Candy Crush Life Lessons

I play it. You play it. Your friends play it. Admit it. I don’t hear it cursed quite as often as I used to, but if my Facebook notifications are any indication, the game is alive and well! It’s an entertaining little time waster, but the time you spend playing doesn't have to be completely wasted. Whether you have a love/hate relationship with Candy Crush or approach the game with mild indifference, there are lessons to be learned here, people. Valuable life lessons – like these:

Decisions Depend on the Goal

Mulling over a move is foolish when you’re on a timed board, and there’s no point wasting a move on creating a vertically striped candy on a middle row when all the jelly is on the edges. Different goals require different choices. So whether your goal is to spend more time with family or to save enough for a down payment on a house, Candy Crush teaches you to keep your goal in mind and act accordingly. And the corollary: If someone else’s decisions don’t make sense to you, consider that they might be playing a different board and have a totally different goal.

Try New Things

Remember when you first tried matching two striped candies? Or a striped candy and a wrapped one? Whoa! Cool things happen when you try new things.

Don’t Ignore an Imminent Problem

When a candy bomb still has a high-ish count, it’s tempting to ignore it in favor of more lucrative moves. But believe you me, that bomb will count down, and you’ll suddenly find you only have three, then two, then one move to make it go away. It will explode, and you’ll regret not paying attention to it sooner. In life, don’t ignore those threats you can see coming. Don’t put off the challenging task, the difficult conversation, the decision you don’t want to make. It will come up to bite you faster than you think.

Sometimes There’s Nothing You Can Do

Even when you start with a good board, make good decisions for your goal, work to take care of the threats – even then, you’ll sometimes lose. Sometimes there really is nothing you can do. Be kind to yourself, in the game and in life. Sometimes your best efforts don’t pan out. Sometimes you've done everything right, and you still don’t reach your goal. It just happens. And it’s OK.

Ask Friends for Help

Enough said.

Rejoice in the Unexpected

I’m sure it’s happened to you, too – that candy bomb is down to one, and there’s nothing you can do to remove it. So, resigned to yet another failed board, you make one last move, only to see the perfect candy drop right into place and the bomb is gone. Or that pesky chocolate has expanded into an upper corner, blocking some of the new candy, and you know there’s little chance of getting rid of it – when out of nowhere a move results in a striped candy explosion you didn't see coming. Boom, chocolate gone! It doesn't always work out that way, but it does often enough – and it always brightens my day. In life, look for the random text from a friend, the unexpected blessing, the tiny moment of joy – and let it lift your spirits. 

Take a Break

You only get a set number of lives in each Candy Crush session. You get a few chances to play, then you have to have to wait for those lives to build up again. You have to stop. So stop – in whatever you’re doing. Take a break. Turn off the screen, lay the project aside, put down the weight of the world and call a friend, take a walk, bake cookies, have a nap, or just chill. Do it. Because I say so. And so does Candy Crush. You can pick up where you left off after a break.

On that note, I’m off to lunch with a good friend. The Saturday chores will have to wait til I get back!

If I Weren't Mormon, I'd Probably Be Catholic

I have more than one friend who has said, “If I weren’t Mormon, I’d probably be Catholic.” They have their reasons, and now I have one, too: Pope Francis. The more I hear about him and from him, the more I just like him. I think I’m starting to understand how my dear Muslim friend (and former roommate) felt about President Hinckley.

Last week an interview Pope Francis gave was making the social media rounds. At least, excerpts were. The highlights are interesting, but read the full thing if you can. It's long, but it’s worth the time. The sensational headlines talked about how he said the church should stop focusing so much on things like abortion and birth control and homosexuality. Headline-worthy for sure. Except that’s not quite what he said. This is what he said on the subject:

The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. . . .The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. . . . The proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. . . . The message of the Gospel, therefore, is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ.

He’s not saying these traditions are unimportant, only that they are secondary. They come after.  He calls them relevant, but they are not the core, not the heart of the message of Christ. Reducing the Catholic faith to these “imperatives” is much like someone saying, “Yeah, I know what Mormonism is all about. They don’t smoke or drink, right?” Yes, that’s true, but there’s oh so much more to my faith than that. The Word of Wisdom is a valid and useful commandment – but it can not even compare to my testimony of Christ, the atonement, the good news of the gospel. “The saving love of God” is the message that must come first.

I learned a few other things in reading the full interview. First, and least importantly, I learned I’m not very well versed in Cathlolic-ness. This interview was intended to be published in a Jesuit journal; he is very much speaking to insiders – and I am not one.  And that’s ok.  The ideas are mostly familiar and generally understandable, even if the exact references are not. I would expect Pope Francis himself to be equally at a loss if I were to reference Talmage or J. Golden Kimball; or mention Elder Bednar’s tender mercies; or allude to the allegory of the olive tree in Jacob or the way Alma talks about faith.

