Brotherly Love

This Thanksgiving the thing I am most grateful for is having an older brother.

Russell is three years older than me and has always been a role model to me.  He has become a great example of hard work and determination and following your dream.  I remember as a kid playing with him in the yard and him allowing me to have the cooler power or the better toy (that is with the exception of his GI Joes!) and helping me clean our bedroom even though I have always been the messy one.  As we grew older and socially distant I remember him inviting me into his room to watch Psych, Glee, and/or Firefly with him.  These moments of bonding throughout my adolescents allowed me to cherish a great bond with my brother. 

                When I was 18 Russell moved out and our bonding time changed into going out to eat once or twice a month.  Our favorite places were the Ruby’s Diner at the end of the Long Beach Pier or BJ’s off of Beach Blvd.  We would talk and I learned a great deal from these conversations.  I learned what to expect when out on your own and I learned that I needed to be prepared to do what was needed if I wanted to be independent.  With everything my brother has done for me perhaps the greatest thing I have learned and received from my brother is the gift of unconditional love.

                Russell and I have long been different on political, social, and religious matters.  Though he disagrees with some of my ways my brother has been there to support me in all my endeavors.  Russell has been present for every major event in my life!  He made sacrifices to come and hear me speak in church and has been present for each priesthood advancement I have received.  He supported me through my mission even coming to church with me on one Sunday.   He has supported me through the loss of friends and family to death and he has informed me on political issues.  He has trusted me with secrets and fears and accepted my trepidations.  This is the definition of true and unconditional love.

                I love you Russell and I miss you very much!  You live in a different state now but I still enjoy your company and conversation whenever we get the chance!  Thanks for being my Older Brother!

Of Lessons Learned

  Last time I wrote it was about all the times I have cried.  I enjoyed the feedback I got from that post but I was sad to realize that it made several people cry as well.  I wanted to use this post to let you know all the good that comes from my tears.

From my mother dying I learned the importance of family and the path of grieving.  I also gain a love for cooking and music at that point in my life.  My mom has been a topic of conversations that has always bright smiles to my face and the faces of those discussing her with me.  All the good things about her have been told to me and I feel as if I know her better now.  I gained several surrogate mothers who worry about me just like one of their own children.  I've made a few friends where having lost a parent was an instant connection! Perhaps the greatest blessing I've received is that of compassion and empathy for those who have passed through similar situations.  I've learned that saying "I'm sorry" doesn't mean anything but asking "Is there anything I can do to help?" is of infinite worth.

From the principal’s office I learned my great capacity for acting and performing on the spot!

The death of my Grandmother is a little harder to find because I didn't know what I learned from her until just a little over a year and a half ago.  My Grandmother died from Brest Cancer and had been suffering for a long time.  However when my mother passed away she canceled her cancer treatments to come down to Southern California to help take care of my brother and I.  I knew she had come down to help take care of us but I didn't realize that she canceled her treatment to help us until a year and a half ago.  From her death I learned that true joy comes from caring more about others than one and this lesson has brought so much happiness into my life.

When my first true love broke up with me that was hard for me to cope with.  I woke up one night and came to the realization that I was going through this for a reason and I needed to focus on that.  From her I learned forgiveness and she helped me develop my personal testimony of Christ.  If she had not broken up with me I probably would have never dated many of the girls I have had the pleasure of taking out on dates.  Also with my first heart break came an understanding of what I really wanted in a future spouse.

Wrestling my last match as a senior taught me that it is ok to love what you do and to invest more than just your body into your hobbies.  I know the power good coaches have in changing your life.  I remember once in my senior year I was getting a "D" in English and my wrestling coach found out and he caught me in the hall one day and hit me upside the head and asked me why I was getting a "D" when I was one of the smartest kids on the team.  If it wasn't for that discussion and that coach I probably would have had to repeat my senior year. 

Losing a dear friend is always hard no matter how old you are or at what stage of life you're in.  Losing Andy was the first time I had a peer who I was close with pass away and in a tragic way.  From these tears I learned the meaning of friendship and that friendships can continue beyond the grave.  I learned the importance of sacrifice and love.  I gained a larger love for music and I will ever be grateful for the EFY program of the church for allowing Andy and I to meet in the first place.

