My Life

I know I've blogged about this before, and I may be repeating myself.  But it's something I've been thinking about lately.  Since I left the LDS church and became an atheist, I've had many people show dislike at me sharing my newfound beliefs.  I've had people ask me "You're not stating a positive belief.  You're just attacking my beliefs."  One guy criticized me (and my boyfriend) about pointing out the flaws in his church's doctrine, saying that we should instead focus our time on something constructive, such as a charitable organization. My response to that is, I am doing something constructive by attacking your beliefs.  Your beliefs are negative, and I seek to make the world a more positive place by negating your negative beliefs.  You believe that homosexual behavior is sinful.  These beliefs have a direct negative effect on the people around you.  I've been volunteering at Lost N Found for a while now, and I really enjoy it.  T...

So, embarrassing things happen at the doctor's office.  Sometimes the doctor needs to examine private parts of your body.  Sometimes the tests he does feel quite invasive.  I know that when I was younger, I was always embarrassed.  I still vividly remember the first time I was asked to take my pants off at the doctor's office (when he wanted to check for a hernia).  My mom was in the exam room with me.  The doctor said to pull my pants down.  I looked over my shoulder at my mom with the look of "Should I really do it?" I believe part of the reason for this embarrassment was because I was raised to believe that parts of the body are embarrassing.  That my body is something I should be ashamed of showing off.  I was always scared to change in public locker rooms--at public swimming pools and my school gym classes.  I was mortified that I had to shower in public in middle school. But my outlook on modesty and on my own body has changed ...

The other day I was listening to Pandora and the song from Disney's Hercules,  "I Can Go the Distance" came on. The line that stuck out to me at the time I listened to it was "I would go most anywhere to find where I belong".  (Of course, I also find it ironic because he spends the entire movie trying to get to Mount Olympus and then decides not to stay when he finally gets there.)  The reason it stuck out to me was because I find this to be true. I have noticed that I do many things in order to find out where I belong.  I loved being a Mormon while I was growing up because I felt like I belonged there.  I did all of the things that a good Mormon was supposed to do and said all of the things that a good Mormon should say because I got social acceptance from doing so (and I also sincerely believed that that was the right path to take).  I loved being accepted and admired by my leaders, friends, and family for being faithful to my church.  I was resp...

The way other people describe things, I often wonder if I'm living in the same world they're living in.  To be honest, I think that it wouldn't be all that inaccurate to say that we are indeed living in different worlds.  Because the way we perceive the world is all that we really know, not the world as it truly is.  For example, there is only a tiny spectrum of frequencies of light that we are capable of seeing.  All other frequencies are there, but invisible to our eyes.  In other words, we only see a tiny portion of what we could be seeing. So, imagine if one person could see the color white but not the color black.  And another person could see black but not white.  If both of them looked at a zebra, one would see a white horse and the other would see a black horse.  They'd see something completely different, even though they're looking at precisely the same thing. So what am I really getting at?  Well, what made me want to write this...