Self Discovery

I won't even bother with the opening explaining how I should be homework because you know if I am writing here chances are great that I should be doing homework. Plus there really isn't any time that I shouldn't be doing homework so it really is just a waste of space to try and bother with the excuses and explanations.

I have learned a lot about myself recently. Good and bad, obvious and subtle, probably some truth and some fallacy. I have emerged from said lesson mostly unscathed but slightly unsatisfied. I really have the best life anyone could ever ask for. My family is absolutely bursting with greatness and while this has been true for generations, I think it has all concentrated itself into a barely containable force in the seven amazing people I am lucky enough to call my immediate family members. I have been nurtured and groomed from a young age in a controlled and tailored environment to become good and happy and successful. I grew up in the greatest state there is surrounded by amazing examples who taught me all there was to know about being a good, decent, kind person. Friends, teachers, leaders, examples, and acquaintances all helped to mold my world into something exciting and beautiful and full promise. Like a freshly plowed, weeded, and dunged plot in all its splendid stench my future has always been waiting for me to plant whatever I wanted. With such a beginning as this handed to me really without any work on my side, what excuse could I ever find to be anything but blissfully successful? Not to say that I am unhappy or failing, just that I should be so much better with amazing gift of a protected and practically perfect incubator before my release into the unknown. Luckily, I am young (in spite of the looks of disbelief my age brings to BYU freshmen) and I am ever happy. I can be better and I will be. That is the miracle of agency--we can really truly be anyone we want to be. I want to be taller--Spiritually I mean. I want to be kinder and more open minded. I want to be less selfish--to think of others first without having to remind myself to do so. I want to laugh often. I want to be thoughtful and good. Sometimes I feel like with the gospel life gives me a catalog of personality traits and promises that if they are righteous and if I am willing to do my part to attain them, anything is possible with God and I can become whoever I need to be with His help. I think that approaching the end of this my third quarter (and basically the last one of my first year) of graduate school has inspired me to reassess and remodel. Take out a wall here, put in a sunlit breakfast nook. Build a porch, add a wing, redo the plumbing, and put up curtains. The outside of the house means nothing if what's inside it isn't worth living in.

You know that feeling right before something important? The deep breath right before you step off the airplane into your new home. The split second burst of emotion and doubt you have to decide in before you close the distance for the first kiss. The hesitation before you finish your signature on the contract, closing your eyes right before the stylist hacks off your last five years of growth and protection, glancing around a packed auditorium just before your name is called and your diploma presented, the quick prayer before you open the oven and pull out your first turkey. Somehow I think these are what makes up who we are. It is in these snippits of time that we take up the courage of a hero and become. Taking a chance on the universe that it won't destroy us in our bout of self-definition and discovery, no matter how brief. These moments serve to define and develop us as the creatures living in our coats of skin. Maybe that is why change is so scary--not just because it alters the world we see but because it reveals in sharp focus what we see in ourselves--someone we might wish to alter and hide from the world. Self discovery is, of course, the most dangerous, worthy, exhausting quest there is. It is an eternal one because we are ever evolving. Finches have nothing on the human soul. And in these moments--the crossroads of greatness or failure we are given the choice--to fall or to fly. The slippery route to penguindom began at the same place as that of the mighty eagle. Natural selection demands that some fail, but human nature does not. So breathe. Breathe again. Drink in the moment, and become.