Second, he uses the phrase “blessed Imelda” – which the translation clarifies to mean “a goody goody.” And I thought, “Hey! The Catholics have an idiom like Molly Mormon!” Love it!

But the most important thing I gleaned from reading his words (well, his words translated into English) is how very much we have in common. In fact, at church on Sunday I was struck by the fact that so many of his words would have been a perfect contribution to our Relief Society discussion on missionary work or to our Sunday school lesson about rescue.  Gems like these:

This church . . . is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people. 

The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful. 

I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. 

The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better. 

Yes, in this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. . . . You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble. 

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. . . . Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.

See? And that’s less than half of the really good stuff from the interview. He also speaks about needing community and the importance of meaningful consultation and discussion. He touches on the holiness of the everyday – of raising children, of supporting a family, of ministering. He talks of looking for God in the world of today, rather than longing for less “barbaric” times, and of letting God come to you. He speaks of love and sin and repentance and grace and memory and covenants and rescue and understanding and faith. In fact, much of what I hear him say closely echoes my own belief, my own faith, and the words I hear from my own ecclesiastical leaders.

I love realizing just how much he and I have in common. It just proves to me that our faiths are, indeed, theological cousins – or better still, theological siblings! After all, we are all children of the same God. And I'm glad to call Pope Francis my brother.

Pope Francis

Wise Words From My Father

In honor of Father's Day -- a brief story about a time my dad taught me a valuable life lesson.

The exact circumstances are lost to time. I could make up something believable, but honestly, the details don’t matter. Only this: I was somewhere in my 20s, driving through Provo, and my dad was in the passenger seat. Even our destination isn't important, though I suspect it had something to do with that time we totaled the blue Oldsmobile. A story for another time.

Anyway, this is what I remember. I was driving. Somewhere. In Provo. And I missed a turn. I must have been talking, and suddenly I realized I needed to have turned a block earlier.  Pulling into the right lane to turn (on the wrong street, mind you, and mentally rerouting to wherever it was we were going), I sighed and said, "Oh, this is not where I wanted to be!" Without missing a beat, my dad chuckled and replied, "But it's where you are."

That was it. The exchange took no more than 10 seconds, and I don't know whether my dad meant to be profound or glib in that moment. It works either way. But when I think of this story—and I do often—it is because of the life lesson he taught me in those 10 seconds.  Sometimes you're not where you wanted to be. It happens. But that is where you are, and nothing can change that. All you can do is move forward from that spot, rerouting toward your intended destination. And if you can do it with a little chuckle, all the better.

Thanks, Dad! Love you, and Happy Father's Day! 

As You Come Over the Hill

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
—T.S. Eliot

Warning: This is not a happy post. Well, it's happy for me because it's about a new poem I discovered. But the poem itself is not quite… Well, here. Read it for yourself.

As You Come Over the Hill

You’ll see cows grazing in a field
And perhaps a chicken or a turtle
Crossing the road in their sweet time,
And a small lake where a boy once
Threw a girl in who couldn’t swim,

And many large maple and oak trees
Offering ample shade to lie in,
Their branches to hang yourself from,
Should you so desire,
Some lazy afternoon or evening

When something tells the birds to hush,
And the one streetlight in the village
To keep a few moths company
And the large old house put up for sale
With some of its windows broken. 

—Charles Simic

Did you feel that? That shift from tranquil country road to lonely, old, abandoned farmhouse? Wow. I heard this poem read aloud on the radio during an interview with the author the other day, and I want to try to recreate that experience of hearing it for the first time. It went something like this:

It starts off well enough. A nice country scene. We're coming over a hill. Ok. Cows. A chicken. A turtle. A lake. Very nice. A girl who can't swim thrown in a lake? Well that was an odd detail. I wonder what happened to her, being thrown in like that? And why did he throw her? Maybe she quickly learned to dog paddle, or maybe she was rescued (and ended up marrying that boy who so obviously had a crush on her). Or maybe she …. But wait, we're moving on. Maple trees and oaks. Lovely shade. Such a nice, relaxing, peaceful scene to come upon as I come over the hill. Wait—branches to hang yourself from? Whoa, Charles. That seems abrupt. Oh, but were back to peaceful. Good. Hushed birds. Ahh. One streetlight. Well that seems a little lonely. Moths? (Really, moths?) Empty old house? Broken windows? Wait. How in the world did we get here? This is not at all the scene we started with. 

