Born Good

I was reminded this morning of a truth that I've known basically my whole life: people are born good. All people who are born on this earth are born with a tendency toward good, for two main reasons. 

The first reason people are born good is that people are born with an influence called the Light of Christ. Commonly known as a conscience, this influence helps us recognize right from wrong and helps us know to choose good. 

The second reason people are born good is because people had a chance to choose good before they were born. There was a war in the premortal world, and those who are born on earth are those who sided with God in that war, whereas those who sided with Satan will never be born. 

Thus, everyone who is born on earth has a conscience and already has premortal experience following it. That's why people are born with an innate tendency toward good. People are born with goodness inside of them, and they were born because they have already chosen to act on it.

Making Room for Introverts

Tonight, I went to my Ward's Halloween Party, but being the introvert that I am, I spent much of that time alone. I helped set up for the party, then snuck off to a quiet room to do homework. When I was satisfied with my homework, I rejoined the party, which was now well underway, ate some refreshments, admired the decorations, and then helped clean up. I didn't mingle much. In fact, I deliberately avoided small talk twice before the evening was done. And, because of this, I actually had a fairly enjoyable evening.

Naturally, behaving so reclusively runs counter to the entire point of a social gathering, and I almost feel bad about rebuffing the people who tried to chat with me and invited me to join their table. But the fact is, I was happier on my own. If they were offering me fellowship, then my answer was No, thank you. Or, if they were seeking fellowship, I'm sure there were many other people at the party who were willing to provide it. I'm not not one of those people.

Some people are extroverts. They love small talk and thrive at parties. They crave social connection and form fast friendships. I'm not one of those people. I'm an introvert, and I know it. And tonight, I was confident enough to satisfy my introversion rather than forcing myself to socialize with everyone I met at that party. Tonight, I kept quiet, spent most of the time in quiet spaces, and interacted with others only as much as I wanted to, and because of that, I enjoyed the party far more than I had expected to. Before the party, I had considered not going, but now I'm glad I did.

I'm sure I'm not the only introvert in the Ward. I'm sure there are many people who don't go to church parties, and might not go to church at all, mainly because they don't want to be forced to interact with people. My opinion is that, if people don't want to visit or chat with other people, we shouldn't make them. We should instead make room for introverts, let them approach at their own pace and/or maintain a comfortable distance. People shouldn't be crowded out of the church for just wanting to sit and listen. I worry that the church focuses too much on "reaching out" and "encouraging participation," forgetting that there are many people who would rather not interact in that way.

Of course, I'll keep coming, I'll keep smiling, I'll keep exchanging meaningless pleasantries, and I'll keep sharing my thoughts when I feel that I have thoughts worth sharing. But I'd rather do this at my own pace than feel socially compelled to converse with every extrovert who strikes up a conversation with me. Generally speaking, conversations should be consensual, on the parts of all parties involved. And insofar as there are parties involved, we should make sure there's room for introverts at them, lest they may not come as all.

Vicarious Service

I just learned about an enormous charity project, one even bigger than the TeamTrees project of late 2019, wherein MrBeast raised over $20 Million to plant over 20 Million trees. Now MrBeast is raising $30 Million to remove 30 Million pounds of trash from the ocean, and I just have to say that I really love the idea of these projects and what they mean for the world. And you know what? I think Christ love it too.

Granted, during His mortal life, Jesus Christ focused more on helping people than on saving the planet, but before it, He created this planet, and I think He would want us to save and protect it (besides, the planet probably didn't need saving back then).

I also briefly doubted the value of donating money to a charity project instead of helping the project more directly. Not many problems are solved just by throwing money at them, and it seems far more moral to do something good than to pay someone else to do it. Still, I'm comforted by the thought of Jesus commanding the rich young ruler to donate money to the power and by the thought of our own Fast Offerings. Naturally, volunteer work is valuable, but money is, too. And while donating money may not feel as meaningful to me as serving directly does, it still does good. That money goes toward supporting the people and projects who do the service, so donating money is kinda like serving vicariously.

So, I'm going to donate money to MrBeast's TeamSeas charity drive, and I hope you do, too. It's good to do service, and I believe that doing vicarious service by donating money to worthy causes is good, too.

"Find New Roads"

I occasionally see a Chevy commercial that encourages the viewer to "Find New Roads," but, setting aside the obvious meaning of that we should go out and find roads that are new to us, this advice is practically impossible to follow. New roads aren't "found;" they're made. If we want to "find" a new road, we have to make it. Of course, this may also be also be what Chevy meant. Maybe they intend for us to be such trailblazers that we discover new ways of doing things, ways that are so good that other people start following our example. We are to find/discover new roads.

