Dealing with pain: becoming like little children

Previously, I wrote a post about the link between pain and anger. I would like to add an insight I recently had on this subject, since it strikes at the heart of what it means to be human.

In that previous post, I asserted that anger arises from pain, and that humans react to pain by becoming angry. We do this because it distracts us from the pain and restores a sense of power following a moment of powerlessnes. Anger is a reaction, and I feel that all reactions are inherently inferior to actions, which are consciously enacted by an agent – someone who possesses the freedom and knowledge necessary to make her own choices. Actions stand in stark contrast to reactions, which are simply responses to stimuli. After all, you don’t even need a simple nerve net to react: plants and bacteria react all the time. Humans are unique in all the universe in their ability to act, yet we often forgo its usage and spend our lives reacting, like lesser creatures.

Anger is, in fact, one of the most destructive and harmful reactions of all. As I said earlier, pain inspires both sympathy and empathy, and urges others around you to come to your aid. Anger drives others away at precisely the moment you most need comfort and consolation. And I haven’t even mentioned the enormous damage you can inflict on others (and yourself) when you lash out in anger.

The alternative, however, is to endure the pain quietly and humbly, without seeking revenge or blaming others for your suffering, as if discovering who is at fault will make the pain magically dissipate.

This is terribly difficult, of course. Turning the other cheek is one of Jesus’ most controversial and difficult commandments. A wise friend of mine once asked me, “what do you do if you just can’t take it anymore? Sometimes the pain is just too much to bear.”

I’ve thought a lot about what my friend said, and was struck by a thought I had while taking a walk this morning. I realized that resorting to anger as a knee-jerk response to pain is a learned behavior. This isn’t something that we’re born with – we learn it as we go through life. It’s those damn offenses that we suffer every day, both small and not-so-small, that teach us to react that way.

The reason is fear: we’re afraid of pain, so we react in anger because we have learned that it lessens the pain and removes the awful sense of powerlessnes and hurt that comes when someone offends you – and by “offense” I am referring broadly to any action that causes someone hurt or pain. There are few teachers in life more effective than pain, and fear is the result of lessons learned. We learn to fear the things that caused us pain, and we develop strategies to cope with it; anger is one of the most powerful of these strategies.

So what am I trying to get at? I have always been fascinated, and even somewhat confused, by Jesus’ teaching to become like a little child. In both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon, he repeatedly insists that conversion to his way of life is tantamount to becoming like a child again, that it is a rebirth – involving necessarily an unlearning of some of the things we learned as we grew up and became adults. (See, for example, 3 Nephi 11:37 in the Book of Mormon, or Matthew 18:3-4).

Thinking about children and offenses (incidentally, right after exhorting his disciples to become as little children, Jesus goes on to teach about offenses), I realized that children react to offense without anger and without apportioning blame on others. They simply absorb the pain, and often simple sit down and cry. They don’t try to discover the cause of the pain, but rather to deal with the pain itself. A child knows no other way to react than to cry it out, and to reach out for his mom or his dad, or someone else nearby, to comfort him and help him make it through.

I realize now that Jesus’ words were more profoud than I had thought – that in this sense, we truly do need to become as children. And I would like to take children as our examples of how to deal with pain, in an attempt to respond to my friend’s question.

First of all, children teach us that the way to deal with pain is to cry it out, so to speak. I’m not advocating literally crying everytime we endure an offense of any kind. Nor am I trying to discourage understanding the painful situation in an attempt to minimize needless painful encounters in the future. But the ability to cry is cathartic and healthy, and in moments of serious pain there is nothing wrong with shedding tears. One of my greatest fears is to some day become so stone-hearted, so covered in callouses and scars that I lose the ability to cry. Of course, those who know me well know that this is an unlikely eventuality ;)

But far more important than simply crying it out, we need to learn how to reach out to others when we’re in pain, the way children do. Instead of focusing on who we can blame, we should focus on who we can ask for understanding and comfort. Despite being individuals, and even though life has a powerful tendency to isolate us from one another, we were not meant to go through this life alone. No one is strong enough to bear their burdens alone. We all need help. Indeed, I think one of the reasons God has created a world in which offenses abound is to give us the opportunity and need to reach out and help each other when we’re hurting.

Like the command to endure offenses well, without anger or retaliation (the “turn the other cheek” principle), the act of helping others through their trials and pain is also a core part of the Jesus’ teachings, and personifies the very heart and soul of Christianity. The parabol of the Good Samaritan in the New Testament, and the prophet Alma’s sermon at the waters of Mormon in the Book of Mormon are two examples. In the later case, Alma teaches that all Christians must be willing to bear one another’s burdens, mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.

