Just Me

I love having guest writers, because it is so much easier to post their pieces than write my own and they offer perspectives I do not have of life in Utah.

A friend of mine posted a link to this blog on her FB page and someone commented that people are people wherever you go and that Utah is no different than any other place. I agree, people are people and you'll run into those with whom you agree and those with whom you don't.

I disagree that Utah is no different than any other place. I have lived in 5 other states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas, Michigan and New Jersey (though N.J. doesn't really count since I was only 2 when we moved away) and Utah is unique in a variety of ways. Of course the obvious is the beauty of Utah, none of the other states in which I've lived can compare, although sadly, now none of them can compare to the pollution experienced in the winter, too.

Utah is also unique because one religion is extremely dominant. I pulled up The Association of Religion Data and in 2000 it lists 73,571 out of 91,391 persons as being members of the LDS Church. This fact brings with is some unique aspects and I am not going to say they are all good or all bad, just unique.

Each person living in Utah has their own experience and perspective and the latter is formed by many different components, religion being only one of them. I do not think whether or not one is part of the dominant religion alone determines a person's perspective, but I do think it plays a part, as a person's religion affects their perspective everywhere. I can also say that in my experience a person's religious affiliation has not been such a topic of conversation as it has in Utah. Many times, within the first few minutes of meeting someone, it comes up - and yes, sometimes I am the one who brings it up.

If you disagree with this, if you think Utah is just like every other place, please let me know. That is what this blog is suppose to be about (most of the time, sometimes it's just postings of my dogs or weight loss or motherhood) - a format for differing views to be represented that hopefully allows people to see things from another's perspective.

I want to add that I actually love the fact that religion is the big elephant in the room in Utah, because I have been able to have conversations with people here that I don't have in other places, because in other places religion is just not something people talk about so casually. Of course on the flip side is the fact that I feel religious affiliation is too often used as a form of judgment too soon in Utah and in other places it is something that may come up much later in an already established relationship, so bears less weight.