Musings of a Middle-Child

Quick! Why was Ender able to beat the formics? Spoiler: (don't worry. I HATE spoilers, so I won't reveal anything crazy) Ender was able to defeat the formics because he understood them perfectly. His conflict, therefore, was that he could not understand his enemy perfectly without also loving them. Of course, it broke his heart to destroy them. Still, the principle is powerful. Even if we come from completely different situations, even if people have faults that drive us mad, we can still come to love them by learning about their past, their dreams, their motivations. Christians believe that God is our Father and an all-knowing being. He knows each person perfectly, and he loves perfectly. There is a fundamental connection between knowing a person and loving them. I firmly believe that the best way to strengthen a bond with someone is to open up to them. That means breaking down the walls and social barriers. We humans have developed an innate fear of admitting our fea

This might be a short post. I just had to say these things. Some people do really weird things that should just be eradicated from society. #1   Mothers, stop giving your child's age in months after a year. I can forgive the "18 month" because it is a socially accepted interval of age, but it is just obnoxious to say "15 month" or "20 month" or "26 month". Stop it. Please. #2   Social Media videos where you use cards instead of your voice.  For heaven's sake. Stop. First of all, you're not doing it for impact, you're just following a trend, and a dumb one. I have seen a grand total of ONE video that used the card technique for effect, and it worked. Only that one time was I moved by the silence. The rest of the time, it just forces the viewer to take 5 times as long to read something that doesn't even have "whoa" moment. #3   Fidget Spinners I saw an infant sucking on one. 'Nuf said. #4   The Fac

Get ready for a whole lot of quotes! If there is one thing that is true about everyone in this day and age, it is that we are all worriers. We, each of us, are guilty of worrying about too many things. We worry about succeeding in school or work. We worry about how we look. We worry about what others think of us. We worry about things other people do do. We worry about things going wrong. We even worry about things going right because it might mean things change. Oh yeah, we worry about change.               I could go on, but I don't want to. You get the point. I bet you can think of a long list of things that you are worrying about right now. So, do it. Make that list. Write it down even. I want to show you something. A great teacher once taught me a simple, yet profound and glorious lesson. It was taught in a religious setting, when I was preparing to be a full-time proselyting missionary, but the lesson applies to every part of life. My teacher asked the group

Have you ever seen Defending Your Life?  Awesome movie. Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep from the nineties. Basically, when you die (in this movie) you spend a few days in a lovely place where you are assigned an advocate to prove that you did enough good things in your life to move on to the 'good place.' Can you imagine looking back at your life and only getting a couple of hand-picked moments? Which ones would they be? What are defining moments? I think many people believe that we have very few of them in our life, maybe only one. One moment that changes you so completely and affects every piece of your future. I don't disagree, but I don't think our life is limited to only a couple defining moments. I don't even think we're limited in pivotal moments either. Can't we change our course an infinite number of times? Not that I recommend such a course...one would start to feel considerably lost, I think. A defining moment, to me, is one that never leaves

This is the Age for the Amateurs, but most people have come to use the term derisively instead of for its true meaning: which is someone who engages in a pursuit without payment. A man can be equally skilled in his hobby as a man who chose the same pursuit as a profession. Have we forgotten that the Olympics were created for amateurs? Now, I do NOT profess to be expert at anything. [Nope. That's a lie. There are some things. I'm sure I'll talk about them at some point in the future, when it is relevant.  No, if there is anything I could compete in like an Olympian, it would be sleeping. I can sleep ANYWHERE, at any time of day, even with things happening around me, and I usually fall asleep just a minute after I close my eyes. Skillz.]  I am certainly no expert writer. I passed all my English & composition classes with flying colors, but I have never wanted to pursue that kind of profession. Still, I find myself to be impressively more eloquent in prose than in oral