Invisible Angels

A couple times a month I volunteer for a shift in the LDS Temple near my house.

During my shift this weekend we talked about some interesting concepts in our preparation meeting. We talked about the goal of doing our service in the temple so that we are invisible. Not to truly be invisible, but to do our responsibilities well so that we are not distracting those who come from worshiping with God. I liked that idea a lot.

Another thought that was shared was that we’re learning to be angels through our service in the temple. We’re learning how to serve others and to do God’s will.

As I pondered throughout my shift on these thoughts they merged in my head – the concept of being an invisible angel. 

The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. And the more I thought that really the goal conveyed in the idea of being an invisible angel is to be a pure conduit of Gods love to those around us. 

What a cool goal. Everyone can use some more love and understanding and compassion in their life!

Perspective: All in How You Look at Things

Life is such an interesting thing, and so often seems to be full of contradictions.

Reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls made me think some about this and why that is and how challenging it can be for children to comprehend. Or maybe how easy it is for adult to ignore or rationalize away...

In this memoir there are so many circumstances shared that you wish could just be fiction. Things that made me frustrated with humanity. And at the same time, everything together made me so impressed and inspired by the resiliency and capacity of human beings. It reminded me that we really do have the ability to choose how we will respond to what happens to us in our lives. We always have a choice. Sometimes making the right one, or the most productive ones, is harder than others, but we always have a choice.

Take this passage, for example:

                  Lori gave me a hug when she heard I'd told off Erma. Mom was upset, though. "We may not agree with all of Erma's views," she said, "but we have to remember that as long as we're her guests, we have to be polite."
                  That didn't seem like Mom. She and Dad happily railed against anyone they disliked or disrespected: Standard Oil executives, J. Edgar Hoover, and especially snobs and racists. They'd always encouraged us to be outspoken about our opinions. Now we were supposed to bite our tongues. But she was right; Erma would boot us. Situations like these, I realized, were what turned people into hypocrites.

"I hate Erma," I told Mom.

"You have to show compassion for her," Mom said. Erma's parents had died when she was young, Mom explained, and she had been shipped off to one relative after another who had treated her like a servant. Scrubbing clothes on a washboard until her knuckles bled--that was the preeminent memory of Erma’s childhood. The best thing Grandpa did for her when they got married was buy her an electric washing machine, but whatever joy it had once given her was long gone.

“Erma can’t let go of her misery,” Mom said. “It’s all she knows.” She added that you should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. “Everyone has something good about them,” she said. “You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “How about Hitler? What was his redeeming quality?”

“Hitler loved dogs,” Mom said without hesitation. (p 144)

Without giving too much away, this scene opens after a truly horrific encounter that Jeannette and her brother had with their Grandmother, Erma. Something that should never happen, under any circumstances. Something that a parent should ALWAYS try to protect their children from if it ever did happen.

But instead of protecting them, their mother blames and punishes them. It made me ill to read.

But Jeannette is right. There are situations that make it very difficult not to become a hypocrite. What happened should never have happened. And, based on the parents’ behavior earlier in the book, under other circumstances they would have responded in a more appropriate manner in protection of their children. However, they were in a very difficult situation. Do you respond how you should to a situation and find your children without a home? Or, do you bend where you normally wouldn’t and make sure they have a roof over their head? Not a choice anyone wants to have to make. And it seems really easy to look from the outside and say what someone should do. But, if I’m honest, I know I become a hypocrite in difficult situations sometimes too. Situations that are not so dire, and do not impact others so deeply. Who am I to judge? How am I to know what I would do in the same circumstances, faced with the same choices and situations?

And at the same time, this mother who made what I feel was a very poor choice based on what happened to her daughter – the same mother – also teaches a beautiful and powerful lesson about respecting others and searching for the best in them.

Humans really are complicated things.

Changing the World....for the young?

Work has been particularly grueling and draining the past couple of weeks. I've had to remind myself on a number of occasions that I am working towards a good cause, one that I care about and want to see succeed.

I have also been contemplating the fact that so many of the people I work with are incredibly young. Why is that?

One reason for this is offered in the movie Amazing Grace:

William Wilberforce: No one of our age has ever taken power.

Pitt the Younger: Which is why we're too young to realize certain things are impossible. Which is why we will do them anyway.

Is it that the young just do the impossible because they don't believe it is impossible? Or that they haven't gotten practical or cynical (or both...) yet?

I don't know, but this also made me think of some lyrics from the musical, Newsies. A young journalist is commenting on her faith in herself and the ability to do things that no one has done before.

But give me some time, I'll be twice as good as that six months from never.

Just look around at the world we're inheriting

and think of the one we'll create.

Their mistake is they got old, that is not a mistake we'll be making.

No sir, we'll stay young forever!

Give those kids and me the brand new century and watch what happens.

It's David and Goliath do or die

the fight is on and I can't watch what happens.

But all I know is nothing happens if you just give in.

It can't be any worse than how it's been.

And it just so happens that we just might win,

so whatever happens! Let's begin!

     -Watch What Happens, from Newsies, the Musical

While no one can actually avoid the mistake of getting older, I feel that all of us would benefit from adopting more of an attitude that "nothing happens if you just give in...and it just so happens that we just might win, so whatever happens! Let's begin!"

