Speaking Engagement

This is going to be a long post.  I wanted to share the content of a talk I gave at church a few weeks ago.  I'm pretty proud of it and think that it is a message the most people need to hear.  Enjoy!

Good Morning Brothers and Sisters. 

We all know about the original sin that happened in the Garden of Eden.  The serpent came to Eve and tempted her into eating the fruit; she, in turn gave the fruit of the tree of knowledge, to Adam.  But most people overlook the second sin of mankind’s history.  The Lord returned to the Garden to find Adam and Eve, who had hidden themselves because they recognized their nakedness as a result of eating the fruit.  When asked plainly if he had taken of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Adam replied that the woman did give him of the tree and he did eat.  The Lord in turn questions Eve and she immediately replies that the serpent beguiled her and she did eat.  When confronted with their guilt, our first parents’ instinct was to share the burden of culpability with someone else.  It is a tradition that most people continue to this day.

I fear something developing in the world.  It is a growing sense of self-righteousness.  This is not new, of course, but it is a taint that I see consuming more and more of our society.  So many times, our reaction to criticism is offense.  Instead of being willing to face our own shortcomings, we throw the blame on others.  “It’s not my fault!”  “So-and-so started it!”  “Why do I always get picked on?”  How many times is this the first thing that we think in an unpleasant confrontation?  “Well, so-and-so did this, so I’m justified in my actions.”  How many people have left the church because they found the truth to be hard? 

I think that human tendency is to deceive themselves.  How can we be honest with others and not be honest with ourselves.  This topic has been on my mind especially after a particular sharing time lesson I gave in junior primary. I asked for a volunteer to come up and watch some candy I had placed on a table while I left the room to grab something.  Paxton’s hand shot up and I put him in charge.  When I returned from the hallway, I found all the candy still on the table.  I asked Paxton if anyone from the class had tried to take any, and he said no.  Then I asked the class what would have happened if Paxton had been alone in the room with the candy and no one was watching him?  He promptly stated that he would not have taken any candy. And I saw in his eyes that he was telling the truth.  I explained to the children that being honorable means doing the right thing, especially when no one is there to see you.

I had an opportunity to see that lesson in action not one week later.  I pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot and was startled by the sharp jolt of the car parked in front of me.  I saw the source of the movement to be a large SUV that was attempting to take the empty space next to the Honda in front of me and had seriously damaged both cars in the process.  I looked at the driver and saw, immediately, in her eyes that she was not going to take responsibility for what she had done.  She made a big show of getting out of her car to examine both vehicles, got back in her car and drove further down the lane to a different spot.  Maybe she thought to herself, “Well, this car is pretty old, so it doesn’t matter.”  Or perhaps, “Well, if they hadn’t been parked so close to the line, I wouldn’t have hit them.”  I took note of the plate before going about my shopping.  When I returned to my car, I saw my suspicions confirmed.  No note left on the windshield.  The offending driver was just now making her way into the store with her kids and we locked eyes again.  I saw again that she was choosing to run away from her responsibility.  So I left the driver of the Honda a note with the SUV’s plate, make and model.  It amazed me how easily you divine someone’s character by looking them in the eyes.

So now that we’ve identified a flaw in human behavior, how do we fix it? I found the answer in a talk by Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander of the Seventy called “The Path of Growth”.  He said that the key to overcoming this canker of self-justification is confession.  Now I’m not talking about shutting yourself in a box the size of a phone booth and telling a stranger what you did.  I’m talking about an honest conversation with yourself, and the Lord, and possibly the Bishop if the circumstances warrant it.

There are a couple of types of confession.  The first confession involves recognizing God’s power. In our confession of God, we recognize and accept that He is, that He is greater than we are, and that His position is preeminent.  We understand our inferior position before Him. So taught King Benjamin in Mosiah 4:9 : “Believe in God;  believe that he is,  and that he created all things, both in heaven  and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom and all power, both in heaven and in earth;  believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend” .

The personal recognition and confession of God’s preeminent position is the beginning point of religious experience. “We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.”  All else proceeds from this first and fundamental truth. Without this first confession of God, no confession to Him can have full meaning.

Confession involves conquering pride. If for some reason I choose not to confess God and His preeminent position, then I will put something else in that position. That something else in all probability will be myself or some extension of myself that I create with my mind or hands.  If we are successful at replacing God with ourselves, then all is permitted to us. We become judge and jury.  It is we who decide what is right and wrong, if anything at all.  Korihor misleadingly taught in Alma 30:17 that “every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime”.  

