I love the movie Cool Runnings for many reasons. One of my most favorite parts is when the team leader is talking with the coach about when coach cheated to win a medal. The coach tells him that if he’s not enough without a medal, he’ll never be enough with it. I find a great truth in that principle. Many people think that when they achieve something or own something or conquer something that it makes them worthy. However, as the coach points out, if you’re not a good person, a valuable person, without such accouterments, they will never suffice to get you there.
Far too many couples I know got together less for love than for advantage. Beyond the traditional combination of families for mutual benefit, many couples I know are together to save on expenses or because they like to do the same things or whatever. A lot of young men I know link their worth as a man to the woman they are currently dating, a notion that, were I to follow, would render me mostly worthless if not completely. Some of the best advice I have received as regards relationships revolves around improving yourself. You first need to love who you are by becoming someone worthy of your own love before you can love someone else or expect others to love you too. This is why improving works if and only if you improve because you want to be better. Efforts to woo someone else by changing yourself frequently lead to disappointment when the other person leaves because you have changed, either generally or in some way for which they do not care.
Many of my friends like to brag about their job. Whether it’s about the pay or the title, our society likes to equate the value of a person with his relative position in society. This is probably why good people shy away from teaching and why many good people elect to go somewhere other than manual labor because sweat isn’t sexy or swarthy or swagger-worthy, and it doesn’t make for bragging rights like being a lawyer or doctor. The paradox in this is that many doctors are lousy, many lawyers are corrupt, and many of the richest or most influential people in this world don’t have enough morality to fill a thimble. If we are paid what we are worth, then the most worthy among us are ENTERTAINERS, which is a notion that most people find absolutely preposterous. However, many young people still hang posters of these “heroes” in their rooms and aspire to be like them. The funny thing about wealth is that it can vanish. I’ve been homeless for a week and completely bankrupt because of my ex wife, and a woman I know once chose another man over me because he earned twice as much. Well, now I have money and that man is unemployed, which is the funny thing about employment. It’s not guaranteed. If you are not a good man without it, all the money or titles in the world will not make you a better person.
One of the things I detest most about members of my faith is how interested they seem to be in appearances and in keeping up with the Joneses. If you drive through Utah, you will see opulent houses, a plethora of personal motorcraft, and all sorts of one-upmanship. They buy boats and cabins and take fancy vacations. They compete for awards and attend fancy soirees and hobnob with elitists in society, even when those elitists obtained their ends through unvirtuous means. Even in dating, they try to outdo the last person, either with more creativity or with a more attractive mate. Members of my faith tend to marry attractive people and then let themselves go. Their achievements are wrapped up in things of no worth and which cannot satisfy because they are things rather than traits.
When I think of the Jamaican Bobsled Team, I stand in awe of their reaction to loss. They realized that getting to the Olympics was a great feat. They learned to work as a team. Even though they finished dead last, they finished strong, and I think they all realized that they were enough even without a medal of any kind. Although the movie is largely fictionalized, this line makes the salient point. YOU must be what you value or the things you acquire will not make you more valuable to yourself. No matter how much others may value you, unless you love yourself their love will not matter. Your own self-loathing will eat at you as you seek happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the law and to reality.
One of the greatest benefits of my trip to Alaska last summer was that I realized that I enjoy my own company. People who are not good enough do not like their own company. They will attempt to surround themselves with the best of things, the best of people, and the best of experiences without defining a reference in the vain hope that those things will rub off on them. Like I said on Twitter, people who are better people, who are different, will not tell you that they are better or different. Other people will say it about them. People who feel the need to boast are usually small, and since they are not enough without it, they can never be enough with it.
Ultimately our relationships and possessions do not amount to much. The greatest of men are usually the smallest by the metrics measured by men. We remember Mother Theresa not because of her wages, her opulent living, or her physique. We beatify good people because they were good. I think most people surround themselves with pretty things, pretty people and pretty titles to compensate for personal inadequacies. We’ve all heard the jokes about why the guy next to us is driving a HUGE truck, but I think in some way there is truth that he may feel he needs it to be worthy. The funny thing is that he IS worthy because of who he is. God loves you for who you are. For God so loved you that He gave His only begotten son that whoso believeth should not perish but have everlasting life. God loves you because you are you. He doesn’t really care if you are Olympian or President of the USA or the Dean of the College of Science and Math. None of that matters. What matters is that you are you. I close with this quote from Abraham Lincoln: "I do the very best I can, the very best I know how. And I will keep doing it until the end. If the end brings me out alright, what's said against me won't mean a thing. But if the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right will make no difference." What other people think should never make a difference. One definition of hell I heard recently was that on the day you die the person you become will meet the person you could have become. You are the one who must live with the person you become.
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