Obsessive Compulsive M&M Eating

An excellent post on OCD M&M eating disease on Light Refreshments Served:

Here’s what always happens when I tear into the bag:

1. I count the M&Ms. There are usually 21. Sometimes there are 20; occasionally there are 22. I give myself a mental high-five when I get 22, as if it were some kind of bonus or something.

2. I separate the M&Ms according to color.

3. I arrange the M&Ms in patterns, depending on what color combinations I end up with. If I have relatively equal numbers of the different colors, for example, I’ll probably do one line of each. If I have some colors with lots of candies and some with few, I’ll make flowers with the scarcer colors as the centers and the more plentiful ones as the petals.

4. Each time I eat an M&M, I rearrange the patterns to restore the symmetry or the artistry or whatever governing principle I have selected for arranging them in the first place.

5. As for the M&M that goes into my mouth, I generally prop it upright between my front top and bottom teeth, apply just enough pressure to split the colorful candy shell in half, and then let the exposed chocolate surface fall onto my tongue. Alternatively, sometimes I dissolve the candy in my mouth until the shell is all gone and I have just that tiny drop of pure chocolate left.

Um, I do all those things except the counting, although I now realize this seems like an excellent idea. If only I weren't in such a hurry for chocolate when I open the package! Also, I don't do flowers; if I have too few of a color, I usually create multi-color pyramids and eat the extras that don’t conform to the pattern. Also, I like to lick the rim of the candy shell until I get to the chocolate and then pry both halves off.

Further to this: is anyone else annoyed by the lack of purple M&Ms? They totally promised them in that "new color" contest a few years back and I still don't have them. :( It’s almost as bad as the lack of blue Skittles. Why can’t these candy makers cater to my OCD desires for rainbow colored candy?

(Light Refreshments Served is an interesting blog, BTW. I highly encourage visiting and subscribing to their RSS.)

One Hundred Percent Perfect

This weekend was our stake conference, and I confess I found it rather frustrating. Our stake president has recently commenced a program called "100% for 100 Days." The program is for all members of our stake to be 100% perfect in the following goals from the institution of the program (Sept 17th) until Christmas:

Daily

• Individual and family prayer
• Individual and family scripture study
• Acts of love and compassion to spouse

Weekly

• Date with spouse
• Family Home Evening
• Sabbath observance at ward of record
• Magnifying of calling

Monthly

• Fast and payment of tithes and offerings
• Temple attendance
• Home and visiting teaching

Now, as several talks pointed out in stake conference, this program really isn't anything new; it's simply a recording of all of the Sunday School answers, the daily/weekly/monthly demands that being a faithful Mormon makes on our lives. These are in essence the things we believe will increase our spirituality and sensitivity to the Spirit. (Though I'm disappointed they left out keeping a journal, but never mind.)

I have no problem with the actual substance of the program. My problem is in the presentation--this program is unmerciful, unforgiving, un-Christ-like. The goal is not "see how much you can do" or "see how much you can improve," but "do it all or fail." That was how it was presented in every talk in stake conference.

My problems with this program are:

• It doesn't allow for any repentance. If you miss a day of scripture study, your 100% is gone. Too bad, you lose, good day, sir. It portrays our spirituality as a fixed state rather than a process. There's no change allowed in this program.
  
• It doesn't allow for different starting levels of personal growth. The stated aim of the program is to help us achieve greater spirituality. But for some people, this won't even be a stretch, and for some, it's too much at once.
• It doesn't allow for personalized goals. Although I'm glad the program doesn't go so far as to state how long our scripture study ought to be, it sets a definite bar of what is good enough, which could lead to apathy for doing more (because you already meet the baseline). What if something vital to my spiritual growth isn't on the list?
  
• It doesn't allow for grace and the atonement, by making us think that if we can do these things, then we are good Church members. While there's definitely a correlation, I don't think this is an "if and only if" condition.
  

Now, I realize that Christ commands us to "be ye therefore perfect." But if this was the way He demanded it, there would have been no atonement given, because those who didn't do it perfectly would have completely failed. I'm just hoping and praying that this program is a set-up to teach us we can't do everything, and that it will end in December with a massive fireside on grace and the atonement.

But it probably won't.

As a matter of full disclosure, I must say that my husband and I are not 100% perfect. We didn't get around to our home/visiting teaching last month and occasionally we miss our prayers or scripture study. However, we have been attending the temple more than monthly. In my estimation, we're doing fine great.

Thoughts? What do you think of such a program?

A Kiss for Abortive Wings

I feel bad about not updating my travel blog recently. I've been typing out things on my USB drive but can't find an internet cafe that allows USB connections. Gah! So, just so you don't all forget about me and because I miss blogging a lot, here's a poem I've been working on.

When we first meet
I see the seams across your back
and wonder whose needle put them there.
In time, I notice you stitch them yourself.
Your needful contortions sucher
gaps between muscle and soul.

I dare not ask about the wounds
for I fear finding them
self-inflicted or inflicting me.
Your eyes are glad for my silence
so I dumbly watch your soundless cries
as we move through the forgiving dark.

