Thankful for adversity.

My intent is for this to be a quick post, as I've had a long day and if I keep my train of thought going then it will be a long night as well. So we'll see how this goes.


My life does not currently "suck." I do have some good things going for me. I have a job, I have a great amount of friends, I have an extracurricular activity that keeps me laughing every time I go even just for practice, I have a roof over my head – there are a lot of things around me to keep me rather content. However, there are times when thoughts can creep into my head that can turn any one of those positive influences right back at me and try to make me feel worthless and downright sad.
"Your job is a minimum-wage position at a fast food joint; there's no room for expansion and you won't go anywhere with it."
"Your friends aren't hanging out with you because they're too busy with themselves, ignoring you."
"Practice went so rough today that things can't possibly get better when you perform two days from now."
"Your weight problems aren't going away no matter how hard you try."
"You live in a tiny apartment that hasn't changed in years, and you stay just because you're too lazy to move out."
"You'll never graduate at the rate you're going, with the grades you've been getting."
"You're going to die a single, lonely man."
Thoughts like that. Thoughts that aren't really true, but can definitely feel like it at times. So sometimes my life feels like it "sucks."

Rare moments happen, though, during these times when I'm feeling down. And I cherish these rare moments. These moments are when I remember that I feel sad or depressed for a reason. That reason is so that I can understand exactly how happy I can feel.

For those of you who might read this blog post and not be Mormon, there's this book we read called The Book of Mormon. You've probably heard of it by now; there's a comedy musical with the same name (not produced by members of the church, just to be clear) that has been on Broadway for some time now. The point of the book is that it serves as another testament of Jesus Christ, much like the Bible has the Old and New Testaments in it. And here's a passage from it, kind of early on, that can help explain a bit of what I'm talking about:

For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so… righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.

And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.

And now… I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon.

And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.

So, what does that all mean? Opposition has to exist. Trials and adversity, times when we're feeling bad or when bad things are actually happening – they fulfill a part of this giant plan that we're all a part of. And yes, I sincerely believe that we're all part of a plan. I've seen too much evidence in my own life to prove that that's indeed the case.
Let me make an analogy so that it's easy to understand, because this concept was strange to me at first: if I was to have had nothing but sweet-tasting food all my life (ice cream, candy bars, etc.) then I would never know what "sour" was. Or "salty." Or "bitter." Seriously, if you're trying to describe in words what those are like without giving examples of actual foods, it's pretty hard to do. Heck, even the first definition of "sour" on dictionary.com uses foods as examples!
So now let's bring the analogy back to the topic at hand: if I was a happy person literally 100% of the time, then people would probably notice and say "Boy, he sure is happy!" But they wouldn't know that that's all I knew. And I wouldn't really know what it even meant to be happy, because I wouldn't know any other emotions. "Well, feeling happy is when you feel good." Okay then, what is "good"? I cannot have "good" feelings in my life unless I have "bad" ones to compare them to. And the inverse is also true; I cannot have "bad" feelings in my life unless I have "good" ones to compare them to either. So any time that those negative thoughts manage to break into my thought process, however they get there or whoever might try to put them there, and despite how long they may last for, I can always come back to the thoughts that remind me that eventually I will feel better.
Here's a wrap-up to that part of the passage I quoted from before:

Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.

One of the beauties of life is that I get to choose not only what I do with it, but how I react to it. How I feel about it. Yes, I understand that there are those among us who cannot help how they feel for one reason or another. Some of us feel anxiety, depression, heartbreak, sorrow, sickness, etc. on a regular basis. But that does not mean that it can't be helped at least in some way, and it does not mean that they're alone at all. Or that they're completely powerless to act.


New movies since the last post: Pay It Forward, Spanglish, Enchanted, and The Man in the Iron Mask.


Aaaaaaaand a couple GIFs to brighten your day.

I don't know what "the right answer" is, but I do know that whoever did this was really good at Photoshop. 

I love this so much. It's my current desktop picture.

I kinda feel like I need one of these masks for myself. For… reasons.