Sabbath-day musings...

I posted this on Facebook. I thought I'd share it here too.

I'm a church-going individual. I have been my whole life. Sunday would come around, and there was no question...you get dressed up in your best clothes, and you sit through 3 hours of church. As I get older, sometimes I wonder about the purpose of church. It's extremely easy to use it as a cover-up. A way to show the world your Christianity. It's so easy to cling to church as the way to profess your faith and prove yourself, but how are we professing our faith beyond church? What do we do with what we learn in church? These are the questions I've been asking myself lately.

Today in church, the question was asked, "How do you stand up and stand out among your peers and how are you different?" The younger me used to think things like, "I'm open and honest about my quirks of not drinking alcohol or coffee...or about how I attend church on Sundays and try not to work on the Sabbath"...etc. The older I get, though...those things are far from my my mind. I, personally, don't need to share the "odd" quirks of Mormonism with the world. The truth is, the world probably already knows how odd we are. Here's what I DO need to share with the world. I need to be the Mormon that people remember because I loved them. I need to be the Mormon that people remember because I mourned with them when they experienced tragic loss. I need to be the Mormon that extended unwavering compassion towards people in their struggles. I need to be the Mormon that offered a shoulder to cry on...even in our differences...and possibly saved a real, tangible life because I offered that shoulder. I need to be the Mormon that bridges the gaps caused by hate and misunderstandings. And I need to be the Mormon that is open to accepting compassion, empathy, love and support from everyone who extends it to me. That's how I need to stand out. I need to be that person that people can think of and say, "I knew a Mormon once. We were friends. We shared a powerful connection of love and understanding."

In true Crystal fashion, I'll end this little novel with an Amy Grant lyric: "And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Everybody needs a helping hand; take a look at your fellow man. Tell me...what can I do today? Everybody needs a helping out, if that ain't what it's all about. Tell me what...what can I do? What can I do today?" That's my continued prayer.

Communication Musings

How do we know what we know...? Part 2

I've always been a questioner, but my communication classes are just fueling the fire...much to my step-dad's dismay. ;)

One of my classes focuses on the question, "How do we know what we know?" I talked about it in my last post. Its primary focus is how communication, and different channels and ways of communicating, often muddle the facts of the topic (most of the time without us even knowing), but because of how our brains work, we often don't search for facts or question what we hear via communication, we just believe what we hear without thinking too hard about it, especially if it aligns with previously-held beliefs. (You may want to argue against this... but we're all prone to being lazy in our thinking. Deep cognitive thought is extremely difficult to keep up at all times.)

Last night, Chuck and I had a friendly debate about whether Kayleen and Bobby's storage room was an "attic." He called it an attic. It's a small room off the side of another main room, and there is one, maybe two steps up into this small "storage" room. After our discussion about why it was/wasn't an attic, I looked up the term attic, in the interest of looking for facts, and determining why I felt it wasn't an attic..."a space or room just below the roof of a building." I actually have no idea if that storage room ceiling is the roof, or if there's space between the ceiling and the roof (I didn't go outside to examine the structure of the house). If there's space, then it's not an attic. But if there isn't space, Chuck is correct, even though it doesn't look like a typical attic (in my mind, an attic is a loft type space that you have to climb several stairs to get to, because it's at the very top of the house). This storage room, though, is on the top floor, off of another room, and could very well be right below the roof...if the roof is flat. I can't remember what their roof looks like over that part of the house, so I couldn't tell you. But if he's right, I am okay with him being right, even though it doesn't make sense to me. Because it's good to know that my logic, what I think an attic is, isn't necessarily fact. My idea of an attic could be shaped by movies and novels, but not actual fact.

Today, Chuck brought up the "attic" again. And I informed him that I had looked up the word, and it's possible that he could be right (we won't truly know unless we examine the house). Chuck couldn't stop laughing at the fact that I looked up the word.

And this is a glimpse into the life of a man who has a communication-scholar-wannabe for a daughter.

