My own wake

While trying to make the most moral decision, selfish farsightedness led to probably the biggest mistake I've ever made with a relationship. I lost what was more than a chance. Now in the emotional scramble of a second attempt, nearly hopeless for what could have been, a spiritual insight has made all my moral efforts free of regret: The victory is not in winning love, but in loving. I loved, and will continue to love.

I choo choo choose you.

Sometimes, I guess you have to care about someone enough to let them take themselves out of your life. You can't force somebody to care about you, because that's their responsibility. True love is the love that Jesus Christ has for us. It is a Spiritual Gift that cannot be attained by the natural man, but only through the power of the atonement, as a gift from our Savior. We are incapable of truly loving others without first loving Him. Through loving God, we are filled with the Spirit, and become capable of loving other people. That's why He commands us to love Him--because otherwise, we wouldn't be able to truly love each other. Thus, any righteous, loving relationship is merely an extension of the relationship we have with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ loves us because he chooses to, not because we earn it. Our love can only be real and true if it is a choice as well, otherwise, it is just lust and infatuation; fickle, flighty, chemical, ephemeral. The difference between love and lust is agency. You don't have to choose to lust; that's natural. Love is harder than that, and because Christ has chosen to love everyone, there isn't anyone that doesn't deserve our love. If love is a choice that you are in control of, and everyone deserves your love, then I guess the selection of who you choose to be in relationships with (all levels of true friendship and relationship) depends on the trust you have that that person will be able to choose to love you. Maybe it takes some hard, rough, uncomfortable introspection to decide to be worthy of that trust. But if not, any love that was learned and chosen, even if not reciprocated, was worth your time. There is no better indication of the quality of our character than how much we choose to love those we can trust.


Without the ability to choose, water takes the path of least resistance, sometimes only to the ends of being dammed up in stagnant pools before ever reaching its goal. Our gift of agency allows us to choose things that are hard-- paths full of resistance-- so we can overcome our natural instincts and inclinations to take the easiest way. What it means to be an agent is to have the faith to choose what you know is right even and especially when you don't want to. It is good to make hard choices and risk our own comfort in order to reach our destinations. People are more than the way they make us feel. One of the hardest choices for me is to forget the way that people make me feel, and worry about the way I make them feel. That sounds a lot like love.
Oh, let the rain fall down and wash this world away. Oh, let the sky be gray. 'Cause, if it's ever gonna get any better, it's gotta get worse for a day.

All I know is that I don't not know nothing.

Politics is funny to me. It doesn't take a lot of effort to realize that what you thought yesterday isn't necessarily what you think now even when yesterday you thought that you would always think that way, so tomorrow you probably won't think the way you do today. Yet, everyone is so sure they know what's right for themselves and everyone else. I think that the biggest proof that someone isn't sure of what they claim to believe is stubbornness. How better can one try to convince oneself of correct conclusions than to ignore all other perspectives and react hostilely to new ideas.

Even in situations where there is an Ultimate Truth (not politics), few people are honest enough with themselves and/or focused enough on legitimate self mastery to want to find out what it is. Most people don't want to discover truth; they want to discover that they knew the truth all along. just like nobody wants you to be completely honest with them; they only want you to be completely honest about the good things you say about them. It's worth secretly being wrong today to avoid openly admitting you were wrong yesterday, especially if your stubbornness allows that secret to keep even you in the dark.

We're so afraid of being (or having been) wrong that instead of pursuing what's right, we'd rather convince ourselves that we were never wrong in the first place. We're so busy trying to persuade ourselves that we're right, that it seems the only defense we have against opposing opinions is to rile ourselves up in the polarized, irrational, mob mentality: that anyone who thinks differently is stupid or evil. If all of that is based on your initial thought that you've been working so hard to convince yourself is right (that was probably imposed on you by circumstance), then people just like you in different situations are probably thinking you are just as evil and stupid as you think they are. Think of school and sports rivalries. What are those based on if not thoughtless, random affiliation. What about Road Rage? How can getting angry at someone you don't even know improve your situation with them. When people get angry at you and think you're stupid, does that make you want to think they're right and justified in any act of aggression toward you? The more you hate, the more you become like those you hate so much. The more you think about it, the more you know. Do you want to?

