What's Important to Me

Recently I've been thinking a lot about what's important to me. This may have to do with November being a month where we consider all that we're thankful for and the like. I think it has more to do with the election we held as a country earlier this month. Let me explain:

Many people know I'm politically apathetic. I don't see much of a difference between one candidate and another and I frankly don't see what difference any of them are going to make in my life. There are plenty of people out there who think differently; kudos to you. I actually watched the votes come in on election night for perhaps the first time in my life and I watched it with a lot of politically enthusiastic people. It was sort of an odd experience for me. In any case watching all these excited people made me think how interesting it was that they felt this was so important and I didn't. Then it started to make me think "well, if this isn't important to me, what is?"

I've been thinking over this question ever since and this is what I've come up with:

The Gospel of Jesus Christ/ My Family

I've been trying to decide which of these two things is more important to me and I just can't put one before the other. The Gospel leads me to my family and my family leads me to the Gospel.

The members of my family are the greatest people that I have the privilege of associating myself with. They are hilarious and witty and caring and every addition just adds to how great they are. I spend more time with them than I do with anyone. In fact, while I was in high school I would often ditch my friends to hang out with my sisters or babysit my nephews. I've gained more wisdom and insight from my family than I would ever be able to find on the internet or in school. I love my family and I treasure every minute I have to spend with them. I would do almost anything to insure their happiness.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is what has led to my family being so important to me. As a young man my dad went on a mission for our church to the state of California. The last person he had the privilege of teaching the Gospel to was a 17 year old girl who happened to be my mom. So my family would not have come into being without God's intervention.

The teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the foundation of everything that is important to me. It fills me with so much joy that sometimes I feel like I'm going to burst. It has done nothing but make me happy. Naturally, when something makes you truly happy you want to share it with those around you, this is why I went to serve a mission for the LDS church a few years ago. Those 18 months of my life were the best I have ever experienced and I don't regret a single minute of it.

My Dear Friends

I don't know how good I am at expressing to my friends just how important they are to me. I hope they know that I care about them and their lives as much as I do my own. If ever they are in need I will do whatever I can to make sure their needs are met. Friends are like an extension of my family; I have some friends that I even refer to as "those cousins that I really really like to see." Just like my family, they have helped to shape me into the person that I am now. They have helped me through my hard times and given me an attentive ear when I'm feeling particularly whiny or upset (sometimes for up to 5 hours while in a booth at Denny's). I will always be grateful to be associated with such wonderful people.

Art

This may seem trivial when considered next to the other things I've listed (though I don't suppose I can rightly count my family and friends as "things") but art is deeply important to me. I'm studying illustration in school right now and the more I learn the more important it becomes. I have drawn, doodled, and sketched my entire life. During a brief interlude in high school I was unable to really draw due to some crippling tendinitis. It was among the lowest moments in my life. However, it was around this time that I realized how important art was/is for me. It is my purest mode of communication. It allows me to say the things my mouth stumbles over when I try to speak it. I have kept literally every doodle that has ever adorned a notebook of mine since 8th grade because those pictures are as much of a journal to me as my written ones are. I can look at those pictures and even though they may not depict anything that happened on the day that I drew them I can remember where I was, what was going on around me, who was sitting by me, etc.

This not only encompasses my ability to create art but includes art in all its various forms. Be it a book, a painting, a sculpture, architecture, music....there are too many things to list them all. They are all important to me.

So there you have it. This is what's important to me. It may not be a long list but it has everything I need, anything else falls by the wayside as my life goes on.