Tag: perspective

A Little Perspective on Life

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20241 Comment

Dear Will:

For Christmas, my son Luke bought me a one-year “subscription” to StoryWorth. Every Monday, I get an email, prompting me to respond to a question about myself as a keepsake for my children and granddaughter. This week’s question: How has your faith influenced your perspective on life? Since you and I have become close over the years, I thought I would share my answer with you as well.

First, some context: Through my mother, I am a sixth- or seventh-generation Mormon (depending on which genealogical line you trace), a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For his part, my father claimed to be a member of the Church of England, which, he said, explained why he didn’t attend services (too far away). So as I was growing up, my mother would schlep me and my six siblings off to church services each Sunday while my dad stayed home tending the pot roast. Throughout my formative years, I remained an obedient but indifferent member of the Church, not thinking much about it or its teachings one way or the other. While other kids my age dutifully played along and parroted the standard professions of faith and belief that they were taught, I remained a detached observer—in the Church but never really of the Church, if you catch my meaning. As I observed my older siblings testing various types of rebellion and defiance, I assumed that one day that would also be me.

When I was 14 years old, my family moved from Redlands to Glendora, California—just as I was entering the ninth grade—and things changed for me dramatically. At a junior high school, the ninth-graders were the old kids, the cool kids, and without upperclassmen to put us in our places we worked hard to act more grown up than we really were. Because I was the new kid in town, I got invited to parties, offered weed, pulled this way and that by different social groups who were trying to figure out if I was one of them. I wondered if I might be as well. I recall being asked about my beliefs and personal practices (“So, do you drink?”) and always answering awkwardly, usually making up some excuse for being a straight arrow because I had not taken the time to decide for myself.

Meanwhile the kids in my church social group were tugging me in another direction altogether, and in time, without really making a conscious choice, I found myself pulled into their orbit. At some point, I couldn’t really tell you when exactly, I made the choice to lean in and truly become the thing I had spent 15 or 16 years merely observing. While I don’t recall the particulars, this much I remember distinctly: at 15 I didn’t really know what I believed; but by 18 I had decided to become a missionary. Those two years in Uruguay were life-altering, and I have remained actively involved in my church ever since.

But all of that is merely preamble—necessary backstory, I think, since so much of what I believe and how I live has been influenced by my association with the Church. But what of the question regarding my faith? Rather than delve into lots of religious doctrine, let’s just focus on those of my core beliefs that really get to the heart of the question:

All my life I have believed in God—that part has been easy for me. I tend to agree with the Book of Mormon prophet Alma who said that “all things denote there is a God.” As I observe the wonders of the world around me, it just seems obvious (concurrent evil and destruction notwithstanding). Beyond those observations, I have had moments of clarity when I have felt God’s presence and an assurance that He has touched my life in a number of significant ways. Along with that baseline belief, I have faith that there is more to life than what we can extract from our 90-or-so years of mortality—that I pre-existed and that I will continue living beyond the grave. I could say more on this—much more in fact—but rather than turn this into a sermon, let’s get to the point about how all of this has influenced my perspective on life.

Because of my faith, I believe that what I do in this life—or more to the point, what I become—really matters. I have spent most of my life striving to become a better version of myself—kinder, less selfish, more patient, more virtuous, more loving. The idea that we should love one another and treat one another as we wish to be treated is not unique to my Christian faith, but it certainly informs how I choose to live. It’s easy to imagine that I would be a very different sort of person if I thought that ultimately how I interact with others is just a choice that really doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be a person of faith to believe and to try to live by the Golden Rule, of course. But for me, it has helped me tremendously to be preached at regularly and to be surrounded by others who are striving imperfectly, just like me, to be better tomorrow than we are today. Not that I’m doing it for show, but I would hope that others could observe my life and see evidence of my faith in the choices that I have made. They will also see plenty of evidence of times and circumstances when I have fallen far short of my own aspirations (sorry), but in its totality, I hope the trend of my life is in the right direction—that I have made at least some progress since my days at Goddard Junior High.

Because of my faith, I tend to be more optimistic than pessimistic, a man more prone to hope than to despair. That hopeful perspective has been tested in recent years—by political and environmental issues, in particular—but I try to maintain an “eternal perspective” when I start to feel the negativity drag me down. Over the last few years, I find myself returning again and again to something the Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans: that “all things work together for good to them that love God.” That isn’t to say that it will be easy or even just easier for me because of my faith, but I do think my faith helps to carry me through the rough times. In 1999, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave a discourse that I love, a sermon that captures in better words than I could hope to compose the nature of my hopeful perspective in the face of adversity. I wholeheartedly recommend that address to anyone and everyone.

And finally, because of my faith, I have no fear of death. Rather I anticipate it with curiosity and wonder. It has been painful for me to lose loved ones—to be sure—but I have taken comfort in the surety that we may be reunited one day. I remember sitting with my mother during her final months on earth when her body was breaking down and she was ready to move on. She said: “I want to see what it’s like.” I have a few more years left in me (I hope), but I agree with her on the essential point: this life is great, but there are even better things to come.

Thanks for asking.

PW

Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash

Contemplating My Navel

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20241 Comment

Dear Will:

I wouldn’t be the man I am today were it not for the navel orange. Or should I say, one navel orange in particular.

As a nineteen-year-old, I moved to Uruguay to begin a two-year stint as a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was ill-prepared but full of youthful swagger—quite literally, as it turns out, because the locals told me they could tell I was an American simply by the way I walked. When I first heard this (and I heard it more than once), I found it kind of funny, failing to see the caution in the commentary.

