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The hardest part of blogging for me is coming up with a title.

Anyways, today I came across a blog that truly surprised me. I'm a fairly judgemental person (I'm trying to change!) so when someones inner thoughts aren't expressing the person I thought they were, it really does surprise me.
This blog was amazing. Not necessarily because of the person, but because of the things they blogged about.
All my life I've been amazed with the people who have the gift of expression; the ability to put down in words the thoughts that they're plagued by. I don't have this gift, and if I do, I'm not utilizing it very much. For example, C. S. Lewis has always been able to form sentences that succinctly capture his message. Although I've never had the chance to READ any of his books, the quotes that I hear from him are so simple and yet so profound.
Have you ever noticed that the most meaningful of emotions are expressed in the simplest of words? Sometimes, a simple "I love you" does more for an individual than an "I will follow you across the sky and back and buy you chocolates and flowers and diamonds......" etc.
but now I'm getting distracted.
Sometimes I think that I think too much. It's frustrating trying to find the words to describe my opinions! If I had Lewis' head, I wonder what stories I could tell. I don't know, but I think it's exciting trying to find my "voice" if you will.
In English and in a couple of classes I've had, we were asked to analyze a story, passage, paragraph etc. I always wonder what the authors of the words would say to our interpretations. Maybe we over-analyze their words? What if they just wrote what they did because they felt the need to say something. What if our interpretations are nothing like their original message?
Though, I guess that in this variation there is beauty. I've learned in Biology that variability increases heritability, and oddly enough, I findthis applicable to literature as well. For example, the different variations and interpretations of Shakespeare's work have helped to keep him in society. Spin offs of his plays are found in the media today, keeping him alive.
What will people interpret from my words?

On a side note:
During this 3 day Thanksgiving break I've been watching more TV/DVDs than I have in the 3 months that I've been here! I've successfully completed Sleepless in Seattle, The Importance of Being Earnest, 14 episodes of One Tree Hill, and the first and second DVDs of the special extended version of Lord of the Rings. Those last 2 movies are a total of 8 hours.

Sometimes it feels good to be a pile.

I miss my roommates though. Half of them left over the break to spend time with their families. Not that I blame them in the slightest! Jillian and I have talked more during the week she's been gone than we did all during the summer! I miss Carly and Kimmie too :( The dorm is REALLY quite without them all!

Traditions: a long-established or inherited way of thinking or acting

Being Thanksgiving today, I've really had a great chance to reflect on the traditions that my family has during the holiday season. Dictionary.com gave me the above written definition of tradition; out of the 7 different options given, this one served me the best.
Traditionally, (see what I did there?!) traditions are often activities that families do together. My family usually hangs up an old laminated turkey, cut out from the Friend. Then for our family home evenings in November we each come up with a few things we're thankful for, write them down on turkey feathers made from colored paper and stick them on the turkey.
Also from the same magazine is a Crazy Thanksgiving Adlib. Grandma Featherbone has had some of the weirdest Thanksgiving feasts courtesy of the Decker family. With nouns such as earwax, Shrek, Michael Jackson, and Mia Hamm, there was just no way she could walk away unscathed.
These traditions although incredibly fun and meaningful in their own way, do not necessarily fit in with my chosen definition of 'tradition'.

Having this break from school has also given me a chance to further my introspection, mostly due to the fact that I am extremely bored. (Going from an insanely busy schedule to nothing seemingly overnight is somewhat liberating, and confusing). Anyways, the traditions of my family have been made abundantly clear these past 3 months. Saturday morning chores, although somewhat of a sick tradition, has been implemented here in my own dorm, and it has brought me this weird sense of peace. Who knew scrubbing floors would remind me of home so much?
Family prayers at night are still continued.
The tradition of the "3 second rule" still applies for me... but some of my roommates are disgusted by that.
The thinking that antibiotics are miracle workers, staying up late is natural, PG-13 movies can be hilarious, making mistakes is ok as long as you are better for them, and laughing during prayers are all part of my family's tradition, and as such I've inherited that way of thinking/ acting.

Funny how differently traditions can be defined!

Happy Thanksgiving family. I'm more thankful for you today than I have been in my entire life.

Fairness

Life isn't fair.

It's an old saying yeah, but everyday it's proven to be quite valid.

It's not fair that I wake up early, and still leave late.