We don’t need to endure life’s pain, trials, and agonies alone. We shouldn’t try. Children don’t, they always reach out for loving arms in times of distress. We should reach out, first and foremost, to God, who possesses not only an infinite love for us, but also the power to heal our wounds and pour in balm. But we must not neglect our friends, either – many of whom stand willing to help if we but ask. In fact, it is often in wading through pain together that we learn to love and ties of friendship are strengthened. It is in being there for each other that relationships sink deep roots, allowing what might otherwise have stayed a superficial relationship to develop into real friendship.

Perhaps most of all, it is in serving one another, in being there for each other, and by reaching out to others when we need comfort, as little children do, that we slowly transform into true Christians – the kind of transformation Jesus was talking about when he urged his disciples to become as little children.    

The ultimate virtue

It is common, during moments when our patience is sorely tried, to hear someone say, admonishingly, “patience is a virtue.” I would like to rephrase this wise statement slightly: patience is the virtue.

Or perhaps, stated another way, patience is the ultimate virtue. With it, every other virtue becomes attainable, every trial is conquerable, and true strength is found. Without it, every virtue disappears, strength withers, and vices of all kinds, shapes, and flavors take their place.

Franz Kafka put it best. He said (and I paraphrase somewhat): “there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience we lost the Garden of Eden, and because of impatience we may never return.”

I first began to see the connection between patience and every other virtue – and its converse correlation: impatience’s link to every kind of sin – while thinking about the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Kafka must have noticed the same connection, because his quote resonated strongly in my mind when I read it.

This ancient and well-known story has never seemed quite complete to me, and I don’t think we generally understand it. As it is commonly told, God gave Adam and Eve two commands: not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; and to have children. But there is a contradiction in the two commandments – as they were stated above, Adam and Eve could not obey both forever. As long as they kept one, they could not keep the other.

Let me explain. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (myself included) believe that before we were born here on Earth, each of us lived with God as a spirit; the soul, in other words, existed long before it was joined with a mortal body through birth. It was God’s plan that we each obtain a physical body in addition to our spiritual one, and this was to happen by being born to a mother and father here on Earth. Adam and Eve were the first couple, and all the rest of us would gain a physical body through them or their children. Hence, the commandment to multiply and have children. So far, so good.

But unless they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve would remain in their innocent state, not able to tell the difference between good and evil. They were like little children, who have no comprehension of sex and the process of reproduction, let alone the mental, physical, and emotional maturity necessary to be a parent and raise children. So if they didn’t eat the fruit (commandment #1) then they would never be able to have children of their own (commandment #2).

Why would God give contradictory commandments? The answer is quite simple: he wouldn’t. He’s not dumb, and he doesn’t give commandments that are impossible to obey. Clearly, the story is not telling us everything – we’re only getting part of the picture. What I think God actually told Adam and Eve was: don’t eat the fruit of the tree yet. He knew perfectly well that Adam and Eve would eventually need to be able to comprehend good from evil. That was, after all, a core part of the whole plan he had put together. Understanding good and evil and learning to choose the good is at the core of what this life is all about. So why would God forbid it absolutely? It makes no sense. It seems pretty clear to me that God fully intended for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit eventually, but not right away.

Why couldn’t they eat the fruit right away? Good question. And I don’t know the answer for sure. But I have a couple guesses.

First, Adam and Eve needed to grow and increase in understanding before they could eat the fruit. You might be thinking, “wait a second! I thought you told me they couldn’t grow in understanding until they ate the fruit.” Good point. But just as a child grows in understanding very gradually at first, so perhaps did Adam and Eve. Even though a one-year-old doesn’t fully grasp what good and evil are, and has a very limited understanding of the world, he certainly knows and understands more than an infant who is, say, only one week old. Perhaps Adam and Eve needed a similar growth period before they could understand the consequences of eating the fruit of the tree. I mean, it would change their world forever – opposition would enter the story and the perfect world they had inhabited would become the imperfect one we all know so well. The God I know would never force anyone – let alone his own children – to make that choice without understanding what it meant. If Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree, it would be because they chose to do so.

Second, perhaps patience was the very lesson God was trying to teach Adam and Eve by telling them not to eat the fruit just yet. In essence, he was testing their ability to wait. After all, the fruit was delicious, and some of the consequences at least were very desirable. I mean, if someone else knows something that you don’t, it makes you want to know too, doesn’t it? Adam and (especially) Eve realized that there was a lot more to life than what they knew, and that eating the fruit was the key to discovering what that was. I even believe that God may have told them that eating the fruit was a good and necessary step for the plan to unfold – but that they were to wait until later to eat it.

