NEVER THOUGHT THIS WOULD HAPPEN

I'm probably the last person who I would have thought would write an entry on sports... yet here we are. I guess you could say it's not about sports, but rather concerns an amazing man who became famous through sports. The man I'm referring to is the late John Wooden.

In short, for anyone who doesn't know, he was the phenomenally successful UCLA basketball coach who won ten NCAA championships in a twelve year period. However, the thing that sets Coach Wooden apart to me wasn't his success on the court, but rather in the hearts of his players and the people he influenced. He was far more concerned about shaping the men that played for him than winning trophies. He taught them that a man must have character or his talent means very little.

Coach Wooden was famous for his short, inspirational sayings that apply both to basketball and to life in general. Having read a number of them, I believe that he was pretty much right on on his philosophies about life that he shared with his players.

He was also a devout Christian and did not hide his beliefs. He is quoted as saying, ""If I were ever prosecuted for my religion, I truly hope there would be enough evidence to convict me." He also subscribed to a seven-point creed of: Be true to yourself. Make each day your masterpiece. Help others. Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible. Make friendship a fine art. Build a shelter against a rainy day. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.

Even though he achieved tremendous fame and success, he was always faithful to his wife, Nellie, even after her death in 1985. He visited her grave and wrote her a love letter each month. His devotion persisted until his death last year, and I would venture to guess beyond that, too.

I think it unfortunate that more men and women of character like John Wooden aren't applauded and distinguished for the great things they do. I truly do believe that there are many such people still around today. We hear about them from time to time, but usually in short inspirational snippets rather than throughout their lifetimes. Is it any wonder that society is heading the direction it is when we consider the kind of activity that is encouraged through fame and fortune?

Thankfully we still have the legacy of amazing people to learn from and build on. I found this illustration of Wooden's "Pyramid of Success" that I think is a fantastic collection of some of his choice pieces of advice. I'd suggest taking the time to take a look at it and pondering what we can learn from such an exemplary individual.

(EDIT: It looks like the link doesn't work any longer. You can probably find it easily by Googling "John Wooden Pyramid of Success")

FREE WILL VS. PREDESTINATION

I have the lecture for one of my online classes paused as I write this. Currently, we're covering the conflicting notions of free will vs. determination (AKA predestination in a religious sense). The professor is explaining that many scientists have suggested that free will is a false idea and our subconscious minds have made our choices for us before we ever think about them. However, he also notes that, regardless of what the science says, most people reject that notion.

Immediately as he said that, I thought, "Well, the notion of us being controlled by our subconscious is true unless we specifically will it otherwise." Then, the idea came that the natural man is nothing more than someone being controlled by his basic instincts and being a slave to his subconscious. When his mind tells him to be angry, he's angry. When it tells him to be selfish, he's selfish. It sometimes even tells him to be nice, and he's nice at that moment. Nevertheless, even though what he's doing is not wrong in that case, he's still a slave to it and cannot choose for himself how to act.

Only the individual who chooses to shape his or her subconscious through strenuous and consistent effort instead of being shaped by it is the only person who becomes free and able to act for him or herself. Only when we subject it to us rather that subject ourselves to it can we be completely able to act for ourselves instead of acting only in the space that it gives us before taking control.

Once again I find evidence that the guidance that our Heavenly Father gives us is specifically designed to make us free. It's always a reassuring thing to find. :)

TIME = MONEY

I've come to two conclusions:

One, if I'm going to bother to have this thing up, I might as well post on it once in a while. It's been almost half a year since my last update! Sad.

Two, I think way too much.

PHILOSOPHY ALERT! THOSE WHO HATE IT, DON'T READ BEYOND THIS POINT! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

Case in point: This morning, while I was gettin' ready to read me some Old Testament (which really has little to nothing to do with the thought), I came to the conclusion that money would be nigh-worthless if time (or death, if you will) didn't exist, and almost all we're buying with money, after all is said and done, is just other peoples' time. So time does, in fact, equal money in a whole new way that I'd previously never thought.

Allow me to explain. If we never felt that there was an eventual end to our existence, we would likely not feel rushed to accomplish anything. Why would we? It's not like there would be anything to hurry up for. We would ALWAYS have time on our side.

Want a new car? Build one. Need a bridge to get across that chasm? Make it happen. Want to completely understand advanced thermodynamics? Spend a century or two studying it. The main reason we pay people to do these things now is because we either have more important things to do or just plain don't care to take the time from our limited lives to learn/build/obtain what's necessary to get what we want.

