What makes me who I am

One of my favorite things about studying Humanities was figuring out what the origin of things was, where did some social norm come from and what nurtured it. Thinking about this constantly with different day to day actions/gestures/conversations, it is obviously constantly on my mind. The past few days though I have been trying to bring it home and genuinely figure out how did I become the way I am?

I will say this to you teaching majors out there if your mind jumped to nature vs. nurture. I believe that me becoming who I am was definitely a mixture of both. As a child I had a very free spirit, I liked to take my picture books as a toddler behind the couch and sit there for a few hours quietly flipping through the pages and stacking the books once I had finished each one. I taught myself how to roll my eyes at my dad by nearly the age of two. Strange to say but these things were just inherently my personality. I marched to the beat of my own drum. There are things though that I was blessed enough to have in my life to make me who I am today.

First of all people have a huge influence on my life. Having the parents, grand parents and siblings that I had is probably one of the biggest blessings I could have ever hoped for. My mother is one of those insanely patient women that takes the time to explain things and truly help you figure things out. My dad who is quiet like my mom is probably the bravest man I know. When he needs to get something done he doesn't take his time, he goes out and he does it. This includes mowing the lawn when the sun is out in the middle of the summer in Phoenix. He does it because it needs to be done. Both of my parents live by very set rules and expectations. My siblings and I were brought up to know the rules and to live by them, there is only black and white, you do what you are expected without complaining. It is funny that when you are a kid the last person you want to be like is your mom or dad but when you get older you learn that you really do want to be like them and inevitably you do!

The next biggest influence in my life is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Growing up a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints I never doubted that I was a child of God and that I was not just placed on this Earth at random, but I had a Heavenly Father and Mother that loved me very much. We have a Prophet on the Earth today that directs us which way we should go. I guess I was lucky not to have to go through huge choices in my life like should I drink, smoke, etc. I had my mind set that I was going to live my life in a certain way and I have thus far.

I know that you all are expecting me to go into some nerdy long rant about French or Les Miserables and here it is....Les Miserables is quite possibly next to the Bible and Book of Mormon, the book that has changed my life for the better. I originally heard the story when I was 7 or 8 watching the PBS Special from a telethon with the 10th Anniversary. There was just something about the music that just spake to me and urged me to learn more about it. There were French words interspersed throughout the musical and so that of course made me thirst for even more. So when I entered into high school at Moon Valley in 2003, I signed up for French and stuck with it up until this last December. That would be a total of 8 years learning one language. I will not say that I am the greatest French speaker in the world. I still have a ton to learn and do not plan on stopping anytime soon. I first read Les Miserables in Mr. Bloom's AP English class my senior year of high school. We got to pick anything that we wanted to do a report on and I chose a 1500 page book. I read it in about a month, I dedicated myself to reading 75 pages a day. I find that an exceptionally fast amount of time to read a book that long. But with how Victor Hugo sees both his characters and people of mid 19th century France as more than who they are it resonates in my soul that everyone has a potential and that we need to stop being blinded of who they are now or the mistakes they made in the past but see them as the person they can become.

Lastly Carl Bloch: The Master's Hand had one of the most profound influences on my life as a young adult. I used to work at BYU's Museum of Art that had this exhibition of Carl Bloch's paintings and etchings of the life of Christ from November 17th 2010 to May 7th 2011. We had approximately 305,000 people go through that exhibition during it's time at the MOA. It truly was a living nightmare and dream. On the one hand I would be in charge of at least moving 300 people through the exhibit while also watching my volunteers, counting tickets, "patrolling" the gallery, etc. Ask any one of the Education girls that worked that exhibit, it was both a living Hell and one of the most peaceful things. I was constantly yelled at by angry patrons on the phone, email and in person because they wanted tickets when there were no tickets available. This really taught me how to have patience. Womem's Conference especially taught me to breath slowly and go with the flow. You literally could not move in the MOA, we had to listen to person after person of why they were not able to reserve tickets or why they should be able to get in. I'd just stand there and smile and tell them "I'm sorry we are not giving out standby tickets right now, if you'd like to check back once the crowds have died down in about 2-3 hours we might have a few available then. I would not trade that experience for anything though. I was able to meet some of the most amazing people in this world. I did meet a huge amount of General Authorities for the Church but my favorite visitor was a poor woman from Spain. She was visiting Utah because her son had submitted a film to the Sundance Film Festival. She spoke absolutely no English and had reservations about religion because of abuse she had from a priest as a child. I decided to skip class that day and walked around for 2-3 hours (with a security guard as my translator) and talk to her about the paintings. Once we were done she gave me a kiss on the cheek and expressed how grateful she was to the MOA for having that exhibit bring people closer to Christ.

All of these things have had a huge impact on who I am today and the person that I continually want to become in the future. I am grateful for all these things and want to have you ask yourself, "What makes me who I am"?