If we can recognize God as the giver of all things and develop humility, we can be placed on the path to the next type of confession.  This second type of confession is one that happens both internally and publically. This confession is a statement of personal responsibility for our actions. The battle over responsibility is a familiar one, and it reaches back far into the past even before our mortal existence.  To Moses, the Lord revealed that Satan “sought to destroy the agency of man”. What is the agency of man but the right to make choices within a framework of opposition and the assumption of responsibility for those choices? The Lord has made it clear in 2 Nephi 2:26, that through the Atonement of Christ, “the children of men … have become free forever,  knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon”. We know good from evil and we act for ourselves.  Of course, things happen in our lives that are beyond our control, things that cause us joy or pain.  But we still choose our reactions to these external stimuli and we are responsible for those choices.  For example, “I stopped going to church because a brother or sister or teacher or Bishop offended me.”  Is that really true? Or did I choose to sacrifice my eternal salvation to avoid a person that I don’t like.

Our accountability to God, as our Father and Creator,  is one of the most basic lessons of the gospel. Likewise, the assumption of responsibility for our own actions is one of the strongest indicators that we are becoming more like Him.  So by admitting our own faults and weaknesses, we draw nearer to Heavenly Father.  Now we’re coming to the crux of the problem here.  We cannot develop ourselves spiritually by blaming another for our condition.  To do so would be to deny the Atonement of Christ; which purchased our spiritual independence from the effects of Adam’s transgression. In this light, it is only through the Atonement that we can truly stand accountable before God for our actions, thoughts, and deeds. When we refuse to admit to ourselves or others our own culpability, if we say that everything is someone else’s fault and declare ourselves guiltless, then we have no need of the Atonement.  And we all know there is only one person for whom that is true.

How often do we hear that society is to blame for the wrongdoings of its members, as if this brings absolution and freedom from the consequences? “Perhaps that child’s parents failed him.”  Or “Well, gun control laws are too lax; he shouldn’t have been allowed to purchase a gun.” There comes a time in our lives, temporally and spiritually, when we must assume responsibility for our choices. In a spiritual sense, confession is our statement to God that we are responsible and accountable to Him for our actions.

A true, honest, and willing confession brings us closer to God. President Stephen L Richards, a counselor in the First Presidency, taught: “Why is confession essential? First, because the Lord commanded it, and secondly, because the offender cannot live and participate in the Kingdom of God, to receive the blessings therefrom with a lie in his heart”. And these lies that we tell ourselves, where we shift the blame for our circumstances to others, where else to we keep them, except deep in our hearts. 

Brothers and Sisters, when we learn to release these falsehoods we tell ourselves, when we confess them to the Lord and turn them over to Him, we are made free.  We are unburdened and can face the Lord on the Day of Judgment without trying to find the excuses we need to justify our actions. 

Car Buying

I feel like the car companies are trying to reprogram the consumer population.  I keep seeing commercials from different dealerships advertizing their "Lowest Price Available" and "No Haggle Pricing" and "Bargain Pricing" on all their new cars.  It seems to me like they are trying to convince car buyers to come in to the dealership and just pay whatever price is on the sticker without putting up a fight.  I remember going with my dad to buy my first car.  My mom warned me in advance that at some point, I may want to go sit in the car because I'll be embarrassed.  I didn't not leave the negotiation, but I did get upset every time my dad threatened to walk away from the dealer empty handed.  He'd propose a counter offer and of course the associate would have to go back and talk to the manager.  A good time into the little car buying dance my dad was doing (and he's a professional) I grabbed his arm and said, "Dad! I really want this car! Please! I don't wanna walk away." He told me to calm down and trust him.  He assured me that after the 3 hours this guy had invested with us, he was going to give us what we wanted to make the sale.  And dad was right.  We got the car I wanted at the price Dad wanted (which was significantly below the sticker price).
It's as if these days, dealers want to make car buying as frivolous as a trip to Wal-Mart.  You don't argue the price tag there, after all!  My husband and I went to a Jeep dealership to see what kind of a deal we could get with a trade-in vehicle that blue booked at about $4000.  We identified a car we liked and began negotiations.  They offered us only $1000 trade in value for a Subaru and Julius was ready to walk out.  We weren't going to eat a $3000 value dump.  We negotiated them up to $1500 for the Subaru and we flatly told them that we considered it a concession for us at $2000 and non-negotiable at $1500.  So the associate (a snotty looking guy with a pencil line mustache who was maybe 10 years older than me and kept referring to me as young lady in a condescending way) said there was nothing he could do.  We made for our car and as we were pulling out, he jogged up and tapped on the glass of my window.  I rolled it down and he said "You're not really gonna let this car go for $500, are you?" I said, "Yes. Yes we are." and I rolled up the window and we pulled out.  He's lucky I didn't smack the pencil mustache off his face as took off. 
I don't care how gullible these commercials make the consumers look! I still intend to treat car buying as an olympic sport!

