Perfect Nights.

Recently, I went somewhere that I'd gone to with a boy I liked. It hasn't been on my mind, so I didn't remember until I got there. And then I remembered so suddenly that it was like I crashed my car into an invisible wall. Like I was going to have to let go of the steering wheel and melt into a pool of nostalgia.

We went there one night and just talked and talked. That night, I felt like I was seeing more of him than I ever had. I asked him questions about himself and he answered, while I looked at him in the darkness. It felt so natural. 

For a while now we had been drawn to each other, but it seemed like something that didn't quite make sense to either one of us--until this night, when it became evident that there was a part of him and a part of me that fit into the same cozy spot in the universe. I felt like he was letting me have this little part of him, and I was ready to take it and tuck it into my heart and take care of it. I remember thinking, "I just want him to be here next to me all the time." It was clear that that would be a happy way to live.

It was a perfect night. 

And that, maybe, is what is so painful--why nostalgia melts you into a puddle of heartache. Because we had a perfect night. When I look into my past, it is punctuated with perfect nights. There are benches and stoops and balconies and couches and cars and front lawns that I will always remember. Because I sat there with another human being for a few hours on a perfect night and talked and listened and laughed and felt so connected.

But. Not a single one of those boys is here next to me now. A perfect night is a punctuation, not necessarily a pattern. It doesn't mean you're fated to be together. It just means that, for a little while, when you think of him, you'll drive into this invisible wall thinking, "I felt so close to him. Why can't I feel that way now?"

It just means that, when I look back on my string of strained and expired relationships, there above the rubble hover a few little bright stars--the memories of perfect nights.

Some of the Best Things I Have Read on Tinder Profiles.

Here is a list of some of the best things I have read on Tinder profiles:

"I am a human male."

"Gods child"

"My dog will come first (let me explain) she's my best friend and she won't live another 50 years like we might so while she's with me she'll be number # 1."

"I know the answer to life, the universe, everything."

"I honestly hate saying that I own a business because it sounds so pretentious."

"I miss my old friends that I have not seen for years, you know who you are..."

"The only thing that surpasses my respect for America... Is my respect for women."

"I believe that logic and rhetoric are not interchangeable"

"I eat muffins and ponder about the paradoxical conflicts in nature."

"I'm into horses. And rivers. I listen to music all the time, unless I'm on a river or a horse."

"If you hate cops and guns, swipe left."

"I'm basically the combination of James Dean and Steve Jobs."

"I am enigmatically ineffable...."

"Get to know me. You'll like me.... maybe... I don't know."

"I am a humanist hell bent on creating heaven on earth."

"Thriving in the present tense."

"I can't trust anyone who doesn't love pie."

"I am a hiker, a singer, a unique individual."

"I am the uncle that I always want to have!!!"

"Self expression is beautiful. The sense of flow is what I pursue."

"I'm not in any way normal."

"I can't get enough of penguins and dinosaurs."

"I'm actually pretty famous but not that many people know about it."

"Mostly looking for someone to enable my dream of Corgi ownership."

"I'm very dyslexic!"

"I like to pick things up and put them down again."

"Wherever I go, there I am."

"Age isn't accurate, nor is work hist."

"A dollar bill isn't worth that much in England, but it's worth a lot in Mexico. We all mean different things to different people. Finding true love is about finding your Mexico, where you go somewhere and you say, 'I get how many tacos for $3? Holy ****! I wanna stay here forever!' And you just hope that that feeling is mutual, and that's love."

A Kernel of Meaningfulness.

I'm always thinking existentially--where does meaning come from in this absurd world? Does life have meaning by itself? Do we create our own meaning?

I think it's probably some of both, but what I've been thinking lately is that life is inherently worthwhile.

It must be. Because being outside and looking up through the trees feels meaningful. And listening to music while you drive around angry and eat an ice cream cone feels meaningful. Feeling the hot sun on your skin feels meaningful.

Like, if you peeled back the physics and psychology and physiology of eating an ice cream cone, inside, left there, would be a kernel of meaningfulness.

In the moments of quiet when you peel back the layers, there is something comforting about knowing that life need not be happy because it is already meaningful.

My Presidential Pals.

