A Lid for Every Pot (Or a Pot for Every Lid)

Once upon a time a wise woman said to a Sunday School class that centered on the doctrine of marriage and cultivating Christ-like relationships, “It is better to be single than to settle.” I thought it counted as more or less brilliant advice. I took it at face value and never really thought about it. Everyone says that you should never settle for less than your best, so why should you settle on anything less than the best when it comes to dating and relationships?

But then, when I first called for submissions for topics to be discussed during dating week, a friend asked if I could talk about the difference between settling and compromise. I smelled a challenge, and I have gone on a psychological and ponderous adventure to develop an opinion on the subject.

Sometimes when I want a sandwich, but have no bread, I settle for a bag of pretzels. Sometimes when I want a roast beef sandwich but all I have is turkey, I compromise with myself and accept the turkey sandwich. I settle for store brand barbecue sauce because I don’t have any Sweet Baby Ray’s. I compromise and put two tomato slices on my sandwich instead of three (because the bread is not large enough for some of the mighty tomatoes I sometimes obtain).

Settle just has such a negative connotation. Compromise sounds pleasant. When something is settled, you generally mean that you definitely did not get what you wanted. When you compromise, you took what you could get, not exactly what you wanted, but still come out of it all with a victory. In a compromise, everybody wins.  In a settlement, you lose.

So let’s talk about relationships. I think that a lot of us have somewhere in our minds (some of us have it more towards the front, some to the back) the ideal that we want to obtain (or that we want our significant other to attain). Ideally we would find the perfect man (or woman, if you’re male) and life would be awesome. To the max. Sometimes we get involved in a relationship and we are pretty sure that the other person is perfect. Most of the time we feel slightly disappointed when our assumptions turn out to be false (which tends to be the case).

Ladies, you can tell me if I’m wrong, but I hear you want a man who is romantic, shiny, handsome, suave, debonair, thoughtful, great with kids, polite, gentlemanly, courteous, brave, honest. Who gets along great with your family, does the dishes, cooks, cleans, makes delicious sandwiches, works hard, and never complains about it. I’m sorry, I can’t date you all. And I hope everyone knows I’m joking. Of course I can date you all (Please, contact my secretary to set an appointment).

In all seriousness, you want perfection. And why shouldn’t you? You deserve it. Every woman deserves it. Some men deserve it, too. But the problem I find with perfection (aside from it often being false in most of the human race), is that I ask myself, “Matt, if the perfect woman came along, would she want you?” The answer is invariably, “It’s impossible to say.”

So maybe we shouldn’t look for him or her to be perfect. Maybe we should instead look for us to be perfect together. At this point I have also shifted definitions of perfect. Instead of a flawless ideal, I am talking about a completion. The yin to your yang. The yellow to your purple. The 42˚ to your 48˚. The spades and clubs to your hearts and diamonds. The spoon to your fork (thus creating the spork, an infinitely more useful instrument of eating). A complementing, if you will.

You’ve heard the saying (if you’ve talked to a man named Andrew or his mother) that every pot has its lid. I’m personally glad that the metaphor does not involve Tupperware, because then you’d never find the top when you needed it. After dating around for a while, most people pretty much know what they are looking for. You start realizing after getting to know someone if they are going to be a dodecagonal top to your triangular pot, or if it’s simply a matter of measuring angles. Settling is when you are so upset and frustrated with all the ins and outs of trying to find that one lid that will fit perfectly, that will finally allow you to cook without worry that you say, “Forget it, a dodecagon is close enough. A shame I broke up with that parallelogram, but this will have to do.” Might I submit that this is unwise (for various reasons, not the least of which being that you should not date shapes, you should date people).

Compromising however is when you fudge the numbers a little bit. So he’s not 45-45-90 triangle, but is it really so bad that he’s off by a degree or two here and there? If you are a math major, then yes, and you are toast within the constructs of this analogy. Sorry.

I don’t believe there is one person out there that will complete your life. No such thing as a soulmate preordained to make your life full of rainbows and unicorns (Though I’m working on it. The unicorns are the easy part, but these rainbows. I’m convinced they are magic). No locking of eyes and swooning. Sorry. No love at first sight. No declarations of passionate love on the teacup ride under the fireworks.