What does all this have to do with patience, virtue, and vice? In essence, Eve’s sin – the first of all and, I believe, the archetype of all sin – was impatience. When she ate the fruit from Satan’s hand, she was saying to God, “I want this, and I want it now. I’m not willing to wait for you to give it to me when you think the timing is right.”

Similarly, nearly all our sins are impatience in some form or another. Take immorality, for instance. Sexual desire is neither virtue nor vice, in and of itself. It all depends on how and when it is acted upon. And it’s primarily a question of timing: sex with someone with whom you have not made sacred, solemn commitments is a serious sin; sex with that same person after making those solemn commitments (i.e. the commitments entailed in the marriage covenant) is not. Sexual sin, therefore, is fundamentally a matter of impatience. By the same token, virtue – immorality’s opposite – can only be found where there is patience enough to wait until marriage vows have been made.

Our ability to forsake sin and return to God’s presence after this life is predicated on cultivating patience. Without patience, we will never be able to return home to the paradise with God our Father that the Garden of Eden represents.

But patience isn’t only necessary to forsake sin. It is also essential to cultivate every virtue that we have a name for. This is in part because we are all imprefect beings and overcoming  our weaknesses and cultivating virtues in their place is a painstaking, slow process that requires persistent effort over time. In effect, it requires patience. But even more than that, every virtue incorporates patience into its very essence. Patience is the very fabric out of which each virtue is woven.

It’s like energy: almost every form of energy man knows how to exploit is, in essence, solar energy. Obviously photovoltaic solar panels use solar energy, but nearly all the other forms we’re familiar with do as well. Take wind power, for instance. The sun heats up the land masses and seas of the Earth at different speeds. This is because the specific heat of water is higher than that of rock or earth – meaning that during the day the land heats up faster than the oceans and seas, while at night the land cools faster. This temperature difference between land and sea gives rise to a corresponding temperature difference in the air directly above them, and masses of air with different temperatures have different pressures also. It is this pressure difference in adjacent masses of air that gives rise to wind, which we harvest for energy using wind turbines. So even wind energy is, essentially, solar energy. Similar arguments can be made for oil and natural gas too, which are solar energies at heart.

In the same way, all virtues are patience in essence, but in a different form. Take hope, for instance – in my mind one of the greatest virtues. Hope is more than mere wishing, it is believing in good things, and believing that good things will come. The realization of our hope is not instantaneous, obviously, or else there would be no need to hope at all. To hope, then, is to be patient. It is to accept a delay between our good, noble decisions, and the consequences that we firmly believe will follow from them. One cannot hope, therefore, without patience. And patience brings hope within reach.

With all the numerous ways in which we can do evil and hurt or harm others; and with the equally numerous virtues we can and must cultivate, it can seem overwhelming and even impossible to lead a good life by forsaking sin and cultivating virtue. Our attention is pulled in too many directions at once, and we never seem to make any real progress in any of them. So, for me at least, it’s comforting to greatly reduce the complexity of the picture and simply focus on one virtue and on discovering its applications in all areas of life.

Patience is the ultimate virtue.

Catching a cab in Amman

Life is like trying to catch a cab in Amman during rush hour.

This epiphany struck me just the other day while I was trying to just that. For those of you who haven’t been there, Amman in the capital city of Jordan, a small desert kingdom in the Middle East, definitely a developing country without oil or water or much of anything else to support itself. The city itself is a sprawl of similarly constructed buildings without any discernible planning or organization. There is no mass transit to speak of – the buses have no published routes or scheduled times, nor are there any official bus stops. You just figure out generally where they go and hail one that you think is headed in your direction, and get off when it seems to have decided to go elsewhere.

I don’t use the bus; I prefer taxis. They are extremely cheap compared to American cabs, and they are ubiquitous throughout the city. But they have their problems too. They are very well-used, since there is little alternative to getting around, and thus during rush hour 99% of them are full. And their drivers are a diverse and eccentric lot, to say the least. I met one who was a Canadian-educated engineer who spoke perfect English (don’t ask me why he was driving a cab); I’ve had many others tell me to cross the street and get a cab over there because I was headed in that direction and they didn’t want to have to turn around. Others have been alternately friendly, full of advice or admonition, or just plain rude. Many have tried to cheat me out of a lot of money (up to 10 times what the fare should have been), taking advantage of the fact that I was new to the city and didn’t know the ins and outs of cabs and where everything is located in the city. In brief, in four short weeks I have had the gamut of experiences with cabs in Amman.

