Hey! Remember that one time when I wrote some blog posts? Yeah, me neither. I guess it hasn't been that long since I wrote a post (2 weeks?), but it seems like forever. I wish I had the time and energy and drive to write every night. I'm not really worried about having material to write about; there's always something brewing in my head. But school and work and homework and trying to have a social life tends to leave a person with little time for writing blog posts, especially when they're as long and rambly (let's just pretend that's a real word) as mine are. Anyway, let's cut to the chase.
So tonight we watched "Hitch." It's a great movie. One of those rare one's that kind of a romantic comedy that pretty much anyone can enjoy, even those that don't care for romantic movies(if it has any kind of romantic themes to it and I've seen it, especially more than once, you know it is good). Anyway, Will Smith has a line in there that my roommate, Miah (<tangent>I literally typed companion instead of roommate and had to correct myself. Strange how I've been home for almost 4 years and I still sometimes catch myself saying things like this</tangent>) and I both caught on to and were pondering. He says "begin each day as if it were on purpose." Miah asked "What does that mean?" The movie went on and it kind of slipped out of memory, but it was still in the back of my mind. Once the movie was over, I brought it up again, because I had a similar thought to him.
What does it mean to begin each day as if it were on purpose? As I pondered it, I was reminded of a talk that Elder Bednar gave in October 2008 entitled "Pray Always." He speaks of praying always and how we can make our prayers more meaningful. He notes how the Lord speaks in Moses 3:4-5 of creating all things spiritually before they are created physically.
As we begin our morning with prayer, it is beneficial to ponder areas in which we struggled the day before or, just in general, things that we know we can improve upon. We must recognize our need for improvement and that we have potential to do better than we are doing. As we humble ourselves, express remorse for not doing better, determine to pattern our lives more fully after the Savior and plead with the Lord for strength to do better, we set a spiritual pattern for our day. As we go throughout our day, we reflect upon the things that we have determined to improve upon and look for times where we would normally struggle with that weakness. As we focus upon those things, we find that we gain strength to more easily overcome that weakness. As we do so, we should offer a silent prayer of gratitude to our Heavenly Father.
When we reach the end of our day and we kneel to close our day in prayer, we have another opportunity to reflect upon the things that we asked our Heavenly Father to help us with as we set out that day. We can recognize His hand in helping us to improve as well as consider ways in which we might still be able to improve. We can pray again for strength to do better in that area or other areas that we have identified where we have room to improve. In this way, we have more fully fulfilled the command to "pray always": in the morning, at night, and during all the events of our day, as we recognized opportunities to answer our earlier desire to improve and expressed gratitude when heavenly assistance was given us to fulfill those desires. In doing so, our prayers (morning, night and all those in between) and all the events of our day are not a bunch of solitary, unconnected moments, but are intertwined ("as if they were on purpose") threads that are bound together from day to day, week to week, month to month and year to year, into an increasingly stronger cord that leads us to become like our Heavenly Father and return back to him.
Life is not just happenstance. If we do not begin each day as if it were on purpose, we will "find that [we're] left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays " (qtd. from "The Music Man"; also President Monson has quoted that on many occasions, which is where I was reminded of it). But as we begin and end our days in prayer, counseling with the Lord on how we can improve and let that be the focus of our day, we will recognize the slow but steady improvement that is the mark of a disciple of Christ and is the key to perfection. After all, we know that Christ received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness" (D&C 93:13).
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
New Calling
Sometimes, the Lord has a way of letting you know that you're not done with a calling.
At the beginning of the summer, I moved to Canyonlands (as most of you are probably aware), but I was living on the other side of the complex (also known as the dark side, or the empire) and thus I was in a different ward. While I was in that ward, I was called to be the second counselor in the Elder's Quorum. I felt like there were plenty of people that were more qualified than I was to serve in that position, but I suppose that's usually how it goes with a calling like that. Either way, I was willing (albeit nervous and feeling very inadequate) to accept that calling. It was a great calling. I loved both of the men that I served with in that presidency and have a great respect for the kind of men that they are.
However, as the summer drew to an end, I knew that I would be switching apartments and I would no longer be in that ward. My roommates were all moving out and I had convinced a bunch of friends to move in with me (they still regret that decision to this day). However, they (and I) had friends on the other side of Canyonlands (the light side, also known as the rebellion). So I figured since I was getting all new roommates anyway, I might as well join the rebelli...I mean, move to the other side of Canyonlands so my roommates and I could be in the same ward as our friends. Obviously, this meant I had to be released from my calling. There was much rejoicing. Okay, not really. But I would be lying if I said that I wasn't somewhat relieved to be free from the responsibilities of that calling. I thought I had gotten off the hook. I had served in an Elder's Quorum presidency (check that one of my list) and I felt like I learned some good things from that and grew from the experiences I had. It was time for a new ward and a new calling.