Windows of the Soul

It amazes me how you can look into someone's eyes and know exactly what they are thinking.  It amazes me even more when that happens with a complete stranger. 
I was pulling into the Walmart parking lot and as I put the car in park, the car I was facing was violently jolted.  I looked up to see a huge SUV backing up from a collision with the little Honda in front of me.  I saw the lady who was driving the offending vehicle and she saw me.  We made eye contact for what seemed like 5 minutes but couldn't have been more than a couple of seconds.  In that blink of an eye, I knew that she was not going to take responsibility for what she had done.  She made a big show of getting out of her car and walking around her vehicle and the other car.  I watched her this whole time and she made furtive glances in my direction.  I took note of her license plate as she got back into her car and drove a little further up the row and parked a bit aways.  She hovered back by her car for a bit, so I hoped that she was writing a note for the owner of the other car with her insurance information, so I decided to go about my business.  I went into the store and made my purchases.  On my way back to my car, I saw the guilty driver walking up to the store with her kids in tow.  I checked the windshield of the Honda, and I was not shocked to see that there was no note there.  I looked back at the store and the lady had stopped in front of the doors and was looking at me.  At that point, I took out my cell phone and took a picture of the Honda's damage, walked over to the SUV and took a picture of it's plate and the huge dent in the front bumper and got back in my car to write a note.  I told the owner what had happened, I put the other car's information and my cell number in the note and slipped it into the car's open window. (I'm sure that if I had left the note on the windshield, the woman would have taken if off when she returned to her car.)
Strangely enough, I did not receive a phone call from the Honda owner.  My hope is that the guilty woman had the car owner paged in the store and did her insurance exchange in person.  But I could tell from her face that she would not have done so willingly.  It reminded me of a lesson I taught to the kids in church a few weeks back about having a "word of honor". I explained that being honest is not only about what we say and do when we interact with other people, but it is more strongly shown by what we do when no one is watching us.  Do we do the right thing when no one is around to see our decisions?  With some people, the guilt is written all over their faces!

Caution! Religious Content!

So, on our way home from church today, my husband mentioned that he'd heard something about another shooting happening today.  My heart sank since this shooting is coming so rapidly on the heels of the Aurora, Colorado shooting.  There was indeed a shooting this morning, in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.  My first thought was, "Why are there so many crazy people these days?" Many times the first inclination is to blame the media or video games or political parties, but I disagree with that.  In the case of adults, I think there is no one to blame but the shooter.  Not gun control policies, not their parents, not their therapists.  Every person has the right to choose for themselves.
Unfortunately, other peoples' decisions effect the lives of people around them.  But this is the purpose of life here on this earth.  To be tested and prove ourselves worthy to be called God's Own.  How can we be tested if nothing bad ever happens to us?  Although it breaks my heart when I see children suffer and die, when I see injustice in this world, I think to myself, "What am I going to do about it?" In some cases, the answer is nothing.  Sometimes there is nothing you can do about tragedy, except learn to  find peace amidst the storms of life. 
I heard a quote that says something to the effect of, "Internal peace cannot be dependant on your external circumstances." So even though horrible things are happening in the world, we don't have to stir ourselves up in anger or sorrow, especially over things that we cannot change.  We can do our part to help out and share our opinions, but we don't have to let the ills of the world create a home in our hearts.  We can have peace knowing that all wrongs will be righted and all injustices that happen in this world will be corrected, either in this life, or the life to come.  Of course all of this depends on your belief system.  I find great comfort in my spirituality. 
This leads me to another thought.  A brother at church today shared a thought with the congregation.  He said that as he watched the news and the weather and heard about the droughts and the hardships around the country, he was reminded of how God has punished nations in the past and that we, as a country, have forgotten our religious heritage.  He challenged us all to encourage our neighbors to read their holy books, be it the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, etc.  We need to be reminded of our relationship with God and how much we need Him in our lives.  A lot of what he said rang true to me, and I think I need to be more conscious of the people around me and encourage them to find a greater spirituality. Obviously I would love for everyone to be at my church, but I think most churches are good and teach truth.  Peace can be as contagious as anger.  If more people developed internal peace, I think the world as a whole would be a better place.