I began my assignment in the capital city of Montevideo, home to about half of the nation’s three million citizens at the time. I lived in the historic Ciudad Vieja with another missionary, Elder Carlos Vaz, an uruguayo with whom I did not get along. He was a decent fellow, but I found him wholly inadequate to the job. I should emphasize here that as a brand new missionary in an unfamiliar land, I had no clue what I was doing. Nevertheless, in my view Vaz worked neither hard enough nor smart enough for my taste. Consequently, I often found myself “following from in front” (as I called it) in order to try to get him to pick up the pace. (Feel free to cringe with me for a moment.) Needless to say, I sometimes found myself halfway down the block before realizing that I was supposed to have turned at the previous intersection. 

Isn’t it great when life gives you metaphors? But I digress. . . .

Elder Vaz and I took our midday meals in the home of Roque Vega and his wife, who lived in a small apartment just up the street from ours. One day, Hermana Vega served oranges alongside our mondongo, and I (literally) dug right in, jabbing my thumbs into the rind and tearing the outer flesh of the fruit into large chunks of broken skin. Elder Vaz watched with concern, finally informing me that I was doing it wrong. As he took out his knife and meticulously pared away the peel to demonstrate, I responded with condescension and defiance. I’m certain I did not yet have the Spanish vocabulary to fully express my feelings, but I can tell you for sure what I thought and wanted to say: “Hey, pal. I grew up in California surrounded by orange groves. I’ve eaten more of these things in my life than you have ever seen. Don’t tell me how to peel an orange!”

A more circumspect individual—one with just trace amounts of humility—might have paused in that moment to consider Elder Vaz’s alternative point of view. But at nineteen, I was certainly not that guy. It was only much later that it occurred to me—in one of those “how did I miss that?” moments of clarity—that during lunch that day, maybe what Elder Vaz was trying to say was that tearing apart an orange with your bare hands in Uruguay is inappropriate or maybe even rude. In language I could barely understand (both literally and figuratively), perhaps he was trying to let me know that while seated at the table in someone else’s home, I was behaving like a barbarian. 

That would not be the last time during my two years in South America that I displayed a barbaric lack of cultural sensitivity and awareness. But fortunately, over time I came to learn the truly powerful lesson that as a fresh-off-the-boat American was then beyond my comprehension: MY way of doing things is merely ONE way of doing things. One way out of many, you could say. Not necessarily better or worse—just different. 

There’s no question that these things become easier to see and feel when you venture out from your own neighborhood and take a look at how other people live. If the only point-of-view you know is your own, how can you possibly see things differently? Or to put it another way, if you are determined to “follow from in front,” how can anyone else possibly show you the way? Different is OK, is what I’m saying, even if you ultimately decide never to serve mondongo to your own children. There is, after all, more than one way to peel an orange, even if these days I do prefer to peel mine with a knife.

It’s true. How’s the saying go? “When life gives you oranges, make . . . (um) . . . metaphors.”

PW

A Fitting Symbol

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2013Leave a comment

Dear Will:

It’s Easter morning and I awaken to a quiet house. The scene is very different from the one I encountered as a boy, when my siblings and I would arise on Easter morning to find a basket set out for each of us, baskets filled with that stringy, green cellophane stuff (what do you call that?), jelly beans, chocolate eggs, and other candy. Then my brothers and sisters and I would scatter about the house and yard looking for the Easter eggs we had colored the night before. Although I don’t remember ever visiting the Easter Bunny at the mall the way kids do these days, I do recall that one year we received an actual bunny on Easter morning. That was pretty cool.

Easter was fun. It was exciting. And the candy was delicious. But this quiet house now feels much more like Easter to me.

That change in perspective has been gradual, to be sure. At some point—at an age I do not now recall—I remember asking what bunnies and eggs and whatnot had to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus. I remember that the answer—some convoluted bit having to do with symbols of birth or life or whatever—seemed contrived and completely unsatisfying. It didn’t really make sense.

The problem, of course, is that bunnies and eggs (and bunny eggs, for that matter) have nothing whatsoever to do with the resurrection of Christ. I’m pretty sure these oddments were adapted from some pagan rites of centuries long ago, but no matter. They might have easily been cooked up by the writers of Seinfeld for all they tell us about the event we celebrate at this time every year. And in that sense they are harmless enough, I suppose. Harmless, that is, if they do not prevent us from seeing and feeling and understanding the larger Truth this Christian holiday (holy-day) commemorates.

The essential, truth-telling symbols of Easter are these: an otherwise nondescript patch of ground in a grove of olive trees, stained with drops of sweat and blood; a cross on a hill on the outskirts of town; linen clothes lying in an otherwise empty tomb, the head-wrap neatly folded, separate from the rest; two hands and two feet made perfect by the scars that now remain as a reminder of who He is and what He did for all of us.

When Mary, Joanna, and others arrived at the sepulcher on that historic Sunday morning, they were met by two men in shining robes who said to them: “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen” (Luke 24:5-6). Later that day, Jesus—the Christ—appeared to Mary, Peter, Luke, Cleopas, and many others of his disciples. The “good news” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was then taken to the world by these eyewitnesses, and it has spread across the globe since that glorious day.

The Apostle Paul, who himself witnessed the Living Christ one day on the road to Damascus, put it this way: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22). In simpler terms, Elder David A. Bednar summarized the message of Easter morning this way: “Jesus died; He is not dead.”

That is good news—fitting for an annual commemoration. And while I treasure memories of my own children dashing about the yard, plucking up fluorescent, plastic eggs, those are not what I would consider Easter memories. If asked to choose, the decision for me would be an easy one: To honor the death and resurrection of my Savior, I will always prefer a quiet house at the dawning of a perfect Sabbath day.

PW