When you plant two trees right next to each other and finagle with nature a little, you don’t get one tree, but they do grow together.

So what I’m saying, with regards to settling and compromise, is that it actually is better to be single than to settle. You can’t force two super distinct and non-compatible items to co-exist in the same space simply because of convenience, or frustration, or because it seems like the only option or a good idea at the time. However, when two people are close enough, when maybe he’s not as romantic and dreamy as you want, but he does try and cares for you a great deal (and it’s reciprocated), then why not compromise.

No relationship is perfect, and it will require work, but why settle for more work than it’s worth? Try as hard as you can to find the best that you can, and then work towards becoming the lid and the pot that will fit together. You’ll both have to work (and if he or she is not willing to work, then it won’t work, and maybe he or she is more of a decagon than you had initially imagined). See, in the compromise, you both win, you both sacrifice, and you both work. In the settling, you end up doing the work with a minimal happiness payoff. You lose.

Hopefully this answers the question that was asked of me. If not, then hopefully it answers the question that was not asked. Either way, I’m all for suggestions, and you suggest them at your own risk.

What is Love? Baby, Don't Hurt Me

What is love? Today we will discuss the popular depiction of love with what the people here at Hunting Sasquatch believe.

First we’ll look at Taylor Swift. Based on my iTunes library, I somehow happen to have 54 songs by Taylor Swift. Taking into account some correction and the assumption that not every song is specifically about some one person (I also don’t have any of her holiday special stuff, but if I did, I’d eliminate it entirely from this segment), I can relatively safely assume that Taylor Swift has been in love approximately 30 times (Maybe 20). She’s also 21 (if I remember correctly from her Twitter posts). If we assume she was not romantically attached to anyone before she turned 15, as can be safely extrapolated from her song “Fifteen,” then that averages to falling in love about (and when I say about, I mean exactly averages to) 5 love connections each year. This math is incomplete because she is also releasing her fourth album here in the next several months.

Let’s look at some of her lyrics.

“And I can’t breathe without you, but I have to.”

“But I’ve been screamin’ and fightin’ and kissin’ in the rain. It’s 2 AM and I’m cursing your name. You’re so in love that you acted insane, and that’s the way I loved you.”

“I’m only me when I’m with you.”

“I said leave but all I really want is you to stand outside my window throwing pebbles screaming ‘I’m in love with you’.”

“As I turn out the light I’ll put his picture down and maybeget some sleep tonight.”

Along with songs like “Back to December,” “Dear John,” “Cold as You,” and “Forever and Always” we see a trend towards relationships that burn with fiery passion but then result in bitterness and distance. I can’t think of a single healthy relationship that contains all of the unbalanced range of emotions she talks about in her songs.  You also get the sense of a detachment from reality, which leads to her assessment of love in fairy tale terms, such as in “Love Story” or “If This Were a Movie.” Really, you can gather a solid through-line of regret and a hint of loneliness. Does this sound like those 30 times have been love?

Other artists of the same circle exhibit some of the same tendencies (and I am not saying that they are all crazies). Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, even Youtube stars such as Tiffany Alvord or the other females she interacts with on the Youtube. It seems they all want a knight in shining armor to sweep them off their feet (Tiffany Alvord even went so far as to tweet about that desire. She tweets a lot, and there are some gems of teenage girl love-wisdomish). They want to be absorbed into some form of passion where their whole world becomes entwined with their significant other, where thought, action, and feeling all become informed and dictated by their relationship status. Their careers sort of depend on it. Why is this considered the successful route in their careers?

I've heard a lot of young ladies say that no matter what is going on in their lives, there is a Taylor Swift song about it. I would opine that we live in a culture wherein the word “Love” has taken on a corrupted meaning, which is propagated and perpetuated by the media, because it’s so extraordinary that it sells. No one wants to buy a book, watch a movie, listen to a song, or read a comic book about ordinary folks and normal life. We look to exceptional folks like Superman, Spiderman, Batman, the Avengers, the Justice League, etc. because of their exceptional qualities. Chick flicks, romance novels, Twilight, teen television dramas, and other things share that same quality. You catch yourself saying, “Why can’t I find a man like that?” or “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen”.  We wish we could have that excitement in our lives, that level of intensity, that instant spark, that one film shot that lets everyone know that you will be together at the end of the film.

