Entering the Summer of My Life

I have developed this rather inconvenient habit this semester......I sleep on the couch almost every night. I live with five roommates and I share a room with one of them. My love and appreciation for Parker, my roommate, is not what is in question, rather it is my lack of ability to find peace in my bedroom. From the beginning of the semester, whenever I lay down to go to sleep, my mind goes into overload with stress about life. "Are you caught up on your research thesis, you are still not married, have you finished your graduate school applications, why aren't you sleeping yet, ....etc....etc...etc." It became such a problem that I would stay up past three in the morning so I would become so exhausted I would pass out on the couch.....and the stress didn't follow out of my room onto my "de facto" bed "a la" couch.

Last night I tried out my bed again, and guess what.....YEP I stressed out of my mind till I passed out of exhaustion. When I got up this morning I started analyze what it was that was making me so stressed. Am I so far behind that every night I push myself to an ulcer to make sure I am in place? My musings led me to Great Harvest Bread where I was buying a batch of cinnamon rolls for the economics lab. Smelling the fresh baking bread, and the casual ambience of the store put me into a lull. Is my life so hard? Does it matter how ahead or behind I am? When was the last time you stopped to enjoy life, to live instead of simply existing and achieving....

Listening to "American Honey" , part of my new country kick back I am in right now, it spoke of nothing being sweeter in summertime than American Honey. The corny lyrics made me laugh, but the images of summertime in Montana brought tears to my eyes. I could feel the warm sun, so much closer at 7,000 ft elevation, licking my skin into a deep tan. I could smell the fresh cut hay, hear the rippling of the creeks throughout my ranch, and feel the shade of the pine trees as I hiked up in the mountains. I remembered the cold of Flathead Lake as I would jump into it and swim for hours, only to retreat to a dock and drink cold "Tea de Rey." Tears combined with smiles as I remembered camping this last summer with my family up by Lake Koocanusa, the first camping trip the men in our family have ever taken together. My life is so good,....and it has barely began. It is folly to view ones life in the comparison with past achievements. I am no longer the national champion in speech and the over achieving extracurricular student. Nor am I the party king who wasted his life on fast times and memories, and yet again I am not the super obedient missionary who dedicated my life God. I am simply Gage....and that encompasses all the past and all the future, whatever it may be. I am entering the summer of my life. I will attend law school this fall, and I have no idea which law school it will be, and later I will have a job and start my career. But the simple mechanics of living are less important than the moments we spend in life with others and the memories, memories like those that brought me so much joy today.

We focus so much as the accomplishment of a task we forget the joy the journey. In our need to be efficient, in a society that values what you can produce more than what have contributed, we are continually incentivized to forget the moments in the middle, and instead push through for the end result only to be once again thrown into another task. When was the last time we made goals for ourselves, and lived the moments in between those goals. When do we live our lives, and perform our jobs not at the ends themselves, but merely an means to an end, the end being achieving the ability to have free time to love life and share it with those we love. I was struck by a close friend recently who was listening to me talk about my abuelita and Nicaragua. She asked me if I had ever visited, and I let her know that I had not....and right there she made me promise to set a date to visit my family's ancestral home. The date is set, the summer when I graduate law school I will leave for Nicaragua and give myself the opportunity to see where the essence of who I am came from.

Let us enjoy all the seasons of our life. I have past the spring and am in the bloom of life, the summer where I will shine as brightly as I can, and I will enjoy the loves of life, and will burn in the heat of passion, the sun of our lives. I will work tirelessly, but not for the right to say I am successful, but rather to experience the joys this world has to offer. And as my life enters the twilight of Fall, and fades into the winter of my life as I await rebirth into another life, a better world, I will remember the lessons of summer, that life is meant to be lived in all seasons...and not merely endured.

Here's to sleeping in my bed again!

Reality and Anger

I have been fascinated with the concept of non-linear time since I was first made aware of it. I remember leaving my Psych 370 class, Personality Theory, and walking into the hall like it was the first moment of my life and possibilities were endless. I have forever been enticed to live my life in a way to reflect non-linear ideas though being constrained by a linear society.