A Frustrating Lesson

My husband and I have a problem with frustration.  I'll share his experience first.  He doesn't like it when I leave dirty knives in the sink.  He's the kind of person that would shove his hand into a sink of water without looking and believes that he's going to be injured by my carelessness.  So he comes running into the bathroom while I'm in the shower, holding paper to his finger and tells me he's cut his finger and it won't stop bleeding.  I asked how he cut himself and he said that he was washing dishes and saw a huge knife in the sink.  He left it there and picked up a paring knife to clean instead and brooded on my lack of consideration.  While he was cleaning the paring knife, he stabbed himself in the finger. I pointed out that if he hadn't been so annoyed at me about the knife, he wouldn't have stabbed himself. 
That's the back story for me to learn my own lesson.  This morning, he complained that his computer was running slow and that something that I'm doing was messing up his computer.  I retorted that I am the one who maintains the computer and it's more likely something he is doing that is messing up his computer.  Shortly thereafter I left for work. (Without kissing my husband goodbye) I go into my car, checked the street and backed up in order to clear some debris ahead of me, to pull out into the street.  While in reverse, I felt a jolt and heard a crunch.  I hit the front of my husband's car!  And I have a back-up camera!  There was no reason for it, except that I was distracted by my husband's accusation and brooding on the situation and not paying attention to what I was doing.  Needless to say, I felt like an idiot all day.  I cried the whole way in to work.  And teared up a couple of times at work.  I realized that I was guilty of the same thing I had accused my husband of not two weeks earlier.  I was brooding and annoyed and as a consequence of not letting the situation go, I smooshed my car.  Both cars are fine.  Hubby's car got the license plate squished a bit and I have two screw head shaped impressions on my rear bumper. 
This has been a pattern in our marriage.  We get annoyed at eachother and instead of letting things go, we feed the frustration and let it fester and as a consequence, something else frustrating happens.  How much agrivation could we have avoided if we would just have charity toward eachother and let little disagreements pass and forgive more readily.  Let's hope the lesson sticks this time!

Dragonfly

I had another bug experience today.  I was driving through a parking lot, maybe 10 miles an hour. A dragonfly ended up bouncing off my windshield and kept flying right in front of my windshield.  I made a left turn, expecting to say goodbye to the bug, but he turned as well, still hovering just 4-6 inches from my windshield and certain death.  I made a right, and sure enough, he followed my turn as well.  I hit a straightaway and accelerated a bit, just enough that the dragonfly could not keep up and was forced by the wind up over the top of my car.  It's been about 7 hours since I had this encounter with my winged friend and I'm still thinking about it.  Everything I know about physics tells me that what the dragonfly was doing was dangerous and offered no benefit, aerodynamically, to it's flight.  It wasn't like drafting a semi tractor trailer, which cuts the wind sheer on your vehicle but puts you in a dangerous position for rear-ending a semi!  That bug was fighting all the same wind sheer that my car was, plus the turbulence of the air passing over my car trying to push the bug up and over the vehicle.  I'm still baffled by the bugs behavior.  Why would it play such a dangerous game?  I'll do some more aerodynamics research and see if I can figure it out.  But until then, I'll just have to believe that God wanted me to think about a bug for a half a day!

History Repeating

I was out with my husband yesterday at a religious service.  I used the restroom and met him outside to make our way toward the exit.  A lady stopped me on the way out to inform me that my dress was tucked up inside my slip! I righted myself and thanked her profusely.  As we headed toward the car, I remembered a story that my grandmother had told me.  She'd been at a funeral many many years ago and had used the restroom.  When she came out, she mingled a bit with the other mourners without realizing that she had her skirt tucked up in her underwear!  I realized today how lucky I am to have heard stories from my grandmother about her life, that I was able to make this small connection between her and me. 

