You've Failed Before. You'll Fail Again.

Weaknesses. Demons. Can you ever beat them?

I think the worst part about them is that no matter how many times you overcome them you always have the ability to FAIL. “Why can’t I make a decision and have the option of failure removed from the table?” The worst part is that when you are trying your hardest and doing everything you can to fix the problem, if you have one lapse in judgment or a bout of forgetfulness, WHAM! Back to your low. And WORSE still is that no matter how much you do right or succeed, the wrongs always seem to weigh SOO much more.

Full disclosure: I, Taylor Eliason, am perpetually late. I know this seems like not too big a deal but it’s one of many beasts in life and happens to be currently plaguing my day to day. This one sucks to share because it’s the one that affects my pride (learning humility), my career, others’ trust in me as someone reliable or responsible and is all around humiliating when you have to face a room of people you’ve left waiting. It shows a real lack of concern for others and their schedules. It’s obviously VERY disrespectful.

I am tempted to try to justify my actions with the best of intentions but what I’ve done would still be what it is. I hope anyone I have ever left waiting or in a lurch understands to what depths I feel upset about it and that they can understand how truly sorry I am.

Sometimes you face your demon, fail, make a choice to change, plan and set goals, do everything right only to turn around and, SURPRISE, fail tomorrow. Now, I don’t like to use the words “never” and “always,” but it is NEVER a fair fight with these guys. They are called demons BECAUSE of their history of hanging around and beating us whenever they deem fit. It just seems they always have the upper hand because, well, they always have. The thought “You’ve failed before. You’ll fail again” plagues our ability to feel any kind of superior to them. But we continue to try; clutching carefully to our cord of corroding hope and grappling with our ever-crumbling faith in our ability to self-control, haunted by the impending reality of our statistically increasing possibility of failure.

And you do. You fail. Over and over and over… and over. Who cares about how many times we succeed. Doesn’t matter. “I’m still who I was, and I hate who I was and apparently am…” Sucks. Sucks. (sorry) It sucks. “Can I even change who I am?”

Don’t know. I’m still trying on many levels to figure that out. Don’t feel like I’ve arrived there yet on any one of them. I’d love to hear if any of you have. I HAVE successfully however, rearranged my thoughts with a lot of them. As a good therapist instructed me, (therapists… they’re the best) rather then exhausting myself trying to fight them through futile self deprecation and frustration, I’ve decided to accept the reality of their existence and simply allow them their space. Instead of wasted energy spent hating them, I’m accepting them as a part of myself, and doing what I can to make a different choice. I also try to find the positives for them, which isn’t too hard if you look. One that somewhat applies really to any weakness is the lesson in compassion. I don’t think I would be any manner of compassionate without them to show me how cruddy life can feel.

This is a great segway into the sufferee…As for those affected by other’s weakness, may I implore (big word) you all to remember the depths of your own personal weaknesses to encourage a spirit of understanding for others? Allow yourself to remember the depth of your own demons so that in the presence of someone else’s you might reverence their struggle and embrace their hearts with compassion through your eyes and words. (Churchy warning:) It makes sense to me that the Savior would need to feel the depth of every struggle so that He could truly love each one of us. (Bible - Hebrews 2:18, or BOM - Alma 7:12) (Could He not “succor” us before He endured our sins?) Back to the book of Taylor… I’m also inclined to believe that He loves us not DESPITE our weaknesses, but BECAUSE of them and THROUGH them. He WANTED to know our deepest sadness and loneliness so He could TRULY love us.

Can we love someone DESPITE his or her weaknesses? “Love the sinner, hate the sin?” (Note: removing articles, the majority of this idiom is “Sinner,” “Hate,” and “Sin”) LOVE! Until we have existed in their heart and felt the weight of their burdens, can we really, truly love anyone? I postulate that we cannot until we’ve born the weight of his or her soul in our own. Most of those who have met the eyes of someone they love who is in the pit of their humility, shame and sadness and been there to embrace them, hold them and love them cannot deny the immensely beautiful binding of souls that takes place. (Back to churchy) I’m certain the Savior’s heart ONLY exists in that tragically humble realm that houses not only shame, loneliness and sadness but, oddly enough, hope, joy and TRUE, unconditional love. (church done.)