While I was in the MTC I got to have an interaction with both my Mom and Andy.  It was a very dear a spiritual experience that I will cherish and hold on to forever!  I was capable of being happy immediately after those tears and I learned the truthfulness of the gospel I was going to be teaching for the next two years.

The tears from the drunken man taught me that I needed assistance to overcome my depression and the tools I learned from that continue to keep me rebounding to be happy relatively quickly after heartache that creeps up in my life.

The end of mine and Kylie's relationship brought fresh wounds into my life that continue to open once in a while.  However I'm happy because she taught me how to love and that I should love God more than I love others.  I should be willing to follow revelation no matter how hard it is to do.  She brought so much happiness into my life as we spent time together.  More than anything else my tears taught me that I had fallen more in love with her than I ever have in my life and that my heart was working perfectly!  I was worried that I had a permanently broken heart and would never love a person to my full heart.

The tears of my guitar taught me that I had become attached too much to the material things of life.  I'm working on detaching myself from trivial things while trying to attach myself more to people and learning.  Both things I can take with me when I go (intelligence and relationships).

So as you can see though I experienced a lot of sorrow I have also been tremendously blessed from my losses!

The Main Lesson!

Everything in life happens for a reason. 

 Its ok to be depressed for a while.

   Get back up and try again.    

    Find the good in the bad.

Smile at least 10 times a day!

Love you all!

The Key to my Soul

My mother Shannon passed away when I was ten. I cried. A lot. I remember lying in the same bed as my brother and my dad when all of my family was down prepping for the funeral and screaming "mommy! mommy! mommy!" Over and over again wailing it repeatedly into my teddy bear snowy. That week I seemed to lose my tears because since then I've cried very few times.  I cried when I was sent to the principal’s office for the first time in 5th grade (but I'm not sure if this should count because I did it so I would get out of trouble because they thought I was crying about my mom.... Shameless I know but ever the opportunist.).

 

The next time I cried was when I found out my grandmother died when I was 13. My dad had shown up at my junior high to tell the news to me after school. I stayed at school and minutes later my science teacher, Mrs. K, pulled me into her classroom and held me as I cried about my grandmother.  This incident really dried me up because it would be almost four years before I cried again.  This time she had a name.

She was undoubtedly my first true love.  I met her at EFY (a church camp) and we hit it off immediately!  She lived in a different state but that didn't stop us from falling in love. I was almost seventeen when she changed my life. She sent me a scripture passage about a man named capita in Moroni.  It described all his great qualities and at the end it said that if all men were like him that "the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men."  

Next to the verse in her scriptures was written "perfect husband!" Oh how I wanted to be that for her!! I was able to go see her and spend a week with her and her family. It was then in the back if her parents minivan that she and I shared our first kiss. My first kiss ever.... Well not ever but the first one that meant   anything. It was 2 weeks after returning home that she text me and told me that she had cheated on me with her best friend’s boyfriend and that we were over.  I was crushed! My heart was torn from my chest and shown to me but not because she broke up with me but because of how much she had changed for the worse.  I remember sitting up with my dad crying because I knew that it could never be now.

 

After Aubrey it was only about a year before I cried twice more.  One will seem quite trivial to most of you but other wrestlers will understand.  I cried after my final varsity match of my senior season.  The realization that I would probably never wrestle again hit me like a ton of bricks and I cried sobbed really.

 

Then the summer after graduation I again attended EFY. There I met Nathan but to avoid confusion with another Nathan in our group he chose to go by his middle name Andy. Andy and I were inseparable that week. We talked about music, games, our secrets, our sorrows, what made us happy and our testimonies of Christ and of course girls!!!  We quickly became best friends and realized our kindred spirits.  

          That week ended far too quickly and we had to go our separate ways. Andy to Utah and I home to SoCal. We parted with promises of reuniting and making a band. 

          We kept in touch and had planned to hang out in December.  I got a text one night in October from a mutual friend. "Sam! They're saying Andy killed himself is it true?"  I called his phone. His mom picked up and confirmed that my friend and her son had indeed taken his own life.  I went in to my father's bedroom and told him what I had learned and cried. 

