Just some life thoughts.

I love this song. Like, I can't stop listening to it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BukPc7ip4Ws

I've been reading a lot lately. I really like it. Words are so beautiful. I'm thinking of changing my major ... I might want to be an editor for a publisher. Deseret Book, maybe? Well, I am about half way through Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, yeah him), it's so good. It is the kind of good that makes you want to laugh and cry and take pictures, all at the same time. My favorite line so far is "Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life." I thought that was beautiful. I also am in the middle of The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis. If you've never read anything by him, I would highly recommend it. It doesn't matter what, just read him (but especially The Screwtape Letters or The Great Divorce, so good). But anyways, The Abolition of Man, it's really good, but hard. I mostly don't understand what he's talking about, but the stuff I do understand is brilliant and the stuff I don't understand is beautiful. Here's an excerpt. 

For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our students we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a weak heart. 

And another. 

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. 

Last one, I promise. It's my favorite part of the book so far, actually. 

I do not mean, of course, that he will make any conscious inference from what he reads to a general philosophical theory that all values are subjective and trivial. The very power of Gaius and Titius depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is 'doing' his 'English prep' and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put in his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. The authors themselves, I suspect, hardly know what they are doing to the boy, and he cannot know what is being done to him.  

So that happened. I am in such a ... reflective, almost hippie mood. I wish life wasn't so ... full of hard choices. I wish I knew what I was supposed to do, so that I could just do it. It still might be hard to do it, but at least then I would know what to do. All this not knowing is scaring me to death and I mostly hate it. 

I just have to share this last thing, even though it doesn't match anything in this post. Sorry, this is a random one. Mostly, I wrote this because I was too lazy to actually write out a journal entry for today. 

So yesterday at dance, we were doing our set dance in hard shoe alone, so we could hear what our sounds were like, etc. As I stood there, watching everyone else dance, I was blown away by how talented all the girls in my class are. It almost brought me to tears, as well, watching them and how good they were at their respective part. In some steps, one girl would be really good at the back clicks, or had such good sounds or was spot on with the music or I could go on and on. The point is, none of us did the step perfectly. We all did well, but none of us were perfect at it. But we all had parts of it that we did better than anyone else in the class. And it just made me wonder if that's how God feels, watching us in life (being a dance teacher has given me a lot of opportunities to wonder that; I'm sure I'll get even more when I'm a mother). None of is perfect at living life, but when one of us messes up or gets off the music or don't turn out our feet, He doesn't think, wow, she's a terrible dancer, why is she even here? Nope. After he tells us, wow you did SUCH a good job of hitting your back clicks. Make sure, though, to fix this part of the dance because you got a little off there. 

I just love how much Heavenly Father loves us, even when we make mistakes and even when we make the same mistakes over and over again. It again makes me think of dance. Being a teacher is so interesting, because I have watched my girls dance so much that I could tell you before they even do their step or leap 23's or whatever exactly what they will do well at during it and what they need to fix. I can tell you that I will have Molly fix her turn out, I will tell Bella to slow down her leaps, and I'll tell Fiona to straighten her front leg. But I can tell you that Molly always kicks her butt, never once misses it; Bella puts all her energy into getting higher leaps, every time; Fiona has the most beautiful, turned out feet on every leap. Just because they aren't perfect at leaps doesn't mean they aren't brilliant dancers and just because they keep making the mistakes, every week, that doesn't mean I don't love them with all my heart. Because I do. And it's so wonderful when I can see improvement, when I can tell they went home practiced that week. There is no better feeling as a teacher than to watch your student struggle with something and then one day, get it. Even if it's not perfect, that doesn't matter. Perfect has nothing to do with it. I love that dance helps me understand how Heavenly Father can love me even when I come to Him everyday and say, look, I messed up again, I am so sorry. But tomorrow, I will be better. And then the next day happens, and I have to say the exact same thing. I know He never gets tired of it, because He loves me and just wants to help me. And I know that when I make progress, even just a little bit, it makes Him happy. 

Isn't life just brilliant sometimes?