Random Thoughts 33 (11/1/2012)


Tuesday, October 16, 2012
- I think 3 is an unofficial burn out number for me. If I try to spend time with someone, and they are busy or flake out 3 times in a row, I tend to give it at least a few months. Dunno why I thought of this at random right now lol.

Thursday, October 18, 2012
- The new CTO at work is enforcing a “be in at 9:00” attendance policy. Not a good leadership idea :/
- CJ is just like Dad when you ask him to do things haha. He has to finish what he’s doing or often he sees something and starts that instead, like taking out the garbage. Maybe it’s just a guy thing.
- The promotion demotion was a total easy blessing for increased pay without complicating my life more. Awesome!

Friday, October 19, 2012
- “A person’s god is the thing or being in which he trusts and which he believes has the greatest power. It is the thing to which he looks for whatever salvation he believes is available. All other beliefs and actions are affected by that belief or object of his worship…. If a Latter-day Saint will not
tithe, is it not because he centers his trust in worldly things and the system that produces them instead
of in the providence of the Lord? In that sense, then, the things of the world become a god to him, for he trusts more in them than in God’s power. Those who do not pay tithing would likely be shocked to think they were guilty of idolatry just as the ancient Israelites were guilty of idolatry. The form differs, but the sin is the same.” – OTM pg 254
- “under the rule of the judges the people must demonstrate loyalty to the Lord and His commandments for this ideal form of government to function properly.” – OTM 258 I’d argue the same about our country

Saturday, October 20, 2012
- It’s funny how social and anti-social I feel at the same time right now.
- I am not a reading learner, this is why I can’t seem to get well read on politics!

