Diversity

Today is March 31st, the last day of the month. Where has the time gone? Seriously, though. How is tomorrow already April 1st––the fourth month into the year. I mean, next month (May) is my birthday. That’s nuts.

Once I was done with work today, I was walking to pick up my graded sources paper, when I ran into Olivia (my sister). Naturally, as I was trekking across campus to get to the JKB, I was all business. I was walking quickly, looking at the ground, and then up at the occasional tree when all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, someone walks up to me very closely and begins to follow me. I was a little bit creeped out, but looked up to see who it was. It was, in fact, my silly sister. She said she had also finished working for the week and was asking where I was going. I said I needed to pick up my paper, and so we went over together.

Walking home with Olivia was a nice change. We don’t sit down and just talk about things in general that often. So spending the fifteen minute walk home with her was refreshing. Olivia is a superb sister. While we don’t have all of the same interests, I am grateful that we are so different from each other. She has such different ideas than myself, so she helps me understand things in a different light––something that I treasure deeply. In fact, all of my siblings are very different from myself. But from our diversity, we learn in ways that we never could if we were all the same. Our different methods for doing things helps us all to appreciate the unique qualities of the individual. I can’t express how much I love my family. We are all different, but are all perfectly compatible.

Trusty Old Clock

In my family’s study, there is a clock. This clock has been, quite literally, hanging around four the past twenty years or more. It has been a sturdy, long-lasting old soul. That is, until about this last week. It gave up the ghost. The once trusty old clock has become a senile old clock. The weird part is that the pendulum keeps swinging, but the hands won’t move. The time has been stuck at 6:45 for the past week. I thought this was the end of old clock-y…until I noticed it just needed new batteries.

There are three types of people in the world: the poopers, the pointers, and the scoopers. Meaning, that there is the one who makes the mess, one who complains about it, and then the one who takes action solve the problem. All week, our family has been in “the pointers” category. Any time someone looked up to the clock to see what time it was, but then realized that it wasn’t working, they would complain. All week we acted this way. But on Saturday, we took action: we put double A batteries on the grocery shopping list.

Finally, we were able to put new batteries in, and the old clock had become trusty once again. But now the pendulum keeps hitting the side and making a “thunk” sound every second, literally. But I don’t want to fix it––I’m too lazy. I’ll just stick to being a pointer for now.

Philosophical Questions

Last night I decided think on a philosophical level. I posed multiple questions to myself, with the first one being: if the world is round, how does a leveler work? Deep, I know. But really, what is the science behind a leveler being level if we live on a round earth? I would like someone to explain it to me. Also, if you were to put something into a time capsule fifteen years ago, what would you put in? How do you even decide what would be important enough to put into a time capsule? And why do we value really old things or really new things? Why don’t we find the things in-between old and new to be fascinating enough? And why do we get bored? How is that a thing? What determines whether or not we decide ourselves to be feeling bored? Also, since no one on earth can completely comprehend and understand everything that exists, how can we be comfortable being so ignorant? When was it we passed the specific point from wanting to know, understand, discover, and invent everything to being content at not knowing everything? Or are we not content? And why does human hair absorb so much water? Isn’t that a counterproductive evolutionary trait? What good does absorptive hair do for us? I guess it can clean up the oil spills, but what else?

Sometimes I find myself confusing myself…

Why Sleep?

Why is sleep a thing? Why do our bodies get tired and need to rest for hours? Maybe we are meant to sleep so we can dream and think up things that are outside of our reality. Perhaps that type of creativity is crucial to our well-being. I think that a lot of inspiration can come from dreaming. And dreaming helps us escape our lives and create another world. Somewhere for us to escape to.

Or maybe we sleep so we can remember to say our prayers more often? Maybe sleep is just one way for us to better remember Christ.

…

Well, I just fell asleep while writing this post. How kairotic and ironic.