But when I bring my hand close
to weigh your burden in my palm,
your wince stings
and cloaks again well-nursed scars.
You ask me to embrace you
but forbid our atoms to touch.

Perhaps if I had light or voice,
you might be able to see. Look:
I don't want you to be happy, only whole.
Stop forcing scabs to bleed hot
and allow the flaws in your clay
to beautifully complete imperfection.

When we last meet,
I see the seams across your back
and learn our wants are not the same.
Still, I lean in to press your lips
and run my hand across
the scars of your abortive wings.

The Problem of Perfection: Part III

So I figured out why I had a sudden influx of random people a few weeks ago: I was highlighted on The Archipelago Digest, an LDS blog review/digest cool-thing. Well, belated hello to you all (assuming some of you are still reading). I'm not sure I like the pressure of being classified as part of the Bloggernacle, although I guess I self-sorted anyway. I feel like I should be blogging about more church topics, when lately my blogging has been skewed towards writerly topics. I guess I don't like being confined to one subject area. Well, take me or leave me, I guess. :D

As a result of finding the Archipelago link, I've renewed my attempt at being more involved in the Bloggernacle. And when I say "involved" I mean "added a bunch of random feeds to my Google reader to see if I like them." (I'll post some sort of review in a few weeks.) One post on Zelophehad's Daughters caught my eye: Why I Hate Mormons. If that provocative title doesn't get you to read it, it's basically a discussion of dealing with the imperfection of Church members, and particularly Church leaders. Since I've been meaning to deal with this topic anyway (as part of my Problem of Perfection mini-series-whatever), I thought I'd post my discussion here. Mostly, I'm just wanting to organize my thoughts before treading into the comments section, where there is no edit button.

First off, although it's bad form, I'd like to start with a disclaimer. This is a big spherical chicken. Like, KFC family meal size. There are tons of situations where what I'm saying would need severe modification, especially in instances of abuse. But, as is usually the policy on this blog, try to ignore the exceptions and focus on the general philosophy instead. Good? Good. Moving on.

Okay, so I don't know anything about the author of the post--as I said I'm new to following this blog--but to me, the story sounds little lopsided and out of proportion. I try to be objective when I write, but I know that I color my actions a little, especially when I write rants against other people. It's natural to want to make ourselves out to be innocent--it makes for a better case. When I read this woman's story, I get the feeling that there's a definite amount of bias, probably because of the lack of admission of possible fault in the author. But, as I said, I don't know the details, so I can't really talk about the specific matter.

What I can talk about it this: I find it interesting that we (members of the church generally, and so-called liberal Mormons specifically) seem to think it's okay for us to condemn others for condemning us. The normal kinds of mistakes, we expect others to tolerate and be patient with, but the sin of intolerance is an automatic out. It's as if somehow intolerance is less important for us to forgive than more conventional faults like lying, cheating, and stealing. Which is clearly ridiculous. The atonement, and its corollary that we are required to forgive all men, covers both active sins and faults of character, like closed-mindedness and discrimination.

Just because you get called to be a bishop or Relief Society president doesn't make you perfectly capable. Theoretically, the further up the "chain of command" you go, the more nearly perfect the people are. But I would be cautious about saying even that much. Take Hugh Nibley's grandfather, Charles Nibley, who was the Presiding Bishop. Arguably, that's high up enough to hold him to a pretty high standard. Yet, on his death bed, he told Hugh if an angel came through the door, he would jump out the window because of the things he had done in order to be successful in business. Clearly, the Lord's standard for calling people is not ours. Of course it's not. It seems to me that this idea of a "minimum standard" of perfection for Church callings is largely illusory, or at least considerably lower than most of us set it.

And this difference in standards causes problems for us, because people in Church callings, even those of high authority, are far from perfect. This often causes pain. I'm not saying that it shouldn't. Imperfection hurts, especially when it comes from people we expect to be able to love or trust. The only place it hurts worse than in Church leadership is in our own families, as CS Lewis discusses in The Four Loves: because our families and our leaders theoretically love us and have stewardship over us, we grow to expect a sort of mind reading, unfair though it may be, and when we don't get it, we get hurt.

However, as I see it, there are two ways of looking at the imperfection of people in the Church, and for that matter in the world in general. Either you can say, as Lady Amalthea seems to have, "These people are wrong, ignorant, and stupid. They're hopeless, and if they are the best the church has to offer, it's unfortunate that I have to be a part of it. How can God allow these people to do these things as his representatives? Wouldn't it be much better to have the Gospel without the Church?" For me, this way seems extremely unhealthy, because it implies that idea of a "tolerable level" of perfection, when in fact, from God's perspective, even the best of us make very little progress in this life.

Here's my counter-statement to the above attitude. I can't claim to always apply it, but I try to remind myself of it whenever I am offended by someone's imperfection. "These people have probably never dealt with someone like me/a situation like this before, so I can see how it might be hard for them. Even though these people hold offices in the church, that doesn't mean they are perfect. God does believe in agency, after all: theirs and mine. He will call them, but He will also allow them to make the choices. I need to help them understand and communicate with me so that they can better deal with these situations, and I can better learn why they act this way. From this problem, we can all progress as children of God. "

In other words, we should look at the imperfection of the saints as a tool rather than a problem. Our intolerance of other's intolerance merely throws into relief our own intolerance. We need to bump up against these problems in order to grow in godly patience and love ourselves. The imperfection of the people in the Church is not an obstacle to the gospel. It is the gospel.

