Seven deadly sins

Dear readers, you may or may not have been raised as devout Catholics. I was not. So I had to refer to Wikipedia to make sure I had my list of seven deadly sins straight. And according to Wikipedia, the sins are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Interestingly, sloth was originally called the sin of apathy and sadness. The early church leaders felt that individuals who refused to “enjoy the goodness of God and the world He created” were serious transgressors.

You may think that I’m leading up to a post about depression. In fact, I’m not, though you’ll probably see an entry on that later. What I’m getting at is a connection between the sin of sloth (or apathy, or sadness, or whatever) and ingratitude.

When we fail to recognize the many blessings God has given us — when we feel that “I got where I am today by my own work, with no one’s help” — in a way we are refusing to acknowledge His goodness. (As a further disclaimer, I am NOT trying to say that depression is the result of ingratitude.) To the early church leaders, that was a big deal. A big bad deal. I think I do a pretty good job of realizing how blessed I am. But there’s one area where I am the biggest sinner of sloth there ever was, and that is acknowledging the blessings I get from other people. Often someone will go out of their way to be nice to me or make my day better, and I’m so caught up in myself that I either don’t notice or I point out how they didn’t actually help me.

By now you may realize what I’m trying to say. Yep, I am frequently a lousy wife. And even though I know what I need to do is mend things with two very sincere words (“I’M SORRY!”), I wanted the rest of you dear readers to get on my case about being more grateful. Tell me to be nice, ok? Remind me that I have a good life, and a great marriage, and that I should appreciate that — not yell about it.

Thanks, readers.

I pretend to be smart

This semester I’m taking the second half of BYU’s required sociological theory unit. I actually ended up enjoying the first half, although it always seemed like a lot of my classmates were struggling with the material. Here’s something I didn’t think was possible–this semester they are even more confused than before. And while I realize that theoretical jargon is sometimes hard to understand, it boggles my mind how much my classmates warp the material. Then they tell the teacher that this theorist or that theorist is obviously wrong.

Example: we discussed Sartre and Goffman, particularly their ideas about the self (which is nothing, or no-thing, not an object). Goffman says that because we don’t have some inherent self-identity  —  a chair has some chair-ness about it, but I don’t have a definite roni-ness about me  —  everything we do is a presentation of the self we would like others to accept us for. Just to make sure you follow that, he’s saying that we are always pretending to be something. It’s pretending because the self is no-thing. Get it? Well, the teacher was explaining how no one wants to be called out for pretending to be something they’re not, so we all kind of work together to maintain this illusion. For instance, a professor presents himself to his students as a professor, but he also needs them to accept his performance; students need the professor to accept their presentation. The idea behind this is that our self is not the same as our activities, so while I go to school and learn in the role of a student, I am not actually “a student” any more than I am “a homewrecker” (just kidding).

I hope you’re getting this ok. Let’s move on. To further demonstrate the professor-student teamwork thing, our teacher said that at home, he presents himself as the father, and his kids accept his performance. Someone in class said, “But you’re their biological father. You’re not pretending. It’s a fact. You can’t argue with it! It’s not a performance!” Unfortunately, this guy was completely missing the point. He’s basing “father” on genetic material, when in sociology we pretty much base “father” on a set of social roles and expectations. But it’s hard to explain to people that they are wrong. He kept going on about how science proves to us that there is a father-son relationship. I really wonder where he was all last semester when we talked about the argument against positivism and the scientific method.

Then other classmates voiced their difficulties with the theory as well. One girl said that she knows who she is, and that’s how she acts, she isn’t just pretending or trying to convince people! She is sincere! Again, Goffman and Sartre said that we are NO-THING and therefore have no self-identity. That means we always pretend. It is absolutely fine with me if people want to disagree with the theories we discuss. But there’s a difference with finding weaknesses in the argument, and with misinterpreting the theory and then saying it’s wrong. Besides…I think Goffman would argue that we really aren’t aware that we pretend.

That’s my thought for the day.

When it rains, it pours

This is unarguably a brilliant slogan for Morton Salt Company, but it’s also unfortunately true for the Romgi and I this part week.

As most of you know, we live in the land of Dumb Weather. One day it will be beautifully sunny and almost “warm,” then the next day is back to death snow. And last Tuesday night it had done the whole snow/melt cycle enough times to make a good layer of ice on the roads, covered by a fresh (but thin) layer of powdery snow. That’s when I went out to grab a Five Buck Pizza.

I drove carefully there, because I could tell the roads were bad. I took the street just north of our apartment and then went onto Freedom Blvd to the pizza place, but our car doesn’t do too well in snow and even going 15 mph it was losing traction and sliding all over the place. On my way home I decided it would be safer to take University Ave, since more people are on the road and it was probably less icy. That was fine, although I still drove slowly. Don’t think I’m exaggerating or trying to make myself sound more cautious than I really was! I hate driving, and I remember being nervous and paying close attention to how the car was handling everything.

Well…I made a left back onto 2nd North, stepping on the gas only enough to get into the turn and then letting off. But my efforts were in vain. We’ve been meaning to replace the front right tire, because it’s pretty much bald; since the streets here are kind of dome-shaped to let the water run into the gutters, the car completely lost traction and slid to the right. And of course, there was a wooden light pole that stopped my car.

I was pretty shaken up. I hadn’t brought the cell phone with me (should have learned my lesson then!), and didn’t know what to do, so I looked at the car, saw the front headlight and side were smashed, and drove VERY carefully back to our apartment. The Romgi was, of course, glad that I was alright, reassured me it wasn’t my fault, and assessed the damage. The next day we discovered that the passenger door no longer opens, and the now-bent front side scrapes the (already bald) tire when you turn left. Oh joy.

But it gets better! …Or worse, really. Friday night we went to the grocery store to get a few things, and since we were just stopping by, I wore slippers and left the cell phone (stupid!). When we finished shopping, we came out to the car and found that it wouldn’t start. Now, I don’t mean that the engine wouldn’t work; the key refuses to turn in the ignition. Absolutely will not. We tried for a full 45 minutes unsuccessfully — two car keys, and neither worked. Of course without a cell phone, it was impossible to get ahold of anyone…this seems to be a good reason for memorizing a few phone numbers.  So we walked back to our apartment with the groceries. I think I cried the whole way. So cold. So cold.

The car did start on Saturday, twice, so we got it back to our apartment and managed to run one errand later in the day, but by yesterday it stopped again. What are we supposed to do now?!