Smile baby :)

I had a couple enlightening discussions on Sunday with various peoples about the influence our personalities have on those around us and vis versa. It was mentioned that there is often a visual difference in someone's appearance when they're happy. My mind caught this idea and extrapolated on it.

Through personal experience, I've come to believe that when people are happy you are seeing who they really are. That is always there, but it can be hard to see when we get bogged down under weights of stress and confusion. Sometimes people say that someone has a naturally sad, depressed, anrgy, etc. disposition but I don't think I can believe that. We're told that the purpose of our creation is to have joy and doesn't it sound stupid to say that beings of light could be "naturally" less than happy?

I'm rambling, I know, but bear with me. I think "inner beauty" is society's word for what I'm talking about. The idea that you have two sides, your outer self and your inner self. In a lot of situations it can feel like that, for sure, but I don't think you can really have a duel personality.

When someone smiles you see their truest, most honest self. You can see their potential, all the good that they posses and you see that the "bad" qualities aren't permanent things. If being happy is our real "natural" state then it stands to reason, for me, that anything that covers that is something that can be worked through and overcome. We spend a lot of time talking about how the Lord looks on the heart and I think that when we are able to see those around us when they are truly happy we are able to share in that perspective.

So smile more, and make other people smile, the world will honestly look a little brighter :)

In other news, is anyone else excited for this weekend? I am so incredibly pumped! And I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever said anything like that about General Conference but hey, I've never been able to attend a session in person before! I have also been extended the awesome opportunity to spend the weekend with Tim's family!!! Judging by my profuse use of exclamation points thus far I'd say that I'm looking forward to it. Maybe. lol. It'll be nice to have a break from Provo for a bit, but more than that I'm just happy to spend time with his family who are all almost as incredible as he is. His parents are two of the cutest and most knowledgeable people I've ever met and I'm blessed that they let me keep coming back. They've been so many places and after 9 kids, they've seen almost all of it, much more than I can imagine seeing anyway. I already owe that wisdom more than I could ever thank them for, the man I love being the biggest, but not the only gift I've received from them.

The end of the semester has been sneaking up on me for a while but now that it's almost April [Friday!] it's just being obnoxious about it. With the end come the tests and looming project deadlines but this time of year also brings class registration like a Christmas present, except it's generally not, lol. Registration involves hurriedly checking out those classes that you want to take in Fall because you haven't thought about it all semester and then desperately trying to find upper-class-men who have earlier registration dates so they can save you a seat in those only-4-section-25-seats-each classes that you need to get into and then ultimately staying up until midnight of your day only to have the system instantly roll over and play dead, something that it will probably repeat at least three times over the course of the night making you ever more irritated and tempted to go buy that sledge-hammer you've been contemplating in order to destroy the strobing kitchen light to smash your laptop instead. Honestly, if the general student body knew where the main computer servers for campus were I'd bet that during class registration those would be destroyed in a very vengeful fashion :P