And that's what I got. I was called to be an FHE group co-chair leader/father-type person (that was the official name of the calling. Unofficially, we were "ma"s and "pa"s or moms and dads, but they didn't like us to call ourselves that. It's clearly not a long enough title). Anyway, I was pretty relieved with that. It sounded like a pretty easy calling. I mean, all we had to do is come up with activities twice a month, and technically one of those was a gimme because it was a dinner at one of the bishopric member's house, so all we had to do was figure out what we wanted to eat. That just left once a month that we had to come up with an activity for our group. Easy, right? Well, it would be except for one small fact. I am literally the least creative person in the entire world (possibly the universe, but that hasn't been verified yet. I'll get back to you when we discover intelligent life on other planets, but I'm willing to bet money that I've got them beat as well). So try as I might, I couldn't seem to come up with a single decent idea for FHE. Fortunately my co-chair, Madison, was able to come up with some ideas. However, for whatever reason, most of the ideas she came up with, I ended up shooting down, which immediately made me feel like the biggest jerk in the world (I probably hold that title as well, and if not I'm sure I'll do something soon that will win me that award). Anyway, thanks to her (and Cody, who pitched in some great ideas as well and helped out a lot with planning and executing some of our FHE activities), we were able to make it through the semester with some pretty decent FHE activities.
Anyway, that brings us to this semester. In my tithing settlement with Bishop Chamberlain, he asked me what callings I have had. He mentioned that they were looking to redo a lot of the callings in the ward and wanted to see who had done which callings. He had asked me the same thing at the beginning of last semester. At the time, he told me that they liked to give people callings that they hadn't served in before, to give them different opportunities and experiences. Which was the case. I had never been an FHE co-chair whatever person before(I don't even remember the title that I made up a few minutes ago and I'm too lazy to go look for it now). So I was interested to see what kind of calling they might have in store for me this semester. Obviously nothing with the Elder's Quorum, right? I had already done that one before. I even had the check mark to prove it (assuming I hadn't lost my list somewhere. I rarely lose things but this was one of those imaginary mental checklists, which means that it located somewhere deep within my brain. I lose stuff there all the time).
Well, apparently checklists don't matter much to God (at least not imaginary ones). Because a couple weeks later (this past Sunday) I was called in to meet with a member of the stake presidency. I tried to trick myself into thinking it was for some other reason than a calling, or at least for some other calling than the Elder's Quorum. But I knew I wasn't that lucky. Fortunately I wasn't called as the president. I don't think an Elder's Quorum could survive having me for a president. I wasn't even the first counselor. I was called to be the second counselor. I feel like it was God's way of saying "Yeah, nice try, moving out of your ward like that. You really think I wouldn't notice? You really think I'd let you get away that easily. Think again." So, tonight I got set apart as the second counselor in the Elder's Quorum.
Side Note: I feel like my back stories are getting longer and longer each time. In fact, there's getting to be more back story than there is actual contemplating. Maybe next time I'll at least try to fit something interesting in as a back story like how I learned airbending from Aang or a really epic Pokemon battle I had against a gym leader or that one time I stole the TARDIS from The Doctor. Anywho...we now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post (this blog post brought to you by the letter "w").
Finally, we get to the reason why I mention all this. As I was getting set apart tonight, I felt like there really were some things that I still needed to learn that I didn't get the opportunity to in the short time I served in the presidency in my old ward. I don't know what they are, but I guess I'll find out. The other thing that was impressed upon my mind was that I need this calling right now. At first that seemed weird to me because I know it's going to be a fairly demanding calling, and that seems like the last thing I need right now. This will without a doubt be the hardest semester of my college career. Last semester sometimes pushed me to my limits and I already know this semester will be harder than that. So why did I feel that I needed this calling right now? Because I need to not be focused on me. And I need a calling that gives me no other option than to serve others. As much as I'd like to be the kind of person that is always serving and finding ways to help and uplift others, I'm really not. I'm a very selfish person. And the Lord, knowing all this, gave me a calling where I will be forced to spend a lot of time serving others. I am convinced that that is the only way I will get through this semester. Because if I'm focused on myself, I'm just going to keep complaining about how hard my life is. And that never helps anything. So, yeah. I'm looking forward to the challenges and opportunities this (not so) new calling will bring. I'm also still nervous as all get out and feeling completely inadequate. But honestly, I'm starting to like that feeling. Because it means good things are on the horizon and I'll have plenty of opportunities to grow.
At the beginning of the summer, I moved to Canyonlands (as most of you are probably aware), but I was living on the other side of the complex (also known as the dark side, or the empire) and thus I was in a different ward. While I was in that ward, I was called to be the second counselor in the Elder's Quorum. I felt like there were plenty of people that were more qualified than I was to serve in that position, but I suppose that's usually how it goes with a calling like that. Either way, I was willing (albeit nervous and feeling very inadequate) to accept that calling. It was a great calling. I loved both of the men that I served with in that presidency and have a great respect for the kind of men that they are.
However, as the summer drew to an end, I knew that I would be switching apartments and I would no longer be in that ward. My roommates were all moving out and I had convinced a bunch of friends to move in with me (they still regret that decision to this day). However, they (and I) had friends on the other side of Canyonlands (the light side, also known as the rebellion). So I figured since I was getting all new roommates anyway, I might as well join the rebelli...I mean, move to the other side of Canyonlands so my roommates and I could be in the same ward as our friends. Obviously, this meant I had to be released from my calling. There was much rejoicing. Okay, not really. But I would be lying if I said that I wasn't somewhat relieved to be free from the responsibilities of that calling. I thought I had gotten off the hook. I had served in an Elder's Quorum presidency (check that one of my list) and I felt like I learned some good things from that and grew from the experiences I had. It was time for a new ward and a new calling.
