STANDING FOR SOMETHING

A great man  named 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. Or we stubbornly go on our own way thinking we know better.   But we don’t improve.  Self-improvement, for many, is difficult to obtain or 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 that will make you accountable and then resolve to ‘endure the process 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 advisors to help them.

 

A final thought:  ‘Standing for something’ is probably a better test of integrity than ‘amounting to something’ because of the value placed upon it by our ultimate Judge. That is what really amounts to something.