Re-Dos!

One day I was checking my Facebook, like I do everyday so it’s impossible to tell which day it was. But, anyway, I was reading my newsfeed and read one of my students statuses that said, “A dead end is a perfect place to turn around, and rock bottom is good solid ground to kick back up to the top.” When I read this I was like, “what is he talking about? He’s going scuba diving and he got lost?” and I re-read it. Isn’t that such a profound thing to say? I’m not sure if he wrote it or not, but he always says good things like this that he makes up, so I think he was quoting himself.

After I understood that he wasn’t being literal, I thought about how true that was. Even though we don’t see a dead end or rock bottom as optimistic things. We see them as failures. We’ve sunk to the bottom. We’ve reached a dead end. Those are both bad things. But each of these places have only one place to go. At a dead end, all you can do is turn around and go back and find the right road. When you’re at rock bottom, the only place you can go is up, you can’t get any lower. When we find ourselves at these places, we can’t focus on the fact that we’re failures. We need to focus on the fact that things won’t get any worse and that we can and will improve.

One day I was riding in the car with one of my friends, Guizella, and we missed our turn. When we realized this, she said, “Well, now we get to make a U-turn! Those are my favorites.” We need to be like Guizella and love turning around and getting another chance. She could have been embarrassed that she missed her turn, or frustrated that we would be late, or whatever. But she wasn’t. She was glad that she could make a U-turn and have another shot at finding the right road.

Tonight I was babysitting my neice and nephew, and we were watching Meet the Robbinsons. For those of you who haven’t seen that movie, it’s about a little orphan boy who is an inventor and his future self invents a time machine, but someone steals it and comes back to when he’s a little boy to ruin his future. His future son comes to fix the situation and ends up taking him to the future. It’s kinda confusing here, you should just go watch it, it’s really good. Anyway, while he’s in the future, one of the inventions his future self has invented, a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich maker, gets clogged or something, and he has to fix it. Well, it ends up exploding and he begins to apologize, but everyone is congratulating him on his failure. The teach him that he wouldn’t learn how to succeed without failing sometimes.

I think we should look at failure more this way. Without coming to our dead-ends and rock bottoms, we wouldn’t know how to be successful. We can’t cherish the good without the bad. If we were always successful, we wouldn’t know how to be proud for our accomplishments, and we probably wouldn’t even be trying at all. We can’t be afraid to fail, because then we won’t do anything, ever. But when we fail, we need to cash in our re-do’s and start over. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Nervous, Excited, or Hungry?

A while ago I was talking to a friend of mine who was going into basic training for the army. He was leaving soon and I asked him if he was nervous or excited to go. He asked why those were his only options, so I said, “oh, sorry, I forgot you’re a boy. Are you nervous, excited, or hungry?”

Last night I went to the Brighton High School Drama awards ceremony, and the seniors said they were nervous and excited. The more I thought about it, I think we’re always nervous and excited about any big change in life. The small things, not so much. For example, I may get excited to eat breakfast because I bought my favorite kind of cereal, or I might be nervous because the milk is past it’s expiration date, but I’m never excited AND nervous to eat breakfast. But when I went to college, I was nervous and excited.

Both of these feelings come because we’re unsure of something in our ‘moving on’ experiences. I wasn’t sure if I would have friends, if I would be successful in my major, if I would get a long with my roommates, if I would have enough money for what I needed or wanted, etc. This unsureness caused both nervous and excited feelings, so I was nervous and excited.

As I talk to people who are making a big change in their life, such as moving away, getting married, transferring to a new school, going on a mission, or joining the army, I ask them if they are nervous or excited. I don’t think I’ve ever asked anyone who didn’t say they felt both. We can feel both because things can go well, and thinking of that makes us excited, or things can go bad, which makes us nervous. We don’t know which way things will go, so we feel both.

Even though we feel nervous and excited, there are more feelings than that, such as hungry. I’ve always heard that we need to listen to our hearts and it will tell us how we feel. Well, I think my heart is broken because I don’t feel things in my heart. I feel them in my stomach. I’m not sure if my heart is lazy or what, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt with my heart. I feel excitement, nervousness, and hunger in my stomach. I also think that’s where my love comes from, not that I’m going to eat someone because I love them, but I feel that I care for someone lower than where my heart is.

At church on Sunday I was sitting next to Carol Atwater and she said something or did something, I don’t remember what it was now, but my stomach lurched and I realized how much I appreciate her and love her. This feeling came from my stomach, and I wasn’t fasting, and I wasn’t hungry. It’s hard to explain. When I feel the Spirit it comes in a stomach lurch of excitement, like you have to ball up your fists and squeal like when you were little and your parents told you that they were taking you to Chuck E. Cheese’s. You don’t have anywhere else for this excitement to go, so you have to squeeze your hands and make a high-pitched whine to keep from exploding. That’s how I feel the spirit. It’s not in my heart. It’s in my stomach.

Many people may say that I don’t have a heart. Well, I feel my pulse, so there’s something doing my hearts job to pump my blood. And my stomach does all the feeling and emotional stuff. Maybe I don’t have a heart. But I’ll love you with all my stomach. Isn’t that bigger than your heart? I have more love to give than people with hearts.

Just Beeee Yourself

Today I was at Carolynn’s last high school concert and they sang “Somebody to Love” originally performed by Queen. Well, in the middle of the song it breaks out into a guitar solo, so the choir air-guitared through the solo. It was funny. But not everyone did it, and she and one of her friends were mad after the concert because of the lack of participation. The people were afraid of looking stupid, so they didn’t join in the fun and just stood there and looked awkwardly at everyone else. Which consequently made them look silly, which is what they were trying to avoid in the first place.

