Who I was - Who I am

After sharing my blog with a friend who hadn’t read it and talking about it a little bit, I decided to go back over my posts and I find it remarkable the person I was then and the person I am now.  I made the comment that I hardly recognize that person as there has been a transition from the boy who was tucked far into the fold of LDS theology to a man who has had the bubble of faith burst and is now walking a different path.

I was a person consumed with the desire to find someone to share my life with.  One individual dominated that desire, though there were occasional distractions and the possibility of being with somebody else, though none of those prospects every yielded much beyond casual friendship.  The place I find myself now is one where I think it wouldn’t be the end of the world to spend my life as a bachelor.  As a matter of fact, remaining single may very well leave my life open to a great number of possibilities that would be closed if there was somebody else to consider in the plans for my life.  Every now and then I’ll look around at those who have found companionship and experience a longing to have something similar, but such feelings are fleeting and quickly filed back away as a simple distraction.  As far as dating is concerned, I see it as nothing more than a child playing with fire and constantly getting burned.  Eventually interest in continually being burned is lost and a new activity is found.

I was a person of strong conservative principles and moorings; but over the course of the years, I have found myself leaning further libertarian.  A simple example can be conveyed in the fact that I believe in the freedom of association.  When applied, this liberty extends to individuals seeking deviation from past cultural norms in regards to homosexuality.  The freedom to engage in a romantic relationship with whoever one sees fit is core to a free society, although homosexuality does lead to a problem when it comes to the propagation of the human race; but that is another matter in itself.

Some things have not changed.  I still love musicals, especially Les Miserables.  I listen to the soundtrack at least twice a week.  The nice thing is that I finally had a chance to see the production on stage a couple months ago, so that ambition has been crossed off my list.  Music has a power that is unmatched in its ability to shape my mood and restore sanity when waters are troubled.  I suppose this is why I don’t care for loud or particularly raucous music.  I generally prefer things that are softer, more melodic, and just instrumental.

In one of my former posts, I utilized a quote from D. Tood Christofferson from a CES fireside.  It mentioned the descent from being a covenant keeper to someone who ultimately comes to despise himself.  For the longest time, I despised myself for my personal weaknesses that the LDS faith would deem immoral.  I won’t go into details, but I didn’t need to stop keeping covenants to feel despicable.  I felt that way because I knew that I was routinely falling short of LDS standards.  I allowed those immoral actions to define me.  I was so focused on the things that I was doing wrong, that I had little time to see what I might be doing right, or to see what value I might have in myself other than the utter lack of value of some of my actions.  There is no shortage of reminders of the ways in which you are falling short in LDS theology.  Weekly meetings that dredge on for three hours on Sunday, 10-hour guilt sessions semiannually, and countless other activities to see others and see the ways in which you aren’t satisfying the requirements takes a huge toll on a person, and that toll is one of the great reasons that I finally decided that I had enough.  I didn’t need these constant reminders of my own inadequacy; and while I have had to struggle to reconcile the feelings that it seems I might be doing nothing, I am doing things now that are making me a better person that I was too distracted to be able to do while involved in church activity.  I am finding out who I am on my own.  Perhaps one day I’ll go back, or there is just as much a chance that I will find that life can be just as fulfilling outside of the Church, or in my case more so, than it ever was in it.

I know there are those that would say, “ but that’s what the atonement is all about.  That is why you need to pray, and study your scriptures, and go to your meetings.”  No, I know nothing about the atonement other than I never felt any power carrying me on away from sin or sustaining my efforts to turn from a life I believed was wrong, praying is just vocalizing one’s thoughts to an empty room, scriptures are (supposedly) thousands of year old ambiguous texts upon which organizations have placed their own interpretations leaving the individual to either accept or reject those interpretations, and church meetings are an oligarchic way of keeping the masses huddled in certain cultural norms and ways of thinking. Anything that I have said in the past is little more than a projection of the person I thought I was supposed to be rather than who I really am.

Some time ago, in a history course, I began to conceive of religion as nothing more than a social construct used by those in power to influence the masses and as a means of explaining the things in life that are unknowable.  History demonstrates people believing in a pantheon of gods that influenced every day events from the rising of the sun, to the changing of the seasons, to the movement of the stars, to the flooding of the plains.  These gods were vengeful and in need of constant appeasement. Time progressed and people began to explore a theology of monotheism and finally one deity was established that wasn’t vengeful but full of love and compassion.  One only needs to look at the difference between the gods of the Old Testament and the New Testament to see this difference. Still wars have raged in the name of even this religion.  Today this religious belief is used to infringe on the rights of individuals to exercise their liberties.

So really, the person I was was a person focused on relationships.  One relationship was that of trying to discover an individual with whom I could share my physical existence.  The other relationship was with someone/something that I had never seen, never heard, and had limited interaction with, if the interaction was every anything more than the firing of neural impulses.

Now, I find myself pursuing things that are more stimulating in a more real way.  My love of learning compels me to learn new things on a daily basis.  I still strive to be a better person than I was yesterday, but absent the religious influence.