Learn to Love, Love to Learn

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

- Mahatma Gahndi (Read more quotes here)

Life happens. Honestly, I do not know what that is supposed to mean, but it is a quote that is used a fair amount. But I would state something else, "I make life happen." That is more how I like it. Life does not just happen, it is not a thing that imposes consequences on our heads. Life is something to be lived; something to live for. Life is beautiful; life is short. If we were to just sit down and say, "Well, life will happen" then what would we have at the end of our lives? Life as I see it has three components: (1) Become stronger, (2) Love deeper, and (3) Learn more.

 Become stronger. God did not intend for us to wander aimlessly here on earth; that is something that I do not believe. We are meant for something greater, something magnificent. We are magnificent. All of us. No matter how insignificant or powerless we feel there is someone who will always believe in us--God. This I have learned this week, through trials and questions. Sometimes we ask why life is so hard; we ask why there are so many trials and difficulties. Some would respond "Life happens", but this is to think that we cannot do anything about the circumstances put on us. However, I disagree. Henry Ford once stated, "Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward." When life gives you lemons you take the lemon you make lemonade, you extract the seeds, you take the seeds and plant them, and soon you have a lemon tree, then an orchard of lemon trees and you make gallons of lemonade. That is what I believe. We take the trials given to us and we make them our strengths.

Click Here

Learn to love. Christ taught "love one another .... " (St. John 15:12, KJV Bible). What does it mean to love others? My girlfriend, who is a great example of love, has taught me this lesson this week: the more you give the more you receive. So, the more love we give to others the more we receive in return. It is the law of the harvest. If we do nothing but expect love to return to us we will be greatly disappointed. I can be better at this. I saw a quote the other day that said this, "Be somebody who makes everybody feel like a somebody."

I have a tendency to want to introvert myself; I have to fight to want to be outgoing and reach out to others. It is not something that I am particularly proud of. From what my girlfriend taught me this week though I know that if I keep trying the feeling will come in return. Learning to love is actually a hard task. Love is confused as a rush of emotions, an overwhelming feeling that we get when we are close to that person who we are attracted to. But this I have learned is not love. Love is more than a feeling, it is an action. We learn to love others as we serve them and make them feel that they are important to this world.

Love to learn. This lesson sometimes is the hardest for me to learn (ironic right?). Learning is a life-long process, something that starts but never stops. I have learned this week that our perspective on learning can be changed. We can choose to love to learn something new, no matter what it is. If we make it our life goal to learn all that we can while here we will find hidden treasures of knowledge all along the way. To become a good learner is the most prized possession anyone could have. Those who learn to love learning can in turn learn all things. They can learn from trials, from failures, from success, and from God. They can learn to love, to write, to do almost anything they put there minds to.

Learning is the essence of all things that we do. We learned to walk and talk from infancy, and we continue to learn if we allow ourselves to. We can learn to love others, and to extend that love. We can learn from our trials, and make ourselves better today than what we were yesterday. We can love learning, and grow exponentially. This I have learned, and I wish to extend into all areas of my life, to want to learn all.

read more "Learn to Love, Love to Learn"

Kindness

"Be Kind; Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle"

Life is hard. Yet many times we tend to forget that life is also hard for others. If you look on social media most of the posts from your friends are happy pictures, inspirational quotes, and links to how others have overcome hardships. However, we rarely think that our friends may be the ones that are suffering just like the blog posts that we read. 

On Wednesday night, while traveling to California with my sister, we talked about many things. One of the things that came up was how many people, parents of families that we have known since childhood, got divorced last year. She also talked about many of her friends that were getting divorced because of their husbands addiction to pornography. While talking about these things it just hit home how real the hardships of life really are, and how it can happen to all of us. Hence the quote above, "Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." We never know, whether it be our friends or just a random person driving alongside us on the freeway, what those around us are going through. If we could just be kind to all those we come in contact with we would find greater happiness and peace with ourselves and spread love to others at an amazing rate.

What tends to be harder is to be kind when we are going through hard times. Yet another quote comes to mind for this as well, "Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."

Do we really think that it is always possible to be kind? What about the times that we are having the roughest day ever, and then someone decides to be mean to us? Is it just to be kind to them as well? Yes. In fact, it may be that the other is just being mean because they too are having a bad day. Though this is a hard concept to enact, this is something that I wish to do every day, think of ways to be kind to others whenever possible, so that I may be the means by which others can be made happy.

If we wish to help others we must show them that we care, and to end I wish to repeat the words of Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Love is spelt T.I.M.E."

read more "Kindness"

Stress.

                                                

Have you ever felt that life was just burning you to the ground? One of those fires for me is stress, and when stress enters my life it also tends to be the best time for me to learn something about myself. 

On Wednesday morning I woke up to realize that I am going to miss the first test in my Finance 201 class. Not the best way to start my day. The stress levels rose as I thought about my family and how they expected me to arrive on Thursday to go to a long planned trip to Disneyland. I talked to my mom about the situation and after some thinking and researching the ultimatum came: Do I go or do I stay. 

Well, the first would be fine because in my class my lowest test score can be dropped. But, my worry was if this test would be the easiest out of all the tests, dropping this one would be more advantageous for my grade. Other stresses also entered into my head, but then I came to the conclusion that I needed to ask someone who would know my potential, someone who can look into the future and let me know if my decision to spend time with my family would be right. I asked God.

Soon after asking I came to feel that going to Disneyland would be good for me and for my relationship with my family. I realized that I was too stressed about school and because of that I was not performing to the best of my ability. There is a difference between good stress and bad stress, but I won't get into that. This lesson taught me how important God is in attending to the every day of our lives; He cares about our stresses, issues, and problems. We are so important to Him that He takes time for all of us. If there is one thing that I learned this week is that God takes care of those who believe in Him. He taught me that I was becoming too stressed about school and not focusing on my relationships that I had with my family and my girlfriend. I needed to think more about them. I knew that if I did He would provide the rest. And so it has been during the rest of the week, He has provided.

read more "Stress."

The First Week of Winter Semester

My first week of Winter Semester has been very similar to those of earlier semesters, stressful. With that stress I found myself wishing I was no longer in school. The Christmas break did not seem long enough for me, and I wished for my leisure. However, the new semester had already started and I knew that I had to move on with life and change my attitude.

I love my classes; I think that they are all really great and will give me the opportunities that I need to learn so I can be successful. However, since my classes are harder this semester I feel the task to do well is somewhat daunting. However, I learned a valuable lesson this week from one of my professors that I hope to never forget. Brother Stice, my accounting professor, taught to the class the importance of reading the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon. As he was telling of this importance, I thought to myself that many times I try to rely on myself to do well in classes, but instead of putting God’s work first and doing what He would have me do, I put homework, projects, and studying first. I had not realized that I was not doing my part with God to do well in school. This week I realized that, and though there are many other things that I learned throughout this week, about writing, accounting, finance, etc. I deem this lesson to be of most value: to put God first in all things, and then all things will work out. I wish to put this into practice in my day to day life by studying at least 30 minutes the Book of Mormon, the scriptures, Conference talks, etc.

This semester is going to be great!

read more "The First Week of Winter Semester"