(For related thoughts, see Paradox of Tolerance, or posts tagged "tolerance.")

The Problem of Perfection: Parts I & II

. . . or several problems rather, but I like the singular title's parallels to CS Lewis' The Problem of Pain. In many ways, the problems with pain and perfection are similar. Here are some specific issues of perfection I've been thinking about. Any commentary would be helpful, as I'm still undecided on most of them.

1. Perfection and the atonement: I finally got around to watching States of Grace the other week. Very interesting movie. Not quite how I would have done it, but then I didn't do it so I suppose I should expect that. Anyway, the critical point I got the first time through the movie was this: do we really believe in the atonement? In the Church, it sometimes seems that we are extremely comfortable with the idea of the atonement helping us with our weaknesses, our imperfections, and our minor mistakes. But when it comes to the truly awful sins, we seem to have a harder time of it. When we pass the threshold from careless mistakes into truly bad sins, it seems we would rather die than work it out--better to be dead than dishonored. We know we were wrong, but it seems now impossible to live down the fact that we made the wrong decision. We expect a certain degree of perfection out of ourselves. It's as if, past a certain point, we don't really believe that God could remember our sins no more. Or perhaps it is our neighbors we are worried about more than God.

One particular example is the idea we encourage in the Church that all women should marry an RM. (That's returned missionary for the two non-LDS readers I might have.) Now, of course I'm a fan of missions, and telling the young men they must go on missions or the girls will never marry them perhaps adds additional motivation (though probably not the most noble one). But after 19, when the mission was either served or not served, is this a fair requirement to keep holding up? Where does this leave men who were not worthy to go on missions? Do they become forever the social outcasts because at one point in their life they weren't worthy?

It's my belief that young women should search for someone who's worthy now, regardless of what they were doing at that point in their life. Not serving a mission doesn't necessarily indicate their current personal state, just as a past mission doesn't guarantee their righteousness. It seems to me hypocritical to say the atonement can change us, and yet to set our standards for people somewhere in the past. Which is why RM is only on my "would be nice to have" list and not my "must have" list, which instead has "worthy, faithful priesthood holder."

Then again, past behavior can sometimes be an indicator of future problems. Do you see my dilemma? Where do we draw the line between being forgiving of mistakes and being careful not to be burned twice?

2. Perfection of the Church as an institution: Are we as Church members are we required to believe the Church as an institution is perfect? I'm not certain as to the answer to this question. There are different levels at which we could criticize the Church. The first would be criticizing the doctrines of the Church, which for me is pretty easy to throw out as unacceptable. But just down from that we have criticizing the GAs. My opinion on this is less solid. Obviously, where it coincides with criticizing doctrine, it is dangerous. Still I'm not convinced that because God will never allow them to lead us astray means they are infallible. (Hopefully I'll be able to clear up my opinion on this when my Hugh Nibley class gets around to reading his article "Criticizing the Brethren.")

Just down from this level, we have criticizing the programs of the Church. For example, I am really not a fan of the Young Women's program. In fact, I pretty much think the personal progress program is absurd, possibly immoral. It seems to me like it's only real purpose would be to force spiritual growth in the youth, which we know is impossible. So it ends up just being a set of hoops to jump through so you can have your spirituality recognized before the rest of the ward. Can we say scribes and Pharisees? I know I grew a lot spiritually during the YW years of my life, but little of that growth was connected to the program. It was too restrictive, too generic, and too artificial. And yet, my mom still feels disappointed that I didn't get the YW medallion, even though I arguably knew a lot more about the gospel than some girls who did. (Gosh, that sounds prideful. Please don't take it the wrong way.) I just didn't feel the need to jump through the hoops to obtain a necklace as proof that I had a testimony. It just feels all wrong. (I'll make a similar argument against the scouting program.) But is it wrong of me to make this criticism? I don't think so. Church programs change all the time, and we sometimes forget that. They are not (at least in form) necessary to salvation.

And what about criticizing Church business deals? I regularly ridicule Deseret Book, and I am extremely suspicious of their buyout of Seagull--a monopoly on LDS merchandise can only lead to roads I hope we don't go down. What about the City Creek Center deal?

In general, the gospel is perfect, but people are not. The Church seems to be somewhere in the crossroads between the two. God will not allow the church to be led astray, but does that mean the church will always be perfectly correct or does this mean that in overall doctrine we will always be safe?

This is getting too long, even for me. Expect problems 3 & 4 in a little bit . . . .

Perfect Day

Human emotions are a weird thing. (I know, I know, another famous understatement from Liz.) Sometimes it takes so little to swing our mood from joyous to depressed or vice versa. The wrong inflection in a voice throws us into doubt, but then a grade on an assignment sends us back up. Every little thing causes us to be tossed to and fro. At other times, a mood is inexplicably immovable, resistant to all outside forces--you could fail a test and not even notice it happened.