I acknowledge I might be completely wrong in what I suspect an immortal's mindset would be. Maybe he or she would be just as impatient as the rest of us, but I suspect otherwise. Death gives us a sense of urgency, at very least in the back of our minds. Without the thought of death in place, I think we'd see the world VERY differently.

Now, the exception to this idea is the things we can't do for ourselves. Say there's a plant that only grows in Michigan and one that only grows somewhere in India and for some reason couldn't be grown or transported anywhere else without being picked. Now say we want to cook a dish that requires both of them, but the shelf life of either would expire by the time we'd be able to go get the other. We'd have to overcome this obstacle by employing someone else to compensate for our inadequacy to be in two places at once and get one or the other and meet us somewhere in Europe or someplace like that so we could produce the desired meal. For that much work, I hope it would be worth it.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have this thought, and I think it entirely possible that if anyone bothers to read this, you're probably thinking, "Yeah, this sounds a whole lot like X idea proposed by Y person/philosopher/raving lunatic." If you did indeed think or say that, you're probably now thinking, "And now that I think about it, that person was proven wrong already... so therefore you are too."

That, or maybe everyone else has always interpreted "time = money" this way and I'm just the last kid off the bus.

Either way, I'm OK with it, and honestly not too surprised.

GREATEAST INFLUENCE

A thought hit me recently (can't quite remember when or where) about various passages of scripture. It occurred to me that, when discussing some of the very most good and also evil of things, often the Lord personifies what He is talking about into a woman. For instance, on the evil side, we have the whore of all the earth and other such depictions of an evil woman to symbolize depravity and wickedness and the devil. On the other hand, the collective most righteous people in the world, Zion, is compared to a virtuous woman in beautiful and resplendent garments and is even the symbolic bride of the bridegroom, our Savior.

Maybe I'm looking too much into things, but I don't think it's coincidence that both the good and evil of the world are personified into women. In my experience, women have had the greatest influence in my life, both for good and for ill. Most of my greatest joys that involve other people involve women, and I'm not even a husband or father yet. At the same time, it has also been women who have caused more difficulty and hardship in my life than men.

To me, this is just another evidence that women are, on average, far more influential in the lives of most people than men. It's unfortunate to me that many fail to recognize this simply because it's more often men in positions of prominence in the world. However, I think in the more personal realms, positions of personal prominence are dominated by the fairer gender.

I'd be glad to hear any thoughts anyone has on the subject, whether you agree with my conclusions or not. :)

A WISE EXTRACT

I recently came across an excerpt that I found interesting from a book titled "The One in the Mirror," by Ramesh S. Balsekar. I thought it good enough to share. The subject being discussed is true love. If you don't get what he's saying, just skip to the last paragraph. The really good stuff is there.

For the average person, love is a manifestation of the violent, possessive doership of the ego. Whereas for the spiritual person, it is not a sentiment at all, but a state of mind in which love exists to the degree in which the selfish element is transcended.

According to the average person, the desire for possession is the criterion, the touchstone of sincerity or reality by which love is to be judged. Even the mother is accused of not loving her child if she is not particularly possessive towards her baby. Love - the sentiment, and love - the non-affective state of mind, where a subject-object relationship does not exist, are infused by the same force. Though basically not different, one is steeped in egoistic involvement, the other unaffected and pure. The former is exemplified by the love of a man for a woman, the latter, sometimes called divine love or caritas, is a luminous pool of light and not a beam focused on one object at a time. All-embracing, bathing all alike in its radiance.

It must, however, be recognized that the discrimination between spiritual and romantic love is illusory because both are aspects of the same reality. Physical expression of love cannot be excluded because the relationship is on the plane of phenomenality. In a few rare cases, even the sense of doership and possession will not exist.

Recently, I came across an instance where the personal element was not excluded from true love. A nurse recounted: "While taking care of my patient's wound, we began talking, and he told me that he needed to visit the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. She had been there for a while, a victim of Alzheimer's disease. I asked him if his wife would be worried if he was a bit late, whereupon he replied that due to her loss of memory she no longer knew who he was, nor had she recognized him in five years. I was surprised and asked him: 'And you still go every morning?' I had to hold back tears when he smiled, patted my hand and said: 'She doesn't know me, but I still know who she is.' I realized that true love is neither physical nor romantic. True love is an acceptance of all that is, that has been, that will or even will not be."

AN INCREDIBLE EXAMPLE

I recently watched again part of the funeral service for Gordon B. Hinckley, the former Prophet and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As I listened to President Thomas Monson's heartfelt farewell to one of his dearest friends and associates, some of his words brought back thoughts I'd had years ago. I'd observed that seemingly all the great men and women that preside in the labor of Christ's vineyard not only love and appreciate but truly adore their wonderful spouses. Of everyone I'd heard, among such an incredible group, President Hinckley seemed foremost among even them. I've never seen or heard a man speak so lovingly of his wife than he did on so many occasions.

