of this, too. Every little critique, no matter how lovingly given, becomes the source of a major wound. And I think this results because of the third thing that we talked about today, which is that girls are very focused on what "I am" over what "I do". When you criticize what I do, I think the reason I take it so hard is because I feel like that critique - no matter how valid, no matter how nicely phrased, no matter how much praise accompanies it - is an attack on who I am. That every mistake I make is a flaw in my personality, that every failure to do something is a failure in who I am. 

There's a philosophical question for you - just how closely connected are what we do and who we are? Obviously, stubbing my toe is not an expression of how flawed I am - but is snapping at someone when I'm having a bad day? Not being a great cook shouldn't be a measure of what kind of person I am, but is it? The intellectual part of me scoffs at that, but there's another part of me that isn't quite so sure it isn't right. Like I said, not every girl struggles with this as much as some others, but I think it's a good thing to keep in mind. Hopefully it will make us more understanding of each other and more compassionate with each other when we make mistakes. Because once you've attacked someone for who they are, it's hard for that wound to heal and neither the wound or the hurt are easily forgotten. Sometimes this can lead to a strained relationship with the person who inflicted the wound, but I think the even scarier outcome is that the girl will internalize that relationship strain, as well, and hear a constant inner monologue of "If only I'd done better, this is all my fault, I should have done more, I should have done something different," etc for a long, long time.

I love to see the temple

Seoul Korea Temple

"Holiness to the Lord

The House of the Lord"

Today I am missing this haven of peace. Oh, there's a temple here, too. And I love it. But it doesn't hold quite the same significance. The Seoul temple is literally smack-dab in the middle of the city, and yet, when you step inside the grounds, you can barely hear the hustle and bustle, or even see much of the city.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The other day I was thinking about a friend of mine. This friend is a truly good person - she's kind, she loves people, she goes out of her way to make people feel welcomed and appreciated, she's smart, she's spiritual, she has a great grasp of the world and her place in it, and she's the kind of person you just want to be around all the time because she makes you feel like the world is a good place. And she has a killer smile and a ready laugh, not to mention she's very beautiful. Now, my own talents don't happen to lie in that direction at all. But as I started thinking about what my strong points are, that got me thinking about all the exceptions to those strengths.

The thing about strengths is that they always come with some kind of drawback attached. Think about it for a second: say you're really good at empathizing with people. That's a great thing, and it can really help you in interpersonal relationships. But think about this, too: sometimes being so empathetic can be completely overwhelming, or render you incapable of being objective about a situation or a person. Or being logical and rational - those are surely good, and they give you the ability to examine connections and weigh decisions carefully. But taking too-logical an approach to certain things - like religion or people's motivations - can be detrimental, not helpful. Let's take one of mine: perfectionism. This can be a great thing, because it can increase the overall quality of everything with which you're associated (like, for instance, how I just corrected my sentence so it wouldn't end with a preposition). On the flip side, it can also mean that nothing ever gets done to your specifications, or lead to a perpetual dissatisfaction with yourself and everyone else - because for sure this world is not a perfect place. It can lead to strife in personal and work relationships as your expectations for people's behavior and performance are unrealistically high. And the list continues, but I think I've made my point.

Every plus has its minus. I'd like to have perfect pitch, but I'd also have to live with knowing every time anyone was just a hair flat or sharp, and that might possibly ruin my enjoyment of some otherwise amazing performances.

So think about this the next time you're tempted to envy someone else's apparent strengths: Would you be willing to accept the drawbacks that come along with that strength you're coveting?

Life in a Bubble

Photo can be found here

When I was in school at St. John's, there was some talk of "the Johnnie bubble", as if there was an invisible forcefield surrounding our tiny little campus. And in a way, I think there was, a forcefield of ideas and lack of interest in what was happening in the world at large. Of course, there are always exceptions - not everyone was unaware of what was happening around us while we read the words of long-dead thinkers and talked about them in the shower, at dinner, and in class.

I admit I was firmly inside that bubble, not caring much about what was going on in the city outside SJC, let alone the state, country, and world outside of that. Inside a "bubble" there's a real sense that the things happening outside it are semi-dreamlike, a little unreal, and they certainly don't effect you or your world. Everything is distant and removed from you.

It wasn't until I was serving in my very last area in Korea on a mission - another very real type of bubble - that this view got substantially challenged. I started to think about that way of life, living like all the things outside your immediate sphere don't have much import or effect. And as with all other real thinking, it started snowballing into a reconsideration of how I'd fundamentally viewed the world to that point.