One more thing about getting a cab in Amman. During rush hour, like I said, the cabs are nearly all full. And those who aren’t full typically don’t want to pick you up. I have no idea why. Plenty of guesses, but no real answers. The real answers probably vary widely anyway. The upshot is that you can wait – along a busy road, even – for 30 minutes or more with your hand out before a cab will stop to pick you up. I have seen literally hundreds if not thousands of cabs drive past me before one stopped to take me back to my apartment. And very often, after stopping, as soon as the driver sees who I am and hears me tell him where I want to go in my imperfect Modern Standard Arabic (rather than the local dialect, which I am only slowly picking up and have never studied) he shakes his heads, waves his hands at me and drives away, leaving me standing there like a fool who has no idea what just happened or why.

Let me share something about myself: I don’t like being rejected; I don’t like being made to look like a fool, or like I got duped because I’m some naïve, kid who is easily taken advantage of. But what I hate most of all is to have that happen while lots of other people are watching. I think everyone fears rejection, but I fear it more than most, and I’m absolutely terrified of others watching me get rejected.

The reason I’m telling you this is that I have to face exactly this fear every day after class when I want to go home. I’m tired, somewhat depressed from a hard day learning a hard language, and I want to retreat to the quiet, contemplative sanctuary of my apartment. Instead, I have to stand on the side of a very busy road with my hand out getting rejected by literally hundreds of taxis – all the while getting gawked at by everyone – those in their cars, those in the cabs, and those walking past me along the road. I mean, I’m the foreigner who looks lost and probably doesn’t know his way around – an easy target for stares.

It’s hard. Let me tell you, there are times when I wonder if I will ever get a cab, if this ordeal will ever end and I’ll ever get home. And when I finally do catch a cab (thirty long minutes later), I never know if I’m going to have to fight tooth and nail in a language I don’t speak well not to get totally ripped off and cheated. You just never know what’s going to happen when you try to catch a cab in Amman.

So how is this like life? In lots of ways. First off, it requires serenity of spirit and mind, and a great deal of patience. I remember a day when I lacked both, and after 10 emotionally abusive minutes in which several cabs rudely and condescendingly told me to cross the street because their cars happened to be pointed the wrong way at the moment, I stormed away, angry and hurt, to find some meager degree of privacy where I could recover and get ready to try again. Other days I’ve had serenity and patience, but boy could I feel how much I was using and needing both.

Getting a cab in Amman is also unpredictable, just like life. You never know what kind of cab driver you’ll end up with – could be a jerk; could be completely indifferent and silent; could be extroverted and talkative; could be friendly, caring, and interested. He could try to cheat you for all your worth. Or he could treat you with perfect fairness – or more.

Some of these experiences are unpleasant or downright hurtful. I hate being cheated, but far more than that I hate the feeling I get when I know the person across from me is trying to cheat me – that he or she has malicious, hurtful intent, and that it doesn’t even bother them to feel that way about me, someone they have never met before. I hate having to get in their face, stand my ground, and call them out on their lies and mean-spiritedness. I hate calling people out on their bad behavior – it embarrasses them and therefore embarrasses me.

So I’ve come to hate taking taxis in Amman, because I’m afraid of those hurtful situations. I’m afraid of the public rejection and I’m afraid of interacting with people who bear me ill will – who are actively trying to hurt me and treat me poorly. In fact, I dread going to class in the morning (when it’s much easier to get a cab, and they tend to be nicer) because I know that if I do I will have to go through the ordeal of trying to get a cab home in the evening.

Getting a cab in Amman has therefore taught me this life lesson: because life is unpredictable and you never know when you’re going to have a hurtful encounter you have to put some space between your feelings and others’ actions. Even if the person across from you is trying to hurt your feelings, you can’t let them. You have to create a buffer between their intent and your reaction that absorbs the venom and neutralizes it before it reaches your heart. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself fearing and avoiding life because of the fear of being hurt. What a tragedy that would be, fearing life while living it!

Finally, getting a cab in Amman during rush hour has reminded me that life isn’t all bad! The other day, after 20 or 30 minutes of watching people stare at me as I stood there with my hand out, supplicating for a taxi, one finally stopped. When I got in, I immediately knew I had lucked out. He understood my less-than-perfect Arabic, knew where I wanted to go, and then asked me where I was from. We had a friendly conversation for the length of the ride. It was obvious he was doing more than making conversation; he was legitimately interested, and I could feel the goodness of his intentions. He corrected my Arabic mistakes and told me about himself as well. When we reached my apartment he asked for no more than what the fare ought to have been. I had a broad smile on my face and said a sincere “thank you.” He said goodbye using my name, and really meant it.

I had a glow in my heart that after that encounter that lasted all evening and that erased all the weariness and uncertainty of the day. Life is like that. You have to take it as it comes. But there are wonderful encounters ahead of you, mixed in with less pleasant ones. The trick is not to fear, but rather to hope. It is in becoming strong enough to endure the offenses of life, with an attitude of hope for the marvelous encounters that fill it with light, that makes life beautiful.  

