Little Things

I've been realizing more and more that there are very few big things in life. I've got this WEDDING in a month and a half, and man did it seem B-I-G before any of it was planned. I mean, how do you plan a wedding? Especially when you've never done it before. It felt like the unexperienced employee paradox: You need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get the experience. Getting turned down from a position due to "lack of experience" always made me want to hit somebody.

Anyway, I got to thinking about it, I'm really not nervous or stressed out about this wedding anymore. We found a caterer, and he is awesome. He has all of the food, the timing, some organization - a lot of things under control. Our DJ is one of the warmest, funniest guys I have ever met; I can't wait to hear him "work" at our wedding. The photographer we hired is a personal aquaintence of mine, but even if he weren't - I would want him there. His work is amazing. Looking through his website gets me so excited to see the pictures he takes on our wedding day. And of course the officiant was so helpful in planning the ceremony with us. What a cool, flexible, easy to work with style. I loved it.

It was so overwhelming at first, but Sara encouraged me to just do something. Just call the DJ one more time. Look over these vows. Send an email to the photographer. Make sure we have the chairs. Anything. Do anything - that was my job. Doing one anything every day allowed me to never need to spend a whole day doing anything! It was remarkable.

All of the immemorable little things added up to a pretty sweet wedding. Even cooler than that is I wasn't the only one working towards this goal. Sara, her mother, her sister, some of my friends who are reading, people giving speeches, all the groomsmen who had to get tuxedos, the bridesmaids who went dress shopping; all of these people did a very little bit. The very little bit that all of them did adds up to a whole lot that I would not have wanted to try to do on my own.

I recently read an article talking about this amazing power. The author spoke about all of the hours everyone spends watching tv. Except he was talking about ALL of the hours EVERYONE spends watching tv. He was somehow able to calculate roughly how many hours or thought went into the ENTIRE project of Wikepedia. He said if we could capture 1% of the time everyone spends watching television and pour it into a project like Wikepedia, we would change the world.

Why? Because we would have collectively put in enough human being brain power to create 100 Wikepedias!!! That is amazing. Assuming you tried to watch as much tv as possible as soon as you got home until you went to bed. 6pm - 10pm, you did 4 hours a night. 1% of that is 2 minutes and 24 seconds of your life.

Imagine how amazingly powerful YOU are in just 2 minutes and 24 seconds, night after night after night if you contribute your little bit to something big. Imagine if you just watch 1 hour of tv. You would need to contribute 36 seconds.

This concept is literally blowing my mind. I can't stop seeing examples of how powerful small unnoticable actions become when they are added together.

What was the point of the article? To let us know that all it takes to radiclly transform your life is a consistant effort of a little bit; day after day after day. I wonder how good I would be at the guitar if I logged the equivalent number of hours on a real instrument instead of one plugged into my Wii. I wonder how fluent I could be in Spanish, and maybe even another language if I spent 15 minutes of my lunch break studying a language. I wonder how much of this weight I wouldn't have hanging off my gut if I actually got up and ran just one mile every other day. I wonder how close to God I would feel if I spent 15 minutes in the morning reading my Bible instead of hitting snooze...twice.

I once heard a quote, which I might not get exactly right, but it was something like this: "If you read an hour a day for a year, your town will know you. If you read for an hour a day for 3 years, your state will know you. If you read for an hour a day for 5 years, your country will know you."

I wonder what I will be known for. I know what books I'm reading, and I know how often I read them. I guess everyone will know. The compounded effect of information that goes into my brain will either give me a life worth knowing, or I'll have an average existance.

It really is quite odd how powerful little things are.

You've read enough. Here is a video of the article I found. http://www.blip.tv/file/855937

Birthdays

44 days to go until Sara and I are married!!! Wow, what wild and crazy thought to have. Married. It truely is remarkable the thoughts that stick in my head over the years. I can distinctly recall swimming in my grandparent's pool in Los Angeles when I was about 11 years old. I was clinging to the side of the pool in the deep end counting every other year and trying to imagine what I would be like at that time. You see my grandparents would fly me out to their home every other year (my sister went the years I didn't) - so I wanted to figure out what I would be doing with myself so I'd know when to stop going.

13, wow I'll be a teenager. 15, I'll almost be driving. 17, I'll definitely be driving then, but wow that is 6 years away...that's more than half the time I've been alive. I don't think I'll be able to wait that long. 19... I'll be done with high school, I'll probably be in college out here at UCLA, so maybe I wont need the trips anymore then. 19. That's when I'll stop.

However, I didn't stop counting or predicting. 21...WOAH, that just sounds cool. I'll still be in college, but probably not married. I wonder when I should get married. . . 23, no. 25, God that is old. If I relived every single day I've been alive and added it onto every single day I've already lived I wouldn't even be 25!!! Most likely I'll be doing something very important. Dad didn't get married until he was 27, and mom was in her 30's...

27. That's a good age to be married. 29. That's a good age for kids. That's what I'll do, I'll get married at 27 and have kids at 29.

I'm sure I kept doing cannon balls off the diving board, swam until my fingers and toes almost imploded, had some dinner with my grandparents then went off to bed. This is maybe one out of five or six memories I have from this time frame in my life. Some random little day that I planned the course of my life.

The funny thing is that right now I'm 26. Getting married in 44 days, means I would need to have a birthday very soon in order for my spoken mandates about my future to actually become a reality. It's even funnier that when you are young, you can see your birthday coming 5 months away. One of my co-workers celebrated his 27th birthday just yesterday. I'm not sure why but whenever I learn someone's birthday who is close to my age I always will remember if I am older or younger than that person. Maybe it's the excel spreadsheet itemizer part of me, but I just love to know where I fall on the list. It wasn't until yesterday that I realized that my birthday is in 11 days.

I'll be 27 when I get married.

Makes me wonder what will happen when I'm 29...