Self-Expression and Depenedence on Others

Allow this post to be more personal than usual.

Emily went to bed a few minutes ago and I had just finished tweaking and printing out the ward program for her for church tomorrow. As I sat on the couch thinking about her and me and our relationship I had a revelation of sorts. Not really a revelation of anything new, but a picture of what already was made more clear to me. One of our differences is also a great strength to both of us. Emily has a stronger dependence on close friends and relatives immediately around her: Her parents, best friends, me, our kids. When she has a problem she depends on others around us for the help or the answer. Last night, her new sewing machine she just bought went funny and she couldn't get it working before bedtime. This afternoon she went to the sewing store and the saleswoman spent a good deal of time with her explaining everything Emily could soak up and more and helped her out a lot. When Emily is having emotional troubles she comes to me or her parents for help.

I'm a little different. Instead of immediately going to people for help, I go to books, guides, internet, etc for the information I want (unless the person who can help is literally in my presence AND I trust them enough to show the limits of my abilities). I had begun to think that Emily was more dependent on others and that I was somehow more independent. The silly truth is that I am just as dependent on others as anyone else could be. I depend on authors, teachers, and scholars for writing books, websites, and articles on what I want to know. For emotional trouble I've always felt I had to rely entirely on the Lord. There were a lot of lonely times as a teenager (and even into adulthood) when I had no friends but the spirit after a prayerful plea to warm my aching heart. Even as I grow, I have to depend entirely on God to ease my burdens. I know this is what we're supposed to do, but there's a strong independent side to me that wants to figure everything out on my own even though I'm not very good at it. Because of this, often the only person left to help me through my (often self-imposed) isolation is my Father in Heaven. One upside to this is that I feel I've gotten to know him very well.

As I encounter problems with my environment and with myself and my weaknesses, I've usually tried to take care of it myself first, with my own abilities and talents. I was taught about personal responsibility and self-reliance and for a long time felt that this applied to spiritual issues as well. The truth: It doesn't. I can get to a certain point, but I cannot get past it and the more I try to get past it on my own, the more often I fall back down.

What I've realized is that even most of my own ability to choose right is a gift from God. The choice is still mine, but that is literally all there is to my credit. Yes, I do the task, the action, or the work, but the ability and even motivation to take action on the choice is entirely up to him. Any righteousness others might see in me is purely a gift from God that he has bestowed on me due to choices I made. All wickedness and faults that others see in me are purely my own fault and only a tip of the iceberg because of God's tenderness in hiding most of my flaws and mistakes from others for some reason that is known only to him. My wicked choices are often even hid from myself until I am ready to tackle the choice head on, consciously. He is leading me through life exactly as he knows I should so that I can end up where he knows I want to go. I'm the one who has to learn for myself what I want and I will learn it by seeing the choices I make when they are brought to light.

One choice I made involved self-expression. Art. At one point between high school and adulthood I was faced with a solid choice presented to me. Obtain a gift for self-expression that would fit my imagination or pursue a course that was more certain to fulfill God's commandments. I knew at that moment that for me, in my place, the choice was one way or the other and I knew the likely consequences of each. Even though I ached to find some way to express everything I felt, I knew the eternal benefits of the latter and chose that. A few days after this decision I felt a certain reassurance that the choice I made would fulfil my desire for self-expression in a way I never could imagine. That by fulfilling these commandments I would be able to use every capacity, feeling, and emotion I had in a creative way that would express itself to me and to others. I see this expression forming now. A symphony and opus in its infancy.

This choice and the following reassurance were not the effects of an emotional, distraught, or fatigued mind. They were as clear as a Fall day on the coast with no clouds or haze, when mountain tops more than 50 miles away are plainly visible. The same reassurance that told me as a young missionary I would certainly see the town of Bella Coola and perform missionary work in the town of Terrace, both of which occured before returning home--an opportunity afforded to very few missionaries and an opportunity that was only decided on days before it occured. When these reassurances were physically fulfilled, fire burned inside me as I was reminded of what I'd been told by the Spirit 8 months previously in a dark damp apartment in Vancouver.

In this same way I am reminded now of what I was told 8 years ago about how I would be able to express myself beyond my imagination through the same certain aspect of my life promised so long ago. This makes me happy.

