Plato and his Wisdom

Two weeks ago, I attended M-Ace Rich’s talk in sacrament meeting.

(Can I take a small parenthesis break here to tell you how good it was, Mace? ‘Cause it was – I loved it. Now on to the meat of the story…)

I’m not sure what caused me to pay more attention than usual in this particular sacrament meeting, but it seemed that my ADD mind had decided to take a break from distracting me and actually let me get something out of the talks I heard. After Macey finished, a lady in her ward spoke on filling our lives with positive influence - both in our attitude towards life and towards each other. She delivered her talk with enthusiasm and had many good quotes and anecdotes to share; she then made an end to her speaking by leaving the congregation with this quote, which has since become somewhat of a new life motto of mine –

“Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.” – Plato

Isn’t that an awesome thought? Kami wrote a couple posts with the same idea, and if you haven’t read those I recommend that you do. (She even wrote them before she had ever heard that quote and they are almost the exact same idea, which proves her crazy awesome insight on life.)

I fell in love with this quote as soon as I heard it and have since written it in both my planner and on my bathroom mirror, making sure that I read it at least once a day. I thought to myself “This is so true! Everyone deserves our kindness no matter what, and we never know when what we do and say will make a difference to them. Man, I’m going to do this ALL the time!”

Alas, once again, I failed to follow my own advice.

This past Sunday in church, my mother leaned over to talk to me right before the sacrament
“Sarah, Sis.____ has a missionary coming home soon, should we tell Hannah?”
Ha! I thought, “Yeah… ‘Cause their family is so cool… Right.”

See, I know their two younger kids and I’m not gonna lie, I think they’re kind of… weird. Let’s just say that we don’t get along that well. After responding with an ‘Are you crazy?!’ look to my mother’s comment, she leaned over again,

“I bet your opinion of them would be different if you knew their background.” She then proceeded to tell me a couple relief-society-sensitive things that absolutely stopped me in my tracks. Are you serious? What kind of person am I to be mean to them? That’s horrible! However, right after that, another thought entered my mind Dang. Too bad all the youth in our ward don’t know that! They would all be so much nicer to them!

What a horrible thing to think! Why should we need a reason to be nice to people? Even if all the youth did know more about that family and were nicer to them, the kindness would be artificial – fueled only by false sympathy given to boost our own self-esteem.

In the past two days, I’ve thought much more about that event and thought I had learned something from it. But did it stick? Not at all.

I have a Spanish II teacher that I must say, I really dislike. I laugh when people make fun of her, make the same kinds of jokes behind her back, and critique every aspect of her personality. I agree with my peers who think she is an awful teacher who is rude and untrusting towards her students.

Well, I was proved wrong today. Ironically, my opinion was quickly changed as I was sitting in detention for and fuming in my head about this exact teacher.

I looked up from my homework to see one of the cleaning ladies, whom I had seen around school before, enter the room and happily greet my teacher. The two sat down next to me and started chatting, so naturally I tuned out of my homework and into their conversation.

These are just some of the things I learned through my eaves-dropping:

1. My teacher (sorry for repetitiveness of ‘teacher’ but uh… It feels weird writing names, you know?) has put forth the effort to making this cleaning lady, who I’m sure is looked down upon by many teachers, her real, sincere friend. She hasn’t ignored her, she hasn’t judged her or looked down upon her, she didn’t do it for her own self esteem, she has just been a true friend and a good listener. How completely awesome is that?

2. She is very religious, and has a strong testimony of what she believes – she was talking about how she has been praying for an offer on her house for the past couple weeks and on Saturday she all of a sudden had six calls and two offers, both ready to buy in cash. AND when she was telling her friend this, she said “There is no way that that was a coincidence, that was my own little miracle in my life, and all I keep thinking is ‘Thank you, God, thank you!’” Again, how cool?

Because of my stupid, self-centered attitude, I couldn’t see through a teacher that I don’t get along with and see the real, good, down-to-earth person beneath.

I guess the first example better exemplifies the quote I used, about being kinder than necessary because of what people are going through, but I think that a HUGE part of that is just not judging people. It’s so dumb. What right do I have to do that? The answer is absolutely none. No one deserves that,

“Who am I to judge another when I walk imperfectly?”

There we go. A new motto to go along with the other.

This time I REALLY hope it sticks.

Spark

Yo, kids. I wrote a poem for English and this is what came of it - it also coincidentally coincides with the title of this blog. Here we go!

