The General Rules #7 - Finding Fire

One time I wrote this about love,
"To quantify the incalculable.
It's like a fever that rises hot in your cheeks,
before spreading to your chest and then settling
somewhere between terror and bliss."

This is at once terribly wrong and perfectly right.

For all my moments of clarity and logical profundity and clever reversals and rehearsals and recitations about love, at the end of the day I still found myself missing someone. No one in particular. Just someone. And that was the problem. I wanted someone to talk to. I mean really talk to. Someone to understand every reason behind my actions regarding "love." Someone who understood that I was only writing to save my life. This blog was the bastard child of those imagined conversations. The girls came and went and it was hard. And yet, I cannot in good conscience condemn my path up to this point. Could it have gone any different? Any better? It may be a long time before I fully understand all of the milestones on my broken road.

Only when a momentous wave of appreciation and affection finally overtook me could I see the futility, the naivety, the simple presumptuousness of my endeavor. Of all the geniuses and mentors that have gone before, how could I have possibly have been satisfied or happy with my childish conclusions about this thing called love? I vainly thought I had something to offer, or could succeed where all the better people had failed. And failed they have.

I can say this because the things they have described, with their various methods and theories and conclusions, are pale, shivering children compared with what I now feel and know. And I see my own words as hollow figures of unoriginal works. I could barely name what I observed, like a toddler just learning that there are words for the things around him. Trying to describe or quantify the ways and workings of love with those words is like doing brain surgery with a hatchet. Giving "rules" for, and building white fences around a feeling is like trying to cage lightning. Love is elemental. It is a primal force. An unchangeable law of nature. And I will no longer try to compose its abstract.

Because our tools are painfully inadequate for the task, I will stop trying to describe what I observe. This will be the last General Rules post.

But before leaving, I will share a few things that I have recently learned about love's effects and implications. Those things that are quantifiable.

Love is completely a figment of our imaginations. Lest that conjure up a negative connotation, I mean imagination in the best sense of the word. The child-like wonder and creativity and beauty, just because it existed only in your mind and nowhere else, did not make the feelings you felt while imagining any less real. It was real because it was imagined. Our senses can be deceived. They are unreliable. Perceptions rely on the compliance of others, and if love is simply a perception based on logic, it is fallible. Logic may suffice at first, until new information is presented, at which point we must throw out our line of reasoning and start over. Love may make sense on a page. It may seem logical, but it rarely is. How often do we try to anticipate it using our logic and fail miserably? Imagination on the other hand can adapt to any information. It is robust, alive, and constantly in flux. This makes it youthful. If love exists in our imagination, it will never fade. We will never get tired and "fall out of love." I for one want to keep it alive and well and I vow to make it as wonderful as I've always imagined. I realize that those could easily be the words of a deranged stalker, but the difference between being madly in love and being a creepy stalker is only a matter of degrees and semantics.

Love is a choice. Our own prophet hinted at this idea six months ago. "Choose your love. Love your choice." Some think that love is an involuntary, unconscious effect caused an unknown combination of factors. But I am here to tell you that love wants nothing to do with ethereal notions of factors that we label "causes of love." Love has nothing to do with chemistry, humor, attraction, lust, appreciation, social standing, desire (enhanced by "the game"), and thousands of other things that do not matter in the least. Initial attraction may be involuntary, but I ask what initial attraction has ever turned into a full-blown crush without constant conscious dwelling, day-dreaming, and flights of fancy? Does this initial attraction to another person cease once we enter into a monogamous marriage or relationship? Of course not. The only thing that changes is the choice. Before a devoted relationship we nurtured this attraction constantly, and after a relationship begins, we (read:most of us) choose not to indulge it any more. Thus, the initial attraction never grows into anything significant. Love is a choice, but this should not demystify it or destroy any notions of its romantic underpinning. The choice to nurture love is infinitely more romantic than attributing feelings of love to being out of our control. The notion of love being out of our control has arisen from centuries of men rationalizing their affairs to their wives. "I just couldn't help it," is an excuse, not an eternal truth. And it is not love. If love is out of our control in the beginning of a relationship, then it always remains so, and could disappear one morning without explanation. It is a weak replacement for taking responsibility. But if we constantly choose to love then it becomes romantic. It becomes undying.

I know that there is no single "right" person for everyone. I know that there is no such thing as a "soul mate." But I now can see how easily those labels would arise. Because finding someone you can truly choose to love, wholly and completely, makes you feel as if you really have found that person. Finding love simply is a matter of finding someone who you are satisfactorily compatible with. Since true, romantic love is monogamous, that makes you feel as if there is no one else who could possibly compare. Again, this does not undermine love's boundless romanticism. The romantic aspects emerge when you choose that single person to be the object of your undying affection and when you choose to exert all your effort into making that one person happy. And it is romantic that any of us find somebody to love, given the circumstances and chance encounters in our lives. That we find a compatible match in the sea of humanity around us is the biggest miracle I have ever experienced. And it is hopelessly romantic.

