Falling Down and Getting Up

I always find watching little kids run around interesting, because they have this uncanny ability to trip and fall flat on their faces, then get right back up and keep running around laughing their heads off, as though nothing happened (at this point, the physics nerds will start explaining all the reasons why this happens, which all makes sense). Then, I'll watch almost any pro-sports player fall down (for any reason) and spend 10+ minutes lying senseless on the ground. A dichotomy that I find very interesting.

The more I've thought about this, the more interesting lessons that I've drawn from it, in a mental and spiritual sense. A child, for the most part, is able to fall down and get right back up because nothing serious has happened as a result of that fall. An athlete, however, often falls down due to something rather impacting (see what I did there, huh?), and can have some more serious consequences.

Our life, our mentality, and our spirituality can be a lot like that, and I think it's something that we need to consider and take into account, for those around us and for ourselves. When someone is living a good, wholesome, righteous life, mistakes that they make can often be not so serious. Like a little child, they can get right back up and keep on going without a second thought. Sometimes it's more serious, and they get a skinned knee that slows them down for a while. But typically, such persons are usually up and going again within a very short time.

Those who are in different situations, however, living lives that are not full of good thing, or that are unrighteous, or even are in hard situations regardless of their personal choices, such as depression or a rough family setting, may get knocked down and have a hard time getting up. Oftentimes the blow that knocks them over is harsh, and the results can be very painful and difficult to deal with. They don't get up right away, because it's hard to get back up when you feel like you've been run over by a tank.

What I think is worth thinking on and focusing on, however, is how we, both individually and as a society, react to those who are struggling to get back up, or who are even still lying down on life's playing field, after suffering a hard blow. We may not have seen the last 100 times this person has been knocked down, the injuries they've suffered, the pain they feel, and the discouragement that is taking a strong hold of their lives. We may not understand why they don't want to get up anymore, or why they can't just bounce back and keep on going. Sometimes we don't see why "toughening up" or "manning up" doesn't work for them.

As seriously, sometimes we don't see it for ourselves, about ourselves. We fall down, and the world expects us to get up and get going again right away, but when we try, we slip and fall, or get bowled over again. We don't feel like getting up, but the pressure from those around us, and from ourselves, drives us to keep trying, even when we shouldn't try to get up so fast. Sometimes we need to lie down for a few minutes, rest up, recover our strength, and make sure we haven't suffered any severe injuries. And when we have been hurt, we should take time to heal. Athletes go off the field when they get hurt, and sometimes we need to get off the field when we get hurt.

The point here is that we all need to be a little more sensitive to those around us, to understand what they are feeling and how they are dealing with it. Not everyone can get right back up and keep going. Sometimes people are good at faking it, for many reasons. We shouldn't be giving them an extra reason to fake it. We should be the ones helping them off the field, if they need it, or pulling them back to their feet, or maybe even just handing them a bottle of water and making idle conversation while they recover for a few minutes. Let us all try to understand a little more, help a little more, and discourage a little less. After all, we all fall down.

Major Life Decisions

So, it's been a while. And now I find myself at a time when I am needing to make some major decisions in my life. I completed a Bachelors degree a little while ago, though it is in no specific field. Now I am faced with the decision of either attempting to pursue a Masters degree of some sort, or to find a possible career.

Sometimes it's tempting to look at the people who are around me, who are moving forward with life, and to assume that they've got it all figured out and know what they are doing. It's easy to forget that they have, and in many instances, are continuing to try to decide what they want to do and where they want to end up. For instance, today I spoke with someone who is pursuing a degree and had previously wanted to work at a museum, perhaps management level. Now, some time later, this person is seeking a new direction far different from the original goal, and this is after a year of study with a certain goal in mind.

So what does this mean to me? I know others who have made similar career changes at different stages in life. Some came after completing a Bachelors degree and discovered that they did not want to continue down that path. Some came mid-degree. Some came without pursing a degree at all, but chose to go down the career path.

For myself, I find this a confusing and frightening time. So many decisions to make, and not the greatest amount of time to make them in. Which path do I follow? Where should I go? Should I stay where I am, or attempt to move to a new place, start over, and go from that point? Do I shell out more money in the hopes of opening new opportunities and giving myself new direction? Or perhaps do I simply try to pick a direction now and make the most of it with where I am at this time? These are not easy decisions to make quickly or with little thought. Yet made they must be for me to continue forward with life and be productive and gain an income with which I may support a health family life, down the road. That pressure may not be upon me yet, but it is something that I do need to anticipate coming upon me sooner rather than later, and not put off the required preparation for it.

