Renewal

It's time for a fresh start.

I've been thinking about my life right now. I'm slated to go to Africa in the next few weeks, and I'm still waiting to find out about travel in Indonesia.

More importantly, though, I have a chance to rewrite who I am, to cast a new mold for myself. I look forward to this more than the travel or the research. Or, more accurately, one of the reasons I look forward to the travel is for this opportunity. I hope to gain the benefit of two new cultural lenses, and to use the new perspective to pare away more of the bad from my life, and to develop more of the good.

I get to start afresh and create a new reputation as well, a new set of expected behaviors. I think I understand the appeal of the French Foreign Legion: no past, no expectations, except those of the army itself. Or of the Veil - no matter the mistakes from before, we have a chance to start anew. Our past still affects us, of course, but the fresh start removes us from the immediate string of our prior behaviors and leaves us only with tendencies, for good or ill.

And so, off on a voyage of self-discovery! To explore the ocean sea, to discover uncharted lands, ... to find a new world! (Sid Meier's Colonization, opening sequence)

And even if I come back immediately after Africa, let the journey continue. I come back to the poem:

Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. "Passage to India," by Walt Whitman

It must ever be so. If not, what is the point of life? Not to see the sights, but to become; metaphorically to travel, to explore. Even married - shouldn't each day be something of a new adventure? A new learning experience? Should I not become better each day than the day before? Should not each day help me come closer to Christ?

And so, off to the sea, to the wilderness, to the sky! I dare not rest; onward, my soul, exploring! That, quoting Longfellow, one day we may offer "from [heaven], serene and far, a voice... like a falling star: Excelsior!"

Excelsior and Passage to India

I'll write on these later. At the moment, they must suffice. Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. "Passage to India," Walt Whitman "Try not the Pass!" the old man said; "Dark lowers the tempest overhead, The roaring torrent is deep and wide!" And loud that clarion voice replied, Excelsior! "O stay," the maiden said, "and rest Thy weary head upon this breast!" A tear stood in his bright blue eye, But still he answered, with a sigh, Excelsior! "Beware the pine tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!" This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up the height, Excelsior! At break of day, as heavenward The pious monks of Saint Bernard Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, A voice cried through the startled air, Excelsior! A traveller, by the faithful hound, Half-buried in the snow was found, Still grasping in his hand of ice That banner with the strange device, Excelsior! There in the twilight cold and gray, Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, And from the sky, serene and far, A voice fell, like a falling star, Excelsior! "Excelsior" - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Seconds

I've been struck lately by how all of life happens in seconds. Thousands of little decisions flow past us like so much water. The channel of our life is cut by seconds, flowing over our decided course. Occasionally, we have those life changing, path changing opportunities - for a second, and then the choice is made and we go on. Even if we take some time to consider, that's the choice. As Pres. Wilford Woodruff said, to paraphrase, - "We do not tread twice the same water in a stream." We can ignore, but not escape, the value of life in "every, every moment" (Our Town, Oscar? Wilde).

This semester has happened in seconds - so many thousand seconds for this assignment, so many hundred seconds for this meal, so many tens of seconds for this thought. So many seconds procrastination flows into hours, evenings, days. A second of action precedes another, and another, and the job is done. If nothing else, I've learned that seconds are what make up minutes, hours, days, months, semesters, and a year.

I've been home a year now - but what I remember are seconds. A feeling in this moment, or a thought in that. A succession of seconds here- not necessarily continuous - like a slide show strobe, flashing relationships by. Agonizing seconds of doubt, redeeming moments of faith, forgiveness, and courage. The second of a decision confirmed; the number of seconds to realize that fact.

Decisions -what am I doing this moment? Is it right? What is the best use of the next moment? Will I do it? five, six, seven, nine, 15 seconds. Were they worth it?
I don't want to belabor the point - but how much more then, the words, "I need Thy presence every passing hour. None but thy grace can foil the tempter's power! ... Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day! ... Change and decay are all around I see: Oh, Thou who changest not - Abide with me!"

Disturbing

In class today, we watched a section of a television show about parenting methods. Two mothers switch households (to some degree) for two weeks, and the viewing public watches the highlights. The experience literally turned my stomach - I felt physically ill after the first ten minutes, when we stopped watching.

First, the parents presented as extremes - a family of "pirates" (I honestly wish I was joking) that never cleans, and a family in which everything in the house is labeled, efficient, and clean, assaults the Gospel ideal of parenting. Organization is not the opposite of laziness - they're only obliquely correlated - nor is organization and order the opposite of love. The presentation of the two "extremes" was what I found distasteful, as if living in a structured environment is as distasteful as living in one where the people catch fleas from their dog. Dante described it better perhaps than I have - pandemonium is a characteristic of hell; to add to that, order does not require oppression.