Those feelings of freedom and enlightenment occurred again today as I went to a class on a part of Mormon scripture called "The Pearl of Great Price." We discussed what is reality? Well in the reality of our lives it is what is tangible or can affect permanently our lives or the lives of others. But in the context of eternity we never experience reality, at least not now. Reality is the mind of God, the context of where he dwells and his state of being. It is without beginning of days or end of years, it is eternal. Reality has no place in this life of ours. Here we can break away from the reality of eternal life, escape or rather postpone the consequences of actions as we make choices. God cannot exist here, nor can he stay in a permanent state here, and for us to be able to endure his presence we are transformed to a point where we are in reality and can experience him. He seeks to teach us, to enlighten our understanding and show us what is real, but we must choose to accept it in the context of this "fake" world of temporal decisions and effects. He teaches in the temple, and thus in the context of being between heaven and earth, in his figurative if not literal presence we can experience the ideas of the eternities. Just like non-linear time, this speaks to my soul. We seek for so much more than this life.

I remember being a little boy, well about 15, and aching for this world. I hated the injustice, the last of love and concern that was evidenced. I made dumb decisions one day when I grew despondent of life. After playing with my own existence, and a momentary lapse where I literally ran through the willows about a mile from my house with nothing on but my guilt and own anguish, I came home and slept. I remember feeling like we, humanity was meant for so much more than this paltry life. I think we have all had those moments where we recognize that we are not living a real life, but it is so beneath us, and yet so hard for us to comprehend. We are eternal beings, our souls feign to understand temporal when we have only ever known eternal. We have lived for eons as non-linear beings, ideas and concepts, and now we are forced to follow a linear world and the constraining upon us is the best evidence for which we can FEEL that this is not real. I feel so unlimited when I recognize that there is more. The commandments of God are not walls to control us, rather they are instructions into symbolic levels of what is real.

My second, rather random thought is that of anger. I have held rancor in my heart towards someone who, though they recognized I was unhappy and continued to seek to push me, seemed to only be doing that which he has done time and again. Individuals, though infinite with possibility and chance, are so much like the helix where they are bound to repeat their own decisions and choices again but at a different moment in their life. This individual does not understand his own actions, and merely plays his part. When we recognize our ability to change that part then we are held accountable for its consequences but until then we are like children merely acting out. I have such remorse for holding him in such low regard and now seek rather to love him and forget. Anger gives us nothing back in return but rather drains us until we are forced to feed upon ourselves. Forgiveness and love are an never ending well that will spring up more of their own feelings and therefore sustain us.

Here is to love, forgiveness, and the concept that we live outside reality......today has been a good day.

Help others to help yourself

I should be studying, but I am blogging. My priorities are jumbled, and frankly, I am not worried about it at the moment. Feelings impress their the desire to be shared and so I am acquiescing, like usual, to their demands.

Actually, I just got off a two hour phone conversation with a dear friend, and my mindset has changed, and so my topic is changing. I am listening to dance music and the upbeat tempo aides in the urgency to write my message before I sleep and get up in 5 hours to work out.

I feel so often like I have no control in my life. Obviously, there are many individuals who experience this feeling as well. Yet, I think we often overlook the number one way we deal with lack of control in our lives. We feel more in control of ourselves as we give advice to others and think that somehow by giving them the advice that often we are to take ourselves, that we are somehow aiding ourselves.

Do we really help that much when we listen, advise, listen, console, and then advise some more. I am a firm believer that we are in fact helping.

What is help? I am no miracle worker. I am not expecting anything I say to change someone's life forever. I am not expecting to move mountains or change the course of history, let alone one life with some motivational speech I ever give. I am however hoping to make a small disturbance, a ripple, a pebble thrown in the midst of a mighty river. That ripple in actuality does little nothing to the course of the river. However, the accumulation of pebbles in a river, thousands or even millions, acts like a dam and changes the course. In fact, the slow changes move a river more than a large dam will. Lifestyle changes that are immediate are like forcing a river to dam. The river stops its course, but has a tendency to overrun its edges and spreads in many directions, in fact it is directionless, other than moving down with gravity towards the path or least resistance. When we force people to change immediately, we will many times get the same chaotic effect. The small amount of pebbles that change a course in a small manner, allow the river time to cut away at the bank, and over years, thousands, it carves a new path, one of its own, and thus the accumulation of millions of pebbles brings about the desired result with a direction consistent with the purpose throughout.

