Mikey He Writes It

It seems to be human nature to test the boundaries of complacency by inching closer and closer to a known danger convincing ourselves we won’t get harmed.

I love playing games with my kids. It’s probably my all-time favorite thing to do ever.

There’s one little game I play with my kids almost on a weekly basis. I call it the “Hand-Snatch Game.” I’m sure there’s another name for it and I’m sure I’m not the only Dad who’s ever played it, but the game is fairly simple.

The game is played when I’m in a situation sitting next to my children, most commonly in church. Usually I have a kid sitting next to me and they’ll reach to hold my hand, but instead I snatch their hand tightly and apply gentle pressure until they’re able to pull it free. Then I open my hand, palm up, and wait for them to reach their hand again. They’ll inch their hand near again, watching for my hand to snatch, and pull back at the slightest movement of my fingers, not wanting to get caught in my grip again.

An interesting thing happens whenever I play this game. If I jolt to snatch as soon as they start to come near, they pull back immediately and don’t even get close. But if I wait… if I don’t even flinch my fingers… they’ll come closer and closer, slowly, until they are just touching my palm. And if I still wait, they will eventually put their entire hand in mine. Sometimes they’ll even look up at me and wonder if I’m still playing the game. And in that moment, my hand quickly snatches around theirs, and I get them every time.

There’s other games we play where I follow a similar pattern, like when I pretend to be a sleeping monster. The behavior from my kids is the same. They’ll creep closer and closer to me, start poking me gently, cautiously, and they’ll even start laying or jumping on my back. Then, in a moment they least expect it, I’ll shoot up from the ground, grab them by their ankles and hold on tight as they scream and try to get away.

What I’ve learned as the hand-snatcher or the sleeping monster is that if I can just wait patiently until their guard is down, until their fear of capture decreased, or perhaps until they’ve even thought I’ve stopped playing the game at all, I will increase my chances of successful capture.

It’s a fun harmless little game I enjoy playing with the kids, but it provides a simple reminder for me about the importance of not getting complacent. Of not letting your guard down.

I’ll share two experiences I had as a brand new missionary that illustrate my personal experience with this idea:

Mission Story #1

Eighteen years ago, I served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Ecuador, Guayaquil South Mission. After arriving in Ecuador to the mission office, I was sent the next day to a small town, 9 hours inland, called Catamayo. When I say small town, I mean you could walk across this town in about 15-20 minutes, something I did on nearly a daily basis. As a new gringo who barely spoke Spanish, I was trained by a wonderful missionary companion from Central America who didn’t speak any English. There was nobody within many many miles that I could really communicate with. But he was very patient with me, and with his help I quickly learned essential language communication skills and missionary training materials.

My companion was very diligent in making sure that I spent the time I needed for study, memorization, language, developing all the skills I needed for success. My companion also loved buying movies. And in this little town of Catamayo (and really, everywhere in Ecuador) there are pirated movie stands on every street corner. We’d be walking back to the apartment for the day and we would always stop for him to buy some $2 DVD’s. He was collecting some of his favorite movies to take home with him. Since we were companions, and I had to be with him 100% of the time, I would go and wait. Eventually I would go check out movies with him. Soon I started finding movies I liked as well, and I ended up buying some for myself. Nothing wrong with that, just buying movies to take home at the end of my mission.

My companion carried with him a little DVD player that we would use as part of missionary lessons with people we would talk to. We loved playing little movies about Jesus or the Restoration that we carried with us, it was engaging and entertaining for anyone interested in the message we had to share.

My companion felt the need to start “testing” some of the DVD’s he had bought to make sure they worked. So several times during any given week, he would take me to the little church where we met as a branch on Sundays and send me to a classroom by myself to study and practice my language and missionary skills, while he would pull out the TV in the other room, plug in his DVD player, and “test” his movies. I was perhaps naive to think he was really just testing them, but I tried to just focus on my studies. The amount of time we started spending at the church increased and increased. For hours sometimes, I would be studying while he was watching his movies.

