An educational sort of day

Somewhere I'd heard something about ward conference coming at the end of the month, and so I was a little surprised when two members of the stake presidency showed up at our ward today, since I wouldn't have expected them to be there so many times in a month. Turns out they had a reason, though; time for a new bishopric (if by chance someone not belonging to my church reads it, authority is a really big deal in my church, so it was important to have the next person up from the bishop there so that there was officially someone with authority present for the meeting during the whole changing of the guard, so to speak). Well, that plus the announcements I started realizing I'd forgotten basically rendered my whole newsletter working from last night useless. And then, as if I didn't already have a plate full of humble pie, my sweet baby, bless his heart, managed to get me quite messy, thus destroying the "I look so great" feeling I'd had going out the door earlier. So, today's lesson topic, regardless of what teachers said, was obviously humility.

Also gained some interesting insights into the world. There's an individual in our congregation who seems unreasonably annoyed by me, as in my attempts at extending smile & wave friendship are neither reciprocated nor ignored, but rather met with a sort of "you, you, you, annoying person, you!" expression. Today thanks to some context clues coming together, I figured out that this person does have legitimate cause for bitterness. Interesting, to say the least. In fact, the circumstances in question are the sort that kind of slap me in the face with just how blessed my life actually is these days. However, despite my general tendency to see the glass as half full, anyone who actually knows me knows that I really do have days and even longer of non-hunky-dory times in my life. In the end, though, I have to go with the Marjorie P. Hinckley quote about getting through life by laughing instead of crying. I'm not trying to criticize the individual in question; I'm rather simply struck by the power of choosing one's perspective. If one has hope that there's more to this life than just the sum of the hum drum, then it becomes easier to try to put things into more manageable perspective. Still takes work, but I think it can be learned like any habit. To borrow a Mr. Collins quote from Pride & Prejudice, "It is a gift of nature, but constant study had enabled me, I flatter myself, to make a kind of art of it." Anyway, all you Pollyanna haters, remember that she lost her parents at a young age and was determined to make the best of things anyway. It wasn't that she had no appreciation of sorrow; she just decided to try not to wallow in it.