But here’s the problem. Those represent only moments in time, just like the Taylor Swift songs. Life is more than a three minute song or an hour and forty-five minute movie. It’s more than a 300 page book. It contains only the highest of highs and the lowest of lows because we don’t want to see the even periods of life. We live those. Why would we want to see or hear or read about them? But this universal focus on the moment has skewed perspective. We spend so much time consuming the exceptional that the ordinary (which really is truly extraordinary) fails to move us and we miss it in our lives (Could this also be one of the reasons some of us struggle with spirituality in our lives? I mean, the scriptures, the stories we hear, everything that sticks in our brains is about the extraordinary acts of faith, the miracles, the sudden changes of heart, and we forget that we are only receiving a moment, and that life is more than the one moment).

This past summer I climbed a couple of mountains. I’ll start off by saying this: It was hard. Every time. The goal with every mountain is the same: to summit. No one who climbs mountains ever says, “My favorite part was probably the first couple miles where we meandered through the trees” or “I really liked that part when we were crossing that boulder field in the blazing sun.” It’s all about reaching the top. When I climbed King’s Peak, we hiked and climbed for three days. Out of those three days, we spent probably about 30-45 minutes at the summit. The rest of the time was grueling labor up and down and up again, through woods, across rivers, over rock fields, into valleys and through passes. There was some frustration the first night when the camp stove didn’t work (But we totally just cooked on our fire, so it worked out). My favorite moment came each night right before going to bed when we quietly looked up in awe at the billions of stars visible that far away from any semblance of civilization. A lot of the weekend was really just spent moving forward. Nothing exciting really happening. There were some moose.

This does have a point. In our lives we are going to experience the whole shebang. For me, love is like hiking in the mountains. You will come across beautiful views that take your breath away. You will reach the summit. You will have those beautifully quiet moments when you see the stars, and it’s more than you ever imagined. But you’ll also plod a lot. You remember that one time a paragraph ago when I said, “It’s hard”? Well, that’s what love is. As sure as I am of that, I’m also sure that it’s not a feeling. You’re not sitting there one day and all of a sudden gasp and scream, “Gadzooks! I have deduced that this is the feeling of love!” At least I haven’t seen it. I also might be the only person that exclaims in that manner.

If you’re familiar with the Princess Bride, you know that True Love is the noblest of causes. I have no problem with these teenage girls growing up hoping that they will find true love. But they do need to realize that most likely it will not play out like a Disney film or a Swift song.

I also think that we, for the most part, look for love in the wrong places. We expect to find love with someone else. We expect for some dashing hero (or heroine) to strike like lightning in our lives and then, without a doubt, we will experience love. Love is sort of an interior, personal thing. There is a reason we declare our love. We say that we love someone (or something if you‘re the woman that married the Liberty Bell), we do not declare that they love us. Imagine the scene. A couple has been dating for a while. They feel comfortable with each other. They are willing to sacrifice for each other. They have worked through hard times and are willing to work through more. They’ve weathered the storms and come through more firmly connected. They feel the same levels of affection, honestly caring about the wellbeing of the other. They are bound together by connections that are not only physical, but spiritual and mental as well. The boy decides that he’s going to say it. It’s finally time. He leans toward her ear and whispers, “You love me.” She blushes and smiles, then whispers, “You love me, too.”

We are the ones that experience love. Those qualities that I listed in that example, that is what I think love takes. Sacrifice, multiple levels of bonding, hard work, willingness to support, strength, tenderness, affection, (time), bonding [on multiple levels, because a lip-to-lip bond, no matter how vigorous, will always end (unless you accidently become glued together, or your braces hilariously entwine)], and comfort. And all of those are things that only you can know. Do you feel comfortable? Are you willing to sacrifice and support despite the obstacles and the turbulence of life? Will you peace out at the first sign of trouble.

Maybe we should stop looking for love, and start loving, start growing our capacity to love one another. Romantic love involves bonds that are different than other types of love, but the core of all love is the same.