If love is imagined and if it's a choice, maybe we make our own soul mates.

That is what I have learned. And it has fundamentally changed me. I found her. I found fire.

[Keep Following.]

Great Moments In My Life

Sometimes the stars align. Sometimes impossible things happen. Sometimes these things happen to me. I was reminded of these few times when one happened the other day. But first, a little commentary. It seems like more often than not, toast lands butter-side down, dogs have to sneeze right when your face is closest, toothbrushes seem magically attracted to the toilet, Lindsay Lohan doesn't overdose, and Justin Bieber's music keeps getting purchased--almost as if by some magical force. Along with natural disasters, I think these moments are God's little way of letting us know that we are not in control. I'm not saying God causes these things to happen, He just allows them to happen. (Because he definitely has nothing to do with Lindsay or The Biebs.) The most exciting thing about these moments for me is that I cannot wait to watch the replay in heaven. Or wherever I end up when I'm dead. It will be like youtube, but more personal. Maybe it will be called metube.

But onwards to my first greatest moment. Picture me. Six years old. White-blond hair. Cowboy boots. That is what I looked like the day it happened. I guess it was a day like any other. On this day we happened to be playing football in the street with the college kids who lived across from us. So there I was. On a team. Running around being generally useless, I'm sure. That is, until I went long. I clomped northbound on 200 East, arms outstretched. I wasn't even looking for the ball floating toward me in the air. I must have looked like a little cowboy zombie, running like that. And suddenly there was a football in my hands. In my little kid perspective I looked backward at the cheering students, and they seemed to be a hundred yards away. I had just caught a touchdown pass. I was a hero. I had done an impossible thing. It was the start of my amazing career as a pro-football player. The celebration lasted into the night.

In heaven the video will be short. Maybe ten seconds. It will be shot in that old-timey style that flickers and the people move too fast. It will show little me running for approximately 3.54 feet and catching a ball thrown right into my hands. Less glamorous. But hey, you gotta start somewhere.

Amazing moments in my life took a 10 year hiatus. I guess catching the pass of a lifetime filled my amazing quota for quite awhile. That is until one fateful night in the Bozeman Stake Center I was center court, holding a basketball. I gave the ball small toss with heavy backspin. The ball sprung backwards and I kicked at it. The heavens shook for my good that night. The ball soared through the air. Going, going, going. Time slowed. Emotions ran high. Swoosh. A perfect half-court shot.

The replay in heaven will be boring. It will show a bunch of awkward zitty teenagers kicking balls at basketball hoops for two hours. Shane and Chet and I all taking turns. And finally one will go in. The celebration lasts longer than is needful for the moment.

Fast forward 8 years. Monday December 20th 2010. I'm pushing carts at Costco. I'm waiting for a line of oblivious customers to get out of my way so I can stow my line of carts in the entrance. Suddenly a rogue cart comes careening into my peripheral vision. Pushed carelessly by some old dude, the cart is headed straight for a stray toddler. He stands like a deer in the headlights right next to my row. I don't have time to think, so I stick out my leg and kick the murderous cart towards the motionless lines of extra carts. The cart does an elegant spin and then lands right on the end of one of the rows. Perfectly stowed and interlocked. Disaster was averted. Not only did I save a miniature human from what surely would have been a most heinous death and/or dismemberment, but I stowed an extra cart without using my hands. I was super-human for half a second. This time no celebration was needed. I just smirked to myself and thought about how awesome I am. No thanks was necessary.

Yeah, right. Where was the mother?! She should have showered me with gifts and affection and different creams and lotions. But I didn't even get a, "OH thank you, you are so great, take this cash." Lame. There better be replays in heaven so I can show this mom what happened and get my dues.

[Keep following. There is more where that came from. Filler... fillerup... FILL 'ER UP PLEASE!]

The General Rules #2 - The Necessity of "The Game" (Part 1)

"Could I trust you with my heart if I was sure you wouldn't break it?" (Yes, I just quoted myself).

This is a touchy subject and I am quite positive that I won't handle it as delicately as most of you would prefer. I also want to re-emphasize rule #1 when I started this segment. There are exceptions. Some of us know people who fell in love at first sight in High School and have been together ever since. This is not that story. This is what happens to the rest of us.

I start by quoting a sage Professor Young of BYU, "Our hopes are not always fulfilled. That, we have been told, is the nature of our existence here. And though good things can happen to us, though peace and joy are assured us according to our faith, the good things must often come through a process of struggle and disappointment and patient waiting." I'd like to take this idea a step further, and suggest that, "struggle, disappointment and patient waiting" are essential to the process of finding "true love."