When I talk to someone I just want to be the small pebble that through a gradual effect will change their life. In fact, if I don't change someone's life in a small way every day of my life I have wasted another day. I think our life is meant to be about gradual changes. Albeit there exists time when we need to make drastic changes, it is usually the slow change that is demanded by society and/or religion. If we all aiding each other in those changes through small acts of kindness of words of advise we would accomplish the task quicker. Thus a zion like people, one that cares as much for the others as for themselves, will usually accomplish more quicker.

This reminds me of the principles of Adam Smith. Those who hate capitalism, and its first proponent, Adam Smith, do not understand him. His principle of self interest, not greed, but self interest cannot be truly understand merely from reading "The Wealth of Nations" but only from a study of it as well as "Theory of Moral Sentiments." A people without morality acting selfishly with greed will never be able to progress far with capitalism. Rather with rule of law and a moral people, democracy and capitalism can exist and expand a community and country. In our lives we cannot progress or at least not at the rate that is possible without communal help. This help cannot be achieved without the ability to trust and rely on others, and that trust and reliance is built off of rule of law and a belief in the morality of the people. As a people are moral, the reliance increases and thus social contracts enforced by rule of law are more likely to occur, and thus society progresses at a greater rate.

Ultimately the principle I have beat around this entire is that it is more important to help others than yourself. By acting in our self interest often we will help others, and then the side effects give us a greater benefit than if we tried to help ourselves. When we give advise, or take it, we need to understand nothing changes overnight but if we are bettered for a moment, the ripples of the river, then we have made an impact. Then as those moments accumulate over a lifetime we are able to change the course of any life and thereby the world.

Family Potrait

I really should be going to bed. I have a meeting at 6:30 tomorrow,....but when I need to speak I have to let it out. I tried to force myself to bed a few days ago, and after rolling in bed for an hour, decided I should just get up and let my mind be at peace with what it was struggling with comprehending.

So here I am, listening to Dancing in September...yes I am listening to a 70's Disco hit and I am bouncing my feet wishing I was dancing, and perhaps it is true that the effects of sleep deprivation mirror being drunk, because my inhibitions have dropped.

My dearest, and in fact only, brother celebrated his 28 birthday a few days ago. He decided he needed a rifle from the ranch, and so decided to make a journey home and back to Idaho in a day. He asked me to go, and I rearranged my schedule so I could leave as soon as I was done teaching. That meant overloading my schedule, but any chance to get back to the ranch I take.

This week has been busy. I am the teaching assistant for Dr. Walburger in Economics and Dr. Whoolery in Psychology. This week, Dr. Walburger left town and I covered his principle of Microeconomics classes. I love to teach and so it was a joy expounding to the students the basic theories of competition and market power. I had to sacrifice getting up at 5:45 and working out or playing racquetball, so I could instead get to class early and prepare, but it was well worth it. I have an affinity for teaching and would love to teach if I know I could support my family on a teacher's salary. Nonetheless, the highlight of my week was on Friday when my brother came to my class and watched me teach. After class got out, he and I drove up to Montana. I slept most of the way up, catching up on needed rest, but as soon as we entered the Big Hole Valley, I was wide awake. The serenity and anachronism of my valley puts me at peace whenever I enter it. I am reminded of the temple. Whenever I attend the temple, I take off my watch because I know time has no place there, and in sacredness I devote what is necessary to God, instead of the time I have allotted. The same is true of the Big Hole. I don't give myself a time schedule, instead I devote the time that is necessary there and if that is longer or shorter than expected, then so be it. We drove down the small hill into the where the houses are clustered together to see my grandmother out with the leaves and my cousin cutting down some of the shrubs. We climbed the steps to our front door, and entered to the smell of fresh squash pie and my smiling mother. My father was writing in his journal in the computer room. The moment we came in, Clay and I together, without his wife, and just my mother and my father home I felt like I was a little boy again. I remembered the years it was just the four of us. We always ate dinner together, my mother always had some type of desert, my father was always preoccupied in the computer room, and Clay and I were always being smart asses. It was a family potrait, a moment that will be imbedded in my heart and mind. My mother is the same, except for a few more wrinkles, as she has always been. My father is unchanged, except his cut and trim body from working out everyday is now a little softer as he has settled into his 60's. My brother is still tall and brooding, though his extra weight has softened his features and given him a twisted smirk the does not bely his true love and charity. Me....well I don't think I have changed...but I am older, more cynical, not the toothpick I always was, instead I am in the position of not being thin and not really being overweight. Clay and I both look more like our parents, and our mannerisms, from how we walk to how we talk, reflect our father. Time has entered that sacred valley, though I have sworn not to bring it, but those things most important never change. The love of the home, the drama of dealing with my grandma, the smell of the new steers recently boughten and watched out the front window, the cold seeping through the walls to the bone. Every part of my home makes my heart wrench and makes me never want to leave.

