“…let him be your servant.”
I remember very little about my exit interview the day before I returned home from my mission. But one exchange has always stuck with me. President Cardon asked me, “Do you intend to remain an active member of the Church?”
I was taken aback a bit. I thought it was a strange question to ask someone who had just devoted two years and hopefully served in a way that demonstrated commitment. I stammered, “Well, yes, of course.”
He then said, “What does it mean to be active?” I tried to think quickly, but, as is often the case, couldn’t come up with much more than the obvious. “Well, it means going to Church, being worthy and having a temple recommend…” He almost cut me off: “Does being active include having a calling?” I wished I’d thought of that, myself. “Yes, I think so,” I said.
Then he said, “I want you to make me a promise. I want you to promise me that you’ll never go four consecutive weeks without a calling without going to your bishop and asking for one. Will you promise to do that?” I did.
I can’t say that I’ve lived up to the letter of that promise as well as I should have, but I think I’ve lived up to the spirit of it. In the various times I’ve moved and switched wards in my life, there have sometimes been intervals of some weeks before I received a calling. I remember on a couple of occasions making a comment to the bishop as I’d promised I would. On a couple of other occasions, I knew the bishop was aware of me and I gave it a little more time and a calling came before too long.
Why do we serve in callings in the Church? Perhaps because we’re asked to and we feel a sense of duty. Perhaps out of a sense of tradition and culture: that’s what Mormons do. Perhaps we enjoy the socializing and relationships that are a part of most callings.
Or perhaps we have better reasons. Perhaps we love people and understand that all callings are about people. Perhaps we recognize the responsibility we have toward them and want to serve them. Perhaps we love God and remember his instruction to Peter, “If ye love me, feed my sheep.” Perhaps we know that all things have been offered to those who magnify their callings. Perhaps we embrace the mission of the Church to bring souls to Christ and we appreciate so much what it means to come to Christ that we want to help others do the same.
My favorite non-prophetic author had one of his characters say, “Everyone is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything.” He also said, speaking of himself, “We are all responsible for everyone else—but I am more responsible than all the others.”
Am I responsible for others? Am I my brother’s keeper? Jacob spoke of “taking upon us the responsibility, answering the sins of the people upon our own heads if we did not…” President Hinckley said, “Each of us is responsible for the welfare and the growth and development of others. We do not live only unto ourselves. If we are to magnify our callings, we cannot live only unto ourselves.”
How do we magnify our calling? Well, we start by having a calling, as my mission president encouraged me to do. Then we understand what it requires. But we don’t stop there! To do so is to minimize a calling—and what a lost opportunity that is! We reap what we sow and few things illustrate that as well as the effort and creativity we put into our callings. So we get a clear understanding of who we are called to serve and then we get busy with those people, focusing on them and how we can serve them within the larger spirit of our calling. We get to know them, learn about them, love them. And then we pray for guidance and we let the creative juices flow (thinking in the shower always helps me!) and between our own pondering and perspiration and the Lord’s inspiration—the perfect recipe—we go above and beyond that low-bar minimum and serve!
Fifteen years ago, I extended a calling to a couple in my ward to serve as ward librarians. I did an utterly pathetic job of it. My explanation of what their calling was about was enough to deflate even the most enthusiastic. But they dutifully accepted. A year later, I sat in a meeting and heard a bishop describe the calling of a ward librarian and became both exhilarated by his vision of how this calling, if well done, could impact and change families—and disgusted by the memory of my own lack of vision and effort and thoughtfulness and a year earlier.
Librarians, it turns out, can help families tap into Church resources to more effectively teach their children at home. Sunday School teachers can visit the students who don’t come and can take and show an interest in them outside of church meetings. Ward membership clerks can knock on doors and get to know the people over whose membership records they have stewardship. Secretaries can advocate for lost sheep. Stake leaders can greet by name the people they serve throughout the stake. Music committee chairs can identify hidden talents and encourage the development of talents which may not even exist yet. And on and on.
We do reap what we sow. When we don’t have a calling, we miss out on a huge source of happiness and fulfillment. When we have a calling but don’t (or barely) act in it… same crummy thing. When we pour our hearts into the people we’re serving and focus our efforts on them instead of on ourselves (teachers, for example, should teach students, not lessons), we reap rewarding relationships and the joy of seeing growth in others—and, inevitably, in ourselves.
Young Single Adults—as that label rather clearly suggests, are neither children nor “youth.” They are adults. For them (as we discussed Thursday), it is time to pick up an oar and row with the rest of the rowing adults—to share the gospel, strengthen testimonies, “lift up the hands which hang down and strengthen the feeble knees.” It’s time to switch from net taker to net giver. Or, maybe better said, it’s time to strive to become a net giver, because it is impossible in the Lord’s economy to become a net giver since the Lord always blesses us disproportionately to our service.
