Someday, somehow, I will find the piano music for this exact version of the above song (it is actually a cover).
Luckily church today was exactly what I needed, and not just because I sat next to my favorite back-scratcher. I just felt peaceful, albeit a little melancholy (I hope you read that like Megamind). And I am so thankful for my ward friends, and really my ward family as a whole, because even though I don't know them all, and maybe wouldn't necessarily be really great friends with them all in everyday life, and there are many that are kind of the stereotypical "cheesy Mormon," (I may be a jerk for thinking that) I just really feel...safe around them. That may not make sense, or be exactly the point I was trying to make, but I'm sure you can relate.
The best part about a college ward, in my opinion, is the insights you get from people who are going through the same things you are. This one kid in particular made a comment that struck me; I can't really quote him exactly, so I'll just mix together my interpretation of what he said and my own thoughts. Basically we were talking about Lehi's family leaving everything behind to go on their long and complicated journey. The guy in my ward said that it must have been really hard for everyone, but probably even more so for the people who had a harder time seeing the big picture, that instead were focusing on all of the things they were leaving behind. Sometimes we need to try and look past what isn't essential in our lives. We are kind of beat over the head with this sort of thing all of the time, and most likely this won't make the impression on anyone else that it did to me, but I need to write it down so I can try and remember it.
He said one phrase in particular that I remember, along the lines of "Every day there are going to be things that we have to leave behind so we can make our journey towards what's most important, even if they aren't necessarily bad things." I just got this vivid mental picture of myself kind of removed from everything around me and making an actual journey (possibly loosely based on Lord of the Rings, that's just who I am). But I felt very at peace with this removal, and also felt assurance that I can leave behind things that may slow me on my journey to do the things I really need to do, even if I'm not entirely sure what that encompasses. It sounds kind of lonely, and felt a little lonely (you know, it really felt like the music of Bon Iver feels, somehow both comforting and solitary at the same time, which is probably why I felt like I needed to listen to it). And it was something that was almost more like a dream or feeling than actual coherent thoughts, which is probably why I'm struggling to express it here. I guess the best I can say is that I learned something today, about life and myself and my situation.
I really wish that when I learned something that somehow everyone could know it the way I do. But it just doesn't work that way. You can never learn something for someone else. Everything you believe in life you must at some point decide that you believe, or it won't last. And I'm learning that now. I just hope that I, and the people I care about, end up believing the right things.
Today, I realized how self-absorbed I have been my whole life. I have always thought that I've worried about others and been a good friend, but today I realized that at the end of the day, I've always gone to bed thinking about my own problems. Lately, I've been beating myself up about what a bad friend I've been, but now I've diagnosed why that is and I will hopefully be able to fix it. Not that I'm trying to justify this selfishness, but I think this is a problem most everyone in the world has. The only times things have changed for the better are when people have overcome that inherent feeling to worry about themselves and truly forgot themselves to remember others. That is my idea of looking at the big picture, along with what you talked about with leaving behind what we don't need.
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