Whatever Chevy meant, doing almost anything of value will take a certain amount of effort on our part. Maybe that means blazing new trails and making new roads, or maybe it's best to keep following the old roads that still work just fine. Maybe you'll need to repair some roads or search through hundreds of known, existing roads until you find the ones that will take you where you want to go. We're all going down roads in life, whether we're blazing new trails or following other peoples'. What's really important is to decide where we're going in life, figure out how to get there from where we are now, and find, make, or follow whatever roads will get us there.

Planning (Too Far) Ahead

I believe that it is generally important to plan ahead. That's why I maintain a rotating To Do list, listing what I need to do on or by certain days and taking each day as it comes, always looking a short way ahead to see what's coming up next. Yet, it occurs to me that the extent to which one can plan ahead depends on a lot of factors, including some unknown and unknowable factors.

No one can predict the future. No one had Covid-19 scheduled in their plans for 2020. Unforeseen events can mess with one's plans, and the further one plans ahead, the more likely it is that unexpected events will interfere with those plans. Granted, you can schedule in some resiliency, such as by setting aside more time for a task than you think the task will take, in case something goes wrong and the task takes longer than expected. And one can adjust their plans as needed as they go. But I'm not sure how much value there is in making plans that you know are going to have to change later anyway.

There are also personal limitations to consider. Sometimes, people just don't have the time or energy to plan too far ahead. My rotating To Do list, for example, rarely goes beyond a few weeks. Planning too far ahead can, in some cases, lead to anxiety about tasks that, realistically, can't be addressed yet and aren't even issues yet. It depends mostly on a person's frame of mind. If you can look at a distant future task and not worry about it yet, that's great. If you find that your anxiety is doing more harm to you than the good your plan is doing, it might be better to not plan that far ahead.

In general, it's good to plan ahead. It's usually better to have a plan than to not have one. Yet, our lack of knowledge about the future and our lack of ability to deal with the future can create practical limitations to our ability to plan ahead. Planning ahead is an excellent idea, but it still makes sense to not try to plan too far ahead.

Lies Meant to Protect

When is it okay to lie to children? One simple answer is "never," and that answer is easy to get behind. Even if the lie is harmless, perhaps concerning the nature of those who visit our homes on certain holidays, I think it's best to not spread lies and erode their trust in those who are supposed to be trustworthy.

Yet, I can imagine some circumstances wherein lying, or at least reframing the truth, may be the morally right thing to do. When a tragedy happens, when something happens that would crush a child's spirit, it might be best to lie, or at least to omit important truths, in order to soften the blow. Sometimes, children aren't ready to handle certain truths. A certain level of maturity is necessary to be able to face such truths with grace. That's why I think it might be wise to not tell them the whole truth, at least not until they're ready to hear it.

I wonder if the same is true for us. After all, we are spirit children of our Heavenly Father. We may not be ready to hear all the truths God would like to teach us. But, if that's the case, would God lie to us? Would He be willing to lie to us to protect us from truths we're not ready to hear? I don't know. But I do know that maturity is important, especially for those who want to prove that they're ready to hear the truth.

On Being Flexible

Remember a few days ago, when I blogged about Building Character and how we can, within certain limits, make ourselves however we want to be? Well, those limitations might be more limiting than I let on. I spoke about being able to develop certain skills and abilities, and I stand by that, to a certain extent. We can become proficient in almost any skill we practice. However, I neglected to consider how our Ability Scores and other mostly immutable traits can limit our ability to do certain things well. A paraplegic, for example, can possess great Strength and proficiency in Athletics, but that won't help them run a marathon well, unless they're allowed to "run" it in a wheelchair. There are times when we, like Mike in Monsters University, need to recognize that there are certain limitations that no amount of skill or practice could overcome. Yet, we can often find ways around them.

I'm currently creating a D&D character named Mialee Yaeldrin, the daughter of Erevan Yaeldrin, a character I ran in a previous game. Mialee wasn't born with the natural talent that her father had, so she can't follow the same path of heroism he did. Nor does she have the strength to wield most weapons or wear heavy armor, so she can't pursue heroism the same way normal, non-magical people do, either. Instead, her talents lie elsewhere, allowing her to tap into a different kind of magic and become a different kind of hero. She can still be a hero; she just needed to find a path to heroism that played to her strengths and circumvented her weaknesses.