 

Only a year would pass before I would cry again. October 30th 2010 I was in the MTC and discovered I needed to squire a stronger testimony in my beliefs before I tried to teach others them. As I knelt in prayer I felt my mother’s embrace... A feeling I hadn't felt in almost nine years. 

          To say the least I broke down and shared a very tender moment with my roommates and we were all able to grow a little spiritually that night.  

         

Again a year later I cried due to a combination of serving in a hard area with a hard companion and the compilation of all the loss I had ever felt in my life coming to a head on new-year’s eve 2011.  My companion and I were heading home from a drudgingly slow day when a man, obviously drunk, shouted

"HEY!!!  ARE YOU MORMONS?!?"

We told him we where and he went off on how he did not believe in god man or the devil and that all he believed in was himself and the money in his pocket.  Through the chilled air and his warm whiskey breath his drunken spittle flew as he spoke and pulled out the largest roll of cash I have ever seen! It was easily twice the size of my fist.

It is important that I set the scene now because his next words will set me off.  I had just passed through the anniversary of my best friend’s death and my mother’s birthday and then my best friend’s birthday and was now only a day away from my mother’s death anniversary.

          Ok now that that is taken care of the man leaned in real close to me and said, "F*** life! It aint worth it.  I should just give you this wad of cash and go for a walk on that frozen lake and pray that I fall through!"

I stepped off of my bicycle and stood toe to toe with the man and in the firmest voice I could muster told him that he was wrong and that life was worth it.  My companion misjudged the situation and though I was about to attack the man and started screaming at me to get back on my bike.  Anger and sorrow coursed through my veins as I reluctantly complied and we rode the rest of the way home.  I was ready to throw someone through the wall by the time I to my door.  The dam had burst and I through myself on to my bed and let every emotion course though my body all at once.  I was shortly transferred out of that area and away from that companion. 

 

It was almost 2 years till I would cry twice more so if you are keeping up with the time line then you know that these two incidents have happened quite recently.  In fact August and October are the exact months.

          The first is when a woman I had come to love deeply and who returned my love told me that she felt we needed to break up.  I didn't cry then.  I cried later that night when I was alone and venting my frustrations at God!  I sobbed and realized that I had lost a precious gift in my life and might not ever get it back.  I've become ok with this and I’m getting better every day.

         

The last time I cried was just last week.  My car got broken into and my battery stolen.  I was fine and replaced that battery then I opened the trunk and realized that my guitar had been stolen.  In front of my dad and unashamed I sobbed.  My guitar, my closest friend at the moment, my anti depressant, my encouragement, my voice gone!  How could someone do that to me!  Not a minute later I realized that this had become such an attachment to cause this response from me.

          So I guess that the best way to know a guy is to ask him when he cries.  That is the key to the soul.

The Technicolor World of Black and White

To Preface this post this is a paper I wrote for my English class using material from the book The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt chapters 1 and 4.

Religions and politicians have always taught a well-defined divide between right and wrong.  However there exist many grey areas between right and wrong on several moral issues such as theft, gun control laws, and abortions. Confusing grey areas among these subjects cause tensions in society that in extreme cases can lead to violent crimes and the degrading of society. The abortion clinic bombings that terrified the United States in the early 90’s are just a few examples of the violence that can be caused by grey areas. Two causes of grey areas are the Inner Lawyer and The Myth of Pure Evil, subconscious traits that all people have that heavily influence decision making. If grey areas were to be declared as good or evil then the tensions they cause could be put to rest. The best way to develop a clearer divide in society is to focus on the divide in the individual.  To develop a personal sense of pure black and white requires a great deal of self discipline to command the Inner Lawyer and then to define pure evil.  With the proper tools and dedication, societies could clear up these “grey areas” and provide clear lines between right and wrong.