I was thinking about my time in high school as a student, and as a teacher. I’ve had students that don’t commit to something because they think they’ll look silly and they’re worried about what other people will say or think. So they do whatever half-heartedly, and end up looking silly, people talk about them in a negative way, and they become a self-fulfilled prophesy. If they had done it, everyone would either not have noticed them, or admired them for being brave.

One day when I was student teaching, a group of students were practicing for their Thespian Conference scene. Someone from the group came in to get another member of the group, and he refused to go because they were practicing in the big hall where all their classmates could see them. I told this student about UNC in Frasier Hall where everyone rehearsed in the main hall so everyone could see. There are often people in the lawn surrounding the Performing Arts building practicing their scenes, monologues, songs, or warming up. Often passer-by think these people are seriously fighting and feel they need to intervene, or, after checking for a blue-tooth divice and not finding one, consider them crazy. But the PVA students know better. My student said, “that’s cool, Miss Stieber. But that’s college. This is high school where people are judgmental and think being different is a bad thing.”

I don’t think high schoolers think being different is a bad thing. I think everyone makes fun of people who are different because they are jealous that they feel comfortable enough to be themselves despite the fact that they don’t fit in or people might make fun of them. The most popular people in schools are the ones who fit in and make fun of their peers for not wearing the right kind of clothes, or not having the in hairstyle. But the most admired people are the ones who are different and proud to be.

My brother, Joseph, told me about a time when my dad took him and our siblings to school. This was when I was in college and he was a junior or a senior in high school. He didn’t bring a coat and it was a cold day. My dad noticed this and made him take his, a tan trench coat. Now, trench coats are nice for business people and adults, but not for high school boys. Joseph didn’t want to take the coat, but my dad made him, so he did. When he got inside he made his way immediately to the science teacher and asked for a magnifying glass. When his teacher asked why, Joseph gestured to the trench coat, which he was wearing, and said, “are you kidding? Look!” So his teacher gave him a magnifying glass. Joseph walked around pretending that he was intentionally looking like a private eye detective searching for clues in the hall way.

That’s what we need to do. Make the best of our situations. I would have taken that coat off as soon as I entered the school and stashed the coat in my locker. But Joseph decided to make the most of his situation and make everyone notice him and how silly he was, which caused everyone to laugh and think more highly of him than they already had.

Rise and Shine! No Thanks.

I think almost every one in the world will agree, the worst thing to do is wake up and get out of bed. Unfortunately, it’s a task most people have to do daily. It’s so hard because your bed is nice and warm, you’re comfortable, and you have to go through the monotony of your life all over again. The first step to your day is swinging your leg out of the blankets and onto the floor. It sounds easy enough, but it’s usually the hardest step of the day. Unless you’re on bed-rest, you hate getting out of your bed. If you are on bed-rest, or in any other way confined to your bed, you’d like nothing more than to take that step out of the bed, I’m sure. But the rest of us wish we were held prisoner in our bed.

The last step of the day is back into the bed. It’s interesting, because I put off this step for as long as I can too. I don’t really know anyone who likes going to bed. I’m not sure why we find it so hard to leave, and then go back at the end of the day again. I never say, “thank goodness it’s bed time,” unless I’ve had an awful day. But even then, I lay in bed and thoughts of my worst day run through my mind and are never exhausted. The time that I spend lying awake in my bed is often the most stressful time of my day. I realize that I didn’t do everything that I should have, or wanted to, and I forgot to do something important for the next day. Then you finally drift off to sleep and have nightmares about whatever you were worrying about before sleep found you, and you toss and turn all night long until it’s time to wake up again.

The worst sound in the world is whatever wakes you up. At any other time of the day it could be the most beautiful sound, like the laugh of your child, but when it wakes you up you want to destroy whatever makes it. That awful alarm clock sound is sometimes played on radio commercials and it’s still the most awful sound in the world, but it’s at least a thousand times worse when it’s pulling you from your REM cycle and a lovely dream. A while back I heard about an alarm clock that would go off and, after you hit snooze, it would move to a different part of the room. If I had one, I would hunt that thing down with a baseball bat and need to replace it daily.

There are some days that waking up is a good thing. Well, every day waking up is better than the alternative, but you never see it that way. I don’t know anyone who wakes up and says, “Oh, good, I’m alive again!” unless they’re really old or ill. The days that something exciting is going to happen, like Christmas, when the monotony will be broken up, it is easier to get up. If you know you’re going to see a cute boy that you like, it’s much easier to get up and not push snooze a bazillion times because you need to shower, do your hair perfectly, apply your make-up so you look flawless, and dress your best to impress that boy. Those days are easy-to-get-out-of-bed days. Twitterpation is useful for that. Until you get married and the person that you’re twitterpated about is in your bed. You’ll never want to leave again.

Unfortunately, on days that will be easy-wake-up-and-get-out-of-bed days, the night before you have trouble sleeping because you are excited. You want tomorrow to come, and when it does, you leap out of bed to meet the new day. As it goes on, you begin to lag and don’t fully enjoy whatever you had been excited about because you only got three hours of sleep the night before.

This sleeping thing should be easy, but it’s actually pretty rough. We could just do away with it, it’s over rated any way, right. Wrong. If you don’t sleep, you die. I guess we’ll just have to fight to fall asleep, struggle to wake up and stay that way until we quit and don’t wake up any more.