Communication musings: How do we know what we know?

I find myself continuously pondering what I'm learning as a Communication graduate student, and I decided it might be fun to use my blog as an outlet.

I'm currently taking a Science and Environmental Communication course, in which we discuss how we, as a society, know what we know. As a child, I always considered myself a right-brain person, because as a child, it was relayed to me that creativity and arts live in the right side of your brain, and math and science live in the left side of your brain. If you gravitate towards one of those things more than the other, you must be one or the other. I've always loved music, which is a right-brain thing, and as a child I loved to draw, which is also considered a right-brain thing. I never liked math, and science never quite made sense to me. I didn't fully understand the purpose of science, until recently, to be honest. I never watched shows like Bill Nye the Science Guy...and science classes just always seems really confusing to me...math mixed with chemicals (especially in high school). When I pictured science I pictured men in white lab coats mixing chemicals to watch them explode, or men in white lab coats dissecting frogs for some unknown reason. It was hard to relate science to my personal life, a) because I always pictured men and I'm a woman (another issue for another blog post), and b) because, how do exploding chemicals and frog intestines relate to me personally? I'm sure they do somehow, but they didn't seem to in my childhood.

So, as a child, when you think you are something, it kind of sticks with you. I was right-brained and I was proud of that and there was no need to explore science or math or anything else the left brain operated because I was right-brained.

Wrong. I'm also extremely analytical. I pick everything apart and question everything. This is what made me really great Rewards Analyst, back when I was fully employed and making money (...the woes of a grad student). It's also what drives some people CRAZY when I have conversations with them.... "Why do you say that? Well how do you know? What makes you think he thinks that? Why are we doing this...what's the purpose?" Yeah, it can sometimes seem condescending when that's not my intention. It's kind of in my nature. I'm pretty logical, which gets me in trouble with spiritual things at times, because knowing by the Spirit is different from knowing by logic (logic is a more scientific method to know...Spiritual knowledge is faith-based). Writing falls in the left side of the brain, which I like to think is a skill of mine. This often confuses people because people associate writing with creativity, and creativity is a right-brain thing. The actual process of writing, and writing well, however, is a left-brain thing - grammar, structure, flow, word choice and placement. It's a strategic process. And then reasoning, which goes along with logic, rests in the left side of the brain, which I also encounter often.

So, friends... I've come to realize that I'm not just right brained, but I'm left brained too! And you probably have a bit of both as well. The reason I'm saying all this is because, at first glance, a Science and Environmental Communication class might seem like a real yawn to many of you. Truthfully, it did to me too. I honestly took it because I liked the looks of the course syllabus, and how the professor was going to structure the class (aka: workload seemed less than other class syllabi suggested). But as I've come to learn in this program, Communication itself is a science, a social science. Any time you go out into the field, observe something, make an educated guess (aka: hypothesis) and then test that educated guess, THAT'S SCIENCE. That's the scientific method. Communication just does that with people instead of chemicals. Psychology does that with people instead of chemicals. Sociology does that with people instead of chemicals. It's all science. Politics does that with people and political stuff instead of chemicals, hence, Political Science.

Anyway, this class. It's all about how we know what we know. I'm sure you hear things in the news all the time, "Study shows a glass of wine a day will reduce stress." "Study shows that eating steak will take 10 years off your life." "Study shows that lonely people experience worse cold symptoms than non-lonely people."  "Study shows...." That's all based on scientific studies. But often, what you read or hear in the news (or on FACEBOOK...) isn't even remotely close to what the actual scientific study found and suggested. Journalists don't always understand the scientific study, and they latch onto one line or one idea, and they report what they think it means. Or, a classic mistake... scientific studies ALWAYS say, "These findings support our hypothesis (educated guess), which SUGGESTS that people who drink one glass of wine a day will have reduced stress." Keep in mind, this study was ONE study, comparing maybe a couple hundred people in an experiment... and we don't know ANYTHING about the background of those people...lifestyle, work demands, health habits, family demands, etc. Sometimes the study will include those things...and try to get people as similar as possible to participate in the study, but not always. And reporters rarely, if ever, talk about all that jazz. They'll often just state, from one study that says a supported hypothesis suggests something, that "You should drink wine because it will reduce stress." Okay.... kinda stretched from the original finding.

