Life Philosophies

There's a conversation Ted and I have had several times throughout our marriage. It's a discussion about the Rudy philosophy versus the It's a Wonderful Life philosophy. In the movie Rudy, Sean Astin’s character sacrifices everything to follow his dreams, while in the movie It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart’s character sacrifices his dreams to fulfill family and community obligations. Which is the correct philosophy? Which is the worthier objective? Which is the more worthwhile sacrifice?

I realized that neither of these philosophies is a 100% correct philosophy for everyone all the time. Following your dreams at all costs can lead you to act selfishly and damage your relationships with others. Sacrificing too much of your own needs and desires to meet the desires and expectations of others can be unhealthy and can create unhealthy relationships.

The only philosophy that is true for everyone 100% of the time is the one contained in the following Bible verses: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31).

The only thing thing or person you're supposed to be willing to sacrifice everything for, all your heart, soul, mind and strength, is God. Not your dreams, not a cause, not your talents or career, not another person, not a material possession--only God. That’s the answer.

You may be asking, why is God the only one worthy of such a sacrifice? Because He is the only one who has already sacrificed everything for you. Jesus Christ paid the ultimate price of the atonement, took the pains, sicknesses, and sins of every single one of God’s children on Himself, which gave Him, and only Him, the power to save each of us and ensure our ultimate, eternal peace and happiness. He is the only one who knows the correct path for each of us to take in our life, what dreams, causes, relationships, and talents to pursue, to help us learn what we need to learn to reach our full potential, do the most good in this mortal life, and prepare for salvation in the next.

Sometimes we have the philosophy, my life will be complete when…(insert mortal experience that we think we have to have in order to be happy: marriage, children, career objective, material possession, etc.). This kind of philosophy can be a dangerous one. To think that your happiness requires some specific mortal experience or possession or achievement is foolish. Either you won't get it and you will think that you can't possibly be happy without it (and you can't be as long as your focus is all on that one thing--marriage, career, etc.), or you’ll get it and realize it has not brought you all the happiness you will ever need, and you’ll either keep trying to make it do that when it doesn't have the power to, or you’ll lose direction and meaning in your life (ex: Olympic athletes who win the gold and then don't know what to do with themselves after achieving that dream).

God’s plans and dreams for us, on the other hand, are with our eternal progress in mind, and each step we take on the path He has laid out for us brings us a step closer to an eternity of joy and increase. No experience we have here is a waste or a failure; every experience can teach us something that can draw us closer to God and help us become more like Him, which is our ultimate goal, and one we can never fully achieve in this life or without the Savior’s help. The more we choose to seek out and follow God’s plan for us, even, and perhaps especially, when it requires sacrifice, the more we will learn, and the more peace, joy, and love we will feel. God wants His children to be happy, and only by sacrificing our all to Him will we find the true, lasting happiness we are seeking, accomplish the things that are most important for us to accomplish, and become the people we have the potential to be.

Food Philosophies

I had a discussion with my mother-in-law about food the other day, and I realized that her philosophy on food and feeding your family is totally different than the food philosophy I grew up with in my family. My mother-in-law had eight children, and she did an excellent job of consistently providing healthy, balanced meals for her family to eat. One of her big things was making sure everyone had a filling, nutritious, hot breakfast to eat every school morning so that they would be in the best physical state to be able to learn and excel at school. As she was describing to me her process of planning and preparing meals for the month or the week, I realized that her main concern in planning meals for her family was nutrition. She took little to no thought about whether or not her family would like the foods she had decided to prepare. 

That's totally different than the way food planning worked in my house growing up. When I try to plan food, I feel an enormous amount of pressure to make food that people will actually like to eat, myself included. Nutrition was a secondary concern in my family. The main concern was whether or not people liked the food that was prepared. My mother-in-law claimed she didn't really have any picky eaters in her family. I, on the other hand, come from a family of picky eaters. I'm sure many of you reading this would say that this is the fault of my parents and their parenting. And you could be right. I don't really know. All I know is that in my family it was considered inconsiderate and unkind to offer hungry people food they could not eat because they did not like it. You may as well not have made food at all for all the good it did them. 

As a child, my mom was forced to sit at the table until she’d eaten whatever food was prepared, whether she liked it or not. This was such an unpleasant experience for her that she was fiercely determined never to do that to her children. Looking back, I'm pretty sure food was a big comfort thing for my mom, one of her coping mechanisms for dealing with other difficult or unpleasant things in her life. In my family, my dad was the one with the responsibility for making dinner. That's just the way things worked out in the division of responsibilities based on my parents’ individual strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. The reason I think food was a comfort thing for my mom is because if my dad made dinner and tweaked the recipe in a way that made it taste different or made something new that my mom didn't like, it wasn't just an inconvenience for her, it was a tragedy. How dare my dad ruin the meal that way. 

I see a little bit of that food as a comfort thing in myself as well. On my mission, for example, I had a companion who would get so caught up in missionary work that she would sometimes forget to plan in time for us to eat lunch. I had to let her know that I could not function without eating all my meals, partly because I get really cranky if I don't eat regularly, but also because I was doing so many things that were hard for me as a missionary, I really needed to be able to rely on the comforting safety of good food at regular intervals to help me stay sane and cope with the hard things. 

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is with all this. I'm not saying that one food philosophy is better or worse than the other--for now, I am just noticing the differences. I feel like that is the first step in making a deliberate choice about what your own philosophy will be--realizing that there are different ways to think about something and that you can choose how you think about it. Do I have any responsibility to take the food preferences of my family members into account when making food, or is the nutritiousness of the meal I offer the only important consideration? What do I want to teach my children about food and its purpose? How do I want to teach that? What is an appropriate way to react to encountering food you don't like? How should I best teach and model that for my children? These are all questions I must answer as I figure out what my own food philosophy will be.