But back to the sufferer. We must start a campaign to reduce the emotional taxation of failure on the sufferer to at least an equal level with success. It won’t be easy. It will seem as though everyone around you (including yourself) will want to continually slow-mo replay your failures on your emotional big screen TV. But they don’t deserve any more attention than you give your successes. So unless you’re throwing a party for each of your successes, don’t allow one for your pity. Each success is a step forward and each failure is ONLY ONE step back. Here’s to three steps forward after every step back. “You’ve succeeded before. You’ll succeed again.”

You're amazing! Keep smiling!!

You Can Only Get an A

I had a discovery today about humility but because my writing got a little carried away in this area today I will have to get to it in a future post. Just know this plays a part in that later post… (did I just make a blog cliffhanger?! STAY TUNED!)

I really want to just be a good boy. I believe everyone does. I know that could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I just want so terribly to replace all that is not “good” in me with things that are. I want to be the “best” me possible. Is that so bad? Sounds good and noble right?

In not so graceful terms I have a big ol’ fat perfection complex. That’s right. I, Taylor Eliason, am an obsessive perfectionist(disclaimer: this only pertains to things I like or want to do, not including any kind of mundane school/busy work. Hate school. Going on…). I LOVE a good project. I remember upon occasion around 2 am, after hours of slaving over hot glue guns and construction paper, my mother, in an attempt to save me from myself would coin a phrase crafted in truth by my brother.

“You can only get an A.”

Good right?! Feel free to use it with YOUR OCD children/self. :) And don’t look down on my mother. I don’t feel she was encouraging mediocrity. I mean, hey, an A is still above average! I think she got tired of not seeing me blink for 30 minutes at a time and rarely coming up for air…

“But is it so bad to strive to do your best?" Well no. It’s not. But what is your “BEST” anyway?!

“Do your best.” … Okay… I mean it’s FINE (ugh) when thinking forwards. Do your best! Try to be your best! Give it your best shot. Fine. But when that “Do” becomes “Did”… Danger will Robinson!

Ask a house huband/wife with 4 kids doing 6 different activities a night, cleaning a house big enough for a six people to live in and destroy daily, sniffing clothes for cleanliness for each body, shopping, yardwork, homework.

“DID you do your best?”

“Well, I mean, I should have…”

Ask a working parent, spending more time at work than at home, paying bills, navigating a career, online classes, spending time with their kids, being present at special events, staying awake the whole time…

“Yeah but DID you do your best?”

“Well, I probably could have…”

Ask a single adult going to school, paying rent, working, studying, paying for, fixing and refixing that college car, traveling home, traveling back, friendships, dating, love…

“Ahh, but DID you do your best?”

“I guess I would have…”

UGH. It’s hard not too feel incompetent in every single area for just lack of time in the day, not accounting for sleep and, heaven forbid, leisure.

But really it’s never “Did you do your best?” No, the real kicker is that generally we ask in a spirit of devastation “Did I do MY best?”

 “Did I do my best?” Ugh. “BEST” It’s fine when comparing things to each other I guess (not even then really) BUT as an ultimate measure of someone’s capability!? Best, to me, signifies an end or a top. The very MOST you can do. Now, I may be lazy but that sounds overwhelming right? “How can I EVER know that there was nothing more I could do?” YOU DON’T! Great huh?! And you never will.

I hope you’ll indulge an LDS (Mormon) scripture but this has probably been the hardest scripture for me in my life. It states towards the end of the verse:

      “…For we know it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 25:23)

Now I have NO desire to speak evil of scripture. I actually like it more now than I did before. But you’re telling me that I can’t be saved unless I do ALL that I CAN PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY DO?! Well, poop. Pretty hopeless right? And I felt this way for a LONG time. Recently, I’ve come to see, however, that there are a lot of mistakes, failures, and struggles in the last line of that scripture. “After all we can do.” I envision a man fighting through a storm. I would like to propose that this may not be a feet to acheive but a mind set to live.

