Assaults on Hope

There are a lot of discouraging things out there. As soon as I start out on a new path I will often find many reasons why the path I'm on may just very well not be worth the effort. I just want to share a couple of my latest discoveries and maybe reflect on them.

After I got off my mission I went back to my old job. There I made some friends, one of my friends was an older gent from the same country that I served my mission. It was fun talking to him and he was very grandfatherly to me. Well, just the past week I came across him and we started talking and he invited me to his wedding. He explained to me that after 43 years of marriage he got divorced and two years later he is going to get remarried. I've been married only seven years but I have to say that as time goes by we don't have as many fights as we used to. I can't even wrap my head around the idea of getting divorced after 43 years. I mean you've spent almost a half century with this person and suddenly you're not going to take it anymore. Well, I don't understand it and I couldn't bring myself to ask him why. It's just discouraging is all.

Now that I am going back to school I often will try and fill myself with the feeling that I am moving in the right direction. I mean, all the Prophets tell us that we need to be educated and get our collage degrees and such. Also I know that my current job can be a career if I really want it to, but I hold the hope that I can do so much more; I also hope that I can get payed more for it. Anyway, most everyone at my job knows that I've gone back to school and some want to talk to me about it. Some have stories about when they were in college, others want to give advice and others I don't really care enough about to listen to. So I've come across two people that have left an impression on me. One person is now a janitor, and he went to college. The other has his bachelors in psychology. So I ask myself, "If these guys who are well educated are doing the same thing that I'm doing; what makes me think that I'm going to be better off once I graduate?" Perhaps this pursuit of education is a fool's errand. I know that a person doesn't need to graduate from college in order to be intelligent. My brother is one of the smartest people I know and he doesn't need a piece of cardboard to tell him that he's jumped through hoops to prove his intelligence. He does it day in and day out, which in my opinion means more than a lot of the people I know that just hang out admiring how smart they are. So what I am to do? Get in debt so I can make as much as I make now? Or what?

I figure that sometimes we just have to gamble and hope everything turns out for the best. It seems to me that in this life we just have to make the most of what we are given and then roll with the punches. It's worked out reasonably well for me so far, it works out better for others and craps out for others. No guarantees no matter how hard you work, how smart you are or how talented. Not that I'm any of those, so I probably should be more thankful for how far I've come.