Also, let's explore the idea of science from a different perspective. What are "facts" and what is "truth"? When you really think about it, these are often just the words we use for ideas, theories and subjects that have been tested enough times to produce the same results, which suggests that there is enough evidence to back up a hypothesis. But friends... history is full of hypotheses that were "proven" true for a while...all the evidence pointed to that truth, and then one day...BAM, someone tested it and, and the findings weren't the same as they always had been; the original truth suddenly becomes challenged and might not be true anymore. So, over a given period of time, with more people now testing that same thing with the impression that the pre-determined truth is no longer true, we finally move to a new truth. A prime and simplistic example of this: The world being flat vs. the world being round. Another prime example: the belief that stomach ulcers were caused by stress vs. stomach ulcers being caused by a bacteria (it's a bacteria...in case you still thought it was stress. ;)). When conducting scientific studies, scientists allow themselves a teeny bit of room for error, because it's impossible to study and find anything without a teeny room for error. It just is. Ask a statistic professor, because I can't quite explain it to you... just trust me on that. The room for error is small, but it's there. (Or don't trust me. Because this whole post is about how you shouldn't believe everything you read or hear. So... go find a statistician or scientist to explain to you why scientists leave a small percentage of chance to error.) And so, sometimes scientists find things in a study that make something SEEM true, but it's actually a finding that fell in that 2% chance of error, but we base the "truth" off of that error...because we can't know it's error until we test it a million more times to discover that was just a fluke finding (maybe not a million, but enough to kick out the error finding).

I'm not knocking science. It's wonderful. It leads to discoveries about all sorts of things, and we basically have everything...medicine, electricity, technology, mental health options, a planet that is still supporting us, all because of science. But it evolves. And progresses. Which is why we don't just test a bunch of things once, find answers, and then say, "Okay. All the scientists can find new jobs now." We keep making new discoveries, and sometimes, those new discoveries kick out the old discoveries, because the new ones are closer to the truth and what's right.

So, how do we know what we know? Well, we know things via communication. The only way we know anything is via communication. Or rather, we discover things via communication. We might know something by testing it, but we only know to test it through what we learned via communication. But do, and should, we take everything we learn via communication at face value and as truth? Mass communication, such as TV, radio and the internet...teach us basically everything we know in today's world. Books...sometimes. School... but teachers and professors learn from books, so I'll fall back to books for that one. But often, we learn via interpersonal communication as well. We learn things based on what our friends are talking about, and what they heard on the news, or out of the mouth of a celebrity, or read on Facebook. So, are we going to believe everything we read? Everything we hear? And then pass it on like it's fact? Like it's truth? What is fact? I take issue with the words fact and truth. Or, maybe I just take issue with how we use those words. Those words are thrown around far too casually. Sure, there are things we've come to learn as fact. No one has disproven gravity, for example...it's a thing. It's here to stay. It's a fact. But often, when we say, "I know for a fact..." or "The fact is..." well... where are you getting your facts and how do you know it is fact?

