true murmurs....

Remember the time that you hiked to the lake? It was about after mile 7 that I wanted to turn around, with my legs longing for the body of a marathoner and my eyes casting glances to the dirt trail which promised to take me home. We could have all turned back, without apology or explanation. We had gone long enough to tell others that we had experienced nature, hiked, travelled, and lived.

But we knew we hadn’t reached the pearl of the mountain, protected by steep terrain. The scene of the lake could be etched into our memories, or breathed into our souls with the feeling of the frost touching our lungs and the view reshaping our connection with nature.

So we walked and continued, and in continuing we were delighted and delightful.

And the lake was there, as promised. Just witnessing the pines (subjected to an existence of struggling in a desert) gather life from the pond during that fall was enough to give confidence to our own future, where we live in an equally dry and desert world. It was beautiful and grand and special because we-step after step, curse after curse-reached it. And it was more beautiful for it.

This view, with struggle and drive and hate and love was earned and to share it or pretend that others would ‘get it’ or feel the poison of envy from it cheapens it like the cheapness of a used love poem employed by the boy in his third serious relationship.

Sometimes I feel like there is an expectation in our digital world of facebook updates, twitter feeds, instant news, gchat, and texting to create a connection of information between those close to us, but more often than not with those distant, foreign, and losing the glow friendship.

The whoring of information will cheapen any experience.

Information gleaned from friends or given freely, like a rare lake found, should be protected through the bonds of friendship and not publicized with every blog post.

I think we forget that information doesn’t have to be shared to be real; increased value is given to that which is rare.

Checklists of life

They say if you want to be happy you have to try a little harder. They say if you don’t like the way things are you need to be more dedicated. They say if you want a different life you can get it but you need to be a different person, doing different things.

They suck.

I feel like I had a plan, a life plan that was going to be great. I was going to change the world, change people, be married, be leaving Utah on an adventure, and exploring ways to make this world work.

And here I sit, in the library, writing about how the combination of they and me has made me less happy about my life, and more aware of my inadequacies. There are the checklists in life, the pattern we create which we confidently generate in order to protect us from needing the advice of the ‘theys’. I am throwing the checklists away.

The checklist only makes us compare, covet and want things irrelevant to true happiness. The checklist makes me limit who I can date, and who I want to be around. The checklist demands my conversations be intellectual and not a reflection of who I am: a questioner. So for every checklist we made in young womens, college, and even the daily list of what I need to--I am throwing them out. Instead, my checklist will now be the truth of the gospel, the inspiration to help people, and the intrinsic nature of my being who knows, without stress and doubt, what makes me happy.

Goodbye checklist.