Keep listening to your love songs, keep watching your chick flicks, keep reading your romance novels (unless of course you find the entire genre below you, but you know you read Harry Potter partially to see who ended up with whom).  But I do hate to break it to you. Love probably doesn’t conquer all. Hard work will. Perseverance. Dedication. Romance and dashing heroes (or heroines)? Not a chance.

True love is definitely not a feeling. You don’t just spontaneously fall in love. I don’t like the idea of falling in love, because I feel like that implies that love is a lower state of being, but true love is the noblest action of all. Because love is action. Love is sacrifice. Love is hard. But love is worth it.

All Things Fall Apart

Breaking up. It’s something that we all do. In fact, it’s something that you will do for every relationship but one (ideally). Maybe it does not bode well that I am starting Dating Week with a discussion of the nearly inevitable end to dating, but aren’t endings just beginnings in disguise?

I understand that people don’t often want to talk about it. In fact, directly after a break-up, that is precisely the response given in most teen dramas. “I don’t want to talk about it.” But I’m a Good Mythical Mornings watcher, so my response is always, “Let’s talk about that.”

I have experience four relatively impressive break-ups in my life. The last one even lasted like three months, and I still don’t have a clear idea about what happened. Actually, I do, but I like to say that to avoid talking about it. We’re not doing that today.

Let’s dissect some of them.

First real break-up (and I use the term loosely here, because real might not apply to the relationship either): This occurred directly before my junior year of high school. Some people say that you shouldn’t date seriously in high school. In retrospect, I probably agree with them. This relationship never really took off. It ended in a phone call that came at about 11 o’clock at night. She wanted to focus on school. She wanted to take a break. Once she had a handle on things she was sure we could get back to the way things were.

I call bull on that. Did she focus on school? Hard to say, but studies indicate the probability is low. Was it a break? Yes, a complete and solid one. Did we ever get back together? Nope! Was I bothered by this? Yes, and I’ll tell you why. Do you remember back in the day when someone told you for the first time that “Honesty is the best policy”? Surprise! It applies to relationships. Go figure. As far as I have been able to gather, every guy knows when am girl is blowing smoke up his skirt, presumably to “not hurt his feelings.” Here is some new: if someone is serious about you, their feelings will be hurt by you no longer liking them or you not being able to see a future for the two of you. Attempting to soften the blow is insulting.

Suggestion: Say what you mean, because anything else can be misleading and possibly slow the healing process, in turn causing more hurt than the truth ever could.

Second Break-up: Okay, I lied. We’re not talking about this one. I’m a still a little bothered by how it went down. I believe there was honesty for the most part, but I also believe there were solutions that could have been implemented (apparently the choice to date me precluded having friends, which was news to me after eight months). Leads me to believe that while honesty was employed, clarity and total honesty was not.

Suggestion: Be clear, be thorough, and don’t hold truth back (well, relevant truth. I’m not going to bring up my third grade experiences during a break-up).

Third Break-up: This was the only break-up that I take full responsibility for (the only one I initiated, carried out, and completed). I personally feel like I did it correctly. If Emily reads this post and feels differently, I invite her to repudiate my statements. We can only learn if someone corrects us, and I still thoroughly respect her opinion and consider her a good friend. Backstory: I was going on my mission within several months. I had felt some distance growing especially as my mind was elsewhere with preparations for the impending mission and other issues that weighed heavily on my mind. To be honest, any problems were completely my fault. I stopped investing as much of myself in the relationship as she continued to, and I felt it was unfair to draw out the inevitable (Inevitable in my mind. The miles between Virginia and California would not help, especially with communication restricted to letters). From my recollection I expressed a lot of this clearly. She cried. I felt really bad. She asked me what she had done wrong. I honestly answered that she had done nothing wrong.

Long story shorter, it probably worked out for the best. We both had an enjoyable two years. When we reconnected after my mission, we had both grown and progressed in our lives in different ways, and we get lunch from time to time whenever we’re both in Virginia. As I said, I consider her a good friend and we cheer each other on in our successes and whatnot. Nowhere near as close as we once were, but two years will do that to a pair of people.