We all have the same story somewhere in our early childhood. For me it was a CD player. For others it may have been a bike or a video game or a Barbie. I wanted a CD player when I was 12. It was a Philips 45 second anti-skip jogproof CD player and it was $25. It was this one:

Beautiful isn't it? But the problem with being 12 is that you have no money. Or job by which one may ascertain said funds. So I saved. I begged. I mowed lawns. I did extra chores. And slowly but surely I saved enough and the day came when I triumphantly marched into Target and bought my prize. I took amazing care of this thing. I kept it clean, avoided dropping it, and never went jogging with it. And it rewarded me with TEN years of faithful service before being irrevocably replaced by my iPod. (Which is still running strong after almost six years.) The point of this story is that I worked for this CD player. I put sweat and long hours of waiting and daydreaming into earning this CD player. I treasured it because I earned it. And it rewarded me by going the distance.

Most of us also have a sad story that runs in an opposite vein to the story above. It goes something like this: we asked our parents for something and they got it right away for us, and we played with it for a total of twenty-four hours before the infatuation rubbed off and it sat in a box somewhere for years only to be sold for 120% off at a garage sale. Horrible isn't it?

Before I get into the meat of this post, I'd like you all to remember that old cliche that reminds us, "We all want what we can't have."

 Like my CD player, boys and girls will obsess about each other. We will wait for months or maybe years harboring a small, flickering hope that that special someone will eventually want, need, or even notice us. We all have that hopeless crush. That original person that never knew we existed. Oh Megan, how your flaxen locks will forever haunt me. Ironically, the thing that keeps this perversely ridiculous hope alive is the fact that it will never be fulfilled. Read that last line again. I'm proud of it. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why can't we be happy with what is given to us? Why can't we be satisfied with the toy our parents bought us on a whim? Why can't we be satisfied with a "game-free", simple, no-nonsense, straightforward, forthcoming, easy relationship?

The answer is pride. We simply view ourselves and our worth as humans kind of like a university is rated by how many applicants it turns away. There is something grossly satisfying about turning away applicants for our love and affection. It makes us feel wanted. Important. Worth more than we actually are. From this elevated self-view we draw our lacking self-esteem. No one, I repeat no one, wants to be easy. We want to be more complicated than we are. We want to feel as though we are the best around. In love we do not want to be cheap recipients. Nor do we want to earn the love of someone else at no cost. For, in either situation, we feel like less than we are worth. No one wants the cheaply attained gift. We want the challenge. We live for the challenge. When all is said and done and love is deemed mutual, neither party wishes to look back upon the road leading to this junction and think, "My, that was easy!" because this would inevitably lead into thoughts of, "Why did I end up with this person no one else wanted? What is wrong here?" And like many things, at that point we will create the evidence to support the belief. We will start making things up in our minds to get out.

To avoid this thought process, "The Game" was invented. Its very name is laughably ironic. Because the nature of a game usually includes fun. And this Game is only fun if you are winning. And I will tell you right now, in this specific game, there are very few winners. Though the Game is hard and confusing and at times wrenches on our heartstrings. It is a necessary evil. For it alone will help us look back upon our road and be able to say, "I did it. I did it when no one else could. I am in love with a person who is in love with me alone. And while everyone else wanted what we have, only I got it. Now I can trust this person with my heart. Because I know for a fact that they can break it."

[Keep following parts 2 and 3 are coming soon to an internet near you.]

The General Rules

No this is not about the online auto insurance company. (Although don't get me started. Those commercials make me want to poke my eyes out with a stick.) This is not a declaration about how the military rules! This is about another type of battle organization. These are the General Rules. Love. Yes, I'm talking about love.

Some of you may remember my poll from awhile back about starting a separate blog about love. Due to the mixed reaction, I decided not to do it. Plus, two blogs is a bit much. So I'm starting a new segment called, you guessed it, The General Rules. But before I get into the meat of this new segment I'm going to lay down a few ground rules for the General Rules:

1. They are the "General" rules. This means that there are exceptions. There are always exceptions. Everyone knows someone who had a fairytale courtship, engagement, and subsequent marriage. This is an exception to the rule. For most of us, dating is more akin to a fight to the death in gladiatorial ring than a delicate dance in  a palace. For most of us, getting engaged and married will require a herculean effort. For most of us, this whole "love process" involves more slogging through the mud than walking on clouds. That is why I titled the new segment the general rules rather than "The rules that are always true no matter what."

2. I am not an expert. Don't quote me on anything. In fact, most of you will be better off not reading any of these segments.

3. I cannot be held personally responsible for any actions you may take after reading my reflections and ruminations on the subject.

4. I am always right. Comments are welcome on these posts, but just know that any comments that disagree with my opinion will be subsequently laughed at and ignored.

Thank you for your consideration. And I hope you are looking forward to the forthcoming mindless blather about the most complex subject on earth as much as I am.

[Keep following. Actually don't. You may not like what you find.]