We often need to do something similar. We often hit certain limits or weaknesses, and we need to find clever ways to get around them. We can still pursue the same goals, but our pursuit of those goals may take a different form than we might expect. A person who is unable to learn the piano can still become a musician by practicing a different instrument. A monster who isn't scary can still be part of the scaring industry by teaching other monsters how to be scarier. And a character who cannot become a Paladin / Celestial Warlock / Divine Soul Sorcerer can still be practice heroism by becoming a Cleric.

There are limits to what we can and can't do, but if we're clever enough and flexible enough, we can often find other ways around them.

Hope for the Best, Plan for Everything

I think there's a certain amount of Wisdom in hoping for the best and planning for the worst. Yet, it makes sense to plan for the best, too. It would be unfortunate if you got a lucky outcome, but didn't have a plan in place to take full advantage of your good luck. So, I think it makes sense to have multiple plans, covering a range of potential outcomes. When it's viable to make so many different plans, it's good to have a plan for whatever may happen, be it the worst possible outcome, the best, or anything in between.

Building Character

When you make a character in D&D, you can decide almost everything about them. You choose their ancestry, background, class, skills, abilities, height, weight, appearance, personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. And that's just the stuff I could think of off the top of my head.

In our own lives, we don't have quite that much control over who we are, but we do have more control over ourselves than we might think. We can't choose our ancestry, background, or starting class, but we can increase our skills and abilities and perhaps even our class. We can't choose our height, but we have some control over our weight. And we can't control everything about our appearance, but there are some aspects of our appearance we can control, depending on how much time, energy, and money we put into looking that way.

But the one area in which we have most control is our "personal characteristics," meaning our personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. Through effort, we can change and control our personality traits. We can choose what ideals we uphold. We can form bonds with the people and places we choose to be close to. And while we can't choose what flaws we start off with, we can learn to overcome them and carefully prevent ourselves from developing new ones.

Through careful and diligent effort, we can control a lot about ourselves, and we can make ourselves into more or less whatever kinds of people we really want to be. We can't choose much, if anything, about how we start, but we can choose how we build our character from there.

Support Through a Stressful Evening

Tonight was a rough night. I felt stressed about all the things I had to do, couldn't do, and shouldn't do. I came rather close to making decisions I would have regretted later. But I made it through. I managed to get through the evening mostly through the help of my brother and my best friend. They helped me in ways that I don't think anyone else could have. With their help, I managed to be strong enough to endure the stress of the evening without breaking anything, over-eating, or making any other regrettable decisions. I'm proud of myself, and I'm grateful to Joe and Nick for being there for me. I needed them tonight, and they helped me. I hope that I can be just as good a friend and brother to them as they are to me.

"I Love This Game"

Almost every time I play D&D, I find myself saying "I love this game." Last night, I not only said it, but also shouted it, at least a handful of times. Of course, one of those times, we weren't even playing D&D anymore.

Yesterday, I stole my friend's debit card. Well, I borrowed it. Without his permission. Or knowledge. ANYHOW, I borrowed it, not so I could use it, but so he couldn't. He was planning on buying me lunch that day, so I took his card, and a swapped it with mine, so when he bought me lunch, he did so with my card, so I actually bought him lunch instead. I'd have bought him that pack of spell cards, too, but he insisted on using his own card once my subterfuge had been discovered. As we were discussing the trick I had played on him, I remarked that "I love this game," meaning, perhaps, the "game" that I had played on him.

Tonight, I said it again, but this time, I was comparing the prices of Oreos. I normally bring Oreos to D&D nights and bring the leftovers home. But it has come to my attention that I eat too much sweets, and I've decided to stop bringing so many leftover Oreos home every week. I knew that there were packs of sleeves of Oreos, so I did a good deal of comparison shopping, and I ultimately found an option that's viable, less unhealthy, and slightly cheaper than what I'm currently doing. In essence, I played a numbers game, and I said I loved that game.

Turns out, life is full of games. I play a form of Tetris every time I load the dishwasher. Taking quizzes is like a memory game. Essays are word games. Traveling is an exploration game. Sometimes, our pets get in each others' ways, and I play a game I call "herding cats." Life is full of challenges, but many of those challenges are basically puzzles, and puzzles are a kind of game. Life itself can be a game, if we choose to see it as one.

Personally, I would like to choose to have a positive attitude and see nearly everything as a game. A serious, important game, maybe, but still a fun game. A game I can win. A game I enjoy playing. A game that frequently causes me to grin and say "I love this game."

