REFLECTIONS

This past weekend we had what we call Stake conference at church. We had the opportunity to listen to some of our leaders give uplifting, inspiring messages of faith, hope, love and many more guidelines by which to live fulfilling lives.

Since my spirit has been humble by some of the challenges I have been facing lately in my personal life, I was especially grateful for some of the stirrings the Holy Ghost caused in my heart as I listened to some of the messages.

I have been thinking that there are more things that make us similar than those which make us different. Diversity is good. We are individuals after all. Unique beings with personal goals, gifts, traits, and circumstances. But when all is said and done, every one of us truly wants the same thing...We want to be happy.

Now, how we define happiness and the methods we seek to attain it depends in several factors such as our perspectives, our upbringings, our understanding, our capabilities, our moral values, our empathy, our spirituality, etc.

So, how can we coexist when my utopia clashes with yours? How can we allow each other to seek for what makes us happy, when we come at it in different ways?

I do it by adhering to my belief that we are all members of one family. Wether you want to call it God’s family or the human family, boils down to the same thing. We are brothers and sisters, henceforth, we ought to love, or at least respect, each other.

Love, tolerance, acceptance and respect are basically what we need to coexist peacefully. Agree to disagree is a phrase which means that neither party can come to a full understanding of the other’s position, yet as long as it is not criminal, we are willing to come to the understanding that we will not be able to change each others’ minds and we are willing to move on.

I believe there are more pressing matters to which we should give more effort than to criticize, judge, condemn, rebuke, chastise, discriminate or alienate others. Why not use our strength to uplift, embrace, inspire, serve and support each other instead?

The prophets have counseled us that one of the purposes of our existence is that we may have joy. Furthermore, they have also counseled that wickedness, or evilness, or wrongdoing, never was happiness. Those two guidelines should make our paths clearer. How do we all reach that happy state we all desire? By doing and being good.

Emotions which cause conflict, such as falling in love with someone who is not your spouse; or taking something which does not belong to you; or holding on to a grudge after an offense and seeking revenge, are more than broken commandments, they are stressors and blockers to the normal and healthy Qi, or vital energy, which must freely flow through our body in order to stay healthy.

Positive emotions, on the other hand, such as loving those we serve, finding joy in nature, the laughter of a child, the blowing of a breeze, the wonder of the universe, will bring a continuous flow of vital energy to our whole body, empowering it in some instances to heal itself from whatever it is that afflicts it. Uplifting thoughts and desires will remove those energy blocks, removing sometimes pain, inflammation and illness.

It is a commonly known fact that gravelly ill patients in a hospital who are surrounded by loving families, live longer and many times leave the hospital totally healed, as opposed to the patient who is brought to the hospital by an ambulance and whose family never comes or it is nonexistent.

In summary, we can be happy. We must want it for the right reasons. We must seek it in the right ways. We must think it and feel it sincerely with the sole purpose of aligning our desires to the wellbeing of everything and everyone that surrounds us. We must change our attitudes.

As Marcel Proust once stated, “ The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” We have what we need.

This is just my opinion as...

A Single Woman, A Mormon, A Western/Chinese doctor