YOLO

One lesson that I have been learning continually throughout my life is to live life to its fullest without fear of failure. When we stop ourselves from doing something because we are afraid, we stop ourselves from learning something new. The only way for us to progress in our growth and understanding of the world and people around us, is to experience it.

            It is amazing how many things you can learn when you set aside your fear of trying new things. For instance, I used to be afraid of riding dirt bikes. I was afraid that I would have a horrific crash and break my legs or something. Eventually, I did get over my fear and I did happen to have many crashes. However, those crashes are the things that made me better. I am a much better driver because of all the wrecks I had. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would choose to have the crashes.

                This type of living is exemplified in the motto “YOLO”. This motto has been used so often, that it has become a cliché. Nevertheless, it is still very true. We can’t just hide in the closet all our life; we have to live our life with all of the risks and pain that are part of the package. If we never took any risks, we would still be living in the Stone Age in Ancient Mesopotamia. Thus, the very best lesson that I have learned through my almost 19 years is to take risks when I should, try as many news things as possible, and to banish or overcome all of your fears.  Live every day like it’s an adventure, and it will become one.

            I think that in the next life, just knowledge of what we could have become as a person will be HECK for us. We won’t need the fire and brimstone, all we need is the knowledge of how much better a person we could have been. The regrets we have will be something that will never leave us. We only have 11 days left of high school so let’s make these last few days count. Let’s not have any regrets over our childhood, or over any other part of our lives. Chase that dream. Buy that car. Climb that mountain. Don’t let something as silly as fear or anxiety stop you from becoming the person you are meant to be. If we can live with the goal in mind to become the best person we can be and to not let fear or doubt cloud or mind, we will achieve that happiness that is only felt and understood by those who have fulfilled their potential. 

The Teacher

    

            There is one person that I can honestly say has influenced my life in both a big way and a positive way. This person, as surprising as it sounds, comes from the Junior High. His name is Mr. McMahon. Mr. McMahon was one of the best teachers that I have ever had. He taught history in a way unlike any other teacher that I had ever had. Also his optimistic view on life was very infectious and got me to become more involved in school and sports. 

            In Junior High, Mr. McMahon was the Track coach. He encouraged me to join the team, so I did. He was an amazing influence on me. If it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't have joined Track, or basketball or any other sport. He taught me that while sports are a greater burden on our shoulders as students, it also gives us stability and something that we can be proud of about ourselves. I know that without sports, I wouldn't have what little confidence that I have today. However, I was only able to do Track one year at the Junior High because I dislocated me knee right before the season started the next year.

            Even though Mr. McMahon wasn't at the High School, he still was the biggest influence on me there. The effects of his teaching and coaching even had ripples that affected me at the end of my senior year today. Because of his influence, I joined Track in High School and I am going to the state competition in discus. In his class, he pushed me harder than I had ever been pushed before in life. By the end of the two years in his class I had the top grade. I learned hard work in the class room and how to achieve excellence. I discovered that I could achieve anything if I just keep my goal in mind and give it enough effort. Perhaps the main thing that I learned from him, however, was to put effort into both sports and schooling. You need to have balance in your life. Having just one or some other thing in your life is not enough. You need to balance your life with what needs to be done (school) and what you want to do (sports). And it was Mr. McMahon who joined these two worlds to make one. 

            Mr. McMahon also taught another important lesson. That lesson was to find joy in everything. Anything, no matter how bearable, can become bearable if we can find joy in doing it. So, I learned to derive some joy from school work. That has allowed me to accomplish things that I wouldn't normally be able to do. Without the influence of Mr. McMahon in my life, I would be a very different person today. 