And that's what I got. I was called to be an FHE group co-chair leader/father-type person (that was the official name of the calling. Unofficially, we were "ma"s and "pa"s or moms and dads, but they didn't like us to call ourselves that. It's clearly not a long enough title). Anyway, I was pretty relieved with that. It sounded like a pretty easy calling. I mean, all we had to do is come up with activities twice a month, and technically one of those was a gimme because it was a dinner at one of the bishopric member's house, so all we had to do was figure out what we wanted to eat. That just left once a month that we had to come up with an activity for our group. Easy, right? Well, it would be except for one small fact. I am literally the least creative person in the entire world (possibly the universe, but that hasn't been verified yet. I'll get back to you when we discover intelligent life on other planets, but I'm willing to bet money that I've got them beat as well). So try as I might, I couldn't seem to come up with a single decent idea for FHE. Fortunately my co-chair, Madison, was able to come up with some ideas. However, for whatever reason, most of the ideas she came up with, I ended up shooting down, which immediately made me feel like the biggest jerk in the world (I probably hold that title as well, and if not I'm sure I'll do something soon that will win me that award). Anyway, thanks to her (and Cody, who pitched in some great ideas as well and helped out a lot with planning and executing some of our FHE activities), we were able to make it through the semester with some pretty decent FHE activities.
Anyway, that brings us to this semester. In my tithing settlement with Bishop Chamberlain, he asked me what callings I have had. He mentioned that they were looking to redo a lot of the callings in the ward and wanted to see who had done which callings. He had asked me the same thing at the beginning of last semester. At the time, he told me that they liked to give people callings that they hadn't served in before, to give them different opportunities and experiences. Which was the case. I had never been an FHE co-chair whatever person before(I don't even remember the title that I made up a few minutes ago and I'm too lazy to go look for it now). So I was interested to see what kind of calling they might have in store for me this semester. Obviously nothing with the Elder's Quorum, right? I had already done that one before. I even had the check mark to prove it (assuming I hadn't lost my list somewhere. I rarely lose things but this was one of those imaginary mental checklists, which means that it located somewhere deep within my brain. I lose stuff there all the time).
Well, apparently checklists don't matter much to God (at least not imaginary ones). Because a couple weeks later (this past Sunday) I was called in to meet with a member of the stake presidency. I tried to trick myself into thinking it was for some other reason than a calling, or at least for some other calling than the Elder's Quorum. But I knew I wasn't that lucky. Fortunately I wasn't called as the president. I don't think an Elder's Quorum could survive having me for a president. I wasn't even the first counselor. I was called to be the second counselor. I feel like it was God's way of saying "Yeah, nice try, moving out of your ward like that. You really think I wouldn't notice? You really think I'd let you get away that easily. Think again." So, tonight I got set apart as the second counselor in the Elder's Quorum.
Side Note: I feel like my back stories are getting longer and longer each time. In fact, there's getting to be more back story than there is actual contemplating. Maybe next time I'll at least try to fit something interesting in as a back story like how I learned airbending from Aang or a really epic Pokemon battle I had against a gym leader or that one time I stole the TARDIS from The Doctor. Anywho...we now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post (this blog post brought to you by the letter "w").
Finally, we get to the reason why I mention all this. As I was getting set apart tonight, I felt like there really were some things that I still needed to learn that I didn't get the opportunity to in the short time I served in the presidency in my old ward. I don't know what they are, but I guess I'll find out. The other thing that was impressed upon my mind was that I need this calling right now. At first that seemed weird to me because I know it's going to be a fairly demanding calling, and that seems like the last thing I need right now. This will without a doubt be the hardest semester of my college career. Last semester sometimes pushed me to my limits and I already know this semester will be harder than that. So why did I feel that I needed this calling right now? Because I need to not be focused on me. And I need a calling that gives me no other option than to serve others. As much as I'd like to be the kind of person that is always serving and finding ways to help and uplift others, I'm really not. I'm a very selfish person. And the Lord, knowing all this, gave me a calling where I will be forced to spend a lot of time serving others. I am convinced that that is the only way I will get through this semester. Because if I'm focused on myself, I'm just going to keep complaining about how hard my life is. And that never helps anything. So, yeah. I'm looking forward to the challenges and opportunities this (not so) new calling will bring. I'm also still nervous as all get out and feeling completely inadequate. But honestly, I'm starting to like that feeling. Because it means good things are on the horizon and I'll have plenty of opportunities to grow.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Prolonging the Inevitable
Disclaimer: On this and future posts, I feel like it would be easier to use names of people to add clarity to who I am talking about. I just felt like with the number of people that are and will be referenced in the future, it makes more sense to use names rather than referencing "my roommate" and "my other roommate" and "my friend that I mentioned that one time that did that one thing." If you would prefer that I not use your name, let me know and I will be more than happy to remove it. I don't want people to feel like I'm sharing information about them that they don't want the Internet (all 3 of you out there that read this) to know about them because their name is associated with something that I share. Now, on with the blog.
