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Every life is different; the only predictable pattern is that all of us experience a mix of joy and sadness, happiness and heartache—usually occurring unpredictably. No matter how carefully we plan, setbacks—large and small—can disrupt our plans. We settle into a good job, a relationship, a neighborhood, and then life surprises us.
Every once in a while, a series of choices, experiences, and circumstances combine to create a person who seems to stand out, someone we naturally look to as a role model. Russell M. Nelson is one of those uncommon men.
Is there such a thing as a “perfect family”? Obedient children, abundantly patient parents, with endless bliss at home—we fantasize about it, because that’s exactly what it is: a fantasy. In reality we all have struggles, seen or unseen, that pull at the fabric of our family. And that cloth knows both tears and tears as we watch loved ones make choices that break our hearts.
Young people are taught that they can accomplish anything they set their minds to. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you can dream it, you can do it. And when we’re young, we believe it. The world seems full of promise and possibilities.
Why is it that so much of life’s profound beauty has roots in heartache and sorrow? There seems to be something about human nature that causes us to reach the highest during our lowest points. We see it when tragedies and disasters strike and people come together to love and help each other in ways they’ve never done before. We see it in sublime art and music, which often enough is inspired by hardship and trial, even as it fills us with solace and joy.
Several years ago, a team of rescuers helped an older couple evacuate their home after a hurricane. Their house, which the husband had helped build, was flooded. The wife had serious health problems that made their situation more perilous. And yet, they were smiling. One of the rescuers asked how they could stay positive in the midst of this difficult tragedy. The woman answered, “That storm can take my house, it can take my car, it can take my furniture and my pictures, but it can never take my spirit.”[1]
So often in life, we are taught by trials. We don’t get to choose our difficulties and challenges, but we do get to choose whether or not we will learn something from them. We can all think of personal trials we’ve had to face—everyone has them. But it’s not often that the entire world faces the same challenge—the same learning experience—at the same time.
Anyone who has ever passed a driving test knows what a blind spot is. It’s that troublesome area just outside your field of vision that can make changing lanes dangerous. No matter how you adjust your mirrors, you can’t truly drive safely unless you’re aware of and account for your blind spot.
You’re probably familiar with the old saying “The best things in life come to those who wait.” Sometimes that’s called delayed gratification: the decision to forego something you want now so that you can have something better later. It’s not hard to see the benefits of this philosophy, but it can be hard to practice it—especially in today’s world, where so many voices say, “Why wait? You deserve to have it now! This will make you happy.”
Despite the difficulties that come with getting older, we all hope we live long enough to experience them. But we also hope, of course, to find plenty of peace and comfort as well. According to one expert who has written about happiness in the retirement years, two key attributes are essential—in old age or any season of life: a good sense of humor and a willingness to forgive. [1]
In 1872, United States President Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill designating Yellowstone as America’s first national park. In fact, it was the first national park in the world. More than that, it was the birth of a new idea—the preservation of a natural site of notable beauty and importance. The idea caught on, and over the next 44 years, another 34 national parks and monuments, along with an agency to maintain them, were created. Here at Yellowstone National Park, we mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, and we celebrate what author and environmentalist Wallace Stegner called “the best idea [America] ever had.”
In the spring of 1945, with the world still staggering from the most devastating war in human history, leaders from 50 nations gathered in San Francisco with admittedly high aspirations: to create an international organization that would “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”[1] Thus the United Nations was born, with a charter that also included the aim to promote human rights, international law, and a higher standard of living around the world.
The first-time famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma ever performed as a young boy, he played a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach. In the 60 years since then, he has performed works by scores of other composers, but he finds himself constantly returning to Bach. When asked why that is, Yo-Yo Ma explained: “At each stage of your life, you go back and discover new things. The way I understand Bach now is with the analogy of a river. It’s like you’re touching a living stream of water that keeps flowing, and by touching it or listening to it or playing it, you are in touch with something much bigger than yourself. It changes from day to day, from season to season and from year to year.”[1]
It takes only a glance at the news to know about disasters and tragedies all around the world. And it takes only a glance into our own lives to know that they happen close to home as well. Everyone’s difficulties are unique, but everyone has some. And perhaps that’s the first step toward coping and hoping: to realize that we’re not alone as we experience life’s hardships. We are all, to one degree or another, going through it together. While we might prefer to turn away from others and struggle privately, hearts heal best when they’re open. That’s when love can enter, when the bonds of friendship can bind up a broken heart. Writer James Thurber once shared this definition of love he heard from a friend: “Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.”[1]
In 1846, thousands of people in the midwestern United States were persecuted for their beliefs and forced from their homes in the dead of winter. They didn’t consider themselves pioneers, but suddenly they were—walking across the western wilderness in search of refuge, a place where they could worship their God and practice their faith. Some traveled by wagon, others by handcart, but they all had to walk and walk and walk many hundreds of miles. There were no roads or restaurants, no inns or waystations to enter and rest along the way. But the fire of their faith kept them warm, and their convictions kept them moving.