*Ahem*

Just got this one from a friend. If you haven't been to visit us yet, here's some peer pressure to move you along. An open vote by a travel magazine/website has placed San Francisco as the best city in the US to visit for the ....wait for it..... 17th year in a row. We're totally cool with visitors, so if you wanna stop by even for just a weekend, we'd be happy to see you and show you around. Even if you don't like us, at least use us for a free place to stay and come look around on your own or something. We're not going to be here THAT much longer. We've already had lots of visitors, ask them if they liked it. Bring the kiddos too.

P.S. If you stumbled on this from the webs and don't know us and we don't know you, sorry, this offer's good for non-strangers only.

Fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog,

I need to come up with more words to my favorite song (see the title above), which is about my favorite characteristic of this city.

I think people complain about the fog, because they feel like they're supposed to or something. Seriously, this stuff is the best! I tried to find statistics about the foggiest city in the US and ended with somewhere in Virginia winning at 116 days vs. San Francisco's average 106 or whatever. Nonsense! If Baker Beach or the passage into the bay (the Golden Gate) were a city, it would CRUSHHH (with a monstrous Skeletor sounding CRUSSSSHHHH) Charlestown's or whatever-lame-names-city, VA's record.

Take for example, the last day of class last quarter, end of September. Sunny day. I can deal with it, but big deal. I ride the nearly straight line home, not a hint of cloud in the sky anywhere. As I come up to the last few blocks of Lake before I turn up the hill into the Presidio at 15th, I note the vapor coming over into the street several blocks ahead. Ahah! I turn up the hill, past the under-construction former hospital which is half enshrouded with visibly hanging curtains of mist. Halfway up the hill, at the dirt-road back entrance to the Baker Beach housing I plunge into the cloud and enjoy a cool gray bath riding down the hill, invigorated and excited to be home.

Another example, Wednesday of this week, I'm waiting for Emily to pick me up at school (it was raining that morning so she gave me a ride). The sun is glaringly bright and at the level of sight where it's just constantly in your eyes. OBNOXIOUS! We get a couple hot chocolates at Bittersweet on Fillmore just below the school and head home. I ask her to drive my bike-route home. Again, on Lake heading west along the bottom edge of the Presidio is a low-lying cloud just above the tops of the 3-story homes. We both heave a sigh of relief and start filling our lungs with cool fresh mist as we escape from the sun in the fresh cool grayness. So nice.

Right now the fog horns on the GG Bridge are playing their song and there's no other noise to speak of.

If there were still Native Americans around here, I'd guess they'd have, like, 150 different words for the various fogs that hit this city. Fogs with clear underneath, low-lying fogs very localized, the stream of fog that goes through the Golden Gate, the massive Tsunami-type fog that takes over the entire city, the Niagara Falls type fog that literally pours down the east side of the Marin Headlands next to the gate, and the windy fog that blows across the street 10 feet in front of you at 20-30 mph or just over your arm's reach as it charges up the hill. I tell Emily, I could live here in this neighborhood forever, half of it just to enjoy the fog and views of the Gate. The only downside is that while it's perfectly cool temperatures of mid 60's and overcast at our place, it's 80 degrees everywhere else. It's like going in and out of a cave (which is really why I like it so much, who needs shelter from this?)

Enough boring talking, here's more pictures and a video for you to look at. I stole all these from elsewhere on the internet.

Looking south. Our apartment is just to the right of the second tower.

This is one of the massive Tsunami fogs engulfing the city from the ocean. The bridge is just in the center right. There is a city somewhere under that blanket.

This is the weird one. The bridge/gate is just out of the picture to the lower left (the source of the band of clouds). The Marin Headlands and the Presidio act like a funnel squeezing fog through the narrow Golden Gate.

Pretty fog, great for pictures and posters. At the water surface, I guarantee the visibility on the right side of the picture is not more than 100 feet, yet the top of the fog is below the deck of the bridge (just 200 feet off the water)

I spent all of 5 minutes making this highly technical map for the geographically challenged. For perspective, my bike ride from Baker Beach to school is exactly 3 miles, 1-2 blocks off of California St. Note that the fog is thicker at Baker Beach, because it really is. That map is more accurate than NASA's best satellites. If you can't read the text, left to right the white labels read: Marin Headlands, Baker Beach, Golden Gate, School, Downtown (stupid MSPaint, stupid Blogger...)

The video's not terribly exciting, it's actually boring, but it's short and shows how localized the fog is around the bridge and the Presdio (if you didn't see the Presdio in the video, there's a good reason!). At about 35 seconds you can see downtown crystal-clear while the west side of the city is swamped in with delicious pea-soup. A delightful place to be!

Drugs

Sounds like withdrawal symptoms. A very telling article.