Dirt bike Crash

            Throughout my life, I have suffered through many injuries, from things like jumping over a fence to almost cutting my finger off with a pocket knife. However, there is one injury that I really think can be applied to life in a profound way. This injury occurred about three years ago when I was teaching myself how to ride a dirt bike. It was perhaps only the second or third time I had ridden the little 75 cc red dirt bike and it was the first time I had ever gotten any real speed on it. I had taken it across the street to the church parking lot because it was a lot easier to ride there than in the dirt. I was on the far side of the church when I hit it into third gear and hit about 30 miles per hour. I became too exhilarated to pay much attention to something like safety, so as you can imagine, the crash came. There was a long, thick pipe laid across the ground that I did not notice until I had run it over. I flew off the bike about 5 feet and skidded my way to a stop on the hard, unforgiving asphalt. The pain was excruciating. I crawled over to my bike immediately to assess the damage. Part of the exhaust pipe had broken off, the gear shifter was bent completely out of shape, and the hand bars were a little scraped. All in all, it could have been much worse, I thought. Then I looked down to see the damage done to myself. About a foot of the skin on my right leg had been flayed off. Road rash, one of the most painful injuries you can get on a dirt bike, was mine to bear. After it quit bleeding, it then started to scab up. I could not even twitch my leg without it cracking and bleeding for a couple of days. After this experience, you can be sure that I did not wear shorts when I went dirt bike riding ever again. I also was a much more careful rider from then on.

            This injury taught me a two-fold lesson. The first was that we should prepare ourselves however possible for the trials that we have in front of us. Even if we think that a metaphorical crash is not likely to happen in our lives, we should be prepared for it to happen. The second lesson is to think before you leap. We need to be on the lookout for things that can trip us up in our daily lives. If we are watchful for things that are right in front of us, and for things that are in our future, we can avoid most major crashes. This injury has permanently etched itself into my memory and on my leg. I will not be forgetting this lesson anywhere in the near future. However, accidents do happen so I will be prepared. 

The FIRST Ski Trip

            I can remember the first time that I ever went skiing. I was about 8 years old when my dad had gotten it in his head to take me skiing. We were in Utah at the time and we went to one of the biggest ski resorts in the country, Park City. Before we left on our trip, I can remember being very excited to finally go skiing. That excitement slowly turned to dread as I saw the mountain that I was supposed to slide down on two pieces of wood. That feeling of dread just multiplied as a got on top of the mountain and looked down. It looked like I was looking down the face of a cliff and certain death. I can still remember seeing the land around me like a gigantic map. Despite my dad’s encouragement to stand up and try to ski, I just sat down and I slid down on my bottom very, very slowly. My dad quickly got impatient with my progress down the mountain and proceeded to leave me. While my dad denies that he ever did this, I remember. By the time that I had gotten about half way down, my dad had passed my about a dozen times, and I was thoroughly sick of the snow. Then, out of the blue, a very patient mother saw me sliding on my bottom and decided to teach me how to ski. She got me on my feet and showed me how to get down the mountain actually using my skis. When I got down, my dad was astonished to see me coming down not on my but, but on my skis! What was even more astonishing was that I had decided that skiing was not all that bad. So I went up and few more times this time with my dad. Ever since then skiing has been my favorite sport (though perhaps it ties with basketball).

            Now that I think back on this experience, I realize that there is a valuable lesson to learn from this. Sometimes, we all need help and assistance; and sometimes we are just not patient enough to give someone else our time and assistance. If we just learn the gift of patience and service, we can accomplish anything, even teaching an 8 year old how to ski.

            Another lesson that I learned from this was that we can learn to do anything if just keep at it long enough. In my experience, I was forced to keep at it all the way down the mountain. Thus, I did eventually get the hang of it. So, if we can just find the courage to try something new and not give up, we can master that thing that we want to do. All we have to do is try. A quote that exemplifies this says, “Triumph, is just a try with an umph on it”. If we take this advice to heart, there is not much that we cannot do. 

The Pride Cycle

How can having ambition and goals affect our lives for the good and the bad?

            You may have noticed that recently the world has started to become more and more competitive in colleges and jobs. More people are entering university than ever before. What was once a relatively simple matter is now a matter of serious apprehension. Getting into college consumes the minds of the college bound seniors. For me, I have been very nervous about whether I would get into college. Like many kids, I realized that the competition is fierce to get into universities. Some kids just don’t apply because they think that there is no hope for them. Fortunately, I believed in myself enough to apply, and luckily enough, I got in to both ASU and BYU, with a scholarship at ASU. I was immensely relieved by this. I kept thinking that I didn’t do enough applications, that I didn’t have good enough grades, that my essays weren’t long enough, that I wasn’t in enough clubs, you get the idea. I was tormented by fears that I had not done enough. Nonetheless, I did do enough and I got in.