My Rotating To Do List

When I have upcoming tasks to prepare for, and especially during the school year, I maintain a rotating To Do list. This list extends from the present date down into the near future, usually two or three weeks, marking when assignments are due and when I plan to do them. This list "rotates" because the present date is always advancing, so the To Do list advances with it.

I like this system because it reminds me of my deadlines and helps me evaluate how to spend the intervening time. For example, I was able to spend most of the day with my friends today because I had already done a good deal of work on my upcoming assignments, and I know that I have a decent amount of time set aside over the next few days to finish them off. I knew I could afford some leisure time today because I've already figured out what I need to do and when I'm going to do it.

I think it's important to give a proper amount of attention to the past, the present, the near future, and the distant future. My rotating To Do list helps me focus on what I'm doing now, tomorrow, and over the next few weeks. It doesn't extend far into the future, and it doesn't extend at all into the past, but it helps me organize my time when I need that organization the most.

Retaining Experience

Tonight, during our family scripture study, we read D&C Section 122, including the evocative descriptions of all the bad things that could happen to Joseph Smith in verses 5-7. However, this list famously ends with the somewhat comforting words "all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good."

I recently ended a D&D campaign, and all of the characters in that campaign chose to retire and to return home (or set up a tavern in what was once the villain's lair), all except for one. One of the characters was chosen to carry on into the next campaign with all their levels, treasure, and magic items. Essentially, this character is carrying all of the EXP and rewards he has gained from one world into the next.

We do the same thing when we pass on. When we go on into the next world, we carry with us all the wisdom we've gained, all the lessons we've learned, all the intelligence we've accumulated. Essentially, we bring all the experiences we've had in life with us.

Granted, not all of those experiences will have been pleasant. Life involves plenty of unpleasant experiences, like those listed in D&C 122:5-7, but all of those experiences can make us wiser, stronger, better people. Essentially, they can make us more like God.

If we allow ourselves to learn from our experiences, and use them to make ourselves better people, we can find ourselves becoming grateful for all our experiences, even the unpleasant ones, and we can be grateful that we get to take them with us when we pass on.

A Dissatisfactory Lack of Effort

I got a decent amount of homework done today, but it wasn't very satisfying. I don't feel like I did my best on that last paper. I kinda rushed it. This... this is an interesting thing to notice about myself. I'm not really upset that I did or might have done poorly, and I'm not worried about what grade I'll get. I'm disappointed because I don't feel like I did as well as I could have. I feel better when I do my best.

The stoics teach that it's unwise to set our value on the outcomes of our actions or of luck. We can't control the outcomes, but we can control our efforts, so making a solid effort should be satisfying enough. The reason I'm dissatisfied right now is because I don't feel like I put in as much of an effort as I could have. If I had put in a worthy effort, I think that would be satisfying, regardless of whether I felt excited or nervous (or nothing) about the coming grade.

I would like to feel satisfied. I'd like to feel proud of myself. I'd like to feel that I had done well. In order to do that, I will need to put in greater effort.

Controlling the Genre

I recently saw a Facebook post talking about what we can and can't control in our lives. Our lives are like a movie, where we control (some aspects of) the main character, and precious little else. We can't control the rest of the cast or the budget or the overall plot, but according to the Facebook post, we can control the soundtrack by wearing headphones. That's true in a lot of circumstances, but one thing I think the post got wrong is saying that we can't control the genre.

I think that we can control the genre of the story of our lives. Granted, we can't control the events of our lives and how our decisions play out, but we can control our attitude about what happens. If we choose to view the events of our lives as funny, we can make our lives comedies. If we choose to view events as terrible, we can make them tragedies. Our lives may involve action we don't want, but that doesn't automatically make our lives action films. Yet, if we want our lives to be action films, we can add action to just about anything, at least in our imaginations. For those with enough imagination and the right attitude, we can make our lives fit whatever genre we want for it.

So, we can control the actions of the main character, we can control the soundtrack that plays in our headphones or our heads, and we can control the genre by controlling how we view the events of the film. There are certain times when it feels like we have no control of our lives, like we're strapped to a chair, watching our lives play out before us like a film. But there are a few things that we can always control, and our attitude is one of them. We can't always choose what happens, but we can choose our emotional response to what happens, and that's what allows us to control the genre of our lives.

Stargazing

When people look up at the sky at night, each person sees something different than what other people see. Some people see constellations and stories. Some people see the final frontier. Some people see an inky darkness filled with dreaded unknowns. Some people see a vast emptiness devoid of anything. Some people see the marvelous workings of astrophysics. And some people see the marvelous workings of God.

