Ben Crowder

Everyone’s heard of Facebook by now, but I still run into scads of people who are staunchly anti. Or at least apathetic. And so, without further ado, I give you nine reasons why you should join Facebook.

1. Addresses change. With our shrunken world, people move around a lot. E-mail addresses change not infrequently. Phone numbers change too, albeit perhaps not as much. And what if someone neglects to give you their new contact information? Good luck finding them. Facebook, on the other hand, stays in place, and it gives you access to your friends’ e-mail addresses and phone numbers, too. (If they choose to list them, of course.)

2. Facebook resurrects friendships. Through Facebook, I’ve gotten in contact again with dozens and dozens of people I’d lost track of because of #1.

3. Facebook helps you keep track of birthdays. Small and unimportant, perhaps, but it’s a lifesaver when you want to know who’s birthday is coming up.

4. Facebook doesn’t replace real life; it supplements it. Facebook helps you maintain the friendships you’ve got, keeping track of where people are going and what’s going on in their lives. Sure, you can do that in real life, too, but do you really have the time and energy to do it for all your friends? Facebook helps you be a better friend. Really.

5. Facebook enhances your networks. The world is a small place, and there are all sorts of connections you’ve never known existed. Whenever you go to someone’s profile, Facebook shows you the mutual friends between you and that person, expanding your knowledge of who knows who. And besides, it’s fun.

5. Facebook only takes as much time as you want to put into it. People can get addicted to something like Facebook because we humans are social creatures, and social stuff is fun. And that’s okay. But you’re still the one in control — you don’t have to check your profile every half-hour if you don’t want to. And if you do get addicted, you don’t have to pull the plug — it’s not that hard to pull back a little bit without going all the way.

7. Facebook respects your privacy. You don’t have to reveal information you don’t want out in the open. Don’t want your phone number listed? No problem. And if you want your friends to see your e-mail address, but no one else? Piece of cake.

8. Facebook isn’t just for college students. While it may originally have been targeted at twenty-somethings, it’s branching out now to every age group. Nowadays, Facebook is as much for high school kids and octogenarians as it is for the college crowd.

9. Facebook is it. Yes, there are other social networks, and no, they’re not all worthless. But Facebook has 30 million users and it’s growing like wildfire. It’s going to be the largest social network in the world. Now, sometimes it’s stupid to hop on the bandwagon, but in this case it’s the right thing to do, because Facebook is going to become as ubiquitous as the telephone. Like it or not, the Internet is a major part of life in the 21st century, and Facebook is going to be one of the deciding factors in whether or not you exist as far as the web is concerned. Don’t be left behind in the 20th century — go to facebook.com and sign up, now. :)

And no, Facebook is not paying me to write this post. :)

[tags]facebook[/tags]

When you have a website that’s been up for over seven years, you get used to getting random e-mails from people who’ve stumbled across it. Now, for some people that might be scary, but not for me. I thrive on it. There’s nothing stalker-ish about getting e-mails or messages from people you don’t know, unless they have a distinctly stalker-ish quality to them. (Like, “I’m watching you.” That’s freaky.) But for the most part, I’m rather flattered when someone takes the time to shoot me an e-mail. And if I don’t know them, so what? Making new friends is fun. That’s part of what life’s all about.

Having gotten so many of these random messages over the years, I’ve also adapted to sending them myself. Half the time only silence responds, but half the time people are quite friendly and receptive, and new friendships are forged, and life is good. Sure, it feels weird to write someone you don’t know and have little justifiable reason for e-mailing, but you get used to it. Offhand I can think of several friends of mine who I wouldn’t know if one of us hadn’t e-mailed the other. It would be a pity to have lost those relationships.

Anyway, I need to run and get groceries while the night is still young, but here’s one quick almost-a-tangent before we end for the day: saying goodbye is like pulling off a bandaid. Feel free to interpret that as you will. (Of course, I have my own interpretation, but I’m not telling. :))

Today’s post will be a triptych, like those old three-part paintings (in case you were wondering what “triptych” means and if it does indeed have anything to do with “cryptic”). Except the parts are unrelated. Well, they’re related in that they all come through me, but that’s about as far as they go.

