My 12th Patriot Day, and Life's Sanctity

It's a Patriot Day tradition in America to ask out loud: "Where were you?"

"Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?" is how the Alan Jackson song goes. I always remember vividly where I was when I first heard the news.

I was a Basic High School sophomore, chilling with my fellow marine biology classmates, 2nd period, waiting to start dissecting squids, when our teacher asked what seemed to be a pretty odd question:

"What does '9-1-1' mean to you?"

[Puzzled looks on our faces for a moment or two…] "Emergency," said one. "Urgent," said another. And those were the best answers we could come up with.

Our teacher, whom I remember being a kind and frank and red-headed lady, noticed that none of us had any idea what she was getting at, so she continued speaking her thoughts:

"Look at the clock. It's around 9:11am. Today is 9/11. And yes, 9-1-1 often means 'emergency.' Have you heard of what's been going on this morning back East?" I think none of us had heard; planet Earth had not yet entered the era of everyone having access to a world-wide-web-endowed smartphone. Social media wasn't a thing yet. Everyone didn't know everything about everyone else in everywhere, in every place, at every possible time. Our teacher was the only person in the room with a computer and with Internet; thus, she was the only person in the room with the back-East scoop.

She proceeded to explain to us a little bit about everything: the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, the Pennsylvania crash, the planes, the hijackers, the rubble, the smoke, the firefighters, the fatalities... She spent maybe 10 minutes talking about it with us, and then we continued forth with our squids.

I'm not sure I can speak for all my fellow marine bio classmates, but I, for one, didn't know how to digest what our teacher had just reported about the morning that was already being nationally termed as "9/11." It all sounded quite alarming, but to be able to wrap my head around it seemed a farfetched concept. For, in all my 15 years, I'd never known my country to be attacked, to be at war, or to go to war... That was something I had only read about in history textbooks. That was World Wars One and Two. That was Korea and Vietnam. That was the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. That was not now. Nowadays war didn't happen.

But things were different now. It took a while for my 15-year-old self to really internalize that things were different, and to this day I think I'm still trying to get used to the idea.

Two years ago, my youngest brother & I visited Sandy, Utah's 9/11 memorial,
which honored the Utahns who were present at the attack sites.

America and I observed Patriot Day for the twelfth time today. I daresay, on this 12th anniversary, my heart was touched more profoundly than on all previous anniversaries. I think it has something to do with something else besides 9/11 that my mind has lately been pondering over and over.

My mind has been revisiting something I heard a girl, who's roughly my age, say precisely a week ago. It went like this:

"We talk about the sanctity of life all the time. Usually when we say 'sanctity of life,' we regard either the birth or the death of a person. But a person's life is sanctified all the time, not just when they're a baby or an elderly person."

It was a fantastic comment. Life is a sacred experience no matter how old the person, whether afflicted or healthy.

A month ago, one of my coworkers and dearest friends (I feel like perhaps I have a lot of "dearest" friends :) got into a serious bicycle accident. He got pretty shattered up inside. God only knows how he survived. I'm pretty sure my whole office and I kept him (and his family) in our prayers constantly, from that initial moment we received word of his wreck. Miraculously he returned to work only one month later, for which God was to be thanked. I remember when he walked in wearing his usual suit and tie. He looked so good; I could hardly believe my eyes. His smile and cheerfulness were brighter than I had ever remembered them being. I could tell he had missed us, and the office.

If there ever was a Dutch oven that baked tangible miracles of angel-light countenances, my friend was one of those miracles. He walked back into our office, after being gone for so long, with a totally noticeable glow about him. It was when I saw that glow that I felt God's love so vibrantly in my every fiber. It was there in that office, very much so.

Sanctity of life: my mind zoomed right to it when I saw my friend for that first time after his bike accident. I realized that, if my nice car were to suddenly be dropped into a boiling, bubbling, burning volcano, it would be infinitely more meaningless than if I were to suddenly lose my friend.

I think this is a similar epiphany to the one Americans experienced on that first Patriot Day. They realized that it was their loved ones --- their people --- that mattered the most, more so than virtually anything else.

