Provo in Peach Light

I was driving around Provo at a quarter after 3:00 this morning. The streets were as empty as Provo streets can be--dark lanes glowing in the peach colored light of lampposts. I don't know why people are the way they are. To understand someone we would have to live their lives, hear their stories, breathe their air. The thing is, sometimes I have enough trouble breathing my own air and living my own life and creating my own story. The more time passes, the more I hate those little sayings or assumptions that people make. (example: "look at how a boy treats his mother, because that is how he'll treat you," "you marry someone just like your father," "you can't love anyone until you love yourself," "love means never having to say your sorry"). Frankly, that all sounds like bull to me. My freshman year at BYU I had one of the greatest shocks in discovering that my life would not mirror my sisters' lives. And then there was everyone telling me that freshman year at college would be SO FUN and I would make TONS OF FRIENDS and I should just ENJOY EVERY MINUTE. That year had to be one of my worst years. I made few friends. I survived it, but I can't say I enjoyed all of it, or even most. The thing that I'm learning--or trying to learn--is that you can hear a million stories about what happened in other people's lives and you can hear someone else's rules for life and you can study the tundras in Alaska (do they even have tundras there? What is the exact definition of a tundra?)--but that doesn't mean it's going to have any bearing on your own life. Some advice is good and some applies, but most of the time you have to figure it out for yourself and head off to find a treasure using a map you drew yourself and will mostly like re-draw and erase a few times.

I wish they had Shari's in Utah. In Oregon they are liberally scattered about and they are open 24/7. This morning, if there had been a Shari's, I think I would stopped and had a piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie. Because it's about time I ate strawberry-rhubarb pie at 3:00a.m. by myself in a low-class chain restaurant.