So, on the left side, we have mind versus matter. Down at Special Collections they’ve had me and my co-worker help move several palettes of cartons from Receiving down to SpecColl, and it’s been so fun! Almost every job I’ve had has been as a knowledge worker of one sort of another, other than a one-month stint doing asphalt with my uncle (I still wonder what influence I was under when I agreed to that!). Not that they’re all cerebral, of course, and they do often involve interactions with the tangible world, but on the whole they’re all in my head. Lifting boxes, however, is different. It’s easier to gauge success with manual labor, I think — move X from point A to point B, and you know you’re done when it’s at point B. Now, I’m not about to drop my librarian dream and get a job with UPS, but I certainly don’t mind getting out of my mind every once in a while.

And in the center, I watched Corpse Bride tonight. In one way, it’s a rather twisted movie, but not necessarily in a bad way. I mean, sure, it’s morbid (kind of) and the palette is very unsaturated and dark, but I can honestly say I liked the movie. (Except for the song-and-dance routines with the disco lights. ~sigh~) Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that whenever I finish watching a movie, most of the time I feel like I’m on top of the world, regardless of how happy or sad the movie itself was. And I didn’t know why. Tonight I found out. You see, if a movie portrays a romance of some sort, I vicariously end up placing myself into it (and I think everybody does this). But when the film ends, I still feel like I’m in that relationship. It usually lasts for an hour or so before fading away into my usual singular solitude. (And I guess this means I feel like I’m married to a corpse at the moment. :P)

We’ve made it to the right panel. A tree stretches along the left side of the painting, reaching its delicate fingers across the top into a leafy arch that shades a young boy sitting at its trunk, buried in a book. From beyond the boy comes a bath of light, whispering out from the ruddy-faced sun as it slips behind the forest on the other side of the lake. Engrossed in his book, the boy doesn’t see the cluster of fairies in the upper right of the painting, dangling from the leaves, fingers pressed to their lips and twinkles in their eyes.

Now it’s your turn. What happens next?

Once upon a time (yesterday afternoon, actually), my hair was long. Not girl-long, or mullet-long, but longer than I would like. (Personally, I’d like to be bald, but by “longer than I would like” I actually mean that the curls were out of control — I have naturally curly hair when it gets long — and were starting rebellions and coups and buying tickets for Greece.)

In the dungeons of the Wilkinson Center there happened to dwell a barber. In this once-upon-a-time world, I went to the barber and asked him to cut my hair. “How long?” quoth he.

“Well, how much is on there?” I asked.

“Three inches.”

I pondered. “Leave an inch and a half.”

Ten minutes later, as he brushed off the razor with one hand, he spun me around in the chair with the other (this was after that glorious head-vacuuming experience) and I inwardly gasped in horror as my nearly-shaven head stared back at me. The guy must’ve grown up in Canada, because he left one and a half centimeters. I don’t know how familiar you are with the metric system, but that’s two and a half times as short as I requested. And that’s a lot. Or a little, rather.

Anyway, even as I type this, I’m aghast at how vain I am. I really need to just go bald and get it over with. Maybe that’ll cure my vanity. Or maybe I’ll have a misshapen skull — like an egg that got rejected at the factory — and become even more vain. Combover, anyone? ~shiver~

In other news, I was on a date tonight at Los Hermanos with a few married couples when one of the women turned to me and my date and said, “So, how long have you two been married?”

:)

[tags]BYU[/tags]

Rainy days are great for writing blog posts. :) (Well, until the power goes out.)

So, the other day I was talking with a couple of friends, and the conversation shifted to faith and prayers. On the one hand, we’re supposed to pray with faith. Ask, and ye shall receive. Nothing wavering. On the other hand, however, we’re supposed to say, “Thy will be done,” which means being willing to accept the Lord’s will even if it’s not at all what we were asking for. How do we reconcile the two?

Case study: I want to be married. (Sorry, I was trying to avoid bringing this up again on here, lest I appear to be marriage-hungry, but I guess the truth will out, eh. ;)) In prayer I ask the Lord to send a wife my way — not that I expect him to deliver her into my hands (ahem), or that I want him to do all the work, but it would be nice if he could maneuver things so the girl I end up marrying shows up on the scene sooner rather than later.

But I don’t actually know that it’s the Lord’s will for me to get married this year. Or next year. Or whenever. I have no idea, and it’s hard for me to ask in faith when I know very well that my marriage may not show up on the Lord’s planner until 2020. He may want me to wait, to learn patience and finances and a slew of other things that will make me a better husband.

