The Daily Honky Tonk 190th Edition

The Daily Honky Tonk
190th Edition
Thursday, July 29, 2010

Table of Contents
Caring

Caring
Meditations on a Long Term Inner Battle

“You love them, don’t you? And that’s natural. . .I can look at your face and know your philosophy, it’s kindness. . .There are people who’ll go after your humanity, Sister. They’ll tell you that the light in your heart is a weakness. Don’t believe it. It’s an old tactic of cruel people to kill kindness in the name of virtue. There is nothing wrong with love. . . Have you forgotten the message of our Savior? It’s love, of people.”- Father Flynn- Doubt

The things I pray for most often are the things I most often feel I’m lacking. I don’t try and focus on all at once, but I generally find myself praying for humility, patience and understanding, and charity. Charity seems to effectively embody humility, patience, and understanding.
“And charity suffereth long [patience], and is kind, and envieth not [humility], and is not puffed up [humility], seeketh not her own [not being manipulative], is not easily provoked [patience, understanding, and humility], thinketh no evil [understanding others], and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in truth [understanding], beareth all things [patience and understanding], believeth all things [yay faith :) and humility], hopeth all things [patience], endureth all things.” (Moroni 7:45, with Mark’s notes).
Every time I’m feeling angry and think that people and the world at large are dumb, that soft voice of the Spirit prods me and reminds me that without charity the Lord will not forgive me and He won’t allow me back in His presence. And then He reminds me of great promises like the ones in the verses immediately following 45:
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing [see here, nothing, worthless, the Bible says we are as dross], for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail- [but wait, here comes the curve ball . . ]
“But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever [ringing bells of joy . .unlike everything else, charity never faileth]”
I’m glad I opened my scriptures to look for things I wanted to talk about. But I’m kind of upset. I wanted to write a long article complaining about the cost of caring. Because caring does cost. Look at the baptismal covenant:
“ . . . and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; Yea and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort . .” (Mosiah 18:8-9)
Now those things take effort. We are agreeing to carry a literal burden and feel actual sorrow for other people (and I’ll remind you here that we are also to feel joy (not just sadness) for other people rather than envying them). It’s a way in which the Savior helps us to understand Him and how much He loves us. We, for a couple people, get to feel their burdens and weights, and in return we are reminded that the Savior carried all the weight and burdens. Suddenly our burden (which is in fact heavy) seems small compared to His.
I mean, let’s not downsize how much energy it sometimes cost us to care. It can cost time, sleep, a peaceful mind, energy, maybe money, an appetite, the ability to function. Okay. . .whoa, maybe here is where I’m hitting the problem. Is caring for other’s really supposed to cost that much? Charity never fails. But what if what I feel for other people isn’t charity?
I’ve tried backing away before. Sometimes the “Screw the world” attitude doesn’t seem that bad to me. He he, this reminds me of a scene from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Movie. Libby is the moody “screw the world teen” and Carmen comes home complaining. Libby, who has grown up a little after meeting a girl with leukemia tells Carmen off for complaining about her problems. Carmen, gets angry and yells at Libby telling her she is dumb and doesn’t understand “You just say “screw the world” because it’s easier than having to feel anything.” I sometimes think it would be easier to do the same. Forget people, I don’t want to feel anything. But once again, I do love the Lord, so it isn’t really an option to not care. But, really, what should caring cost?
I remember a time in the last year or two when Scott and I were roommates. Scott has an incredible talent for remembering the details of people’s lives. He remembered when I had tests that I didn’t even care about and would send me a text wishing me good luck. That felt good even if at times I was a little annoyed that he could care so much, and I could remember so little about his life. It was nice to know he cared. Through his example, I realized I had disattached myself from people and found myself only interested in what people had to offer me intellectually. I was interested in talking, but I could have cared less about the details of people’s lives. I wanted to understand people through their deepest thoughts, but I refused to care about what was happening to them. I would start to open up to people, but they would close off to me. In an enlightening session with the therapist I was visiting, he suggested that I tried to invest myself in little things. People, he suggested are more comfortable initially opening up about the more normal parts of lives, as time passes they will open up to you about other things because they feel you will care.
