Last week I had to decide whether to attend a particular annual celebration. My mother opposed the event and especially the traditions associated with it, and I partially agreed with her reasoning. Several months beforehand, I had decided that I wouldn't participate. But as the event came closer, I began to feel pressure from a close friend to come in order to show that I supported my leaders and that I was happy for my peers' accomplishments.
I stood on a diverging road, and I faced a choice: I could either not go, and offend many of my friends and peers, or I could go, and offend my own convictions and those of my mother.
Suddenly I felt fear.
Fear led to worry.My mind began to spend every unoccupied thought on my dilemma.I weighed the consequences over and over, exaggerating them, examining them, comparing them.Just as I would begin to lean one way, additional factors would pile onto the opposite end of the teeter totter and I would lean the other way.
Worry led to stress.I replayed conversations back on themselves again and again.I wasted mental energy trying to reorganize the issue along more decisive lines so my answer would be clearer.In the meantime, I stopped focusing on my classes and responsibilities.Friends would notice something was wrong but I would be too stressed to talk openly to them.
Tied in knots of indecision, I was sucked into a spiral of negative emotions that affected every aspect of my life.Mentally, I couldn’t focus on my classes and wasted a key day of AP test review.Spiritually, I didn’t have the energy for a seminary activity and had to sit out.Emotionally, I reached the point where I couldn’t be around people and I spent a lunch hour biking up and down hills and swinging at a playground, trying to outrun my stress.Physically, I couldn’t sleep, muscles in my neck and torso cramped up, and I even began to limp.
For thirty hours, I let fear incapacitate me.
In hindsight I see that the test was not the decision.I ended up going to part of the event, and my mom understood why and was fine with things.I appeased my own convictions by skipping the part of the event that bothered me the most and by staying afterward to help clean up.
If I had not come, I would have explained to my leaders why, and they would have understood. My peers may not have even missed me in the crowded setting.
The negative consequences I had so greatly feared were, as things turned out, insignificant.I could have decided either way and everything would have been fine.The true test was how I made the decision.And I failed that test.I choose to focus on negative outcomes and give in to fear, rather than having the faith and optimism that I would make one of two good choices and that everything would work out.
Fear is completely unnecessary.The only reason fear may have value is to discourage us from making wrong decisions.But wisdom and caution serve this purpose equally well, if not better, and bypass all the negative side effects of fear.
Fear is the king of negative emotions.Stress is the fear of not performing well.Worry is the fear of things outside personal control. Dread is fear of the unknown.Outrage is the fear of what someone’s actions might have caused.Suspicion is the fear of what someone might do.Fear is the root cause of more negative emotions than anything except possibly pride—but even pride is partially fear: fear that someone else might be better, fear that life is meaningless unless one cements his own value and worth.
If I can guarantee you one thing as you journey through mortality, it is that every situation you ever find yourself in will be better without fear.So how do we conquer fear?
Christ says, “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.”
And again, “Perfect love casts out all fear.”
These verses tell us that the opposites of fear are faith and love.
Faith is the assurance that certain principles will stay true, no matter what.It also brings the assurance that if we make reasonably correct choices, everything will work out eventually.If I approached my decision with faith, I would have rested assured that no matter how I decided, if I decided for the right reasons and did my best to alleviate possible negative consequences, than everything would work out.And that’s exactly what happened.
Love is a deep and abiding concern and respect for every member of the human race, especially family, friends, and associates.If I had approached my decision with love, I would have forgotten any negative effects I might have suffered personally, and focused instead on making the decision that would be best for the most people involved and then taking steps to make sure others didn’t suffer.And that’s exactly what I ended up doing.
So the next time you experience stress, or worry, or suspicion, or any other form of fear, pause.Set aside, temporarily, whatever issue is causing your fear.Choose to cast all fear out of you and replace it with faith and love.Then approach the issue with all the energy, insight, and strength that fear would rob from you if it could.
The next time you fear, remember this: Christ has conquered all permanent negative consequences.You have no need to fear.
Franklin Roosevelt said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”Christ said it better: “Fear not.”
For Further Reading: “Therefore They Hushed Their Fears” by Elder David A. Bednar, April 2015.https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/04/therefore-they-hushed-their-fears?lang=eng
What is it? We all know what love is well enough to describe it, but poorly enough to entertain dozens of attempted definitions. Our culture--indeed, human-kind--obsesses over love. Just go to a reading session for modern teenage poetry and 80% of the poems will either be about love or death (which is a whole other topic that we understand and yet don't understand, and thus obsess about). What about all the other emotions humans undergo? What about hunger, or pain, or confusion, or boredom? These aren't under dispute, apparently--only love and death.
Hundreds of songs, and thousands of poems, have somewhere in them said, "love is____" and then followed up with a simile, a metaphor, a lie, an excuse. But rarely a definition.
One of the difficulties in defining love is it has so many meanings. The Greeks (and C.S. Lewis, but he got the idea from the Greeks) had four separate words that are all translated into English as "love". So let's examine them and see if we can narrow our focus . . .