So far I’ve been going off the prayer modeled by Christ in Gethsemane: “Here’s what I want, but nevertheless, thy will be done.” Did Christ have faith that the bitter cup would be removed from him? Or was his faith instead placed in the will of the Father? If so, then it looks like we have prayers of desire and prayers of faith, which may or may not overlap. (Insert Venn diagram. :))

I’m not entirely sure I’m satisfied with this answer, but it’s the best I can come up with so far. Thoughts? And let me add that I fully believe that the Lord’s will is what’s best for me, and I don’t want to go against it because I know I can’t be as happy that way. God trumps every time. My real question, I suppose, is this: should I even be praying for marriage? Perhaps my prayer needs to change from “Let me get married real quick now” to “Please help me prepare for marriage so that when the time is right, I’ll be ready, and please help me be really, really patient until that time comes, especially when I watch chick flicks and see happy couples and realize what I’m missing out on.” Or something like that. :)

P.S. It boggles my mind that some people actually don’t care about getting married. I really don’t understand it. Me, I’m on pins and needles. Everything in my life centers on it. And while I do realize that there is life outside of marriage, and that some of us will be single for most or even all of our life, I still feel drawn to marriage and family like a moth to light, like a magnet to the refrigerator. :)

Do cell phones and iPods and Facebook virtualize our lives, stripping away the face-to-face contact we need and replacing it with prosthetic relationships?

That’s the vibe I’ve been getting lately from a few different places — a newspaper article, and some of my grown-up friends, to list a couple. It’s gotten me thinking, particularly since I have a cell phone, I have an iPod, I’m on Facebook, and I of course have this blog and lots of you comment on it.

The danger, if danger there be, lies in replacing our real-life relationships with technology, but not in supplementing them, I think. Cell phones make it very easy to communicate, and since it’s often not feasible to physically be in the presence of my friends and family (for whatever reason, be it walking home from work or already in bed or what have you), I use mine to better keep in touch. Sure, it’s easier to ask girls out via the phone than in person, but it’s not like I try to do the whole date itself on the phone. :P

Facebook is doing wonders with helping me keep track of my friends, many of whom are scattered across the globe. It hasn’t replaced my real-world friendships; it has augmented them.

iPods, now, there’s a possible snag. They don’t really help us communicate with other people. Instead, they’re portable isolation devices. Don’t get me wrong: I have one and listen to it every day. But I think there are times when it gets in the way of things, like when people walk from class to class. (It’s hard to say hi to someone who’s sprouting earbuds.) And yet I don’t know that I necessarily fault them.

Likewise, chat (Gmail chat, for me) has made it far easier for me to talk with my friends when I ordinarily wouldn’t be able to. Sure, it’s not the same as a phone call or as being in the same room with them, but it’s still communication, and I’ve found it refreshing and worth my time.

All of these can be used for bad, of course, but I don’t think any is inherently detrimental. Technology is neutral; it’s the use of it that determines what side of the line it ends up on.

I’ve noticed in the last year or so that whenever I find a girl attractive, almost always there’s an accompanying ring on her finger. This means I’m either only attracted to married women (which obviously presents a problem :)), or there’s something about them that I happen to find very attractive.

Since I do find myself attracted to single girls as well (phew!), I’m led to believe that it’s the latter. But what is it? When girls marry, they become different, in noticeable ways — they often tend to dress differently (more like grown women and less like girls), they carry themselves in a more mature manner, etc. — they exhude weddedness. Seriously. I’ve found that I can very often tell when a girl is married, even before I see the ring. (Not always, of course, but it’s happening often enough that I’ve noticed it.)

Now, whatever this “weddedness” is, it’s quite attractive. It’s wifeness, motherness, and that’s precisely what I want. (And I hope to develop the mirror image of it — husbandness, fatherness — in myself.) I look for it in girls I date.

And you know what? It’s rarely there. Sometimes there’s a glimmer, but rarely more than just a shadow. At first I despaired, because it was something I wanted so badly — and it felt so right and so good, so surely it wasn’t an unrighteous desire — and yet none of the girls I went out with were like that. Only the married girls, and they’re already taken. Since then, however, my eyes have been opened.

You see, there’s an anecdote floating around about Pres. Packer (or Pres. Kimball; perhaps it happened to both). As the story goes, a young lady said to Sister Packer, “I want to marry someone like President Packer.” Sister Packer then replied, “Honey, he wasn’t President Packer when I married him.”

