So in church today there were a few testimonies shared that touched on decisions and choices that I found interesting.
First one was from a guy who shared a story that his dad used to always tell him. His dad grew up on a ranch and apparently one day he and 2 other people were out baling hay or something along those lines when one of the supports that a machine that they were using broke. So one guy was essentially holding up this machine (several hundred pounds and more than he could really hold) by himself.
The 2 other guys were kind of looking around not sure what to do and I’m sure kind of in shock / panicking. Then the guy says “Do something, even if it’s wrong”
Then another lady shared something from some training she was in. She is a nurse and I guess has volunteered to be on the county emergency training group or something (little hazy on the details). Basically if there is a county-wide emergency then she gets involved as kind of like a first-responder type thing?
Anyway she said one of the things that they said in the training was that in a disaster, 10% of people will do the right thing, and 10% will do the wrong thing, and 80% of people will do nothing. And how if you do nothing then the disaster will choose for you what happens to you – you are kind of having your agency taken away.
It also reminded me of the Rush song Freewill, that says “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”
On a nerdier note, I’m definitely seeing this in a game I am in. It’s basically a multi-player democracy game of the computer game Civilization. We have teams of 5-10 people that are all playing one civ on the game (there are 5 such teams in the game). So as we are trying to conduct diplomacy, or make moves in the game, we all talk about various things and strategies that we want to do, but then nobody really DOES anything – we all think someone else will do it, or we don’t want to send out that letter until we’re sure it’s the team’s consensus, etc.
So as I mentioned in my last post, we’ve been dealing with some kid sickness. Because I have meetings and such that I have to go to church anyways, I went by myself last week. Church is definitely interesting with the no-kid factor in there.
So while I was sitting there in sacrament meeting, actually PAYING ATTENTION AND HEARING THE SPEAKERS, I had some thoughts. The big one was wondering if people that are in this (no-kid) situation appreciate it. And figuring that no, they probably don’t. So whereas I was there, really enjoying the speakers and such, I’m sure there were plenty of people who were just going through the motions or such. When you don’t get to experience certain things, I think it always makes it sweeter when you do. I know that has been my experience in life.
Anyway, one of the talks was from Tracey Blackwelder and she used a metaphor that I really enjoyed (but am just now getting around to posting about). She talked about how they (until recently I guess) had a big 15 passenger van and how she found it interesting that she as a “soccer mom” could just whip this thing around, and talked about the joys of power steering. And comparing that to God and how with His help you can make kind of “course corrections” in life. And (here’s where I’m getting hazy between the lines of what she actually said and what I just thought about as she was talking about the general concept) I found it interesting thinking about that not only in terms of like course corrections as far as sin / repentance / forgiveness goes, but also just general life changes.
Especially in this January time of goal setting, how much easier it is to change your life when you have God around to be the “power steering”. Though I guess you could abstract this out even a little more and talk about the usefulness of any kind of support group (whether it’s family and friends or Weight Watchers)
So yeah I couldn’t decide if the talks were just really good last Sunday or if I just THOUGHT they were really good because I could actually HEAR them. And I also heard how loud everyone else’s kids were and thought “Are my kids that loud” before deciding “Yeah, they probably are”. Though in our ward’s defense, when my mother-in-law (also Mormon) came to visit a few months ago she said that it was the quietest meeting she’d been to in months.