The idea that we rest, rejuvenate ourselves, and then keep going is really nice, though. We have a fresh start each day. I think it goes along well with the idea that when we repent, we have a chance to forget the sin and move on. I also think that if we were to never sleep, it would be harder to understand that we can restart, if we never actually had an instance of “restarting.” I’m not really sure, but maybe that is one reason we were created to sleep.

Spiritually Fed

I love the rain quite a lot. I love how vibrantly green everything becomes outside. The timing of the rain is also remarkable. I mean, not this last Saturday, but the one before, I was outside doing some yard work and noticed how dead our lawn was. I was feeling discouraged about it because our sprinkler system is down since we are trying to remodel our yards. And our water is also still turned off outside, so I felt hopeless in trying to help our yard come back to life. Having this rain pour down all week has been such a blessing. 

I am constantly amazed how the plants thrive from the rain that comes from the sky. God created the plants on the Earth so they don’t have to solely rely upon us mortals to take care of them. If that was the case, we would barely have any plants. Instead, God takes care of his creations consistently. While some plants only need water a few times a month, or even a few times a year, they need the water regardless. It’s interesting to compare our situation on the Earth with the plants. Nothing can thrive on this Earth without the consistent help from God. Just for us, we need to look for Him to be spiritually fed every day. Just like when Moses and the children of Israel were in the Wilderness and were fed by God with Manna every day, we need to be spiritually fed each day. This can be through daily scripture study and prayers. We can’t expect to thrive in our environment and go places by only looking to God a few times a year. God is always present, so we should be too.

Happier Times

Sometimes all I can think about is how badly I wish things could be back to the way they used to be. Just far back enough to have everyone from our family back here on earth. That would be great if time would simply reverse and I could be with my whole family again. But that is an unrealistic hope for this life. As I have mentioned before: I am grateful that time keeps moving forward. While I still have those days where I miss the “happier" parts of my life that included having my whole family together, I know that God has designed things for everyone to help us reach our highest potential. For some, reaching their highest potential includes having their whole family on earth, together, throughout their mortal life. For others, it is a different story. But the motives behind such events is the same: to help us become more like Christ and be the best we are capable of being.

Thinking back on what I have learned over the years, and who I have become today, I honestly don’t know who I would be if I didn’t experience the joys a pains I have felt so far. I seriously can’t comprehend it. At times, it can be extremely difficult to try and align my will with God’s, but I just need to have the faith that He is all-knowing and has marvelous things in store for me to do. I wonder why it is so hard, though. Why did God create us to be able to think for ourselves? Why give us agency? Especially when we, at times, think that we know better than God? Why create rebellious children who develop their own logic––logic that carries a high chance of denying Him? I believe that God created us this way in order to let us discover the truths of the Gospel for ourselves and become truly converted to Him. Understanding this reasoning, and then thinking about the amount of faith God has in us is astounding. So the least we can do is have faith in Him.

Kickstarter

So, today I decided to do something out of the blue: I decided to back a project on Kickstarter.

Sitting at the kitchen bar tonight, I thought I would go see what Kickstarter had to offer. I was browsing around, until I came upon a project titled: Eat Offbeat: The Cookbook. I was intrigued, so naturally I watched the video. It turns out that a few refugees, from all over the world, decided to make a cookbook of their families’ greatest recipes. These chefs, who were only home cooks back in their home country, came to New York and were professionally trained to work as real, restaurant chefs. Then they decided to make a cookbook with a lot of their recipes—recipes that have been handed down in their families for generations and that haven’t been written down. I honestly cannot tell you how excited I am to get this cookbook. I have been wanting to have my own, real cookbook for forever (since the only cookbook that I had ever purchased before was when I was eight and it was a Disney child’s cookbook––naturally it didn’t offer that much). The only downside is that I will receive the recipe book next year. But I guess that is the norm with all of the Kickstarter projects: to take a while to fulfill the promises made to the backers. Nonetheless, I can’t wait until March 2018.