It’s a liberating thought, really. We all want perfection, of course, and we see married couples who reflect the ideals we want, but we easily forget how long it took for them to get there. (The same thing applies for young college students wanting to have the same luxuries their parents do, without realizing it took decades of saving. Thus the avalanche of consumer debt.) We can’t compare people with 30-50 years of marriage behind them (or even five or ten) to the singles we associate with. Apples and oranges.

This doesn’t mean we should settle, of course. But it’s very important, I think, to keep in mind that growth is part of the process. We have to take that into account, recognizing that it’s okay if our significant other isn’t completely perfect yet. Some things take time. The alternative is to spend forever seeking out our chimera, and heaven knows how fruitful that will be.

[Editor's note: I wrote this late yesterday afternoon, but my server was down all evening and so I couldn't post it till now. Rather than rewrite the "today" references, I'll just let it stand.]

Usually I eat a homemade lunch, but today I ended up at Subway because of time constraints. In front of me in line were a mother and her 12- or 13-year-old daughter, and my attention quickly became caught by the dynamics of their interactions. Not that I tend to eavesdrop, but…okay, well, I do. None of my business? I suppose so, except that “mankind is my business” (Marley’s probably rolling over in his grave) — I’m a writer, and observing people is what we do. It’s grist for the mill, fuel for the fire.

So anyway, at one point the mother apologized in front of her daughter for not hearing the Subway girl or something, and I could tell she was trying not to embarrass her daughter. Heaven knows I myself was embarrassed by my parents many a time in my pre-teen years. Their seemingly innocuous comments or easily excusable faux pas (how does one pluralize “faux pas,” I might ask?) would blossom on my cheeks as if I’d forgotten to put my pants on when I left the house that morning.

And in that moment, as I was asking the Subway girl to put lettuce and onions on my sandwich, I decided that I want to be a parent so cool that my children will never be embarrassed by me. Is it possible? I have no idea. But it’s my new goal. Granted, parenting is still a long way down the road for me, but I think now’s the best time to start preparing. (And by “cool” I probably ought to mention that I mean down-to-earth and solid, not worldly cool. No James Dean or the Fonz for me, thank you very much.)

I can’t wait to have children. I mean, I have to wait (social and religious restrictions and all), but I wish I could hurry up and get to that point in my life. I’m dying to be a father. But all things in their due time, and I guess I need to relish this season of singleness while I’ve got it, because it won’t last long. I’ve never been very good at that, though — as soon as I know something else is coming up around the corner, I’m trunky as all get out to move on to the next thing, whether it’s high school to college, college to mission, mission back to college, college to graduation, one job to another, one calling to another, or whatever. And singleness to marriage, and then marriage to kids. (And yes, I do understand that there’s a 9-month required waiting period on that last one. ;)) “You’ll be married for the rest of your life,” they say. Well, then, let’s get on with it! While being single is “okay,” it’s not my ideal state of existence, and the sooner I leave it, the happier I’ll be.

(And now I must pedal back to say that I am happy as I am, and that I’m not holding my happiness ransom to my marital status. My life is fulfilling. I’m blessed in many different ways, more than I could ask for, even. But all the same, the blessing I want is marriage and children. It’s a righteous desire — heck, it’s not like I’m lusting to raze Canada to the ground with a nuclear warhead or anything — and family life is essential to being complete, and yet it’s the one thing I can’t really do much about.)

(And now I have to explain that. This can be my onion skin/Russian doll post of the year. ;) Yes, there are things we can do to prepare for marriage — make ourselves as marriageable as we can, personal progress, that sort of thing, and then of course go on dates when the opportunities present themselves. (I’m not so much a fan of dating purely for the sake of dating. I find it mostly a waste of time, and there are so many more things I could be doing. But I realize I’m in the minority here. For me, an ideal evening is spent reading books. For others, they have to go out and do something. I don’t understand that. But then again, I don’t understand myself half the time, so I’m content to let things remain as they are.) When I’m interested in a girl, I ask her out. Always have, always will. At the moment I’m not really interested in anyone (there’s a little voice tapping on my internal shoulder right now asking, “Um, why are you blogging about this, Ben? Hello? Anyone home?”), and there’s nothing I can really do to conjure up a girl I’m interested in. Nothing that will guarantee results, at any rate; I could go to parties (though I find myself strongly averse to parties, and I don’t know why) but chances are that I won’t find anyone I’m interested in. Looking back over my past, the times I’ve met girls I’ve been interested in were completely out of my control. One time the girl came to the lab I was working in. Another time, the girl showed up at my apartment with a petition. And yet another time, I saw the girl in the lobby of the HFAC. Nothing I had any control over. Now, after the initial encounter there’s a lot I can do, of course, but it’s getting to that point that’s hard.)