            If we don’t have any ambition, how are we supposed to do anything worthwhile in life? The truth is that we can’t. If you have nothing to hope for in life, nothing to strive for, and no goals to endeavor to fulfill, we cannot expect to have any happiness. The only thing that we can do is to simply believe in ourselves. If we have a belief in ourselves, than we can accomplish anything. Sometimes, the only thing that we have done wrong is to not believe in ourselves. If we can attain confidence in ourselves, we will create goals and find ambition in life. When we have ambition in moderation, there comes a greater meaning to our lives. Nevertheless, this can also lead to an evil thing if it grows out of moderation. Too much ambition can destroy the lives and the careers of the people around us. Too much confidence leads us to pride, self-centeredness, and greediness. Once we gain too much pride, a disaster strikes us bringing us back to square one. This disaster can be absolutely anything that reduces the confidence in ourselves. The cycle continues like this endlessly unless we find moderation in our self-esteem.

This cycle is called the Pride cycle. It starts at the stage of self-doubt, progresses to self-confidence and ambition, and then progresses to pride and over ambition, then returns to the first stage. Even now, each of us are probably at some point trapped in this cycle. In order to find true, lasting happiness, we must find that point on the cycle where everything is in moderation, and learn to stay there. We must gain self confidence in ourselves, but also we need to temper that with the knowledge that we are not better than our neighbors. We must strive to never think of ourselves in a way that is greater than we actually are. In this we can find inner peace; peace from our doubts and our pride. The greatest among us are the ones that can balance ambition and humility, accomplishment and failure. When this is done, we can leave the Pride cycle and enter the cycle of peace. 

Pain

How can pain make us stronger?

Recently, I had to miss two days of school this weekend. You may think I am lucky, since my weekend turned into a 6 day weekend, but I am not. The reason that I was gone those days, was because I had to get my wisdom teeth removed. If you have not had the pleasure of this happening to you yet, then I suggest that you run for the hills (just kidding, don’t).

My dentist tells me that particularly my experience was much worse than what most people have to go through. He had to cut one of my teeth in half, and another one of my teeth was underneath a bone, so he had to cut right through the bone. While the experience was terrible, I can honestly say that if I needed to, I would do it again. While this may sound crazy, I think that experiences like this really do benefit us in the long run. Having pain like this makes us more capable of handling pain in the future. Pain is going to come whether we are ready or not, and if we have experienced pain before, we will be able to endure the future pain better. I think that this is why that everyone has wisdom teeth and has to get this operation done. It is not simply a flaw in our bodies that we have these teeth. Consider the example of a medieval battle. Let’s say that one side of the battle did not temper their swords when they made them, and the other side did. They thought that tempering the sword would just make it weaker because you had to break it down so much. So what would happen when that one side tried to use their swords? Their swords would shatter upon impact leaving their owners at the mercy of the enemy. Our lives could be like this if we do not feel some pain in the relative safety of our homes. We will shatter ourselves against the first challenge that we meet in our lives. It is what we do after we face these challenges that really define who we are. If we sink into a deep depression, or we decide to be cheerful and just take life day by day. It is these choices that show what we are made of. That is why it is so important that we feel pain and face challenges before we leave home. So don’t be afraid and go get your wisdom teeth pulled out, because it will only make you stronger; just like the song, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

Pain is an important aspect in all of our lives that we really need, but don’t really want. It is kind of like High School, we really need it, but we don’t really want it. I know that if we just accept pain as part of life and do our best to overcome it, we can be better people because of it.

Skiing

Is solitude better than companionship?

                This Friday, I went on a skiing trip with my brothers and my dad at Sunrise. This ski trip had been postponed two different times, so I was pretty excited to finally go. What made it even better was the fact that I was missing school to do it. The reason that I was doing it on Friday was so we could get the discount for scouts. All scouts could go and ski for 60 dollars.