After several weeks of this, I had finished up my study goals (there were little certificates and landmarks I had to surpass with memorization and language skills) so there was no need for us to spend as much time at the church during the week anymore, but we were still doing it. You can guess where this is going, eventually we found ourselves just watching movies in a room of the church building. Although I did not feel comfortable doing something that was clearly against mission rules, I felt too afraid to confront my companion. I was new, inexperienced, and weak. I wanted to get out there and do missionary work, but I felt stunted.

What started as just buying movies on the way back to the apartment turned into watching several movies a week instead of proselyting.

Mission Story #2

I’ll share another experience with this same companion. He LOVED soccer (well, fútbol), as do most people in Central and South America, and as do I! Every Wednesday evening, the Catamayo branch and any friends in the town would all gather to play soccer behind the church building. However, like most missions, there are many rules that missionaries are obligated to follow, many of them up to the discretion of the Mission President. One of those rules was we were not allowed to play soccer with members or investigators. I knew this, but my wonderful companion decided it was a rule he had no interest in following, and justified it as a good opportunity to invite potential investigators and interact with them. Again, he’s my companion so I went where he went and although at first I resisted the urge to play and would just watch, eventually I ended up right along side him playing soccer every Wednesday night.

One night we were playing and the ball was accidentally kicked over the fence that surrounded the church property. It landed on top of the tile roof of one of the neighbors houses. Being a young, active, and eager to help missionary, I volunteered myself to go up and retrieve it. It was almost 9:00 at night and quite dark and I climbed over the fence and up onto the roof.

Now, I’m from Alaska, and I’d been on plenty of roofs in my life thus far, but never a tile one. So I was very unfamiliar with how unstable and brittle these clay tile shingles could be. I walked as carefully as I could to where the ball lay, and right as I was reaching down to pick it up…

I fell through the roof. Right into someone’s house.

Thankfully nobody was directly below me. But the family whose house I just fell into was sitting close by at their kitchen table, and I scared the living daylights out of them.

Instead of getting upset, they immediately came over and started asking if I was alright, still somewhat in shock that a gringo just fell through their ceiling. Other than a sprained ankle, I told them in broken spanish that I was okay. Through the open front door, I saw my companion’s frantic face rushing towards me. I could tell by looking at him that he felt responsible and guilty for what had happened. I hobbled out of their home, apolgizing and embarrased, unsure of how to repair the damage I’d just caused.

That was the last night we ever played soccer at the church building. Interestingly enough, we also never went to watch movies at the church again for the rest of the time he was my companion.

He was transferred soon after and I remained in Catamayo with an American companion, but for the rest of his mission whenever I saw him, we would chuckle about me falling through someone’s ceiling. We had even tried to teach a missionary lesson to the family whose roof I fell through, thinking it would have been quite a unique story had they decided to join the church. They could have told their kids and fellow church members that they heard the message of the gospel from a missionary who fell from the sky into their home. Maybe some day I’ll go back to Catamayo and see what’s become of them.

Ambush Predators

Nature is full of predators and prey. We’ve all watched a video perhaps in school or on the Discovery channel, of a lion or a cheetah chasing down their prey. Eventually with speed and strategy, they capture their prey. But another type of predator we maybe don’t see as much are ambush predators. Ambush predators are usually carnivores that capture their prey by stealth, luring their prey and using the element of surprise. Ambush predators don’t have to bother with speed or fatigue, they just have a tremendous amount of patience and wait and wait and wait before launching a sudden overwhelming attack that quickly incapacitates and captures their prey. It’s a highly effective strategy and to me, even more intriguing.

Now, I shared those stories from my mission to illustrate the message of what can happen when we find ourselves inching closer and closer to what we know to be a wrong choice. Just like my kids in the hand-snatch game. If they keep their distance, they’re safe and I’ll never get them. And from that distance, we can say to that choice “you’re so far away, I’ll never even come close.” But then we find ourselves making small compromises, small adjustments in the wrong direction, justifiying and making excuses along the way, and before we know it, we’ve arrived at the choice we claimed we’d never have to make. And it reacts. It snatches us. It might even wait until we feel quite comfortable as we snuggle up right against it, then it closes in on us.

In reality, it’s not the choice that does this, it’s the consequence of the choices we made to get there. We can control our choices, but we can’t control the consequences.

