my thoughts: on motivation revealed

So, last time I really only shared what someone else thought about motivation.  I thought I would do it differently, but when I was typing it up, I felt like I should just share what someone else said and ask if you agree.  Many thanks to those who replied.  I appreciate your time and thoughts very much!

As for me, I believe that the three motivations shared in the last installment of my thoughts is really pessimistic and not really accurate, anyway.  Perhaps I'm overly optimistic.  I just believe that if I had to limit folks' motivation to three it would be: love, security, and legacy.  Probably in that order, too.

What to you think of my three?  Am I overly optimistic?

my thoughts: on family

What a great training-ground, right?  I mean, for real... what better way to pass on important knowledge, both spiritual and temporal?  Can you think of one?  Most of the institutions established for much the same purpose really do a barely adequate job.

I believe that the family has been ordained and organized by God.  Among his innumerable purposes for families, I believe we are meant to learn all the important lessons about God and his plan... the purpose for our lives.  He wants us to have folks we care about with whom to practice the most important functions of a society.

Hopefully we learn about honesty being the best policy without lying and having to rebuild lost trust.  We learn about consequences, both natural and imposed by parents who are our very first authority figures.  We learn about leaders and how to lead and how important our example may be.  We learn about love, like, joy, happiness, faith, hope, and so many other positives and their opposite.

As a tale from Tori... when I was about 24, I thought I had improved dramatically in patience.  I just really didn't get angry much or easily.  By the time I'd been married for a year or two, I realized how impatient I yet was.  Another couple years, and our first child, proved to me in wholly new and amazing ways how far I had to go to become truly patient.  Each additional child has revealed to me how sorely lacking in patience I really have been all along!  So... as an example that is also true of many other things, family provides growth opportunities.  Family enables us, when we are willing, to see into ourselves more fully... as if shining a light into the corners we didn't pay attention to before.  It is revealing and ripe with potential for transformation.

Our family of origin as well as the family we form when we marry, potentially provide us with more opportunities of this sort than any other single relationship.  Trial and blessing all in one... as must needs be since opposition is necessary to true and deep understanding.

my thoughts: on marriage

If you remember my thoughts on the purpose of life, you might recall that I believe one purpose of life is to marry and have children.  I believe marriage is a figurative house, spiritually built by three (the man, woman, and God) individuals who promise God before other humans that they will be faithful to each other and potential offspring.  I believe that the energy of creation of the marriage is an actual spiritual shield and provides a form of protection for the children that simply isn't there without marriage.

My life has provided some specific experiences through which I have felt the reality that marriage is not just an ephemeral idea or just a word.  It is a living, breathing house for those joined together and the children they bring into it.  It is a sort of being.  It is more than just those who began it, even if there are never children brought into it.  The time and energy put into the relationship between the two who began it actually build rooms and beautify the house that the marriage is or can be.  This is the exact thing that Proverbs 14:1 is referring to when it says, "Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands."

It is daunting to realize the problems in marriage.  Even more difficult to realize that the only person whose problems we can ever improve are our own.  I know, though, that as we improve ourselves, our spouse will improve, too.  That's a result of the truth in the Mandelbrot Set and the reality of our spirits being tied together.  There are exceptions, of course.  Those are very sad, especially when one partner wants to make it work and the other will not consider it.  In general, though, as we focus on fixing what we actually can (ourselves), our partner will improve basically all on their own.  How awesome is that?

Marriage.  Defined by God.  And created as an awesome vehicle for self improvement!  We realize how far we have to go when we unite with another person, don't we?  I know I sure did.

What do you think of marriage?

my thoughts: on love

Love is one of the primary purposes of life.  Both to learn to feel our Father's love and to give/feel it unselfishly and unconditionally.

Family is one way we are both able to feel and express love hopefully readily and often.  It's also an arena for practicing selfless and unconditional love.  How much more difficult is it to love someone who knows how to hurt you and does it?  It's all about opportunities!  Boy do I fall flat on my face... sometimes daily.  Thankfully most of my blunders and less extreme than flat on my face.  Thankfully!  

Through the more recent years, I've learned that our Heavenly Father loves me because I am unique among his daughters.  The funny-awesome thing is that the same is exactly just as true for you (though maybe as a son) as it is for me!!  Because we are fallible, we rarely love perfectly - even our children.  So, it might seem unlikely or even impossible that God loves you as much as I know he loves me.  Nonetheless, it is true and such a glorious and joyous truth!

No matter what I think of someone else's worth... because I look around me and see others doing far better than me!  I know that even though I struggle in visible ways with things I really should have mastered by now, our Father loves me just as much in my foibles as he does another better-performing daughter in her accomplishments!  How awesome is that!?  Well, I think it's spectacular!

Loving others completely unselfishly and unconditionally is not among my spiritual gifts.  Just so we're clear, you and me.  I know a lot of things I'm not necessarily wonderful at actively living on a daily basis.  I know, though, that as long as we don't stop trying we can never fail, we just keep on having opportunities to improve until the lesson is learned!

Although it may seem elementary to you, it took me until I was well in my 30s to realize that the feeling of like and the reality of love are not always companions.  I can love someone without liking them.  Just like I can love them without trusting them.    Love can (and should) continue even when other feelings move like tides.  Love, like joy, can be a solid rock beneath the changeable waters of the feeling sea of like.

Do you see love as a possible foundation stone, like joy?