True Love

Here is a good quote which is, perhaps, applicable since today is Valentine's Day.

True love’s the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy’s hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.

- Sir Walter Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 13
(see http://www.bartleby.com/100/338.11.html)

True love perseveres over time. It persists even when difficulties arise. It brings out the best in you and impels you to do your best to bring out the best in the one you love. True love requires action, patience, service, trust and forgiveness.

Happiness

William Cowper is attributed to have said, "Happiness depends, as Nature shows, Less on exterior things than most suppose" (http://www.bartleby.com/100/278.3.html). Remember that, in all of our efforts to earn a living and provide the necessaries of life for ourselves and those we love, it is not what we acquire that brings happiness. Happiness comes from loving and serving others.

Trustworthy

Maybe it just a side effect of a world of legally binding documents, but many times it seems that people in general desire to require that those with whom they interact must be trustworthy, but do not require that trait in themselves. And then someone becomes irate when someone else fails to live up to the imposed value. All of this leads to more degradation of moral and honorable behavior.

However, at this time I do not want to focus on another person's likelihood of deserving the label of being a trustworthy individual. I want to focus on self. Yes, for this moment at least, let each of us be self-focused. In this introspection, review this question: Do you honorably keep every agreement you make?

Make sure that all that you say you will do, even (especially) the small stuff. If you tell your spouse that on the way home from work you will pick up a gallon of milk, do you do it? Or do you get home and apologize saying you forgot? Do you use your time at work to the best of your ability in accomplishing what you are paid to do? Or do you look for ways to avoid doing your work when your boss is not around? Do you follow the speed limit all of the time? Or just when there is a cop with a radar gun on the side of the road?

There are a hundred ways every day in which people trust us to do what we have agreed to do. As we go about our day, pay attention to things that you are being trusted to do. On a scale from one to ten with ten as perfectly trustworthy and one as not trustworthy at all, how would you honestly rate yourself?

Does being that trustworthy really matter? Well, think about all of the people that you trust throughout the day. Is it that important to you for them to fulfill what they have agreed to do?

Be trustworthy.

Humility

"Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."

- C.S. Lewis

Serving your fellowman will never decrease your self-esteem, but it will very likely increase the esteem of others for you. Being humble enough to serve and to be served allows you to trade in love and kindness, the commerce of which always makes the world a better place.

Power to Savor the Sweet

At a craft show I saw the following thought:

"True power doesn't need batteries."

True power is the strength to continue through whatever life throws at us without choosing to be pulled down. This power comes from trusting in Jesus Christ, for it is by His grace - His enabling power - that we are able to advance despite the storms of the devil and the world that rage around us. He can give us this power because, as Neal A. Maxwell put it, "Jesus partook of history’s bitterest cup without becoming bitter!" (https://www.lds.org/ensign/1997/04/enduring-well?lang=eng).

Evaluating Entertainment

What do you do for entertainment? The movies today and the shows on television are changing their standards. They are changing their rating system so that it will be a little more appealing. Can you depend upon the rating system today? I heard a couple of young people talking about a particular television show. They said, “Well, it wasn’t too bad. It had a couple or three rough spots in it—a little adultery and murder and obscenity and brutality and quarreling and profanity and dishonesty. But other than that, it was a pretty good show.” I don’t know what kind of boiling system we’re going through where somehow evil doesn’t look like evil anymore. We can become homogenized in our judgment, in our discrimination, in our values, to the point where we can’t discern between good and evil if we’re not careful. It can happen gradually, like freezing to death. We can become seriously numb before we even know it.

    - "The Gift That Matters Most", J. Richard Clarke

Perseverance

Stick to your task ‘til it sticks to you;
Beginners are many, but enders are few.
Honor, power, place and praise
Will always come to the one who stays.
Stick to your task ‘til it sticks to you;
Bend at it, sweat at it, smile at it, too;
For out of the bend and the sweat and the smile
Will come life’s victories after a while.
—Author Unknown