Where I will end up and what I will do will cause a large impact in my life, of that I am aware. It just remains to be seen what it will be. I wish there were some amazing words of wisdom that I could share, or that had been shared with me. However, if there is anything that I have come to understand in this short time that I have been facing this situation, it is this:

This is a hard decision, one made over a period of time with much thought and prayer and investigation. It may change part way through. Whatever the decision, it needs to be made well. Beyond that, I cannot say.

The Empty Life?

What is life, when you suddenly find yourself floating in an empty limbo where nothing is what you remember it being? Is it really empty? Has life ended from what you used to know it being? Or have you simply moved on to a new existence, and suddenly find you have to make your own new world?

Life is about creating new experiences and allowing them to direct you and to take you to where you thought you could never go.

I am in the process of graduating from BYU-Idaho, waiting for the paperwork to finish and the actual graduation to occur in December. In the meanwhile, I find myself confused and somewhat lost. I haven't quite finished school, but at the same time, everything is done and I'm just waiting on the formalities to really give myself a sense of accomplishment and finality, to let myself say my goodbyes and let that life move into the past.

Yet, I think that life will never allow the past to fade away completely. It continues to haunt, to remind, to sneak around a corner when you least expect it, or something it even just walks right up and slaps you in the face. I find myself now facing my past, yet not my past. Haunting memories and familiarities are mixed up in the present, creating an image that seems to belong more in a kaleiodoscope and not my life. Yet, now I get to deal with it.

Yet, I sit here, wondering what to do. I watch those that I know going through half a million different things, it seems. Some are happy, some are sad. Some seem fulfilled, some seem empty. Some seem close, and some seem distant. Yet, it makes sense, in a number of ways. People are going on with their lives, and so am I, and now we are going in different directions. That's the way of life, and there is nothing wrong with it.

Yet, it leaves me feeling empty. I keep trying to fill the emptiness, yet it never really seems to work. Everything I try just seems to be fluff, nothing substantial. But I don't really know how to find the substantial anymore? Or do I? Maybe I actually do but I just am not giving myself credit for being able to, not allowing myself to because I don't WANT to believe that I can, because I don't WANT to let go of the past and move on to something new.

Well, whatever the case may be, I guess I just gotta smile and keep going with it. Make the most of what I have. What else is there to do, really?

Sleep and Dreams

You know what I think is one of the most under-rated things we have? Sleep.

Being a senior in college, sleep has become something that I am at odds with. Either I don't get enough of it, it is reluctant to come visit me, or we fight all night and neither of us get up in the morning happy. Sleep is a very tricky creature to stay on good terms with.

I'm sure this thought doesn't come as much of a surprise, given than most people I know are either in college or have experienced it at some point in life. It really is a trying thing. And not sleeping, well, that just doesn't help much at all. But you know what they say, we can sleep when we're dead. Sounds good to me. Only 60 more years to go until I can sleep.

Why is it, though, that we dream, but not always happy, or sad, or scary, or pleasant? Why do we wake up from some dreams feeling refreshed, and from others feeling as though we never slept? Why are some dreams so vivid, and others only a murky fog? No new questions for humanity or God here, just finally being repeated by yet another person. I guess it's something that most everyone asks at some point or another. Let's just say, I'm really looking forward to hearing the answer.

Anyway, yeah, this is my first post in a long time. Life tends to get you busy and some things just fall by the wayside. Who knows, maybe I'll keep it up. Maybe not. Guess we'll just have to see in the future.

The Importance of What Matters

Some days I just wonder what exactly is it that I'm trying to accomplish, with all that I do. What exactly are my goals in life? Where am I headed, what am I trying to be? I wonder how often we all ask ourselves these questions. And how often do we honestly answer them?

To answer those questions honest is perhaps the biggest challenge that most of us will ever face in this life. We don't like to accept hard answers and the difficulties that those answers can present us with. We don't want to acknowledge that maybe we did something wrong, or maybe we aren't as good at something as we would like to believe. Maybe we know we should have acted a bit differently with our friends. Perhaps we shouldn't have spent so much time slacking off instead of getting our work done. What about all those times when we said we were doing good, but really weren't, and didn't want anyone to know?

Yeah, it seems to be rather a strange musing. But honestly, think about it, who is going to know? I look at my followers on this blog, and I don't have many. I'm not really using Facebook right now, so this won't get posted on there. So it would be those five people, if they ever bother to see it and check it. How many people really look at this?

