On the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, my history teacher had us write how we would explain the attacks to our future children. It was an interesting exercise, looking back: seeing something from our experience and our lifetime as an event that would be studied in similar history classes in the future as well as showing that what we were studying in that class had impacted the lives of real people. Well, it had that potential, anyway.
My city decided to hold a moment of silence at 11:00 this morning. The Bishop informed us of this during the announcements at the beginning of Sacrament Meeting so we would know what was going on if they set it off with sirens or something, and so we could participate if we so desired. It would be during the transition between Sunday School and Relief Society/Priesthood, so wouldn't affect the adults' lessons. I, however, would be in Primary. Because I have never bothered to memorize the exact start and end times of lessons - knowing what time to get to church and about what time I'll be leaving has always been enough for me - I wasn't sure whether I would be in class or in Sharing Time. But I did know that if they announced the moment of silence with sirens, the kids would be curious about what was going on. And so I thought a bit about what I would tell them if our class was disrupted. And I wondered whether hearing about it would scare them, and if so how I could help them feel safe, or if it would seem so long ago as to have no meaning in their lives. After all, 10 years ago none of them had even been born.
Well, the class wasn't disrupted. Apparently the city trusted everybody to realize that it was time to be quiet on their own. But the possibility started me thinking about when I will be teaching my own children. Will I be telling them about September 11 as a one-time thing when they are older and able to understand complex topics, in a manner similar to the paper I wrote in class? Will I teach them a little bit at a time as they're ready to hear it? Or will the topic just never come up and I leave it entirely to the schools? I hope I will do it the second way, a little at a time. That seems to be the best way to handle most topics. But I worry that I'll end up going with the third because it just doesn't come up and I don't think to bring it up or can't find a way to do so.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Best Friends Forever
It's confession time again.
Sometimes I like to read those dating and relationship articles on MSN.com. It's mostly an entertainment thing. After all, most of those articles are one person's opinion and experiences presented as absolute truth. I definitely am not going to go date a guy who is all wrong for me but has great abs just because some online writer put that on a list of things to do before I get married And it's fun to laugh at the lists of 50 things women wish men knew - about half of which are blatantly untrue. For me, at least.
But mixed in there are some not so fun ones. Griping, bitter ones. Lists of annoying things that couples say or do. I sometimes read those ones too. And most of the things listed I see nothing wrong with. But the one I least understood was on a list of annoying relationship cliches.
"I married my best friend."
I was a little bit stunned to see that on there because I had always thought it was about the most romantic sentiment out there. After all, who doesn't want to be married to somebody who always has their back, whose company they enjoy, and around whom they can feel completely comfortable just being themselves? Then I read the commentary on it:
"Of this, a married girlfriend of mine writes, 'Oh, you're so unique! Your spouse is your BEST FRIEND? Wow. My husband is probably my favorite person to spend time with, but … I have a lot of great friends in my life.' This one is true. Perhaps your spouse is your closest friend, or your best guy friend, but he doesn't have to be your end-all, be-all. So stop making other people feel bad."
So what exactly do these people think a best friend is? Evidently not your closest friend or your favorite person to be with. No, a best friend is apparently supposed to be your only friend. An idea I thought everybody had grown out of by adulthood.
Sometimes I like to read those dating and relationship articles on MSN.com. It's mostly an entertainment thing. After all, most of those articles are one person's opinion and experiences presented as absolute truth. I definitely am not going to go date a guy who is all wrong for me but has great abs just because some online writer put that on a list of things to do before I get married And it's fun to laugh at the lists of 50 things women wish men knew - about half of which are blatantly untrue. For me, at least.
But mixed in there are some not so fun ones. Griping, bitter ones. Lists of annoying things that couples say or do. I sometimes read those ones too. And most of the things listed I see nothing wrong with. But the one I least understood was on a list of annoying relationship cliches.
"I married my best friend."
I was a little bit stunned to see that on there because I had always thought it was about the most romantic sentiment out there. After all, who doesn't want to be married to somebody who always has their back, whose company they enjoy, and around whom they can feel completely comfortable just being themselves? Then I read the commentary on it:
"Of this, a married girlfriend of mine writes, 'Oh, you're so unique! Your spouse is your BEST FRIEND? Wow. My husband is probably my favorite person to spend time with, but … I have a lot of great friends in my life.' This one is true. Perhaps your spouse is your closest friend, or your best guy friend, but he doesn't have to be your end-all, be-all. So stop making other people feel bad."
