Amounting to Something

A recent prophet of God, Gordon B. Hinckley, wrote a book not long before he died, titled 'Standing for Something.' I like that title. A related notion, though I’ve never seen a book with this title, could be 'Amounting to Something.' I remember, as a kid, hearing my dad say something like, ‘if he would apply himself he could amount to something,’ and ‘he’ll never amount to anything.’ If so, how? If not, why not?

I have though a lot about standing for something and amounting to something. A good and continuing education can help with both.

To become educated, we must surrender ignorance. To move forward we often undertake a course of study and yield to teachers who are probably wiser and certainly better educated than we are. When we pay money to go to school we usually don’t balk over the process. When we go to a physician to get healed we usually submit to the treatment. Yet when we are encouraged to voluntarily engage in practices that could help us in our quest to ‘amount to something’ we often do not fully engage ourselves or invest ourselves or discipline ourselves to ‘go the course’ or take the medicine. We may get distracted from our goal, or resent the expectations of our guide or mentor or maybe just get lazy. Self-improvement, for many, is hard to sustain.

Let me suggest that if you want to ‘amount to something’ more than you currently are, you don’t continue to go it alone. Make a contract with another person (or better yet, a covenant) that will make you accountable and then resolve to ‘endure to the end.’ Check in periodically for ‘progress reports.’ Engage another person in the pursuit of your quest. Don’t be afraid of correction along the way. Even the best of athletes, musicians, performers and presidents have coaches, mentors, and advisers to help them.

Here is a favorite metaphor that illustrates this, by a favorite author, C. S. Lewis:

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage; but He is building a palace. He in intends to come and live in it Himself.” (Mere Christianity, Book IV, chapter 9)

If we can come to a belief that we are a child of God, a child of Royal birth, that He wants us to ‘amount to something,’ and that He wants to help us in the school of our mortality, even though some of the courses and tests may be hard, then there’s no telling what great things that can be done with our lives. He can make much more of us than we ever could on our own. If we don’t believe that, then we’ve got a problem with pride.

Usually before we rebuild we must tear down or clean out. In investment language it is called divestiture; in religion it is called repentance.

As a bumper-sticker stated: If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.