Learning and faith

Learning and faith are powerfully connected. Learning increases faith, and faith is required for learning to take place. Faith and learning are a self-reinforcing pair that can form a virtuous cycle – leading the learner to ever greater light and knowledge of the truth. But the right conditions must be in place. This concept is very new to me and I have only begun to explore it, so this post is just a first stab at what seems to be an extremely important area of study.

While my exposure to the concept goes back further, I was most recently inspired by a passage in the Doctrine and Covenants (a book of revelations given by Jesus Christ to his prophet, Joseph Smith and considered scripture by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), section 88, verse 118. Let me quote the passage here:

“And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”

I found it striking that the response to a lack of faith was to teach: “as all have not faith…teach one another…” Learning, in other words, begets faith. But also, at the end of the verse, we are commended to “seek learning…by faith.” So the reverse is also true: faith is essential to learning!

Now, the atheist or agnostic is probably rolling her eyes at this point, thinking “hey, I don’t need to believe in God to be able to learn. And learning doesn’t make me believe in God either.” Good point. But I never said one had to believe in God to be able to learn. What I said, was that faith was necessary for learning. Let me clarify: faith is belief. To have faith is to believe something with less than 100% certainty. Anytime you have less than absolute proof of something, but you believe it none the less, you have faith.

Faith is therefore a part of every human life, not just those with spiritual or religious inclinations. When scientists first propose a new theory or idea, they have little proof that they’re right. But they advance the idea anyway – believing it to be true before they know for sure. This is faith. Even after much evidence has been collected, there is still uncertainty in the result. In fact, scientists are required to quantify their uncertainty. For example, they might be able to say, “we are confident of this result to within one tenth of a percent.” But even then they can’t know for sure that their theory is correct. Further experimentation might overturn their theory, or reveal it to have been only partially true. So to believe the theory is correct still requires faith.

Another way to see it is that faith is confidence that something is true. The more faith you have in someone or something, the more confident you are in that person or thing. Under this definition, a scientist’s faith in a theory increases as more evidence is discovered that supports the theory. This may seem counter-intuitive, but faith is actually proportional to the degree of certainty, not inversely proportional – as many mistakenly think.

Now back to learning. My first claim was that learning increases faith. How is this so? If we use the concept of faith as confidence that something is true, then it becomes clearer. Say I have heard of a particular principle, idea, or concept (let’s go with ‘concept’ from here on out, for simplicity’s sake), but I’m not at all sure I believe it is true. Perhaps I have only heard it explained vaguely or briefly and my understanding of it is not very strong. At this stage, my lack of faith (or confidence) in the concept is justified: I cannot have faith in something I do not even understand. That would be foolish, and atheists and agnostics are right to criticize this behavior – what is often referred to as ‘blind faith.’ True faith is not blind: it is a well-founded confidence that something is true. To gain that confidence, I must first increase my understanding; in other words, I must learn.

There is, of course, no guarantee that the more I learn about a concept the more confident I will be in its truthfulness. On the contrary, I may discover that it is an unreliable or even completely false concept, and my faith in it will diminish. And rightfully so: since faith is confidence in the truthfulness of something, as you discover that it is not true, your faith in that thing should diminish.

From the preceding argument it should now be clear that as knowledge and understanding grow, so does faith. This is simply because you cannot have faith (or confidence) in something you do not understand. If, through learning and increased understanding, you discover a concept to be false, then you discard it and your faith is no greater than before. But if you discover it to be true (or that there is some truth to be found in it – perhaps it is only partly true), then your faith has grown in that thing – and your overall faith in the truth has therefore augmented. As you discard false notions and embrace those that are true, your knowledge expands to an ever-wider circle, encompassing a larger subset of all truth. And as it does, so does your faith in the truth.

So much for learning increasing faith. One final word, however. And this is so important that I feel bad adding it as an addendum, but this post is getting too long and I need more time to think about it. For this process to occur (for learning to increase faith), the teacher must also have faith in what she is teaching. Faith increases a teacher’s capacity to promote learning.

The key here is that the teacher must teach with her faith. In other words, she must communicate her faith in the concept to the student. A teacher who does not really believe what she is teaching – or who is incapable of communicating that faith to the student – is much less likely to be able to assist the student in increasing her own understanding and faith. In other words, she will be a less effective teacher.

This is because it is very possible to learn something by rote without really gaining confidence that it is true. Stated otherwise, it is possible to simply learn about something without really learning it. To truly understand something, you must find out for yourself if it is true. You must be confident about the matter. Only then have you truly learned it. Faith, therefore, is a strong barometer for learning.