Now I had a wonderful missionary campanion, and many others after him, who all made their own choices about how to serve as a missionary. But regardless of whatever choices they made, I also made my own choices. I also suffered the consequences of those choices. And not just as a missionary, obviously, but throughout my entire life.

It seems to be human nature to test the boundaries of complacency by inching closer and closer to a known danger convincing ourselves we won’t get harmed. Whether that’s physical, spiritual, emotional or mental harm, we seem to be quick to forget the consequences of wrong choices or the severity of the grip that awaits us when we get snatched.

I remind myself when I play the hand-snatch game or the monster game with my kids, that the best strategy to avoid the consequences of those games is just to steer clear. Right? To keep my distance. To not compromise or justify. So why don’t my kids do it?

Well, partly because it’s just a fun and silly game with dad. No real harm is going to come to them.

But also because that’s not reality. I’m going to slip up. I’m going to give into temptation. Everybody does. Sometimes the game is just too enticing.

And it’s what I do after that that really matters. Hopefully, I learn. Hopefully, I grow.

And hopefully, I have the strength to pull my hand back out after it gets snatched.

“Hear Him, Can you hear Him? When you’re near Him, Are you listening to the pause? Hear Him, Can you hear Him? He is speaking through the silence, To your heart.”🎵

In April of 2020 I wrote a song entitled “Hear Him.” We had just wrapped up listening to April General Conference sessions and the theme of “Hear Him” was everywhere.

At the same time, everyone was one month into the COVID pandemic. School was cancelled for the kids, I was “working from home,” and we were all a little unsure about the future.

At the time I had a job as a construction manager over a site of about 40 new residential homes under different phases of construction. New construction had just been deemed “non-essential” in the state of Washington, so my site was basically shut down.

As a construction manager with no construction to manage, my job felt pretty useless. For about a month I logged into a computer from home, participated in boring trainings and meetings related to construction, and once a day visited my job site to make sure everything was still locked up and in order. It was very odd to walk around an abandoned construction site. It was also very odd (although admittedly quite nice) to drive to work with no traffic. Everything was empty, quiet, and peaceful. It seemed like the loud and busy world around me had gone silent.

So with the world quieting down and General Conference of 2020 themed around “Hear Him,” it felt appropriate to write a song with the same message.

I’ll post the lyrics to the song at the end of this post for reference.

I often ask myself, what does it mean to “hear Him”? Does it mean I literally hear the voice of my Savior? Does it mean that I hear His voice in the scriptures I read? Maybe a specific passage that speaks to me? Is it not really a voice, but a feeling? Or maybe it is a voice, but maybe my own voice in my head? My own thoughts? Feelings? Impressions?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m sure the answer is different for nearly everyone. I have a hard time relating to others’ experiences of “hearing a voice” as an answer to a prayer. I honestly can’t say that I’ve ever had a clear answer to a prayer. But I can say that when the world around me quiets down, I can think and feel more clearly. For me, it’s easier to “hear Him” when His voice isn’t competing for my attention.

A well known and favorite quote of mine is by Boyd K. Packer: “The Spirit does not get our attention by shouting or shaking us with a heavy hand. Rather it whispers. It caresses so gently that if we are preoccupied, we may not feel it at all.”

The older I get, the older my children get, the more preoccupied I seem to be. I recently wrote a post about balance and how challenging it is to maintain. Jobs, kids sports and activities, sickness, injury, car troubles, music, writing, school, exercise, dinner…. There just isn’t enough time in the day. And even if there was, the weight and struggle in my mind would keep me too preoccupied anyways. Where in all that am I supposed to quiet everything down to hear that gently caressing Spirit speaking to me? How am I supposed to “hear Him” in all the noise?

I’m not sure about you, but one thing that works for me is aligning my priorities. The days I’m able to wake up in the morning and refrain from immediately going to my phone filled with work, social media, YouTube, emails and distractions, and instead ignore my phone and spend some time alone in prayer, scriptures, or quiet meditation, those days I can hear His voice a little bit clearer. The day still ends up being filled with the usual activities and noise, but because I put Him first, in turn I receive a bit more clarity.