Bubbles are dangerous. Living in a bubble has disastrous effects on everything from your personal relationships to the economy of your country, depending on the size of that bubble you live in. When we cozily draw our comfortable, "normal" worldview around us and tuck ourselves into its warm, enveloping folds, we close our eyes and ears and hearts to the suffering and struggles of millions, even billions of people. We turn everyone outside it into "others" who become stereotypes and sometimes even less than human, or worst of all, simply vague concepts that aren't really that important in the grand scheme of things. We close ourselves off from new ideas, new ways of examining our problems, from the very experience we've been sent here to obtain. We rob ourselves of the opportunity to grow and become better people; we deny ourselves opportunities to love and serve our fellowmen. We do ourselves a horrible injustice, because what happens around us certainly does impact us. A web of choices and consequences connects your decision to purchase a certain item in one country to the dramatic altering of a person you've never met's life in another country. What you do matters. What other people do matters to you, or it should, because it effects you.

All you have to do to prove that is to examine history. Do you think people in America really gave much of a thought to an assassinated Archduke somewhere over in Europe in 1914? Probably not. Probably the majority of Americans didn't even know it had happened. And yet, the consequences of that one action - and all the actions that preceded that decision to act - had a terrible, tremendous impact on Americans then and are still effecting us even to this day. You have a stake in internal politics in China. The economic situation in Europe is effecting you right now. They may seem far off and remote, but life has a way of making a mountain out of a molehill.

Or maybe it's only our perception that makes one a mountain and another a molehill. The thing about bubbles is they have a disturbing tendency to pop.

Photo can be found here

Questions and Answers

I wrote a while back that I didn't know why I was here. Of course, no one can know all the reasons for everything - I'm a firm believer that everything serves more than one purpose, and that God never does anything for a single reason. But I think I know some of the answer to that question now, although the greater part of it goes unanswered.

This is the first time in recent memory that I've spent longer the four or five months in the same place, associating with the same people. In fact, at this point it's almost been twice that amount of time. And so, I think for the first time in a long time, I've learned something new about myself. Or rather, somethings. Putting yourself in a lot of new or different situations will teach you a lot about yourself, but I think I'd forgotten that remaining in the same place or situation for a while will also teach you about yourself. It's been awhile since I've had relationships with people that I didn't leave after just a few months. Being in the same place with the same people has given me the opportunity to examine myself in this context in a little more depth. Actually, I should be more accurate: it's not that I've learned anything really new about myself, per se, but that I've learned more about how those things are interconnected. I've (I think) come to see a little more clearly the whys of certain things, and how one thing influences another so that x result comes out. And it's never just one or two things. People - and especially their motivations and actions - are seriously complicated things.

To be honest, I'm not so happy with what I've discovered. But then, I've always been the type not to see the good in something for staring at its flaws, and that includes myself. Especially myself. It's like being unable to see the beauty of the whole forest for mourning over a few dead or dying trees. Or, when you finally do look around you, bemoaning that even the healthy, beautiful trees have their flaws. Of course they do. Nothing on this planet - human, animal, vegetable, mineral, or otherwise - is perfect, and expecting anything to be perfect will only result in disappointment. I think I've done a good job at embracing this in other people, but as of yet I struggle with allowing myself to make mistakes - to be human, in other words. Am I ever going to be perfectly patient? Not in this life. Perfectly understanding? Nope, not that either. Nor will I ever be perfectly honest or perfectly nice or perfectly full of love. But it's one thing to tell yourself that and know it intellectually, and quite another to forgive yourself and move on and let those imperfections and mistakes go. The gap between knowledge and true understanding can only be bridged with help, and no ordinary mortal help, at that. And is true with anything involving the divine and changes of human nature, that takes time and patience and a lot of work.

Happy Quarter-Century to Me!

25 years ago today, at this very hour (1230), I was just over six hours old.

In that 25 years, a lot has happened. 25 years. It's a whole quarter of a century.

The last year of my life has been quite the upheaval. I decided that I wasn't happy where I was (academically speaking). I dropped out of school. I changed my life goals. I nannied for a semester. I moved 2/3 of the way across the country. I made new friends, settled into a new educational atmosphere, took care of my grandparents, adjusted to a different culture, lost both grandfathers, made life decisions impacting my immediate (and possibly long-term) future. I've smiled, cried, laughed, shouted, slept and dreamed and made mistakes. I've grown. Perhaps not as much as I should have, or could have, but I know that I'm a better person today than I was one year ago, and that's something.

Here's hoping the next year is better than the last.

Not That Today Was A Rainy Day At All

비오는 날 (Rainy Day) by 김사랑 (Kim Sarang)

I love this song. I don't know that I've ever even listened to the lyrics, I just love the sound of his voice singing, the simple guitar accompaniment in the beginning, and the mellow, flowing melody. It captures perfectly the feel of a rainy day for me. And there's something about that first breath he takes before he starts singing, and every other intake of breath we hear throughout the track, that makes me love this song. Usually you don't get to hear the genesis of a song, but I think it's a good reminder that there are two sides to everything, and that we cannot just give continuously, but need to pause every once in a while to be refreshed.