As it turns out, I'm quite a bit different from other people.
This isn't such a bad thing, in my opinion. Allow me to explain.
I was standing around after church today, waiting to be interviewed by my bishop. I assume most readers of this blog are either BYU students or familiar with how BYU operates (as most of you are either friends of mine or found this blog through the 100 Hour Board), but for those of you who are unaware as to such matters, each year every BYU student has to receive an ecclesiastical endorsement to prove that he or she is still following the BYU Honor Code. It's an exciting yearly tradition that generally takes me all of two minutes. My interviews usually go something like this:
BISHOP: Have you read the Honor Code?
OPTIMISTIC: Not recently, but I know what's in it.
BISHOP: Are you following it?
OPTIMISTIC: Yes.
BISHOP: Are you sure?
OPTIMISTIC: Yes.
BISHOP: Okay. Do you have any questions for me?
OPTIMISTIC: No, not particularly.
BISHOP: Okay. Thanks for coming.
OPTIMISTIC: Not a problem.
This is how most of my conversations with my bishop go, actually. He's an excellent man, it's just that we usually don't have very much to talk about.
At any rate, I figured it would be a while before I got in to my interview, as my bishop likes to talk an awful lot. There's just very little to talk about with me, so our interviews usually go very fast. As it turned out, I waited in the hall for close to forty minutes before I actually had my interview. In that time, he interviewed two people. I had the pleasure of waiting in the hall with a pair of glitter girls during that time. Predictably, they chatted merrily away about boys (more on my hatred for this particular term later) in their lives, strange places that they'd left objects in the past, and about bagels and which sorts they liked best. (I'm not even kidding about that last one.) I compared their conversation to the book that I was reading - Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - and realized just how different we really were. At several points during these girls' conversation, they looked over at me with a quizzical look, as if to say, "What on earth are you doing reading a book? Especially a book as weird as that?"
I am different than a lot of people. I enjoy reading this particular book. I like discussing historical theory with those who can appreciate it. I feel and act more "intellectual" (as my roommate sneeringly describes it) around many of my friends. I rather enjoy it. I think I enjoy it most precisely because it makes me different from many other people. I've always enjoyed defining myself as something "different." If all that does is free me from having to talk about boys and bagels, then I'm okay with that.
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5 comments:
I like pizza bagels best, although the sundried tomato variety is delicious too.
One time I left a ceramic pot I had spent an entire semester of pottery class perfecting in the bathroom.
As for boys, I think the verification word says it all: ugypigs.
Once I left my shoes at home and didn't realize until we reached our destination-Disneyland. Then we had to go back and get them.
I like hearing people's conversations. Not listening in technically, but it's interesting to hear what random people talk about.
Once I left my glasses in Chile. Somehow they found their way back to me through church channels.
I don't like bagels. Isn't that a Jew food?
I am a boy.
I'm not sure how you say this, but I think it is interesting enough to consider.
So as far as religion goes, ours is one of the most strict. Everyone knows the people who follow each law to the letter. I admire such people, I'm just not one of them. So when you think about a lot of stuff we do, it isn't exactly useful, doesn't have a religious/eternal purpose. I'm talking about stuff like most entertainment. TV is like spiritual junkfood, we know it is bad for us, but we like it.
I don't know how to justify such things. I'm not sure I need to. Seinfeld, Kung-Pow, RATM or Kurt Vonnegut, none of these have any good spiritual implications, and may have bad ones (the overused word 'desensitization' comes to mind). So they may not be good for us in the long run, but they help with the issue of keeping one's sanity.
Maybe no one else knows what the heck I"m talking about. I'm not a fundamentalist really, though I admire those who can be. My point is that not all frivolous things are bad (or that more stuff is frivolous than we think). I spend inordinate amounts of time figuring out how to hack computers, a word which here refers to getting computers to do something they weren't designed to do. Some people think it is a waste, then they go watch a movie (I often counter with "I have time to waste, I don't own a TV).
Just because I select my frivolous pursuits differently than others doesn't make them better or worse. Sometimes I am surprised that people can pay as much attention to their appearance as I do to computers, my brother does to politics, my mother to books, my father to work and my friends to movies, video games & tv shows. They just choose their frivolous pursuits differently.
Does this mean we have to stop having our converstaions about bagels and boys?
I actually have a funny story, at the callings interviews that Bishop had, they were behind as usual and so when Robert mentioned that they were behind I told him I've never been in the office with Bishop longer then two minutes, he said that was impossible so I bet him I'd be in and out in two minutes. I went in, two minutes later I came out and smiled at him. It was wonderful.
Oh and if you really did start becoming a glitter guy, I'm sure many of us would disown you straight away.
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