I believe that within the soul of every human being is a desire to be great. As children of the Greatest Being in the universe, it is innate; we desire to emulate our Parent. The circumstances of life may squelch, skew or supplant this desire, we may act upon it or not, we may ignore it all together, but it can never fully be destroyed. Exactly how it is manifest differs from person to person, though, because we are all human, each manifestation of greatness will have distinct similarities.
Part of being great is leaving a mark, having an impact. In cliché terms, it means changing the world. A noble goal; too often, however, our dreams of grandeur turn to delusions of grandeur and, instead of changing the world as we dreamed when young, we end up embittered and withdraw, content to merely live until we die. The key component of the shift from dream to delusion is narcissism.
Narcissism [nahr-suh-siz-em]: inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity
When we allow narcissism to become the guiding force of our lives—often, understand, unconsciously—we begin to see our quest to “change the world” as a way to define ourselves and our greatness, rather than as a service to our fellow man. There are two problems with this approach. First, our focus is wrong. We care less about how we help others and more about what it makes us look like. This leads to the second problem. In our narcissism our focus is on ourselves, how we look. Desiring to look as good as possible, we want to do the biggest thing possible. Unsatisfied with giving a bum money for dinner—that’s not a large impact, it doesn’t make us look great—we have to accomplish something grander; we can’t help one because we want to help—or be seen to help—a million. When these massive projects fail abysmally—or worse, never even get started—we write off our dreams as delusions and, in the final stage of narcissism, become wrapped up in only ourselves.
By small and simple things are great things brought to pass. ~Alma 37:6
We don’t understand how change takes place. In our effort to end poverty in America, we pass by the bum on Temple Square. “That’s too small,” we think. “It wouldn’t make a difference.” We forget that that is the difference to be made. I’m reminded of the story of the boy on the beach, throwing starfish that had been trapped on the beach as the tide went down back into sea. An older man—embittered perhaps—came along and berated the boy. “Look,” he said. “There are miles of beach and hundreds of starfish. You’ll never make a difference.” The little boy, throwing another starfish back into the sea, replied, “I made a difference to that starfish.”
Oh that we could be like that little child, unafraid to simply roll up our sleeves and go to work. Did he save them all? No, in that he failed. But where so many of us wouldn’t have started—after all, failure makes us look bad—he began. That is the key. If ever we are to make a difference, we must ignore the scoffs of others; free ourselves of our narcissism and go to work doing small things. After all, greatness is not about how we look; it’s about what we do.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Case for Current Events
Once upon a time, I didn’t read the newspaper. Or watch the news. Or listen to it. Any news that did manage to filter down into my awareness usually came from the radio after I’d flipped through all the stations and my choices were really bad commercials or top-of-the-hour news. When I found myself in such situations, I’d listen, but only partially; really I was just waiting for the music to come back on. When it did, up went the volume and I was back to singing along, blissfully ignorant of what I had just heard. That’s how it was, until last semester, when a current events class forced me to become aware. Becoming aware made me realize just how important being informed really is; which is why now, I find myself making a case for current events.
Before I immersed myself in the wonderfully exciting world that is current events, I had several reasons for being checked out. Association with fellow checked-outers led to the discovery that people have very similar reasons for not keeping up on current events. I call them Current Events Cop Outs or CECO (pronounced see-ko). An examination and debunktion of these CECOs will, I hope, inspire those where I was to come where I am.
The first goes something like this: “Current events are BORING! I want to spend my time doing something more interesting.” This is the excuse of the uninitiated, but, I confess, it was the biggest for me. The few times I had delved into current events I found myself excessively bored. “Who cares what so-and-so said” and “No I am not going to follow that story to A17” were my constant thoughts as I threw newspapers away from me. How does one get over this? Stick with it! Read a variety of sources; see how they report the same event. Follow stories; what so-and-so said may not be interesting until somebody talks back, and the story on A17 may be uninteresting, until, at the end of the week, you suddenly discover what really happened in a story from some obscure publication in Europe. In today’s world especially, current events are anything but dull.
The second common CECO is one I think we are all familiar with: “Current events make me depressed/angry/sad/frustrated/etc. and there’s nothing I can do about it anyway, so why bother?” The real problem here is that people feel powerless, which is why they feel depressed. Once you realize that there are things you can do, excitement replaces the ________ (fill in the blank) and you find yourself scanning headlines, desperate for something to get involved in. And with the internet, getting involved is easier than ever. Read articles online, comment and argue about them with complete strangers, share important ones on Facebook, encouraging your friends to “check this out!”, sending Congressmen and Senators strongly worded emails demanding that they do such-and-such, and then tell everyone the story on your very own blog. The first time I contacted my Congresswoman was about a bill that had been living under the radar, something I’d had to dig to find. I felt it was extremely important, wrote her, and then zoomed over to Facebook—while texting everyone I thought would be interested—to let everyone know what was going one. That specific bill is still in limbo, but the best part of the experience was when I convinced a few other people to contact their Congressmen. I’d thought there was nothing I could do, but I’d had an influence, however small. You can too; all it takes is initiative.
