Winter Gala Ball

I've had a few busy weeks and let blogging fall behind. So, today I think I may write as many as four different entries. Hope y'all don't mind! Here's the thing, this post here will probably be the most interesting one for most of you who read along hoping to hear how my life is going. As you can clearly see in this picture, I was in a tux with a stormtrooper. That's how my life is going! AWESOME. Well, let's start with last weekend. Last Friday night there was a large regional YSA activity for people all across Virginia and the D.C. area. So, my good friend Daniel and I decided to get some tuxes and some dates and go have a grand ol' time at the Downtown Richmond Marriott. We all went out to dinner and had a great night of dancing and fun. I took a good friend of mine who is heading back to BYU Idaho on Tuesday. I've been fortunate to become good friends with her.
Well, Melissa and I had a good time and I got to dance with lots of other close friends as well. It got to the point during the dance that one of my friends was standing at the side while I was dancing with another friend and she started talking to me, saying that I hadn't asked her to dance and she just had to stand on the side, so the girl I was dancing with excused herself and I danced with the other girl. Haha. I was very popular and was asked to dance as often as I asked people to dance.
So, that was the dance, we had a great time and met a storm trooper afterwards. The next day a group of us got together for a group date and a hockey game where we all had seats on the ice. The game was awesome as we watched the Richmond Renegades win in an overtime shoot out. It was lots of fun and crazy times.
In other news, I had my first final this Tuesday for Property Law, I think it went okay. I hope so anyhow! Life's been busy but super good. Oh, yeah... and I have kind of started dating this girl, Crystal. She's not in any of the pictures I have up on here because so far I don't have a picture of just the two of us together, but she's great. She's a 2nd year dental student from Holladay, Utah. I was fortunate that she was willing to give me a dance when we were at the ball, and she was even willing to let me spend some hours with her last Saturday. For those of you who are counting, that is 3 dates I had last weekend... We studied together on Monday, as she had her last final on Tuesday and I had my first final. And then we went out with a bunch of friends to celebrate the end of her finals and watched the movie Australia. I like her. So there's that. Thanks for reading, hope you all keep reading down for the other posts I've just made. Also, I'm super lazy and don't feel like fixing the picture layout. So deal with it.

Home

I'm going home soon, for Christmas. I'm so excited to be there and to see everybody. But thinking about it and telling people that I'm going home has caused me to think a great deal about the concept of home. In one of my favorite movies, Garden State, there is a scene where the protagonist is speaking with his new girlfriend in a swimming pool and he says to her, "You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone." She quickly responds by saying "I still feel at home in my house." He responds by saying, "you'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place." I like that scene.
In some sense I think I can inversely identify with that scene. I see people who have that same kind of concept about home, where once they've left the house they grew up in for the world, they just can't find their home. In the movie he finds his home again as he falls in love with his girlfriend and begins to experience life anew. Lucky for me, I can only identify with his thoughts on home in an abstract manner, it has been the opposite for me. I feel like telling people who ask if I'm going home for Christmas that I'm flying home on the 21st, then I'm going to drive home with my sister, then I'll go back home for a few days with my grandparents, until I fly back home. If that last sentence doesn't make sense, don't worry, I hope it will.
The phrase "home is where the heart is" may be trite and cliche in many ways, but it also contains a great deal of truth. In my life, I have been truly blessed to find home wherever I have lived. Pinedale was my home growing up, and every time I return, although it has changed drastically since I left, I feel at home. I feel like I'm returning to a place that will always hold a special place in my heart, a place that truly is my home. But whenever I got to Pleasant Grove, whenever I get to see my grandparents who so generously allowed me to live with them while I went to school, I also feel like I've returned home. In Pleasant Grove I had so much family and I made so many friends that whenever I go there, I can't help but feel love. When I'm in Pleasant Grove I am home.
Finally, I'm here in Richmond. I moved out here in August without knowing a single soul closer than Charlotte, North Carolina. In a few short months I have come to know and love so many people. The bishop here told me on Sunday that I am one of his "peeps" and I have a place to go for every holiday if I need to. As surely as I know that my friends in Utah and Wyoming will go out of their ways to help me, I know that my friends here in Richmond will do the same.
What is the meaning of home? Where is it that we can truly call home? For me, the answer has fortunately been everywhere I go. It may take some time, it was a while before I could call the areas on my mission home, but the more I live the more I realize that home is where I am. Home is where I feel comfortable, and where my dearest, closest friends are. I can't wait to go home for Christmas, and I can't wait to return home for New Year's and see my grandparents, I can't wait to return home and start my study of the law back up. How did I get to be so fortunate as to find a home wherever I go?

