Things that make me smile :)

birthday parties

friends

balloons

blue skies

trains

pictures

love notes

clocks (melting ones, or broken ones)

ice cream cones (with ice cream inside)

mint chocolate chip

Pixar movies

good books

flying

fairy tale endings

life, the universe and everything

architecture

starry nights

campfires

irises

s'mores

hugs

waffles

Greek yogurt

cantaloupe

sweaters

old movies

poetry

walks (on the beach, up to campus, through a foreign city at night, etc)

making up words

good conversations

Christmas songs

A good mystery, read while curled up in a comfortable chair on a rainy day.

comfortable couches

stuffed animals

foreign films

cooking with friends (and eating, too!)

art museums

thinking, musing, pondering or otherwise wondering about life

dancing (salsa or country)

Spanish poetry

fall weather

teachers

dreams

lunch

colorful leaves

spiral staircases

Spiral Jetty

roses

trying new things

talking to people

making lists in an attempt to describe myself.

Those lists are probably unavoidably incomplete, but I try anyway. I made another of these last year in July, so I thought it would be interesting to do it again and compare the two. Maybe I'll do it again next year... Here's last years' version:

Singing in the rain.

Cooking with friends.

Dancing.

Pizza.

Love notes.

Letters.

People who genuinely care, and who take time to show it.

Going for walks.

Swimming.

Picnics.

Canyons.

Blue skies, with not too many clouds.

Playing soccer with friends, in Spain or wherever.

Going for walks.

Fireworks on the fourth of July.

The way nighttime smells.

Jumping into/through pool toys...

Writing and expressing myself with words (thus this note).

Hearing songs I like come on the radio.

Lying on the floor with my roommates and talking about whatever we want to.

Talking about books, movies and plays with other people who like talking about books, movies and plays.

Singing out loud, when I'm with people who won't mind.

Museums.

Seeing friends I've been missing for a while.

Swing music.

Finding really cool parks.

Spontaneous dance parties.

Liar's dice.

Hugs.

Fiddle and folk music.

Hearing stories.

Speaking Spanish with people.

Baking cupcakes.

Sharing food.

Weddings!

Laughing.

Waterfalls.

Taking pictures and making memories.

Making people smile.

Musings on life and poetry.

It's been a while since I've written. As you can tell if you look at the dates of all of the posts on here. But I feel like writing again.

It's about midway through my second-to-last semester as an undergrad. It's also my last Wednesday as a 2o-year-old. Life is still good. It's just busy enough to help me avoid boredom, and I am enjoying my classes. I've been reading lots of Spanish poetry, which means I've been thinking about life, love, memories, dreams and philosophy. I enjoy thinking and making connections between all the things I learn. Poetry is a fun way to express thoughts. I've tried writing poetry a few times... I find it easier to write in free verse, without worrying about rhyme schemes or meter. For me, that's a better way to describe life. Life doesn't always fit in a specific meter. It's mixed-up and crazy and complicated. Putting it down in words is hard enough without worrying about making it rhyme. That's not to say that I don't believe there's meaning to life. On the contrary. I believe life is full of meaning. God is real. He loves all of His children, and He does have a plan for us. That's where the meaning of life is and that's why I can say that life is good.

Things I like to do.

So Summer term just started at BYU. It's good to have new classes, even though I enjoyed the ones I had last semester. My senior seminar class for my Humanities minor is going to be awesome. As we were introducing ourselves as everyone does on the first day of class, I got to thinking about things I like to do. Thus, I'm making a list of some things I enjoy.

*I like to travel. It's good to see other parts of the world and meet new people. I hope to go back to Spain and Portugal sometime within the next few years, and I'd love to travel to Chile again. I've already been there with my family, but it's been a while. I would like to see Brazil and England and Ireland, too.

*I love languages. This helps when I travel, because I don't want to fit the stereotype of travelling Americans who expect the world to speak English for their benefit (Note, I said stereotype; that means I don't believe it's universally true, just that it's something that other people believe about people from the USA). I've got a list of languages I want to learn, and so far I've got Spanish and Portuguese, but I'd like to add Italian, French, and German someday, if I have time.

*I love reading. My favorite genres are fantasy, frontier literature (Louis L'Amour--no, he doesn't write only westerns; he writes about frontiers, which is a broader genre), some dystopia (utopias that aren't... like The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, etc.), mysteries (mostly Agatha Christie), and other classic literature. Favorite authors are Lloyd Alexander, C.S. Louis, Isabel Allende. Some of my favorite books are To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, The Alliance by Gerald Lund, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Louis, The Icarus Hunt and Deadman's Switch by Timothy Zahn, and many others.

*I like watching movies for fun and as part of class. When I saw Avatar a few weeks ago, I didn't like the plot but I did like being able to see the themes of romanticism and discovery and so many of the same themes that show up in American literature. (By "American" I mean everything from the top of Canada to the the southern tip of South America.) I enjoy watching films in BYU's International Cinema because there's so much to think about.

*I love to quote my favorite movies, especially Emperor's New Groove, Star Wars (mostly the original series--I don't like the newer ones), and the Princess Bride.

