Blogging is an experiment for me. I'm normally a very private person, but I occasionally enjoy stepping out of my comfort zone. Take last night, for example, when I dressed up as MC Hammer, and attended a Halloween Charity Dance Party in Boston that ended up just being an excuse for many attendees to get drunk and grind on each other.** Aside from the aforementioned indecorum, it was fun to dance and enjoy the night in a church packed full of a few hundred potential friends.
On to the blogging! This is fun. I can write whatever I want and it'll go directly to the blogosphere and be a part of that permanent trove of information that constitutes the internet. So I guess I'd better use a modicum of discretion as to what I share.
I think I'll start with what's most important to me: What Matters Most. Anyone that knows me reasonably well knows that there are a few simple and basic things that make me, me. This one's a serious post about the most important things in life:
I've realized that when it is all said and done that few things really matter: love, family, friends, relationships, the way we treat each other, the way we think about ourselves. My priorities in life are really very simple and in the following order: 1) God, 2) Family, 3) Friends, and 4) Everything else including work - just don't tell my boss. Notice money - while important and even necessary - did not make the list because it's not a priority on its own merit, but instead is simply a means to an end of achieving real priorities.
It's difficult to put into words what God - Heavenly Father - means to me. He's been the one true constant throughout my life - even when I wasn't aware. During my happiest moments and throughout my trials, He's always been there with me and always will be. I have unmistakably felt this through His spirit and have "thereby heard his voice and know his word."*** Insular critics will forever dispute for one reason or another the existence of God, our relationship with Him, His care, concern and love and design for us. As for me, when I see a newborn, the ocean, a sunset, or feel a tender heartfelt expression of love, I stand in awe of His magnificence and am reminded of how little I actually know compared to His omniscience and omnipotence. His creations, infinite love, and just one word from His lips when compared with human understanding and achievements as great and miraculous as they are, "strikes it all into insignificance."**** Since God loves me, I have decided to love him and put him first and make following his Son, Jesus Christ my first priority in life. I believe that Jesus restored his church through a prophet, Joseph Smith, in 1830, in upstate New York. It is for this reason that I am a Mormon - a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is Christ's church and gives me great joy in giving service to God's children both inside and outside of the church.
My family is a tremendous source of immense joy and personal satisfaction. Family is so so important to me! My mother, father, brothers, grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephew... are amazing! My family has always been there for me. They have to be - they're my family! And I want to be there for them. I want to make my parents proud of me and have fun with my brothers and play with their children and have children of my own someday.
I appreciate my true friends that take the time to know me and anyone that has read down this far can certainly be considered a true friend. Although during the last three years that I buried myself in Law School books and only sporadically emerged to engage in social activities, I greatly value all of my friendships with people of all religious persuasions, nationalities, and political persuasions, new and old friends alike!
Some other things that are near to my heart are learning, working, reading, exploring, adventuring, singing, dancing, pondering, writing, music, game playing, sports, and art.
*With credit for this title of this post to a magnificent sermon on the same subject by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf. See http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/of-things-that-matter-most.
**For the record, I neither consumed alcohol nor inappropriately danced.
***Bruce R. McConkie, The Purifying Power of Gethsemane, available at http://www.lds.org/ensign/1985/05/the-purifying-power-of-gethsemane.
****Oliver Cowdry, Joseph Smith History, available at http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/js-h/1.