So what exactly do these people think a best friend is? Evidently not your closest friend or your favorite person to be with. No, a best friend is apparently supposed to be your only friend. An idea I thought everybody had grown out of by adulthood.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Beautiful Beast
Earlier this summer, I read a new (to me) retelling of Beauty and the Beast. As usual, at the end of the story the Beast turns human because Beauty confesses her love for and to him. Although this version didn't say much about the Prince's human appearance, he typically is depicted as being very handsome. And for probably the first time, I wondered how Beauty felt about that.
Generally in the story, it is a good thing - she is able to see past his exterior and love him for who he is, so she is rewarded with a handsome exterior that she can be actually attracted to. But she learned to love the Beast for who he was. And who you are does include, to some extent, your physical body.
She probably does eventually get used to and appreciate his new form. But how long does it take for her to look at him and see her Beast?
Generally in the story, it is a good thing - she is able to see past his exterior and love him for who he is, so she is rewarded with a handsome exterior that she can be actually attracted to. But she learned to love the Beast for who he was. And who you are does include, to some extent, your physical body.
She probably does eventually get used to and appreciate his new form. But how long does it take for her to look at him and see her Beast?
Saturday, August 6, 2011
A Disturbing Misconception
One morning a few years ago when I had gone in to work a morning shift, before we all dispersed to our various posts, one of my coworkers claimed that if a boy has not had sex by the time he was fifteen, something was wrong with him. The woman he was talking to, who I would guess to be in her thirties, seemed to agree with his assessment. I felt that had to be challenged. So I said what I could think of to say at the moment, which was basically that there was nothing wrong with having moral standards against early sex. It has always felt somewhat inadequate, but was the best response I could formulate at the time.
Of course, it is not at all wrong for a boy to remain a virgin long past the fifteenth birthday. In fact, there is something wrong with a boy who does have sex that early. If there wasn't a problem before, there will be one later in consequence. I really do not want to go find the appropriate research now, but I know that aside from the spiritual issues that will come, especially if he has been taught better, people who have sex earlier tend to have more emotional problems than those who wait.
And there is something very wrong with a society where that opinion is accepted as fact.
Of course, it is not at all wrong for a boy to remain a virgin long past the fifteenth birthday. In fact, there is something wrong with a boy who does have sex that early. If there wasn't a problem before, there will be one later in consequence. I really do not want to go find the appropriate research now, but I know that aside from the spiritual issues that will come, especially if he has been taught better, people who have sex earlier tend to have more emotional problems than those who wait.
And there is something very wrong with a society where that opinion is accepted as fact.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Applied Scripture Study
For some reason, I've been thinking lately about an LDS romance novel I read years ago. I can't remember the title or author and can't find that information online. I do remember the plot, including many minor details. But most of that doesn't really matter.
What does matter for my purposes, and what I've mainly thought about it (besides trying to remember the title and author because it bothers me that I can't), is that the main character, Sydney, is reading through the Book of Mormon, one chapter a day. And every day, she tries to apply what she reads into her life. When she comes across a chapter and can't quite embrace the message she is getting from it, she rereads that chapter the next day. And the next. And the next. She does not move on to the next chapter until she feels that she is really improving in that area (I feel like it had something to do with hope, but I'm not 100% on that).
As I remember her pattern of scripture study, I wonder how following a similar program would work with me. Would it help me focus more on self-improvement? Would I get overwhelmed by the constant addition of new attributes to focus on? Or would I get stuck on one chapter for so long that I would get sick of it and move on to some other system?
What does matter for my purposes, and what I've mainly thought about it (besides trying to remember the title and author because it bothers me that I can't), is that the main character, Sydney, is reading through the Book of Mormon, one chapter a day. And every day, she tries to apply what she reads into her life. When she comes across a chapter and can't quite embrace the message she is getting from it, she rereads that chapter the next day. And the next. And the next. She does not move on to the next chapter until she feels that she is really improving in that area (I feel like it had something to do with hope, but I'm not 100% on that).
As I remember her pattern of scripture study, I wonder how following a similar program would work with me. Would it help me focus more on self-improvement? Would I get overwhelmed by the constant addition of new attributes to focus on? Or would I get stuck on one chapter for so long that I would get sick of it and move on to some other system?
Monday, July 25, 2011
They Are Also Sayd to Love
I don't really believe in love at first sight.
As I said on here before, the word love can actually be a bit unspecific. So, to clarify, it is possible to care about somebody the first time you see them. It is even possible to care deeply about someone early on.