(Here's one last utterly random thing that popped into my head that I feel prompted to document...) Believe it or not, a few days ago I actually shared a stage and sang with the great, one, and only James Taylor. The last song on the program was "Shower the People You Love with Love." Terrific message that song delivers, and so pertinent with what I've been trying to say here in this blog post. Let's shower our people with love, for they are our treasures.

Busy

Today is Monday. Monday is typically my craziest workday of the week. Crazy just occurs naturally on Monday, no matter which Monday it is. Sometimes the crazy is mild, and sometimes it's wild. Today was wild crazy.

Notwithstanding, in the midst of today's pool of crazy, a series of gently bright and soothing thoughts spontaneously bubbled in my brain. Here are the bubbles to which I refer:

Hard work is hard. Hectic busyness is hard. It all can be so gosh darn draining. Work and I are not strangers to one another; we are well-developed acquaintances, and today I've decided to consider work as not just an acquaintance, but a friend.

Today I've decided to be grateful for the opportunities I have in my life to be busy, and to be working. Today I realized that I usually feel like I'm serving someone else when I buckle down and work hard, and at the end of a session of working hard --- especially if the service recipient expresses their genuine thanks --- I feel like all my work was worthwhile.

At the end of this crazy Monday afternoon, my boss kindly thanked me for the efforts I put into the mandatory Monday duties. Upon hearing his "thank you" I immediately ricocheted that "thank you" to God for helping me land the great job I've got. I also thanked Him for blessing me with thousands of wholesome and righteous ways to stay busy in my life.

I hope I'll remember all this good stuff the NEXT time I have a crazy Monday!

Do You Love Me? Do You, Surfer Boy?

Eleven-and-a-half years ago I was a 15-year-old in Hawaii for a few days. One particular day was my last day visiting Hawaii. One particular moment on that particular day I was in the Surf n Sea store in Hale‘iwa, which is a historic surf town on the amaaaazing North Shore of Oahu.

The walls and aisles of Surf n Sea’s interior were LOADED floor-to-ceiling with surfboards of all shapes, sizes, designs, and colors, and I remember it being almost difficult to maneuver myself through the store. A little birdie, also known as my sister who lived on the island, told me I should purchase a pair a flip-flops whose position on the scale from 1 to Awesome was so off-the-charts in the affirmative, that the shoes could be found in one place and one place only on planet Earth’s globe: the store in which my feet did presently trod.

So I found the shoes, and here they are:

But actually that photo does not show the original shoes. The original shoes were bluely outlined instead of brownly, and I owned them and wore them religiously for about nine years until they broke. I think I underwent an emotional meltdown when they broke—a meltdown that was so heartwrenching that my family metaphorically picked up what I was laying down and they mail-ordered a new pair of Pyrameds for me. (Pyrameds are what the shoes are officially called, but all my friends call them the “boat shoes,” because they float like boats on water, and once I really did try walking on water while wearing them, but surprisingly it didn’t work.) I continue to wear my Pyrameds almost every chillaxingly leisure moment I can get my hands on.

Anyway, back to 2002… There I was, standing in the checkout line with my merchandise, when suddenly he appeared. I’m going to pull a Stephanie Meyer and call him brilliant, perfect, and beautiful, but he was so much better-looking than Edward Cullen. Soooo much better-looking. No boy I had ever considered cute could hold a candle to this guy. So vividly I remember this moment, which is a moment that he walked in through the store door adjacent to the cash register, turned ever so gracefully, and started talking to his friend who happened to be the cash register attendant. I don’t think it was just my imagination when that most handsome man in my world swiftly smiled at me in his process of meeting his friend.

My heart agonizingly plummeted when I realized that I had no time to dilly-dally and linger in Surf n Sea as beautiful man’s innocently adoring creeper; I had a plane to catch if I ever wanted to make it back to the mainland. Did I truly want to go back to the mainland? Back to the desert? Did I make a mistake? Should I have stayed in Hale‘iwa and learned beautiful man’s name? It was now or never, and I chose never. Ohhhh myyyy goooosh!!!!