If you couldn't tell from my last post, I'm kind of a wordy person and I feel the need to provide as much detail and back story as possible to make sure that the context of a particular idea or situation is absolutely clear. And so, I begin tonight's post with a recounting of today.
Today was a great day. In fact, it was practically the perfect last day of Christmas Break. I slept in (probably too much, but it was still nice) and lounged around for a while. After I finally got ready for the day, I just chilled in the apartment for a bit and hung out with my roommates. Miah invited his friend Kathleen over to hang out. I had met her before, but it was good to get better acquainted. They played guitar for a while, then we ended up playing some card games. She left for work and so I went back to chilling in the apartment. I watched an episode of Merlin. Then we decided to go get pizza at the place where Kathleen worked. We got the pizza, said "Hi" to her and came back to the apartment to eat. After that, Luke went with me to go get gas since my car was running pretty low and I knew this was a better time than any I would have in the next week to fill up. After that, we decided that we wanted to go see what was going on around Canyonlands (our apartment complex) and see who had gotten home from the break. So we stopped by to see Cody for a bit, James joined us, and then we wandered over to D9 to see if anyone was home. Stacie had just gotten back, so we hung out with her for a little bit until Miah called me and let me know that Kathleen was coming back over to hang out some more and she was bringing friends. So Luke, Miah, Kathleen, two of her friends and I watched a movie and then played some more card games. Then they left and my roommates and I hung out for a little bit more and talked and then went to bed.
All in all, it was a great day. Nothing exciting, but just relaxing and hanging out with roommates and friends. I couldn't have asked for anything more. So that brings me to my topic of contemplation for tonight. Despite today being such a perfect day, I find myself malcontent, not wanting to go to bed. By all means, I should be satisfied and ready to rest. I mean, I had a great day, I have a meeting at 8:30 I have to get to and tomorrow is Sunday which means I have church to look forward to and the rest of the day I will mostly be relaxing.
That got me thinking back to last semester and all the times I did this same thing to myself. I would get to the end of a long day of work, school, homework, etc and it would be time to go to bed. But despite the fact that I had to get up early the next morning and even though I was tired, I prolonged sleep for the sheer fact that I didn't want to have to wake up to a new day and do it all over again. So likewise I find myself sitting here at 2 am, trying to prolong the inevitable. Is it just that I don't want today to end because it was so good? Do I not want to move on to tomorrow because I feel like it will inevitably lead to Monday and the start of another hectic semester of school? Do I think that not going to sleep will do any good? Tomorrow will come regardless. Not going to bed just means I'll be that much more tired tomorrow. It means I have that much more time to sit here and dread the upcoming Day of Reckoning (AKA first day of the semester) rather than sleeping and being at peace until I am suddenly faced with the horror of it all. I know that I will have countless more nights like those of last semester, where I won't want to sleep because I refuse to face a new day of drudgery. So somehow I have to find a way to be okay with that. I have to know that I will make it through those long days and short nights (sometimes too short because of my stubbornness in trying to fight against time). I have to know that intermingled with those days will be other days and times that will be worth everything else I go through. Most importantly, I have to know that all of those experiences are what will shape and mold me for longer and harder times to come. That when I am faced with the next inevitable task, I can face it head on instead of dragging my feet the whole way. Because the more I try to avoid it and fight against it, the harder it will be, the longer it will seem to last and the less I will gain from it in the end.
So with that, it's time to stop prolonging the inevitable. As always, thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully this has been of some help to you as it has been to me. Good night, friends.
If you couldn't tell from my last post, I'm kind of a wordy person and I feel the need to provide as much detail and back story as possible to make sure that the context of a particular idea or situation is absolutely clear. And so, I begin tonight's post with a recounting of today.
Today was a great day. In fact, it was practically the perfect last day of Christmas Break. I slept in (probably too much, but it was still nice) and lounged around for a while. After I finally got ready for the day, I just chilled in the apartment for a bit and hung out with my roommates. Miah invited his friend Kathleen over to hang out. I had met her before, but it was good to get better acquainted. They played guitar for a while, then we ended up playing some card games. She left for work and so I went back to chilling in the apartment. I watched an episode of Merlin. Then we decided to go get pizza at the place where Kathleen worked. We got the pizza, said "Hi" to her and came back to the apartment to eat. After that, Luke went with me to go get gas since my car was running pretty low and I knew this was a better time than any I would have in the next week to fill up. After that, we decided that we wanted to go see what was going on around Canyonlands (our apartment complex) and see who had gotten home from the break. So we stopped by to see Cody for a bit, James joined us, and then we wandered over to D9 to see if anyone was home. Stacie had just gotten back, so we hung out with her for a little bit until Miah called me and let me know that Kathleen was coming back over to hang out some more and she was bringing friends. So Luke, Miah, Kathleen, two of her friends and I watched a movie and then played some more card games. Then they left and my roommates and I hung out for a little bit more and talked and then went to bed.
