Simplicity

It's not often that I come across something that really inspires me, but these past couple of weeks I've found something that really made an impression on me. Although I do feel a little silly admitting it, because it isn't scripture or anything all that religious. I could of course fall on the idea that anything that inspires a person to do good is from God, but I've always been a bit hesitant to look for justifications, well, at least that's what I tell people.

Anyway anyone that knows me knows that I am a bit of a superman fan. Not so much a fan of the comic books, or the movies or anything like that. I am a fan of the idea of superman. A man that has the ability to do good and is driven to help people for no other reason then because he believes that is what he is suppose to do, or for love. Oh yeah, he can fly, has super strength and heat vision; But those are beside the point, other than just being really cool.

So I've come across these books that I really like, Odd Thomas. It's about a fry cook that can see the dead and for no other reason then to do the right thing he goes out of his way to help them pass on or get justice. He doesn't tell anyone because he's afraid of becoming a spectacle and well, the stress of seeing the dead is a bit stressful. For that same reason he remains a fry cook and he just likes it better.

And that got me thinking about my life and the kind of life I lead. I have a pretty simple life and I kind of like it that way. I don't have new cars. I would like a new car just because I wouldn't need to worry about it breaking down, but then again I probably would have to have the stress of keeping it new. It's also not like new cars don't break down. More than likely we don't place enough stress on the follies of the sin of envy. Once I start looking at how far behind I am in, well, everything I get a little anxious. Once I sit back like the way this book did I realize that I don't think I really want to clutter up my life all that much more. Sure I would like to buy some new stuff from time to time, I will have the money from time to time, but I shouldn't let it bother me.

Simplicity, maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be; then again maybe it is.

1st report from Facebook.

Well, I've been fooling around in facebook for a little over a month now and I've been feeling like I should say something about it and my goals for it.

First of all Facebook is a lot more fun than I thought it would be. The games are addicting at first, although the real trick is to start them; leave them for a couple of days, then come back. My big problem with all the games is that I can't seem to get a large number of friends to play them with me. I kinda wish that I would get more invites to play games with others, but I wonder if people consider it rude to continually send game invites to othersd. I try not to send game invites willy/nilly, because I know that some people just don't play the games. Nevertheless I sure don't want a large number of friends that I don't know just so I can get a large number of people playing with me.

Which leads me into my next little concern with Facebook, friends. There certainly are a lot of people I know on Facebook. Some of them I've invited to be part of my friend list right off the bat, while others I just stand back and let them invite me; it's kind of like a high school reunion were you keep hoping the popular people will walk up to you and start a conversation, but you won't do it yourself because you don't want to appear needy. Its been kinda awkward like that. Anyway, I've also been getting invites of people that I don't really remember and that I accept them in the hopes that I will remember them eventually or they might say something that will help me remember them. So far I seem to be the guy the remembers everything about almost everyone and I feel a bit the loser, because I like to talk about the memories (maybe I should change my major to some sort of history since I seem to have a knack for remembering useless information).

Nice segway into my next bit. One thing that Facebook has been great for has been the ability to get to know more about people that I know/knew, and for me to try out my quick wit (with very weak results, don't worry I don't plan on quiting my day job and moving to stand-up). The thing is that there are going to be a lot of people that don't seem to get on Facebook as much as others. For one, as you can imagine, get on the Internet quite a bit. I use the Internet for almost everything I do in life from watching TV, paying bills, shopping, bargain hunting and keeping up with friends and family; It doesn't take much of a stretch for me to open a second window and pull up Facebook. I also update my status at least once a day, I do it from my phone, using Twitter, as you can read on the sidebar. There are others that don't seem to jump onto it for months at a time. I added a friend as soon as I got on, he accepted the request a week later, I asked him a question, he responded me two weeks later, I asked him another question and, well, I'm still waiting for him to get back to me. He isn't the only one like that. Having people that consistently update makes the whole Facebook experience fun, because it makes you feel more part of a community, while the slow-pokes do make you feel part of the community just at a snail's pace.

