Give Thanks...Music

 It's Sunday...a day I've set aside to try and write something about giving thanks. This week, it's music.

I could write a hundred posts about music.

Music changed my life.

Before the internet, before iPods, CDs, even MTV and Walkmans, we had only a couple of ways to listen to music. You could listen to it live. You could play a record, listen to a tape or 8-track, or hope they played what you wanted to hear on the radio.

That was it.

It sounds so weird considering not being able to just listen to your favorite song or album anytime, anywhere. Hence, the wonders of technology. In my high school years I remember sitting in our font room, RUSH, Styx, REO, ELO, Kansas, or any number of records blasting in my father-built speakers. When I was younger, I listened to Mitch Miller, the Beatles, even the soundtrack to Saturday's Warrior (I listened to that album so many times...). 

My senior year I joined a high school choir and that is when I fell in love with choral singing. I sang for four years in a college choir, three years with Mormon Youth Chorus, and we part of a bell choir for another couple of years. Doing musical theater productions has allowed me to keep singing since I left those choirs. It was because of a choir I met my wife.

Yes...music's been an important part of my life.

Today in church, we were able to sing a couple of Christmas songs. I appreciate them all the more because for several months were were not to sing in our meetings. I love singing Christmas songs, love them most of all.

Today, I give thinks for music. It is the language of deity...how God communicates to us, and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.

What #GiveThanks Showed Me...

 My wife and I heard the challenge the Friday before Thanksgiving as we drove home from the grocery store. The message was simple, an experiment, really. We were challenged to post things for which we were grateful on social media and use the hashtag GiveThanks with our posts.

There was also a promise. We were told if we accepted and followed through with this challenge, we'd see things in a different light. Since I post at least two things every day on social media, I accepted the challenge. I was happy to do it. For one thing, it gave me seven blog post topics right off the bat (sometimes, coming up with something to write about every day can be a challenge in and of itself...). Now, I had seven posts ready to go...I just had to think of things--and write about things--for which I was thankful.

I wrote seven blog posts. I posted seven PicOfTheDay photos and I used the #GiveThanks hashtag on each. And I'm here to say, President Nelson was 100% right. He nailed it.

There's something I've learned in my many days and years. I remember thinking about photography and writing comic strips. I've tried both. I wondered how photographers could take such amazing pictures form things everyone else sees. They can look at a street, or a hillside, or an animal and see art. Why doesn't everyone see the same things?

I wondered about how people who create successful comic strips come up with their ideas as well. I came to the conclusion, that in both instances, photography and comic strips, the artists have changed the way they see the world. They've trained their brains to see the beauty of the street, hillside, animal. They see the comedy in the mundane and create a comic to tell the story.

What has all this to do with #GiveThanks?

This past week, I was reminded of my thoughts on photography and comic strips because I believe happy people have trained their brains to be grateful. They see the beauty. They recognize the things they've been given and they are thankful. It becomes habit. I found that as I looked for things on which to give thanks, I suddenly saw them everywhere--everywhere I looked, more and more things. I think that's the biggest thing I took away from the challenge.

I wrote in one of my #GiveThanks posts that I could write a post every day on what I'm thankful for and never run out of things to write about. I believe that now more than ever. I loved my week. I loved reading the thousands of other #GiveThanks posts. I hope I can continue to train my brain to look for those things. I want to continue to see things in a different light.

#GiveThanks.

Give Thanks...Day 7--Adoption

 

Day 7

Adoption

I grew up always knowing I was adopted. It wasn't weird--on the contrary, it was the most normal thing in the world. Both my siblings were adopted--it's just the way things were. 

As an adoptee, my childhood was pretty much like everyone else, at least, it was for me. My parents were my parents, my siblings were my siblings. I grew up knowing I was loved and figured my birth parents made a great decision allowing someone else to raise me. I was brought into a large family, and by large, I mean large. My dad was one of twelve, my mom one of three. I was surrounded by cousins, people I love to this day.

We grew up in the west, with open skies and adventures. We hiked the Tetons most summers and sledded down our mountain most winters. Looking back, it's hard for me to imagine a better place to be raised and better people to do the raising.

Then, things changed as I've grown. I'm still so grateful for my parents and incredible family, but as I get older, thoughts of my birth parents have risen to the surface. I've wondered what they were like, questions I would ask them if given the chance. Seeing as how they would both be in the 80s now and possibly not even with us anymore, the chances I may meet them dims a little each day. It's okay if I never meet them in this life. I'll have the opportunity later (hopefully, much later).

When I look back on my life, everything hinges on that one decision, that one action that placed me with Harry and Lois Taylor. Everyone I know is a direct result of that action. Everything I've ever done is affected by it. We can speculate what my life would have been like had things turned out differently. I'd like to think I would be loved and have had a great life, but that's all academic. It didn't. We can't go back.

And I don't think I'd want to, if that were even possible. 

