I woke up with a spider on my chest and the air conditioning doesn't work here. With the last heat wave, we're regularly hitting 105 degrees outside so this apartment is starting to feel like we're living in a third world country.
My companion and I started a new incentive system for goal-keeping. Every time we're late to an appointment or fail to keep another goal, we add one tally marks to the board. At the end of the week, for every tally mark the other missionaries in our apartment get to put another ingredient into a "pukie" (puke smoothie) for us to drink. Last week we downed one made of tuna, herbal tea and potato salad. It was pretty nasty.
For P-day last week we made a mega slip-n-slide on a hill in a field of llamas out of a tarp, some shaving cream and baby oil and absolutely wrecked ourselves.
I was listening to some motivational youth speeches by Hank Smith and one thought especially stuck out to me – the best athletes have determined beforehand to push themselves further WHEN it gets hard. They aren't making a decision when their legs are on fire 12 miles into a run whether or not to stop because it hurts, they know what they're running for and that's to train for a marathon. So when it gets hard they run harder because they are not preparing for a 12 mile race, but a 26 mile race.
I was thinking a lot about keeping commitments and setting goals at the time (and also my companion is a track star if you haven't forgotten so running has been a more prominent thing for me for better or worse) so that got me thinking about how important it is for us to keep ourselves accountable for where we are and where we're trying to go.
First off, you kind of gotta know what kind of race you want to run in life – how far do you want to go? What are you doing to condition yourself every day in order to get closer to running that kind of race? If you go a whole day without thinking about how you've gotten any stronger, then you're just running that day to run.
Which maybe that's your thing. It's good to be able to enjoy running on its own. But running without goalsetting robs you of the achievement you could have from a measured increase in effort.
I can put it this way, analogy aside now: Neglecting to set and achieve goals for yourself will ensure that you live a life without direction or purpose.
So where do the goals come from? How do you know what kind of race to run in life?
I remember a deep conversation I had with a friend back in highschool. She seemed put-off by the fact that I derived so much of my identity and purpose from God and church n stuff. She said I could find purpose and meaning in anything, so why choose to find it in such a lame, self-depricating way? Churchy people like me are just cut down and brainwashed to believe we're doomed incompetent potatoes who can't live a good life without following Jesus and all His rules so we better go to church and repent or else we'll live a long, hard life only to die a sinner and a failure.
Shoot well, that's a good point. What if I really am just following a bunch of unnecessary rules on a long road to discovering the same sense of purpose and identity which could be found at the end of an easier, more fun path?
(Shoot bro, that's tough)
Here's just an idea to consider on your own. Nobody knows by their own power what the purpose of life is and anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.
We all experience things in life which shape the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us. No original thought pertaining to the world we live in or ourselves comes without first accepting preexisting ideas gained through your family, the society you live in, the kind of information you consume in all its forms and the perspectives from which you consume it from. Anytime you agree or disagree with something you are choosing to throw away one idea in order to embrace another based on the number of relevant ideas you have and perceive at that moment to be reliable facts inside of your brain. We all meet enough forks like that in the road of intellectual development and eventually come to the present reality where all of humanity is splattered across a spectrum of conflicting opinions, with the majority firmly believing that they are right and if you disagree with them you are wrong.
"YOu cAn finD pUrpose and mEaniNg in ANythiNg." Alright then, what does that really mean to me? Why should I care what Joe, Mike or even I say about my purpose or meaning?
Do they have all the facts? Do you? Does anbody you know actually have the right answers to the most important questions? How do you know? Wouldn't they have to know everything perfectly and I mean everything including yourself from a totally unbiased perspective in order to give a true idea of who you are or what the purpose of your life is?
Bro. If there's one thing I know, we're ALL doomed incompetent potatoes from day one. Any honest seeker of truth will eventually discover that nobody has all the facts, no one is totally right or wrong, and nobody really knows what they're doing.
If you're designing a rocket to get to the moon it doesn't matter how much fuel you think it needs or what you think the geometry of the body needs to look like for it to function properly – there's a lot of math involved, with actual formulas and answers to be found for every technical question posed.
If you want to get good at playing the piano, it doesn't matter what note you think each key should play – there is one note for every key, and you have to learn to play the right keys in order to get the notes you want.
If you're trying to find your purpose and meaning in order to live a successful life, you can, but you're gonna need a lot more than all the opinions of every human who's ever lived. You gotta talk to the manager or whoever's actually in charge here if you wanna find any real answers. Just like with rockets and pianos, there are laws that govern our lives and by following those laws we can start working with God (our engineer, boi) to make our lives what we really want them to be.
So yeah, that's why God and churchy stuff are important. :)
Pray for the Spirit my friend, you can feel it again because you've felt it before – everyone has. Jesus Christ taught that the Spirit, or Holy Ghost, reveals all things to us and invites people to do good. You might have felt the Holy Ghost as a good feeling when you did something nice for someone else for no reason or gave your mom a hug. Pretty much anytime you do something good and realize "woah that felt AMAZING!"
The Holy Ghost has helped me to feel sincere love, patience and joy, even when it was hard to. It made the stressful times easier and the good times good-er. But I'll be the first to assjre you that I am not special, you can totally experience all those things too! Just start talking to God, talk to other people who have talked to God. If you aren't sure he's talking back, keep talking to him.
Remember marathon runners? You won't run the whole 26 miles your first day of training ever, but if you choose to keep running when your legs start to hurt you'll eventually gain enough strength and experience to run the whole race.
Just remember the most important part: God, your Heavenly Father, loves you. He talks to you everyday, it's just a matter of figuring out how to listen.
Con amor,
Elder Johnson
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