What of freedom? What of creativity? Try working in an environment of instability and disorder, and tell me that you are more creative and at greater inner peace. Karl Marx made that argument with his choice of living conditions and lifestyle, and lost three children as a result of it. (Note: Not all who lost children at the time, nor all who currently live in squalor, choose to do so; Marx had the resources not to, and chose to anyway. At least that's my judgment, you call it as you like.) He described losing his children as some of the worst experiences of his life - is that worth a few extra minutes each day of creative expression? Again to Marx - the price he paid in time lost to depression associated with losing his children while writing his seminal works was far greater than would have been the time to, say, make a budget or find a new home, or to give his children needed medical care, or even to earn the money to make those options possible.

Another argument, from the class discussion: organization isn't worth the few minutes you save. Here is the counter: neither is laziness. Being lazy is trading a few minutes of one activity for the few minutes required for a better one - three minutes of sleep versus three minutes of cleaning your bedroom. It's the same false doctrine as "we're not going to force our children to be like us." As if parents could! But whether they accept it or not, parents encourage their children one way or another; far better to encourage the freedom of self control and self development than to encouragement the oppression of sloth, filth, and the self-appeasement of the senses.

A related, infernal line of reasoning is that, "I choose to go my own way, rather than God's way." The lie is that we are going our own way; we are not, but instead choose to follow the devil. Our own way is whichever way we choose, but we cannot cut our own path; we can choose our actions, but not the consequences of our actions.

Perhaps, most disturbing: why would I ever seek this out as entertainment? Why would I ever tolerate this in my home? I don't watch tv very often, and now I am very glad of it. What depravity, what excess would lead me to enjoy watching two people be subjected to others choices; to enjoy seeing people inflict upon each other intense social and emotional pain; to not only encourage that suffering through the creation of the show, but to revel in it, to enjoy it, and to laugh at it?

Maybe I'm taking this too seriously, but I don't approve of this type of "emotional Colosseum."

Quite frankly, it makes me sick.

Love: The Risk is Worth It

I'm currently writing a paper on a piece of Swedish literature - Det gaar an ("It's alright") I'm going to update this post as a I write, but one of the characters, Sara - whom I once thought was like a girl I loved! - disparages marriage and commitment as, at best, unnecessary between two who love each other, and at worst and most often as a constraint that binds two people together even during tough times when they don't, can't love each other.

What a fantastically hopeless view of love! I'm just coming out of a relationship, where she I and both loved each other; but because of divine instruction, we needed to break up. We did. Even so - the point of love is that it lasts, through thick and thin. Love is like faith - it is a decision that is not to be given up during tough times. What I felt for my former girlfriend was the beginning of a commitment - inspired by the happiness I felt with her up to that point - to be with her through both happy times, and times when I was not as happy. What is love that leaves with unhappiness? No love at all. If love only exists with infatuation, then love is nothing. But it is not. Love is strengthened through weathering adversity, when that is chosen - the presence of trial certainly doesn't negate it.
Sorry - this post probably doesn't make sense to those who haven't read Det Gaar An. Simply, this: I loved someone, and even though it didn't work out and breaking up has hurt, it was worth it for me to love, and I state absolutely that it will be worth it for me to love again.
So there!

The test

"Good timber does not grow with ease - the stronger wind, the stronger trees."

This is something I've been pondering recently -why are things so hard sometimes? And this is what I come up with: Abraham had to climb Mount Moriah, and to be willing to sacrifice his only son in order to become like the Lord. Joseph Smith taught that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all we have cannot produce the faith necessary for salvation (not an exact quote).

In other words - it has to be hard. If it's not, we cannot develop the strength we need, or the faith we need, to become as the Lord, and we, would that we become.

Fortunately, the Lord doesn't leave us despairing, but gives us hope, by revealing to us enough to confirm our faith and to help us carry on.

I really like this picture - I think it says it all. "The Voyage of Life: Manhood" by Thomas Cole.

Love

It's amazing how involved in our lives our Heavenly Father is. It's amazing to me.
Anyway, I'm free!
The whole world is ahead of me! And the horizon is, once again, back where it should be in the distance.
However, I am glad for my experience - I am better prepared for the future. I know more what I want out of life.

Part of that is adventure - I want to hike Kilimanjaro, bike the American Discovery trail, shoot the tunnel in the Grand Canyon, hike Denali. Another part is love - I want to love and to be loved intensely. I want to live life intensely - and I'm okay with that, and if other people aren't, so be it.

One good part about rejection is this: it forces the question, "Do you like who you are?" And I can answer, "Yes, I do!" I'm not perfect, I'm working on things, but I am a valuable individual. And so rejection is not a blow, but simply a negative answer.

If that is the prize of rejection - a renewed awareness that my worth is not dependent on someone else's opinion - then rejection is a very, very good thing.

Not that I want more of it, though. :-)