This is commentary. And this is really good.
What I've been watching and reading this week:
TED Talk: "The leaders who ruined Africa and the generation who can fix it," by Fred Swaniker
TED Talk: "Is there a real you?" by Julian Baggini
TED Talk: "Philosophy in prison," by Damon Horowitz.
TED Talk: "All it takes is 10 mindful minutes," by Andy Puddicombe
TED Talk: "We can be Buddhas," by Robert Thurman
Blog post: "Contemplating the Red Pill," by Free Northerner
Article: "Fifty Ways to Leave Leviathan," by Max Borders & Jeffrey A. Tucker
Article: "How Long Ago Was Adam Created!?" by Maan Khalife
Blog post: "The Most Useful Mnemonic Technique," by Brienne
Article: "How Climate Change Will End Wine As We Know It," by Sandra Allen
Article: "Latter-day Saint, Latter-day Lovecraft: an interview with W.H. Pugmire," by Theric Jepsen
I have also written notes on David Pulsipher's talk, "Renouncing War: How Mormon Theology & History Lead Us to Nonviolence," and compiled some knowledge from Wikipedia and elsewhere.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Friday, December 6, 2013
Home is
I don't remember ever having trouble moving to new places, permanently or temporarily. For as long as I can remember having an opinion on the matter, home was the place where you were resting your head. And a couch was as good as a bed was as good as the bench of a car.
Moved around a little bit, and saw some other places a little bit more. Spent the past two years moving from place to place every time that I was transferred. And it was just moving to a new place. Having a new place to set my head for a little while, up until the next time that I would have to move.
To be honest, I had grown pretty well adjusted to this mindset. So it's kind of disorienting- not unpleasant, just disorienting- to lose it. Or at least lose part of it. I should like to think that I will still move from place to place as easily as I did before but there is no battling the idea that as soon as I arrived at the house which my family moved to while I was on my mission, as soon as I arrived it felt very peculiar.
So this is what people must mean when they say that a certain place, and no other, feels like home.
It is probably no coincidence that this house is reminiscent of the one which my mother's parents have lived in for my whole life. Everyone else has moved at least once, even my father's parents, but not them. So it should come as no surprise that this familiarity and sense of stability- the one thing that hasn't changed, in a life full of shifting scenes- should combine, with the intellectual knowledge that this is where my immediate family is living, into the feeling that this is home.
Moved around a little bit, and saw some other places a little bit more. Spent the past two years moving from place to place every time that I was transferred. And it was just moving to a new place. Having a new place to set my head for a little while, up until the next time that I would have to move.
To be honest, I had grown pretty well adjusted to this mindset. So it's kind of disorienting- not unpleasant, just disorienting- to lose it. Or at least lose part of it. I should like to think that I will still move from place to place as easily as I did before but there is no battling the idea that as soon as I arrived at the house which my family moved to while I was on my mission, as soon as I arrived it felt very peculiar.
So this is what people must mean when they say that a certain place, and no other, feels like home.
It is probably no coincidence that this house is reminiscent of the one which my mother's parents have lived in for my whole life. Everyone else has moved at least once, even my father's parents, but not them. So it should come as no surprise that this familiarity and sense of stability- the one thing that hasn't changed, in a life full of shifting scenes- should combine, with the intellectual knowledge that this is where my immediate family is living, into the feeling that this is home.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Dead Missionary Report
I’m writing this in the car on the way between two DIs. Mom found most of the volumes of The Work and the Glory, which has sent us on a quest to find Volumes 6 and 9 to complete the series.
In missionary parlance I’ve been dead for three days now, which means that you’ve got the privilege of reading the words of a ghost. If this is the Spirit World, though, then it looks remarkably like Utah, which isn’t really what I was expecting.
Utah really is an inescapable black hole.
Dead Missionary Life hasn’t been as restful as I imagined. There are a lot of people to see before I go home, and yesterday we went up to tour BYU-I. I’ll be living there for most of three years, so it’s a good thing that the campus appears to be a place that I’d be content to live at. It feels a lot like the campus at Schoolcraft College, which is nice.
By far the most curious thing to me is that I don’t feel a great and pervading shock over the transition. What I’m doing now feels as normal as what I was doing before. I would wonder if this was a sign that I wasn’t going as far as I should in my mission, but the transition into my mission felt just as natural, and the same when one of my companions genuinely died (and not just in the parlance of missionaries). It seems more likely that I just adjust very quickly.
The anticipation and worry over how I would take the change were worse than the change itself. Which, honestly, I should have expected. I had had enough information on hand to anticipate that.
Still working on renovating the site. I hope to have it all finished by the end of next week but, you know, working on that in between everything else.
In missionary parlance I’ve been dead for three days now, which means that you’ve got the privilege of reading the words of a ghost. If this is the Spirit World, though, then it looks remarkably like Utah, which isn’t really what I was expecting.
Utah really is an inescapable black hole.
Dead Missionary Life hasn’t been as restful as I imagined. There are a lot of people to see before I go home, and yesterday we went up to tour BYU-I. I’ll be living there for most of three years, so it’s a good thing that the campus appears to be a place that I’d be content to live at. It feels a lot like the campus at Schoolcraft College, which is nice.
By far the most curious thing to me is that I don’t feel a great and pervading shock over the transition. What I’m doing now feels as normal as what I was doing before. I would wonder if this was a sign that I wasn’t going as far as I should in my mission, but the transition into my mission felt just as natural, and the same when one of my companions genuinely died (and not just in the parlance of missionaries). It seems more likely that I just adjust very quickly.
The anticipation and worry over how I would take the change were worse than the change itself. Which, honestly, I should have expected. I had had enough information on hand to anticipate that.
Still working on renovating the site. I hope to have it all finished by the end of next week but, you know, working on that in between everything else.
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