                To go on this trip, I had to wake up at 5:30 in the morning, so we could get the most time skiing as possible. When I got there, I immediately got my rental skis on, and shot off for the lift by myself. I went up and down the runs a couple times, but eventually I got a little bored skiing by myself. I realized that it wasn't as fun just doing it by myself. So I came down the mountain and looked for my family. They were just finishing getting their skis and their clothes on. I felt a little bad, because of how slow they were taking. I went with my dad and took them to the bunny hill to help them learn how to ski. I especially tried to teach my youngest brother, Jonah, who is 8. He quickly got the hang of it and wanted to go on the bigger runs. So I took him up to the easiest run on the resort, fairway run. He took to skiing like a monkey eating bananas. Pretty soon, I realized that it was more fun teaching him how to ski, then skiing off by myself. After a while, I decided that he was ready for a bigger and better run. I took him on a blue run. Now, if you don’t know the levels of ski runs, they go like this. Greens are the easiest ones, blues are intermediate, blacks are difficult, and double blacks are just plain intense. To get a scale of what these runs are like, a green would be something like skiing down 8^th avenue. Blues are much, much harder. So anyway, back to the story.  I took Jonah on a different lift, a high speed quad (a lift that seats four people). This lift took us to the top of the mountain to the harder runs (the view from up there is absolutely amazing by the way). When Jonah first saw the run we were going on, he thought we were skiing off a cliff, and indeed it did look like that until you started down it. Jonah did very good until he got to a steeper part of the run. He crashed and was unable to get down for 20 minutes. He had to crawl down on his but down the run. It was quite amusing to watch. When he got down, he acted like he had just finished climbing Mount Everest.

                From this experience, I realized that is better to be with other people and not just be by yourself. You will probably have more fun if you stay with other people. Also if you crash and hurt yourself, you have somebody to help you get down off the run.  We always need a buddy to stick with. 

Memories of High School

How has school affected my life?

While I can honestly say that school sucks, I cannot admit that it hasn’t changed my life. School has affected every single aspect of my life. It sucks away my free time, makes me stress about stupid things like tests, changes my social life, and yet it also gives my life a purpose, a meaning.

Just consider how you would be different if you didn’t have to go to school tomorrow morning. It is surprising to find out how many changes would result. I know that I would be acting very different right now. For one, I would probably be staying up way later than I should, and second I would not have any plans for tomorrow whatsoever, except to sleep. I think that making plans makes you a more productive person and gives you something to look forward to. When I know what I am going to do tomorrow, I am usually a much happier person, unless if it is a test, then I just want to get it over with as soon as possible.

Right now, if I dropped out of high school, I would probably turn into a lethargic, fat hobo. As much as it pains me to admit it, school has affected me positively. Another thing that has given me this perception of school is sports. Being on a sports team is like being in an extended family for a while. What makes it even better is when your team wins. Especially when winning is completely unexpected. When the Chess team went to state, we were ranked as one of the lowest teams there, but we didn’t let that get us down. We just beat everyone anyway and took ninth, needless to say, we partied all night. I have to say that I won’t soon forget being on the Chess team.

The other sport that I have been doing for the past three years, Track, starts tomorrow. The thing that I like about Track is that it is all individual. You are constantly competing against yourself. It is the greatest challenge that anyone can ever undertake, because you can never truly win. You can only progress. While it is true that I am amazing at my events, shot put and discus, I will never truly have won, like you can in other sports (basketball, baseball, football). I will only admit my success when I have become the world champ.

So basically the main point of all of this is to cherish your school years, because they are almost over.  If we are not careful, they will slip by without us knowing. The only way for us to make these past years of hard work truly pay off, is for us to recognize that we are better because of them. I know that I am. 

The Meaning of Life

What is the meaning of life?
      One of the first and the most important questions that man has ever asked in the history of our world is what is the meaning of life? Many people across the world have pondered this question ever since man has formed into civilization. Indeed, this question has befuddled many philosophers and thinkers in our day. Without getting too much into my own religious views, I will honor everyone with what I consider the meaning of life to be. I kind of went on a bunch of different tangents when I wrote this.
      I believe that the meaning of life can be different for everyone. The meaning can change for each person based on the things they have done, the things they have seen, the environment they are grown up in, and their separate individual interests.  The meaning of life is for you to discover what you want to do for the rest of your life. It is for you to understand how you want to act for the rest of your life. How you want to look when you grow up.
      I also think that you can look at it this way. If I had to say what the meaning of life is in one word, it would be “grow”. In life we all need to grow physically, mentally, and emotionally. That is why we are here on this planet; that is why we are faced with such difficult choices in our lives, and how are you supposed to grow without facing difficult choices. For example, why do you think that metal is transformed into refined steel by beating it up with a hammer? You would think that hitting it would make it weaker, but it only makes it stronger. We are like that metal, we need to be beaten up, we need to be cast down before we can be lifted up. That is the true meaning of life. If any of you have different opinions to me own, please feel free to share them.