While riding in the car that took me to the Honolulu airport, a certain song came on the radio. I remembered hearing it once when I was very young. It was on one of those “Music From The Heart” TV infomercials that advertised ginormous collections of sappy “timeless” love songs that supposedly will never get old no matter how old you get. One of the infomercial’s example songs was called “I Go Crazy” by Paul Davis.

I go crazy

When I look in your eyes

I still go crazy

That old flame comes alive

It starts burning inside

Way deep down inside

Oh baby

Now, every time I hear that song I think of him, who cannot be named (because his name is romantically unknown). When iTunes became available to consumers, I obtained it, and guess what was the first song I ever did buy from the iTunes Store? Need the question even be asked?

I went crazy

When I looked in your eyes

I still go crazy

……uhh, not really. I don’t really still go crazy, but I wanted to finally write down this fun childhood memory, for it had never previously been documented.

Peacefinding Pointer

Last night, several good friends and I attended a nice little workshop-type dealio, wherein was discussed the topic of peace—its sources, how to obtain it, and how it doesn’t always mean “the absence of war.”

Since there strangely was no opportune moment during the workshop to share a personal experience, I’d like to share it here.

February 27, 2010—Utah. ‘Twas the wee small hours of the morning on a Saturday. “Wee” means sometime between 3:00 and 4:00am. I was slumbering at my family’s house, and I was out like a light, up until the point my mom came in to gently shake me awake and tell me that an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck right near the place where my younger brother was serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was alarmed enough to make the lickety-split decision that I had slept long enough. I hopped out of bed and followed my mom downstairs to where a TV was blaring breaking news about central Chile’s urgent state. Our TV stayed on for hours, because we wanted to keep ourselves in the loop as best we could. We waited and waited for some sort of clue that my brother and his mission companion were alright. The clue kept on not coming, and I began to feel too anxious to keep watching the tube, so I chose to escape for a tiny bit.

I drove a short ways to a local park that was endowed with dozens of big, tall trees. Upon arrival, I got out of my car, walked over to one tree on the east side, wrapped myself up in a huge cozy blanket, and sat on the dead grass with my back leaning against the tree’s trunk. No one else was in sight. No one typically goes to the park on a chilly winter afternoon. This was the perfect chance for me to strike up a conversation with God.

I told Him about the concerns of the day, and then I made myself as still as possible as I awaited His reply, which sweetly came mere seconds later by way of the Holy Ghost: “Whatever happens, everything will turn out alright.” Very few words, but it was all I needed to hear in order to find peace in the currently crazy South American situation.

Nothing in that divine reply referred to anything about the status of my brother’s physical well-being. Neither I nor anyone else definitely knew he was still healthy as a horse. All was still mysterious, and danger was still existing, but peace was still available. And peace was what my family and I had lodged pleasantly in our souls as we stayed prayerful.

The cherry atop this sundae of a peaceful situation is the phone call we received a day or two later—from my missionary brother! He called to say he and his companion were okay! In fact, I think I remember learning that all missionaries there were okay. This warranted some jollity, as well as another dose of thanks to God.

And thus endeth my personal attestation that peace isn’t the absence of turbulence, but it certainly can be found amid turbulence.

Sometimes I have a “peacemaking pointer” for you, but today I’m offering a peacefinding pointer: “Be still and know that I am God…” (Psalms 46:10)

Strength In Your Past Self

Once upon a time, not terribly long ago, in a land not far away, I sat on a northbound train in the early morning. The lovely shiny sun was rising up over the eastward mountains, and all surrounding passengers were anywhere between 75-100% asleep, but I was 100% awake, because the thing I wanted to do rather than sleep was write down the list of all boys upon whom I’d ever crushed in my younger years. Needless or needful to say, it was a very fun brain exercise to do; it took much enjoyable mental dust bunny extermination to rediscover the memory lanes of my history, and thence travel upon each.