It's not fair that I study 20 hours and end up with a lower score than my study partner

It's not fair that the light turned green for the guy speeding/weaving through traffic, and then turns yellow too early for me to blast through it.

It's not fair that ______ can eat a whole box of pop tarts and still have a 6-pack.

And these are just a few of the unfairness qualities of life. But when I take a second to think globally, I'm pretty sure the unfairness is balanced out between the good and bad things happening.

There is so much of everything in this world, the good, bad, ugly and beautiful! All of these things can be seen in one individual, so it makes sense that the 6,881,300,109 people living on this planet would magnify those traits.

                                                                                                            

I got a letter from a friend serving a mission yesterday and he's serving in a fairly ghetto place.
Let's be real, it's freaking Miami Vice x 10 there.
But amidst the shootings, police chases, drug users and white trash, the beautiful message of the gospel is taking a hold of the hearts of the people there. Good is born from the ashes as they would say.
This doesn't only happen to the people, but to him (the missionary) as well. Never having a brother that served a mission, and being too young to remember my uncles leaving, it's been a phenomenal experience for me to keep in contact with him and literally (but not literally...) SEE the changes the Spirit has worked in him.
Stereotypically, it's HARD to explain, but certain things that used to bug him before he left don't anymore. Movies and music were his life previously, and even though he sometimes misses them now, he said he's just stopped paying attention to the new releases.

Not to mention the advice he gives. I wrote out a long letter of venting things, mostly about the frustrations of college and such. But what the advice I got back was priceless. None of it was necessarily NEW to me, but how he worded it made better sense to me than the words of those who'd previously tried to talk to me. Giving me advice on to "just chill", turn to God and His words, and go to His places for guidance.

The gospel is truly amazing!
It's all just so cool to see/hear/read!

I'm feeling the LOVE today.

There are the occasional days that I am truly feeling good wholesome lovely feelings for life. And this past week, was not one of those times.
HOWEVER; Fast Sundays usually bring about an amazing change in my personal life, so much so that I really feel good today.
Today was an amazing day. Particularly since being here, I've noticed how the conversations on deep personal pondering seem to be answered in a small seemingly unimportant conversation the next day. Having kept track of this phenomenal occurrence (7 times), I feel like it's important to share the simple fact that: God does hear His children.
My Bishopric introduced a new program (for lack of better words) entitled Roommate Support Program, also known as RSP (because we're Mormon LDS and we love our acronyms!) The goal of this program as far as I understand, is to further protect each other by eradicating improper worldly items from our apartments. To make our apartments a spiritual haven, much like our ideal homes... back home.
As I personally thought about what our apartment could do to help spiritually saturate #129, I realized how incredibly blessed I am to have such awesome roommates.
NO seriously... they're AMAZING.
There are stories circulating around about roommates who keep ridiculously late hours, participating in all sorts of shenanigans, those who NEVER do the dishes, never clean, swear, R-rated movies, drugs etc.
And just because we're at BYU doesn't mean that the people here aren't human. Mormons are human too (sometimes it's a hard concept to grasp, I get that).
My dorm doesn't have any problems like that. Please don't think our dorm is "perfect" (such an unattainable ideal) however; our dorm is next in line to be translated :)
Just kidding. I wouldn't be here right on the Internet right now if that was the case!

The point of this whole blog was to share how much love I feel for my roommates. I had NO idea the impact that each of them would have on my life. No idea how each of our backgrounds would magically, and beautifully combine to weave the fabric of our own family culture here in Robison Hall.

And to top it off, they're all great cooks... dinner tonight was Salmon, baked potatoes, home-made rolls and salad.

Stuff on Being Better

Every time I go to church I am constantly being reminded about how much better I could be doing.  My roommate Natalie has one of the sweetest and genuine spirits I've ever encountered. And so do all 100 of the girls in my ward.
I've never been in a place where there are at least 2 piano playing geniuses in every dorm. And the others have had some level of musical background be it singing, (which I'm pretty sure we were all required to know), violin, cello, flute, guitar, saxophone, clarinet, viola etc. etc.
And not to mention just how much BETTER everyone is.. in EVERY aspect.
spiritually
academically
physically
emotionally
athletically
musically
(fill-in-the-blank)-ly

It's weird to be in this place and NOT get discouraged because of how little your achievements mean.
I could be happy that I ran 5 miles, and the next day hear how an FHE sister is running marathons like a boss.
I could be happy that I finally got to play the piano for a little bit, then hear how the girl downstairs has 3 music classes and is required to play 2 hours a day. And she jams on the piano like no one's business.
I could be happy with my ACT score, then sit in awe as Brad down the sidewalk explains his "unstudied" score of 35.
I could be happy for the 96/100 on a paper, then have that trampled by the roommate's 99/100 score.
I could be happy I was able to squeeze out the time to go to the temple, then hear about the people across the lobby who have religiously gone to the temple every Friday since school started.