May God bless us with vision, an interest in people, a desire to serve, and inspiration to see how to magnify our calling to a point of real impact. In such a scenario, all are blessed and become happier.
Exclusive Offer…
… for the followers of after-the-manner-of-happiness.com!
I have two free tickets to today’s 12:30 showing of Son of God at the Megaplex Theater at Thanksgiving Point. The only price you’ll need to pay is your willingness to sit next to my wife and me (since the seats are assigned). Please call or text my cell phone if you are interested. First come, first served.
After one hour, the exclusive nature of this offer will be revoked as I turn to my vast (and growing) number of friends on Facebook.
Disclaimer: I have neither seen the movie nor read any reviews and therefore make no warranties, either express or implied, with regard to your enjoyment of said movie and whether you’ll feel, at the conclusion, like you just spent two hours living after the manner of happiness.)
On Familiarity and Contempt
Someone—reportedly that (possibly fictitious, himself) fable-teller Aesop—once coined the phrase—or at least popularized it: familiarity breeds contempt. With one exception (more on that later), I don’t think that phrase could possibly be less true.
More than once, I have begun teaching a class of youth—maybe a Sunday School or Primary class or a group of deacons—and come away annoyed with them and their impolite, disrespectful behavior—to the point where I wasn’t anxious to return. But two things inevitably happen: I get to know them and I start to like them. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever really gotten to know a youth and failed to come to appreciate them and become fond of them—and I’ve started out annoyed at quite a few of them! For me, that initially unfortunate experience doesn’t just happen with youth.
I spent this past week out of town on business. I wasn’t looking forward to it because I knew I’d be spending the week with a small group of people led by someone I really did not want to be around at all. I had never actually had a personal or individual conversation with her (you’ll note), but I had been in meetings with her and knew her to be foul-mouthed, sour-faced, and terse. My few interactions with her had completely turned me off and I was about to spend four long days with her (and a half-dozen other people I’d never met).
Well. You can’t spend thirteen hours a day virtually locked in a room with a few people and not get to know quite a bit about them. I met a highly educated young man who, with his girlfriend—now fiancé—is expecting their first child; a single Jewish mother of two teenagers who is under lots of job stress and worried about her kids; a single dad who spent his birthday with his teenage son and his (the father’s) girlfriend; and a woman who has a perpetual fiancé following failed marriages for each of them, no plans to ever formally tie the knot, and whose face lights up at the very mention of reality TV shows.
And then there’s Megan, the person I really pretty much despised before the week began. Megan, it turns out, is an actual person pursuing life and happiness and family and fulfillment just like the rest of us. She has a husband and kids that she cares about and frequently talks about. She has a home she loves. She has a personal history of success and failures (lots of successes). She takes a direct, sometimes curt, but nevertheless sincere interest in others. She goes out of her way to help people advance in their careers and in life in general. And, yes, she has the foulest mouth I’ve ever spent more than a few minutes around. But, by the end of the week, my contempt—bred entirely from both unfamiliarity and repeated personal failure on my part to not give people the benefit of the doubt—had turned into empathy and even appreciation. Another of life’s important lessons learned, rather pathetically, yet again. I hope I learn it well enough soon enough that I don’t have to keep re-learning it.
(I mentioned above an exception. It seems to me that if there is any tendency toward truth with regards to familiarity breeding contempt, that it is within families where we are so familiar with one another that if we’re not careful, we can become complacent in our relationships, take loved ones for granted, actually lose empathy for them, and sometimes let our experiences with their shortcomings and the offenses we’ve taken from them canker within us. You can tell you’re in danger when you notice yourself treating visitors to your home better than you treat its regular residents. We must not stop seeking to understand others and appreciating their efforts—especially those closest to us!)
Longfellow said, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” It would be good if I didn’t have to wait to discover the “secret history” of everyone I meet before deciding that I can grant them the generosity, respect, and even appreciation that they deserve. Giving people the benefit of the doubt, of which there is much where familiarity is lacking, is a happier way to live.
“…if we pursue the path that leads to it.”
On more than one occasion as I was growing up, my father said something like this: “Pain has a purpose. Pain is the body’s way of telling us that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Often, the best fix is an adjustment to one or more of four basic health-related habits: what and how much we eat, how much we sleep (not too much; not too little), how often and how long we exercise, and how we manage stress in our lives. Frequently, the best remedy is a rather uncomplicated correction to one or more of these aspects of our lifestyle.”