We all agreed to get a family potrait done this year. We have never had a picture taken as a family, and I think it would be good to start the tradition, and so we are going to add it. We talked politics, school, religion, jokes, and goals as we sat around the table and ate ham, oriental salad, potato salad, squash pie, water brought from the artisan well 2 miles away, fresh rolls, and fresh made jams. We moved into the living room and we rotated with Clay talking to Dad and my mother and I talking about our most recent forays into new literature. Then my father and I talking politics and where I will go to law school, if I ever want to get married (he is pushing the issue, he wants grandchildren) and how I look more like him the older I get. Soon, the 3 hour drive back to Rexburg looms on our minds, and we have only had 3 hours at the house. We pick up and head to grandma's. She complains, bemoans illegal immigration (though she is hispanic) and then talks about dying...some things never change, and so we joke back that we will start to party and misbehave as soon as she dies, and she get feisty as usual and lets us know that she is going to haunt us till we die. We leave, and Clay and I joke about how I will dig her out of the grave to sit at my graduation from law school, because she is the main reason I am going, just so she can be happy knowing her grandson finally obeyed her wishes. We go home and hug everyone, with mom continually finding ways to always be the last person to get a hug, and then circling around and getting another one. We agree to meet up on Saturday, of next week, when they all come down to my mother's uncle's funeral.

3 hours home are filled with good conversation with my brother and dear friend........ and as I walk back into my apartment, and reality, realize that truly the home is as spiritual and renewing as the temple. I pray I may have that same spirit in my home someday, so that my children can feel as renewed to deal with life when they visit me, as I feel when I visit my home in the mountains of Montana.

Two dear friends....two perspectives

I recently had a moment of questioning. I think we all experience these. We wonder if we are making the right choices in our life, and if we are truly accomplishing what it is that we are here to do. Doubt, its a plague of the human condition, and I felt it and I needed confirmation and guidance. I have many friends who I could turn to and many who I have in the past. In my own apartment I have close friends who know me and would eagerly encourage me to move forward and tell me that they have such trust in my abilities that I should never waiver. I could have called my family, and the concern and care of my mother with the wisdom of my father could have stilled my troubled heart....for a moment. I don't turn to these people when I am in doubt. My doubt is too deep and too real for those who rely on me to know. I have to turn to people who I trust to see my weakness and who will not judge me less to know that I have weaknesses. These two people are completely different, and the circumstances of our relationships are different, and yet they are similar in that I confide most in them.

I have a close friend from Livingston, Thom Blake. We have been close since his friend and I use to do Impromptu speech competitions together. From our relationship, I became acquainted with many people in Livingston, Montana. I met a girlfriend that changed my life, a friend who to this day I hold closer than any sister I could ever have, and my finally my confidant. Thom knew a "kid" completely different than me who was his "epitome" of intelligence. While I was the quintessential LDS youth at this point in my life, Hadden was the quintessential free thinker and free spirit. I met Hadden once, and was fascinated by him. Within a few months he had moved to Texas, and we continued to communicate through email and instant messages. We didn't know each other, but somehow we developed a friendship that was unique. He introduced me to Leonard Cohen and many other innovative thinkers, and I have no idea what I showed him, unless it was that someone as regimented as myself was not a bigot. Hadden is openly bisexual, though he favors men, and I never judged him for it. We have met since our first meeting only two other times. The last time was over a summer when I was in Livingston visiting my girlfriend. When I would leave her house at 2:00 in the morning I would meet up with Hadden and we would discuss life. He would smoke, and I would brood and with the stars as our companions we just discussed what made us different, how we felt and thought different. I learned to respect him, though I did not always agree with him, I learned to love him and hold him as a close friend. We talked throughout my own rebellious years. He cancelled me when I broke up with Alex, he talked me through my own doubts on life. My family got use to him calling and even my bigoted father was unabashed when my "gay" friend would call. Hadden is unique and his opinion matters more to me than anyone else I know save Danny. Hadden is intelligent, witty, and wise and he has taught me that life is more than labels, and it is meant to be lived and not contemplated.