One use of Facebook that I've really wanted to explore has been the airing of old questions. Sometimes when I'm with friends will we start recollecting and as we go through our old memories we find that we remember the same situation completely different. When that happens I want to get in contact with a third party and see what they think. It's a lot of fun for me to find out all the angles of memories and it thrills me how people see things. I haven't explored this option to any great extent, but I really want to. I still don't know how others feel with regards to dredging up old memories, not painful memories, just old memories.

Well, I think that covers it for now, perhaps in a couple more weeks I will be able to ramble on about Facebook some more.

Assaults on Hope

There are a lot of discouraging things out there. As soon as I start out on a new path I will often find many reasons why the path I'm on may just very well not be worth the effort. I just want to share a couple of my latest discoveries and maybe reflect on them.

After I got off my mission I went back to my old job. There I made some friends, one of my friends was an older gent from the same country that I served my mission. It was fun talking to him and he was very grandfatherly to me. Well, just the past week I came across him and we started talking and he invited me to his wedding. He explained to me that after 43 years of marriage he got divorced and two years later he is going to get remarried. I've been married only seven years but I have to say that as time goes by we don't have as many fights as we used to. I can't even wrap my head around the idea of getting divorced after 43 years. I mean you've spent almost a half century with this person and suddenly you're not going to take it anymore. Well, I don't understand it and I couldn't bring myself to ask him why. It's just discouraging is all.

Now that I am going back to school I often will try and fill myself with the feeling that I am moving in the right direction. I mean, all the Prophets tell us that we need to be educated and get our collage degrees and such. Also I know that my current job can be a career if I really want it to, but I hold the hope that I can do so much more; I also hope that I can get payed more for it. Anyway, most everyone at my job knows that I've gone back to school and some want to talk to me about it. Some have stories about when they were in college, others want to give advice and others I don't really care enough about to listen to. So I've come across two people that have left an impression on me. One person is now a janitor, and he went to college. The other has his bachelors in psychology. So I ask myself, "If these guys who are well educated are doing the same thing that I'm doing; what makes me think that I'm going to be better off once I graduate?" Perhaps this pursuit of education is a fool's errand. I know that a person doesn't need to graduate from college in order to be intelligent. My brother is one of the smartest people I know and he doesn't need a piece of cardboard to tell him that he's jumped through hoops to prove his intelligence. He does it day in and day out, which in my opinion means more than a lot of the people I know that just hang out admiring how smart they are. So what I am to do? Get in debt so I can make as much as I make now? Or what?

I figure that sometimes we just have to gamble and hope everything turns out for the best. It seems to me that in this life we just have to make the most of what we are given and then roll with the punches. It's worked out reasonably well for me so far, it works out better for others and craps out for others. No guarantees no matter how hard you work, how smart you are or how talented. Not that I'm any of those, so I probably should be more thankful for how far I've come.

Notes on interracial marriage.

This week I've come across a couple of instances were the topic of interracial marriage has been brought up. This doesn't usually happen so I am going to take it as a sign, of sorts, that it's time that I address the issue.

As anyone that reads my blog should know by now; I'm married to a Latino woman. I am confused with the use of Latino in this case, it sounds more right to me to say Latina, but in our non-sexist language Latino seems to be the correct word. Anyway, when we were courting I did a lot of fasting and prayer in regard to this subject -well, there was a lot more prayer than fasting-. Most may not know that the LDS faith discourages against interracial marriage. Boyd K. Packer has spoken about it along with many others. This was a big sticking point for me because for the most part I like to think of myself as someone who doesn't like to rock the spiritual boat. Nevertheless I went with my heart and felt that I had received God's approval, and so here we are.

