Introspect

I am incredibly busy.  I haven’t had much time to sit down and be on a computer.  But I feel bad that this little blog has been neglected, and that anyone who is still actually checking it after a week of silence is being deprived of fresh information as well.  I have to write a mini-ensayo in a minute so I figured I would just quickly share a few things I’ve learned this week, in no particular order.

1. If you are eating a taco with hot cheese, and that hot cheese falls on your white shirt, trying to cover that hot cheese stain with sour cream is ineffective and silly.

2. Waiting for a doctor’s appointment can be beneficial; you can get more homework done in 45 minutes than you would normally complete in 3 hours, due to an acute desire to forget where you are and why you are there.

3.  Happiness is a habit you can train yourself to have, and if you are a negative person, it’s because you tend to choose to look at things negatively.  You can actually train yourself out of automatically responding with negativity.

4. Friends are a gift from God.  They know me, and even better, if they don’t know something, they usually want to know.  They care; they’re interested.  And people-pleasing, or seeking for everyone in the world to like me, actually hinders me from recognizing the value of friendships.  While I’m busy seeking attention from the next “new” person who doesn’t know me well enough, I might forget and stop appreciating those who do know me and already like me; those who have accepted me.  So I’m turning my attention back on the friends I have… they are a joy and a blessing.

5. I’m wrestling with the actual definition of “blessing” after doing a devotion on it… so in spite of the last word of the last section, I’m no longer throwing the word around; at least not until I get a grasp of it again.

There’s five things that came to mind that I discovered or pondered this week.  Oh, and one big thing…

I did my last presentation of my college career this past Tuesday – in spanish, as usual.  And I’ve learned something from these presentations, which can actually be carried over to taking exams, or to the hard times or struggles and trials in life.  Preparing for the presentation is terrifying for me.  Having to do it is absolutely no fun at all.  No matter how prepared I am (and I HAVE to be prepared to calm my nerves) my hands get cold and clammy and my throat becomes dry and I can’t really remember who I am or what I’m saying.  But then, when the presentation is over… I have to say, the elation is actually worth the fear beforehand.  I’m pumped, excited, and ready to do anything.  But what if I hadn’t felt the fear?  What if I hadn’t had the agonizing event in the first place?  I would never have known what it was like to feel so relieved and elated without first suffering.  And in life, I wouldn’t know what it’s like to overcome if I didn’t have an obstacle.  We are so quick to shun God when life doesn’t go exactly as we want.  If we shun God, believing nothing could ever be good, then we’ve already lost.  We have to struggle; we have to toil; we have to suffer, and if we endure rather than dodging the thing altogether or collapsing in the midst of it, we can know victory.