Fourth Break-up: This one was nuts, because I didn’t really know it had happened, and then it hadn’t happened, and then it was mostly clear that it had happened. Essentially, there was a lack of communication. While it might not be true, I felt like the relationship was sort of one-sided, like I was the origin of almost all of the calls and stuff. She did surprise me with cookies once or twice, and I appreciated it. She baked delicious cookies. Sort of lemony. Really pleasant. I always meant to get that recipe. And then it just fizzled out. Miscommunication, assumptions, and things that were just lost in translation. Unfortunate because I really liked her, also unfortunate because I felt like I was in limbo for a long time, not really knowing w hat was going on or what could be done for clarification.

Suggestion: Most people need a Break-up. Not a disappearance. Not to ignore it. The thing about break-ups is that even though they blow, they do provide some sense of closure [if done correctly, without the open ended, “Well, I just don’t feel the same way NOW” (which means, I will never feel the same way, but I don’t want to let you out of my dastardly clutches in case no one better turns up].

Hopefully you can see some common threads in these (Aside from the thread of “Matt really thinks that he’s always in the right at the end of a relationship”). Communication is key. Clear communication is key. Consistent clear communication is key. Alliteration is fun.

To the one being broken (because invariably something has to be broken in the process of breaking-up): Life will carry on. You can’t really protect yourself from this. It will happen. Over and over again. Unless you’re one of those weird folks that marry the first person you date. WEIRDIES! Not that I hold it against you. You played and you played well. But for the rest of us, the game is not quite that forgiving. People will always tell you to move on. I’ll say it, too, but with an addition. Move on, but move on at your own pace. Don’t dawdle or anything, don’t wallow. Grieve, because if you’re hurting, it’s because you really cared and those sorts of feelings don’t just disappear overnight. Eat ice cream. Bake cookies with your roommates. Talk about it with a close friend (and when I say talk about, I do not encourage or condone the ripping apart of the man or woman that destroyed your fragile heart).

Coming from a guy that talks about almost nothing with almost no one (emotional discussions have the tendency of giving me the heeby-jeebies, but don’t let that scare you off. I’m actually a good boyfriend. You could ask Emily, and I think it would be a positive answer. We had some good times), that’s sort of a big deal. Listen. As soon as you feel even remotely comfortable, flirt, go on group dates with friends and roommates. Hang out with the mens or the womens. You don’t need to act like nothing bad ever happened, but you also don’t want to act like it’s the end of the world. The world will continue, and you will continue with it. And when you are with that completely complementary guy or gal and you both have rings on your left hands, then I think (if not before) you’ll realize that those periods of pain, those downturns, were precisely what you needed in your life.

Side Note: I do not believe in double-dipping in most circumstances. Once you’re done, be done. In rare cases both people have changed and actually fit together better, but those cases are rare. I mean, if some of the girl(s) I have dated asked me to kiss them on the face, I probably would think about it at least. But I would also think, “Matt, you double-dipper. You’ve sampled this dip. Move on to another.” But hey, sometimes you just need to go back to make sure you really didn’t like the French onion as much as the 

Seven-layer. No judgment here.

Stay tuned all week for more Dating Discussions.

Also, I am still accepting suggestions for topics to discuss, so feel free to share your ideas with me. I will definitely take them into consideration.

It's Officially Over

In my lifetime I have witnessed (generally through documentaries) a great deal of injustice in the world. Slavery, human trafficking, drug addiction, the Maximals being constantly outnumbered and outgunned by the Predacons, Dora receiving no response (presumably because she is latina. Racist viewers), and Women's Suffrage to name a few. Today I have discovered the greatest injustice ever done to me.

Subway, a company that I support and love, has completely shafted me. On campus after visiting a friend at work and attempting to print things [except my printing account is not properly connected to my new ID card yet (not the injustice)] I stopped by Subway to get lunch. It was about 10 AM, so I knew Subway to be open. Then the hammer began to fall.