Yesterday was one of the latter days for me. For some inexplicable reason, I was up on a high that nothing could bring down. And strangely, everything that would have been bad turned out well. I woke up too late to purchase tickets to the BYU bowl game for my dad, but he managed to get some anyway. I hadn't finished my math homework, but then my rhetoric class got cancelled so I suddenly had time. I did poorly on a test, but miraculously the teacher decided to offer a make-up quiz. It was bizarre how everything went my way yesterday.

And then there was my miraculous timing. Since I was trying to figure out the bowl ticket thing in the morning, I was late to OChem, but I arrived just in time for the in-class quiz, which I wouldn't have been able to make up. Then just as I was leaving class, the computer repair place called to tell me my part had come in. (My power cord blew over Thanksgiving break, and I had been waiting for one to come in.) I ran into a couple of people just when I was thinking about them.

When I got home from school, I flipped on the TV to find an episode of Star Trek was just beginning! I had been dying to watch some TNG for quite a while. (It was even a Data episode, which is my favorite kind. They always deal with issues of what it means to be human--very interesting. To top off the goodness, the next episode was a time travel one!) I used the commerical break to go start some laundry, and just as I had finished loading the machines, a whole bunch of other people walked in. Had I been five minutes later, I would have been out of luck for at least an hour. All very small things, but put together, it made me feel like I had entered some strange twilight zone.

This whole experience begs the question: which is the cause and which is the effect? Does the quality of our day control our attitude, or is it our attitude that makes a day seem so wonderful? And if it's the latter, as I suspect it is, what is responsible for an inexplicably good attitude? You can try to convince yourself that today will be good, but it never seems to quite work as long as you're aware you're tricking yourself. A good day has to spring up on you suddenly.

Then again, there's something about good days that can be even worse than having a bad day. If you realize that you're having a good day, then you have to take care not to do anything that might break whatever magic controls these things. About noon yesterday when I realized things were going perfectly, I went into a minor panic. I was almost afraid to do anything that might risk shattering this mood. Perfection is a burden. When I was a kid, I would concentrate hard on making each day perfect, doing things in a ritual way to prevent anything uncertain from damaging the day. After a while, my mom used to tell me that I had to make five mistakes a day, just to keep me from obsessing about messing it up.

Like most good things, perfection only works in small doses. But when you have it, the power is intoxicating.

Middle Woman

Ah-Cheu was a woman of the great kingdom of Ch'in, a land of hills and valleys, a land of great wealth and dire poverty. But Ah-Cheu was a middle person, neither rich nor poor, neither old nor young, and her husband's farm was half in the valley and half on the hill. Ah-Cheu has a sister older than her, and a sister younger than her, and one lived thirty leagues to the north, and the other lived thirty leagues to the south. "I am a middle woman," Ah-Cheu boasted once, but her husband's mother rebuked her, saying, "Evil comes to the middle, and good goes out to the edges."
-"Middle Woman," Orson Scott Card

I guess the real thing I was getting at in my "Insecurities of a Jack" post is that lately I feel like a middle woman, moreso at this point in my life than at other times. I'm neither entirely ignorant nor astoundingly intellectual, neither committed science geek or philosophical humanities student, neither flamingly liberal or staunchly conservative. I don't read the cannon classics or the pulp fiction, but in between. I'm envious of those who can be obsessive fans of something, for I find myself on the borders between fandom and normality. I am a middle woman.

It's not that I don't have firm opinions, because I do. It's just that most of them happen to be firmly in the middle. Everything I've learned has lead me to believe that's where the truth is (see the Circle Theory). But to the people out on the edges, I appear wishy-washy and bland.

In theory, it's a great place to be. The middle is more objective, the middle can try anything, the middle can camoflage itself. But it feels so fake. I'm on the fringes of so many different communities, but part of none of them. Gamers, anime fans, science researchers, English researchers, high culture, low culture, political culture--I've got enough of each to understand what they are talking about, but I never really get out there and commit myself. I balance on the edges, watching and observing.

Which brings me to the excerpt from "Middle Woman." I love the story overall, but I've always wondered about that line: "Evil comes to the middle, and good goes out to the edges." It simply doesn't make sense to me. Good comes to all the edges, no matter how different they are, leaving out only the middle, which is a little like all of them?

And then I wonder if it has something to do with the parable of the unjust steward. Am I only in the middle because I lack the zeal or courage to settle on a direction and move out towards it? Does evil come to the middle because it is afraid?

Just Do It

In response to people (*coughJonicough*) complaining about not having enough time:

Stuff and nonsense. I don't want to hear a single thing about you being busy. I'm taking five upper-division courses and working 16 hours a week. Yet, this week, I still found the time to cook dinner every night, spend 4 hours at the CS Lewis Society booth (plus 2 hours passing out flyers), play Sardines in the library, watch Nova, start a prank war with the apartment across the way, and go to an enrichment activity. Oh, and I've posted on my blog almost everyday.

If there's one thing I've learned in the past few months, it's that complaining about being busy will get you nowhere. Either you're doing it or not.