The final CECO I’ll address is the most dangerous: “What does it matter anyway? Whatever happens happens, and I’ll just keep living my life.” To think that what happens in the world doesn’t affect you is kind of like being a running back that only looks at his own feet—sooner or later somebody’s going to come and knock him on his butt. A possible future case-in-point would be the health care reform bill. If it does indeed mandate that everyone purchase health insurance or pay a fine, people not paying attention may find themselves short $3,000, to say nothing of the freedom lost while that person was “blissfully ignorant.” Whether it’s a good or bad, we live in a society where the actions of others often affect us quite personally. If all we focus on is our own feet, we will quite likely find ourselves on our butts, or worse, dog-piled.
Ultimately, that’s really why current events are so important; they have a dramatic impact on our lives. Whoever said ignorance is bliss probably spent his life being “blissfully” pushed around with no control of his life. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be that guy. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get a paper…
Before I immersed myself in the wonderfully exciting world that is current events, I had several reasons for being checked out. Association with fellow checked-outers led to the discovery that people have very similar reasons for not keeping up on current events. I call them Current Events Cop Outs or CECO (pronounced see-ko). An examination and debunktion of these CECOs will, I hope, inspire those where I was to come where I am.
The first goes something like this: “Current events are BORING! I want to spend my time doing something more interesting.” This is the excuse of the uninitiated, but, I confess, it was the biggest for me. The few times I had delved into current events I found myself excessively bored. “Who cares what so-and-so said” and “No I am not going to follow that story to A17” were my constant thoughts as I threw newspapers away from me. How does one get over this? Stick with it! Read a variety of sources; see how they report the same event. Follow stories; what so-and-so said may not be interesting until somebody talks back, and the story on A17 may be uninteresting, until, at the end of the week, you suddenly discover what really happened in a story from some obscure publication in Europe. In today’s world especially, current events are anything but dull.
The second common CECO is one I think we are all familiar with: “Current events make me depressed/angry/sad/frustrated/etc. and there’s nothing I can do about it anyway, so why bother?” The real problem here is that people feel powerless, which is why they feel depressed. Once you realize that there are things you can do, excitement replaces the ________ (fill in the blank) and you find yourself scanning headlines, desperate for something to get involved in. And with the internet, getting involved is easier than ever. Read articles online, comment and argue about them with complete strangers, share important ones on Facebook, encouraging your friends to “check this out!”, sending Congressmen and Senators strongly worded emails demanding that they do such-and-such, and then tell everyone the story on your very own blog. The first time I contacted my Congresswoman was about a bill that had been living under the radar, something I’d had to dig to find. I felt it was extremely important, wrote her, and then zoomed over to Facebook—while texting everyone I thought would be interested—to let everyone know what was going one. That specific bill is still in limbo, but the best part of the experience was when I convinced a few other people to contact their Congressmen. I’d thought there was nothing I could do, but I’d had an influence, however small. You can too; all it takes is initiative.
The final CECO I’ll address is the most dangerous: “What does it matter anyway? Whatever happens happens, and I’ll just keep living my life.” To think that what happens in the world doesn’t affect you is kind of like being a running back that only looks at his own feet—sooner or later somebody’s going to come and knock him on his butt. A possible future case-in-point would be the health care reform bill. If it does indeed mandate that everyone purchase health insurance or pay a fine, people not paying attention may find themselves short $3,000, to say nothing of the freedom lost while that person was “blissfully ignorant.” Whether it’s a good or bad, we live in a society where the actions of others often affect us quite personally. If all we focus on is our own feet, we will quite likely find ourselves on our butts, or worse, dog-piled.
Ultimately, that’s really why current events are so important; they have a dramatic impact on our lives. Whoever said ignorance is bliss probably spent his life being “blissfully” pushed around with no control of his life. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be that guy. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get a paper…
Monday, January 4, 2010
Baby's Running a Marathon
12 weeks exactly today. We went in to our second prenatal with our midwife; this was the big one, we were going to get to hear the heart; now we could finally find out if there was really something in there or if it was just our imagination. Morning sickness has been mild and Elly's been handling everything GREAT; couldn't ask for more (except for maybe some kind of shampoo that would make me smell good to her; heck, I'd even settle for not smelling bad haha), but even so we where stoked to find out if there was really something going on down there, or if she had a bad taste in her mouth for nothing. First thing we heard was a high pitched whining, like when a mike gets to close to the speaker, but that disappeared after our midwife moved the speaker away. Nothing but weirdness, then, we heard it. And boy was it moving!!! The kid's running a marathon in there or something. It was really neat; finally, we had some external proof that there was something there and some real interaction-even though it was just a little bit-with our baby. Can't wait till July!!!
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