I propose the statement “Your/my best” is inherently flawed. Just as perfection doesn’t exist, so too the noun “BEST.” For that reason, may I propose that we get rid of the statement all together? Ditch it’s inherently impossible expectation…ness.

In life, the hard/beautiful TRUTH is that there are NO redos. The moment is gone. So whatever you gave in that moment for WHATEVER reason, (listen up!) it WAS your BEST! Allow yourself to let that sink in. With all the many known and hundreds of unknown variables (ie. Thoughts, relationships, health, weather, what you ate) that account for every moment of life, can we just FORGIVE… Forgive? No. That would imply you did something wrong… ACCEPT what we did as our VERY BEST and just. let. go?! And smile? And breathe?!

Sure, It’s COMPLETELY appropriate to look back and see where you can improve or do better, but there is NO sense in hating yourself because you didn’t do more THEN. You did everything you could. It is not so much about doing your best, as it is about trying to. LIVE bettering yourself and accept your shortcomings as a beautiful bi-product of your BEST!

You’re amazing! Keep smiling!

I'm a Superhero.

The reader of this post should take into consideration the writer’s state of alertness at which this entry was composed. “This dude is crazy!” is a fair assessment of what you’re about to read, but bear in mind that I began writing this a mere 5 minutes after the event transpired. That magical hour when the universe is still expanding, everything seems relevant and gravity has yet to make it apparent how full your bladder really is…

This morning I laid there in my bed with eyes shut on the cusp of awake and asleep when I suddenly saw the image of my clock showing 8:59a. I hadn’t looked at the clock. I hadn’t even seen the clock since I set my 9:00a alarm the night prior. Eye’s closed, I somehow and in someway knew and could see it was 8:59a. As I smiled and began to dismiss the idea as crazy or absurd so I could allow myself to sink back into sleep, my alarm sounded. What?!

“I’m a superhero.” was obviously among my first thoughts. But can our body clocks be THAT precise? And if my mind can accurately track the tedious tempo of the temporal world’s turning, what can’t it do!? I’ve woken up AROUND my desired wake time before, and I’ve heard people express their frustration for waking up 5 or 10 minutes before their alarm, but, to the best of my knowledge, never has it been with such a clear awareness of the exact time! “I’m the Time Master… mind…guy...”

Then began the (downward?) spiral of the next couple of paragraphs. Buckle up.

Why did I wake? “Was it God?” (telling) And why a minute before my alarm? Was I to learn the power of my mind this morning? Or perhaps the power of God? (giving irony to the phrase “wake up call”) For some reason, I awoke not at 9:00a but at 8:59a. Sure, if it had occurred at 9:00a as planned the night previous it would have been a more accurate and impressive display for my body to accomplish it with such exactness, but I would have dismissed it all with the sound of my alarm. But no. It woke me at 8:59a. Something OR… someOne... (capitalization intended) wanted my recognition of it. “My untapped inner superhero. Waker-upper-er”

Perhaps I was simply aware of the energy in my room? Now, I know it’s crazy but could I somehow see it without SEEING it with my eyes? Perhaps my third eye? “It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No! It’s Third eye… Needs work.” Or was my mental clock simply manifesting in a representation or image of what 8:59a would look like in my physical world?

Was it BECAUSE I set my alarm that my brain knew to keep track of 9:00a specifically? If I hadn’t set the alarm or made a mental note of when I wanted to wake, would I still have woken at 8:59a? Was it all just a coincidence? Even still, I was keenly aware of the correct time with no stimuli but my own mind.

If you’ve ever felt like a crazy, as I do re-reading this post, know that you’re not alone. A word of caution to this tale, however, your friends may question your sanity if you talk about these kinds of things openly. So, consider sharing it digitally and in writing as to remove all doubt.