With Real Intent

I remember as a boy learning about the concept of a spectrum or continuum as the ‘fill in’ between extremes.  This further clarified the notion and rarity of ‘absolutes’ in behavioral terms. 

For some, it gave license to be content with a norm or a mean point between the extremes.  For others, if you were anywhere on the ‘positive’ side of the continuum it was good enough.  For yet others, the ‘absolute’ on the positive side of the continuum became the goal.  Examples of these types of individuals would be those who strive for athletic records or A+ academic grade point averages or the ‘most,’ or ‘biggest,’ or ‘best’ or a celestial heaven or of whatever is their highest value.

I always tried to be on the positive side of the continuum.  I even subscribed in my twenties to a ‘pursuit of excellence’ program created by my Church to challenge participants in their spiritual, emotional, intellectual, social, and physical dimensions. 

 

Had I done this program in my teenage years and let people know I was doing it I suppose I would have been labeled an extremist, or a ‘goodie-goodie’ by my friends. Well I didn’t and wasn’t but only because I didn’t know of the program then.  “For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men wherein they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it” (Doctrine and Covenants 123:12).

Knowing my proclivities even at a young age, had I been challenged to try the program, I believe I would have notwithstanding my peers’ possibly negative evaluations.  For I would have rather been thought of as a ‘goodie-goodie’ than a ‘baddie-baddie,’ if there is such a term. 

 

The way I figured it—and still do—is that if a person is convinced of the rightness of a course of action he should do it ‘with real intent.’ 

 

I realized that being a very average person in terms of ‘natural’ endowments I would have to work harder than average to achieve. I would have to apply myself with real intent if I wanted to win the prize.  And so, I had to set my sights high. I learned, as Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, that “to hit the mark, you have to aim above the mark.”  I also believed the maxim, learned, I think from my father, that ‘if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.’ 

 

Consequently, after seven decades of living I have had validated and confirmed again and again the truth that if you do any good thing ‘with real intent’ and persist in it long enough you will be blessed.  This is true with prayer—“For behold, God hath said a man being evil cannot do that which is good; for if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing” (Moroni 7:6)—with faith in God, with academic achievement, with good health, with noble associations, or with that which produces happiness and a useful life.