On Friday I forgot to take my meds, the aftereffects of which convinced me that the only dose change happening in the near future is an increase. The low hits me somewhere between 10 and 30 hours after the missed dose, and it’s an unhappy place to be.
I’ve had a good weekend—fun times at the MTC with a friend, successful cleaning check (I think I’ve checked the sheet 100 times to see the little check mark next to “Pass”), some schedule organizing, inspirational hike with Becca, lovely dinner at Chadders with Becca and Marat, enjoyable Sunday spent primarily outside. Logic tells me I’m happy but the rest of me can’t feel it.
Always with depression comes more intense questioning than usual, challenging the basic truths that are supposed to guide my life. Most dominant among these questions is: why am I here?
I know that theoretically I am here to learn and grow, make and break covenants and suffer consequences and repent and vow to live more righteously. Somehow this 80-year journey is meant to prepare me for godhood and perfection. During it, I am supposed to become better.
The problem is, I don’t feel like I do. I make positive changes—the most drastic being the change from being a secretive child with a chronic lying habit to being a fairly open and almost always honest adult—but I feel like as I kick each bad habit I just move on to new ones and my overall goodness level remains about the same. Some habits have more religious significance than others, but even the ones that don’t get me in trouble with the church cause stress and unhappiness and I don’t see that they are necessarily less detrimental. This makes it hard for me to feel motivated to actively try to improve. I think I’m a decent person as is, and each time I try to eliminate something negative from my life it just seems to get replaced with some other negative—which, though disheartening, seems human. Part of mortality is being constantly flawed.
I suppose the point is to gradually decrease the seriousness of our flaws. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I feel like I’ve reached good human status, and that the flaws I possess now are just evidence of my humanity. I’m good at getting back to good human status when I slip below that, but progression past good doesn’t seem to mesh well with my humanity. So I keep changing my behavior without feeling that I’m making progress towards perfection.
But then I wonder, if I’m not progressing, what am I doing here?
Progression tends to come through challenges--it seems to me that life is designed in such a way that it will always be challenging, so that in each of our fourscore or so years of life we find ourselves beings stretched. If we hope for a day when we will be on top of our challenges, doing everything we need to, cruising smoothly (and don't we all have that hope) we will probably be disappointed--such days are few and far between, and as far as I can tell are guaranteed to preceed some new period of frustration and growth. We do grow, we become better, more able, more compassionate, more humble...but there is not some endpoint of perfection we are expected to attain, at least not in this life--maybe not ever; somehow the concept of eternal progression suggests to my mind that there will always be room for improvement and growth; unless perhaps we do reach some perfected state from which our involvement in the growth of our offspring becomes our focus.
ReplyDeleteI know life is always challenging, and I do learn from it--but my behavior stays at the pretty good plateau. So I can either continually struggle trying to improve and then be disappointed when I find myself in yet another kind of trouble, or I can just let my current negatives alone and accept them as my weaknesses. The second option is less stressful but seems to go against what we are taught.
ReplyDeleteMy all-time favorite scripture is Ether 12:27:
ReplyDelete"And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."
I take immense comfort in the statement that the Lord will show my my weakness when I come unto him. I think we all have our summer cottages in Babylon...but Christ's unconditional love and atoning sacrifice make it possible for us to consecrate even our weaknesses unto the Lord.
For me, it is in finding the willingness to lay my burdens at the Lord's feet and accept what He has given me that I find hope for becoming a better person. It's definitely not a linear progression; sometimes I feel like I take four steps back for every one step forward. But I don't think the Lord's particularly interested in efficiency.
A great post and excellent comments. I like this question because it's such a basic part of our experience here and I don't know the answers. I have so much to struggle with as well, but I think a lot of our frustrations come from the entire concept of trying to be perfect.
ReplyDeleteI had a friend who changed my view of perfection. He said that striving to be perfect is not just cutting out everything that is imperfect and what is left is perfect. I suppose that's like trying to cut out all the blemishes in a sculpture or piece of wood - what's left wouldn't be perfect. Instead I think we have to realize that we are always flawed by ourselves and can't just "cut out" our weaknesses - we are only perfected in Christ. He makes our weaknesses and imperfections whole. He fulfills them and we are perfect with him.
I agree that this is a human experience and part of humanity is weakness. In fact, I think it would make less sense for us to be here if we didn't have those things to live with. But, I think if we focus on building the good in us, rather than focusing on the negatives, then our lives get shaped into something better almost naturally and our weaknesses become strengths in Christ (I like that scripture too, Elisabeth).
I agree that it doesn't seem like I am making any progress either. But perhaps the journey and gaining experience and still holding onto Christ and the good we find and building that is really the point. Maybe it's the plateu that you are standing on that keeps rising and you just need to stay on it. =)
Becca suggested that even as our basic weaknesses remain unchanged, we gain new strengths through struggling with said weaknesses. I think she's right, and that's a kind of progression on its own.
ReplyDeleteA favorite insight from Elder Bruce C. Haven on Ether 12:27 of Elisabeth's comment: "As we draw close to God, He will show us our weaknesses and through them make us wiser, stronger. If you're seeing more of your weaknesses, that just might mean you're moving nearer to God, not farther away." (The full talk, from the April 2004 General Conference, is excellent and very much on topic: http://www.lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,49-1-439-33,00.html.)
ReplyDeleteAs for weaknesses remaining -- as Victor suggests, it's really about building good. A bad habit cannot simply be eradicated; it must be displaced by a good habit. One point that is made repeatedly in the scriptures, and perhaps most clearly in Jacob 5, is that bad can only be removed as we grow in goodness. From verses 65-66: "Ye shall not clear away the bad thereof all at once... wherefore ye shall clear away the bad according as the good shall grow".
p.s. Listening to Elder Hafen's talk is even better than reading it: http://broadcast.lds.org/genconf/2004/apr/5/5_5english.mp3
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