There, but for the grace of God, go I

Selflessness starts as merely selfishness with intelligent foresight. The natural man is only capable of hedonistic (self serving) motivation, but I believe that it is one of the defining characteristics of human beings to have the ability to be altruistic. We cannot find this ability within ourselves alone, but must receive it from an altruistic Source as a Spiritual Gift the scriptures like to call Charity. Because God is willing to bless us every chance we give Him to, the only price we need to pay is obedience, even if (and at first, inevitably) one's motivation for obedience is personal gain. In order to be worthy of the Spiritual Gift of Charity which is the power behind altruistic motivation, we must act in a pseudo-selfless way towards others through service. This preliminary form of hedonistic selflessness (an oxymoron) is probably better labeled as Intelligent Selfishness. Unintelligently selfish and greedy actions can only bring expiring self gratification. It's a simple principle that most people agree with, so why do so many people choose to be self-serving instead of self-giving? The only reason you would ever do anything harmful to yourself is because of ignorance or misunderstanding. The Natural Man never does anything he doesn't believe to be in his best interest. Of course, a lot of people's perception of what is in their best interest seems a little absurd and sometimes even perverted. Even if you do things that are obviously harmful to yourself, from biting your nails to smoking to suicide, it is done with the belief that the alternative would somehow be more painful physically or mentally. Even habits and addictions were first a choice. A big reason people struggle with making right choices is a lack of faith. A large part of faith is a logical deduction of the given proof that Jesus Christ, as an omniscient being, knows exactly what is most beneficial for you, and lets you know through his commandments. Therefore, righteousness = intelligence, and sin = foolishness.

The scriptures say that the glory of God is intelligence, or Light and Truth. That's the way revelation works: Your mind is quickened (that's the word the scriptures use to mean "enlivened" or "enlighten") by the Spirit, being filled with intelligence to be able to make the perfect choice independent of, and also specific to circumstance. The Spirit makes you smarter! The Spirit cannot affect you in a way that is contrary to this pattern and method. Even the "stupor of thought" is not confusion, but clarity in some other thing: that thing which is right, which will take your attention away from the thing which is wrong. You cannot receive revelation that will make you more confused. The Spirit cannot make you sad or feel guilty. That's the pain that comes with sin. You make yourself feel that way when you realize you are not following the light and truth the Spirit shows you. Alma Explains this very well in his conversion story: The power of the Devil racked his soul with eternal torment and the pains of a damned soul (not the pains of a spiritually enlightened soul). As soon as he called upon Christ, he was filled with joy as exceeding as was his pain. That's the Spirit! Before he was able to be filled with the Spirit, he was filled with pain, but as soon as he made the choice that allowed the Spirit to fill him (the same way we become worthy for personal revelation), he was filled with joy. Therefore, the lack of the Spirit = sorrow and confusion, and the presence of the Spirit = joy and clarity.

It's easy to "put your life in God's hands" and just want him to make all your decisions for you. But that defeats the purpose of being alive. God's not going to make our choices for us. He's not going to take away our responsibility and make everything easy and painless. That was some other guy's plan. Life becomes easy when we keep his commandments not because He takes away the trial, but because he teaches us how to grow so it isn't a trial. Jesus' burden isn't light because his life was a free of responsibility and pain, but because he's strong enough to carry any burden. It does us no good to just carry our burden for us. By the power of His Spirit (Intelligence/Light and Truth), we can grow enough to carry it ourselves, and it becomes easy because we become stronger. As we use the intelligence we are blessed with to be intelligently selfish, The Lord blesses us with Charity. We are then capable of doing good and serving others without any thought of reward, not even blessings. Though the blessings will come, as truly selfless and altruistic beings, they are not the motivation for our charitable actions. This is what it means to truly be and Agent, and act instead of being acted upon.