I realized at the time and even more so now the reasons why the church has discouraged interracial marriage. It's not easy; marriage itself isn't easy, but add the race/culture bit into the mix and it makes it a bit harder. Now, because I love the bulleted list, I am going to go over a couple of things that make an interracial marriage a bit more difficult then others. At least in my opinion, I've never had any other kind of marriage so I'm just going to list off things that I think make an interracial marriage different:

• Language: The largest problem that any couple can face is communication and being able to communicate clearly. Now what we have here is at least one person in the marriage that is not as capable of communicating as well as the other. Doesn't matter what language you speak, one or the other is going to be at a disadvantage. We've been married for over seven-years, I've studied Spanish, but there still are words that my wife throws out that I don't know. This little problem also has an upside, when you are in the middle of an argument and your spouse uses a word that you've never heard before it diffuses the situation because the argument has to take a step aside as an explanation is presented. Nevertheless miscommunication abound. I won't even get into the subject of movies. If you thought it was hard agreeing upon what movie to watch, try having the discussion about in which language to watch it.
• Culture: Year after year we often will have the same discussions about traditions. If both of us were from the same culture then I'm sure a compromise could quickly be reached. As we both come from different cultures, well, differences abound. Let's take Christmas for example; In most Hispanic cultures they don't have a Christmas tree, they have a big nativity scene. So every year we discuss how much effort the tree should get as compared to the nativity scene. Luckily, the kids settled this one for us because a complex nativity scene is impossible with small children in the house. As time drags on, soon our home decorations will be moving from tree-oriented to nativity-oriented; that was the compromise. In addition one of the other culture differences is how to celebrate Christmas. Hispanics will often stay up all night, while us gringos just get up early. Gringos tend to have Christmas a very quiet family affair, while Hispanics make it bit more of a celebration. These culture differences range from Valentine's day to Independence day, and they don't seem to ever go away.
• Belonging: As an interracial couple we have found ourselves in an odd situation in society; one I didn't know existed. I don't know why it is this way but people, on the whole, don't seem to know quite how to treat us. At times I can't blame them. As a bilingual couple we find ourselves using a kind of Spanglish to communicate, we pick whichever language works better for us at the time. Most of the time the people we are with don't understand one language or the other and it can be a little disconcerting for them. Since most of the time we are with couples that aren't interracial at least one of us is always going to feel a little left out as one of us just isn't going to have as much in common with others as the other one. If we are with Gringos, I usually take the lead. If we are with Hispanics, my wife takes the lead. It's the way things go, and often times people don't hang around with us simply because they recognize that they will always have more in common with one of us and not so much with the other. Then there is always the element of people that don't agree with interracial couples. On the whole I haven't come across these people, but I have come across a few, and it's saddening when you realize that people will judge you for it. Often we find ourselves drawn to other interracial couples, but as most know these are few and far between; although there are more now then ever before. Nevertheless, it limits your friend options.
• Family: Doesn't matter how you twist it one member of the couple is going to have to be far away from their family. This will always be a point of friction. My wife has been very, Very understanding on this point. Her family has been on the short end of the stick since we got married. Very few of them were able to attend the wedding. Only her mother has been able to get to know both of our kids, let alone see them grow up in any capacity. Our kids don't know any of their cousins on my wife's side let alone their aunts and uncles; I won't even start on the cultures of either. Because of this distance there is always the threat of money that has to be spent in calling cards, long-distance gifts and travel. There is no way of getting around it, it's simply part of the deal.
• Children: This is one of the things that I never considered before and as our kids grow older it slowly becomes more of an issue. As we both come from different cultures we were brought up very differently and therefore have very different ideas about child rearing. I am pretty layed back about the whole thing and my wife is fortunately someone that recognizes better ways of doing things, but I am sure that things would be different had we both been brought up similarly. There are other problems with children in an interracial marriage; one of which is language, I've spoken about this before, another one is identity. As my kids straddle the culture/race line it will make them more aware of both while at the same time never really belonging to either. It would be great to be able to say that it doesn't matter, and it shouldn't, but as I have seen, people, whether they mean to or not, treat you differently depending on how you look. If Hispanics are racist against Gringos, then they will see our kids as Gringos. If Gringos are racist against Hispanics, then they will see our kids as Hispanics. I certainly hope that as my kids grow older this will never be a problem.