Which brings us, of course, to my second claim: that faith is necessary to learning, and increases both its pace and quality. But this point will have to wait for a later post.

The meaning of each day

The prime value and meaning of each new day is that it is an opportunity to love. If we cannot come to see life this way, we will not have lived to the fullest, or gained what we were intended to gain.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard is that you should always be thankful every day just for waking up. Don’t take it for granted that you will wake up tomorrow and have another day to live.

I’ve often wondered about this advice. It sounds so true – to use a physics analogy (which I warned you in my introductory post might happen occasionally), it makes my soul resonate on some of its most fundamental frequencies when I hear it and think about it. But I’m not sure I truly know why. I mean, most days I’m not frankly that grateful to wake up. I know that sounds awful, but it’s true. And why? Because most days are so full of responsibilities, expectations, requirements, work and stress that I can’t honestly say that I wake up saying to myself, “Oh goody, here we go again! I love this!”

Which gives me pause to consider why the advice to be grateful every day just for waking up is so profoundly true. I mean, I’m not grateful. But I ought to be. What am I missing?

My own experience has provided a window of insight (and I’m sure, on reflection, you will discover yours has too) that might lead to a breakthrough on this one. In an attempt to resolve the conundrum, I asked myself, “have I ever been grateful just to wake up? When have I been grateful to be alive, to have the incredible pleasure of living? When has life been joyful to me?” Let me share with you some examples I thought of, and see if you can tease out the commonalities, the underlying themes.

The first experience I thought of was during my two year volunteer mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereafter referred to as “the church” – yeah, it’s kinda long). For two years I spent all day, every day with a colleague talking to people about God, his son Jesus, and the plan they have for our lives here on Earth. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but for most of it I was legitimately happy. Sure, there were times when the homesickness (I served thousands of miles from home), difficulty getting along with my colleague, or the stress of talking to complete strangers in a foreign language overwhelmed my happiness. I’m only human. But for most of the time, life was joyful and I was happy. Not because life was easy. It certainly wasn’t. But even though it was hard, I was happy.

Second, I thought of a time when I volunteered (after my mission ended) on a committee – again, affiliated with the church – that organized, planned, and put on inspirational talks and lectures about spiritual matters and life in general for the students at my university. We would invite talented, wise individuals to come address the student body (the event was open to the entire university, but most of those who attended were members of the church), then prepare the main meeting hall of one of our churches for the event. This involved setting up hundreds if not thousands of chairs. Then, after everyone had left (which often took an hour after the event ended) we would take down the chairs and clean the building before heading home. In all, it would often take four or more hours of effort on the day of the event and several hours of preparation beforehand.

One winter night after one of these events I left particularly late. As I exited the building I realized it had been snowing hard the entire time and the ground was covered in at least 2 feet of snow. It was cold, and I hadn’t dressed for the snow, as it wasn’t snowing when I had arrived hours before. I trudged across the parking lot, the snow coming up past my knees, heading towards my car. It was a lump of white in an otherwise deserted parking lot: I was the last to leave. As I unburied my car with my arms, I remembered I had a test the following day in a very difficult physics class and I hadn’t had time to study much.

It was then that a funny realization hit me: I was happy! I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. I was cold; I was wet; I was the last to leave on a miserable snowy night; I had a test the next morning that I should have been stressed out about. But I wasn’t – on the contrary, I was happy.

I could mention other experiences too, but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave it at two. Thinking back on these and other times I felt truly happy to be alive, I discovered the following remarkable correlation: my being happy had nothing whatever to do with the ease of my life. The level of ease, of pain, of convenience, of entertainment and fun; all these had nothing to do with my happiness. In fact, if these had been the prime determinants of my happiness or misery, I should have been very miserable, not happy.

Instead, it seemed to me that I had been ignoring my own ease, pain, convenience, or entertainment, and that this had somehow caused me to be happy. As soon as this thought hit me, I remembered my reasons for not being happy to wake up every morning. I had thought that so long as my life were stress-free, responsibility-free – in short, full of ease, convenience, fun, and short on pain, then I should be happy. And being grateful to wake up every day would be natural.

I realized that I was completely wrong. In fact, the focus on my own life and my stress, troubles, responsibilities, etc was what was bringing me down! When I forgot to think about them because I was too busy thinking about others, worrying about or serving others, I was truly happy. The motto “forget yourself” came to mind. As did Jesus’ teaching, “for whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

Which leads me back to my conclusion: the meaning of each day – the reason to be grateful and happy just to wake up one more time – is that it affords each of us the opportunity to live for others, not ourselves. In short, each day is an opportunity to love.  

