It Seems We're Fearfully Made and Designed

My eyes water a lot. Aside from the fact that I'm fairly emotional and cry easily, my eyes water when no emotion is involved whatsoever.

It's getting colder outside, and I can almost guarantee that if you see me on campus, I'll have big, fat, crybaby tears rolling down my cheeks, even though I'm not sad at all. I know lots of people's eyes water when it's cold and windy, but this is insane. Mostly it just annoys me. It wears off all my make up (I worry too much about my makeup, apparently), people are probably going to start thinking I'm some weird emo kid who cries all the time, and it's just a nuisance.

But I never really considered why we humans are wired to react this way. I mean, crying really doesn't serve any purpose except to wash debris out of the eye. Crying when you're sad or angry doesn't do anything. And if you're cold, that doesn't mean there's something in your eye.

I realized the other night though that tears are salty (duh, we all know that, and have since we were small). But what do we do when the sidewalks freeze over? We sprinkle salt on them. Why isn't the ocean frozen? Because it's full of salt water. So my overactive tear ducts are really just trying to keep my eyeballs from freezing. Which I think is, in a dorky, nerdy kind of way, really pretty awesome.

A lot of people say that God and science don't go together, but I don't think that's right. I think science is us figuring out how God makes stuff happen. Like maybe God set up a machine that does the repetitive stuff so that he can go through and manually do the fun stuff. And some of that machine stuff is science. And I think it's awesome when I realize stuff like, "Our tears are salty so our eyeballs don't freeze." I know if I were designing something, I wouldn't have thought of that.

Maybe that'll help me not hate it so much when the cold and the wind make me look like I've just finished watching the Notebook. I mean, I'd rather have tear-stained cheeks than chunks of ice for eyeballs...

Rain on Everything That I Know

It rained today. Even though it makes my hair do weird things and makes a mess of my clothes, I generally like the rain. Today it wasn't even very cold rain, so I was pretty happy. Being dressed up for professional day, I was less than comfortable, but even considering that, it was alright. 

I was looking around at other people, though, while I walked to lunch. One guy, totally soaked, looked fairly miserable, but like he was taking it in stride. A couple of girls were grimacing, obviously perturbed by the weather's affect on their hair and makeup. Another girl, wrapped in a hoodie looked like she was trying to suppress an appreciation of the rain. The best reaction I saw, though, was some guy who walked out into the middle of Drury lane and turned his face up to the sky with a wide open smile. 

I wish I didn't care so much about my hair, my makeup, my clothes, and could appreciate the rain like that. It looked like fun. 

Last time I said I need to try and see the beauty in things I don't like, but I saw today that I need to more openly appreciate the things I already do enjoy. 

Like the Colors of Fall

I'll come right out and say it: My least favorite thing about fall is the foliage. I know everybody likes the reds and oranges and yellows of the trees, but I'd prefer just to keep the green, thank you very much. Bring on the early evenings, the cooler weather, and damp days, which are all manageable. But if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not have naked, dead trees everywhere. 

This blog isn't a critique on the autumn season, actually. I actually am realizing, as I type this, that I need to learn to live for the moment a bit more. Not so much that I am negligent of the future, but enough to appreciate what is just as much as what will be. 

When I started my rant about the trees, I was reminded of the Mitch Hedberg joke where he talked about wine: "I like to drink red wine. This girl asked me once if red wine gave me a headache. I said, 'Yeah, eventually, but the first and middle part are amazing!' I'm not going to give up on something because of what it does eventually. It's like getting an apple and going 'Woah, stop! That's going to be a core eventually!"

This fall hasn't been as depressing as I was afraid it would be. I'm finally learning to enjoy it while it's here. I've got semester-long, group projects in two different classes, as well as other ongoing projects in those same classes. I'm trying to learn two different foreign languages, and I was assigned another project to come up with a story and be ready to present it over a weekend. I've got tests and quizzes to study for, research to do, letters to mail, and Sunday School lessons to plan. And aside from these responsibilities, I feel the need to maintain my friendships and family relationships. In short, I'm swamped. But I don't really feel it. 

Last week I walked across campus with a perfect stranger. Instead of worrying about being late, or being nervous around someone I didn't know, I just enjoyed the conversation (We actually even talked about politics, which isn't something most people discuss with strangers, nor something I particularly enjoy). Everything about the situation that could have made me uncomfortable or irritated me wasn't an issue. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. 

And now that I think about it, it's not the first time I can say that. I've had a few other brushes with strangers that were profoundly awesome. 

When you talk to a stranger, you have to kind of let go of everything else that you know and that they know to really communicate, because there is so little common ground. Maybe to keep appreciating the moment, even to see the beauty in the dying trees, I need to talk to a few more strangers.