This stuff blows my mind. Honestly. It blows my mind. I even question my professors, and most of them would probably tell me, "Good for you." Because they're communication professors, and they know that every word, every utterance that comes out of human mouth, is subject to bias, mood, environment, etc. etc. And it's so unbelievably important in this day in age, with social media teaching so many of us what we know about the world and about each other, to really contemplate how we know what we know. I'm not saying we all have to become analytical beasts that chase all our friends away because we question everything too much (like me...). But I am suggesting that we should all just take a minute before we get caught up in the popular discourse and sharing of information that could possibly be skewed to rial you up, instead of present you with what a study actually found and suggested. And far too often, we don't question it before we share. How many times have we clicked on something, or nearly clicked on something, some offer for some amazing coupon, or some headline that seems too good to be true, and we open it to discover it was just a scam and think, "crap... I hope this doesn't give my computer a virus." We allow our emotions and our gut instinct to agree with or latch onto anything that's in our favor or already in line with our thinking. That's a natural psychological and biological thing to do. But we must start using rational and some logic to weigh what we're hearing and talking about via communication, if we're truly going to know and come to the truth. This goes for all information... not just scientific in nature. (But when you think about it, so much of our lives revolve around science... political, social, psychological, health..... it's all scientific to some degree). Even religion uses the scientific method, when you think about it. We come up with a hypothesis, based on scripture, that an idea or belief is true. Then we act in faith that it is, and wait to discover what happens - the Spirit either does or doesn't confirm the truthfulness of that hypothesis. Information is coming at us from all venues in all forms...and can be framed in any given way for any given purpose. Let's figure out what we're talking about before we talk, and how we know what we think we know before we share. 

That's all I've got today. Kind of broad. Stay tuned for more communication musings. ;)

Blogging instead of homeworking...

Last night, I made a specific decision to turn down a potentially great opportunity...for my sanity. From the outside perspective, it probably looks like a stupid decision. Kind of like how my decision to quit my journalism master's program at Georgetown probably looked to outsiders five years ago. Kind of like my decision to take a break from my undergraduate coursework for a few semesters...to work at Subway and live with my cousins...probably looked to outsiders. Kind of like quitting a job that drove me absolutely insane...when I didn't have any new jobs lined up...looked to outsiders (wait, I've done that twice). And sometimes, it's not just outsiders...or about outsiders at all. There's a really mean part of my subconscious, that is sometimes louder than other times, screaming, "YOU'RE SO WEAK. YOU CAN'T HANDLE ANYTHING. YOU'RE A LOSER." But I know in my heart of hearts that all these decisions were the right decisions for me. In hindsight, the past decisions I mentioned above, took me to where I needed to be...they were right for me. If I just stop and listen intently, I can hear the true me, the me that's in tune with God, the universe, and my own heart, and it drowns out the meanie in my mind that tells me I'm a loser.

I think so often, in regards to mental health, we feel "less-than"...as though it's not a worthy cause or an appropriate motive to make decisions. We call it "weakness" instead of calling it what it is, "mental-health maintenance." I've dealt with mental-health issues my whole life. I saw a school psychologists while my dad was dying. Post-death, I participated in school group counseling and a nonprofit child grief counseling center called The Dougy Center. In my pre-teen years I saw a counselor...and in my college years I saw a counselor. I've experimented with different anti-depressant medication...I've dealt with diagnosed forms of OCD/depression/anxiety for much of my life. And while I've currently got a decent grasp on my mental health with the appropriate amount of sleep, healthy eating, exercise, adult coloring, meditation, long walks, podcast listening, candle burning (and anything else that brings me happiness), it doesn't mean I don't still deal with it, and have to acknowledge it as a very real thing in my life. But the truth of the matter is, we ALL should be doing things that help us achieve pique mental health. And we shouldn't brush it under the rug as weakness. If someone is fit and physically healthy, does it make him/her need physical health maintenance any less than someone who might not be physically fit and/or healthy? No. Obviously, s/he is doing the maintenance that is required...which is why s/he's physically fit and healthy. We all need physical health and maintenance. For some of us, it might be a bit harder to maintain than others, for a variety of reasons. But we ALL need it. It's the same with mental health.

So... here's my plea, to you and to me, to be happy and content with who we are...and replace the notion of "weakness" with "mental-health maintenance." Y'all are worth it. Give yourself a break and tell the meanie you (and all of us have) in your head to back the hell off.

It's been over a year since I posted in here.

I don't have time to be writing this post. Grad school is kicking my butt.

I'm really into melancholy music.

https://youtu.be/l0XRlNZbQFE

That's all for now.