I have thought about that idea a lot over the past couple of weeks as we have discussed the elements of happy living in our seminar series. If veggies, fruits, whole grains, 7.5 hours of sleep, 30 minutes a day of rigorous exercise, and functional stress relief valves in our lives make for physically healthy living—at least as a general rule—could it be that there is a similar “formula” for spiritually- and emotionally-healthy living that would help us live in a state of happiness?
We finished (for now, at least) putting our heads together this week in our Thursday evening seminar and came up with a list of nine elements or ingredients for happy living. I like to call them “The Manners of Happiness” since we are trying to explain what it means to live “after the manner of happiness.” (Recognizing that happiness is, in reality, a matter of degree and not either strictly present or absent, we nevertheless identified these things as being required to get us to a way of living that would generally be described as “happy.” For achieving the greatest amount of happiness ultimately possible, more is needed—and we’ve identified those things, too, in a second list.) For being happy right here and now, here are the nine things we came up with—in no particular order.
- Pursuit of personal improvement. We need to be striving for personal growth—not just striving to be better at something or to acquire more knowledge (though those are good), but striving to be better human beings—better contributors to the common good.
- Love. Here we refer to love as a verb and with ourselves on the giving, serving end. We cannot be very happy when we are not striving to help others feel loved, valued, supported—and happy—themselves. We tend to make ourselves happier when we are making efforts to help other people feel happier.
- Choosing well. Alma said, “Wickedness never was happiness.” Conversely, it seems a valid axiom that righteousness—or choosing well—not to be confused with piety or self-righteousness—is a necessary condition for happiness. Not that we must be perfect or we can’t be happy, but we must strive to keep the commandments and to live life as God encourages us to live it.
- Handling adversity. “Into each life some rain must fall,” said the poet. God sends “rain on the just and the unjust,” said the Son of God. We will all gain experience with life’s difficulties: disappointments, tragedies, heartaches, doubts, discouragement, mean people, etc. How we handle those things is up to us. If we do not handle them well, we will severely limit our ability to experience happiness while we struggle with them, which can be most of the time.
- Forgiving. Like adversity, we can hardly avoid being wronged or offended. The better the perspective we maintain and the more generous we are at giving people the benefit of the doubt, the less we’ll need to forgive. But if it’s true that “the greater sin” lies with the person who fails to forgive than in the person who commits the original wrong and if it’s true that happiness is not found in sin, then it stands to reason that failing to forgive is a great formula for living unhappily.
- Having hope, faith, and optimism. It may be true that a pessimist is never disappointed and it is surely true that we should anticipate and prepare for negative events in our lives, but surely happiness is associated with a bright outlook and a sense of confidence that we will become better than we are today, that fairness will ultimately prevail, that people can change, and that a better future lies ahead. Faith centered in the Atonement and teachings of Jesus Christ is the ultimate form of optimism and confidence.
- Diligence. Of “a virtuous woman,” it is written that “she looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” The commandment Adam received, when leaving the Garden of Eden, to eat his bread by “the sweat of thy face,” was, according to Elder Bruce D. Porter, a gift, not a curse. Working means contributing and is surely an essential ingredient in a happy life.
- Feeling loved. Nothing in our list is dependent upon the choices or actions of others. Feeling loved is, perhaps arguably but nevertheless defensibly, not an exception to that. It is not enough to be loved; we must recognize and accept that we are loved—hopefully by family and friends and all the people whom we love, but if by no one else—and hopefully in addition to those others—then by our Father in Heaven and by a Savior who has given all for each of us.
- Recreation. This item came down to a close vote, but with an appeal to “The Proclamation” and its reference to “wholesome recreational activities,” the pro-fun faction among our young single adults won. And why not? The Lord doesn’t just make the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He makes the sun shine on us, too (well, unless you live in the Northwest). It’s hard to imagine feeling happy in a life devoid of moments of wholesome fun and laughter and enjoying the good things of the earth.
As previously alluded to, it is important to note that there were five other items on our list, which we say are essential for the fullness of happiness which awaits us if we choose to live after the ultimate manners of happiness. These include: not only gaining a testimony, but being fully converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ; forming meaningful relationships with each member of the Godhead; making and keeping temple covenants; being humble and acquiring to their fullest extent all the attributes of Christ; and being in and contributing to a happy, successful family. Including those in our immediate list would have meant excluding large portions of our world population from being happy, which we agreed was unjustifiable and contradicted our experiences and observations. Yet we note again that there are degrees of happiness—with much available to us now and yet more later if we so live. (Of course, most of these things are available to most of right now and need not be waited for.)
Is it possible that doing things like loving better, being more diligent, and facing adversity with more faith and optimism will result in us feeling happier—just as straightforwardly as eating better and exercising more consistently will result in us being healthier? I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t one more item to add to our list, which departs a little from the physical health analogy—and that is making the choice to be happy. I doubt that a person can be happy solely by choosing to be while ignoring things like those we’ve listed; but it does seem possible for a person to do a lot of things right yet lack the willingness to let themselves experience being happy.
