I will NOT slack!

But it's kind of hard when things get busy!

So on Thursday I have an interview for the full time slot at Slate Canyon! People have been very encouraging but I recognize that my chances are, in reality, very slim. I'm on a long list of people who would like the spot but just having the opportunity to do it means a lot. I actually shouldn't have been allowed to even interview but the people I work with are so great that they stuck their necks out on a limb so that I could at least interview!

School is half good, half incredibly annoying because I am taking 2 English classes that I just put off for forever and so I'm really rusty. Also, English classes are a lot of homework... that I don't want to do... ironically, writing on this blog every day is for one of those classes. Professor, if you're reading this, you're great, I just wish I had more time to give to your class.

But the Stats class is still going fine and research should pan out smoothly so I just need to buckle down and survive the semester.

So now that I've written for a sufficient amount of time I am going to add some things that i was working on yesterday for an assignment that i thought was due today but is actually due on Thursday. This was the last of a few prompts so I had been writing for a few hours and by the end of it my brain was pretty tripped out so I don't know if it will make a lot of sense but I want to put it on here to hear from other people about their ideas and so I can find it later:

What is the role of beauty in day-to-day life? What is its role in eternity? What is beauty?

            I believe that beauty, much like art, is in the eye of the beholder. I believe that beauty is to inspire. To the average human being, beauty is addicting, once we see it we wait for the next opportunity to find it again because it makes us feel something better than the ordinary. Beauty is a comparison. If we are surrounded by beautiful pink flowers we will start to take them for granted and forget that they are beautiful. We’ll start to desire blue flowers because we believe they are more beautiful. In reality, they may not be more beautiful but to our eye they are fresh and new.

            This can be seen in the way we think of beautiful people. I believe that we give someone the label of beautiful because they exhibit something that we don’t see often. A common example is how a woman in the United States desires to have darker skin because she sees her lighter skin every day. A woman from India often strives for lighter skin because she sees her dark skin every day. When watching television we desire the tiny figure of a tall, petite woman because as we look around we rarely actually see this figure in real life. The average model is 5’10” and weighs 115 pounds. The average American woman is 5’4” and 164 pounds. Our minds are often driven by what we see, a small body means a healthier person, which means a more desirable person. As is also shown in beauty pageants, more color in the face than is natural, a smaller figure and bigger hair than could ever be natural is seen as beautiful. Stepping away from the physical and into art this is also true. Life often gives us chaos, few things are naturally in order and so when our eye sees order, it is beautiful.

This is not to say that beauty is actually evil and misleading. On a day to day basis as we find order that is out of the ordinary, we find it beautiful and it inspires us to continue. When something is beautifully articulated it is a thought put in order and it inspires. When nature delivers a perfectly symmetrical flower in your garden it is beautiful and inspires us. Actions can also be beautiful. Kindness is restoring order to someone’s life. When someone drops a pencil or needs the door opened a kind person provides order and returns the pencil and holds the door. When we witness a moment like that we call it service and it is beautiful. So I guess service is people being beautiful toward one another.

This takes me to the next part of the prompt for this portion of the paper, what is the role of beauty in the eternities? If beauty is restoring order and inspiring progress then the role of beauty in eternity is that beauty must be eternal. I hope that our idea of beauty will evolve from what is rare to what is valuable. I think that as human beings we struggle to make the distinction but with time (eternity) I believe that we can sort through it. If we can let go of searching for what is rare then we can spend more time finding what is valuable and if we can understand how valuable service is then we can understand the importance of restoring order. If we can do this then we can further understand how God is a God of order, not because He is strict but because He values serving each other and progressing for eternity.