"Storge" was the Greek word for love as in "I love cake," or "I love my dog Fluffy." It means affection due to familiarity and can thus be best understood as "like." I think this emotion is well-enough understood we can pass it by.
"Philia" was used to describe friendship. Here we strike more fertile ground. Friendship, brotherhood, camaraderie--our culture gives some lyric and screen time to exploring this healthy, vibrant emotion. Look at Boromir's last words to Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings for example. But once again I sense no great confusion over the implications of this meaning of love. It is simple, organic, vibrant, giving way to courage and trust and connection.
"Agape," means charity, and after Paul the Apostle was through, I have sensed no need for further exploration. "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth." That about sums it up.
And that leaves "Eros," the romantic love, the love we find so difficult to define, the love we spend hours writing poetry about. What is it? We don't know, for certain. A boy reaches the age of twelve or so and suddenly he gets shaky knees whenever she walks by. A girl age sixteen cares so much about him that she plans for hours how to drop subtle clues to make him ask her on a date. A man age twenty-one will write a girl for eighteen months, waiting patiently for her without ever seeing her once in that time period.
What is this powerful emotion? Why do certain members of the opposite gender illicit this feeling in us when the majority do not? Can we control it? Should we control it? Why does it affect our behavior so drastically? Is it the greatest of human emotions? Or is it like a powerful drug, deluding our sense of reason and objectivity?
I'll let the poets answer these questions. Or maybe I'll tackle them in a later post. But right now I'm going to bed so that I can develop good sleep habits so that I can be more successful and productive and thus be a better husband one day for the girl I have probably not met yet but that I know I will love more than the whole world, because if the love I have had for certain individuals is only a foretaste, a prelude of the overwhelming joy to come, then O! How joyful will be that eventually wedding day!
I remember. I remember the broken light of morning. I remember snow falling, and wanting so bad to build a snowfort that I rushed through homework in an hour when it usually took me all day. I remember throwing snowballs. And getting hit. And laughing. I remember the prison, the fortress, the lookout post, the inner wall, the outer wall--might snowforts. We would tip the kiddy pool upside down for a roof. I remember how sad I would be to see them melt, year after year.
I remember pomp. He would clap his hands and we would run--faster and faster. Always run by the fence. One long dash to freedom and if he goes after you, you have the aspens to dodge behind. But he rarely goes after you. If he's Tyler he goes after CJ, if he's CJ he goes after Tyler. And then they get each other and you and her are in trouble because there's no way you can both get past them.
I remember our sandbox. We had great ambitions to dig to the center of the Earth. Only we only got a foot before we hit clay, and then the going would get tough, and he would go and get a real shovel to dig deeper, and then Mom would chide us for mixing clay into the sand. And then after it rained the hole would be gone.
I remember pirates and merchants on the swing-set. If you are a pirate you start at the blue swing thingy on the west side, and you'd have to climb or swing or jump or crawl to the yellow swing on the east. Because that's where the merchants always are, and they always have Granny's Apple Cider or Black Cherry Soda. I remember those were synonymous with treasure--Black Cherry Soda and Granny's Apple Cider. I don't remember ever pausing to think of how they tasted, or if I had ever tasted them. They were legends, myths. Worth fighting for. Worth falling from the swing-set's crossbeam and spraining an ankle on the sand. Which I don't remember doing.
I remember hide and seek. The only game outside we played as a whole family. Mom hid in the peach tree and it took us forever to find her because we never thought to look up. Every time after that we remembered to look in the peach tree. People stopped hiding there.
I remember so many places to hide. Not just for hide and seek. For tag, or King of Death, or Adventure, or for pouting after a basketball game. Under the deck. In my window well. Inside a bush on the corner where you could remain unseen for hours if people didn't know to look there. Crouched behind the branches of a weeping willow. In the recycle bin. In the corn. One of the best spots was behind a row of rocks, by the street. No one thought to look there, it was so obvious.
I remember the rose bushes. Their thorns tantalized me. In my sheltered innocent world they presented the most danger, except perhaps spiders and bees. So many thorns, all lined up along the sidewalk just waiting to snag you. He pushed her in once. On accident, officially. I still remember all the cuts she got.
I remember swinging, swinging, swinging, till you could see nothing but sky on the upswing and nothing but sand on the downswing. We would edge off our shoes, slowly, carefully, and then fling them as far as we could. And then hop in our stocking feet to retrieve them. I never won.
I remember baseball. We pitched from the north for years until we realized by pitching from the west we didn't hit so many balls over the fence. The fence was easy to climb but the neighbors had dogs. I was terrified of dogs. Once we pitched from the west we could hit it over the house, which was a guaranteed home run. So was the window-well.
I remember football with my brother. He danced circles around me and every game ended in my tears. I cried a lot, back before I realized that you save tears for the important things.
