16 November, 2009

Enjoying The Journey

Well, Stake Conference was this last weekend and I would like to highlight one thing I appreciated from the vast array of spiritual knowledge that was given. The stake Patriarch spoke about "enjoying the journey". While this may be a fairly oft spoken of topic, I really enjoyed his remarks. He was an older gentleman (not surprisingly) and was very enthusiastic and warm. He, and others that night, from the adult session, talked about being young and newlywed and having so much to do. He quoted people saying, "Well, I'll be able to be happy and satisfied when we have a house." or, "When we have a new car, we can enjoy ourselves." He listed a lot of things that apply there: Children, money, education, etc. It's important to remember that these things aren't "when life finally begins", they ARE life. We're living our life right now. It's already begun. Enjoy it while you can. There will always be a next "when". You'll never run out of things to shoot for so you might as well enjoy yourself getting to the milestones. By no means do I mean be lazy or spend all your money, or do anything unwisely. All things, especially children and other life-changing decisions, take deliberation, and even prayer and fasting, in some cases, to know if you're ready for it. Just don't spend so much time "getting there" that you forget where you're trying to get to.
This is good advice to me. This last month or so has been very busy, very stressful, and very fast. Money is not in abundance and neither has my patience been. Even now, I am lying on the couch, trying to fight off the achy pain in my teeth from the dental work I just had done, feeling bad about the fact that I haven't gotten to cleaning the house yet and my wife is only at work for another five hours.
Well, that's my advice to you. Learn to enjoy your time here. Another thing the Patriarch said was that life isn't a test. When you get done with a test, you say, "Whew! Glad that's over with!"
a more fitting ideal is that this is our chance to Enjoy the Journey, but just don't forget where you're going either. This is definitely made easier when the person I'm traveling with is also the person I plan to spend forever with.

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