The first step to making a clearer division between right and wrong is to understand what the Inner Lawyer is and how to tame it.  The Inner Lawyer is the portion of the mind that defends and justifies the actions, thoughts, and judgments of an individual.   Haidt uses the example of a brother and sister making love with each other using two forms of birth-control with the end result that their relationship became stronger and no one else found out about it.  Our initial reaction to a incestuous scenario is on of disgust and contempt, but when presented with the facts of no-harm done we begin to reconsider our original stance and start to come to the conclusion that sometimes or in some cases incest is alright. This is an example of the Inner Lawyer finding the easy way out in creating a grey area instead of continuing to work on our initial gut feeling that incest is wrong.  We can avoid having our inner lawyer slack off through the practice of a strict moral code.  Strict moral codes exist in both religion and martial arts which teach people the ability to clear their minds and consciously rationalize through the practice of prayer or meditation.  The practice of meditation and prayer allow a person to take a step back from situation and spend extra time debating an issue within oneself.   Meditation and prayer forces the Inner Lawyer to spend more of its effort on finding better reason to justify your original reaction to a situation.  Eventually the Inner Lawyer can be trained to defend positions of morals rather than our actual actions, so as to create feelings of guilt and remorse when we do or think something contradictory to the moral code we have chosen.   Once the Inner Lawyer has been trained by a moral code then it is capable of helping us create black and white instead of creating grey areas.

People must also understand that The Myth of Pure Evil, that says there is no such thing as pure evil is false.  Though there are not people who are wholly evil there are actions that all people instinctively view as evil such as rape, child molestation, and murder. Knowing that some acts that are inherently wrong, and that people always have the opportunity to choose not to commit a crime, then we also know those who willingly make the choice to commit these acts have chosen to be evil, and as such should receive swift judgment.  As we develop stronger stands against criminals then those who commit crimes will reevaluate their survival instincts and think twice before committing an act of violence that has been deemed as evil in their society.  An example of this survival instinct being reevaluated can be seen in the study More Guns Less Crime conducted by  John Lott by examining how the introduction of concealed firearm permits into societies that previously banned them or made them difficult to acquire.  In all cases the level of violent crime dropped dramatically and it was decided that the reason was that criminals were more aware that those they would be attacking were more likely to be armed and better capable of defending themselves.  As societies take firmer stands on what actions of evil are purely evil and take steps to make quick black and white judgments they will be benefited by falling crime rates.

                It would take a united society to make these changes that would be necessary for the defining of good and evil, but with so many individual senses of morals within one society it is hard to achieve unification; however through celebrated diversity you can create a unified governing body.  This is clearly shown in the United States Supreme Court where the opposing opinions are debated and then put before a judicial body who will declare which side is correct, Supreme Court verdicts are then used as the line that divides white and black.  If smaller units of society were to create similar governing bodies to debate and then to make declarations on what is good and evil the lines between white and black will become clearer as all sides of morality come to agreements on where to make stands.  Along with judicial systems of government diversity can provide strength in society with the strength of good morals that the foundations of good culture and upbringing instill in respective members of society.  For example many races have a culture of respect and strong families.  If more people exercised these traits the amount of abuse within families and against children and the elderly would decrease.  The main requirement to receive these benefits from clear lines between good and evil is to accept diversity as a strength and not a dividing factor, to do this the common goal of taming the Inner Lawyer and understanding Pure Evil must continue to be the focus of all members of society.

                In conclusion the division between good and evil can be clarified and used to benefit society in several ways. The First was is in understanding and taming the Inner Lawyer to learn how to make instinctual judgments between right and wrong.  Next is by learning how the Myth of Pure Evil allows us to declare actions as evil and to deem those who willingly choose to commit those actions as evil, and to punish them accordingly.  And finally in applying the understanding of both the Inner Lawyer and the Myth of Pure Evil into society to create a heavily judicial system of government to create a unified line between good and evil.  If these steps were to be taken society would be benefited by lower crime rates as well and stronger morals and a decrease in child and elderly abuse, through taming the Inner Lawyer and defining pure evil.

Mother's Day (for those who didn't have to)

  This mother’s day marks my 11th motherless Mother's Day.  Today, even though it is a day late, I would like to talk about three women who will forever hold special places in my heart for being a Mother to me when they didn't have to be.