All in all, it was a great day. Nothing exciting, but just relaxing and hanging out with roommates and friends. I couldn't have asked for anything more. So that brings me to my topic of contemplation for tonight. Despite today being such a perfect day, I find myself malcontent, not wanting to go to bed. By all means, I should be satisfied and ready to rest. I mean, I had a great day, I have a meeting at 8:30 I have to get to and tomorrow is Sunday which means I have church to look forward to and the rest of the day I will mostly be relaxing.
That got me thinking back to last semester and all the times I did this same thing to myself. I would get to the end of a long day of work, school, homework, etc and it would be time to go to bed. But despite the fact that I had to get up early the next morning and even though I was tired, I prolonged sleep for the sheer fact that I didn't want to have to wake up to a new day and do it all over again. So likewise I find myself sitting here at 2 am, trying to prolong the inevitable. Is it just that I don't want today to end because it was so good? Do I not want to move on to tomorrow because I feel like it will inevitably lead to Monday and the start of another hectic semester of school? Do I think that not going to sleep will do any good? Tomorrow will come regardless. Not going to bed just means I'll be that much more tired tomorrow. It means I have that much more time to sit here and dread the upcoming Day of Reckoning (AKA first day of the semester) rather than sleeping and being at peace until I am suddenly faced with the horror of it all. I know that I will have countless more nights like those of last semester, where I won't want to sleep because I refuse to face a new day of drudgery. So somehow I have to find a way to be okay with that. I have to know that I will make it through those long days and short nights (sometimes too short because of my stubbornness in trying to fight against time). I have to know that intermingled with those days will be other days and times that will be worth everything else I go through. Most importantly, I have to know that all of those experiences are what will shape and mold me for longer and harder times to come. That when I am faced with the next inevitable task, I can face it head on instead of dragging my feet the whole way. Because the more I try to avoid it and fight against it, the harder it will be, the longer it will seem to last and the less I will gain from it in the end.
So with that, it's time to stop prolonging the inevitable. As always, thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully this has been of some help to you as it has been to me. Good night, friends.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Potential
Tonight's post is something that I think we all consider at some point in our lives and something that I have considered in part before, but never to the extent that I considered it today. If you don't care about back story and just want to get to the philosophical stuff, you can skip to paragraph 4.
Let me start out by saying that I love my roommates. We have crazy, random debates/arguments all the time(always in jest; we never actually fight with each other). Usually these are pretty pointless and nonsensical. They revolve around things such as whether one of us could be simultaneously Spider-Man and Batman, who would win in a fight between Spider-Man and Flash or whether or not Spider-Man's web parachute would really work as it appears to (considering the fact that it is little more than a mesh net made of webbing but seems to have the air resistance of a fully fledged parachute). In other words, we're nerds. These debates often require a high level of suspension of disbelief (for those of you unfamiliar with this term, read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief. We throw out whatever amount of reality we feel is not required to validate our argument, and this tends to vary greatly for each one of us. For this reason, we rarely come to a conclusion as to who is "right" or "wrong" or who "won." But they are fun nevertheless and it usually ends up with either all of us laughing hysterically at how ridiculous we are or else one or more of us being somewhat frustrated with the others' inability to see the flaws in their argument and the merit in our own (this rarely lasts for more than 5 minutes). All in all, it's a good time.
Once in a while, though, we have actual discussions about meaningful topics that spur actual thought and give way for further contemplation and revelation. Such an instance occurred for me today. I was chatting with one of my roommates on Facebook and we were poking fun at each other. We were talking about a friend of ours that goes to BYU and how we wish he could/would attend Dixie so that we would see him more often. We joked about the fact that he was probably way smarter than us and I may have somewhat jokingly called my roommate dumb (what can I say? I'm kind of a jerk). He rebutted by asking me (if I considered myself so smart) why I wasn't "living up to my full potential" (by attending BYU). This led to me trying to weasel a response out of him about whether or not he felt like attending a more prestigious university was a requirement in helping one reach their full potential. I think he felt like he'd hit a nerve with me and he didn't want to spark a debate, so he avoided the question. I bore no ill will by his jab at me, but I was curious to know his thoughts about the matter. It is something I have considered a few times and it got me thinking more in depth about it.
And so these two longer-than-necessary(and probably not even entirely necessary at all) back stories lead me to the topic of my pondering today. How do we know if we are "living up to our full potential?" What is the ideal circumstance for this? Obviously certain situations or circumstances are going to help us more than others. BYU is undoubtedly a more prestigious and meritorious university than Dixie is. Does that mean that it is undeniably a better environment for growth? Although I always planned to attend BYU, personal experiences and revelation led me to attend Dixie instead. Does that mean that I wouldn't have grown as well at BYU as I have at Dixie? Would it have been too much for me to handle? Or could I have gone either way and grown equally as much but maybe in different areas? These are things that I have thought about often in the past 3 1/2 years. They are very difficult to answer because it requires a lot of unknowns and what-if scenarios. Ultimately, I don't regret my decision to go to Dixie in the least. I have loved the people I have met and the experiences that I've had and have seen a lot of personal growth over the past few years that I never could have anticipated.
