Single and waiting? Or not waiting?

Recently there was an article going around facebook that was very interesting! It is on the topic of just graduating college and being single. It involves the fact that in the Christian society, it is almost frowned upon to be single. While I agree with this to a certain degree I also think that your upbringing has an affect on your views on this subject. I was taught at a very young age that I matter. It doesn't matter what I was doing, I mattered. I grew up with this in my head, but I am an introvert, so I still am a bit cautious of strangers, and sometimes my friends. This comes into play when there are guys that I like. I get really nervous and I hate talking to them, because I feel like I am making a fool of myself. I have a very different personality, and sometimes feel as if I am annoying people, or boring them. I am very guarded and really dislike putting myself out there.

I am at Brigham Young University- Idaho. A church school. For Mormons. People here get married at the age of 18 after knowing the other person for maybe a semester, which is 3-4 months. I think that is crazy. I think that something the author of the perviously stated article has some very interesting things to say about the Christian culture and relationships,

"People talk all the time about pursuing people or things for the wrong reasons, but maybe we pursue God for the wrong reasons. Maybe subconsciously I’ve been treating God like he’s a vending machine. And my pursuit of him has really been a pursuit of someone else. When did Christ cease to be enough?
And when did I stop finding my identity, self-worth, and fulfillment in Him, only to place my life on hold for someone I’ve never even met? Each day is a gift, and I’m not waiting for it to get here. It is present in every moment, and it begins anew daily.  Man-less or not, I want to wake up every morning and be excited because I get to spend my day with the God who created the universe."

"When did Christ cease to be enough?" When did I stop caring what Christ thought of me, and started caring what young men thought of me? I have always be very confident in myself and who I am. When did I forget that the only people who I should be trying to impress are Christ and myself? I think it was somewhere along the lines of my first semester at college. There are gorgeous people here that seem to have it all figured out. And here I am, having struggled with my facial quality my entire life, and doubting my career choice. After my trip to Ireland and England, my confidence in myself has returned and I could care less that I am single. For heaven's sake I'm only 19! The only men I need in my life at this point are, Christ, God, and my Dad.

That is something I wish the young girls of my faith were being taught more. That God, Christ, and your Daddy should be the only men you try to impress. If you are trying to impress a young man into liking you, he is not worth it.

That is something I need to live by. Impress yourself, Christ, God, Dad and Mom, and don't worry about anyone else.

You're only young once, travel now.

Traveling, I've done quite a bit for someone only 19 years of age. I practically lived in Canada every summer until middle school, but that happens when your dad is Canadian. And with my dad's job we got to travel fairly often. We went to Mexico and the Carribbean for family vacations. We've been to Disney World and Disney Land. I've been to Germany, and while I was there I set foot in the Netherlands as well as France. I have also been to Ireland, Wales, and England.

Traveling has made me who I am today just as much as my religion, family, and own believes. I am an adventurer. My Papa has said that I inherited his "Travel Bug", and that is so true. Traveling is what I do. It's my favorite thing in the world. I love the thrill of the plane take off, the different tastes of the food, the foreign sound of a different language, the feel of the currency in my fingers, the excitement of seeing one more stamp in my passport. I love it all, even the fear of trying to figure out if you've missed your stop on the Tube, or not knowing if you really did understand the directions that old German lady gave you. I love the entire thing.

So why should you travel when your young? An article I read today explains why. In the article the author tells a story of a time one of his professors said something to him that changed his life. His professor said, “The habits you form here will be with you for the rest of your life.” This wasn't in reference to traveling, in fact it was said in a locker room one early morning. The author continues to say, "The words reverberated in my mind for the rest of the day. Years later, they still haunt me. It’s true — the habits you form early in life will, most likely, be with you for the rest of your existence."

The habits that you form now will stay with you for the rest of your life. What are my habits now? Surfing tumblr, facebooking, watching youtube? Is that what I want to do for the rest of my life? HECK NO! I want my habit of traveling, reading, doing family history work, running, painting, and being a cultured and artistic person to be the habits that I keep for the rest of my life.

So, what does this have to do with traveling while your young? I'll tell you.

 “No, this is NOT great while I’m still young! It’s great for the rest of my life! You don’t understand. This is not just a thing I’m doing to kill time. This is my calling! My life! I don’t want what you have. I will always be an adventurer.”

Traveling while your young shows you the world. It shows you the difficulties of different lifestyles. As a young American, my life has been fairly easy. I haven't had too many life changing trials in my life. The ones I've had have shaped my life, but my life has mostly been shaped by the traveling I've done. Seeing as I'm only 19, I don't have the "wisdom of age" yet, so I will let the author explain some more,

 "As we get older, life can just sort of happen to us. Whatever we end up doing, we often end up with more responsibilities, more burdens, more obligations. This is not always bad. In fact, in many cases it is really good. It means you’re influencing people, leaving a legacy. Youth is a time of total empowerment. You get to do what you want. As you mature and gain new responsibilities, you have to be very intentional about making sure you don’t lose sight of what’s important. The best way to do that is to make investments in your life so that you can have an effect on who you are in your later years. I did this by traveling. Not for the sake of being a tourist, but to discover the beauty of life — to remember that I am not complete."  

