Finding Joy In Life

I really love life! My life is so joyful right now, but I can’t really find an adequate way to describe why. This past week was mainly about me trying to figure out my plans for the spring and summer. What I have decided at this point is to stay in Provo for both spring and summer. During spring, I will take classes, and during summer, I will just work full-time at my job at independent study. I have mixed feelings about this plan. On the one hand, I’m sad that I won’t get to see my family nearly as much as I would like this summer. On the other hand, I think it could be a great experience to be in Provo during the summer and experiencing what it is like to have a full-time job. Also, I’m going to make sure to visit my family as often as possible, and hopefully they can come visit me as well, so it isn’t like I won’t be able to see them at all.

Perhaps one of my biggest victories this past week was showing Kevin one of my favorite movies, Serenity. Now that I have a clearplay DVD player, he is able to watch a lot of movies that he couldn’t watch before. He told me that he really liked Serenity, which really made me happy, it is a wonderful movie. I also was able to keep up in my classes this past week and I had an enjoyable session with my writing group because Joe was not there for the second time in a row to tear my story apart. I am really gaining a love for writing this semester that I’m hoping will continue throughout my life. One of my big goals this summer is to continue writing consistently, and even hopefully write out the rest of my book by the end of the summer. It would be really fulfilling to me to be able to say I have written a complete book. Of course, after that, it’ll have to go through many revisions to actually become pretty good, but just getting that first draft out completely would be a big accomplishment for me.

I enjoyed conference this past weekend, the priesthood session is what really stood out to me. I really loved Elder Uchtdorf’s talk. He told a story at the beginning of his talk about a plane crash that happened a while ago. What had happened was that a light didn’t light up and people on the plane started freaking out and focusing all their attention on the light. This drew attention away from the more important duty of keeping the plane on course. They ended up crashing because they took their attention away from flying the plane and on this small light. Just because a light bulb burnt out, a whole plane crashed killing over 100 people. This experience shows that we shouldn’t focus so much attention on the smaller things that we lose sight of the most important things. These smaller things may be good things, but if they draw attention away from the greater goal of exaltation, then they are a problem, and we need to lessen our focus on them. It really taught me a lot about what I should be most focused on.

That was mainly my week. I have joy in life because I have life, and isn’t that enough? I am able to live in a great country and have a wonderful family and friends and go to an incredible university. I find joy in the simple pleasures in life. In the satisfaction of finishing a difficult homework assignment, in spending time with my friend after a long period of him being so busy he could barely talk to me, in being able to text my sisters and see what is happening with them in their lives. These experiences may seem small and mundane, but to me they are profound and what life is all about. I cherish each minute. It is truly wonderful.