I had a particular profound reason for the reminiscing on the train, besides the mere desire to indulge in nostalgia. I compiled the list so I could look back on all the times it was okay that a crush’s head got chopped off by the guillotine of fate. In other words, every time I had to “let him go,” the sun rose again the next day, and I still had a pulse. I now know that every time a heartache may say “hola” in my future, I’ll certainly be briefly sad, but I’ll also be able to find strength in my past self. I’ll be able to remember that my past self had the power to conquer letdown time and time again, and I’ll know that I can conquer once more.

That’s how it can be for all of us, I think, not just when crushes are concerned, but also when any other type of letdown is the subject. If you’re experiencing a hardship now, try rediscovering and travelling a memory lane that included another hardship, and remember that you overcame it. If such a memory lane is nowhere in sight, and you’re not sure how it’s possible to come off conqueror in your situation, please know that you are not condemned to weaklingism forevermore. Now can be the time that you turn to God—your Heavenly Father—who loves you. Talk with Him in calm earnest, keep your faith, maintain your communion with Him, let Him help you along your way, and you’ll see that you really can be the gladiator who doesn’t get eaten by lions.

Keepin' It Classy: One Reason Why Keeping the Arts Important in Schoolsis ... well ... Important!

(This is a freewrite from my touchscreen phone, so it may not be extremely eloquently written.)

So I'm sitting here in the Blue Lemon bistro in Salt Lake City, and they're playing classy jazzy music as I dine. I am reminded of how classy and polite I had to act as I recently sat in another musical kind of place: my first opera.

Operas, instrumental recitals, ballets, galleries, Mormon Tabernacle Choir concerts... Any performer or attender of such events are expected to be well-mannered and on their best behavior.

One reason I think it's extremely important to keep the fine arts important in schools is because it's one great way to teach kids the importance of developing decent courtesy in life. Schools can provide plentiful concerts, plays, art displays, etc., that students can either attend or supply the entertainment for.

I remember being a young junior high and high schooler. Back then I was a lover of causing mild ruckuses (all in good/non-juvenile detention ways), even as a band and choir "nerd." Even though I was a hoodlum (and let's face it, what child isn't?), participating in the arts in school instilled somewhere deep yet real in me that it's gonna be really important in my future to be a polite and as classy as possible individual.

I say let's keep opportunities to provide and attend artistic events a big deal in schools, because I fear that the art of being courteous is plummeting in society, and the fine arts can greatly help the rising generation improve their world.

God Logic

I just wrote to my younger (but not "little") brother, who currently has approximately six more months of serving a full-time LDS mission in Salta, Argentina. I wanted to share with him a spiritual thought that I just barely had today, because I figured that missionaries like spiritual thoughts. Here is an excerpt from my email to him:

Speaking of Heavenly Father, I just barely had a thought about Him. Specifically, I thought about certain logic about God. President [Dieter F.] Uchtdorf said: "Think of the purest, most all-consuming love you can imagine. Now multiply that love by an infinite amount---that is the measure of God's love for you." (I found that quote a few minutes ago magneted to my fridge, and it's from "The Love of God" talk by Pres. Uchtdorf.)

Here's my logic about the love that God has for each and all of us:

*God = perfect and omnipotent

*When a person messes up in life, regardless of the severity degree of the mess-up, and they say "How can God possibly love me now?" that person is actually implying (probably without realizing it) that God is imperfect and impotent in the sense that He no longer has power to love His child, and to say that God is powerless is clearly wrong and illogical, since it's already known and set-in-stone that "God = perfect and omnipotent"

*The statement of "How can God possibly love me now?" may also imply that God is withholding His love from His child. That implication also doesn't mesh with the true logic that "God = perfect and omnipotent" because if God withholds His love from anyone, that means He is selfish in a sense, and a selfish person is an imperfect person

So there you have it: my spiritual thought for the day. Remember that it is impossible, illogical, and against God's divine nature for Him to not love you or stop loving you. You are His eternally beloved child, and there is nothing you can do about it! ;)