Amicable Companions

Share

Tonight, for the first time in my life I will be attending the wedding of someone who is not a relative. I have been invited to many weddings, and sometimes I send gifts or visit them personally after the fact, because I'm not much of a big group person. Additionally, I don’t usually like weddings. Mostly, I feel like everyone in attendance is outwardly happy except for me. While I am happy after a fashion, you won’t think it to look at me, as I’ll probably have that look on my face that my sister says makes me look like I’m going to kill someone. I decided to go to this one because they are only the fourth couple I’ve seen get married in the last five years that I thought was a good idea, and I want to be supportive. Plus, I guess it means I can have some free food. Lately, the media has been talking about marriage a lot because the President says he supports gay marriage. I don’t really know what to think, because nobody seems to define marriage except for the people who passed the Defense of Marriage Act, but even then it’s not specific enough. Let’s not pretend all those people have been waiting to be intimate until the government legitimated their relationships. I can count on one hand the number of people I know who are actually living celibately because they choose to. Plus, I know people will ask me why I’m not married (because I’m not dating, duh), and give me advice about how to get dates (it would help if you shave. Correction, it MIGHT help), but at least I probably won’t run into anyone at this wedding whom I’d rather not see.

For the third time so far this year, I have Saturday to do with as I please. Last semester, I taught a Saturday Microbiology course, and I would really rather be teaching class, to be honest. I know that actually MIGHT be productive use of my time. Right now, I’m just going through the motions. Outside of teaching, my life is the daily necessities of life, not really worth writing about or discussing, with neither observers nor teammates. No wonder people assume that I have no life. Nobody is around when I do something amazing or fun. Contrary to popular belief, I am not arrogant or greedy or selfish but far rather have “a great desire to find an amiable companion with whom to walk the road of life” (Gordon B Hinckley). At least in class, for a period of six weeks or sixteen, I am surrounded regularly by such amiable companions who share the road of life, even if for a short duration.

With that rather inarticulate segue and in the absence of your literal presence in my life, thank you so much for your companionship on the road of my life. I receive so infrequently the affirmative feedback that tells me whether or not my actions, choices, and conversations have borne fruit worthy for the Lord of the Harvest. As the department secretary pointed out yesterday, our department, like life, is prone to only send out negative feedback rather than encouraging positive things. Were I to act based on the little feedback I do receive, the incessantly negative din would do well to convince me that I’m an awful person. A few nights ago, I heard through the grapevine that several of my former students also are out there echoing the growing sentiment that I am arrogant. You kind of have to be arrogant to a degree to be a good professor; what value is a teacher who stands up and admits he doubts his competency to teach you? Students often unjustly ascribe both negative and positive traits to their instructors. Yes, we should be better people, but we are humans too.

It has been said that if you seek to be with better people the onus lies with you to become a better person. So many people I know think about what they ‘deserve’ without thinking about the many ways in which they can improve. We are all sinners and consequently fall short of the glory of God, and as we pair with the Savior, as CS Lewis discusses in Chapter 9 of Mere Christianity, He will remodel us into a palace worthy of His inhabitation. The problem with "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" is that it does not admonish us to that higher road that invites us to do and be good instead. Not being a bad person is significantly different from being a good one. I know many people who, like that student aforementioned, find it easy to roast me who are not themselves visibly striving in any way to become better people themselves.

Perhaps you will find as I that you are surrounded by people who discourage you from that pursuit. Another speaker whose words I have converted from cassette to mp3 talks of how, while catching crabs, he noticed that crabs will pull any of their number back down who attempt to climb out of the bucket. They cannot abide, for myriad reasons, that any of their number gain an advantage; for all of our so-called altruistic rhetoric about shared sacrifice, the only thing most are willing to share is the sacrifice of the best things for any of us if it cannot be true for all of us. Hence, we can expect, like the crabs in Hyrum’s story, to share captivity, misery, and death. Christ, contrarily, invites us to life and peace, not that everything will or MUST be blissful, but that things can be worthwhile. The same dissemblers who project evil traits onto me then complain that I will not spend time in their presence. Why would I want to? I am comfortable in the presence of people who are like me, and they have shown a disposition to anything but that.

I hope that you find a few friends who share your high standards, your noble ideals, and your stalwart faith. I find selfishness to be the root cause of most strife between people, blood related, work-related, or electively engaged in any kind of emotional relationship. Surround yourself with people who support you. Not that they necessarily always agree with you, but who encourage you to go and do and become the best You of which you are capable in the circumstances. The people whose companionship is of the highest value long term are those who truly desire and help you to become the best you can be. They do not care about keeping pace with you and holding you back; they desire you to move forward, upward, and onward. Real recognition of relationships between members of the family of man involves an understanding of the fact that when we truthfully care about others, we lose our lives for their sakes, even as Christ, for our sakes, gave His.

Remember that you were born a son or daughter of a God. You have earthly parents who participate in the process of your birth and nurture. In the end, however, you were born to lead and born for glory. I have every hope that you will become a better person than I am. Many people are threatened by that, and I understand the feeling, but if we are not improving as a people, then the adults are not meeting the needs of their children. We progress as a people when the rising generation is smarter, healthier, and wealthier in every way that matters than the previous one. For their pride, many of our elders hold us back to exalt themselves, and every time they do that their posterity suffer more than necessary. Be the kind of amicable companion you desire to have, and it will help attract more of that kind of people to you. People will still hate, but you will be able to find what Aristotle calls ‘friends for the sake of virtue’ who will invite you to a higher plain thereof.