I am so blessed

It is interesting how much everyone (including myself) complains about how rough their life is, when really it isn't rough at all. I know that I have had a few rough spots in my life, but nothing compared to the people around me. For the most part, I am completely healthy. I am pretty smart and I know how to solve general problems in my life. My family loves me. I have friends. I may have lost my mom, but I at least have my family and all my relatives who are willing and able to help me out if I asked. I already have a job ready for me when I graduate. I am graduating from college. I am not in debt. I am generally happy in life. Sheesh. My life is probably the easiest for anyone to live in.

I have always known most of these things, but it really brings it to home when I am talking to one of my roommates. This girl is absolutely wonderful. She is generally always happy, always helping out others. Everyone who sees us together thinks that we are sisters (it helps that we both have the same interests and come from large families, she is the 4th of 12). She is smart and has been working here for a while. Unfortunately though, her life has had tons of problems. She was previously married, but divorced because her husband had some issues. She started dating someone about a year ago, but her mother decided that he was the spawn of satan (or something in those terms) and so she and her mother have not been on good speaking terms ever since then. Also, her dad got really sick a year ago and has had other issues. About a week ago her parents recently decided to get a divorce. Her siblings are having to decide which parent that they support, thus determining who goes with which parent (there are 8 kids still at home). To add to that, her relatives generally hate her family and none of them are helping them out through this situation. While this is all happening at home, she is stuck here because of work and so can't go home to help her siblings (she is basically like our "bignlittlesis" when it comes to roles in the family), or even take a break to deal with her own emotions. Compared to her life my life is absolutely heavenly.

So, now that I am reaffirming that I am blessed, the big question I want to know is why I am so blessed. People around me talk about all the trials that they have had, and yet looking at my life, I really haven't had very many. Why? Is my life always going to be this peachy, or am I being blessed now because Heavenly Father knows that I will have rough times later? Or, as trueblat puts it, I have trials, but refuse to accept them as trials and work through them. What ever it may be, I still know that I am very blessed in everything that I have and do, and I need to remind myself of that. In the meantime, I am just working on being there for my roommate and helping her as much as I can. Gosh, I would hate to be in her position in life.

Music and feelings

So, I have come to the realization that I really can't stand listening to good piano players, and I mainly mean the ones who have taken lessons for years and are basically way too trained. Let me explain.
From my perspective, music is my form of emotion. When I am mad I go and play really mad/depressing music. When I am sad I play really slow, depressing music. When I am happy I play fun music, and when I just want to feel I play everything else. etc. This just doesn't apply to playing the music, it also applies to listening to it. I love to listen to music played by others because then I don't necessarily have to worry about a key change or chords coming up, I can just sit there and feel. Unfortunately, most of the people who feel comfortable playing in front of others are the ones who have been taking lessons for years. In my mind, most of these people are way too "trained." They have been taught repeatedly to play what is written as written, and as kids they always wanted to see how fast they can play it so any time they aren't truly practicing, they play everything really fast. More often than not, for the people I meet who are "trained, " they are never taught to put their own emotions into what they are playing, which is really sad. Some songs it makes sense not to do so, but other songs need that sense of feeling in order to be heard.

On Sundays, I go to church early to play piano mainly so that I can feel the music. I really don't mind if there are no pianos available, that just means that I can just sit and listen. But lately, all the pianists who are playing are putting absolutely no feeling into their songs. They are playing the hymns and other beautiful arrangements perfectly with very few mistakes, but there is no emotion in it, I can't feel anything from it. Playing hymns straight makes perfect sense when you are accompanying people, but if is just you and you are playing it for fun, then for heaven's sake PLAY IT! Put the words into the piano so that others can hear and feel what you are saying. And these beautiful prelude arrangements don't mean anything unless you can feel the words behind the music. I will admit, I am not an expert at doing this, but at least I try. The people I am listening to are so much better piano players than me, but in my eyes they are just too trained. They are capable of making these pieces sing out, but they don't and that really saddens me. That is the main reason I can't abide listening to these people, they basically just suck all the emotion out of me and make life very bland.

I know that this post probably sounds very conceited, but just think about it from a different perspective. What if you wanted to feel something today, whether it be happy or sad or whatever, but everyone around you is just feeling blah. You too will eventually feel blah as well, and that is a hard feeling to abolish. That is how it is with music and me when I am listening to trained players. Without music, I don't really express my feelings and I normally just end up in blah land. I need music to express myself. So those of you who are reading this and see yourself as one of those "trained" pianists, please put emotion into your music, feel it, revel in it. Otherwise, what is music for?