The Burning Questions of Life...

I receive e mails from my sister in law at least once a day. I love it. She makes me feel loved and like I have some wealth of knowledge or experience from which to impart. I was her age approximately 16 years ago. Well, that's got to qualify me for some kind of experience, right?
So the other day, dear Sades, who is way beyond her years in maturity wrote:

What am I good at?
What is my passion?
What is my hobby?
When i die, what will people know me for? can ya help a girl out?

I don't think she is depressed, she has simply hit her mid-life crisis 30 years early. But really, are these not the questions that we all ask from time to time?
So darling girl, here is my answer:
1. What we are good at changes form day to day. Some days we are not good at anything but getting clothes on and brushing our teeth and some days we do everything right, there is good rhythm and we accomplish a lot. We can be good at lots of different things. We used to tease my sister Amy growing up that she was "good with people". That would be the greatest thing to be good at, in my opinion. I would feel happy to be good with people, to make the people around me comfortable and happy. To end their day better than it started. That means my family and the lady I pass at the grocery store.
2. Our passions change from day to day as well. Sometimes I feel passionate about education and teaching other people things that would help them...sometimes I feel passionate about women looking beautiful and feeling really good about themselves. Sometimes I feel passionate simply about my kids having a healthy meal and sometimes I am more passionate that they just have a really fun, loving day with ice cream for lunch and popcorn for dinner. Do you see that sometimes our passions are contradictory? Some of our passions last forever and some last only a few hours. We are human and spirit. We are supposed to grow and develop and stretch...and sometimes that means what we loved yesterday is different than what we love today. And that is OK.
3. What is your hobby? You know what? This changes too. I remember all of the phases that I went through as a child. Did you know that I was a really good roller skater? At 7, my sister and I were choreographing longs songs of spins and little leaps. I could have gone professional but my hobby changed...and then I liked lip-syncing and pretending to be one of the Monkees with a tennis racket as my guitar. At one time I loved drawing, and once I did a lot of scrapbooking. You know, years later I still love to roller skate and draw and scrapbook. I don't always have the resource or time or drive to do any one thing. But I have my whole life to do whatever I want that makes me happy. Hobbies help us feel passion (refer to #2). Hobbies help us relax and feel happy. They help us feel talented or express ourselves. They can change or they can stay the same. Some of our hobbies we keep practicing and get really good at. And some we just let fade out when we are done with it. Just remember that your hobby is still good even if you never turn professional.
4. If we simply try to do what is right we will be remembered as a loving person. And you know what? If you are not perfect, as long as you were nice and tried hard, people will only say good things about you anyway. I try not to worry about what people will say at my funeral. I just hope that there is good food afterwards, that means lots of ham and potato casserole and maybe some rolls made with love by women of the Relief Society.
And Sades, I can read your blog or hang out with you and you would answer all of those questions about yourself. You might not know this, but you already had it all figured out all along, and you are only 12 (almost 13).
But thanks for reminding me to answer those questions about myself from time to time.
All the love little sis,
Em