One thing I highly suggest is taking into consideration exactly how much effort you need to put into your school work. Book of Liz, chapter 6, verse 12, "For what is a woman profited, if she shall gain straight A's, and lose her sanity? or what shall a woman give in exchange for a high GPA?" Really, especially with textbook reading, there's three levels of effort you can put in: comprehension, completion, and skim. Reading for comprehension is not necessarily the best level, especially when completion or skimming will do. See where you can cut back your efforts and still get reasonable returns.

My rule is the Pareto Principle. 20% of the work will get you 80% of the way there. 80% is a B-ish; how much of the other 80% of the work do you want to do? Is the extra 40% to get an A worth it when you could save hours and get an A-? It doesn't have to be perfect, just done. No, you won't have a 3.999999 GPA, but you'll hang in there around 3.6-7-ish. Which is perfectly fine.

Anyway, try not to stress out too much. You can't do everything, so stop trying to. It's extremely liberating. Only do what you need to do, then do what you want to do.

A Return to Normalcy

As normal as it gets at BYU anyway. Whew, I forgot how nice it is to be in school. Besides New Year's Eve and the end of the school year, there's nothing I like better than the first week of school. Don't you just love Provo in the fall? Boquets of newly sharpened pencils . . . .

Movie quotes aside, there's nothing that invigorates me like collecting syllabi and making new productivity goals. And this year I've tried to be a little more realistic about what I can accomplish. One of the pieces of advice for oldest children I found in my recent birth order research was that oldest children need to relax their expectations for themselves a little, to be happy with what they do accomplish instead of depressed at where they fall short. As I've been applying this method, I've noticed an opposite change from what I expected: I've become more productive instead of less. I think that lowering my expectations for myself has also lowered the activation energy (sorry about the chem analogy) it takes for me to start doing something. Since I don't need to spend as much time recovering between activities and worrying about not getting everything done, I can actually exceed my expectations and have a wonderful time. Why didn't someone tell me about this paradox earlier?

Along with the new school year came New Student Orientation, which I volunteered at last weekend. I suppose it counts as a service activity, and a pretty impressive one, clocking in at about 36 hours of time during the last few days you have to make money for school. But really, I do it purely for selfish reasons. First, I like schedules and bureaucracy, so I fit in very well with the routine of NSO. Second, where else can you get an instant group of friends and a social schedule given to you on a platter? NSO is my way of forcing me to have a social life. :D However, the most important reason is really that NSO gets me pumped up to go to BYU again. I've been listening to the NSO CD that I made, which includes a mix I made of Switchfoot's "Dare You to Move" and a bunch of quotes about BYU by President Hinckley, President Samuelson, and BYU radio. It's pretty much an amazing piece, for someone with no experience or musical ear.

That CD also has a really great talk by President Hinckley, "The BYU Experience," which I think every BYU student should listen to regularly, along with "Out of Your Experience Here." These two talks have shaped my philosophy of BYU which goes something like this:

1. Your first priority at BYU ought to be to be grateful, both for the tithing that is spent to subsidize your education (up to 70% of costs, according to my sources) and for the opportunity to study in a place that invites the Spirit.
2. In keeping with this gratitude, you should work hard in your classes, striving to really learn something rather than just to pass. Additionally, we should not learn anything without the Spirit with us.
3. Unlike most other universities, the mission of BYU goes beyond the "can-opener" approach; rather than just providing a gateway to a better job, BYU seeks to help us grow as individuals both spiritually and socially. As a result, our spiritual devotions and our social experiences should be equally important with our academic studies.

Alright, soapbox over. But you should really read those talks. Good good stuff. Oh, and did I mention that the calculus is coming back to me much faster than I thought? I went to my first review session for the pre-test for Math 302 today, and I just kept remembering everything that they talked about! Hurrah! That relieves a lot of anxiety about that class.

Changing Your Birth Order

Another thing I've been doing whilst the blog was down is some research on the birth order/sibling theory of personality. By research, of course, I mean some random browsing on the internet, an article from the July 10th Time magazine, and some obscure popular psychology book from my mom's collection. For anyone who's not familiar with it, or couldn't guess, here's some basic personality types based on your birth order:

• Oldest Children - Parents often have high expectations for the first child, especially since they have little to no experience of what raising a child actually means. This means that the oldest is often treated like a mini-adult, with high expectations for behavior and responsibility. As a result, oldest children tend to have high standards for themselves, and a perfectionistic streak a mile wide.
• Middle Children - The novelty of having a child is worn off, but the special position of baby of the family is given to someone else. This leaves the middle child striving for a way to make themselves stand out from the pack. Middle children vary widely, but you can usually see how they choose activities and traits purposely opposite their older siblings. Middle children also usually end up with good negociating skills, since they must mediate the authoritative streak of the oldest and the baby princess attitude of the youngest.
• Youngest Children - Obviously, the baby of the family gets a lot of attention, which often leads to outgoing, manipulative little superstars. They have a wide variety of examples to choose from in their older siblings, and therefore don't the same differentiation complex that the middle children do. As a result, they often don't take life very seriously and just want to have fun, trusting that everything will just work out in the end.
• Only Children - All the high pressure of the oldest child with all of the attention and drama of the youngest child put together. Perfectionistic complexes blended with people manipulation skills and a sunny exterior.
  