And yet it is. It is still a scene of all the things you'll see "As You Come Over the Hill." Simic finds two very different emotions elicited by the same scene.The shift from the peaceful cows, chicken, turtle, lake, etc. to the empty, lonely, broken house at the end is shocking. And subtle. Even more shocking because it is subtle. Yet, on a second look, it shouldn't be. The shift really starts half way through—at the middle line of the middle stanza. And even the last line of the first stanza hints that possibly all is not well. Still, at the end I am completely amazed and surprised that I didn't end up at all where I thought he was going to take me. And that, in a nutshell, is why I loved this poem as soon as I heard it.

Footnote:  I already like Charles Simic. During a poetry workshop class at USU in 2005, I wrote a review of his book The World Doesn't End, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990. His poems in that volume are surreal, darkly  humorous and deceptively simple. "As You Come Over the Hill" reminds me of one line from a poem in that book: "Dear Friedrich, the world’s still false, cruel and beautiful."

Growing Season

     To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. 
     —Ecclesiastes 3:1

I had a few extra minutes in downtown Salt Lake City last Saturday evening, so I decided to swing though temple square. I was really hoping to see some lovely spring flowers. I’m not sure why I expected there might be flowers at the beginning of March, but after a dreary and cold winter, it seemed like it’d been long enough. Surely there were flowers by now.

There weren’t.

Instead, the flower beds were simple mounds of dirt, with just a few patches of ground-cover greenery. And snow. That’s right, some of the flowerbeds still had patches of snow on them. I was rather disappointed. But then I saw this:

See it? Those two orange-ish somethings, front and slightly right of center? There in this mound of almost barren dirt, still somewhat covered by snow, there is a tiny sprout of something. I don’t know what it will be, but clearly something is coming, something is growing, something is happening beneath the surface.

I think we all go through growing seasons. Times when it looks like nothing is happening. Days that seem like our patch of ground is never-endingly covered in dirty snow. It’s hard to remember, especially if we just look at the surface, that a lot is going on underneath. Seeds planted months ago (and even longer), seeds that have been have nourished and protected and watched over, are sprouting and growing, and small yet sturdy tendrils are making their way toward the surface. In time, they will bloom. But not yet. 

Now is the time to trust the Gardner.

Trapped. In a Car Wash.

     The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
     --George Bernard Shaw 

Yesterday I was trapped in a car wash. Not a sentence I ever thought I'd say. But there it is. The wash cycle was finished, the entrance door behind me was closed, and so was the exit door in front of me. I was trapped.

It started innocently enough. I needed a car wash. In fact, after driving through all the snow and muck and salt around here in the last few weeks, I almost couldn't see out my side windows. It was time. Unfortunately, the gas station car wash I usually use was not working. Frozen, they said. So I ended up at a stand-alone car wash place I'd never been to before.

The actual car wash went smoothly enough. Drive Forward. Pre-wash Soak. Double Rinse. Then the doors opened, the dryer started and I inched forward. It took a few seconds before the windshield was clear enough that I could see how much time was left on the dry cycle – and it was much more than I expected. I had time, I reasoned, to let the dryer do a better job on my hood, so I backed up a little bit.

And the exit doors closed.

Since I was trapped, I took a few seconds to look around and assess my plight. Now that I was back behind the dryer apparatus, and my car wasn't covered with water and soap, I could see that there was, in fact, a sign: Do Not Back Up During Dry Cycle. Malfunction Will Occur. The sign was big enough, but it was low to the ground, and when I made the decision to back up, it was very much behind me. Not so much useful at that point.

On the wall, taped to a utility panel of some kind, was a hand-written note with an emergency phone number. This would seem to qualify, so I called the number and ended up leaving a message on an automated, nondescript voicemail. Uncertain there was really anyone even on the other end of that line, I started calling nearby friends who might help rescue me.

In the middle of my first help-me conversation, the car wash attendant returned my call. There's a button, he said, on the wall. Get out of your car, push it, and the door will open. The button was on the same utility panel that housed the hand-written emergency number. There was even a(nother) hand-written sign above the button that said Push to Open.

It's worth noting that I had seen that Push to Open sign on the panel and thought, "That's of no help; I don't need to open that utility panel…" I assumed it was directed to technicians or employees of the car wash. Now that I knew the inadequately labeled button should have said Push to Open Doors, I walked over and pushed it. The doors opened, and I drove home – laughing at the absurdity of it all as the final rinse water still on my bumper began to freeze.

I'm pretty sure the attendant man thought I was an idiot. There were signs, after all. Do Not Back Up. Push to Open. But they were poorly placed and poorly worded. Would it have killed anyone to place that warning beyond the dryer, maybe near the timer, visible at the point where people actually make the decision to back up? Or could someone have added the word Doors to the hand-written Push to Open note? It probably wouldn't have been that difficult, but I'm guessing no one thought of it. 

And this, my friends, is exactly why we need technical writers and folks who study usability.