The thing is, I'm not sure that any of them are wrong. Space is many different things to many different people. Space is many different things at once. Space can inspire all sorts of feelings. Peace, excitement, awe, anxiety, hope, hopelessness, isolation, and communion. What a person sees in space depends largely on the person looking.

Next time I look up at the night sky, I'm going to try to notice how I feel about it, and I'll try to find out why I feel that way. Looking up at the stars seems like it might be a good way to look into myself.

The Aggregation of Everyday Acts

For family scripture study tonight, we listened to talk about Oliver Granger, and other saints like him, who are perfectly ordinary, and who yet do a remarkable amount of good. This good isn't accomplished through great acts or even through miracles, but through the aggregation of everyday acts. Every little bit of good we do builds on all the other good ever done, and like grains of sand that together form a large dune, all our small acts and efforts add up to something great. None of our contributions are too small to contribute. Every little bit of good adds to the greater good, no matter how small it is.

Perhaps Oliver Granger never did anything remarkable himself, and maybe we won't, either. But together, we can do a remarkable amount of good.

A More Stoic Approach to Pain and Misfortune

A day or two ago, I was given an assignment to write a bit about stoic philosophy, and I realized that I was basically being assigned to write a blog post. Well, waste not, want not. Now that the assignment has been graded and I can't be docked for self-plagiarism, I can share with you what I wrote.

I’m not terribly good at dealing with pain and misfortune. Just the other night, I was struggling with some computer software that I need to use for a Business class, and it was frustrating. Or rather, I was frustrated by it. Or perhaps, I allowed myself to become frustrated. Marcus Aurelius wouldn’t have. He, and other stoics like him, would have remained calm and kept the situation in perspective. Sure, I need the software to work so I can record my presentation, and I need to record my presentation so I can submit it for a grade, but beyond that, this software issue won’t ultimately matter. My grade in this one Business class won’t drastically affect my GPA, and my exact GPA won’t strongly affect the rest of my life, let alone whatever comes afterward. Had I not written about it, the memory of this experience would have been lost within in a year or two, or a decade at most. There was no need for me to become as frustrated as I was at those inconvenient software bugs. It would have been far wiser for me to adopt a more stoic philosophy.

Marcus Aurelius wrote that it is unwise to allow ourselves to be frustrated by others. Naturally, he was talking about other people, but the principle still applies in the case of computer programs, other life circumstances, or anything else. According to The Daily Stoic, “[Marcus] believed that people do bad things out of ignorance of what is good and evil, and that we should forgive them for their errors, even when they harm us.” This is especially true of unthinking things, such as computer programs, which are not only ignorant of morality, but also of the harm they cause and of everything else. When dealing with harmful others, we should retain our composure and morality, and not waste time or energy wishing that circumstances were different. Rather, The Daily Stoic tells us that “Marcus reminded himself to not be upset by the misdeeds of others and to correct them if possible, but if they were stubborn and would not change, to accept it.” Fortunately for me, I was able to “correct” the computer program, or rather correct my usage of it, and I have reached a point where I can accept the situation for what it is.

I would like to adopt a more stoic philosophy, especially when dealing with pain and misfortune, because my current strategy of getting frustrated isn’t terribly helpful. I suppose one could argue that negative emotions, like frustration and anger, can be motivating. In this case, my frustration caused me to want to “beat” the computer program and force it to submit to my will (that, or throw my computer against the wall). However, negative emotions are not the only possible motivations to effect a positive change, in fact, such emotions can do more harm than good. Such emotions are unpleasant and detract from net human happiness just by existing, and they can prompt destructive and counterproductive actions (like throwing computers). Naturally, I don’t want to just accept unfortunate circumstances, especially when they can be changed, but I shouldn’t allow myself to become riled up by them, either. Thankfully, stoicism only requires acceptance of such circumstances when correction is impossible or impractical. Marcus Aurelius tried to correct others, when possible, and he accepted their bad behavior only when he couldn’t change it. Stoicism does not require passivity. Were I more of a stoic, I would still be able to try to solve my problems, but I would be more able to keep a level head while doing it, even while faced with potentially frustrating failure.

Striving for Improvement

One of the most important habits in life is striving for improvement. If you're terrible at something, don't give up; strive to improve. If you're excellent at something, don't grow complacent; strive to improve. Granted, there are cases where a skill or feat is impossible or unimportant, and there are times when "good enough" is good enough, but most of the time, it's important to strive to improve.