Any of you who know me at all might have noticed I fit the classic oldest child stereotype: I love rules, I'm obsessed with doing well, I care about how others see me, and I take life very seriously. But most people aren't as perfectly cookie-cutter as we sometimes seem, and this is one of the weaknesses behind the birth order theory. Not all young children are self-destructive rebels or baby princesses, and not all middle children are insecure and forgotten. And the genders of the children in the family also matter: both the oldest boy and girl can end up with the first-born complex, but an only girl in a family of boys can easily end up with a youngest child mentality, regardless of birth order. What I'm try to say is you can only predict the influences from the outcome, not the outcome from the influences. I can't take someone's family situation and try to figure out how they will turn out based on that, but I can take their current personality and family situation and draw correllations between the two.

However, in my mind, there's another very useful way to use these three personality types, and that is to see them as different sides to your own personality that you need to keep in balance. Instead of "oldest," "middle," and "youngest" personalities, I've decided to see them as three different desires that change how we mold ourselves: our desire to be successful; our desire to be a different, unique individual; and our desire for fun and attention. Too much of any one of these can be bad--perfectionism leads to low self-esteem and depression, a desire to be different causes us to be contrary and hard to get along with, and an obession with attention leads us to be easily swayed by peer pressure and caught in bad relationships. None of these desires should be pursued to the exclusion of the others, but rather in harmony to create a whole person.

I'll go back to me as an example. As I said before, I'm your classic first born personality, but I also see traits I have of the other two. I resist doing classic girly things as a way to differentiate myself from the crowd, and I love playing random ubiquitous games where I can be crazy and outgoing. But I've allowed my middle and youngest child sides to be overwhelmed by my oldest child perfectionistic desires. I think my life could be a lot happier if I learned to let go of at least some of my high expectations for myself and take on some more traits from the other personalities. I've been working on being more "youngest child" lately, and I think it's helping me a lot. I feel less stressed and more interested in other people. It's good stuff.

Subtle Messages?

It seems like lately life has been conspiring to send me certain messages. Or maybe it's just that I'm more able to synthesize them because of the amount of writing I'm doing. Or possibly it has to do with my increasing training in lit crit, which has caused me to start seeing patterns and meaning in almost everything. Or maybe it's that I'm feeling a lot more in tune with the Spirit lately. Whatever combination of these it is, I certainly got one straight message in the past few days: don't waste your life simply enduring, waiting to do what you want to do.

Some of the factors leading up to this realization:

• Our discussion Thursday at CS Lewis Society. Somehow, we got off on the topic of going and living in a primitive hunt in the planter box inside the HFAC, and maybe living off farming and fishing in the JFSB courtyard. You scoff, but the real point to me was that mankind always thinks that it wants to go back in time because it seems so much simpler, that there might be more time for real life in that era. But in reality, in almost all times, men have found ways to fill their lives with dull tasks that seem necessary but don't really mean anything. But there is also hope, because in all times, we can also find a way to get past all the unimportant things and feel in touch with God, ourselves, and joy. The key is not to go back in time, live in a hut in the HFAC, or to throw out your computer/TV: that only treats the symptom. The real problem is wasting time--letting it slide by us without caring how we've used it. The solution is simple. It's simply to think about how you are spending your time, and eliminate those things that don't bring you closer to the person you want to be. The key is to truly long to become what you should be--and then to do what you can to move yourself there. The very longing to become something, the passion that it stirs up within us, makes the road worth traveling, regardless of whether we reach its end.
• Reading Joni's first blog entry. Welcome to the blogosphere dear Lilymaid. But really, her comment about realizing she wasn't a bookworm anymore really struck me. I had exactly the same realization at the beginning of this summer as I started reading Ben's blog. I looked at all the books he was reading and things he was doing, and I thought, what I am doing with my life? In elementary and middle school, I used to plow through two to three books a week. I loved reading and learning and doing. But since I let the busy-ness and pressure of high school and college take over, I hadn't made time for those things that I once enjoyed. Even worse, I had started to hate reading because it was so associated with the stress of classes. Which is why I've been so insistant on reading this summer, even during Spring term when I felt like I was going to collapse. I needed to remember why I used to love it. And now I do.
• Seeing You Can't Take it With You at Hale. (Arg! Someone remind me whether play titles are supposed to be in quotes or italics.) In addition to a hilarious printer character who sort of reminded me of Ben, the message of the play was right on target. It's about a romance between the daughter of a family of eccentric, poor playwrights, dancers, and firework-makers and the son of a wealthy Wall Street banker. Predictably, when the two families collide chaos ensues. But the message was that even though the artistic family was poor, strange, and disorganized, at least they went out and did what they wanted to do, whereas the businessman spent six to eight hours a day doing things he found boring, just for the pursuit of money that he could spend in his one hour of free time. There was one especially moving part where the father of the eccentric family talked about the idealistic dreams and plans we all make in college, pointing out that only a few lucky ones get to say they did even half of what they planned. It made me so sad, to think of all the people out there wasting their lives working for "that which cannot satisfy."
• A radio commercial. Yup. While driving home from the play, I heard a commercial for some auto repair place. The guy said, "I spend eight hours at the office fixing transmissions, and then I go home and do exactly the same thing. I work on cars in my garage. After [some-odd] years, my work and my hobby are still the same." That's the kind of life I want for me, and especially for my husband--I've seen the effect of a hated job on a man and consequently on his family. Everyone has something that they would love to do; why don't we all stop aspiring to be doctors and lawyers just because we will make money, and go out and do the thing we love?
  