First off, the $5 footlong of the month is Egg and Cheese and Spinach, which is just the normal breakfast $5 Footlong if you ask them to put spinach on it, except it's served all day. No one goes hooray for microwaved egg patties available all day. Then I scanned the rest of the menu even though I already knew what I would be getting. Spicy Italian Footlong, Flatbread, pepperjack cheese, spinach, tomato, olives, green peppers, banana peppers, jalapeno (optional, the tilde is also optional when typing) peppers, mayonnaise, and honey mustard. It's what I get every time.

I was shocked to see that the straight-up regular chicken had moved to the $6.75 selection of footlongs. Shoot, my first year at BYU that was on the $5 menu. I thought, "Well that's lame. I'm pretty sure wages here are stable and the price of chicken has not drastically increased. Money grubbers." I then looked at the $5 menu. I looked again. And again. And again. My Spicy Italian was not on there. Black Forest Ham, BLT, Cold Cut Combo, all there, but no Spicy Italian. Then, with trepidation, I looked at the $5.50 menu. There, sitting right next to the Seafood Sensation (which I'm always curious about, yet too terrified to try) is my Spicy Italian.

But I couldn't leave. The girl working had already said, "I'll help you when you're ready," and I, like a fool, had said, "Okay." I had accepted help before I realized I didn't want it, because what I wanted had increased in price by 60 cents (that figure includes tax). I am ashamed to say that I paid those 60 cents. I'm also ashamed to say that I still found the sandwich delicious after I was robbed by my favorite corporation represented within the Cougareat.

What is the world coming to? When a man walks into a Subway with exactly $5.34 to buy a delicious Spicy Italian, he deserves for that company to be there for him. If there had been a line there to witness my outraged I would have made a scene, but it was just the employee and I. I'm sure the employee was equally outraged. Recognizing this I did wish her a pleasant day. But seriously, was the price increase necessary? No.

I'll tell you what happened at the corporate offices. All the fatcats with their fancy bowler hats and monocles sat around the mahogany table smoking their ivory pipes and Cuban cigars.

One of them said, "Man, people are buying too many things off of our $5 menu and not buying more expensive sandwiches. How can we ruin all their cost-effective fun?"

Another chimed in, "Well, it looks like the Spicy Italian is popular. Matthew Fife buys one every time he goes to Subway, except during Anytober and Februany (Both of which we'll probably have to take away in order to make sure he never has joy in life). I bet if we bumped its price while the cost of production remains the same, we'll make more money because people will continue to buy it, thinking that 50 cents isn't much of a difference. Fools. Didn't they notice what we did to the chicken breast sandwich? It'll be the same with the Spicy Italian."

A third portly gentleman said, "Eventually we should just leave the BLT on the $5 menu. $5 for like two slices of bacon and then relatively costless vegetables? That's insane! That's the most expensive bacon ever! I love making money!"

They then retired to the swimming pool full of gold dubloons and priceless gems and their hot tub filled with champagne.

Well it's over. I will only support Subway during the months of Anytober and Februany, as long as those months continue to exist (so never again, probably). I'm enraged. Where am I supposed to go now? After consistent boycotts, I don't have very many choices. Scoreboard Grill got booted off the list when it was gross (so it's always been off the list). Teriyaki Stix lost its spot when it continued to be Teriyaki Stix (instead of something delicious). L&T barely remains on the list. Taco Bell is the only thing consistently on the list, but if the really loud, annoying, slow guy is ever working cashier, I'll take my business elsewhere (meaning nowhere, because there is nowhere else). I've never purchased anything from Freschetta or whatever the pizza place is because the pricing is bogus (Why should I spend more than $5 for a tiny pizza when I can spend $5 at Little Caesar's and get an entire large pizza?). I don't think anything else is in the Cougareat (except the Snag and Grab or whatever it's called).

I loved Subway, and my heart breaks for our terminated relationship. Break-ups are difficult (Want more insight into break-ups the Matt Fife way? Stay tuned for Dating Week!). Looks like I'll have to remember to pack my meals this semester. I shed a single crystalline tear at my loss.

And for the record, never once did any of my sandwiches look like this.