Recently I bought my first pair of AirPods headphones. One of the things I love about these headphones is their “noise cancellation” and “transparency” modes. All I do is press down for a few seconds on the tip of the headphones and all of the noise around me deadens and I can hear my audio clearer. If I press it again for a few seconds, I then enter transparency mode where the noise around me is amplified but I can still hear my audio.

Prioritizing a quiet morning with no distractions is like pressing the “noise cancellation” button on my headphones, then spending the rest of the day in “transparency” mode. I’ll still hear the other noises around me, but I’m also tuned in to His voice when it speaks. Or rather, for me anyways, it’s my own voice. I feel like the Spirit speaks to me in my own voice within myself. An idea or a thought or a realization usually feels like it comes from myself, like I’m speaking to myself. Sometimes when I’m alone, I will in fact verbalize my own thoughts to myself. It helps me maintain clarity in what I’m trying to articulate. And often, those thoughts are then written down and eventually turned into personal journal entries, blog posts, or maybe a song. My “notes” app and my “voice recordings” app on my phone are filled with these thoughts and partially completed songs.

As always, it’s easier said than done and the outside noise can still be overwhelming, even with my spiritual headphones in.

God speaks to His children in different ways. He knows us, better than we know ourselves. We all “hear Him” in different ways. Only you know what way that is. But I think it’s up to all of us to figure out how to quiet the noise around us.

I have three kids. There’s nothing more frustrating than a parent trying to communicate to a child that is unwilling to listen. It usually results in imperfect parental yelling, or counting, or some sort of threat of punishment to get our children to heed our words. Especially when children are young, getting them to “hear” us is nearly impossible.

Similarly, our Heavenly Father, like every parent, wants to talk to us, His children. He wants us to hear Him! But he has that perfect patience and will wait until we are ready to listen. Very few times in scripture does he raise His voice above the surrounding noise to speak to someone.

He will wait until we’re ready. Until we decide we want to hear Him. Until we decide to put our spiritual headphones in, whether in “noise cancellation” mode or “transparency” mode, I don’t think it really matters. Whenever we unplug, turn down the volume, or remove ourselves from distraction and intentionally focus on Him, he’ll be waiting and ready to talk to us.

The world quieted down for me in April of 2020. The loud noise came back with a vengeance, but at least for a brief moment I was able to experience some unexpected peace and reinvigorate my efforts to hear Him a little better.

I just gotta keep those headphones charged.

Here are the lyrics to the song:

“Suddenly the noise has ceased,
Suddenly the sounds of peace,
Like the breath that you hold before release,
Close your eyes, fall to your knees,

Somewhere in the realm of space,
Engraven on your soul, His face,
A picture in your mind, a warm embrace,
Speak your heart, then gently wait…

Hear Him,
Can you hear Him?
When you’re near Him,
Are you listening to the pause?
Hear Him,
Can you hear Him?
He is speaking through the silence,
To your heart.

A whisper in the wind, a breeze
A voice inside your mind, or is that me?
Or is it one in the same, this voice that’s speaks,
Please help thou my unbelief,

A question on my mind nobody knows,
Here is all I have to show,
Distractions all but gone, the moment is close,
To my Father, I repose.

Hear Him,
Can you hear Him?
When you’re near Him,
Are you listening to the pause?
Hear Him,
Can you hear Him?
He is speaking through the silence,
To your heart.

A boy, not much different than you and me some how,
He cried, and entered in a Grove of trees with power,
The time had come, the wait was o’er,
His work has just begun,
The answer stood above and spoke
This is my Beloved Son.

Hear Him,
Can you hear Him?
When you’re near Him,
Are you listening to the pause?
Hear Him,
Can you hear Him?
He is speaking through the silence,
To your heart.”

You can also watch the video podcast of this blog post below on Vox Nostra’s Youtube channel:

“Get Lost! It may be the best way to find yourself!”

Have you ever been lost?

I have. In more ways than one.

