Why so serious?

So I just finished the 8th draft of my personal statement to law school and it’s gone through a lot of transformation since I first envisioned what it is that I wanted to say.  I know they say that 90% of your admissions appeal comes from your GPA and LSAT score, but since those two are already in stone and there isn’t much that I can or cannot do about it…it’s been the personal statement that has received my attention as of late.  (or at least whatever is left of my attention after work, grad school, church and blah blah blah).   It’s funny to think that I can try to fit all my thoughts and essentially my entire being onto a few sheets of a Microsoft Word document, but I guess that’s just it.  It’s not easy to write a great personal statement, but hopefully by the end of this weekend, I’ll be done with it.  To the best of my present ability anyway.

I just got home from our Sunday School teacher’s Christmas party a couple hours ago.  It was great fun to have delicious food (it didn’t hurt that Mrs. Park so lovingly made us take bags of leftovers home), to see the contentment or discontent that comes with White Elephant gift exchanges and to finally watch The Dark Knight…which was by the way…Angela’s gift that Christine ended up coming home with. Yay for being an indirect beneficiary!  I bought a Hello Kitty toaster that toasts with the famous kitty’s head toasted so toastily on every bagel or bread slice that you’d ever like toasted.  It was so cute and it found a great home after a couple steals.  How practical of me to buy, I know.

The point that I’m trying to get to is that the past few weeks have been a bit rough.  I think that I’m slipping into this slump where I’m not really sure where I’m headed or why.  It’s easy for me to go through life just doing what I do best…which is to try my best and not question things.  But I’ve been noticing that I pray less although I rely on praise more now and I’m not sure if I’m pushing myself to be a better and better person.  That is, after all, the ultimate goal.

My new 8 gig thumb drive was stolen out from underneath my nose this past Friday.  All of my school files and law school files were on there.  Thank God (seriously, He is really good to me) that I backed up my files last weekend and for some reason decided to save my grad school projects/papers and law school personal statements on my laptop at home.  I would have been just, so destroyed if this was not the case.  Teaching requires such resilience, but man, I’m not sure how I would have bounced back from having to redo grad projects this last week before Winter Break AND rewrite drafts of my personal statement AND lose all of my 08-09 school files.  I’m just thankful.  So over it.  And hope that whoever stole it learns to be nicer and realizes that what they did is truly wrong.

This post is getting long, but I guess as I type without having to think. so. damn. hard.  like I do when I’m writing a personal statement, I’m beginning to recall why keeping track of my musings on a blog is nice.  This upcoming week should go by quickly.  I knew this past week was going to be terrible, which is probably why it was.  But this week is going to be good.  I’m going to give my kids their little holiday gifts on Monday and I’m excited to promote all the love and healthy habits that will be inside each gift.  I’ll take pictures and post more images and less text next time.

Ah, and before I forget why I entitled the post what I did.  As life continues to whirrrrr by.  I begin to grasp more fully that things in life, they really aren’t so serious.  That thumb drive, Hello Kitty toasters and dare I say, law school applications…really are not that important in the grand scheme of things.  Which is why I have learned how to take a chill pill once in a while and relax post-college.  While watching, The Dark Knight (which is a rather excellent film if I might say so myself)…I had a lot of a-ha! type moments.  I think my favorite part in the entire movie was when these two boats that have the option of blowing the other up (sort of like the classic prisoner’s dilemma), well, they don’t.  And it’s a huge surprise to the Joker.  (I’m also convinced that if they pressed the button, they would have blown their own ship up and not the other one anyway) But that’s beside the point.  The point is that the Joker is a character that seeks the darkness, the evil and the worst in us as people.  He pushes people to make decisions that reaffirm his belief that all people are inherently rotten, like himself, inside.  But what he doesn’t realize is that his own game is also a huge lie.  That moment when he looked up, expecting one of the boats to blow up, was the rekindling of hope.  Hope in mankind.  It sounds so cheesy, but today my dad called me to tell me that he learned that hope is continuing to believe that what has not yet happened will happen one day.  Okay, so he said it better than me just now because I’m having hard time remembering exactly what he said, but you get the picture.  I have to remember to have hope and faith that I will do what I’m supposed to do in this world and that the world will be a better place for it.  Happy Holidays everyone.