If something is worth doing, then it's worth doing well, and we can't get better at doing anything without putting in the effort to strive to improve.

Learning About Myself

Something I'm trying to learn about myself is when to try to push forward and when to take a my breaks. For example, I've learned that I'm more productive in the mornings than I am in the evenings, so it's a good idea for me to concentrate on work in the mornings and save my rest and recreation for the evenings. I've learned to try to watch my energy and emotion levels, to try to notice when I'm burned out or worked up and need to give it a rest. And I'm trying to learn when and how to remove myself from distractions, so I can focus on the matter at hand when necessary.

I expect that learning more about how my mind and body work will help me put them to work more effectively. But I also expect this process to take time and to meet with some unusual circumstances, like a possible change in my nature at some time. Still, I find it satisfying to learn about myself and to learn how to work more effectively and with less stress. It's good to learn, especially about oneself.

A Brief Frustration

This evening, I struggled with something. My classmates and I have to do a presentation for our Business class, and since we can't get together to present our presentations in person, we each have to use a screen recording program to record our screens to create our presentations. And this program did not get along with my computer. At first, I couldn't even download it, and then, when I managed to download a version of it, it had some weird bugs that caused unusual problems for my computer. Fortunately, I eventually found out how to get the thing working well enough, but for a handful or hours, I was terribly frustrated. I got fairly angry. I almost cried. It was so frustrating and broken and stupid!

But it's over now. It's fixed now. Fixed enough, anyway. I don't need to be frustrated with it anymore. I know how it works (sort of), and I know how to make it work (sort of). I now almost feel silly for having felt frustrated. That period of infuriating frustration lasted, at most, a few hours.

In the grand scheme of things, our lives don't last that long, either. We are eternal beings. We were created long before we were born, and we will continue to live for an eternity after we die. This brief handful of decades is very short period of time, from an eternal perspective.

So, perhaps I shouldn't let it get me down. I already feel silly for feeling frustrated for a few hours. Imagine how silly I'll feel if I feel frustrated for my entire life.

Situational Advice

I think that most advice, if not all advice, is situational. For example, honesty is generally the best policy, but there are certainly circumstances in which honesty could have devastating consequences, such as if an operator of the underground railroad is asked if they've seen or helped any escaped slaves. Being honest is usually a good idea, but there are times when it's not.

The same can be said of two pieces of contradictory advice that I've heard and read recently. At General Conference, I heard that it's important to look down the road, but on a Facebook post, I read the advice to "Focus on the step in front of you, not the whole staircase." So, which is the better advice? Naturally, since the long-term view came from a Conference talk, it would seen to have better credentials than some quote on Facebook, but the actual answer is that it depends. Some people focus too much on the present and should focus more on the future, and some people focus too much on the future and should focus more on the present. Whether a piece of advice is good or bad for any individual depends on the circumstances of the individual hearing the advice. Maybe I need to look further down the road, and maybe I need to focus on the next step. It just depends.

So, I would advise you to take all the advice you hear or read with a grain of salt, even this advice. There may be times when advice is truly universal and should be adopted by everyone, regardless of circumstances, but at all other times, I think that it's important to apply wisdom and the Spirit of Discernment in your evaluation of advice, even advice from prophets. Maybe it's good advice for you in this situation, and maybe it isn't. You'll have to evaluate that advice for yourself, no matter who or where it came from.

A Place to Focus

I spent basically all of today at the library, doing homework in a place where there were very few distractions. Thankfully, it worked. I was able to focus and accomplish some work that I had been struggling with for days. Perhaps I ought to go to the library more often.

Similarly, I should also visit the Temple more often. Being there won't necessarily help me with my homework, but it will help me with my spiritual work. There are few distractions there, so it's easier to focus on spiritual matters and connect with the Holy Spirit there, which is something we all need to do as frequently as we can.

Unfortunately, the Temple's a lot farther away than the library, so it'll take me longer to get there and back, and I'll need to spend a considerable amount of time there to get the benefit of being there, but I should still try to carve out some time for it, or at least try to find a way to reduce distraction and connect to the Spirit here at home.

Life is full of distractions, and they can make it difficult to make progress, academically or spiritually. We should seek to visit and create spaces where we can avoid distractions and enjoy a deeper focus.