*I like older movies, including The Thin Man series (one of the few instances where the movies are better than the book that inspired them--mostly because they're a lot cleaner), "Casablanca", "The Maltese Falcon" and some of Alfred Hitchcock's, mainly "The Lady Vanishes", "Rear Window," and "The Trouble with Harry." The dialog tends to be better, and they're less likely to fall into the typical genres of "chick flick" or "adventure".

*I like listening to a lot of different music. I like classical, country, Beatles, Monkees, Carpenters, Billy Joel, some pop. As a general rule, I don't like rap.

*I like to cook. It's really fun to cook with people and be able to talk, and then get to share delicious food. It's much more fun to cook when you either have someone to cook with or when you're cooking for others. If I do cook alone, I either pull up a TV show from Hulu or I listen to music. (It's more productive if I just listen to music).

Well, that's about it for now. Not that there's not more I like to do, I just have to get on with my day. So long.

Metaphorical randomness...

I have decided that life is like a giant game of telephone, with miscommunications galore and lots of laughs. Actually, many things are like games. Dating, for instance. In that particular game, no one knows the rules or understands the moves other players make. I don't think anyone ever does understand the rules to the dating game, but we'll be able to stop worrying about it once we get married. (At least, the kind of dating where you're trying to find the right person. I think spouses should still continue to date each other.)

I've also heard that love itself is a game, but that version of the saying isn't as accurate, in my opinion. Love is more complicated and it's harder to state in a metaphor. I like the quote that says the course of true love never did run smooth. It's from one of Shakespeare's plays, but I don't know which one. Anyway, love isn't really a game. And it probably is smooth sailing sometimes. Or maybe not. Life itself isn't easy, so why should love be unproblematic? Ah well.

Other things that are like games are conversations, tests, including the GRE, according to the prep class I'm taking, and probably a lot of other things. And I know that using "like" makes it a simile, but that's still a kind of metaphor. I still like the game of telephone analogy the best, though. To me it describes both the frustration that arises from miscommunications and the joy and laughter that we can generally find if we look for them and refuse to take ourselves too seriously. It makes life a lot more fun.

Finding time to be happy

I saw a quote once that said "It was a dark and stormy night, but I chose to ENJOY it!" I think it's a good policy. Life is filled with ups and downs and craziness. However, there is always sufficient time for that which matters most. For me, the most important things in life are church, family, friends, and education. Besides those, there is room for the smaller things which make life so much fun. We can and should find time for the non-essential things we like to do, like watching movies, going on walks, getting exercise, listening to music, dancing, laughing, reading really good books, and writing. It's these little things that make life enjoyable. And we are meant to find enjoyment and happiness in life. It's not supposed to be boring. As my professor taught on the first day of my world religions class, we should find enjoyment in learning and we should learn because we love it. For me, school is not something I want to get out of the way so I can move on with life. This, right here and right now, is my life and I want to enjoy it. Of course I have to do things I don't enjoy as much, but I can handle that because it's part of living and becoming a better person, I suppose. However, life is a gift and I think that it's my choice whether or not I enjoy each day. And by choosing to enjoy each day as it comes, I can find lasting happiness. It's not always easy, but considering that the alternative is unhappiness or a depression that I bring on myself, I like the first choice much more.

To life.

I was sitting by a fountain earlier and watching air bubbles float by. They were there and then gone, faster than I could keep track of. Some people might say that life is like that... there, then gone, with no real pattern, except the predictable ending when it all disappears. But human beings aren't air bubbles in a fountain. We live, we laugh, we love, we cry, we move on, we laugh again, and someday we die, but death isn't the end. We are eternal beings and our lives here and now do have meaning.
I've been thinking about life and death today because my teacher's wife died over the weekend. I suppose it doesn't really affect me, other than the canceled class, but it made me stop to wonder. I know that life goes on after death, but that doesn't always lessen the pain we feel when someone we love dies. One girl from class offered to find a card and a gift for our teacher, and it was amazing to see how many people contributed. It's so hard to know what else to do and it's really hard to feel happy about a canceled class under the circumstances. Still, life goes on.

As I walked across campus, I saw families riding bikes together and a couple eating lunch. Life hasn't stopped. It never will, really. We learn to move on after hard things happen. The sun doesn't stop shining, the wind won't stop blowing, and the sky is still blue. It's perfectly all right to grieve--in fact, it's good for us to take time to feel sadness or to share in someone else's sorrow, but then we can move on and find happiness again. Life is good.

Two of my favorite movies are Fiddler on the Roof and Life is Beautiful. Both are sad stories, but they don't focus on the sad parts. In fact, I'd say that they are the happiest movies I know, because of the way they face life and laugh in spite of all the difficulties. One of the songs from Fiddler on the Roof is "To Life!" which says something about how they have to take advantage of every opportunity to celebrate. Life itself is worth living and celebrating, because if we decided to be upset or saddened by every hard thing that happened, we'd never be happy. I'm glad for things that remind me to smile. Even when life is hard or doesn't make sense, we can still find happiness.