By Soyde River
President Packer years ago, gave one of the most significant talks I ever read, about being spiritually self-reliant. Yet we live in a culture in which we are immersing ourselves in self-pity and becoming ever more emotionally dependent on therapy, on blaming others for our troubles, on contemplating our navel (and our vicissitudes), to the point where we are so self absorbed that we are constantly depressed.
Some years back a mission president in the US told me that almost a quarter of his missionaries were on Prozac. I heard another mission president say that in his mission, a desperately poor third world mission, virtually none of his missionaries were depressed. Leaving aside the fact that they may have selected who they sent to each mission, it was his opinion that the reason his missionaries did not suffer from depression is that they experienced every day how people coped who had REAL problems (whether they would have enough to eat, to live on, a job, etc.)
The pioneer generation buried their dead along the trail, and in spite of their pain and sorrow, managed to persevere and put that behind them. Not to the point that the pain disappeared (some of it never did–-nor am I minimizing that pain), but that life had to go on.
Emerson worried that
“the sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, despondent whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other….We are parlour soldiers, we shun the battle of fate, where strength is born…. Discontent is the want of self-reliance, it is infirmity of will…. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle.” (Self Reliance)
Some tragedy happens in the US and the counselors and psychologists descend as spiritual ambulance chasers. But the reality is that throughout most of mankind’s existence, death, disease and separation were a fact of every day life. Those who suffered such losses mourned, but most did not let the mourning distract them from the purpose of life, or drive them into despair.
Above all, those of us who have a testimony of the Gospel, of all people, should be able to cope with the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. John Stuart Mill suffered from depression, and eventually worked his way out of it, offering the following insight: “The only chance is to treat not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell said:
The real accomplishment is to drink from the “bitter cup” without becoming bitter. Rather than simply passing through trials, we must allow trials to pass through us in ways that sanctify us. We know we are sanctified by the trial when our empathy for others is enriched and everlasting. The suffering loses its purpose when all we do is complain.”
Or wallow in self pity. As Shakespeare’s wrote in Julius Caesar, “The fault lies not in our stars, dear Brutus, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
(By the way, Emerson would not have liked my use of quotations–he felt it was a crutch!)
I was told that after Sister Hinckley’s graveside ceremony, President Hinckley left with the crowd. But later that day, he returned with one of his sons. After sitting silently in meditation for some time, he stood up and said: “Well, it’s time to go to work.”
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