Grace Period

As of me writing these words, I have an assignment due in about 15 minutes, and it's not quite ready. Thankfully, it doesn't have to be. My teacher for this particular class has the generous policy of accepting assignments that are up to two days late. Assignments are always due on Fridays at 11:59pm in this class, but the Saturday and Sunday afterward form a "grace period," where the assignment is technically late, but not marked down for being late.

Arguably, life is a sort of "grace period" as well. It's a period of time where we're supposed to learn, and we're allowed to make mistakes. Naturally, there are things we're supposed to do or not do, but even if/when we mess up, it won't necessarily put a bad mark on our permanent record. As long as we repent before it's really too late, our imperfections don't have to be permanently damning.

That said, neither grace period is going to last forever, and our earthly grace period has a sort of "abusing it and lose it" policy, where if we try to abuse the system, such as by deliberately sinning with the intent to repent later, the system will prove less reliably exploitable than we might have hoped. We still need to repent and get our homework done, even with the small amount of leeway we've generously been given.

We all rely on grace periods like these. We just need to be careful to not grow comfortable with relying on them.

Confidence, Despite Setbacks

I have an assignment due tomorrow. The assignment is supposed to be a script for a 4-minute presentation about a company meeting its social responsibilities. The trouble is, the presentation is supposed to incorporate a lot of numerical data about the company's goals and their actual progress, but I haven't been able to find data that lines up. I've found a goal they set about providing disinfected water, and I've found some data about how much they're doing to help fight the pandemic (I'm presenting on the Clorox company, by the way), but I haven't found anything about whether they met their Safe Water goals or anything regarding any Covid goals. Naturally, this is likely because the pandemic cause and unexpected shift in their priorities, but I still need to fill a 4-minute presentation with as much factual data as possible and to try to tie it all together. Another problem is that I have work tomorrow, so I may not have much time to work on the script from my presentation.

Still, I'm confident that I can find enough data to fill the presentation, or to have at least one good data point per slide, and that I can fill out the rest of the report with interpretations and transitions that explain the data and connect it into something cohesive. This will take more work than I'll have time to do tomorrow, but I'm sure I can get something somewhat passable done by the end of the day, especially if I go and get some restful sleep now.

I've hit major setbacks in my efforts to do the research and outlining for this project, but I'm confident that my presentation will still go well enough by the end of it, even if I have to write some extremely creative transitions to tie my data points together.

All's Well That Ends Well

I have had numerous experiences that went poorly until the very end, but then ended well enough, leaving me satisfied. And I've had several experiences that went well until the took a turn for the worse at the end, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. In each case, the overall experience was greatly shaped by how it ended.

Life can be rough. There are trials and afflictions to endure and challenges to overcome. As an experience, life leaves a lot to be desired. Yet, life won't last forever, and it will eventually end. Whether mortality is, as a whole, a positive or negative experience depends largely on how it ends. For those who have behaved badly, life can have a bad ending, and the whole experience would have been a huge disappointment, but for those who behave well and repent, life can have a good ending that will make it all worthwhile.

Most experiences include a few rough patches, but those are temporary. What matters most, in my memory at least, is how those experiences end.

An Author or a DM

President Camille N. Johnson, Primary General President, recently counseled us to "Invite Christ to Author Your Story," but I think that the authorial analogy works less well than another analogy of which one might think.

Part of the trouble of looking to Christ as the author of our lives is that the characters whose lives are written by authors don't truly have agency for themselves. Fictional characters have no wills besides those that their authors write for them. I suppose one could argue that we should allow our wills to become swallowed up in the will of Christ, but if we're supposed to do that, then why would God give us our own wills in the first place. Why give us the ability to choose if the best choice is to always do what Christ wrote for us in our scripts? Perhaps God wants us to choose to follow Him, but that's not really choosing. That's letting God and Christ choose for us. I believe that God wants us to make a more proactive use of our agency than that.

That's why I see God, not so much as an author who wants to dictate our entire life's story, but as a DM who wants to write the story with us. Dungeon Masters and D&D players share story-telling responsibilities in interesting ways. The moment to moment gameplay loop goes something like this: sees the DM describes the scene, including whatever just happened moments ago, the player decides what their character will do or try to do, sometimes dice are rolled to determine how well or poorly the player's plan plays out, and the DM describes what happens. In these situations, the DM can drop hints to encourage or discourage certain behavior (like describing a tapestry as "flammable" or "informative"), but the decision always lies with the player. The player has the final say in what the character does (or tries to do). Player agency is sacrosanct.