Quaestiones Disputatio

I got in an argument recently that was extremely frustrating. It wasn't even in person. not even on the phone. it was online, for goodness' sake! I think that's what bothered me to begin with. It's hard enough to communicate what you really feel when you're looking at the person and they can hear you and respond immediately. But that's still not the frustrating part. No matter how logical and honest my answers and explanations were, this person continued to accuse me of things that either weren't true, or obviously misunderstood. Even after clarification and interpretation of intentions, no progress was made, in fact, it was more regressive than anything (who's going backward?). I realized that resolution was not this person's motive; it was justification. There was no intention of understanding the other side, and I got caught up in it too! I felt silly for even getting involved in it and started to see my own selfish intentions to "win" the argument (for sake of score keeping and one-up-manship, I'm pretty sure I won, anyway), so i decided to just leave it be. It was easy to see that no good would come of continuing, even if I was right.

Isn't that usually the case with arguments? Can you ever think of a time when you won an argument and then felt like you achieved what you were arguing for? I can think of a lot of arguments I at least think I won, but I never felt good about it afterward because the "loser" never admits to losing. In arguments where even the smallest part of my motivation is to win the argument, I never feel satisfied unless the person with whom I argued also acknowledges my victory. In the spirit of competition there is always a loser. Even when merely self proclaimed, there is seldom a winner. In the rare occasion that one wins an argument to the acknowledgment of everyone involved, what moral justification is there in self gratification? How can you ever feel good for bringing someone else down? You can't be motivated to win an argument without also being motivated to make your opponent lose. It is impossible to morally build yourself up while breaking others down.

When Jesus Commands the Nephites not to have disputations among them about the doctrines he gave, I don't think he's telling them not to talk about or even question them. I think he's commanding them (and us) not to argue about it. As I pointed out, argument seems to be more of a form of competition than truth seeking. I think sometimes we get confused in our attempts to be honest, too. Honesty isn't just saying facts. Half the truth is often a great lie. Oftentimes, our arguments are exactly that: half the truth, because we don't know enough to give all of it. I think honesty is saying, to the best of our ability, what is ultimately beneficial for the people we're talking to. Nothing that isn't motivated by love falls under that category. Saying kind truths is probably the closest to truth we are able to speak. What if our conversations were only focussed on establishing truth and honestly saying kind things to each other? I think there would be a lot fewer negative things to not talk about.

"Always love! Hate will get you every time.
Always love! Even when you want to fight."
-Nada Surf: Always Love

There's been a accident...

Thorns hurt! I made the mistake of walking to a hot tub in my bare feet last night and got about infinity thorns in them. By the time I realized that what I was walking on was a little more than just really sharp gravel, it was too late. It's the worst when you have to do something more painful to escape the pain in which you already find yourself. With more abstract situations in life to which that same principle applies, like a bad relationship that you need to end, I'm sure it requires more moral resolve to consciously step on those figurative thorns, but for me in this very literal and specific application of that principle, I had no choice. Pure agony. After it was all done, I thought to myself: "what if I didn't make it?" not like the same type of "didn't make it" as in someone who gets attacked by sharks and doesn't "make it"; "An elephant sat on Bob last week, and he didn't make it." But what if the pain was so bad that I couldn't put any more weight on my feet? What if the pain was so unbearable that I fell down?! It would have been curtains for sure! so million thorns in my whole body... I don't think i would have made it. I've been laughing to myself all day at the thought. I imagine myself being very dramatic as I fall down, roll around, and start convulsing as consciousness leaves me. It's funny to think of myself as very fragile. I can't figure it out. I wish bad relationships were that humorous in retrospect.