Laundry Day

Today is my most dreaded day.  Laundry day.  It amazes me how perfect strangers can make something as mundane as laundry a fearful event.  I have no particular dislike of doing laundry.  To the contrary, I love the way my clothes and towels feel when I pull them warm and soft from the dryer.  Unfortunately, my personal washer and dryer are in a storage unit.  We moved into a tiny house with no hook-ups while my husband is in school, so I drive out of my way to a coin op facility in a nice part of town.  But the niceness of the area is deceptive as to the clientele of this laundromat.  I had learned my lesson a while ago. I am a normally chatty and friendly person, but you get some crazies at the laundromat.  So I've developed a habit of using machines directly in front of the entrance so that I can sit in my car and watch the machines. Last time, I re-entered the laundromat prematurely to change over my loads to the dryer.  I had 3 minutes to kill. So I pull out the ole smart phone and jump on facebook to see what's happening.  Immediately, a guy sitting on a bench in front of my machine starts freaking out about me taking his picture! He insists that people keep taking his picture and that he has an attorney and will sue me if he sees his picture show up on facebook (like I'd friend him!) After insisting adamantly that I did not want to nor would I ever take his picture, I finally just put my cellphone away and said "There. It's gone. Now no one can enjoy themselves here." He continued to mutter about it to no one in particular for the next 10 minutes and then retreated to his car, which happened to be parked next to mine, to watch me for another 5 minutes before taking off.  That's one of my least favorite adventures in laundry. Sigh. I miss my machines.  Wish me luck! I'm off to the freak-show.

My Theory of Relativity

I was at my little mexican grocery store again today.  I always find something interesting at that store.  At the checkstand, where you find all the impulse purchase items, I saw a blister packed 4oz can of shaving cream and a plastic razor.  It wasn't even a name brand like Bic or anything.  Just a blue plastic single blade razor.  The package was labeled "Deluxe Shaving Kit". I cracked up to myself and then I got sad.   Perhaps to someone else, this is a Deluxe Shaving Kit.  I need to remember to not judge when I go to the market in the more destitute parts of town.

Love and Marriage

I'm seeing an unsettling trend in my own social circle.  I had a friend call me this morning looking for a babysitter to watch her kids while she went to see a divorce attorney.  This broke my heart.  It seems like a lot of my friends are having the divorce conversation these days.  Is this a commentary on our society? Have we reached the point where it is more common to be divorced than married to the same person your whole life?  My marriage is by no means perfect.  The D-word has come up once or twice in the past 7 years, but I had good advice from reliable sources to help me make good decisions.  I have tried to be that for my friends, but there's really no one on earth that knows exactly what you are going through.  I don't know what their daily conversations are like.  I don't know if they are hostile toward eachother.  All I know is that if there is love, then it's worth the fight to fix the marriage. 
I've seen so many cases of dysfunctional relationships caused by pride or misunderstanding.  It's caused by things that can be fixed with communication and therapy. (I'm a HUGE supporter of therapy.) People who are unwilling to change are going to keep having the same relationship problems with every new person they get involved with unless there is some self-improvement happening.  So I tell my friends that if the significant other is not going to therapy, or church, or a guru or something, there's no reason to stay with them.  It's asking for history to repeat itself, which is more painful the second or third time around.  It makes you feel like an even bigger fool for having trusted the person again.  It is possible to forgive someone and not trust them or allow them to continue to hurt you.  The efforts to save the marriage cannot be either one sided or half hearted.  If both are willing to try, there is always hope.  If something can be fixed, it is worth the effort. But if one or both of you are miserable, you're not doing anything for the children by staying together.  I saw my parents fight so many times and how miserable my mother was and I prayed for them to divorce.  They have since repaired a lot of their relationship and I'm glad they stuck it out, but there was a time that their bad relationship made me miserable as well. 
On a related topic, I had a lady come into my work and start airing her life story to me.  She had been divorced in January and had started seeing a man a couple of months ago who had already proposed to her!  I thought it was crazy that she even kept the ring.  You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else fully and freely.  You have to know your own value.  You cannot derive your value from what other people think about you. 
On a vaguely related note, today I learned that all three of Tom Cruise's wives filed for divorce when they were 33 years old.  What a strange coincidence!  Maybe all the glamour of being married to Tom has worn off by that point and they realized what is really important in a relationship.