As a kid, I remember camping with my family quite often. My siblings and I were usually tasked with finding some fire wood for the campfire, the best part about camping. On one occasion I somehow ended up wandering the woods, probably looking for a proper marshmallow roasting stick, and the next thing I knew I was all alone and surrounded by trees. Whatever trail I may have been following was gone. We were far away from nearby roads or man made landmarks, and the silence quickly became overwhelming. I then did what any kid would do, I started yelling. I yelled my siblings names. Then I yelled for my mom and dad.

No response.

Apparently I’d somehow traveled beyond shouting distance. I started to feel scared. I stood in silence, trying to listen as best I could to any noise other than the quiet woods immediately around me. I yelled a few more times, but with no response I was left with no choice but to continue wandering in the direction I thought I had come. All sorts of frightening thoughts came to my head. What if I was wandering in the wrong direction? What if I was walking farther and farther away from my family instead of closer? How would I know? I was about the age of Webelo Scout, and I’d learned something about how to find north, but in this moment I could not remember. Not that I felt like that would have helped much anyways. I had no idea if the campsite was north, south, east, or west.

Instead of walking in a straight line, I decided to run in a large circle, or rather, a spiral. As I ran, dodging trees as bushes, I grew the spiral diameter larger and larger each time, yelling occasionally as I went. After about 15-20 minutes of this, I heard someone yell back. I ran towards that voice to find a few of my siblings still gathering sticks and firewood, completely unaware I had even temporarily gone missing. I sucked up whatever fear of getting lost I had and kept this story to myself until now.

Since then, I haven’t been in many other situations where I’ve found myself physically lost for more than a few minutes. I’ve always prided myself in having a great sense of direction. And by the time I became a Boy Scout, I definitely got that Orienteering merit badge.

While getting lost physically can be frightening and emotional, there are other ways I’ve gotten lost throughout my life that have had a much deeper impact.

Childhood

When we are children, we depend on the grown-ups around us. We assume they have all the answers. Parents, grandparents, teachers, church leaders, coahces… We assume they have our best interests at heart. If someone is bigger than us, we automatically assume they must know better. We believe whatever the adults in our lives tell us. Why wouldn’t we? We’re innocent and trusting. We hopefully haven’t been introduced to the world of lies, manipulation, and evil that surrounds us.

We are also just beginning to get to know ourselves. What activities do we like to do? What are we good at? What are we not so good at? How well do we play with others? How creative are we?

Children are blessed to have free reign to explore their creativity and imagination unimcumbered by the emotional hardships of real life. If they are getting lost, then they are getting lost in a book, or in a game, or outside in the woods looking for firewood. They loose themselves in the simple joys of life. And in that simple way, they begin to find themselves.

Adolescence

Everyone knows the teenage years are tough. I may not remember much from my young childhood, but I definitly remember being a teenager. I took those childhood experiences and started to figure out who I was.

I liked soccer. I liked music. I liked singing. I liked riding my bike. I liked hiking and camping. I liked reading. I like spending time with my family and friends. I liked girls and going on creative dates. I liked spaghetti and meatballs. I liked riding horses at our family ranch in southern Utah. I liked talking to people. I liked making videos with my siblings and friends. I liked writing songs and performing on stage.

I lost myself in these things I liked to do. And in so doing, I found myself. I came up with a pretty good idea of who I was as a young teenager. These things became a part of me, a part of my personality and temperment. They helped me form connections and relationships with other humans with their own likes and dislikes.

If this all sounds sugar-coated, let me be clear: Time and time again I was absolutely miserable. Miserable for whatever teenage reason, but mostly mistakes I would make, or sadness I felt when a girl didn’t like me back, or not feeling like I belonged with a certain group of friends anymore, or getting made fun of for my religious beliefs, and so on. Whatever the reason, we all know what it feels like to not fit in and boy did I feel it. Especially when we moved to a different state right before my sophmore year of high school and again right before my senior year of high school.

In my adolescence, living in new places and making new friends was extremely tough. I definitely felt lost and alone. I used that solidarity to thrust me forward and outward. It was uncomfortable and awkward. I was uncomfortable and awkward.

But rather than shirk back and retreat into myself to try and find myself in my solidarity, instead I found myself by getting lost in the uncomfortable world of new friends around me. That uncomfortableness became tolerable and then comfortable and I eventually found accepting and belonging.