I remember the garden. Off limits. Without exceptions. When the corn was ripe Dad would pick it and toss it to us, blindly, through the corn like a game of 500. We would fan out like a patch of receivers, trying with our might to avoid dropping any. Then we would husk them all. I hated husking corn. It didn't help that I refused to eat the finished product.
I remember barbeques. The smoke and flames dancing in the grill. It would take an hour to make all the food and dish up all the food and carry all our plates outside. Then we'd eat and in ten minutes it would be over. And bees always investigated the baked beans.
I remember the spruce trees. They caught anything. Footballs, frisbees, baseballs. You throw a broom or a bat up and they'd catch that too. Then he would get the ladder and you'd hold it as he climbed.
I remember the rabbits. They ate everything--flowers, carrots, grass. We'd spot them from the house and then it would be rabbit chasing time. He blocks the south side with a gate as you and I come from the north with laundry baskets. And the rabbit would slip through the fence and Mom would block up the hole and we'd wait for another day. We caught six that way, and two with a trap. The laundry baskets worked better than traps. I remember a rabbit screaming when the vet down the street picked it up.
I remember basketball in the hot sun on a summer afternoon. You and I would do all we could to beat him and we never could. He'd let us get ahead and then his competitive side would kick in and next thing we knew, he had scored six points. Have I ever beaten him? I don't think so.
I remember the Death Star Run. We'd fire up the scooters and go racing down the sidewalk with tennis balls clutched in our hands. And the cones would come up way to fast and then it was time to turn around and if you get it wrong you slammed the scooter into your shin.
I remember chalk. We drew roads and stores and gas stations and drive around in our scooters. Tyler was always the road hog.
I remember the dirt piles. One would arrive one day, unannounced, and we'd have a huge pile of dirt to haul before we could use the van. So we'd grab the wheelbarrow and the shovels and you would all work as I tried to dig a tunnel through. We built sixteen beds over sixteen years with those dirt piles. And Dad would come home and be completely surprised. Mom never told him when she ordered dirt.
I remember deadheading. My scissors going snip, snip, as I wreaked destruction on the flowers that dared wither into ugliness. I would get blisters if I did it for too long, or wore the wrong gloves.
I remember the planes flying overhead. If you didn't know better they sounded like dragons.
I remember short-lived attempts at freeze-tag and dodgeball and soccer.
I remember the Battles of Hoth. Tennis balls and frisbees and kickballs would be flying everywhere, and the stately trod of you and CJ on your knees as Tyler and I ran around you, pelting you with anything we could throw. The ATAT's always won. I remember growing up. And suddenly all of that was gone. And all that was left was remembering.
More than a month ago, I set out to write a story. Changed, I called it, for it was about a man's journey to correct his fallen nature and find true happiness. I was excited to write the story; it had potential, it had meaning; it had truth. I sat down one morning and wrote out the first page, the opening scene to what I hoped would quickly pan out into a wonderful story.
And, of course, that's when you showed up. As I read back through what I had written, you whispered, "That's a terrible way to begin this story. You fail to develop any of the attributes of the main character, your world development is nonexistent, you begin with a story completely non-essential to the story, your readers are going to lose interest, your first line is written to be a memorable attention-grabber, not an introduction to the book, and your too caught up in the action to write about the picture. This page of writing is junk."
And you were right. Completely right. To be fair, you could have been even harsher and still have been in bounds. So I have no reason to complain on that count. It's just that when you criticize me, I have a tendency to lose my excitement, my steam. So I haven't written in that story since then.
Am I blaming you? Partially. Yes, you killed my starting motivation. But I also had a lot going on last month, which didn't help matters, and I hadn't taken the time to develop enough scaffolding under the story to erect it very high. Most importantly, perhaps, you stopped me short in a course of action that would have led, quickly and unfortunately, into yet another poorly-written story.
So why did I tell this story? Well, today I started work on Changed for a second time, and I am fixed in my mind with a determined resolution to work on it every day until it is done.
So normally at this point, I would say, "That means you have to go, Editor Max!" The 1812 overture would strike up in earnest as I leap from my chair and charge for the fat red Inner Editor Containment Button located at the other side of the room. You would charge to intercept me, crying out in pain at the betrayal, and in a climactic leap I would slam my fist into the button and you would disappear, sucked into the Inner Editor Extra-Dimensional Containment Chamber moments before your graphite-stained hands would close around my throat.
. . . Normally, anyway.
I see you're getting edgy. Don't worry. I have a different plan this time. Instead of containing you, suppressing you, and letting you out only when the last word of a terrible first draft is completed, I am inviting you to pull up a chair and labor beside me over ever line, every sentence, every word as they flow forth onto the page, so that my first draft is as pristine as your brilliant efforts can make it.
So sharpen your pencils and prime your red pens, I'll need them more than ever, Editor Max.
Sincerely,
Quillen Inkwell
This letter was dictated under my hand on the 16th of January, 2015. -Inspire Chief of Pencils under the Office of Quillen Inkwell's Writing