Creepy.

Different style for Pixar. About half way through I realized why they didn't put this one at the beginning of Cars 2.  Oddly enough, I liked this. 

A Letter about Improvement.

I know I already posted today but I felt inspired by this and wanted to share. "To the individual who is weak in the heart, fearful in the heart: be patient with yourself. Perfection comes, not in this life, but in the next life. Don't demand things that are unreasonable, but demand of yourself improvement."

Two.

“Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.” 

"Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?" 

G.K. Chesterton wrote beautiful things.

A Quick Story that I Love.

I've noticed recently that if it's late and there is no one in the family room to keep my dog company, she opens my parent's bedroom door and curls up in a ball on the floor next to my dad's side of the bed and goes to sleep. It's as if my parents have another small child that can't sleep through the night alone. She loves my dad. I think it might be because he lets her lick his plate after every meal.  

A Letter About Looking Back.

“If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.” - Audrey Hepburn


After viewing this video you will know at least three things about me: 
1. I love my roommates. 
2. I love my dog. 
3. I often have strange men in my apartment.  

Two days ago I posted my facebook status as, "I have a paper due on Monday so my roommates and I are dancing around the apartment dressed like Spice Girls." 

I don't know why people thought I was kidding. 

School of Life.

Depressing? Yeah. True? Probably. I like this short film. A lot. Watch it twice. 

Also, I came across this quote that I really like by William James. I think I like quotes and short films for the same reasons. They are like little bursts of insight that pertain to the school of life. 

 "Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life...Seize every first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make...Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. If he keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can, with perfect certainty, count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation."  

Probably easier said than done, but still inspiring.

A Letter About "No" Goals.

1. No treating early rising as if it were some sort of terminal illness.

2. No more Cheetos. 

3. No more swearing. (exceptions may be valid during the following situations: near misses with my car, locking myself out of my apartment at night in the freezing cold, and walking in on my roommate naked.  *clarification: she was the one that was naked, not me.)

4. No more youtube videos of furry creatures that seem more important than my homework. 

5. No more worrying about things that I can't change. 

6. No more daydreaming about Chris Hemsworth. 

I can hear my roommate (not the naked one) laughing in the living room and it always makes me want to laugh. She's the best. 

A Letter of Huge Proportions.

I might be biting off more than I can chew with this entry. I'm an avid reader of Psychology Today. Recently, there have been a lot of studies done based on the premise of evolutionary theory, or the idea that our behavior is merely a reflection of prehistoric survival instinct. I picked up my roommate's anthropology text book last night (yes, I read my roommate's textbooks to avoid my own homework) and the first chapter explained the evolutionary process of homo sapiens. When it comes to the evolutionary/creationism debate, I have found that  people tend to react in extremes. The two sides are completely irreconcilable so I guess this can only be expected.

Here is where I'm at on the issue as of now (it's always changing and I'm constantly adding and retracting my views. Tomorrow I might see this entry as totally inaccurate, who knows): 

I'm not sure how humans can claim consciousness as their own: which is something that natural selection insists that we do. If we evolved just like any other animal on Earth, where did this self-awareness come from that is not found in any other species? At what point did we become creatures capable of experiencing empathy, hate, love, joy, or motivation? If the world is survival of the fittest, what benefit does humanity's sense of wonder offer to us?  Psychologists have become obsessed with studying people objectively. It's the only way psychology can be defined as a hard science in this empirical world. But the idea is absurd. People are not rocks. People are not black holes. People are not simply a collection of atomic mass. The idea of a person trying to get outside of themselves to accurately measure another person is impossible and ridiculous. 

Tonight I went and listened to a speaker share some of his life experiences with a young audience. I watched the young audience carefully take notes and learn from the words he spoke to them. Later, I listened to someone play the piano in a way that seemed as natural to him as breathing. I watched a short film about a guy that has been deep sea diving for fifty years and has yet to tire of it or take its beauty for granted. People  recognize beautiful things. They marvel and wonder at new experiences. This characteristic of consciousness is unlike anything else on Earth and to claim it as something we developed ourselves seems presumptuous. I believe that consciousness is a gift from God. 

A Letter about Wit.

I appreciate this:

"I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years.

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the "nub" of it and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to see."

I bet Mark Twain was a babe back in the day.

I love to see the temple. I'm going there today.