  First is my Aunt Karen.  I am really grateful to her for allowing me to live with her family for the last 6 months.  She has treated me like one of her own sons from the beginning and has been very supportive and caring towards me.  She encourages me and expects great things and most of all she is interested in my life and the choices I am making.  She often tells me of how much she loved and misses my Mom.  I love her and I am glad that she chose to be my mother this year!

Next is Bev! She is an amazing woman and after my mother passed away she was hired to take care of my brother and I while my Dad was at work.  She was amazing!  Although she has never had children of her own she is a great mother and many kids have been privileged to be her surrogate children! Even after she moved away to Utah she continued to watch out for me and allowed me to take shelter under her roof many times! She also was friends of my mother and would share stories with me about her and would allow me to know that she was a great person!  I love her and hope to sit down and visit with her again :)

Last but certainly not least is someone who was my second mom even before I ever lost my mother.  Tina is my mom as much as she is my best friend’s mom! Ha-ha I spent more time at her house than I did my own in my childhood through high school.  When my mom passed away she was the next go to.  The only person ever given permission by my parents to beat me! LOL.  Tina was my mother's best friend and knew her well and I remember wanting her opinion of me to be good even though she knew my deepest secrets!  I could tell that she cared about me when she was willing to look past what I had done to see what I would become! I love her! 

Thank you Mom's!  Sorry this is a day.... ok really 2 days late!

Happy Mother's Day

Thomas and Me (How Doubt Can Lead to Knowledge)

So this week I am going to get a little spiritual so prepare yourselves!  This week I had the opportunity to watch a musical called “Savior of the World” it is about the life of Christ.  The end portion is all about the apostles after the death and crucifixion of the Jesus Christ.  I have seen this production a few times now but this time the plight of Thomas the Apostle, commonly referred to as Doubting Thomas, struck me in a way that I have not ever been struck before.  Maybe it was the quality of the actor portraying the part, but I feel it is because at this time in my life I can relate to Thomas.

                Thomas had walked and talked with the Savior.  He had heard His teachings and seen the miracles He preformed.  He had been divinely appointed to serve on the council of 12 Apostles.  He taught and testified with them and sat daily by the feet of the Master learning and gaining a stronger testimony.  Yet, on a night shortly following the resurrection of the Lord, Thomas was absent as Christ showed himself to the remaining Apostles  in an upper room.  I could imagine the pain Thomas must have felt when he learned that his beloved friend and teacher had shown himself too all but him.  What had he done to deny him this blessing?  Was he no longer worthy to be an apostle?  Was he still trusted to tend to the flock of followers who still believed in Christ as the promised Messiah?  Surely these and many more questions like them were going through Thomas’s head as he said “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.” (KJV John 20:25)

                In my life I feel this way at times as well.  I live the Gospel to the best of my ability and I do the things I know I’m supposed to do.  I still make mistakes as everyone does and I have to repent quite often.  However there are many times I wonder, “Has God forgotten me? Did Christ really die for my sins?”  I served a mission and I saw miracles happen on a daily basis.  I saw people’s lives change with acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  You would think that now after only 4 months of being home I would just put these questions of doubt aside.  It has not been that easy.  I continue to have doubts and questions come up and I keep looking for answers. 

                Of course we all know the Happy ending to Thomas’s story.  Eight Days later as the Apostles again gather in the Upper Room Christ again appears and calls Thomas to him to feel the prints of the nails and to thrust his hand into his side.  Christ then spoke and said “… because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” (KJV John 20:29)  The part that interests me most is that Thomas is present at this meeting of the Apostles.  Even though his testimony was being challenged he chose to be where he knew he was supposed to be.  In my life I fell I can currently relate to Thomas.  I have my doubts but I remember the my soul did burn within me and testified to me that Jesus is my Savior.  I remember the moments that cemented my testimony!  Then, I continue on and wait till the blessed day when I shall stand before my Savior and have my Faith replaced by Knowledge.

                Remember that when those times of doubt come into your life that there will be more but it doesn’t mean you’re right or wrong in what you are doing just continue forward and continue learning and we too can become great men and women like Thomas went on to become.

Who needs their Pinkie anyways!

So I think that it is time to go back to my childhood and pull out some stories for the entertainment of my readers! As some of you may know I was a very active little boy with more energy and imagination than I knew what to do with.  As a consequence I was always getting into trouble/ hurting myself. 