And, it seems to me, that the more important part might be to keep going. Beginning is one thing, but enduring and pushing on when things get hard or take longer than we anticipated is quite another. A passage from a novel I'm reading right now captures what I'm trying to express very well:

"Apparently he was brooding on the magnitude of the task ahead and questioning his ability to carry it out. The job would never be finished, not in his lifetime at least; there was too much to be done. That's true of a lot of things, though, including the achievement of social justice, universal peace, and a world in which there are no hungry children. It's no excuse to stop working towards those ends."

         -Night Train to Memphis by Elizabeth Peters

It seems to me that most things worth doing will not be accomplished in any one person's lifetime. Those tasks are hard, and so often require personal sacrifice. But they are worth working towards. It makes me wonder if part of what happens is that people start to focus on the small part of the puzzle they can impact. They raise their children with love. They reach out to their neighbor in kindness. They live a quiet, good life. Does everyone do that? No. But I think an awful lot of people do, and their cumulative acts of goodness make this world a pretty wonderful place.

One Day at a Time

Recently I heard what could be labeled a tragic story, but is also very inspiring. 

There was a wonderful man who had a wonderful wife and a wonderful family. He was successful in all ways you can think of: wealthy, had a great education and a great job, had many friends and family who loved him, was described by one friend as the best man they ever knew, was strong and healthy, and was a generous, spiritual person.

One day, he got off his treadmill after a run and dropped dead on the spot.

He was young. He left a lot behind – including a family who loved and relied on him.

I don’t know this family personally at all. However, I was the recipient of their generosity through a mutual friend. While at their house, I saw this hanging on their door:

What a great reminder. It can be easy to think of the future as being far in the distance. Something that we will have time for later. Something we don’t need to worry about, or something we don’t control.  And while we never really know what the future will bring, we can always live as if the future is now – something we can shape by the choices we make. And in many ways that is true. We get to make choices every day, and those choices affect us, and those around us, for better or for worse – now, and into the future.

Learning from Chess (or Band or Sports or Theater)

I believe in being well rounded. I am grateful that my parents allowed/ encouraged me to be involved in a variety of activities. I remember writing a self-reflection letter as a senior in high school about the way that being in theater shaped me – how, ironically, by pretending to be someone else I learned a lot about myself. There have also been countless times I have talked to people about how playing in band allowed me to learn how to do my part – and the need to rely on and help others to do their part.

 

Yesterday I read an article about a group of students who learn to play chess (starting in Kindergarten!) who were visited by one of the world's best chess players, Garry Kasparov.

Their teacher talked about the benefits of playing chess that go beyond the game:

"Chess requires you to do research to learn to play in certain styles. You may make an error that you have to go back and fix. Those things translate because there is not a thing in this world worth having that you don't have to prepare for."
- Fritz Gaspard

 

It made me think that while there may be specific benefits that come from playing chess, and different ones from playing in band, and even other ones from playing on a sports team, but that no matter which one a child does, there are real benefits to doing something you enjoy and are invested in. Something that pushes you and forces you to think differently.

There was something that Garry Kasparov said in the article that really struck me:

"If you don't feel nervous you don't care. Everyone has fear, it's about how you handle it."

 

That makes me feel better about feeling nervous! And reminds me of a quote from a movie preview I saw recently:

"Danger is real. Fear is an option."

 

While I'm not sure that fear is an option, pairing that thought with Kasparov's comment helps me realize that we can control how we react to situations - how we handle our fears and nervousness. Do we build the skills we need to work through and find success? Or do we let our fear/ nervousness cripple and control us?

More fuel for my quest for increased self control! (and a good excuse to pursue extra-curriculars :)

(Un) Remarkable

Sometimes I get sucked into reading books based on their cover. Remarkable by Lizzy K. Foley was one of those books for me. It was an adorable read that seemed a bit like a combo of A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Mysterious Benedict Society.

One of the things I realized as I read this book was that many people feel unremarkable. I tend to think that only I do. But in reality everyone does at different times or in different aspects of life - and that is okay, and normal.

The Mayor of Remarkable is married to one of the only "unremarkable" people in the whole town (his name is John Doe) and the grandmother of the only other "unremarkable" person - a young girl named, you guessed it, Jane Doe.

The Mayor or Remarkable tells her grand-daughter at one point:

...despite what most people think, the best things in life are often quite ordinary.

It's true - ordinary = awesome. Or at least my experiences have taught me that over and over again.

I appreciated that the book didn't end with Jane becoming remarkable at something (oops, spoiler alert!). The culminating moment for me was this - Jane gets a puppy sent to her by a former teacher turned pirate (bizarre, I know :) and in this exchange she is talking to the twins who she has been hoping would invite her to their home:

"No, thanks," Jane said, looking up from her puppy for the first time since she'd gotten him. Her face was a happy mix of amazement and joy.

"What do you mean?" Melissa demanded. She had never in a million years guessed that Jane wouldn't accept an invitation to enter their creepy black house. "We're giving Dirt a chance to be something special, you know."

"He doesn't need to be special," Jane said firmly. "All he needs to be is my dog." And with that, she walked home with Dirt Cuddled in her arms.

We, like Dirt, are remarkable to someone (and we don't have to be remarkable to everyone). And perhaps more importantly, we have the ability to make someone else feel remarkable (instead of like dirt) - and by that I mean we can show others that we love them and appreciate what they have to offer.

Bad Day (or Two Months :)

It's been a rough past while for me, if you hadn't already gathered.

Today I made a decision - it's time to start a new trend, and the song Happy Girl (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsQi3bvgM9s) is going to be my new theme song :)

I liked this particular video for the quotes they added running across the bottom like:

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending."

Here's to a new start!