A Spoonful of the Middle Class

You may think that being a part of Divine Comedy assures you all that is privilege and luxury. I'm here to dispel that belief. We are solid members of the middle class for now and possibly forever. I mean, we get fed a lot, and yeah, we get noticed, but we get all that at the sacrifice of our time, our semester grades, and sometimes our sanity.

Don't get me wrong, I would never trade the experience of being in Divine Comedy for anything, but I don't want people to get the false idea that we are the upper class at our school, you'd have to see the athletic department for that.

Anyway, we met at the HFAC at 5:30 in the morning before heading to the airport where we split up into two groups, one group to arrive 2 hours earlier than the other. I really wouldn't have minded being in the later-to-arrive group except that we didn't get to the hotel until about 8 after having traversed all of Times Squares with our suitcases. Not too fun. Then besides being hungry, I was just incredibly tired and my allergies had decided to act up so I also felt less than up to exploring. I think I spent my first couple hours in New York sleeping.

This tale probably makes it seem like my first night in New York was terrible and it kind of was, but I did end up getting real New York Pizza. and I think I'm sleeping these allergies out of me. Lots of things to be excited for, but right now I just want to sleep!

A Spoonful of Death

I always have time for sleep. In my mission prep class, taught by the famous Norm Nemrow, he mentioned how the night previously he didn't get to bed because he had something on his mind that made it impossible for him to sleep and asked if we could relate. I know that's happened to me, but what's strange is I haven't had that problem for the longest time now. I just feel this deep, deep desire to sleep. I hardly ever get less than 7 hours of sleep. It's pretty awesome, actually. I love to sleep.

Sleeping, however, is not my intended topic.

I saw the play "Tuesdays with Morrie" on Saturday at the HFAC and I was surprised by how much it affected me. I cried. A lot. It just made me think about things I don't really think about often. The relationship between family, love, and death.

Family is important because it gives you the opportunity to experience love--and love is what it's all about--but sometimes you lose the people you love. The people that make you want to a better person. Sometimes it's slowly, to a destructive disease, or quickly, to a tragic car accident. Either way, somebody else dies and leaves you more alone than you were before. We may lose these loved ones for the time being, but they can teach us more in their last hours than at any other interval in their life if they are able to show us how to die by learning to live. Are we learning the lessons we should be from others? Or are we going through life trying to stay ignorant? We're all dying, there are no exceptions. Which is why we need to learn how to live, as soon as possible. And I am convinced that living cannot and should not be done without loving.

Challenge: Forgive somebody who as wronged you either recently or long in the past. Just do it. Oh, and read Tuesdays With Morrie.