I am grateful for adoption, for the opportunity people have to raise children who are unable to do so otherwise. It literally means everything for me and I thank God that it happened to me.

Give Thanks...Day 6--Performing

 Back in the fall of 2000, I had a crazy idea to try out for a play, a community theater production of their annual Christmas program. I brought along my then five-year old son to also audition. That one decision, in a way, changed my life from that point on. We both made the cast and did the show. We did the same show a year later. And in the over two decades since that decision, theater has been a part of my life--not every show, not every year, but eventually, I've found my way back to the hardwood of the stage.

I know many have never had the opportunity to perform with a group of amateurs on a stage in front of a paying audience. It's not for everyone, I understand. If you haven't, you may have some pre-conceived notions of what you'll learn and go through from the experience. I know I did. I can with certainty say, you can't possibly imagine all the things you'll learn, you'll feel, you'll experience doing a community theater show.

In the past twenty years, I have made life-long friendships. I have had incredible experiences--almost spiritual, in some cases. I have had the opportunity to exercise blind faith, leave my comfort zone, and take a chance--risk. There's something about being on stage...you feel alive.

These pictures represent my community theater career quite well. I'm usually in the ensemble. Once again, that doesn't work for some, but it suits me well. In the one show, I was Pig #2. In the second show, I was a towns person. Being in the ensemble means you're also other things. In Shrek, for example, I was Pig #3, a prisoner, a town member of Duloc, and a few other things. In Beauty and the Beast, I was a town member, a cheese grater, Monsieur D'Arque, and a few other things

One thing that has been a true blessing for me is that I have had the opportunity to do numerous shows with my kids, two of the kids, a least. I did many shows with my son. For the past decade or so, my daughter and I shared the stage. Yes, it's a lot of time, but what an amazing thing to spend time with your kids.

We moved recently. There's fewer theaters here, fewer opportunities. I have no idea when I'll get the opportunity again. But, if I never participate in another show, I'll always love the time I spent on stage. 

During the last show I did, I smuggled my phone backstage and snapped the picture of Wendy and Peter Pan talking. It shows their relationship from an angle unseen by the audience. In fact, me and my fellow cast members were the only ones that experienced the show from that perspective. Doing a show is watching the world from a different perspective. That's one of the reasons I've loved doing it.

Give Thanks...Day 5--Work

I've mentioned on this blog before that there's opposition in all things. It's one of the few absolutely sure things I know. There's good, there's bad. There's up, there's down. Sad, happy. Big, small.

So, what does opposition have to do with work?

Well, it depends on how you see it.

This week I've taken up the challenge to post things for which I am grateful. Many of my friends and thousands of others have done the same. Most have listed the obvious things, family, health, pets, church, lessons learned. When I think of these things, there is one thing that--for me--allows most of us to enjoy the incredible things found in this life. 

Work.

I have been blessed with work. Since high school, except for my mission and a few months here and there, I've been employed. I've had jobs I've absolutely loved, being a stuntman and part of the Seance crew at Lagoon were a few. I've had jobs I absolutely hated, Feature Films for Families was one of them. I'm thankful that for the past almost twenty-five years I've been working for the same organization. I had a couple promotions, been passed up for many others. It took me a long time to realize, work wasn't about the promotions--it was about doing my best and finding joy in the journey.

Work can suck, and it usually does...even the best jobs have sucky times. But I feel humans must work. As a species, if we don't work, we die. Although it's not as pronounced now for many, it's still true. I have many friends who have done well in their careers. They post pictures on social media (or, they used to before this year...) of amazing places they've visited, amazing memories they've created with their families and loved ones. A major reason for this is because they work hard.

When I thought of seven things to write about this week, work wasn't one of them. But, when the idea hit me, it made more and more sense. Yes, I am grateful for work, because there is opposition in all things, work that sometimes sucks can result in good times.

Give Thanks...Day 3--Sundays

 I am thankful for Sundays.

A day of rest.

Today is a great example. I spent the day at home with my family. Normally, I would attend church, but due to circumstances beyond our control, that's a little difficult right now. Thankfully, technology allows us to do the next best thing--attend virtually.

I remember my mother telling me something about my father. He designed, and was in the process of building, our house when he got sick and passed away. She told me, when it came time for us to help build our own house, that they never worked on the house on Sundays.

Since he started the house in 1970 and passed away in 1974, he could have worked an extra two-hundred days on the house...give or take. That's more than half a year. I'm confident in saying that with those days, the house would have been finished by they time he died, leaving his wife and three children under the age of 11 a home that would not need to be worked on later. He chose not to do that.

So did we.

In addition to not working on the house, I tried as best I could not to do any homework for both my degrees on Sundays. Admittedly, I didn't like doing homework any of the other days, either, but making that personal rule allowed me an excuse. 

The earth rotates one turn seven times in a week. To it, Sunday is just another rotation. It's us who give the day its meaning. I'm grateful for Sundays, a day unlike all the others...a day of rest.