Well, that sounds all nice, but I don’t want to just listen to people’s days so that I can selfishly get them to open their souls to me for my personal fulfillment. So, I decided I would have to learn how to care about the little things. If I didn’t really want to know it, I shouldn’t ask it became my philosophy. This is a good philosophy for investing in other people and actually caring. It is not a good philosophy when you just are having chit chat. I still don’t think it’s realistic to remember every detail about every person you meet. But starting with polite conversation and questions whose answers you forget may later lead to a friendship in which you will both ask those questions again and really care about the answers. It’s a little complicated, I know.
Caring takes a lot of work. I don’t believe it comes naturally to anyone. Its one of those virtues that we have to build. I think that I perhaps appreciate great works of literature most, because they help me to actually care about people. Literature generally encourages me to understand people and be patient with them and love them rather than to dismiss them all because they clearly can’t keep up with my ideals :).
A good example of this is the book I just finished tonight, “To Kill a Mockingbird”. It was an excellent read. No, I haven’t read it before. None of my teachers ever required me to read it. I think Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison may have been it’s replacement. I think that Harper Lee does a beautiful job of portraying what I think of as the ideal caring person in Atticus. Atticus can see , even in the people who may do the most harm to him, their inherent goodness. He judges the best in people and loves them despite the many times they fail at doing what is right or even when they hate him. Near the end of the book, Scout comments as she drifts off into sleep that some crazy person in her dream turned out to be real nice. Atticus replies “Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”
He’s right. I think sometimes I have a tendency to pry into people’s lives because of how much more love and understanding I know I will have for them. When you can really see a person- I mean really see. What do I mean? Seeing means you know their life history, you know the circumstances in which they grew up, you know what were major turning points in their lives, you know their personality, you know their strengths and their weaknesses are, their dreams and their fears, their successes and failures, the people who inspire them, the people they dislike, what they choose to do in their free time, what they choose not to do . .and so much more your love for that person increases exponentially. Isn’t it funny that the things all humans have a hard time sharing about themselves actually draws them together? It seems like a contradiction. . .but its not. Its the theme of countless works of literature, normal fun reads, movies, and other forms of entertainment. The plot of the story is often the unfolding of our knowledge of characters. As we understand them, the first judgment is shed from our eyes, and what we once saw, becomes something knew. It’s like a puzzle. Puzzles are not that beautiful when they are in thousands of pieces that we can’t seem to quite put together. As the pieces come together, we appreciate the puzzle and the work it took to put the pieces together.
Perhaps Heavenly Father and the Savior can love us so much without condition because they already have a perfect understanding of us. For now, we have to learn how to love without that perfect understanding. I think we can see that big picture when we talk about racial differences or Hitler and the Jews, or even the persecution of the religious groups. But somehow, we forget it when it’s the EFY kids, or the education week, or women’s conference that is supposedly (in the view of some students) invading our campus. Or it’s easier to worry about the poor people in Africa and donate to them than it is to that family who we’ve never seen work very hard for anything in their life. (I’m not suggesting that we should jump up and hand our money to beggars, but we might try and really understand people’s situations before we deny assistance). It’s easier to love the fans of another team or even the players when we see them doing service, but it then becomes hard not to yell at them or curse at them on the field. The same thing can be said for referees, who undoubtedly made a worse call than we would have. Or the bozo holding up the line who obviously hasn’t had as long and as hard a day as we have had. I could list more. But you get the picture.
Caring is worth it. It takes a lot of work. You have to ask yourself a lot of questions. You have to be introspective and painfully honest about yourself and your dealings with other people. And when I say painful, it hurts to sit there and list off what you’ve done and thought wrong about other people. But on the reverse end, caring is incredibly rewarding. The joy is addictive. After the pain the feeling of pure love sweeps through you. Why? Because charity is a gift of God. After all our work to love others, He bestows upon us His ability to love and feel what He feels for us. Because being human, no matter how much we’ve worked for that charity, we are incapable of having a fullness of charity for other. The charity we feel is in fact not ours at all. Its the taste our Father gives us of His love. Its an ability to feel for others what we couldn’t feel on our own. There is no sweeter fruit than that love. The price is worth it.

The Editor,
Mark