Adulthood

I’ve been an adult now for almost 20 years, so I know I’ve still got a long way to go. However, I’ve definitly discovered a new way of getting lost as an adult and then as a husband and father.

As a brand new adult, one of the best ways I got lost was to serve a church mission. I threw myself at full speed into a world where I spent nearly every single day for two years doing absolutely nothing for myself and focused my life on serving other people in a foreign country. My personal dreams, ambitions, career goals, marraige prospects, musical aspirations, and even family communication was put on hold. I lost myself in service to others, and in that way as a brand new adult, I really started to find myself. I was happy.

It’s amazing how quickly that service, any kind of service, can bring such incredible joy.

As a husband and a father, this sheer joy and happiness from loving and diligent service gets propelled to an entirely new level.  I’ve written about fulfillment in family before, but I’ll simply say that as I loose myself in the daily, sweaty, groggy, tiresome service of my wife and children, I find and discover more and more about myself, who I am, and who I want to become.

Get Lost

My experience has been that every time hunker down and burrow in, surrounding myself with my own problems and worries and fears, I find myself becoming more selfish, unkind, depressed, sad, and lost. In trying to reach inward to find myself, I actually loose myself.

However, when I push through (not ignore, not run away from, push through) my problems and worries and fears by serving and loving others around me and loose myself in helping them, well whadaya know, I start to find myself again. Things become clear. Answers to questions become known. My path ahead starts to come into focus. Overwhelming happiness pounds through my chest.

My problems and worries and fears aren’t magically solved, but my perspective has shifted up. And with this new perspective, I’ve lifted myself out of the selfish fog and can see more clearly the path ahead for me.

So get lost! It may be the best way to find yourself.

And maybe after running in circles for a while, you’ll also find a pretty good marshmallow roasting stick.

“Balance is that sweet spot right in the middle. And the truth is we are only passers by to it as our pendulum swings back and forth from light to dark.”

How’s your balance?

I’m not really talking about how long you can stand on one foot, or walk along a raised high-wire. The former I can do decently well, the latter not so much.

A few days ago while I was cleaning up in the kitchen, my kids were watching a show called “Limitless with Chris Hemsworth.” In the first episode, the actor Chris Hemsworth trains to walk on top of a crane that dangles off a skyscraper standing 900 feet tall. With movies and TV shows constantly putting people in supposed precarious and life threatening situations, often at high altitudes, I sometimes forget that in real life, unless your name is Tom Cruise, those situations are actually quite frightening. The danger not just in falling but also in strength, stamina, and proper breathing, is real. I was only casually paying attention to the show until Chris Hemsworth started walking along that crane, then I had to stop and watch. I knew everything would turn out fine, but just watching made me quite nervous. My kids even asked me “Dad, would you ever do that?” Without hesitation, I said “Nope!”

Yeah, the older I get for some reason my fear of heights has increased…

The crane platform he was walking on was about 2 feet wide, wide enough that if it were laying on the ground, balance wouldn’t even be an issue. But take that same 2 feet wide platform and raise it up 900 feet in the air, and all of a sudden the idea of walking along it becomes unthinkable. I guess that’s what makes good television. And I’m sure there’s an analogy there somewhere.

But like I said, I’m not really asking about that type of physical balance. No, I’m referring to life balance. A platform that for me, with every year that passes becomes narrower and higher up off the ground. Or so it seems.

Life Balance

Life balance has always been a challenge for me. There is so much that I want to do and accomplish each day, but no matter how hard I try, one thing or another takes over and exhausts the majority of my time.

For example, right now. Writing blog posts. Something I really enjoy doing, but it takes a lot of time out of my day and often well into the night. Next thing I know it’s 2am and I’ve sacrificed a good night’s sleep for a blog post, something I then have to pay for the next day as I grog along at work. But if I go to bed on time and get proper rest, the blog post won’t happen, and my unarticulated scattered thoughts never come to fruition, clogging up my cerebral brain function, my creative outlet left untapped.

Another example is reading books, although I admit that over the past year I have learned to balance this activity much better. For me, this has been possible through dedicating smaller increments of time while eliminating distractions.