(I'm still processing this part, so it may not come out the right way, but hopefully it makes some sense). This begs the question "How do we discover the perfect circumstance for our own growth at this time in our lives?" Life is constantly changing, and although something may be right for us now, it may not still be so 6 months from now. At what point can we decide that we've learned what we needed to and seek to move on to the next phase of life? We certainly don't want to stay in the same circumstance too long, when there is opportunity for growth elsewhere. But we also don't want to be so focused on the next opportunity that we let this one be wasted. We have to learn to take things as they come.
The other unfortunate thing that we do is not pacing ourselves in working towards developing that potential. Sometimes we hit a point where we are overly motivated (yes, I feel that this is possible) to do good and work to be the best we can. We get into a mode where we notice everything (or at least a lot of things) that we can and want to improve about ourselves and we try to do them all at once. This works for about a week and a half. Then we hit the wall, where we can't maintain all these new good things that we're not used to doing and we make the mistake of slowly but surely giving up on most or all of them. This leads us to the other extreme of not doing anything to improve and just keeping the status quo (or worse, letting ourselves drop even some of the things that we were already doing well at).
There is a fine balance of continuing on in what we are doing and adding that one or two things to the list that will help us to be a little better. This can be frustrating and disappointing as well. We feel like there is more that we could and should be doing, but we don't want to overextend ourselves, as we have likely done in the past. We also often find ourselves not keeping up with everything even when we are only focusing on one or two things. This can be discouraging to think that we can't even handle a little bit. But it is the consistently working at the one or two things, even though we will struggle, that will help us to improve. The hardest thing about reaching our potential is that it is such a slow process, marked with frequent stumbling and coming up short. It is hard to notice improvement right away, especially when the improvement we make can be so easily lost of we allow ourselves to become lackadaisical shortly thereafter.
So when it comes down to it, there are a few things to remember about potential:
Anyway, this has been way longer than I intended it to be, but I guess that's the way it goes. If you actually bothered to read all of this, give yourself a pat on the back or some other such form of self reward. Heck, if I were reading a blog, I probably would have given up long before now. I certainly know I'm not going to proofread this for clarity. I barely even bothered to skim it for spelling errors. As I stated in my initial post, this is just a place for me to express my thoughts, so I doubt if it's even coherent. It made sense to me (at least I think it does upon my writing it at 2 am. It might be interesting to read this at a decent hour of the day and see if it still bears any semblance of coherency, but I digress). If you care to add anything to the discussion, you are welcome to post a comment. Or you can complain about how it made no sense or it was too dry and I need to get a sense of humor. Whatever tickles your fancy. After all, if you bothered to read this far, you certainly deserve to say whatever to dang well please about this massive wall of text. Peace out.
Let me start out by saying that I love my roommates. We have crazy, random debates/arguments all the time(always in jest; we never actually fight with each other). Usually these are pretty pointless and nonsensical. They revolve around things such as whether one of us could be simultaneously Spider-Man and Batman, who would win in a fight between Spider-Man and Flash or whether or not Spider-Man's web parachute would really work as it appears to (considering the fact that it is little more than a mesh net made of webbing but seems to have the air resistance of a fully fledged parachute). In other words, we're nerds. These debates often require a high level of suspension of disbelief (for those of you unfamiliar with this term, read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief. We throw out whatever amount of reality we feel is not required to validate our argument, and this tends to vary greatly for each one of us. For this reason, we rarely come to a conclusion as to who is "right" or "wrong" or who "won." But they are fun nevertheless and it usually ends up with either all of us laughing hysterically at how ridiculous we are or else one or more of us being somewhat frustrated with the others' inability to see the flaws in their argument and the merit in our own (this rarely lasts for more than 5 minutes). All in all, it's a good time.
Once in a while, though, we have actual discussions about meaningful topics that spur actual thought and give way for further contemplation and revelation. Such an instance occurred for me today. I was chatting with one of my roommates on Facebook and we were poking fun at each other. We were talking about a friend of ours that goes to BYU and how we wish he could/would attend Dixie so that we would see him more often. We joked about the fact that he was probably way smarter than us and I may have somewhat jokingly called my roommate dumb (what can I say? I'm kind of a jerk). He rebutted by asking me (if I considered myself so smart) why I wasn't "living up to my full potential" (by attending BYU). This led to me trying to weasel a response out of him about whether or not he felt like attending a more prestigious university was a requirement in helping one reach their full potential. I think he felt like he'd hit a nerve with me and he didn't want to spark a debate, so he avoided the question. I bore no ill will by his jab at me, but I was curious to know his thoughts about the matter. It is something I have considered a few times and it got me thinking more in depth about it.