I'm resolved to either start loving everything I do, or just getting rid of it. And that's really the thing: to be able to love everything you do, mundane, intellectual, or otherwise. Cooking, homework, reading, spending time with friends, cleaning your house--all should be things we bask and glory in. Down with the separation between work and leisure! I am determined to love it all.

Pros and Cons of Being Martha

This wasn't what I originally intented to write about, but I need to write it down before I forget what it was about. So Saturday's intended blog entry is being put off indefinitely.

As this semester has come to a close, I've noticed a problem I have that's always been lurking in the back of my mind, but I never really bring out and conquer. It's one that should be obvious, but for some reason I manage to always ignore it. The problem is this: I am always living waiting for something to end, for the future, I guess, but mostly for change.

In particular, during the semester I tend to rationalize the fact that I have no time to do what I want by the fact that it will soon be over. This semester has really been the worst: I literally go to school everyday, come home, eat, do homework, and sleep. When I do have free time, I spend it vegging out in front of my computer because my brain and will are simply so fried that I can't do anything else. When the semester ends, I spend a few days just hibernating in my apartment recovering. But then, I don't learn from my experience and simply load myself up again with way more than I can handle.

I probably get this from my dad: he tends to go in this same full-throttle/crash-and burn cycle. He'll work a sixty hour week, perhaps staying at work for even 48 hours straight. Then he comes home and crashes through the weekend. I know this is not a good way to live; as I said to my dad, I don't want to live waiting for my life to be over.

So while I've been pondering this, I came across in my scripture reading the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10. When people discuss this story, we talk about the problem of being too busy to stop and listen to the gospel. The work Martha is doing is something that needs to be done, but sometimes it is more important to stop and listen to the gospel. Mary is symbolic of the quiet listener, Martha the overworked and distracted disciple.

However, this time as I was reading this story, I looked up a cross reference and read in John 11 the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. I hadn't ever read this story focusing on the Mary/Martha aspect, but when I did, I noticed another aspect of this relationship which caused me to reconsider the meaning of the story. When Jesus comes to Bethany, Martha immediately comes to him, and when asked if she believes Christ has the power to raise the dead, she immediately says yes. But when Mary comes to the Lord, she seems, at least to me, to be in total despair, lacking the hope that Martha seems to have in the gospel.

The conclusion I came to was this: living a busy and less active life sometimes leaves little time to contemplate the gospel, but I think it gives us a testimony of the principles of the gospel in action in our lives. By sitting around contemplating the gospel, we can gain a deep understanding of the principles involved, but it doesn't necessarily give us a testimony of their truth. The gospel is not something that can be studied in isolation; we cannot learn the gospel without having something to apply it about. The most boring and least strong members of the church are those who spend all day studying the gospel. Really, it becomes a sort of inbreeding: you have no substance to live the gospel about and your belief in it becomes founded only on your study of it. But when you live, you see the application of the principles in your life, and your testimony grows stronger even though you may not have as much time to study.

So, as seems to be the conclusion of the most of my posts lately, it's all about balance. I need to find the point in my life when I won't be so overwhelmed that I don't have time to contemplate, but also be busy enough to have experiences and deepen my testimony of the gospel.

After Poem Wind-Down, in Prose

Funny how sometimes when you think you know just the right person to cheer you up or help you out, the universe sends the exactly wrong person. But today, he ended up being the right person because he made me realize all that I am not. I am not hopeless, clueless, or alone. That I do have skills, that I could be likeable, that there is hope for joy.

And I know the answer to my poem is in What the Thunder Said. But how does one get there from the Wasteland? (Sorry for the literary reference, but if you haven't read it, you should. And then you should talk about it with someone who has, or it won't mean anything.) My life is so centered on being lost, different, and alone that it's difficult to see the pathway to being part of something. I seem to have an idea of the bridge, in which I'm sure Christ is involved, but the path is still hazy to me.

Perhaps this all comes about from reading the Screwtape Letters. Or it's another factor anyway. I know, I should hardly dare to put CS Lewis on my interests list if I haven't read it before, but there's a first time for anything. But that part about keeping our beliefs in the theoretical, thinking it is enough to simply think about action, and allowing that to lead us to complacency, that hit to my core. That's me--living in the world of my ideals.

A sign on a professor's door in the Benson building reads:

Theoretically, there's no difference between theory and practice.
Practically, there is.