Distractions

Ah, distractions. The antithesis of balance. The lazy opponent of focus. My carefully planned days falling to ruin due to unnecessary and unimportant distractions. Temporarily giving up my life fulfilling passions and activities for any number of mind numbing readily accessible entertainment constantly buzzing in my pocket and flashing across my screen.

But over the past year or so I’ve tried, with some success, to get into the habit of coming home from work, going immediately upstairs, and plugging my phone into the charger by my bedside. As I walk out of the room, a sense of freedom comes over me. A burden has been removed. I don’t need to look at that phone for any reason the rest of the night. I’ve got kids to spend time with, tasks to complete around the house, and any leisure time can be dedicated to book reading, music, or writing.

Emphasis above in “try” and “some success.” Many days I simply do not succeed at this. The distractions are too great. My resolve is weakened and I find myself laying on the couch glossing around YouTube while my kids run ramped around me. My energy gets depleted and I end up going to bed that night feeling like I accomplished very little that day. It’s disheartening, burdensome, and annoying.

Balance. Let me be clear- there’s nothing wrong with watching YouTube or playing video games or engaging in relaxing and enjoyable entertainment after a long day at work. I’m not about to go throw my phone away or sell my Nintendo Switch or trade-in this modern lifestyle for a horse ranch in the middle of nowhere (as appealing as that actually sounds). Indeed I believe it’s important to embrace wholeheartedly the life and time we live in and use all the tools available to us to strive to conquer the challenges we face head on.

But this can only be done with balance. Focus. And that takes diligence and hard work. Not letting one side of the scale tip for too long in one direction, disregarding the other side that is also an important part of who we are.

Star Wars

Now I don’t claim to be any Star Wars expert or fanatic, just a casual fan since my youth. Everyone knows Star Wars and everyone knows about the force. Yes the force is awesome, and the many explanations throughout all those movies are insightful, interesting, entertaining, and dare I say even contain religious components.

Whenever the “force” is mentioned in Star Wars, there is often another word that is mentioned in the same breath. That word is “balance.” Anakin and later Luke are destined to bring “balance” to the force. I’ve often thought about what that actually meant.

In the end of Return of the Jedi after Luke proves there is still good in Darth Vader and with his help then defeats the Emperor, one could argue that this doesn’t bring balance to the force at all! The light side won! The dark side was defeated! And now the Ewoks, along with the rest of the galaxy, celebrate good conquering evil and Anakin Skywalker gets to be a force ghost! It seems that this would tip the force scale to one side. Unbalanced.

Again, I’m no Star Wars expert and far from the first person to mention this subject I’m sure, but I’ve always thought that maintaining balance in the force meant more than that. It wasn’t really about the number of Sith vs. the number of the Jedi. It was more about allowing the Dark and the Light to interact in harmony with one another. The Dark side will always be there, as will the Light. How you maintain that balance within yourself is what determines your destiny.

And not to get too far off on a Star Wars tangent here, but in the newer Star Wars films, I loved how this idea of balancing dark and light within was manifested in Rey. In Return of the Jedi when Luke is being tempted by the Emperor, encouraging him to strike his father down to complete his journey to the Dark side, I never once believed that Luke would actually choose the Dark side. He was the hero of the story, I knew he would always choose good. He never strayed much from the light. But for Rey, there were moments before they completed the final trilogy that I would not have been surprised if she did succumb to the dark side and choose evil. She walked that line between dark and light much closer. She even embraced the darkness within her, accepted it, also accepted her own light, and as a result I believe she was a better example of bringing balance to the force than Luke.

That might be a controversial statement. Oh well.

The point is: Balance. Accepting all that is dark and sad and difficult and terrible in the world and within ourselves, and meeting that head on with light, happiness, fulfillment and love. That light isn’t going to just show up on its own. Darkness will. But light takes work. Focus. Determination. Endurance.

Balance is that sweet spot right in the middle. And the truth is we are only passers by to it as our pendulum swings back and forth from light to dark.

When I’m feeling overwhelmed or unfulfilled, I think about my life balance. What am I doing too much of? What do I need to do more of? What’s distracting me from being where and who I want to be? How can I eliminate those distractions, increase my focus, and calibrate?