He puts it in words that I couldn't, "Traveling will change you like little else can. It will put you in places that will force you to care for issues that are bigger than you. You will begin to understand that the world is both very large and very small. You will have a newfound respect for pain and suffering, having seen that two-thirds of humanity struggle to simply get a meal each day."

Like he says, traveling changes you in ways that are difficult to explain. Whenever I return home from a trip people without fail ask what my favorite part was. I have no answer. Everything. The things I saw were all amazing! They were so different! I can't compare them. At all. I can tell you that my least favorite part is returning home.

I will leave you with words from this insightful author,

"While you’re still young, get cultured. Get to know the world and the magnificent people that fill it. The world is a stunning place, full of outstanding works of art. See it.You won’t always be young. And life won’t always be just about you. So travel, young person. Experience the world for all it’s worth. Become a person of culture, adventure, and compassion. While you still can."

Does reading make you more empathic?

Reading. I've always done it. I was branded a "nerd" early in my life because I was reading books like Gone with the Wind when I was in 7th grade. I read the entire collection of the Nancy Drew books that our library had when I was in Elementary school. I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 7 hours. Reading is my life. I don't know who I would be without it.

I recently read an article on the topic, do reading fiction make you a more empathic and compassionate person? It was very interesting! Before I start talking about it here is the link! Does reading make you more empathic?

"The idea that reading is an ethically salutary pursuit gets more appealing the more time you spend doing it. There’s something basically reassuring about the notion that you might be a better person—not just intellectually, but morally—for having read a lot of literature."

Most people view reading as an intellectual activity. If you read, you're smart. But does it really make you a better person? I think back to when I read The Book Thief. I remember being horrified at the actions described in the book. I felt sick to my stomach that my relatives were forced to participate in the Nazi movement. I felt the sorrows and the hopes. Reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, I felt the pain of being rejected by Harry and Ron that Hermione felt. I remember reading The Fault in Our Stars and feeling the deep lose of a loved one when Augustus dies. I felt the anger and frustration that Elizabeth Bennet felt towards Mr. Darcy, in Pride and Prejudice. The point is, you connect to the characters. You fall in love when they fall in love. You get jealous when they get jealous. You cry when they cry. You scream when they scream.

You are connected. 

But do you keep that connection? What do you really remember about those many novels that you've read? Do you remember names? Places? Events? The plot? What has stuck with you? What has changed the way you think?

"I found myself trying to quantify the residue of all this reading; what was it that it left behind, and how had it changed me, if at all? There was, surely, some cumulative effect, some way in which I could be said to be a better or wiser person for it. But all I could think, really, was: Christ, if all this reading has made me a better or wiser person, I’d hate to think what kind of monster I’d be without it."

In the article it references a study that shows evidence that social skills are improved by reading fiction,  "specifically the high-end stuff: the 19^th-century Russians, the European modernists, the contemporary prestige names." 

 "The experiment, conducted by psychologists Emanuele Castano and David Comer Kidd, found that the subjects who read extracts from literary novels, and then immediately afterward took tests measuring empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence (looking at photos of people’s eyes and guessing what emotions they might be going through), performed significantly better on the tests than other subjects who read serious nonfiction or genre fiction. Their basic finding was that reading literary fiction, and literary fiction alone, temporarily enhances what’s known as Theory of Mind—the ability to imagine and understand the mental states of others."

"Finally, science has given its approval to one of the literary world’s most cherished ideas about the value of literature."

George Elliot wrote “the greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies."

 David Foster Wallace said:
“We all suffer alone in the real world. True empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with their own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple.”

'Books are, as Susan Sontag put it, nothing less than “a way of being fully human”.'

"We have, I think, an anxiety about the place of literature in our world, about the usefulness of reading fiction. If we can answer the question of why we read with the empirically verifiable assertion that it makes us more socially attuned, then that seems to give literature an identifiable job to do, a useful function in our lives."

Based upon all this information, I don't know if reading has made me a better person, but it has made me that person that I am today. I've built my believes and standards upon the principles that I've come across and been influenced upon by reading books. I am me, because of my books. Who are you?

Poetry will Keep You Alive.

As I'm back at school I will be posting more writing assignments to my blog! For my Medieval and Renaissance class I wrote a synthesis essay comparing Shakespeare's Sonnets 55 and 60.

Everyone knows Shakespeare for his plays, his sonnets however are less known. Simply for the reason that we don't read them in high school. Let's face it, the average American reads the most while in high school and the amount of literature that they read after decreases drastically. While I love a good Shakespeare play, I found that I love his sonnets. They are often declarations of love and are short enough that I don't get lost in them, and not the good kind of getting lost in literature. Most people know that William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. However did you know that Anne was 26, an average age to get married for women, but William was only 18. Which was VERY young for a man to be getting married. And the reason lies in the fact that Anne was pregnant. Their first child together was daughter Susanna. Two years after her followed twins Hamnet and Judith.

