Better Than Most, Relived

Bryan Schuurman

Self Worth

During sacrament meeting last Sunday I pondered what has worth? I spend my life worrying about my time, now forced to devote it to ARUP. Or how I need more money. How am I going to make ends meet? I also want to buy more and more cool gadgets. I love gadgets. They make me feel more masculine or something. I don’t know, but I have rooms full of them.

Is any of this of worth? Do my possessions add to my worth? Does making more money than you add to my worth? No. It is of no importance. It is all illusory fluff that distracts me from the one and only thing that has any importance whatsoever: myself. What matters is how I perform my job, earn my money, and grow personally. “There's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are will come from that. It is the only measure of human value” (p.99, Atlas Shrugged).

It suddenly appeared odd to me how desperately I cling to all those other modes of worth. I cling to my physical possessions. I cling to my habits. Charles Du Bos advises “to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”

Am I too caught up in my accumulated ‘worth’ to now see the way to what I can become? I think that is worth thinking about. What do you think?

Adams Cabin 2006

Introducing you to a new segment you can expect to see from time to time: Old Memories Relived. These will be videos and slides shows from adventures, or entertaining daily life, I have had. I am sorting through my gigabytes of pictures and video clips and realized that I need to share these.

Basketball mishap

I seem to be accident prone. It seems every few weeks I am injuring myself. This is a recent development that I find rather troubling.

This time the injury came while playing a casual game of basketball with a group of friends last Thursday. At some point during the game, doubtlessly after one of my amazing drives and slam dunks (ok, maybe not), I hurt my big toe on my left foot. I remember turning to Amy Schmidt and saying, "Ha, boy that hurt." What is odd is that I have no recollection of what 'that' was. Did I trip over someone's foot (much more likely than slam dunking)? Did I stub my toe? No idea.

Despite the mild pain, I played for another hour or so. When I finally got home I took off my shoe to find my sock red with blood. Uh oh. That generally isn't a good sign. I peeled the sock off to discover my large toe nail could bend way back, revealing the fleshy interior of my toe; also not generally a good sign.

For those of you that saw me at church, this is why I wasn't wearing shoes. I have my toe wrapped and am hobbling around the house. It hurts quite a bit. I am still left with the question: how on earth did I do this while playing basketball?

Davis High Football

This is a quick sample of one of my projects this last year. I did highlights for Tanner Hinds, Davis' star running back. He won pretty much every award you can in one school year. Things are looking bright for him.

Save our Parks - Turn off the TV

Have you visited a national park lately?

"The iconic American family vacation to a national park, after 50 years of rising popularity, is now in steady decline. From 1987 to 2007, per capita visits to national parks shrank by 23 percent" (Scientific American hereafter mentioned as Sci Am).

I only went to one last year. Why didn't I go to more? Well, personally, work. I wouldn't let myself take the time off. What is your excuse?

"Surprisingly, we discovered that 97.5 percent of the decline in national park visits could be explained by just four factors: the rising price of gasoline and the increasing amount of time people spend plying the Web, playing video games and watching movies. Although correlation is not causation, the relationship was strong."

The last three of those four factors, web, video games, and movies, really blend into one. That one I call 'life.' Sci Am "coined the term 'videophilia' to describe 'the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media.'" The problem appears to be: less people coming to parks, less funding. Less ardent support for environmental protection.

As Sci Am puts it, "Nature: use it or lose it."

Well, I'm going to go watch a rerun of Seinfeld.