The odd link between pain and anger

The other day I was thinking about anger. Where does it come from? Why do we feel this powerful emotion? And why does it always feel like reaction? Reaction to what? Trying to trace this emotion back to its source, I came across a rather startling realization: in almost all cases, anger originates from pain and/or fear. An angry person is one who has been hurt, who is suffering, or who is afraid. And properly dealing with that pain or fear can quench the anger. 

I’m not sure exactly how I stumbled on this, but if you think about specific examples and try to trace the anger back to its source, you almost always run into pain or fear, or both. Indeed, fear is the source of significant pain and anguish, so the connection is hardly surprising.

For instance, take a group of three friends. Initially, they are all equally close to one another, more or less; but over time, two of them grow closer to each other than to the third. The two are happy and sense nothing wrong, but over time the third friend grows inexplicably angry with the other two, being mean or spiteful for no apparent reason. The two friends might interpret this to mean that the third doesn’t really like them anymore, when in fact the opposite is true: the anger stems from her hurt feelings at being excluded or feeling less loved.

Or an even simpler example: you stub your toe hard. What do you do? You hop around, cursing like a sailor for half a minute while the pain subsides. Someone walking in on this scene might be frightened by the sudden burst of angry words. But there’s no cause for alarm – the anger will subside with the pain.

At first, I was confused as to why pain would lead to anger. Pain inspires sympathy and a tender desire to help and comfort. Fury, in contrast to pain, drives others away and discourages the kind of comfort and love that would best address the suffering that caused the rage in the first place. It all seems very counter productive and ironic to me.

Yet it’s true. Every time I feel angry about something it comes down to an offense: someone or something offended me, hurt my pride or my feelings. But if this natural reaction is so counterproductive, then perhaps by understanding the reason behind it one can learn to overcome it. This is especially important in light of Jesus’ famous statement: “Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come.” (Matthew 18:7, KJV) I take this to mean simply that it is impossible to avoid being offended in this life; people and circumstances are going to offend you every single day. So the sooner we overcome the knee-jerk reaction to resort to anger, the better off we will be.

So why is it that pain and fear give rise to anger? I think, after some reflection, that it arises from two factors. First, anger is an anesthetic, a painkiller. We resort to anger because it distracts us from our pain. Think back to the stubbed toe example. Why resort to cursing while you hop around on one foot? Because it takes your mind off of your throbbing toe a little. That’s why the cursing tends to subside with the throbbing.  Or the friend who has been excluded forgets her hurt and loneliness and rejection by focusing instead on being mean. She may not even consciously recognize that her anger is the result of her feelings of rejection, so effectively has her anger distracted her.

Second, the alternative to responding in anger makes you feel helpless; and people don’t like to feel helpless. Responding in anger gives the impression of accomplishing something  - and sometimes, if directed carefully and properly, anger can lead to getting important things done. But most often the perception of power that comes with anger is illusory and short-lived, or at worst is highly destructive, rather than productive. But those who suppress the resort to anger have little choice but to quietly, humbly endure the pain. To be honest, this is extremely hard to do. It’s why Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek is so revolutionary – and difficult. You simply have to submit to the pain without any distraction or anesthetic. Resisting the urge to anger and quietly, patiently enduring pain is, I think, at the heart of what it means to be Christian.

There is something magical in enduring pain and suffering without recourse to anger and wrath. It prevents the wounds to self and others that rage always inflicts. But it also changes you. Great patience is required, and I have learned that patience is the greatest virtue of them all; where it goes, every other blessing follows. By resorting to anger, you are forfeiting the chance to mold your character in the heat of affliction. Sometimes absorbing that heat (rather than directing it outwards at others) allows impurities to burn away, leaving you more refined.

I certainly haven’t discovered every aspect of this issue, but I’m intrigued by the connection. It seems to me that this is one of those golden keys to wisdom, maturity, and happiness in life. And like all such keys it is difficult to master. Jesus himself mastered it to perfection – which indicates how important it is for us to follow and do likewise.

P.S. I hope I haven’t offended the reader by my frequent references to Jesus. It’s just that he is, in my mind, the greatest teacher of all time; so whether or not you believe he is the savior of the world, I hope you can appreciate his role as a teacher.

The courage that should rightfully be yours

You only have the courage that should rightfully be yours when you have nothing to lose.

This says a lot about us as human beings. It says a lot about the power of fear, and the pain of hope. I think it’s sobering. After all, we shouldn’t let fear rule our lives, right?