Print Shop Wisdom

I took a flash drive in to Office Depot today.  I had a couple of pictures that I wanted to print 2' x 3' so that I can hang them in my living room.  I had a couple of thoughts I'd like to share.  First, the man at the counter checked the size of the pictures I had on the drive.  One was 7mb, one was 3mb and the last was 1mb.  He looked at the smallest one and said that it may come out a bit pixelated because the file size was small. I decided to risk it.  He printed my 7mb picture first and it came out GORGEOUS!! The detail in the shadowing and textures was amazing! I couldn't have been more pleased considering the huge print only costed $3.00.  The 1mb picture printed next.  It was not pixelated as I had feared, but it definately lacked the crispness that I got with the larger picture file.  So in an effort to liken all things to life, I propose that the more full you are, or the bigger your file size, the more beautiful and detailed your life will be.  If we can persue knowledge and experience, if we can open ourselves to the wealth of information offered in this world, the more rich and fulfilled our lives will be.  So take a different path on your walk! Try a different restaurant! Pick a book of a different genre for a change! Our eyes will be opened to a new world that was all around us all along. 
I mentioned that I had two thoughts to share... After the first picture was printed (a picture of my husband and I on our wedding day) the store employee said "This dress looks gorgeous". I immediately thanked him and agreed that it was a beautiful dress.  It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about the way the dress appeared on paper despite the low quality paper medium.  I must be very vain, I always assume people are complimenting me! I'm sure most people have had a conversation with a person where they interpreted half the things you said to them as either a slight or an outright insult.  It's so difficult to hold up this type of conversation, because you are choosing your words carefully and then halting the conversation to try to explain what you meant.  I would love it if everyone I talked to would just assume that I'm being polite and friendly, even when I'm not as eloquent as I wish I was.

Olde Fashioned Materialism

I was driving through the "village" in my town and the abnormal congestion and presence of some very old beautiful cars reminded me that the summer vintage car season was upon us.  As I slowly rolled down the boulevard, admiring the vibrant colors and shining chrome of the classic cars, I began to form a train of thought.  The first car in my train of thought was an admiration that someone could care for and maintain a material object for so many years and have it look like it just rolled out of a showroom the day before, as if time had stopped for that vehicle.  I looked at the beautiful lines and curves of the Thunderbirds, Speedsters, Packards and Cadillacs and wondered if any of the new models of cars on the road today would be considered classics in the future.  For some reason, no matter how well I maintain my Santa Fe, I can't imagine that one of my children will be showing it at a car show 40 or 50 years from now.  That lead me to the next car in my thought train.  We are very materialistic these days.  We spend so much money on things that we are fully aware are not going to last a whole lot longer than a decade, a year, a month etc.  This consumer society we live in drives us to constantly purchase newer and better models of the things we already have.  In fact, many things that we own are not designed to last very long without breaking.  How many of you are still using the same cell phone you used 5 years ago?  I get new phones, not because I need the new amazing tech, but because the memory or some chip in my phone is worn out and it is cheaper to buy new than to fix what is old.  This got me thinking about the cars again.  Classic cars are a vintage form of materialism.  A kind of materialism that you don't see as much today as you did 50 years ago.  The time and effort and money that people poured into their cars, rather than just scrapping them and buying new.  A 2012 Lamborghini Murcielago is an impressive sight to see, but it doesn't stick with me as does the sight of a perfectly restored 1965 Porche.  I think I prefer that vintage materialism to the consumer materialism that we have today.

Charitable Drinker

I do my grocery shopping in a questionable part of town.  There are usually groups teenagers wandering around the area, a possibly crazy woman walking down the middle of the 4 lane roadway.  As I was pulling out of the parking lot, a lady was making her way up the sidewalk with a shopping cart and several trash bags full of recycleables.  As she approached, a man sitting out on his stoop drinking a beer quickly finished off his drink and handed the lady his can.  It's nice to see charity happening in some of the more destitute parts of town. 

Cockroach

As I started up my shower this morning, I noticed a 1/2 inch cockroach in my bathtub. I don't mind bugs outside my house, but inside my house I find them ghastly! So I determined to drown the pest as I started my shower. My shower drain is not super fast, but it keeps up with the water flow. As I watched the cockroach float back and forth and orbit the drain, I thought is was dead already. I realized quickly that cockroaches are nearly impossible to kill without chemicals or a blunt object (as evidenced by the week a roach spent in my polyethalene kill jar before it could be added to my collection for my entomology class). But the bug just floated there, not moving it's legs or trying to save itself whatsoever. Until it was right at the cusp of the drain. Just as it was about to be pulled into the whirlpool of suction down the pipe, it frantically flipped itself and flailed it's legs until it was caught up in another current that took it away from the drain. I watched this happen four or five times, it floating, riding the currents without moving until it is nearly sucked down and then the agitated dance of survival. I thought to myself, is that the cockroach's secret to survival? Do nothing until the absolute moment of demise and then fight like a berzerker to escape death? What a horrible life lesson. I've had a religious upbringing and was always taught that you should work hard every day, live every day, as if it were your last, because you never know when will be your last day. Don't procrastinate the day of your repentance, so to speak. So why has this lesson from the cockroach not changed my whole outlook on life? Why has it not convinced me to sit around and do nothing when I am in danger until the moment before tragedy? Because I don't want to be a cockroach.