And that sums up my problem: I know a lot about people and relationships theoretically, but practically is another matter. I am not good at risking myself, trying, caring, being there. And I feel I should be, despite the fact that I have never done so. As a child, I never played games until I was sure I could win (which probably explains my aversion to sports). That continues to today. I have never actually played Risk, but I have watched it so many times. Video games, same deal: I've seen them all, played none. Never played DDR, but I like the idea of it. Ultimate Frisbee, definitely not at all. And relationships, where it's not a game, are much worse. How can I possibly learn how to win before I start?

In order for me to ever find what I seek, I must be willing to "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy." But I am not. I need to find a way to be able to. I could try locking myself off, but clearly that's not something I would do. I try to keep my self at the surface, but as a result I have to be very cautious or I can break. Do break, actually, but we try to keep the damage down.

Ambition, Planning, and Willpower

So, it's finals week. In other words, my spring break, since BYU doesn't have one and I don't believe in "studying." I've been using this time mostly to catch up on some of the cool stuff out there on the net (read: surfing around wasting time). I did find a few nifty things, like librarything.com, on which I've already cataloged most of the books I own (should finish up on Monday). Thus the cool book thing on my sidebar. :D

Which leads me to the real point of this post. Not really, but anyway. . . . I've come to realize over the years that I am very good at planning things, but extremely poor at actually carrying them out. I spent about 2 hours last Sunday planning out a study schedule, which I had absolutely no intention of keeping. I mean, why should I? I took my Stats exam cold yesterday and got a 95%. Was the other 5% that I possibly could have gotten worth studying for a couple hours that I could have spent taking over Russia on Civ IV? Not really.

So that's not really a problem since I'm not losing anything by it, but in other cases my lack of willpower holds me back. For instance, for the last few years, I have been sketching out plans for a website/zine/wiki about the history of the Harry Potter fandom. Yes, I'm a nerd, I know, but the development of online communities really facinates me. I even went so far as to take a web design class last summer (not that it taught me anything I couldn't have figured out in a couple of hours--what a waste of $50). I brought up my idea on a Harry Potter discussion group and was actually approached by Melissa from TLC, who's only like the most powerful HP fan ever, about developing it as a subsite of the Floo Network. Unfortunately, I just sort of let the project slip. I could have been part of something really cool, that I'm actually interested in, but I just didn't do anything about it.

This is my problem: good ideas that I have no intention of following through with. Books I want to write (I've got three really interesting ideas floating around, one fiction and two non-fiction, but have done no research and written nothing), projects I want to accomplish (organizing my filing cabinet, actually figuring out some more web design stuff, like CCS and maybe PHP), things I want to get involved in (essay contests, volunteer efforts, volunteer in a chem lab, a social life, you know). And the problem is that I seem to be okay with having these things continue to float in my brain, and on paper even, but never materialize. Lots of ambition and planning, but no willpower to actually accomplish anything.

And I'm not really sure how to go about gaining willpower. I mean, the times when I actually feel like accomplishing something coincide with the times when I am too busy to do anything. When I have time, I just want to sit around and play computer games, watch movies and surf the net. Even catching up on my reading list feels like too much effort to put forth. Any ideas? I just want to feel like accomplishing something again.

Now off to conquer Russia.

Unpacking

Well, I'm finally back from Christmas vacation. Today was really crazy. Between dropping Heather off at USU, picking up Joni from the airport, and driving to Provo, I spent about 10 hours in the car, plus two in the airport. Sheesh. I hate waiting for things and riding in cars. I don't feel like I can get anything done because something might happen and I need to be on alert. (Plus in cars, I'll get sick if I try to do much of anything.)

So, I thought I had this semester all planned out until I got my grades for last semester. Then I realized that in order to keep my scholarship, I need to retake a few classes. Thus, this semester has suddenly become a lot easier than I thought it would be, but I feel sort of ashamed retaking classes. I mean, I should have done better in them in the first place. Almost without exception, my bad grades are due to my lack of participation. On tests and papers, I almost always do well, but quizzes and participation points are usually enough to bring my grades down to the B range. Not bad for some people, but in trying to keep a scholarship, huge problem.

I think the reason this happens is because I used to be able to get by in school on pure talent. No effort was really necessary to get A's (or E's, since my elementary school didn't use traditional letter grades). But in high school, they start including so many participation points and busy work, which I hate. For example, I failed (yes, with an F) two quarters of AP Biology. However, I got a 5 on the AP Bio test and a 7 on the IB Bio test. It was just ridiculous. Why should people who know everything in the class get poor grads because they refuse to do busy work?

Here's my solution to the problem. Give each student two grades at the end of the semester, one based only on important papers and tests, one including those plus all the busy work points. Either put both on the report card, or let students choose which one they want. I guess my main frustration is the lack of a standard grading system for all classes everywhere. If I were in charge, all classes across the US (maybe the world) would have a standard grading system. That way things can actually be compared. This is why I am a huge fan of testing systems. They provide a scale of comparison. All this nonsense about the tests not being fair just seems silly to me. People complain about them because they reveal the difference between a 4.0 student who learns and a 4.0 student who just does the work.

This detour brings me back to the real point. Through out my school career, I have avoided doing more work than necessary to learn the material. Basically, I'm a self-made slacker on purpose. But now I need to reform and get some actual study habits. Yeah, that would be good.