"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not."
- Thomas Henry Huxley
I have been blessed/cursed to have best friends throughout my life who have all had exceptional amounts of self-discipline. This is a blessing because they have set great examples for me; it is a curse because I have never ever come easily by that ability, and have therefore always felt like a lazy bum next to them.
But I have realized that pretty much nobody simply stumbles upon self-discipline. And I have realized that if that is the case, then I am going to have to work hard if I someday want to always be able to do the thing I have to do, when I have to do it, whether I like it or not. It'll be a lifelong quest; this I know.
The good news is that I think I have decent self-discipline in specific areas. I can make myself floss my teeth every night even though I hate it. I have pretty good control over my eating habits and I can rein myself in before I eat too much junk food. I can talk myself into liking things that are good for me and talk myself out of habits which waste time. I can befriend and care about people I don't get along with. I just don't think I'll ever be very good at getting myself up any earlier than the very last second possible when I need to be somewhere in the morning. (All things considered, this is not a worst case scenario. But I will pray and work for that dang character trait anyway.)
Anyway, I thought of this quote because I taught the lesson in Relief Society this week, and the topic was "Becoming Perfect before the Lord: A Little Better Day by Day." I would maybe modify the quote by replacing the word "education" with "life experience." After all, the original word and the replacement are, in the long run, synonymous, yes? The purpose of Earth is to provide a testing center for everyone to experience and overcome the difficulties of mortality, so through life experience we learn self-discipline. And since perfection, I believe, is the end result of self-discipline, as well as the ultimate and final goal in the eternities, day-to-day self-discipline in this life is crucial.
So although this basically was already the case, I'm declaring that self-discipline is now my main thing--my goal and my motto and my challenge.
And I say: bring it on.
We are not perfect, but we can do perfect things. We can pay tithing perfectly. Or clean the dishes perfectly. One thing after another, and then another. Our lives will not be made perfect overnight, but one night we will realize the perfect things in life.
ReplyDeleteI was going to comment about this awesome RS lesson we had, but then I continued reading and you already did. so that was just what I took away from it.
also, in case you needed to know, your self-discipline already inspires.