But when it comes to the overall plot of the game, the authority over storytelling shifts more in the favor of the DM. By shaping the world the characters inhabit, controlling the major world events, and determining the behavior of the non-player characters (NPCs), including the antagonist(s), the DMs exercise a great deal of control over the shape of the game. DMs determine who the enemies are and what they do. DMs determine what sorts of challenges the characters encounter. DMs shape the broad strokes of the story, even while it's left up to the players to fill in the details of how the story plays out.

But what really sells me on the analogy of God as a DM is the idea of how DMs and players need to work together in order to tell a good story. DMs need to respect players' agency over their characters and their characters' actions, and players need to respect the DM's plans and story-telling intentions. If the players work against the DM, the story will become directionless and chaotic and will likely end poorly, and if the DM neglects the will of the players, they players may grow resentful and rebel against the DM. But when the two work together, they can create a story they can both enjoy.

I don't want God to "railroad" me or to try to dictate my life's story, but at the same time, I don't want to neglect God's plot hooks and force God to endlessly improvise and come up with alternative plans. I want to respect God's desires for this story, just as I want Him to respect mine. Hopefully, if we cooperate, we can together tell a story with which we can both be satisfied, which, to me, sounds a lot more appealing than letting God write the whole story Himself.

Available Anytime

Apparently, Facebook was down for most of the day today. People who rely on Facebook for communication had their line of communication interrupted if not completely cut today, which I'm sure was frustrating to many people. This is part of what makes me glad that we always have an open line of communication to God, angels, and the Holy Spirit, who can hear and answer our prayers at any time, day or night, no matter what else is going on. Facebook wasn't available for a large portion of today, but God always was, and He always will be.

Renovating my Foundation

This morning, President Russel M. Nelson spoke of the importance of having strong foundations, and of the need to renovate or reinforce one's foundations if one's renovations aren't strong enough. Having been raised in the church, one would think that my spiritual foundation was solid. Yet, I'm finding that my foundation is not as strong as I'd like it to be.

You see, my foundation was mostly built on following along. I listened to what I learned in Primary, and I never really questioned it. I followed the Gospel Path all the way to a two-year evangelical mission because that was the path that was laid out for me. While I was on my mission, I struggled, partly because I didn't really have a personal testimony of what I was teaching. I was just repeating what I had been told.

Now well into my adulthood, I've learned that my foundation of following along isn't strong enough, especially now that the path forward is less clearly marked. I need to gain a personal testimony. And to do that, I need to do what thousands of missionaries have told almost everyone to do: Study and Pray.

So, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to study the Bible and the Book of Mormon and perhaps other scriptures, and I'm going to pray to God for answers that I can know in both my heart and my mind are true.

I don't want to rely on just believing in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints because I was raised in it and never questioned it. That's not a strong enough foundation to get me through the trials and temptations of life. I need to gain a personal testimony and learn for myself whether it's true.

Slopes

My favorite message from Conference today is too personal and too unusual to share, but my second favorite message was the one that involved algebra. One of the General Authorities spoke of our lives as lines, with our starting points not being anywhere near as important as our slopes. As long as our slopes are positive, we will end up really well off, no matter how low we started, but if our slopes are negative, it will end poorly for us, no matter how high up we were when we started. Thus, no matter how high or low we started, and no matter how high or low we are right now, our slope matters far more than our past or current position. I love the hope and inherent warning in this message. It's a warning that we shouldn't get too comfortable, but it also gives us hope for a bright future, no matter where we are now.

I find it comforting to know that, despite the unfairness of life, people will ultimately end up wherever we deserve to be. Wherever we started in life, we can control the slope of our lines and thus control our destinies. Where we end up in the future depends entirely on how positively or negatively we choose to live them.

Advice for Everyone

I'm looking forward to General Conference tomorrow. I'm looking forward to hearing inspiring messages, insightful truths, and sound advice. In General Conference, there's always something for everyone. That said, I acknowledge that not all of the advice I hear tomorrow will be custom-tailored for me. Some of it may need adapting. Some of it may not apply to me at all, at least not yet, or not anymore. God will give all of us directions through His Prophets tomorrow, but since we're all in slightly different places, spiritually, the directions He intends for you may be different than the directions He intends for me, even though we have the same destination in mind.

So, while we listen to the counsel we hear tomorrow, let us seek the spirit of discernment to know which advice we should apply in our lives at this time. I know that, if we listen with the Spirit, we will each hear messages that are meant for us, even if those messages are different.

In each Conference, there will be sound, prophetic advice for everyone, though it's true that not every piece of advice will be for everyone.