And for some reason my lower body feels like it’s disappearing right now (falling asleep, maybe?), which is a peculiarly disturbing sensation, so I’m going to stop this overly long post and go eat some dinner. And read books for the rest of the evening. (And don’t even try the guilt trip about not going on a date. It won’t work on me. Ha! :P)

Wow, that certainly wasn’t what I expected to blog about. ~sigh~

The scenario: Guy likes girl. Girl isn’t interested.

Option A: Guy pursues girl anyway. Girl either 1) eventually becomes interested or 2) calls the cops and gets a restraining order.

Option B: Guy leaves girl alone. Guy either 1) finds another girl who is interested or 2) remains single for the rest of his lonesome life.

This is all purely hypothetical, of course. :) I can see arguments for both sides — for example, my cousin originally wasn’t interested in her husband, even thought he was a jerk, but he was persistent and she eventually fell in love with him and now they’re happily married. On the other hand, if the girl really isn’t interested, then the guy’s persistence will end up feeling like the buzzing of a gnat, and it won’t take long before she swats.

You see, people’s autonomy is something I value a lot. If a girl isn’t interested in me, then I have to be totally, utterly smitten to keep pursuing her (and thereby ignoring her autonomy), and there has to be at least a little flicker of hope that she might change her mind. That’s only happened once, and that poor little flame was readily extinguished. Since then, I find myself unable to pursue any girl who’s not interested. I just can’t do it. And the reason why I bring all this up is this: what if pursuit would have changed her mind? Am I losing out on a golden opportunity because the rust is proving hard to scrape off? If that’s the case, then I think I’d certainly be able to pursue, even knowing that she wasn’t interested (heck, it happens in the movies all the time ;)). But then it’s so much easier to just find a girl who is interested at first. Not such a great story, but less stress and thus longer lifespan.

When is pursuit warranted? What thinkest thou? Or ye, rather. :)

Oh, and again, all of this “I” and “me” stuff is just for ease in writing. I’m talking on an abstract level here, not at all connected to the real me in the real world with real girls. Right. ;)

I hate goodbyes.

Yesterday in sacrament meeting we released most of the ward, seeing as finals end this week and everyone’s moving on. And in each of my scheduled finals so far, I’ve walked out of the classroom thinking how I’ll probably never see most of my classmates again.

The closing hymn yesterday was “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.” On my mission, I’d always end up singing it with my fellow missionaries and local members as the time for transfers came, to the point that it became my song. It still is, in a way. And while I don’t get all teared up the way I would on the mission, I still feel like part of me is yanked out with each person who moves away.

This morning I picked up my cap and gown. Tomorrow I have my last two finals. My last day at my current job is Wednesday. Graduation’s on Thursday and Friday. I start one of my new internships next Monday, the other next Wednesday. It’s all changing so fast, and I don’t want it to!

Well, I do, but I really don’t want to say goodbye to everyone. I wish they could all just stick around forever. No more goodbyes, only “Hello.” But alas, the only place where that happens is heaven. And I’m not quite ready to go there yet. :P

The funny thing is that while it hurts a little right now to contemplate everything I’ll miss, when I’m actually done and graduated I won’t miss it as much as I think. Sure, there’ll be occasional pangs of longing for the past, but most of the time I’ll be solidly in my new reality, busily making new memories that I’ll someday have to move on from as well. And on it goes, a neverending pattern.

I’m so grateful for my family, who I know I’ve got for not only this life but also the rest of eternity, and for close friends who are always there. It sounds kind of sappy. (By the way, I think the people who call relationships sappy are the ones green with envy who want just that kind of relationship terribly bad but don’t have the guts to say so.) Bonds with family and friends are what matter most in life. Everything else will fade away, falling off like Eustace’s dragonskin. Let’s not forget what’s real and what is only a passing facade.