Rambunctiousness, Recklessness, and Restraint

I suppose you could define me by my willingness to forgo sanity and do the stupid and incredibly fun things that could certainly kill me if anything went wrong. I’ve always been reckless, even since I learned to walk and probably before that, I have no doubt that even before I was born I was getting into some kind of catastrophic mess in one way or another. The earliest disasters I caused happened so long ago that the only reason I know they happened is because my parents took pictures. 

"A Picture is worth 1000 words." - Fred R. Bernard 

In my case they seem to repeat the words 'oh no', 'ouch', and 'yikes' a lot.  Yes that's me in a torpedo tube.

Living Authentically (and Loving It?)

A personal essay by Anna Christensen

"It is far better to live your own destiny, duties, and nature imperfectly than to live an imitation of someone else's with perfection". -The Bhagavad Gita

"Let Peace Fill Your Body"-Sage Friedman

There have been points in my life where I preferred to surf the tides of trends and societal norms. I went crazy for chia pets and Lisa Frank folders in the early 2000s, as did my classmates and friends. More recently, I bought velvet scrunchies, a denim jacket, and suede boots at the same time that everyone else did.

More importantly, I've chosen specific paths in my life because that's what everyone else was doing. I applied to BYU, I served a mission, I got married. While I did all of these things willingly, I do know my desire to conform contributed to the confidence with which I made these decisions. During some of these decisions, I seemed to be living "an imitation of someone else's [life] with perfection". All that mattered was that the boxes were checked.

Jump?

A personal essay by Sarah Wiersdorf

Is the little voice telling me that I can't do something sometimes right? 

Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash

Atticus Finch said to Scout, “[courage is] when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

Great quote, isn’t it? But here’s the thing. What things are worth seeing through no matter what? At what point is it best to give up? A part of me, the little, analytical scientist in me, may pretend to know the answer to everything, but I can’t seem to figure out which things are worth being courageous about.

I didn’t question myself as I stood at the edge of a cliff, waiting for my turn to jump. Most of the kids in my teenage youth group were much larger than me, so none of the lifejackets fit me correctly. But I didn’t have to wear the suffocating things. My dad was there to give me permission not to. “Is she a strong enough swimmer?” they asked him. Yeah, yeah, I’d been swimming since before I could walk, thank you very much. Just let me jump.

Running Toward the Future

A personal essay by Breanna Staten

A newly-converted long distance runner uses her endurance skills to cope with her husband's upcoming admittance into medical school.

White earmuffs. New tennis shoes. Two jackets layered up to stave off the chill. My resolve was as fragile as the ice crunching beneath my feet with every labored step. The top of the hill came slowly, slowly. That breathtaking view of Utah valley was veiled by my huffing, puffing breath.

Photo by Hunter Johnson on Unsplash

Whoever said, “You were born to run,” (Florence Griffith-Joyner, I think. Along with every motivational sports commercial ever) must have been at least a mild-mannered masochist. I wasn’t born to run. I was born to read for hours on end and eat grapes and goldfish all afternoon. As I reluctantly turned from that view to finish my run, I thought of the rest of Ms. Griffith-Joyner’s quote. “You were born to run. Maybe not that fast,” (like me), “maybe not as efficiently as others,” (also like me), “but to get up and move, to fire up that entire energy-producing, oxygen-delivering, bone-strengthening process we call running.”

A Time to Speak

A personal essay by Elizabeth Niamh Keeney

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

-Ecclesiastes 3  

Even though she is my oldest friend, Bronwyn has never made a lot of effort to keep in contact with me. Even with our friendship of eighteen years, it took a worldwide pandemic for her to initiate communication. I know that people grow apart, people change, and that friends come and go, but I never thought it would be that way with her.

Our friendship has survived a lot. In college, she once stopped talking to me because of a difference in opinion, she apologized and we moved on like normal. During my year-and-a-half in Taiwan, she maybe emailed me once, but we still hung out after I returned home. So, after months of sporadic replies to my messages, she contacts me at her most bored, when she is confined to her living space.

Maybe it’s because we have nothing to talk about anymore because we view our shared past in such different ways.

Sincerest Performance

A personal essay by Benjamin Gappmayer

LIFT me close to your face till I whisper,
What you are holding is in reality no book, nor part
of a book,
It is a man, flushed and full-blooded—it is I—So
long!    - Walt Whitman

Don’t worry. I’m not as ambitious as Whitman was. I don’t expect to be reborn on this page, to crawl out of this paper for some secret meeting with you. Even if I could, I don’t think you would want that, either. I certainly don’t. 

Orion and One Family's Story

A personal essay by Andrew Oakes

Orion used to be the only constellation I ever bothered to look for--and it still is.

"Stars"

How can I do justice to Grandma, and to stars? I am not the first person, neither will I be the last, to have gazed, somewhat stiff-necked, up at the night sky. I am not the first person, neither will I be the last, to have tried expressing (clumsily) the camera obscura holes in our dark, warm night-blanket, which open on unexpected realities on their other sides. I am not the first person, and I will not be the last, to take pride in knowing the constellations, and relaying their stories to my friends. Neither am I the first—as these last several months have taught me—to pay homage to a life which now finds itself among those stars.