Let me tell you a story that illustrates my point. There was this girl. From the moment I saw her I was taken aback. I immediately knew I wanted to know her better, I wanted to be a part of her life. And I wanted her to be a part of mine. It’s crazy, yeah – I mean, love at first sight is just a fantasy, right? A daydream? Maybe it is. But that’s the way I felt about her, right or wrong.

The trouble, though, was that whenever she was near me, I totally lost my cool. I mean, I’m not a confident person by any stretch of the imagination, and I lack the natural facility in social situations that many people have. But what limited social skills I do possess abandoned me ruthlessly every time she walked in the room. I laughed in a ridiculously giddy manner at everything she said; I smiled twice as much as any sane person ever should. In short, I wasn’t myself anymore. I was this different person.

Why the transformation? Sadly, I think it’s because I was hoping she wouldn’t see me, but rather someone better than me. I hoped I could make her think I was cooler, more fun, interesting, nice and impressive than I really was. I was trying to hoodwink her because I was terrified she wouldn’t like the real me, that she wouldn’t return my sentiments for her.

We’ve all been down that road – liking someone more than they like us. It sucks. And I couldn’t bear to think through what that might be like if it happened this time - but it’s happened to me before, so I had a pretty good idea. I suppressed the thought vigorously, but it came leaking through anyway, turning my hope into agony and further eroding my self-confidence – which in turn made the transformation into my exaggerated self whenever she was around all the more extreme.

Long story short: we went out a few times; I got my hopes up; I asked her to be my girlfriend; and she turned me down. Sad. But hardly remarkable or noteworthy. This kind of stuff happens every day all over the planet. Get over it, right? That’s what I did. Or, at least, I got over her as much and as fast as my heart would allow me to. I studiously avoided the “woe is me, I’m gonna slit my wrists now” mentality. I moved on.

I avoided her as much as possible. Because, try as I might, I never failed to notice her the instant she walked into the room, and I couldn’t think straight as long as she was there. I’ve decided that love is like sediment and your heart is like a glass of water. Once you fall in love with someone like that, the sediment is always there. As long as you don’t stir it up, though, it will settle at the bottom and you won’t notice it’s there. So I avoid past crushes as studiously as possible to keep things inert, like some stratified, love-sick geology.

But one day, I just couldn’t. I was somewhere I wanted to be, with people I wanted to be with, and poof, in she walks. Dang! This was several weeks after it was over and almost as long since I had seen her last. I decided it was time to stop avoiding her and just go say hello. So I did.

And guess what? I didn’t transform. Nothing. I was cool, collected, my head on my shoulders and my feet on the ground. I didn’t giggle or laugh (more than I normally do, anyway ;) and I carried on a rather lengthy conversation (compared to what I had intended) as if she was just any ordinary person. You know what else? I didn’t have any hope whatsoever that this would lead to anything else. I wanted to say hi, and that’s all. I knew I would say a few short words, that she would give me a few seconds of her attention, and then I would depart and I wouldn’t be on her mind for a second longer.

My twin lack of hope and transformation were linked. Because I had zero hope, (and therefore zero fear) I was able to be myself. And the funny thing is she was the one keeping the conversation going, not me. And she suggested we go see a movie we had wanted to see together, not me. And she gave me a wonderful, long, sincere hug when I said goodbye. I hadn’t planned on any physical contact at all. The irony of this all struck me like a meteor on my way home. I felt like it was condensing on my clothes, it was so thick.

What a shame! Are we so consumed by self-doubt and so afraid that our dreams won’t come true that we can’t be ourselves? Are we truly afraid to be ourselves? I know I was when she was around. I didn’t want to be me – I wanted to be someone else, someone better than me. I knew (or feared) instinctively that I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t good enough to make her like me.

The sad truth is we should be brave enough to be ourselves – to own ourselves - faults, weaknesses, foibles and all. And we should be strong enough to admit that not everyone is going to like us, we aren’t going to be the most popular, loved and admired person on the planet.

I think, deep down, we need to love ourselves for who we are. And yeah, that’s hard, because no one’s perfect, and so loving ourselves means coming to terms with the parts of us that aren’t admirable, that aren’t beautiful, and that might need some work to change. But there’s no use pretending to be more than we really are in the mean time, or wishing that others won’t notice the bad along with the good. God loves us the way we are, and encourages us to become better, more, greater. He doesn’t want us to doubt ourselves, to hate ourselves.

But how do you possibly overcome the fear that your dreams won’t come true when most of the time they don’t? I’m not sure on this one. Perhaps all I can offer is this: when you want something good, and you give all you can give and do all you can do within your power to get it (and by this I mean when you are truly yourself, the best you can be), then that’s all. The rest isn’t up to you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If it doesn’t turn out, then that hurts, and I’m sorry. But isn’t that the way life is? Being yourself is really all you can do.