                Perhaps one my favorite stories of getting into trouble come from the first time I got a detention at school which also happens to be my first “fight”!  I say “fight” because I didn’t ever throw a punch.  I remember I was in second grade and my friend Gwen and I were out on the playground when a kid named Greg came up and said he was going to fight me.  Gwen stepped in and said he would have to fight her first.  Greg said he would be back with his friends and that we should get ready to get beat!  I’ll be honest at 7 I didn’t yet have my tough guy defense to get me out of some of these sticky situations so I was pretty scared, so Gwen and I ran around the playground getting all of our friends together to help us fight Greg.  We had maybe 12 kids but at that age I felt like I was leading the charge of the royal cavalry with two full battalions behind me!  When Greg saw us coming he had only 2 friends and he started to run away fr0om my Mob!

                This “fight” turned into a game of chase and when the bell rang I ran to the bathroom to wash my hands.  Next thing I know I come walking out to go stand in line and Greg has been choke slammed to the ground and I am being blamed for it!  I had no idea what had happened I just walked up to the Principal’s office and got given a detention for nothing!  So unfair… and thus started my distrust of school leadership.  But that was the first time I got into a lot of trouble at school.

                The other story I blame my getting injured on my father!  Let me set the stage for you.  My brother and I had a sandbox in the backyard under our beloved fort!  One day we were out there and decided that the sand box was boring and we wanted to go to china! So we began digging and digging and digging some more!  I would say the hole was about 8 feet deep… in reality is was probably 5 or 6 but still an impressive feat for a 6 and 9 year old.  Once we dug the pit we put our tramp over it to provide shade.  So there we had it our very own pill box and bunker from all of our enemies!  We decided that we needed a way to communicate with the other person in the fort so we waited until our mother left cause she would have never let us do this and when she went to a woman’s conference in Utah we asked our dad if we could appropriate the old garden hose and put it in-between the 2 sections of out fort so we could communicate with each other.  He said yes so we did it and after wards Russell went inside and I stayed outside playing.  It was at this point mistake 1 was made.  I looked at the hose and decided that it was too long and I needed to cut off about 3 feet of it.  I first tried ripping it… Not happening.  Then I tried to use my beautiful teeth!  This even probably caused my need for braces later on in life.  So I did what any self respecting 6 year old would do.  I asked my dad for a knife!

                Now in my Fathers Defense I will say he probably though that giving me a pin knife instead of a steak knife was a good idea cause who hurts themselves with a pin knife!... well that would be me!  I walked out to my fort (armed and now un-supervised!)  And proceeded to try and cut ¼ inch rubber with the weakest knife known to man.  Well as I grasped the knife as hard as I could and pressed into the Rubber I learned something that has been very valuable since then.  I learned that Human flesh is not as strong as rubber!  I learned this when the lock on my newly acquired play thing broke and the blade which was now incredibly sharp and could cut through anything cut into my pinkie and blood went EVERYWHERE!

                I somehow managed to scramble out of my pit and ran into the house with blood pumping out of my hand and my dad the ever quick thinker pulls out one of my mother’s white towels and tell me to hold it tight on my hand.  I do and we all pile in the car for the almost bi-weekly trip for Sam to the ER!  I use to be on a first name basis with Dr. Shelly and the CHOC ER center!  Anyways we get there and the bleeding has stopped somewhat and I decide to look in my cut and I see this weird white stuff inside of the cut and that is when I realized how bad I had injured myself cause on this white stuff was a small scratch of where the knife blade had nicked the bone of my right pinkie finger! 

                After what seemed like an eon we got taken back to an ER room and a Doctor came in (not Dr. ShellyL) but still a cute female ;) and she sat down and numbed my hand and started sewing and me the ever talkative person that I am began asking her if she sewed a lot and she said that she was no good at sewing and could only sew when she really really needed to. She then asked me if my Mother Sewed and I said “YES!... but not hands.”  At this the three nurses the Doctor and my father all started laughing!  I had succeeded in my quest to make people laugh and with my new really cool stitches I left with my hand throbbing and my head held high!