Joseph Smith said, “Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.” Clearly happiness is within the ability of each of us to experience in the short-term. Perhaps if we are not, we just need to adjust one or more of a few basic happiness-related habits in our lives.
On Sports and Wings of Lightning
Seriously. I can hardly think of a bigger waste of time than being a devoted fan and spectator of sports. Some dedicated sports fans seem to see their dedication as a virtue—right up there with faith, hope, and charity—and the absence of it in others as shameful. As for me, I’ve wasted—and continue to waste—way too much of my life on sports. So this post isn’t a criticism of others. It’s a cry for help; an attempt at self-therapy.
I’m 48 years old. I’ve spent at least 39 years attached to various sports teams. Other than a few somewhat vague memories of watching Spencer Haywood of the Sonics with my Dad back in the three-to-make-two days of the NBA; driving around on Saturdays in the car with my Dad listening to Sonny Sixkiller (no kidding, that was his name) throw the ball for the Huskies; and watching (admirably) vicious Bob Gibson pitch for the Cardinals on a little black-and-white TV—again with my Dad (I may have identified the source of the problem! just kidding, Dad)—my real addiction to sports crack began on April 6, 1977.
On that night, I laid on our hallway floor just below our wall-mounted radio listening to Dave Niehaus call the first-ever game for the Seattle Mariners for three hours. In what can clearly be understood now as a precursor of things to come—for at least as long as the Children of Israel wandered in the desert—and with the promised land still nowhere in sight!—they lost 7-0. But! The next night, they lost just 2-0. They were obviously moving in the right direction and I felt encouraged—even optimistic—just as I’ve felt on about 8,000 nights since then.
Let’s say that, on average, since April 1997 I’ve been emotionally attached to about five teams each year (between the Mariners, Seahawks, Sonics, Sounders, UW football, BYU football, and BYU basketball). That’s about 200 sports seasons I’ve lived and (mostly) died through. Guess how many of them ended with a meaningful win? Guess how many of them did not end in disappointment? Three. Three! The 1978-79 Sonics, the 1984 Cougars, and the 2013-14 Seahawks. (Three and a half if I count the 1995 Seattle Mariners.) That’s less than 2%—and a long, long way beneath the Mendoza line.
Not that winning seasons justify the time and emotional energy invested in sports-watching. Winning seasons are actually the worst because they suck you in all the more. In fact, with most teams most seasons, there comes a moment (with the Mariners, it’s usually when they lose for the fiftieth time somewhere around early May) where I’m so fed up that I emotionally let go of the team and the season and then something amazing happens. I feel like a man born again, relieved of my Sisyphean burden. The sky is blue again and I can hear the birds. But then I find out they’ve won a couple of games in a row and… I’m back on the crack.
Some of you will protest. You’ll say that nothing is more important than family and that sports bring your family together. Not buying it. All kinds of crummy things bring families together. Ever heard of the Sopranos? The Gambinos? The Godfather? Shoot, boating on Sundays is a great way to bring the family together!
Others will say that we can’t spend our WHOLE lives doing family history and some diversion is not only tolerable but healthy! (This will typically come from people who aren’t familiar with actually doing family history.) I agree that some diversion is healthy. Among the myriad ways my father has redeemed himself from hooking me on sports is that he took a teenage boy to the opera—and not just once. No kidding. Some of my favorite memories. I realized, while reading this great talk the other day, that I have not yet brought my son—or my daughters—to the opera. So we’re going. (Get ready, kids.) Hopefully we can arrange to go during a so-called important ballgame. (My kids have never seen the Grand Canyon, either—and we live in Utah!)
Still others may say that participating in the drama of human achievement is an admirable form of refinement in itself. Well, I don’t know. Seems there’s a lot more admirable human drama and achievement going on professions all around us which don’t get nearly the attention they ought to get. Perhaps we should be cheering on nurses or mental health workers or school teachers.
There’s a great scene at the end of George C. Scott’s version of A Christmas Carol, which I watch every Christmas season religiously. In it, Scrooge has “come to himself” (see Luke 15:17) and begun mending his ways. When he returns to his nephew and his wife to repent for his lack of kindness and affection over the years, he says, very sincerely “God forgive me for the time I’ve wasted”—a line which reaches the center of my heart every time I hear it. (You can see that here—just go to the nine-minute mark and watch for a minute or two.)
“Time flies on wings of lightning; We cannot call it back,” says the song. We have such little time. Would that I might use mine better!
Living "after the manner of happiness" 