I didn't realize how good I had it when there were like 15 people running for president. It was like having 15 best friends. Here's what we would do together if we really were best friends:

Jeb Bush:

We'd watercolor paint together at his kitchen table with Columba while he told me in detail about the novel he was planning to write if he didn't become president. Columba and I would roll our eyes at each other good naturedly over his head.

Ben Carson:

We'd watch "Gifted Hands" together, the made-for-tv movie about his life, with Candy. He'd narrate over the whole thing until he fell asleep about two-thirds of the way through.

Chris Christie:

We'd eat meatball hoagies together on the Jersey shore while he told me about the time he met Snooki.

Hillary Clinton:

We'd get pedicures. While she pulled up pictures of her grandchildren on her phone to show me, I'd pull up clips of "Pinky & the Brain" cartoons from the 90s that made jokes about Bill. And we'd laugh and laugh.

Ted Cruz:

We'd watch "The Princess Bride" together, and Ted would convince me to play a drinking game where we'd have to take shots every time someone said "Inconceivable," or "As you wish," or "You killed my father; Prepare to die." I don't drink, though, so I'd take shots of Sprite and be totally sober at the end of the movie when a drunk Ted would burst into tears about how the world lost a great man when Andre the Giant died.

Carly Fiorina:

We'd go power walking together, and I'd feel dumb in my t-shirt and shorts, having to be seen with her in her hot pink track suit and bright white Reeboks. She'd give me a lot of advice about how to succeed as a woman in a man's world, which I'd probably never take.

John Kasich:

He'd take me to the local Elks Lodge for poker night, where all the guys would tell me unbelievable stories about John holding his liquor. Every time I'd look at him in disbelief, he'd just sit there munching peanuts with a twinkle in his eye.

Rand Paul:

We'd play tennis, and Rand would look surprisingly like a young John McEnroe. He'd talk about Edward Snowden the whole time.

Marco Rubio:

We'd have a pool party at his house with his family. Obviously, we'd play Marco Polo, and he'd make a lot of dad jokes about why his kids were calling him by his first name and whether they were asking him to put a shirt back on. I'd be intimidated by his hot wife.

Bernie Sanders:

We'd walk down to the local Ben & Jerry's with Jane to get ice cream cones. On the way home, his ice cream would fall right off the cone, and he'd do an impression of Larry David doing an impression of him being mad about it. We'd all try to see how many times we could work the phrase "millionaires and billionaires" into the conversation naturally, and I would win.

Donald Trump:

He'd take me under his wing in a Jack Donaghy-Liz Lemon style mentoring relationship. He'd drive me around a private green on a golf cart, gesturing to the 'uge expanse, telling me everything the light touched was our kingdom. We'd eat popsicles later and make fun of people's haircuts. 

Trampolines.

Recently, I was driving to Target and I saw some kids jumping on a trampoline while an adult sat in a chair and watched them.

And I realized that my time for trampolines had passed.

Trampolines are for children. You never see adults on a trampoline. Trampolines just exist to give adults nightmares about their children flying off and breaking their heads.

I even had a trampoline growing up. And I never once appreciated it the way it deserved. Sometimes I lay under it in the shade-covered grass. Sometimes I took my soccer ball on it with me and pretended I was an elite athlete who used this unconventional form of training to gain control over unpredictable bounces and jumps.

I never once truly let my little body fly and flip. And now my time for trampolines is over.

Things I've Been into Lately

1. Audiobooks. It's like reading, but someone reads to you so you don't have to.

2. 1010! A type of tetris game without the time pressure. What I do while I'm listening to audiobooks... and sometimes walking across campus. Also, all the time.

3. Saltwater sandals. I want them in every color and I never want to wear anything else.

4. Beach hair. Going to the beach is a chance for my hair to step out of its shell and be who it wants to be. Like when Gabriella sings with Troy on New Year's Eve. I've been trying to recreate it by sleeping on my hair wet, but it's not really the same.

5. Listening to the same three songs on the way to work every morning: No One Is to Blame by Howard Jones; You're the Inspiration by Chicago; and Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. Also, singing into my phone like it's a microphone while I do this.