I am sure that there are plenty more points, but for now these are all that come to mind. I will probably talk about this again but for now I think this will do.

Debt vs Bargain! The Deathmatch of the Century!

So my wife is planning a trip to her country of origin, and she is taking the kids with her. I'm not going because the money that we've put away isn't quite enough for all of us to go, so I get to be the one left behind; besides, I don't have enough vacation for the amount of time that my wife and the kids are going to be there.

Nevertheless my wife insists that I should buy a ticket and stay for as long as I can. I've been opposed to this idea because I've been against accruing debt since the beginning of our marriage. Oh, yeah, there is that thing about the Lord suggesting that we should avoid debt; that is a bit of a influence too.

My wife, being ever the optimist, is still trying to convince me to go. She has a couple of arguments that certainly get me thinking about it. First, she says that airline fares are really low right now -it was part of the reason we decided that her and the kids should go now- and it's true, and do we know if prices are going to be this low for very long or at least return to these prices by the time we have the money saved up? Second, when we all go down we want to tour the whole country and see people that we knew on our mission. Let's face it, these people aren't getting any younger and neither are we. The longer we wait the more things are going to change, and it's already been ten years.

So here I am trying to decide between time, price and debt. Do it now and we'll be in debt a while. Do it later and risk paying more, and missing more than we already have. I still lean in the direction that we should avoid the debt and save. Have faith as it were. It's not easy and I certainly don't like the idea of even more time passing but that is what faith is all about I guess.

One of those days.

Ever little once and a while I am convinced that God has stored up punishment for all my little sins and has to release them all at once. Not Big, Smiting, type of punishments. Just the punishments for not being as good of a person as I could be: Not being as nice to my fellow creatures, missing a prayer, really wanting to swear, adding my own lyrics to hymns, teaching my kids little habits that drive my wife nuts... etc. Anyway, I think there is an angel somewhere that running a tally on all my little misdeeds and punishment has to come down.

When punishment finally comes down it happens all in one day. A day when nothing goes right despite your best efforts. You can't find your keys, your late for work, you take the blame for something, someone is mad at you and you don't know why, you're overly self conscious, you forgot a bit of homework, you lose a glove...etc. So you spend the whole day in what feels like a broken treadmill. You can't get ahead no matter how are you run.

Usually when these days come around I find a nice controlled area of my house and don't answer the phone. As long as I am in an area that I can control then nothing can hurt me and once the day is over then I can resume my regular activities.

I just wish I could avoid these days, but as of now hiding is the best way that I have found.

Random Mission Memory

I've been thinking a lot about the mission lately. Could it be because it's been ten years since I was on my mission? Could it be that since I've been on facebook I've been in contact with a couple of people from the mission? Or is it just because I am feeling old because when I go to class I am hanging around guys that got off their mission maybe 3 months ago. I'm thinking the last of them.

Anyway, I thought I could do a little segment where I travel back into either my mind or my journal and dust off some of my old missionary tales, well at least the ones that I think are worth the retelling.

One of the things a missionary does is makes contacts with people. I served in some of the more populated areas and so many people knew who we were and most didn't want to have anything to do with us. So we were always on the look out to make new contacts.

One of my most memorable contacts was on a mini-bus. The thing you have to remember about mini-buses in third-world countries is that they don't care about your safety. Your Safety, Your Problem. So these mini-buses would take off as soon as the last guy's foot left the pavement. Once I just-so-happened to be that last man in the mini-bus. For my own pride I will state that most of the time I was never caught by surprise when the bus took off; although this time I was taken by surprise. When the bus took off my head slammed into one of the edges of the handrails connected to the ceiling, and I fell immediately into a seat. The lady I landed next to looked at me in horror and asked if I was okay. I said "Yea, it's not the first time I've hit my head on one of these buses. Since I'm a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder-day Saints we are consistently getting on these mini-buses...(you get the idea)"

Certainly one of my more impromtu contacts.