When The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square first began singing, not long after the wagon wheels came to a stop in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1847, there was more sagebrush than people in the listening audience. Now, that same choir produces the world’s longest-running continuous network broadcast—carried on more than 2,000 media stations and heard by millions of people each week.
We opened today’s broadcast the same way we opened The Tabernacle Choir’s first-ever broadcast 90 years ago: with a stirring hymn titled “The Morning Breaks, the Shadows Flee.” It was composed by George Careless, former conductor of the Choir, and looking back, it was the perfect way to begin the weekly tradition of Music and the Spoken Word—with a song about “the dawning of a brighter day” majestically rising “on the world.” Mornings, after all, bring hope. The dawn is a signal of promise and possibility and encouragement. And this is what Music and the Spoken Word has brought to the world for nine decades now. No one knew it at the time, but July 15, 1929, marked the dawning of the longest continuously broadcast network program in history.
On the 10th day of May 1869, at a remote promontory north of the Great Salt Lake, Central Pacific Railroad official Leland Stanford struck a golden spike into a railroad tie. It marked the connecting point between the Central Pacific and Union Pacific rail lines, a railroad that now spanned the breadth of the United States. Bill Smoot, a local 15-year-old, had signed on to help with the work as it passed through Utah Territory. He later recalled, “I caught the railroad fever, even though I had never even seen a picture of a railroad or a train of cars.”[1]
Nathan Hale was a schoolteacher, fresh out of college, teaching in a one-room school in New London, Connecticut, when the American Colonies went to war against the British in 1775. Inspired by the cause of independence, he joined the fight and quickly rose to the rank of captain. But the colonists faced a series of defeats in the early months of the revolution, and victory did not seem likely. It was in these circumstances that General George Washington asked for volunteers to spy on the British forces. It was a dangerous mission, and being captured would mean certain death. At first no one volunteered. Then 21-year-old Nathan Hale—alone—stepped forward.
Good fathers make a big difference in the lives of their children—bigger, in fact, than they might realize. Fathers often try to share with their children some of their hard-won wisdom—lessons about work, integrity, and perseverance. But most children will tell you they remember less of what their fathers say and more of what they do—who they are. How blessed are the many sons and daughters who can say, “I want to be just like my dad,” or “Whenever I’m not sure what to do, I think about my dad and try to follow his example.”
Life is often compared to a pathway. And, as most of us know by experience, that pathway is rarely smooth and straight. Rather, it takes us on a journey of peaks and valleys, twists and turns. Some of these are expected: Childhood passes into youth. Youthful life evolves into adulthood and, eventually, into life’s twilight. We know these changes are coming, and we can prepare ourselves to transition from one stage to another.
Not long ago, a man ran into an old high school friend, one he had not seen for many decades. He remembered his classmate as a reckless teenager, but he was now well into his 60's, and he was noticeably different: certainly more responsible and mature, but also kinder and more caring. What a pleasure it was to get reacquainted with this new version of his long-lost friend. He couldn’t help but ponder what experiences must have influenced him over those many years. What heartache and happiness, what successes and sorrows had shaped him and made him into the person he had become?
To be human is to love. We become our best and truest selves only when we stop focusing on ourselves and start loving others. Love gives richness and beauty to life. People who love are able to keep going forward during difficulties and experience authentic joy.
The flag of the United States has flown on the earth and the moon, on the home front and the battlefront, in conflict and in peace. Something stirs within us when we see this red, white, and blue “emblem of the land [we] love, the home of the free and the brave.” 1
Life is full of important things to do. But if we let those to-do’s fill up our lives, we may be missing something essential about what it means to be human. After all, as it is often said, we are human beings, not human doings. In other words, life is more about who we are becoming through our experiences—not just what we’re doing with our time. So while it’s helpful to plan what we are going to do each day, we might also consider what we are going to become each day. How might the person we are at the end of the day be a little different from the person we were at the beginning?
Much of the world’s most important work is done by people who don’t get much recognition. Teachers, farmers, laborers, military personnel, emergency responders, and so many others all play such vital roles in our society, and yet they often do it quietly, without the appreciation they deserve. And for no one is that more true than for mothers.
We all know the law of the harvest: the fact that we tend to reap what we sow. And yet even when we sow carefully, we don’t always reap what we expected to.
A drop of water may seem rather ordinary and unimpressive. And yet when very small amounts of water are dropped steadily, over extended periods of time, the results can be quite spectacular. Think, for example, of Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, or the Reed Flute Cave in China, to name only a few. It’s amazing how often water does its remarkable work one drop at a time—giving life to a plant, turning a field green, invigorating parched soil, filling a river or lake, and yes, carving into solid rock. Over time, small drops of water can make a big difference.
It seems pretty much impossible to go through life without ever being insulted, mistreated, disrespected, or snubbed. We are surrounded by imperfect people who do imperfect things—people who are sometimes unkind, occasionally bad-mannered, and frequently rude. So what can we do about it?
One spring, a robin built her nest in a wreath that hung on a family’s front door. The mother bird flew to and from her nest many times a day. But one time, the bird came in for a landing just as the front door opened. Instead of finding her nest, she flew right into the house!