6. Rock music from approximately 1967-1970. I'm surprised they let music continue to be made after that.

7. The Whole30. Yes, I feel like I'm cooking all the time, but did you know that if you use protein as your energy source, you don't get hungry between meals? It's amazing.

8. The Office, Season 9. I know it went crazy there at the end, but I love when comedies get all sentimental in the last season to tie everything up. I love Pete and Erin and I love Oscar and Philip and I love Jim and Dwight.

9. Driving through the business parks and industrial areas of Provo. Some of the roads I normally take to get to my house are being worked on, so I've been taking scenic routes past rusty old trains and auto body shops, which I love.

Opposition.

In the Book of Mormon, a companion text to the Bible of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the prophet Lehi teaches his son,

"For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things."

2 Nephi 2:27

I.

The concept of opposition in all things informs LDS doctrine and the LDS worldview. The typical reading of this phrase, as I have heard it used, is that we will be opposed in all we do, particularly the good things we try to accomplish. Life won't be easy. Things won't go your way. Opposition seems to mean dissent, resistance, adversity. Trials--another favorite word of Mormons.

I think this is a correct reading, to an extent. The first definition of opposition is "resistance or dissent, expressed in action or argument." We are taught and many, myself included, have experienced that the most difficult things happen to us when we are about to do things that will be for our greatest good. 

However, we seem to paint a one-sided picture of opposition. If there were this type of opposition in all things, it would sometimes thwart us in our bad choices as well as our good choices. Every time you were going to watch Netflix instead of doing your homework, for instance, the internet mysteriously stops working. If this does happen, as I'm sure it also does, we don't use the phrase opposition in all things to explain those situations. Situations that turn out "right" don't need to be explained.

Opposition in all things is what we say when things don't turn out. We all experience things we want not happening, at least some of the time. I submit that our cultural use of the doctrine of opposition in all things allows us to make sense of the unexpected and discouraging things that happen to us by assigning the "blame" for these events to opposition. 

II.

But there is another definition of opposition: "a contrast or antithesis."

For there must needs be, that there is an opposite to all things.

Opposites aren't inherently negative, as our reading of the word opposition is. An opposite of a purely virtuous principle or thing is evil, but regular opposites aren't. Like hot and cold or even and odd.

For everything, good or bad or in between, there is an opposite. Every thesis has an antithesis. For every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. This seems to be a law of the universe.

III.

So what does opposite really mean? "Having a position on the other or further side of something." Also, "diametrically different."

Diametrically is the adjectival form of the word diametric, which means "of, relating, or constituting a diameter."

A diameter is a line that connects any two points of a circle and also runs through the center point of the circle.

IV.

Let's put those pieces together. Across cultures, the circle is a symbol for totality, wholeness, perfection, and eternity. In line with this, let's let a circle represent Truth. That's capital-t Truth, the kind that in true throughout the known universe.

For any point on the Truth circle, there is a point directly opposite it that can be connected with a diameter that runs through the center. It runs through the center, or heart, of the Truth, linking the opposites, and making them opposites, instead of any two unrelated points on the circle.

So there is an opposition in all things. Literally. Because that's how circles work. You can't have a circle that doesn't have a diameter. That's also how Truth works. You can't discover Truth without considering and integrating opposites. The existence of the opposite does not break down the truth; rather that is what makes it Truth.

V.

If this reading of opposition in all things is workable, then it could have major effects on how we view God, political parties, ethical frameworks, and any scale or continuum which is considered to have two poles.

One example: in America, we are more polarized in our politics than previous generations were. Let's take helping the poor as an example. Liberals would generally like to help the poor at all costs, and advocate doing so by raising taxes and building large government programs. Conservatives would like the poor to be helped, but think that can occur best at the local level. Ideally, these people would learn to help themselves.

From a Christian perspective, both viewpoints can be supported. Jesus fed the 5000, but Paul later taught, "if any would not work, neither should he eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Both points exist on the Truth circle; in fact, they are opposite each other.

How do we find the truth in any situation? Consider the opposites. Begin on one end and move across the diameter, through the center of Truth, to the other side. Once you have considered, integrated, and mastered the opposites, you have to power to implement the principle  of helping the poor in a way that is right for each individual situation. 

For more information on this topic, see "Opposition in All Things," Dallin H. Oaks, April 2016