First, my wife says I'm not mid-life yet, so we'll say I'm talking about the middle 40 years of my life.
When I was younger, like high school and undergrad years, I viewed myself very differently than now. I thought I was extra smart, hardworking, healthy (even athletic, though too busy or disinterested to act on my innate talent), kind, social, and active in church. Extra is intended to modify all of those adjectives. By extra, I mean really great in my own eyes, and better than most I knew.
I assumed those exceptional attributes would lead to being rich and publicly powerful. I may be exaggerating to make my point, but only slightly. I spoke openly about my expectations of getting rich. At least some members of my family commented they thought I'd be the richest, as an orthodontist or with another high-paying career.
Now I'll break down how each of those identities have . . . broken down.
Rich
I recall talking with my wife around the time we married about some of our concerns for the future. We knew so many good people with such fancy, big things. Big, nice houses in particular. We worried that, someday, we'd fall into that trap. I worried that, as my income flew wildly out of control, I wouldn't be able to help our expenses from keeping pace. That name-brand cheese and fashionable suits would be too easy and attractive to pass up. Before we knew it, we'd be in a fancy, big house like all the other rich people. How could we discipline ourselves enough to set aside most of our income to save for future missions or other generosity? Our lives would be fraught with the moral dilemmas of people aspiring to be humble but awash with too much wealth.
Now a few years later . . . you could double my salary, and I assure you I could find ways to spend all of it on just my family with no moral qualms whatsoever. I simply don't see anything frivolous about replacing our section of carpet that smells like urine (and surrounding carpet to match), adding a second bathroom, letting a child or two have lessons of some kind, buying a futon, making progress on books my wife and I want to publish, recieving some counseling or therapy, flying to see some friends and family, going to Harry Potter/Disney World for the first time while visiting Orlando family . . . okay wow this is easy, maybe I should be talking about tripling my salary.
We just recently bought a home. We looked at a lot of options. Not a single option was eliminated because it was too fancy or big. They were eliminated because they were too expensive or too dingy. That's right, too dingy. We discovered that we're uncomfortable without a certain niceness.
 |
| She excitedly builds her fancy house as he accepts he can't afford such a house |
The difference between my younger financial expectations and current reality, while it feels stark sometimes, came about gradually. As I was considering law school, I was warned by many people that I wouldn't make much money, and I was advised that an MBA would be better. I believed them, but decided I still wanted to be a lawyer. Some of this change came from meeting my wife. Although most Americans descend from great-depression era scrimpers, she talks about and carries on that legacy more than anyone I know. I'm yet to find a spec of being materialistic or wanting to seem rich in her. So anyway, I started law school with slightly dampened visions of getting rich. Then at some point I recognized that I didn't fit the mold of an attorney set up for "big law" that would pay better than other attorney jobs. One honest and good-humored professor said about being on law journal that it looks good to law firms because it shows you're willing to do a lot of work for little compensation. I missed the deadline for getting on law journal, but that was a relief and felt meant-to-be for my baby daughter and overwhelmed wife. Later, I took advantage of a school-paid-for trip to LA to interview with a big firm. I thought that the interviewer, through her curriculum vitae and appearance, possibly spoke an Asian language, so I took a shot at saying a line in the language I thought she might have spoken. She didn't understand. I think I felt my chances at a job like that were low enough that I'd rather have the chance to get some language-learning in than slightly increase my chances at getting the job.
After being a judicial law clerk (slightly boring sometimes) and then public defender (never boring and often stressful), I realized that both of those jobs easily met the threshold for excitement and fun, and I should probably seek the most boring job possible while making enough to get by. In summary, I have realized I am very unlikely to accomplish or even seek being as rich as I used to anticipate.
Healthy
I distinctly remember a few times my sister who is a runner (she has run 100 miles in less than 30 hours, enough said) saying that I could be such a good runner if I cared enough. And at the beginning of my relationship with my wife, I remember my wife commenting on how infrequently I got sick. Even though I didn't care enough about these things to try to become a super athlete, it made me feel like a super person, perhaps thinking I'd live extra long or simply could do anything I set my mind to. A few years later . . . I have had celiac disease for several years, so my body doesn't absorb nutrients like most bodies, I can't eat what I used to think of as the ultimate healthy (whole wheat spaghetti with whole wheat toast), I have frequent digestive problems, I feel like my kids and I are sick with bugs about half the time, and I get body aches when I am not gentle with my body. So I don't have the lack of physical pain and the physical confidence that I had when I was younger.
Smart
I think I have viewed smartness as the ultimate prover of coolness. Maybe somebody chooses a less lucrative career, but if you went to Harvard then you're still forever cool. This was probably my earliest crushed identity, starting with the ACT, a standardized college acceptance test that I took during high school. Nothing like one big number to reflect exactly how many students you're dumber than.