Get Excited

I'm starting to get excited. I have recently begun gathering data for Dating Week 2.0 . By gathering data, I mean I've thought about it. Like, more than in passing. Sudoku level thinking. Granted, I am not the greatest Sudoku-er. Now you're excited, too. You're probably asking yourself, "But when is Dating Week 2.0 going to hit an Internet near me?", and I can answer that question. When is the critical time for dating? If you're KamNasty, it was approximately a year and a half ago. But for the rest of us, it's the first week of classes here at the BYU. New classes, new wards, new pools of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes just waiting to be mined. Or yoursed. So I have decided to optimize your dating prowess and give you helpful hints, sage advice, and the opportunity to learn from a master theorist.

But wait, that's not all!!!

I'm also accepting suggestions for topics from the general public! That means that I could potentially discuss something that's on your mind. What if I receive so many suggestions that I just can't write about all of them in a week? Well, I'll answer your question with another question. What's better than Dating Week 2.0? Dating Week 3.0. That's right, I'm willing to extend Dating Week by another week (If I receive enough suggestions, ideas, or dates). That's two weeks for the price of one, which also happens to be the price of none.

So mark your calendars. August 27th is the first day of Dating week (running through the 2nd of September with a possible extension to the 9th) That's more advice than you can shake a stick at. You would get tired of shaking around post ten.

If you have a suggestion, tell it to me. You could comment, text, call, or tell me in person. I'm flexible like that. I will ignore suggestions that sound like a juvenile came up with them (For example: "You should write about why boys are so immature.") But remember, this is a momentous occasion. I normally ignore most things that people say to me by way of suggestion. Get in on this while you can.

In the meantime, I will be communing with nature and pondering deeply upon the subject as I climb the mightiest peak in Utah this weekend. I might ponder other things, and if I manage to ponder something worth mentioning, you had better believe that I'll mention it.

Now for your postly excitement.

Sincerely,
The Very Fife

P.S. I hope someone laughed at the second sentence of this post. Or at least thought, "That is mildly humorous."

It's About Time!

I've noticed something. The number of hits I get on my blog correlates rather closely to the time that I post the post (and if I have anything that might get me a weird random link from a Korean Art Gallery website). Also, I'm apparently a big hit in Russia. And qualifying that statement, over almost ten months I've had over 40 Russian views. That's more than Ecuador, South Korea, Singapore, the Phillipines, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Malaysia, India, and France combined (which combine for somewhere around 29 hits). In the past week I have hat more Russian hits than US hits (by one). Apparently Russians like plums. That's still 656 less total hits than the United States, but you have to start somewhere, and Super-Stardom in any country is really all I ask for.

But here are my observations.

Optimal Conditions: Posting in the late afternoon to early evening, September through May, including pictures of cute animals (possibly Korean), and preferably with a topic related to dating (8 of my top 10 posts are related to dating. #8 and #9 are not about dating, but are still interesting. They also have half the views of my #1 post, Crossed Signals).

Sub-Optimal Conditions: Posting late at night or early in the morning, Year-round, discussing anything other than dating (exceptions clearly stated in the above paragraph), without cute animal pictures.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that low viewership is not because people don't care. There is enough ebb and flow regularly to cast doubt on the idea that people don't care what I have to say, and enough evidence to support my present assumptions. I'm pretty sure that everyone cares. It's a timing thing. Not that I measure the value of my thoughts and opinions based on the number of page views I get on any particular post. That'd be ludicrous. At the current rate, I'm going to need to post twelve 20-view posts before the end of October in order to get 1000 views in one year.

There's only one option. I'll have to do a "Return to Dating Week" Week. I've wanted to hold off, but it might just be time. Soon. Very soon. Probably to kick off the new scholastic year. Get everyone pumped for another round of discouragement, lack of success, and the possibility of winning (What did I just hear? Matt's going to compare Dating to Quidditch!?).

So to end this post, I will follow advice I recently gave a friend.

Wagon Wheels or Wooden Wheels?

Today is Pioneer Day. I have fond memories of Pioneer Day as a child. Well, not really, because I didn't even know that it was a real day for the majority of my early life. We sang pioneer songs in Primary growing up, but I don't think I thought too much about why. They were even favorites from time to time in Family Home Evening (unlike my college Home Evening Group, everyone in the family picked a song to sing at the start of FHE. Everyone. So, 6-7 songs to start the evening. If we did that now, most people would probably groan a bit and then never come back to Home Evening, thus causing me to fail at my calling as Group Leader). The Oxcart, Pioneer Children Sang as They Walked, and I don't remember singing any others. 

