Everyone has a story. Believe me.

Quonelia Epa. It's a Samoan name, the name of the young woman who walked near me last week. Monday, to be exact. She began talking to me, which is something I do, talk to people I don't know, and so I liked her right away. We were headed to the same class, as it turned out, "Women and the Gospel of Luke." It's a big campus, so we had a few minutes to talk, and when we got to the Hinckley building, Nelia wanted us to sit together. I was glad.

She was at BYU that week for the same reason I was, Education Week. We were two of the 23,000 who came for five days to learn. She was scouting out the place, too, finding out that she really does want to go to school there, and because she is a bright young woman and was nearly finished with the application process, I thought it very likely she would soon be a BYU student.

But the story is not so simple.

She is 26, lives in Hawaii, has Rheumatoid Arthritis, and, even if she is accepted to BYU, must go home to Hawaii and work to save money so she can pay for school. Clearly, she is patient and determined. If she gets in and is a conscientious student, which, in my brief acquaintance with her, I became convinced she would be, she will graduate and be the first in a large Samoan family to do so.

I did not see Nelia after the two classes we had together last Monday. I will likely never see her again. But I love her, though we are strangers, and my hopes are that she will be well and able to do all--and I mean all--she wants to do.

Isn't it peculiar that such things can happen? A few minutes with someone can show you that you share much. Nearly fifty years difference in our ages, different skin color, hair color, cultural heritage. And we will never meet again. But no matter. We are friends.

What To Do About It? Part 2

But we do want to be known. It's part of being human. And yet we hold back. We want to be private about some parts of ourselves, too. Is that not right? Or is it only a matter of trust, of finding the person you can trust with your soul?

I said it was a contradiction. We often contradict ourselves, we human beings.

But wait. Do I have to take it all back? Because of Facebook, and MySpace and Instagram and Google+ and whatever else, which facilitate the revealing of those very personal stories, of secrets. And millions of us feel quite comfortable these days telling everything to the internet, to the air, to strangers--yes, I know, they're all our "friends." And, I suppose, Facebook and other social network facilities have caused us to believe our stories are of interest to strangers, to everyone. More's the pity. Because they're not really.

Facebook aside, and interest aside, have you never found yourself telling your story to someone on a plane? That stranger who seems to be listening, seems to want to know what you will say next. And you show your soul to this person you do not know. Or perhaps you have been on the other end. You have listened as a stranger poured something you thought terribly personal into your ears?

Perhaps we simply want to hear it or see it told. The story that means the world to us.

Obviously, I have not settled anything here, and obviously, I contradict myself from beginning  to end. Besides, there is much more to be considered. For instance, I haven't even brought up the subject of how fragmented and disjointed our lives are, which must have bearing on something.

I have figured out one thing. It's about me. This is about me. I cannot speak for anyone else.  And, speaking for me, I have no intention of laying open my soul, writing my story, on Facebook. Or even, I suppose, in my own journal. 

Yet there is something in me that wants to tell it, write it, before I die. To someone.

What To Do About It? Part 1

Shall we (not in the sense of "Let's do," but rather in the sense of "Is this what will happen?") go to our graves with our sweetest thoughts, our deepest feelings, our hopes and aspirations left unspoken, unwritten, unknown by anyone outside ourselves? I believe my husband did. I believe I will.

Yes, I have blogs, and I post to them. But much of what I write there is superficial. I have kept a journal sporadically through the years and have filled little note pads with whatever came to  mind. Even so it is not "an hundredth part." And sometimes not even the real part.

And who on this earth will, not shall, ever read it? No, an hundredth part or not, I do not see all that I have written being read. That is why we write, isn't it? And, trust me, no one is listening.

Besides, and here is a contradiction, I have never said or written what is in the deepest part of myself. Never written those secret thoughts or confessed those secret deeds. I write what is on my mind, or what comes into my mind. With limits. Perhaps it is self-censorship or simply good judgment. Whichever, it's a fact that there are self-imposed limits.

I believe we want to be known--not by everyone--by those few people we love and trust. I do not know if I speak here for others or for myself alone when I say we want to be known, but that has long been my belief. Oh, how could I forget? I know people who will tell everything to anyone and leave nothing out. I am not one of those.