Hardworking
This identity lasted longer than my smart identity. I figured, I may not be smart, but I work hard to get good grades and be awesome. Then my law school grades were not as great as undergrad's, and I have seen that doing a stellar, perfectly thorough job on certain work projects requires more time away from my family than I want to spend. And I simply run out of steam before I can use hard work to make our house as clean as I'd like.
Good-looking
Just kidding, I've never thought I was super good-looking. Though once my sister was looking at the newspaper section about people leaving on religious missions and said something like "who is that good-looking guy? Oh my goodness, it's Rees!" She didn't do it on purpose. Happiest day of my life up to that point (though clearly the picture didn't look much like me).
Active in church
I went many years (perhaps my entire adult life before children?) never missing church on Sundays. Then with COVID and my family's subsequent regular illnesses it feels like we are home half the time. I sometimes find myself missing the days when I knew everybody in the ward and never missed anything.
Kind
Yup, I've discovered I'm unkind. Okay so perhaps easy-to-get-along-with would be a better way to describe that identity; I still haven't given up on kindness. I used to enjoy wowing my close friends and family with how I could get along with even people with difficult characters. The break-down of this identity started with feeling thoroughly disliked by some of my mission companions. Turns out that saying nice things about somebody is easier than making decisions with somebody and being with the person 24/7. This further broke down when I began practicing law, with some opposing attorneys or parties finding what I think is ethical and necessary zealous representation to be excessive and disagreeable.
Social
I used to be a social butterfly, who struggled a little to have really close friends but had lots of friendships. Now I have reverted to a caterpillar, though fortunately I snatched a wife-caterpillar and wrapped her and our kiddos into a group-cocoon. Sickness and other busyness has simply made hanging out and visiting with others difficult.
Takeaway: Consistently Doing Small Things to Show My Love for Jesus is More Important Than My Short-term Feelings and Identities
So what is my takeaway from all of this? Some identities don't last forever, but I have thought more about my most important eternal identity, as a child of God and follower of Jesus Christ. A few weeks ago, my daughter woke up with a fever. We had just gotten over another sickness a few days earlier, and we were excited about my daughter getting to sing a song she loves, called Thankful, with the primary children during our congregation's Sacrament meeting. I was very frustrated and downright grumpy with . . . life? And with my wife. As I was in the shower I was trying to remember some key to being better. I was trying to remember some trick that I had thought of relating to how I should respond when something hard is happening. I couldn't remember the trick. So I thought, "okay, what is even more basic?" In my religion, the most basic principle we are taught is faith in Jesus Christ. While not remembering this exact quote, I remembered the gist of this concept taught by President Nelson: "[A]ct in faith. What would you do if you had more faith? Think about it. Write about it. Then receive more faith by doing something that requires more faith." I thought "what would I do because I believe in Jesus Christ?" with the implication that I would not do it if I did not believe in Him. For some reason, that inspired me to think "I should say something nice to my wife." That started to change my thoughts, and then I said something nice to her, and it helped. I think I had begun to tie my identity less to someone who gets through a sickness and quickly returns to health, or someone whose daughter gets to sing the fun things that she and her parents look forward to, and even less to someone who feels perfectly good-natured about happy expectations being dashed because of his innate kindness and optimism. Instead, I was tying my identity to being a follower of Jesus Christ, one who tries to follow Him in whatever circumstances/feelings/state I might find myself in.
As a more general point, I have learned that a lot of the identities that I, at some point, have created for myself are not really important to what matters most to me. I want to be a loving follower of Jesus Christ. And I can show that to myself and God by small and simple choices. I do not need to worry, at least not in every moment, about my overall life experience and how I feel about it and how awesome or horrible my repeated successes or failures are. I can just choose to follow Jesus in this moment. I recently read a good article from 1977 about "what makes a person loving." It talks about several actions that a loving person does. None of the actions require having certain feelings at all times. Rather, regular efforts to show affection, accept others, and give of oneself are the focus. This is much more inspiring to me than thinking that I need to feel and look like who I used to think I was, but simply am not. The journey can still be hard though, so it is wonderful to remember that Jesus knows how I feel. Because He chose to take upon Himself my sins and afflictions, and conquer them, He knows what it feels like to have money hopes dashed, suffer from celiac disease, have mediocre intelligence, run out of steam, struggle to get to church, feel accused of being heartless, and not get to be with friends or family as much as one would like. He helps us in our feelings, and guides us to keep growing closer to Him. Knowing Him is the ultimate purpose in life.