Little side note: Whenever we sang The Oxcart we would all get on all fours (I don't think Ma ever did, but the chilluns, definitely) and move around like slow oxen. This would generally result in minor head butting, slightly tackling, and otherwise trying to knock over the other "oxen" on the trail. Not a very pioneerish thing to do, but fun nonetheless. I'll have to teach that to my children some day.

Anyways, back East, Pioneer Day is not a recognized holiday. In fact, Utah is the only state that formally recognizes it. But wherever there are LDS people, there is Pioneer Day (though generally, unless there is a large population of Utah Mormons in your Back-East congregation, it slides by pretty much under the radar).  As a youth, I just thought it was an arbitrary day that the ward would have a cook-out, celebrating pioneer ancestors (of which I have a few) and their contributions. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it was actually the 24th of July and marked the day that the first pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley after traversing over 1300 miles (in oxcarts. Oh, how slow. They're pulled by an ox, of course, you know). 

Now, in order for the LDS folk and all other folk that came out West to start new lives to have done so probably required a great deal of faith. Whether they traveled the Mormon Trail, the Oregon Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, or any other trail, it required them to pick up everything and head in the opposite direction of civilization. I don't mean to offend any folks from out here in the West, but very little of the region is hospitable for flourishing human colonies. The word desert comes to mind. And yet they were driven by something greater than themselves, knowing that it would not be an easy life. And then (speaking now of the LDS pioneers pretty exclusively) once many of them were established in the Salt Lake Valley, they received calls to colonize other even less hospitable plots in God's Rock Garden. 

They faced immense physical and spiritual challenges as they managed to eek out a living in the dry and barren land. And yet, somehow, they did it. They overcame challenges, turning the desert into something slightly less deserty. At least there's grass and a handful of trees (where people live).

Lots of folks today face similar challenges in terms of enormity. Most people probably aren't lugging a handcart across 1300 miles in unfortunate weather. I haven't been called recently to turn barren ground into a thriving community (Literally. Figuratively? I think that's what most mission calls are). But the struggles in our lives oftentimes seem as insurmountable as the Rocky Mountains (though from experience they are not insurmountable, in point of fact). The world is no less difficult now than it was then. Only the nature of our challenges has changed (and it hasn't really changed all that much). We have our challenges, our obstacles, our temptations, our fears, our hesitations, our insecurities, and all of them aim to force us to stay put, to try and convince us that moving forward will not bring us to a better home. They point out all the desertification that is waiting for us over the mountains. And if we face those challenges, if we arrive in those deserts with that faith and hope in a better world, nothing can stop us from making it so.

Pioneers are not limited to those that crossed the plains in wagon and handcart [or train, after 1869 when the first transcontinental railroad was finished with the driving of a golden spike, thus unifying East and West at Promontory, UT (Which is still pretty deserty, though if you live in Utah and have never been, it's worth the drive into nowhere at least once. The trains are cool. You also learn that there were like a half-dozen golden spikes, along with several silver ones, and they removed the golden spike immediately to prevent theft)]. Women and men of courage have consistently and bravely gone into the deserts of their lives to bring about a better world. These people have worked, and continue to work, in all aspects of life, from the sciences to the arts and everywhere in between. The world is not perfect, but it is brighter today because of the hope that people placed in the possibility to make life better. My life is better because of these pioneers. 

So remember your pioneer forebears, whether they crossed the plains or not, and live your life to give their lives greater meaning. They believed the world could be better. Honor their sacrifices and make it so.

Explanatory Note: For many years there was hot debate inside the Fife Household as to whether or not the wooden wheels or the wagon wheels of the oxcart creaked as they rolled along. While the official lyrics in the Children's Songbook say "Wooden," I would still contend that "Wagon" is an acceptable adaptation as well. Same number of syllables, same meaning, both applicable to travel by oxcart, and both creak. I will sing "wagon wheels" until my dying day.