Most of the time I know what I need to do. I just need to choose to do it.

Easier said than done, of course.

But I don’t need the toned body of Chris Hemsworth or even a lightsaber to do it.

To reach the peak of clarity is an encouraging albeit unattainable goal.

So there I was. 15 years old. Sophmore in high school. Math class. Class hadn’t started yet and I was goofing off with some friends before the bell rang.

One of my friends who wore glasses had taken them off and set them down on his desk. While he was turned around talking to someone behind him, I snatched up his glasses, put them on, and began to do an amusing imitation of him.

Up to this point in my life, I had never really worn glasses before. As far as I knew, my vision was just fine. Besides, people who wore glasses were nerds, right? Or so I thought at the time.

Within seconds of putting on my friend’s glasses, I happened to look out the window. It was a sunny day and there was a large tree just outside, leaves glistening in the sunshine.

Leaves. Individual leaves. The tree wasn’t more than 30 ft away and I could see each individual leaf on this tree. Not only that, but I could see the detail of the exterior bricks that enclosed the school, and beyond that I could see cars and license plates in the parking lot below and faces of people walking around the outside courtyard.

I couldn’t believe it. I removed the glasses, and examined again the objects I was just looking at without them. They were slightly blurred. But until this moment, I had no idea that everything I saw at a distance was slightly blurred. I spent several minutes applying and removing the glasses, fascinated and astounded at this amazing discovery and the difference in clarity.

I was shocked. I never knew the world around me could be this clear.

I never had any reason to think I might need glasses. My vision had always seemed just fine, even objects at a distance. Or so I thought. I never blinked twice (figuratively) that I apparently had to lean forward and squint when seated in the back of the classroom to see the chalkboard sometimes. Didn’t everyone do this?

With excitement and surprise, I exclaimed the awesomeness of my discovery to my friend and owner of these hallowed glasses. You would have thought by my reaction that I’d been blind and was just given the gift of sight. He seemed not quite as amused as me, and asked for his glasses back as the bell rang and class started.

I sat there the remainder of math class staring out the window, saddened by the blur of leaves swaying back and forth outside and faceless people down below, wishing I could have that clarity again.

Not long after, I got my own pair of glasses. I was nearsighted, although not severe. However the optometrist recommended I wear them when driving at night (something I had just started doing at age 15 almost 16) or when seated in the back of a classroom. This inconvenience of constantly taking them on and off was tiresome, and I was enjoying my new-found clarity in life, so eventually the glasses just stayed on at all times. Coincidentally it was decided around this time that just because you wore glasses, it didn’t necesarily mean that you were a nerd…

As I’ve gotten older, I often think back to this moment of discovering my need for corrective lenses. I didn’t know the clarity I was missing out on. I’ve related this experience to other moments of discovery in my life, like a level of happiness I didn’t know existed, or experiencing a deeper love I never felt before, or gaining a clearer understanding of an educational or spiritual truth I hadn’t understood before.

Also as I’ve gotten older and continued to wear glasses and contacts, my natural eyesight has gotten worse, and the need for continual adjustments in clarity are constantly present.  The same could be said with life experiences and feelings.

What if I had never put on my friend’s glasses or any pair of glasses? How long would I have persisted in my blurry world, not knowing there was something wrong or more importantly, something clearer out there? Or what if I’d gotten my first pair of glasses and decided that was it, that’s all the clarity I would ever need?

The answers are self-evident, as is the analogy. To wherever you’re at in your life, whatever clarity you feel you’ve achieved, there is always more. There are always adjustments to be made.

I’m inclined to never accept things as they currently are to be the best they will ever be. To reach the peak of clarity is an encouraging albeit unattainable goal. Any belief I have can be doubted and challenged. Any life choice I make can be altered. My opinions may change, my understanding may broaden, my feelings may enlarge, and my vision may adapt.

Fortunatly we all live in a world where even if we tried to remain the same, the changing world around us will inevitably rub off on us, forcing most of us to seek change and clarity.

All it takes sometimes is the curiosity to reach over and try on a new pair of glasses.