The Suppressed Correlative

In one of the first Ethics classes I took, taught by Dr. Gates at BYU, we had a day where we discussed a fallacy called the fallacy of the suppressed correlative. This fallacy is a fallacy of relativistic ethics, where those who claim that what is ethical is based upon every culture's own ethical theory. Basically, the idea of relativism is that each culture defines right or wrong according to its own set of standards. The fallacy of the suppressed correlative comes into play because once you make right and wrong subjective, or only objective according to a community, you deny the very nature of right and wrong. You can have no comprehension of what is right unless you understand what is wrong. This is what Lehi was pointing out to Jacob in 2 Nephi 2, there are some concepts that have no meaning unless the opposite exists. Without evil, good would not make sense. Without sorry, happiness could not exist. The contrast gives life to the good and the bad.
Well, that's the introduction to what I want to say here. I've been thinking about this a lot. In Law School teachers like to say that they use the "Socratic Method" of teaching, a system of dialectic where the teacher asks a series of questions to the students in an attempt to draw out the correct answer. This means that the student must explore each question and discover the answer on his own, and it is an effective teaching method.
However, I take umbrage at calling this the Socratic Method, not because it doesn't closely approximate the style Socrates used in his famed dialogs, but because the intent is wholly different. Now, take this with a grain of salt, as I only have a BA in Philosophy and may be largely erroneous in my understanding, but I believe that Socrates' intense with those he taught was not to teach any knowledge, but to teach ignorance. Socrates recognized the nature of true wisdom, you cannot be truly wise unless you recognize your own ignorance. Socrates primarily taught those who were high of mind, who thought they were experts in a given area, and demonstrated the flaws in their beliefs. He showed that even those with the most knowledge are largely ignorant. To be aware of that ignorance is the first step to becoming truly wise, no matter how much knowledge we obtain we will always have more to learn.
This is what I think about sometimes, the nature of virtue. Wisdom is a virtue that cannot be obtained until we are aware of its inverse, ignorance. Likewise with courage, the only truly courageous man is the man who acts despite his fears - it is only in recognizing the inverse that the man can be come truly courageous. You'll notice that I don't say the opposite, but the inverse. I think this is right, courage and fear are not opposed, but rather just on different ends of a spectrum, inverted, if you will. The Christian virtue of humility is impossible to obtain without a recognition of our own pride. If we would be virtuous we must recognize vice.

8 things

My 8 Favorite TV Shows
1. House
2. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
3. The Colbert Report
4. The Office
5. Boston Legal
6. Countdown with Keith Olbermann
7. The Rachel Maddow Show
8. Mad Men

My 8 Favorite Restaurants
1. Tucano's
2. Mimi's Cafe
3. Jalisco
4. Ruby River Steakhouse
5. Cracker Barrell
6. IHOP
7. Chick Fil A
8. Waffle House (just for Mike Stafford)

8 Things that Happened Yesterday
1. Property Study
2. Final Torts Class/Review
3. Time with Crystal
4. Frost/Nixon interviews arrived
5. Blessed a sick kid
6. Bought gas
7. Washed my car
8. Stayed up late

8 Things I Look Forward To
1. Cy and Brit's baby
2. Home for Christmas
3. Inauguration day
4. End of recession
5. End of Iraq War
6. Finishing school
7. Having time to write
8. Sleep

8 Things I Love About Winter
1. Christmas
2. My birthday
3. The New Year
4. I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
5. Hot Chocolate
6. The smells
7. Cooler weather
8. Calm blankets of snow

8 Things On My Wish List
1. To be a husband and father
2. To visit Greece
3. To publish a book
4. To teach
5. To speak the 10 most spoken languages
6. The ability to slow and speed time
7. My own personal library
8. That my friends/families wishes will come true

8 People I Tag
I don't play tag.