But when it comes to being actually in love with somebody, it takes more time. In Win a Date With Tad Hamilton, after Tad tells Rosie that he loves her, she says, "You maybe wanna love me, but I think what you love right now is the idea of me. You can't love someone for what they stand for or what they seem to be. You have to love them for their details; for the little things that are true for them and only them." And I'm not sure how exactly I share that feeling, but I do know that for certain types of love, including what I tend to think of in association with the phrase "love at first sight", you need to know somebody well.
This past spring, I was really bothered by how often in literature characters are depicted as being 'in love' with someone they barely know. The offender I remember most clearly is The Three Musketeers, probably because of a combination of it being what I was reading when I got really irritated and because it is particularly bad in this regard. As I remember it, d'Artagnan, the protagonist, falls in love with two different women he knows absolutely nothing about. The first woman he finds out is really bad news, and he falls out of love with her fairly quickly - more quickly than I think would be possible for anything I would consider more than a crush. If it had come out that he had just thought himself to be in love, that would be one thing. But no, it is referred to as though he really had been in love and just got over it. I sometimes thought that maybe it was a problem with the translation; that the French had different words that more exactly expressed the nature of the feelings. But I wasn't completely convinced. Partly because I had noticed similar issues in books I read in their original language - English.
Last Wednesday I was reading Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. In Chapter VI, Hobbes defines a number of the terms he will be using throughout the book. About love, he says, "That which men Desire, they are also sayd to LOVE: and to HATE those things, for which they have Aversion. So that Desire, and Love, are the same thing..."
As I read that, I thought that reading 'love' to mean 'desire' would work really well for me in books such as The Three Musketeers.
As I said on here before, the word love can actually be a bit unspecific. So, to clarify, it is possible to care about somebody the first time you see them. It is even possible to care deeply about someone early on.
But when it comes to being actually in love with somebody, it takes more time. In Win a Date With Tad Hamilton, after Tad tells Rosie that he loves her, she says, "You maybe wanna love me, but I think what you love right now is the idea of me. You can't love someone for what they stand for or what they seem to be. You have to love them for their details; for the little things that are true for them and only them." And I'm not sure how exactly I share that feeling, but I do know that for certain types of love, including what I tend to think of in association with the phrase "love at first sight", you need to know somebody well.
This past spring, I was really bothered by how often in literature characters are depicted as being 'in love' with someone they barely know. The offender I remember most clearly is The Three Musketeers, probably because of a combination of it being what I was reading when I got really irritated and because it is particularly bad in this regard. As I remember it, d'Artagnan, the protagonist, falls in love with two different women he knows absolutely nothing about. The first woman he finds out is really bad news, and he falls out of love with her fairly quickly - more quickly than I think would be possible for anything I would consider more than a crush. If it had come out that he had just thought himself to be in love, that would be one thing. But no, it is referred to as though he really had been in love and just got over it. I sometimes thought that maybe it was a problem with the translation; that the French had different words that more exactly expressed the nature of the feelings. But I wasn't completely convinced. Partly because I had noticed similar issues in books I read in their original language - English.
Last Wednesday I was reading Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. In Chapter VI, Hobbes defines a number of the terms he will be using throughout the book. About love, he says, "That which men Desire, they are also sayd to LOVE: and to HATE those things, for which they have Aversion. So that Desire, and Love, are the same thing..."
As I read that, I thought that reading 'love' to mean 'desire' would work really well for me in books such as The Three Musketeers.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Scientifically Rigorous Faith
When you read through Church lesson manuals, like the ones for Primary or Family Home Evening, it isn't unusual to come across a sentence saying something like, "Share a time when your life was blessed through obedience to the principle of ________."
Well, I've always had a hard time singling out exact cause and effect for my blessings. Even during my most dramatically difficult or tempting times, no blessing has ever jumped out at me as coming because I obeyed that specific commandment that had given me trouble. If I paid my tithing and then found some money I forgot I had, I didn't make any connection between the two things.
So maybe I should take careful note of all the blessings in my life, then stop obeying various commands one at a time. That way, I can see what I stop being blessed with and what comes back when I resume my obedience. It's the most scientifically rigorous study of the issue I can think of at this point.
Well, I've always had a hard time singling out exact cause and effect for my blessings. Even during my most dramatically difficult or tempting times, no blessing has ever jumped out at me as coming because I obeyed that specific commandment that had given me trouble. If I paid my tithing and then found some money I forgot I had, I didn't make any connection between the two things.
So maybe I should take careful note of all the blessings in my life, then stop obeying various commands one at a time. That way, I can see what I stop being blessed with and what comes back when I resume my obedience. It's the most scientifically rigorous study of the issue I can think of at this point.
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