Danny I met on my mission. He was in my apartment "wasting" time when he was suppose to be proselyting. I was cold with him and later had to apologize. He later became a District Leader and my closest advisor. I relied on him more than he knew. When I was worried about the mission or my zone, I knew all it took was a call to Danny and he would gently reassure and remind me of priorities. We stayed close throughout the mission, and my favorite memories include staying late listening to opera, as he explained to me the finer points of the art. I remember getting only two hours of sleep and then working hard all the next day, with my limited spanish, as we discussed Don Quixote and other literary masterpieces. He taught me "my" leadership style. He showed me that what destroys people more than criticism, is self doubt, and I learned to never allow those I served in capacity as a leader to feel that doubt. In short, Danny was my hero, and he still is. I want to be the type of father Danny will be, and I want to be the type of man he is today.

When I doubt I turn to both of these two. Hadden calls me at 3:00 in the morning and emails me. Danny responds the next morning. Both give advise the calms my soul and clears my mind, though their advice is different. They are like family to me. Though I know one only through our communication and not through physical contact over the last 8 years, and the other I know from close association of 2 years, and infrequent contact over the last 2,....though all of this, I hold them as dear as family.

We all need the time to doubt and to question ourselves. We all need to face the dark abyss and welcome it. When I look into the darkness I want and need Hadden and Danny behind me advising me. Until I am married and find one with whom to be one, they will be the my closest advisors, my dearest friends.

What are your idle thoughts.......

Today was "Business Summitt" at BYU-Idaho. It is an opportunity for students to have a legitimate reason to skip school all together, because most classes are cancelled to provide an opportunity to attend the guest speakers presentations. However, being in Senior Capstone for Economics, I was required to attend at least two of the break out sessions with our speakers. I would have preferred to have gone to Jon Huntsman Sr. presentation at 2:00 pm, but I was going to be working then. So, I went to a presentation made by a famous LDS author and investigative journalist. He spoke about himself.....a lot....but he made a comment that struck me.

"What do you think about when you have idle thoughts?".......... I don't usually have time for idle thoughts. My mind is constantly moving. I am worrying about what I have to do for school, about what I need to get done for my calling, about the situations of my friends, the cattle prices in Montana, my grandmother's health, my LSAT, my work schedule, my savings, if I am ever going to find who I am suppose to marry....the list goes on and on.....and so at first this comment made me laugh. "I am far too busy to have idle thoughts....." Then I realized that was not true. I remember the moments when I just sit, and stare....when my mind reboots and I can just think quietly and for a moment my life is my own and not an instrument being used for others. Other times include when I withdraw completely and just type and do Montana statistics. What do I think about when I have idle thoughts......two things really. I think about Montana and the growth in its cities. I think about the beauty of my state and how much I love it, how close I feel to it. The second thought, it always my ranch. With both those ideas in my mind I re-entered the world where the speaker went on to make his point. What you think about when you have idle thoughts is an indicator of how successful you will be in your career.

I was shocked......I always HOPED, I would be successful at law. I know I don't have the greatest love for it, but I do have a gift, at least that is what I have been told, for arguing and for presenting my case. Yet, this man told me my thoughts betrayed the level of my success. How can I make my thoughts part of my occupation?

I have never wanted to be a rancher, I still do not. I see what my father does, and although I would love the down time in winters, when you aren't feeding cattle or doctoring them, I could not handle the constant pressures of manual labor every day. I love the outdoors, and I would love the time to read, and to constantly to be finding ways to maximize profits, but I could not be my father. I don't have the mechanical skills or any other number of prerequisites needed to run our operation. Yet my mind constantly falls back to the fields of my home. I feel so connected to them. My father told me, "one day you will feel the land is your flesh and the water is like your blood." I remember him telling me this as we walked the fields irrigating by hand. I thought he was foolish, and I was only 8, but now that I am older I would not assume to have his affinity for the land, but I feel it deep within. I love those fields, the memories they hold bind the physical attributes of the land to me like a covenant. I cannot be parted from it, and for this reason I will never sell my ranch, and if there was more land and greater ability to merely financially run the ranch, and hire a foreman for the manual labor and everyday control, I would be eagerly looking forward to returning. I cannot return.....and so I am on a train to "somewhere" and my heart will forever be left behind in Montana and my ranch.