A spark, one small thing that changes a lot
Then growing, growing, taking over –
consuming and showing the world your power

Goodness, love, charity,
All embodied in your flames
Everything powerful popping and cracking

But the black fog will come, as if you produce it
when in reality you only attract
the evil wind that surrounds you
wafting, waiting, wishing to overpower

The ignorant say there is no use –
that when the embers barely glow,
the smoke engulfs the world.

Not knowing it takes merely a twig,
some small branch of fuel -
something to live for, something to love
for you to roar once again

Amidst all the evil and despair,
there is hope.
The spark.
We must learn, and start our own fire.




Poetry may not be my forte, but I do love being a pyro!

Long Overdue

June 2009 – Girl’s Camp Year 3

Don’t worry, these conversations are going somewhere.

Monday

Me: “Have you seen those redhead girls before?”
Jen (my best ward friend): “No. But I think they’re in our year.”
Me: “Seriously? They look like they’re twenty! I thought they were junior staffers!”

Tuesday

Me: “So I found out more about the red heads today.”
Jen: “Yeah?”
Me: “They’re twins – Haley and Hannah. And they are SO COOL. I want to be their friends.”
Jen: “Well invite them to do something at our cabin during free time or something.”
Me: “Nah…”

Wednesday

Me: “Seriously. They are so cool. It’s crazy.”
Jen: “Have you even talked to them?”
Me: “No… not directly. They’re too cool.”
Jen: “I bet they don’t think that.”

This continued on for the rest of the week – “Hey Jen! I finally talked to them! But I didn’t really know what to say. They’re just all amazing, so I didn’t really know how to act.” etc.

After camp, it continued on for the rest of the year. I would turn to Jen at any stake activity and say “Man, I want to be their friends.” But I never acted on it.

THEN, it was this year, A-Camp, in which we weren’t separated by wards anymore, and it just so happened that I ended up in a tent with the redhead twins that I wanted to befriend so badly. And let me say this – they are really awesome. Which is exactly the reason why I shouldn’t have worried so much.

On one of the last days of camp, Haley and I were reminiscing about past summers,

Haley: “You know, Hannah and I thought you were awesome last year. We saw you and said to each other, ‘I want to be her friend’ but we were too afraid to talk to you.”

So there you have it, we could’ve been friends this entire year, but we were both too afraid about what that other person thought to do anything about it.

Here, when I wrote ^that^ post, (no, I’m sorry, I never did get around to actually posting it), I thought that I had learned my lesson, I thought I knew that it was easy to make friends and that I shouldn’t really mind what people thought about me.

THEN, I got to high school - a wonderful world of new people and new opportunities constantly presenting themselves all around me. And, once again, I fell in love with the idea of making new friends, especially with all of the dang-super-awesome-cool-amazing-beautiful-magnificent-wonderful-incredible-excellent-marvelous-everyotherpositiveadjectiveyoucanthinkof people that I was meeting. Unfortunately, with that new desire to make friends there also came a new fear – fear that they would think I was dumb and obnoxious, fear that they wouldn’t want to be my friend, and in short, fear of all around rejection.

Every so often, I would get sudden bouts of confidence; I forgot about my self-conscious and self-absorbed ways, and remembered for a moment that people didn’t really care and I didn’t need to worry. However, the bursts of confidence always inevitably came to an end and I went back to what I do best – over-analyzing and worrying about everything anyone ever said or did.

Then I received sage advice from a wise friend (ahem, ahem, MACEY!)

“Listen, Sarah. You don’t need to worry so much. Friendships happen because they happen – I’m sure that they want to be friends with you just as much as you want to be friends with them.”

And it’s true. Friendships do have a way of happening naturally. We (me) don’t need to be concerned with other’s opinion of us because…

#1 – Ninety-nine percent of people we meet are so worried about themselves and what other people think of them that they don’t have time to think much about us.

Something I often forget is that EVERYONE has these same fears of rejection. Some may more than others, but everyone has the same doubts and reservations that we do.

#2 – And more importantly, the old adage rings true that “Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

Chances are, if we think someone is awesome and we want to be friends with them, they feel the same way about us. AND, the very fact that they are such good people ensures that they are not the kind of person who will judge us or think ill of our intentions because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind!

I had absolutely no reason to worry about Haley and Hannah’s opinion of me because they were feeling the exact same way.

And really, if someone does happen to think differently, it still doesn’t matter because D&C 3:7 reminds us “You should not have feared man more than God.” because Heavenly Father’s opinion of us is the only one that matters at all anyway.

So the moral of this rambling post is that we don’t need to worry. If we love life and love everyone around us, we will be surrounded by sincere friends who love us no matter what and we won’t ever have to worry about what anyone thinks about us again.

I just hope this time it sticks a little longer than before…