At his burial site in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon there is a curse upon his gravestone! It states:

Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
To digg the dvst encloased heare.
Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.

(Modern spelling: Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, | To dig the dust enclosed here. | Blessed be the man that spares these stones, | And cursed be he that moves my bones.)

I had the opportunity to see Macbeth in the Globe Theater and Hamlet in Stratford performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.






Here are some photos of the Globe Theater and Macbeth being performed. A perk that was unexpected was that Billy Boyd, who plays Pippin in The Lord of the Rings, was in Macbeth!








Hamlet was amazing! It was a modern interpretation, so the actors were dressed in our style of clothing, however the language was still how Shakespeare had written his play.

Back to the Sonnets. I analyzed sonnet 55 and 60.

Sonnet 55
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.

Sonnet 60
Like as the waves make towards a pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Words Secure Immortality in Time

“And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,

 Praising thy worth, despite [Time’s] cruel hand” (Sonnet 60, Lines 13-14, William Shakespeare).

Thesis: William Shakespeare’s written work depicts the immortality of words; they live on while the physical manifestations crumble and decay.

Shakespeare’s example of words outlasting time is shown in his Sonnets 55 and 60. Time is triumphant over nearly everything and in both sonnets is depicted as “sluttish” and “cruel”.  The theme of time is a common occurrence in all Shakespeare’s works; it is seen as a cruel inevitable force that cannot be prevented.

Sonnet 55

 In Sonnet 55 it is stated “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme” (Lines 1-2). Shakespeare is explaining that the physical will disappear while the writing will live on. The entity of Sonnet 55 is that the monuments will crumble and disappear and with death they are forgotten. But through the verse the speaker’s love will carry on. Shakespeare states that through the poetry the subject will live on.

Sonnet 60

 He does this again in Sonnet 60 writing, “And nothing stands but for [Time’s] scythe to mow: And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand, Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand” (Lines 12-14). In these lines he is expressing his hope that his words will outlive the cruel destruction that time enacts. Sonnet 60 as a whole is about time destroying all things beautiful. The speaker closes with the hope that the words will live on unlike the physical. In Sonnet 55 that is quoted earlier, Shakespeare is bringing forth the idea that poetry can defeat time, as poetry is insusceptible to destruction in the physical sense, which is seen in Sonnet 60.

In both Sonnets 55 and 60, Shakespeare suggests that time is the enemy of beauty. As, with time, one grows old the beauty is lost. In Sonnets 55 and 60 Shakespeare indicates that, through poetry, beauty will live on. The ending lines of Sonnet 55 read, “So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes” (Lines 13-14). As poetry is likened to love, when one dwells in love or poetry they shall live on.

On the English Study Abroad we saw several Shakespeare sights. One that fits the theme of immortality in words rather than the physical is the Globe Theater. As one of the main Shakespearean sights, it will now live on in the minds of all quite possibly forever. However the only reason that it is so, is because of the influence of Shakespeare’s words. The original Globe Theater could not stand the influence of time and burnt to the ground. The only reason that the replica theater stands in existence today, is because actor and director Sam Wanamaker wished to recreate the magic that happened in the original. He was inspired by the words of Shakespeare several hundred years after Shakespeare himself had departed from this world.

 Many of the other Shakespearean sights that currently are in existence only stand because of the influence that his writings have had on life today. His birth place, his wife Anne Hathaway’s home, his daughter’s home “Hall’s croft”, they all stand in the condition of Shakespeare’s time only because his words have immortalized them. His works are known worldwide and their influence has preserved locations from his life and areas depicted in his works because people love his plays and other writings.

Something that resonated with me was the fact that Shakespeare is still so prominent! There is a theater dedicated to his works. In his hometown there is a theater company solely for performing his plays. There were so many things, statues, buildings, monuments, and souvenirs dedicated to Shakespeare even after the passage of time. He has become his hope in Sonnet 60 “And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand, Praising thy worth, despite [Time’s] cruel hand” (Lines 13-14).  William Shakespeare’s works live on through the reading, acting, and loving of his written work. The physical may not have survived, however his words have endured time, immortalizing themselves among the great works of the written word.

Glee and the not so glee-ful.

I just watched Glee's Quarterback, and although I'm no longer a huge fan of Glee, I cried through the entire thing. It was difficult to see where the actors ended and their characters began. I can't imagine how the Glee family is feeling, nor how they filmed that episode. I read that Naya Rivera's break-down in the middle of Santana's song wasn't scripted and I feel like that is how all of those family members must be feeling. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Cory is gone. He was such a GOOD person.

My heart goes out to all those who actually knew him. I hope we can move on and stop being so sad, but never forget who he was or what he accomplished.

Cory will forever be in our hearts.