Putting in an Effort

Today, I gathered four tennis balls from the tennis courts at my school. The first three were easy. One was stuck pretty low in the fence, and the other two were just lying on the ground. They were almost too easy. The last one, however, was about as high up on the fence as a tennis ball can get. To get to it, I had to roll a set of portable bleachers across the lengths of two tennis courts and stand on the highest bench of those bleachers so I could just barely reach the fourth tennis ball with a stick. But you know what? I appreciate that fourth tennis ball a bit more than the other three, mostly because of the work I had to put into it.

Life is hard. At least, the more worth-while parts of life are hard. Getting and keeping a job, raising a family, keeping covenants, and achieving Celestial Glory are all fairly difficult things to do. Yet, those things are absolutely worth doing, and we appreciate them all the more for the work we put into them.

Too often, I shy away from doing difficult things because they'll be difficult, and I doubt that they'll be worth the effort, but maybe, sometimes, the effort itself is what makes those things worth doing. People don't climb mountains because it's easy. They climbs mountains, among other reasons, to challenge themselves and to prove to themselves and the world that they can do difficult things. More than that, they are willing to put in the effort required to do difficult things.

I spent at least five minutes today retrieving a tennis ball. I should be willing to put in at least that much effort to do things that are more difficult, but infinitely more worth-while.