And so these two longer-than-necessary(and probably not even entirely necessary at all) back stories lead me to the topic of my pondering today. How do we know if we are "living up to our full potential?" What is the ideal circumstance for this? Obviously certain situations or circumstances are going to help us more than others. BYU is undoubtedly a more prestigious and meritorious university than Dixie is. Does that mean that it is undeniably a better environment for growth? Although I always planned to attend BYU, personal experiences and revelation led me to attend Dixie instead. Does that mean that I wouldn't have grown as well at BYU as I have at Dixie? Would it have been too much for me to handle? Or could I have gone either way and grown equally as much but maybe in different areas? These are things that I have thought about often in the past 3 1/2 years. They are very difficult to answer because it requires a lot of unknowns and what-if scenarios. Ultimately, I don't regret my decision to go to Dixie in the least. I have loved the people I have met and the experiences that I've had and have seen a lot of personal growth over the past few years that I never could have anticipated.
(I'm still processing this part, so it may not come out the right way, but hopefully it makes some sense). This begs the question "How do we discover the perfect circumstance for our own growth at this time in our lives?" Life is constantly changing, and although something may be right for us now, it may not still be so 6 months from now. At what point can we decide that we've learned what we needed to and seek to move on to the next phase of life? We certainly don't want to stay in the same circumstance too long, when there is opportunity for growth elsewhere. But we also don't want to be so focused on the next opportunity that we let this one be wasted. We have to learn to take things as they come.
The other unfortunate thing that we do is not pacing ourselves in working towards developing that potential. Sometimes we hit a point where we are overly motivated (yes, I feel that this is possible) to do good and work to be the best we can. We get into a mode where we notice everything (or at least a lot of things) that we can and want to improve about ourselves and we try to do them all at once. This works for about a week and a half. Then we hit the wall, where we can't maintain all these new good things that we're not used to doing and we make the mistake of slowly but surely giving up on most or all of them. This leads us to the other extreme of not doing anything to improve and just keeping the status quo (or worse, letting ourselves drop even some of the things that we were already doing well at).
There is a fine balance of continuing on in what we are doing and adding that one or two things to the list that will help us to be a little better. This can be frustrating and disappointing as well. We feel like there is more that we could and should be doing, but we don't want to overextend ourselves, as we have likely done in the past. We also often find ourselves not keeping up with everything even when we are only focusing on one or two things. This can be discouraging to think that we can't even handle a little bit. But it is the consistently working at the one or two things, even though we will struggle, that will help us to improve. The hardest thing about reaching our potential is that it is such a slow process, marked with frequent stumbling and coming up short. It is hard to notice improvement right away, especially when the improvement we make can be so easily lost of we allow ourselves to become lackadaisical shortly thereafter.
So when it comes down to it, there are a few things to remember about potential:
- There is no single situation or circumstance that will provide the best environment for reaching your potential. What may work for someone else will not work for you and what may have worked for you 6 months ago may not be the best for you now. Learn to be open to changes in circumstance and look for the unique opportunities for growth in each opportunity and stage of your life.
- Do not let yourself be too complacent or too ambitious. Find the happy medium where you can work towards steady improvement without being overwhelmed. This will probably be slower than you may want, but it is better than doing too much and burning out.
- Learn to handle failure without accepting defeat. Reaching your potential will never come without failing and making mistakes, but working through those and moving forward are a large part of what will help you reach that potential. The sooner you can learn to work through failure, the more you will see yourself fulfilling that potential.
Anyway, this has been way longer than I intended it to be, but I guess that's the way it goes. If you actually bothered to read all of this, give yourself a pat on the back or some other such form of self reward. Heck, if I were reading a blog, I probably would have given up long before now. I certainly know I'm not going to proofread this for clarity. I barely even bothered to skim it for spelling errors. As I stated in my initial post, this is just a place for me to express my thoughts, so I doubt if it's even coherent. It made sense to me (at least I think it does upon my writing it at 2 am. It might be interesting to read this at a decent hour of the day and see if it still bears any semblance of coherency, but I digress). If you care to add anything to the discussion, you are welcome to post a comment. Or you can complain about how it made no sense or it was too dry and I need to get a sense of humor. Whatever tickles your fancy. After all, if you bothered to read this far, you certainly deserve to say whatever to dang well please about this massive wall of text. Peace out.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Opening the Floodgates (Deliberate Randomosity Defined)
Well, here goes nothing. I've never seen much merit in writing a blog. At least not in me writing a blog. See, I always looked at bloggers as the kind of people that have something to share. This generally falls into 2 categories:
I am definitely neither of those. However, I read an interesting blog post the other day, in which the author noted that his reason for blogging was to give life to his own words for his own benefit. It didn't matter if others bothered to read them or whether or not they liked or agreed with what he said. It was a way for him to further explore his own thoughts and give an outlet for his mind to store all it's excess thoughts. And as I've thought about this, I realize that this is also a very valid reason for blogging. This is the reason I intend to blog.
You see, I often find myself deep in thought, my brain full to bursting. This happens most often when I am studying the scriptures (or some other philosophical work of similar complexity) and I encounter a concept I haven't considered before or see a concept or idea in a new way. My brain kicks into high gear and it's all I can do to write down everything that comes to mind, for the sheer sake of keeping my brain from exploding all over the place. Most often I write these in a journal that I keep for such thoughts. I rarely look back at this journal, but some of the thoughts remain with me and those are the ones that I usually feel are worth remembering. Anyway, I guess what I'm getting at is that this blog exists for the sole purpose of me emptying my brain of whatever it may be too full of at the time and it will come in whatever fashion it comes. For those of you who bother to read this (I'll be surprised if there is more than 1 of you), you're free to take from it what you will. But if you expect there to be some semblance of order or structure, I'm afraid you will be sorely disappointed. If I so choose to take the time to organize my thoughts for particular posts, I will, but that's not really the point of this blog. So, yeah. Enter at your own risk.