Monday, October 29, 2012
- Awesome line from The Black Prism, “Kip spluttered, making some kind of sound like he was drowning. Seriously, if embarrassment were a muscle, I’d be huge.”
- Talking with someone online (Molly is her name, great fun so far J ) and I wrote this novel that I figured I’d preserve on my log. My Utah bubble rant, tangent inclusive. I do recognize and acknowledge the existence of the Utah bubble, but I don’t think it’s as big of a deal people make it. For example, I remember once being teased because I didn’t know a word was also the name of some random alcoholic beverage. First of all, there’s like a million alcoholic beverage names, pretty sure almost anything works. Second of all, I don’t drink alcohol, why should I even know the names of obscure mixes? If it was some sort of derogatory or offensive term that I was misusing, that’d make sense to know. But a drink name? Who cares! The point being, a lot of the things that people are sheltered from in the bubble are often things not really necessary for us to know. Random sexual terms, drink names, gang signs, and so on are all things that one can live an entirely healthy life without ever knowing. Maybe there’s hard life lessons that people would learn faster outside the bubble, but there’s nothing significant to our eternal salvation that we can’t learn regardless of where we live.
That being said, Utah Mormons can definitely take the passive sheltering of just being in a different environment a step too far, and actively shield their kids from everything. This is not good parenting. If you’re afraid your child might drown, you don’t try to keep them from ever being near a body of water. Someday they’ll end up at a party with a pool at the house, and when they get pushed in they won’t know what to do. No, you get them swimming lessons. In a similar way, you can’t teach them not to swear by never allowing them to hear swear word, you can’t protect a child’s chastity by forcing your will on who they date, you can’t protect your kids from pornography by not having a computer or tv. You need to teach proper principles and allow their agency. Anyway the main point is I think the bubble is less of a big deal than people make it, if you’re really living the spirit of the law you’ll be fine.
However, overall I am not very proud of Utah Mormons. I’d love to be wrong about this, and I never feel my opinions or observations are absolute. But I would say the vast majority of Utah Mormon’s would not fit in the valiant category. I have been pressured more to break my standards (both passively and actively) by my LDS friends than I ever have by my non-LDS friends. On the flip side, I would say the vast majority of members I’ve met that grew up out of state (excluding some parts of Arizona or Idaho, which are pretty much like extensions of Utah) are way more valiant than the majority of Utah members. I don’t have any personal basis to say this, but it almost seems like it’s just as hard to find a good member to date in Utah as it is everywhere else. The difference is there are just so many people in Utah who SHOULD be good members.
Living out of state where not everyone already knows my standards, where I could have open discussions with people about their different takes on the world (here it’s pretty much the Mormon take, an all out anti-Mormon take, or a “I don’t want to think that hard about things because I’m afraid my conclusions would require me not being so lax” take) I’ve LOVED the comparatively few times I got to discuss religion with a Jew, or a practicing Catholic, or an Atheist, or what not. It’s so interesting. BUT! I’m also super super close to my family, and I can’t imagine living far from them, so I don’t know what I’d do. Not to mention it’s a little harder to move your roots in a wheelchair.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012
- Fun random fact. The average person reads 250-300 words a minute. If we go with the upper average of 300, it would take the average person just under 240 hours straight to read the entire Wheel of Time series.
- Had an interesting conversation with a friend today. They mentioned how in games they are more willing to make firm choices even when the consequences are ambiguous, because the consequences are irrelevant. They could win, or they could end up dead, it doesn’t really matter. It can’t be that way in life though, because in life consequences matter.
For the most part I agree. Consequences in life certainly matter. Ended up dead in life experimenting with something brash is no small deal. Drugs, pornography, anger, lies, any form of sin really, have meaningful consequences we are meant to learn from. Luckily choices like these seem to have the most clearly defined consequences in human experience, and the consequences really matter. It’s good though that we don’t have to step on a nail ourselves to know it’s not enjoyable.
Going on in a religious light, the consequences of sins of omission are similarly clear (although not as vivid or direct). Not going to church our testimonies become lax, not serving in our callings we end up thinking less of others and more of ourselves, not receiving all the temple ordinances we won’t be eligible to enter the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom. All still moderately straight forward. All very real consequences that really matter.
The interesting thing to me here, is the choices in between these two categories. I’d argue that the consequences of these in between choices hardly matter. Note, this is if you’re living the gospel enough that you’re in tune when the Lord tells you no. But the consequences of whether you take this girl or that girl out, or whether you pursue this career path or that, while seemingly significant, I submit are not very consequential. Or at least not consequential such that we should be as paralyzed about our decisions in them as we frequently are. I mean, take asking a girl out for example. Maybe she’ll say yes, maybe she’ll say no. If she says yes it may make us happy, if she says no it may make us sad. But unless she ends up being our eternal companion, or unless the sadness drives us to sin, the consequences were really just more experience. I’d wager that people who are willing to step into the dark with good goals, without knowing the consequences, have much more to show in their lives than people paralyzed with the fear of consequences. I KNOW the people who step out all the time like that have had more failures than people who rarely do, but they have more successes too.
Well, I do think my above “consequences hardly matter” category does have consequences that matter. I just believe that win or lose they’re for the best for us when we look back someday and see it all. And if they worked out for the best, it didn’t matter really. Not in a way we should be very worried about our decisions anyway.
This is all a somewhat hypocritical rant for me by the way. I’m still fairly disenchanted with dating. I’ve mentioned in previous blogs how low I’ve been. And while I do feel like I’m on the uphill now, I still have less faith in this category than I once had, and would like to have again. Not willing to take action becomes one is afraid of failure isn’t good, I call that a fear driven motivation. But not being willing to take action because I have low faith in the meaningful consequences of the effort is just as bad really.
-This may be idealistic, and it's definitely easier said than done. And it's not even a point I've reached so maybe talking about it is hypocritical. But as long as or opinion about ourselves is derived from others, we'll always be controllable by others. The only reliable and sustainable confidence is when we get our validation ourselves and from God. Someone confident with their standing with God is waaay more confident (and thus likeable) than someone who is likeable just because the crowd says so. And it doesn’t require any outside validation to find peace between ourselves and God.

Thursday, November 01, 2012
- No matter how justified anger is, it will consume you if not bridled.
- Awkward moment, I woke up with this song stuck in my head http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-su4WO5TVxQ and I wanted to show CJ, cuz it has Final Fantasy tribute in the middle. I thought the band was called GString. They’re not, the song name is. But I Youtubed G-String, not even thinking about what a G-String was for some reason.
I was assaulted with butts.

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