The quote President Monson shared that got me thinking about this was the following. Speaking of his wife, President Hinckley said, "I am so grateful for her. For 66 years we have walked together, hand in hand, with love and encouragement, with appreciation and respect. It cannot be very long before one of us will step through the veil. I hope the other will follow soon. I just would not know how to get along without her, even on the other side, and I would hope that she would not know how to get along without me."

President Monson continued, "Within six months, his beloved Marjorie had stepped through the veil. He missed her every day, every moment. What a glorious reunion they have now had."

What a tremendous example. From reading Sister Hinckley's autobiography, my mom shared with me that, in their marriage, the Hinckleys had their ups and downs just like everyone else. Sometimes they got on each others' nerves. But they loved each other with everything that they were.

How did they do it? On another occasion, President Hinckley stated, "True love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the well-being of one's companion."

I think that both of the Hinckleys lived by that idea. By being selfless and forgiving and caring about each other, they built a life together that stands and shines with the greatest of any mortal men and women that have ever lived.
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Click here for the link to the address from which President Hinckley's quote about his wife was taken. It was an address to the women of the Church.

EDITS TO CONVENIENCE VS. LOVE

If you haven't read the Convenience vs. Love entry, this won't make any sense to you. Go ahead and read it and then come back to this one.

This post will be a work in progress, as I decided when I reviewed the C vs. L post that I missed a few key points. Rather than mess with the original itself, I'm going to post some amendments here. As I think (and get time) to write more, I'll edit this post and add them.

(4/6/10) Amendment #1.) The most important revision that I thought I needed to make was to clarify that I don't necessarily think that a couple has to endure great hardships to have a love relationship. I more meant that a love relationship can endure terrible things and come out all the stronger. The man and the woman won't shrink because something suddenly appears and messes with their blissful relationship.

A good example of this is in one of my favorite movies, A Walk to Remember. If you haven't watched it and plan to, don't continue reading this paragraph now because it will include spoilers. The movie begins as a typical chick flick with the bad boy (Landon) falling for the good girl (Jamie). She doesn't feel exactly the same way, but he fights for her and does cute things until she falls for him, too. The plot is decent, although unoriginal and unspectacular, until she reveals that she has leukemia. The rest of the movie revolves around Landon sticking it out with her and eventually marrying her despite that she likely won't live. He cares for her and doesn't try to take advantage of her or her weakness while she's in such a fragile state. I can't describe how incredibly well it portrays pure, lasting, and self-sacrificing love.

Their relationship began as a typical one but proved to be one of love once the hard times hit. However, until they did, it was hard to tell what kind of love they had. Even though the movie is fiction, it's loosely based on a true story, so such a relationship did exist.

(4/6/10) Amendment #2.) I imagine that some people who read the last post think I might be delusional or have a "marriage will end all life's problems" outlook. I failed to mention that my thoughts are based on what I've already seen in successful relationships from couples around the country, not from a fanciful idea that came from watching one too many corny movies. I haven't seen a very large number of them, but I know they do exist.

Do such couples still disagree on things? Of course. Do they get on each others nerves occasionally? Absolutely. However, the big difference, if I were to pick the most dominant trait besides love, is selflessness. Both people consistently put their spouse's needs above their own and try to make the other's day a bit easier every day. They work as a team and not as independent people working together. They compromise. They forgive. They don't let their pride get in the way of the most important relationship on Earth.

(5/30/10) Amendment #3.) True love matures and develops over time and thus the outward expressions of it change. At first, it can be difficult to differentiate love combined with infatuation from just plain infatuation. The divide becomes more obvious as time goes on. You know those cute old couples that we all see holding hands and caring for their spouse completely after a great many years? Those are the kind of people who most always, I think, truly love each other. Time has proven the veracity of their devotion and care. Some other couples stay together because it's just the thing to do and some others remain so because there's nowhere else for them to go. They end up being in what resembles more a living arrangement than a relationship of continuing (and increasing) love.

The next post I'm about to make inspired this amendment. I can only hope that I'm blessed to love and be loved when I'm much older.

(5/30/10) Amendment #4.) I don't know if this is really an amendment... probably not. More like an afterthought. Even with the changes I've made, it still feels like I'm missing something or not explaining what I'm trying to clearly. I'll keep thinking about it, but if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to give them.