Moving on. Just for the sake of the curious reader, I'll take a minute to define what I mean by deliberate randomosity (seeing as how it is the title of this blog). Randomosity, while strictly not a word, is the non-word (maybe I'll speak more about those some other time) that I've chosen to represent the adjective form of something that is random. Due to the nature of the word random, you would assume that it would have a random-sounding adjective form, right? Well, I did. And when I found out that it's adjective form was just randomness (could you be any less original) I rejected that reality and decided that I would determine my own. The result of much contemplation over that train of thought resulted in randomosity. The process of coming up with that word is what I have deemed the title of my blog: Deliberate Randomosity. It appears to be random, and in some senses it may be (it is not unlike a random number generator in any programming language. It seems to be picking random numbers, but it's just a computer's best attempt to appear random based on a predetermined seed for a modulus...and I'm already breaking out the nerd terms. Hopefully someone can understand and appreciate that comparison). But most often it was very deliberate and calculated. One might even call it premeditated. And that kind of describes my thought process most of the time. While I enjoy the occasional instance of true randomosity, most the time I opt for things that may seem random, but have been contemplated and calculated. I have carefully measured them in my mind before allowing them to be presented to the world. Therefore, even though they may seem random, a lot of forethought has gone into them. Sometimes, even more than the seemingly average and mundane.
So there you have it. My first blog post. Like it or not, it's here. Feel free to comment, if you so desire. There's no guaranteeing what will end up on here or how often I'll post. It just depends on how often I feel the desire to dump my thoughts into this blog and what happens to come out. But hopefully in the process something worthwhile will come of it, either for me or for you.
- Those who generally have interesting things happen to them on a regular basis that are worth sharing for the enjoyment or edification of others.
- Those who have a unique perspective on life, who can share their thoughts and ideas with others.
I am definitely neither of those. However, I read an interesting blog post the other day, in which the author noted that his reason for blogging was to give life to his own words for his own benefit. It didn't matter if others bothered to read them or whether or not they liked or agreed with what he said. It was a way for him to further explore his own thoughts and give an outlet for his mind to store all it's excess thoughts. And as I've thought about this, I realize that this is also a very valid reason for blogging. This is the reason I intend to blog.
You see, I often find myself deep in thought, my brain full to bursting. This happens most often when I am studying the scriptures (or some other philosophical work of similar complexity) and I encounter a concept I haven't considered before or see a concept or idea in a new way. My brain kicks into high gear and it's all I can do to write down everything that comes to mind, for the sheer sake of keeping my brain from exploding all over the place. Most often I write these in a journal that I keep for such thoughts. I rarely look back at this journal, but some of the thoughts remain with me and those are the ones that I usually feel are worth remembering. Anyway, I guess what I'm getting at is that this blog exists for the sole purpose of me emptying my brain of whatever it may be too full of at the time and it will come in whatever fashion it comes. For those of you who bother to read this (I'll be surprised if there is more than 1 of you), you're free to take from it what you will. But if you expect there to be some semblance of order or structure, I'm afraid you will be sorely disappointed. If I so choose to take the time to organize my thoughts for particular posts, I will, but that's not really the point of this blog. So, yeah. Enter at your own risk.
Moving on. Just for the sake of the curious reader, I'll take a minute to define what I mean by deliberate randomosity (seeing as how it is the title of this blog). Randomosity, while strictly not a word, is the non-word (maybe I'll speak more about those some other time) that I've chosen to represent the adjective form of something that is random. Due to the nature of the word random, you would assume that it would have a random-sounding adjective form, right? Well, I did. And when I found out that it's adjective form was just randomness (could you be any less original) I rejected that reality and decided that I would determine my own. The result of much contemplation over that train of thought resulted in randomosity. The process of coming up with that word is what I have deemed the title of my blog: Deliberate Randomosity. It appears to be random, and in some senses it may be (it is not unlike a random number generator in any programming language. It seems to be picking random numbers, but it's just a computer's best attempt to appear random based on a predetermined seed for a modulus...and I'm already breaking out the nerd terms. Hopefully someone can understand and appreciate that comparison). But most often it was very deliberate and calculated. One might even call it premeditated. And that kind of describes my thought process most of the time. While I enjoy the occasional instance of true randomosity, most the time I opt for things that may seem random, but have been contemplated and calculated. I have carefully measured them in my mind before allowing them to be presented to the world. Therefore, even though they may seem random, a lot of forethought has gone into them. Sometimes, even more than the seemingly average and mundane.
So there you have it. My first blog post. Like it or not, it's here. Feel free to comment, if you so desire. There's no guaranteeing what will end up on here or how often I'll post. It just depends on how often I feel the desire to dump my thoughts into this blog and what happens to come out. But hopefully in the process something worthwhile will come of it, either for me or for you.
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