I BELIEVE IN MARRIAGE...

My mind is just spinning today. I am here at work. It is my long day. I will be putting in 9.5 hours today. That is fine. My boss is gone of vacation. I wish I could be on vacation, away from this depressing environment. I have thought a lot lately about where I am in my life. About where I could be. I am for real when I say that I have honestly thought about taking myself off facebook because though I am genuinely happy for so many amazing friends of mine who are on amazing adventures throughout the world, and I am also really jealous because I am here, in Salt Lake, sitting at a desk. I know that this is starting out like a pity party...but I swear it is building to something. I really don't like my job. There I said it. It is the truth. Am I grateful for it? YES! Am I learning a lot? YES. But do I like it? Well there is the hang up folks.

I have been reading Half the Sky...when I finish, I shall blog about it. But in it, they describe this wonderful woman from Minnesota who decided at age 21 to go to Africa and work in a hospital...in Congo of all places. Then the book encouraged us to all go there or go somewhere...anywhere and really DO something with our lives. Oh man, I would. In a second. I asked Parker that night if we could move to Africa...he said yes. He always says yes. He's good that way. He's the best actually...but we can't go to Africa right now. I can't even get a different job right now. I could barely get this one.

I find my work so depressing. I loved college. It was full of ideas and energy and excitement. I am so tired of lawyers who just care about money. I am tired of divorces. I am tired in general. Why am I going to law school? I don't know. But I know that I hope it is so that I can scream in the face of all the cynics that I believe in marriage. That I believe in families. That I believe in people and that they are naturally good. And that I despise money and how is corrupts and clouds the mind. That's my rant for today.

We have staff meetings on Thursdays during lunch. I don't like them much. I find them boring. I like having my lunch paid for though. I dislike the meaningless chatter. Anyway, today when I was discussing a new client that we had, everyone asked why he was getting a divorce. I said that his wife just wanted a divorce and that he seemed like a nice guy. What a let down. I didn't realize what a disappointment that would be to everyone. They all wanted something juicier, something scandalous. They said, well surely he has a girlfriend. I said no. "Well, there must be something, there always is...the scandal will come out in time." I nearly burst into tears right there. My goodness. Why isn't it good enough that this poor man's wife left him after 35 years of marriage? He's shattered, and my co-workers want a scandal.

Anyway, right there and then it occurred to me just how provocative it is to believe in marriage. To believe in families. To believe in people and that they can be good. BUT I DO. I will scream it from the roof tops too. I am tired of the cynics. I am tired of the skeptics. I am tired of the haters and the tainted and the pessimists. I am tired of the mockery that people make of truth and purity. I am tired...but I am not finished, and I hope that I can turn this otherwise depressing atmosphere into a catalyst for change, into a reason to do and be and live BETTER. Ugh...I am tired of people settling for mediocrity. Sometimes I wonder if I have, but I haven't, and I won't.

This thought came back to me today, and it is what urges me on to be something more:

"I respect all men, and it is from disrespect for none that I say there are no great leaders in the world today. In fact, greatness itself is laughed to scorn. You should not be great today--you should sink yourself into the herd, you should not be distinguished from the crowd, you should simply be one of the many.

The commanding voice is lacking. The voice which speaks little, but which when it speaks, speaks with compelling moral authority--this kind of voice is not congenial to this age. The age flattens and levels down every distinction into drab uniformity. Respect for the high, the noble, the great, the rare, the specimen that appears once every hundred or every thousand years, is gone. Respect at all is gone! If you ask whom and what people do respect, the answer is literally nobody and nothing. This is simply an unrespecting age--it is the age of utter mediocrity. To become a leader today, even a mediocre leader, is a most uphill struggle. You are constantly and in every way and from every side pulled down. One wonders who of those living today will be remembered a thousand years from now--the way we remember with such profound respect Plato, and Aristotle, and Christ, and Paul, and Augustine, and Aquinas.

If you believe in prayer, my friends, and I know you do, then pray that God send great leaders, especially great leaders of the spirit. [Charles H. Malik, "Forum Address" (18 November 1975), BYU Studies 16, no. 4 (Summer 1976): 543 44]"

That address was quoted by Gordon B. Hinckley at a BYU Devotional and it was followed up with this, which will forever be my goal.

"It is in harmony with that profound statement that I wish to say a few words to you today. You are good. But it is not enough just to be good. You must be good for something. You must contribute good to the world. The world must be a better place for your presence. And the good that is in you must be spread to others.

I do not suppose that any of us here this day will be remembered a thousand years from now. I do not suppose that we will be remembered a century from now.

But in this world so filled with problems, so constantly threatened by dark and evil challenges, you can and must rise above mediocrity, above indifference. You can become involved and speak with a strong voice for that which is right."

I hope I can speak with a strong enough voice someday to do something good for someone even whilst sitting at my desk in Salt Lake City dreaming about Africa :-)