I'm trying to just focus on using all of these people's talents, ideas and examples to help me become better. But when it seems like you're so low on the totem poll.... it's hard not to look up.
And then there are the days that I really just don't care anymore. Not in a suicidal sense mind you... but in the sense that I am recognizing that I am ME, and I have to live with that. There are habits that I wish I had, scores I wish I could get, and things that I wish I could do... but I'm not going to be able to do any of those things simply by looking up to examples. So every now and then I tell myself that I'm doing just fine; that I don't need to be anyone but me.

And then we go to church and the whole self-esteem slaughter ensues once more.

The Puzzles

Carly and I recently (last night) had a conversation that has really got my mind reeling.  We were talking about our roommates, our likes and dislikes about all of them (*no offense guys), and she told me that over the summer, before school started, that she felt like she really got to know me because of our emails back and forth. She said that there was one email that I sent where she felt like she really connected with me. And it's this connection that I love finding in people :)

We talked about the difference between 'understanding' and 'knowing', and how there is a definite difference.
Ask me about an ant, and I can tell you that, yes, I do know what that is. But I can't tell you that I understand what it is because I have no idea why an ant is either significant, insignificant, trivial, remarkable or memorable to you. The background, history and memories associated with ants are specific to you, and I wouldn't be able to understand them without further explanation provided by you.

We also talked about how people store information in their heads. Going back to our roommate discussion, I was talking about how I put people together in my mind. Everybody has their own puzzle in my head that, when completed, forms their own heads. On the back of each puzzle is a word either describing them, their hobbies, random facts etc. etc. The borders of the puzzle have the basic, rigid information about them such as family info, age, gender, morals, values, where they're from etc. But the middle puzzle pieces are the pieces that TRULY describe the person. Their habits, sayings, opinions, interests, passions etc. I was going through and thinking about how fully formed each roommates' puzzle is in my head. Elizabeth's about 90-93% completed, Jillian's around a 75-80% (although some days I feel like I have no idea who she is at all. She's spunky!). Carly was asked that day how comfortable she felt around all of us (100% being like family comfortable) and she said around 65%, which is weird because that's how much of her puzzle is completed in my head.
But there are some people in this world who I can't put a puzzle together for. I just collect puzzle pieces not knowing if it's a "border piece" a "middle piece" or even a piece at all. It's these people that I have the hardest time relating to and it's not their fault at all. I'm not trying to say that they should change so that I can piece them together; it's just hard for me to relate to someone I can't form a picture of.

I love late night post-gym conversations!

I can't remember

Ever wonder what you would do without your memory? Sure we typically forget some answers to a test, but I mean not having the ability to remember anything at all?
Not remembering what you did the second before.
I wonder what it'd be like not to remember--
I wonder what it'd be like not to----
I wonder what it'd be like not---
I wonder what it'd be like---
I wonder what it'd be----
I wonder what it'd----
I wonder what---
I wonder---
I----
And that's all you'd get.
Each second exising and forgetting. Every sense would constantly be stimulated by something new. Never knowing how to speak, crawl, eat.
Literally, a couch potato. Not knowing who you are; your interests, hobbies, talents, abilities.
Not recognizing your family. Not knowing what a family is.
I truly can't think of anything more horrible.

"Each of us finds that in [our] own life

every moment of time is completely filled.

[We are] bombarded every second by sensations,

emotions, thoughts... nine-tenths of which

[we] simply ignore. The past [is] a roaring

cataract of billions upon billions of such

moments: Any one of them too complex to grasp

in its entirety, and the aggregate beyond all

imagination... At every tick of the clock, in

every inhabited part of the world, an unimaginable

richness and variety of 'history' falls off the

world into total oblivion"

C.S. Lewis

I think I'll complain a little less now when I can't remember something trivial. such as a name.