Consequences

So I'm sitting here in my philosophy class discussing different ethics and how to have a universal concept of how to decide what's right or wrong, and I made an interesting connection. I've understood for a long time that when deciding what a good choice would be it's better to choose the one with the least visible consequences (always try to be free). This is what all laws, temporal and spiritual, are based on. Every law that I can think of is focused on keeping either us or anyone else free from any natural consequences. Such as: we shouldn't speed because it might harm us or others because it's unsafe, we shouldn't steal because then someone else would have to be without something or have to use what they have for another one (they would have a consequence). But any law about something that we should do is keeping us free. Such as "though shalt obey thy mother and father" keeps us free for having more ideas since we may have been limited from the knowledge of good ideas that we had.
    I just thought this was interesting.

Joy

I'm sitting here in the library kind of doing homework and listening to the Sigur Ros. There's 4 little kids probably about 2 and 3 years old that keep running around as the mom tries to contain them from time to time. they just crawled near me whispering and giggling as they were hiding from there mom again. I love every time that I catch a glimpse at joy.
Just a bit ago I was on facebook and happened onto an old friends page. She passed away a while ago but I saw how many people still post things on her wall talking about old times, or telling her things that remind them of her. It made me happy and sad at the same time. I read a couple of them and one was talking about a dream she just had of her. The dream was just about sitting laughing, not doing anything particular. Those kinds of times are my favorite.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't make be productive and work hard, but we all worry too much about specific things. I know I do. Do everything you need to do, but smile more than you think. Crawl on the ground and whisper if you want. I love life.

Why have laws?

We all want to be free but no matter what there always seems to be something that binds us. We can't be free to choose our choices AND the consequences of those choices. I heard something yesterday that simplified for me the difference between following laws now and being free.
Satan frees us now to bind us. God binds us now to set us free.

Knowledge

I really like to know things. I just got out of an American history class and I just wish I could all of a sudden know everything about it. But that's not what's important. I've come to the conclusion that the knowledge isn't what's important but the processes we go through to get it. Learning to learn and stretch yourself is more important than learning for a specific, limited, outcome.

Moments of Focus

I don't really remember my dreams. I don't know why. Sometimes I wish I did. But I just don't. Sometimes something reminds me of a split second of a dream I had but I never remember anything else about it. I sometimes want to know what I dream about but I've realized that it doesn't matter. At all. And actually... I'm grateful that I don't have/remember dreams from the night. I would never want anything to take any focus off of reality. The reality of how great life really is. Nothing I could ever imagine could top it, I'm sure.
I try to remind myself at times that at one point of our existence, all things will be brought to our remembrance... but the time until that point may need those memories just as much. I don't do a good enough job at keeping journals, or any other kind of personal history. I keep telling myself that I should just write more of what's going on in my pocket sketchbook friend... but I forget too often. So I'm recommitting myself.  Recommitting myself to keep record of why reality is so great. And why I would never want anything else than what has come, what does come, and everything that may come.
Come what may and love it... and record it.

make plans

Everyone loves to do things with other people but generally don't want to be the one to make the plans. Just do it, you love it when other people do.

mistakes

I hate making mistakes. It's just something I don't want to do. Unfortunately I learn more from mistakes than I do from good decisions. And then it's a tricky balance to forget the mistakes so they don't weigh you down yet still remember the lessons you learned from them.
I love making mistakes. It's just something that's good sometimes.
Here's to stupidity. Here's to not being perfect. Here's to making a quest to slowly transform our imperfections into perfections.

curiosity

We've all heard that "curiosity killed that cat", but I've never seen what's so wrong about being curious. Curiosity may have killed that cat but satisfaction can bring him back. What does kill us, however, is the confusion with what satisfaction truelly is. 

** actually... I just changed my thought... it's not confusion with what satisfies that kills us. And it's not that satisfaction CAN bring you back but satisfaction is the ONLY thing that brings you back. Just being curious without finding results is like running on a treadmill.

addition to a previous post...

So I was writing a couple days ago about not exactly believing the line that I put in a song. "I've learned that expectations lead to disappointment, so I hope for the best and live in the moment." I decided that wasn't right since we should always expect greatness and tweak failures. But I guess that only has to do with expectations in yourself. When you expect great things out of other people or things all the time that you don't have control over than you can easily get into a state of mind that nothing else is ever good enough. So expect greatness in yourself, but expect the worse. That's probably what I was thinking when I first thought of that.

The Sacrament

I use to ask myself fairly often why we take the bread and the water/wine/whatever you use with the sacrament. Of course they have to do with reminding us of the body and the blood of Christ which was slain and shed for us, but where is the real correlation between these two things? Why can't just one thing remind us of the atonement rather than two? Or why is it important that he suffered seperately between the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross on Calvary? After a lot of changes to my answers I finally found one that seems fairly concrete and well supported. Starting with the base of the reason for the sacrament: The Atonement consists of the suffering in Gethsemane (which allowed Him to go through all of the temptations, pains, and infirmities that we go through that he may atone for those things), the crucifixion on the cross (which put an end to all of life's temptations and pains, and sanctified him to the next level), and the resurrection or his spirit and his flawless, immortal body (which broke the bands of death allowing us to do the same and to all individually be reunited into full fellowship with our Heavenly Father once again). With all of this in mind: the bread, representing His body, reminds us to be sanctified and put a 'death' to pain of sin or temptation as we covenant to take His name upon us, remember Him, and keep His commandments; and the water, representing the blood He spilt, reminds us that the blood He spilt continues to atone for our sins and all kinds of pains as we covenant to Him that we will always remember Him. As we keep our parts of this covenant He will allow His spirit, or the Holy Ghost, to always be with us.
I wrote a lot more about this separately but I think this describes it enough for now.

Family

I spent the past few days with Talia's family. I love them all. I learned a few things about life. I learned even more about what a family should be... close, friendly, funny, forgiving, busy, religious, having goals, and reminisced. There is always a hardship withe everything in life, but with every hardship is a solution and a teaching opportunity.

Jealousy

We often waste time on being jealous. Don't. Sometimes we'll be in the lead and sometimes we'll be eating everyone else's dust. But when we all get to the finish line we'll learn that we all were only running our race against ourselves as we shared the track with others.

sometimes i worry about what people think about me... maybe

Songs?

Lately I've decided to try to make more music. I've always enjoyed learning to play other people's art but I'd rather put my own contribution into the world. I often think of good one-liners that i think are neat but have a hard time putting them all together; or a hard time matching them with music (mostly from my guitar). Music generally comes really easy to me but doesn't generally stay on topic.
Anyways... the reason I started writing this: would it be alright to include a line in a song that seems to be a good, general, and fairly individual thought even if i don't necessarily believe it? A long time ago I wrote "expectations lead to disappointment so I hope for the best and live in the moment" and recently fit it into the chorus of a song. But since then I've learned that even though expectations often lead to disappointment, that disappointment from unexpected outcomes can teach the most valuable lessons ever learned. I'd rather expect greatness, tweak failures, and never give up, than to quit expecting and just enjoying whatever comes. Pleasure can come from living in the moment but true joy only comes with improvement from knowledge, which often comes from previous hardships.