My Life is a Gift, My Life Has a Plan

There was some really great counsel given in this last General Conference. One of my favorite talks was given by President Uchtdorf, and this quote in particular has stood out to me:

"We often wear our busyness as a badge of honor as though being busy by itself was an accomplishment or sign of a superior life. Is it?" 
He goes on to compare what the Savior did instead. "I see the compassionate and caring Son of God purposefully living each day" and not necessarily just fill our days to be so busy that we have no time with those who mean the most to us." -President Uchtdorf

This describes me perfectly, I think in part because I lived for so long not doing all of the things that I could have, whether out of fear or doubt of my abilities or self-worth, or for whatever reason. Up until now, my busyness level has been how I determine how I’m doing at life—the more time I fill up with stuff, the better I can feel at the end of the day. And to an extent I still believe that this is true. Historically I have been the happiest at my truly busiest times, and the things I try to fill my time with are usually legitimately good things. But I now realize that being busy for busy’s sake is not really an achievement. And this talk helped me to realize that this is probably the reason I have, as of late, been drifting in and out of a bit of a rut.

Compared to last year, I think I have a lot more going on—I’m working, which also means I have more money to go and do things, and I have more people to go and do them with, I have harder classes (although to be honest I don’t think I can say that any semester I’ve had has been a total cakewalk, and this is usually mainly because of my friend chemistry), I’m trying to devote more time to things like volunteering and going to the temple (neither of which have taken up as much time as I thought they would, however), and you know, just life. And while I started out this semester super strong and pumped, the inevitable slump is starting to sink in, and I actually feel like I’m not doing enough. I pass the time I have, but I’m just not sure if it’s being used to its best potential. And while pre-conference I may have just thought that this means I need to find some more stuff to fill my time with, now I’m not so sure that would be enough either.

I had a talk with my sister about a month ago that amounted to kind of the same thing, about her own life, that I didn’t really think of in the context of my own life until conference. Then these two questions came up: Why am I doing what I’m doing, and what do I really want from life?

Well, I’m going to school so I can have a career and make money to be able to live comfortably, I guess. Hooray. Don’t get me wrong, I still think I have chosen the right career path, and can’t think of anything except maybe be a rock star that I would rather do as a career, but at this point I don’t think I want that career to define my life. With some people, I feel like that is the case. Scientist who win Nobel Prizes, Barack Obama, I feel like with these people their career defines them a little bit more than what I’m expecting to happen with me. It’s cheesy, but I kind of feel like the guy in that truck commercial (for some reason I always liked it, now I see why, I guess) where the neighbor asks him what he does (supposedly looking for a career title), and he struggles to come up with an answer while looking back on memories he’s had. This sounds incredibly selfish of me, but it’s the truth so I’m going to say it—when I thought about the question “what do I really want from life?” the one word I thought of was happiness. I just want to be happy. All I really want from life, I think I’ve mentioned before, can be summed up with the phrase “truth and happiness,” but thinking about what I’ve seen of the world in my limited perspective, being happy is the ultimate achievement. And I feel so, so guilty because there are an almost unlimited number of problems in the world, and people suffering a vast scale of horrors, and yet my greatest desire is not to help them, but to have the best life for myself. And I do know that service is a sure way to happiness. There are a ton of great people out there working their best to make a difference, some devoting their entire lives to serving others, and I deeply respect that. But as much as I’ve maybe tried to fight it, I’m realizing more and more that having a happy, loving family of my own takes precedence in my mind to helping out others. The redemption I find in this is that while there is no way possible for me to save everyone, there are still things I can do while searching for my own personal happiness to help out my fellow men. I hope to God that I don’t forget that, and that I try and make service a big priority in my life.

And maybe, just maybe, the greatest service I’ll be able to do will be to do to serve my own family and give them the best and happiest life possible.

 I have always been educationally-minded, that has been my top focus. As it should have been, considering all the factors, such as age. But I guess time passing and getting ever older, and maybe also a more spiritual focus in my life, has shifted the balance to focusing on a future family. When planning out my life, I could always make a list of the things that would happen, and picture them in my mind, but “having a family” was vaguely represented by only that simple phrase and no further elaboration. Now, when I really thought about what I wanted from life and the happiness problem, something of a slideshow of moments passed through my mind, not unlike my truck commercial friend (it really was kind of Hollywood, to be honest).  I thought of walks out in the beauty of nature, of cooking delicious meals with someone special, of tiny hands and tiny shoes and tiny people running around a playground, of holidays and evenings spent with well-loved people and warmth and the presence of the Spirit and feeling hope for the future and I realized that yes, I may be selfish, but this is what I want, and as much as I’ve tried to reason out of it and fight it I have admitted for the first time (with this blog as my witness) that the Gospel is right, as it has the tendency to be, and that a forever family is absolutely everything, and nothing, no career or prestige or worldly possession will take precedence for me over that. I hope I don’t just sound like a whiny husband-seeker, and this does not mean that I will abandon my education, because I still find that to be important and one of my top priorities. But somehow it just hit me why the family is the center of this Gospel. And I just want everyone in the world to realize this. It’s almost laughable how it has taken me this long to get with this program, but now I am just thinking about what the world would be like if everyone had the opportunity to come from a strong, loving family. I don’t think we can even imagine the difference this would make.

And all of this has led me to an even stronger conviction that I should go on a mission. Everything going on with me is just converging on this idea; my increased spirituality, a desire for the blessings of the gospel and a future family which would definitely benefit from my serving a mission, the empty feeling like I’m not doing enough in my life, a desire to serve others, a less narrow focus on education as the most important thing. Granted, most of the reasons are for my own benefit—I won’t lie and say I don’t really want the blessings that will come, or the spiritual, mental,  even social, etc.,  knowledge and skills that I could gain. I think it is a great way to go out into the world and grow in all ways. And probably the thing I need to work on the most is the ability to teach others the doctrines of gospel, which I feel incredibly inadequate right now. And which is kind of the point of a mission, so it is no small thing. But I am feeling confident in this direction at this point, so all I can do is prepare myself as much as I can before I fully commit.

This was incredibly long. But incredibly needed (for me). You know those times when you don’t really know what’s in your heart unless you get them out by writing or prayer or talking with someone? This was one of those times. And that rut that I was in at the start? I started writing this with a strong feeling of anxiety and dissatisfaction, but that has been replaced with a calm and peace that comes only from the Gospel. I found myself singing this Primary song, which I had to Google to find all the words to, and turns out it is basically my new life theme song. Funny how that works. Here they are now, for your enjoyment:

"My life is a gift; my life has a plan. My life has a purpose; in heav'n it began. My choice was to come to this lovely home on earth And seek for God's light to direct me from birth. I will follow God's plan for me, Holding fast to his word and his love. I will work, and I will pray; I will always walk in his way. Then I will be happy on earth And in my home above."

May we be able to keep this always in our hearts.