And that's one of the questions that I ask myself - what matters? It's one of those questions that really stings a lot, perhaps the most, to ask. Do I really want to know that answer? Not usually, no, actually. I'd often much rather not. Sometimes it's simpler to continue on in the ignorance of my youth, the simplicity that it can bring to my life.

But it doesn't really matter, does it? Life has a great way of taking those things that we need to focus on and address and throwing them in our faces for us to see and acknowledge and deal with, whether we want to or not. It's just one of the many pains of life that we have to deal with, sadly.

The Musings of a Mind

Okay, think back, when was the last time you thought, "What's the point?" I'm gonna hazard and guess and say for some, it hasn't been all that long. It seems to be a pretty common thought, actually. And a good one at that.

Wondering what the point of something is perhaps one of the most crucial points to developing our minds and our intellects. If we aren't constantly questioning things, then we become stagnant. To see it from a different perspective, let's use the child's most common question, "Why?" Asking why becomes a fundamental part of developing our thoughts and our lives. It becomes the basis of what makes our lives everything that they are.

Then stop, again, and think, how many times have you thought, "It doesn't matter." What have you lost with that thought? What have you put aside? Everyone does it, all the time, and you know, that's okay. There are things that just don't matter that much to us, and if we lose something from it, then we'll still get along fine because we ask "Why" to something else. But what if that something becomes something life changing? What might we have lost by not asking ourselves more about it, looking more into and finding out what it had to offer?

But how do we decide what to ask about and what not to ask about? Is your brain starting to melt yet from reading this? No? Hmm, I must not be doing a good enough job at making you think too hard. Thinking too hard is perhaps one of the greatest reasons that things don't get done in our lives. We sit there and think too much about the "ifs" and the "maybes." I know everyone has at some point, it is just part of life. It's learning to not let those things catch us and hold us, but to make a decision.

And I'm finished musing.

The Truth of Self Control

Ever wondered why self control is sometimes made into a big issue? Or why it seems that when people don't have it, it almost always looks like they're having fun? I've wondered about that, a lot, actually. But really, as I've thought about it and as I'm learning about it from personal experience, having self control really is much more fun, because then you get to pick what you want and what you do, and are not controlled by what you want and feel like you're neglecting yourself if you don't follow those urges.

Self control is perhaps one of the most neglected talents among the entire human population. Honestly, think about it. If people learned to control their wants, society would be better. Hate, anger, crime, addictions, unproductivity, teenage pregnancy, so much of this would disappear. A bit of control, and life would be dramatically improved.

"But I'm fine with how things are." Really? So many people claim that, that they're happy with the way things are. And it's true, they may find some happiness, when they're engaged in the activities that give them pleasure. But when they are denied those activities, whatever they may be, so often I see them upset, angry, depress, worried, nervous, etc. Their lives become a complete mess, until they're able to fulfill that desire, that urge.

"It's so hard to have control." It most certainly is. That's why it's called self control, because we're learning to put our wants under our control and direction. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of people don't want to put that work in, especially if they don't really understand the reward and benefit of doing so. They see it simply as denying themselves of their pleasure. Really, though, I think pleasure comes from allowing oneself to pick what to want, pick when to engage in activities, and giving oneself the ability to say no to things that just don't seem right or won't lead to lasting happiness.

"Why should I even bother?" I personally sometimes wonder how I can trust people who don't want to control themselves, or even worse, don't understand why they should. Sure, I might get along with them, but how do I know they won't let their desires override their judgement, or lead them to put aside a responsibility for something that needs to be done right away? If they have no control over themselves, how can one expect them to have control over things outside themselves?

There is truth in seeing that those with the most self control are the ones who succeed in life. They learn how to put their natural desires aside and focus on the needs of the moment, like work or school or training, etc. It's something I think that we can all take a lesson from. I won't ever claim to be in great control of myself. It is so much easier to simply let myself follow my natural interests, but I find it so much of the time to be detrimental to my health, or my emotions, or my spiritual life. When I take charge and put myself in control, I am happier, healthier, more focused, more in tune, and able to function and perform better.

Having self control is the secret, I think, to living a truly happy life. Learn to control yourself, and you can learn to control almost anything. It may take a long time, perhaps one's entire life. But so long as we are working towards having self control and keeping it our goal, I think that we can accomplish anything we set out to do, in time.