My Greatest Fear: A Failing Future (Short Thought)

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."

-Abraham Lincoln

People tell us to don't live in the past. They say to prepare for the future you do something today. This is very sound advice. Only we can shape our own future. Only we can give ourselves the final say on what we do. We need to trust our self to do the best we can and make the best decision. But what happens if you can't trust yourself?

I remember in get-to-know-you activities, one of the top questions you would tell about yourself would be, "What is your Greatest Fear?". For the longest time, my younger self would always say being held hostage or large spiders. In my young mind, this would put me on the borderline of losing my mind and be in a complete state of panic. But as I have gotten older, a new fear developed in me. I would say that is started when I was on the ending point on my mission.

When I was preparing to come home, there were several emails that my parents and I talked about what I would do after my mission. This included job and school. In a LDS church mission, you are gone for 2 years basically just spreading the gospel continuously with no distractions. It was perhaps the most growing experience I have had in my life. But, to have that for 2 years and to come back to real life can be quite an adjustment. I think I adjusted pretty well, but what I wanted to do for my career was still uncertain. I thought of doing computer stuff, be it programming or building computers, and then maybe doing a little bit of music stuff on the side.

Then I took my first 3 semesters at BYU-I. I took 2 programming classes and a database class. I did, fairly well in those classes, but it just didn't click with me. I just didn't see myself doing that for a career choice. I took other classes to explore my options, but still, nothing stood out.

Then at the end of 2016, I transferred back to my home of Utah and applied to the Utah Valley University (UVU). This school had a lot more options so I decided to jump right in for my first semester to computers again. The same conclusion came to be. I just didn't feel it click and the desire of it just went away. 

It came at this time that I really had to think about what was I going to do? My first plan failed and I didn't prepare a back up. I was... terrified. I was looking sparaticaly at different computer class options and none of them peaked my interest. I started to go into a panic and just was looking frantically on what I could try to major in. I remember just sitting in my room with my computer opened, staring at the wall, not sure what to do.

I kept telling myself "I'm going to fail. I'm going to run out of money. I'm going to disappoint my friends and family. God will not want to help me get back up. I am going to start over in school again". These were the doubts I was constantly telling myself, over and over. In my mind, if you don't know or don't have a plan for your life, you are a loser. School is what gets you to your future career and if you can't finish school, then what other choices could you have?

I am now going through this same process again with my current and new major, nursing. I am in that state of panic of, "This isn't clicking. This doesn't make sense. I don't want to do this. What do I do?". I'm...terrified. 

Maybe I put my expectations wrong. Maybe I shouldn't define success as just getting through school. Maybe I shouldn't depend my happiness on certain things. But it still scares me. It has become, in my opinion, my greatest fear.

So what do I do? Do I look for another option again and keep paying for school for my current major, or try to go some other way or other major that would interest me? This is a constant question and battle I have been through these last 3 days. It wouldn't be such a big deal if a lot of money was also involved in here. I am leaning one way over the other, but I am still exploring my options. 

But in the end, who can make that decision? Who can go and change my degree or keep going on the current one I am on? Only I can. But it helps that I am not alone. I know many of those in school that are going through this same process and have battle this same question on what to do next. But not only do I have support from them. Family and friends will always be there. I also have a loving Heavenly Father, no matter how far away from the right path I take, will still love me and want me to come back to His loving arms. I have a crucial decision to make, but it is comforting I am not alone.

In the end, just realize there are all kinds of people out there that don't know what they want to do. They don't know what next step they should take in their life. Their fears keeps them from going forward or even to attempt to move. But fear should never absolutely control us. Fear is a motive, but it shouldn't be our long lasting motive. Learn to trust yourself, ask advisers and others for advice, and know that you are never alone.

My Bullied History / Koe no Katachi (A Silent Voice) Mini Review

"Everyone goes through difficulties in life. But we're all in the same boat, aren't we? You have to learn to love even the things you hate about yourself and move forward." 

-A Silent Voice

As far as I can remember, I have been always a super sensitive kid. Whether I had it since birth or it was developed over time, I do not know. Even the silliest little insult at times that can be easily identified as a minor joke or to make me laugh at myself can possibly hurt me dearly as well. I don't know whether this is a good or bad attribute to have in my life, but it has taken me since elementary school to understand it a little bit better. Why do you ask since elementary? This was my earliest memory of getting bullied.

I believe we all get bullied throughout our life. Whether it be by someone at school or even at home meaning a brother, sister, or even parents, we have had some kind of bullied experience. This has probably happen the other way as well where we have bullied someone when we were young. What comes as a huge factor however to when we are bullied is how sensitive we are to the words being said to us or actions that are being included in by someone. As mentioned before, I was a very sensitive kid and still really sensitive now. I did, and still do at times, let myself hurt too easily by some little thing people say at times. We all hear that saying where, "Stick and Stones will break my bones, but words will never break me." To some extent, this is true. We shouldn't let word easily defeat us. We shouldn't let others definitions of ourselves destroy our own definition of ourselves. However, words still hurt. They can hurt very badly. 

In elementary school, I was bullied very heavily. It is very funny though because I was a big kid and could have easily stood up to the bullies that were bullying me. However, I was getting hurt very easily and it was pretty much hurting my way of life and school. My mother could see this and decided to transfer me to a different school. This was a private church school and so surely this would not have the trouble of bullying here, right? 

Actually, in my opinion, the bullying was even worse. Where as the bullying at my previous school was mostly done by boys, this time is was mainly girls. They didn't even want to touch me, look at me, or even interact with me. It was just terrible. I remember thinking, "If this is how all girls are, then I don't want any part of them." 

Don't get me wrong, I now realize I am a super weird person. But to have this thrown at you day after day in school, saying that you don't fit in, can very be heartbreaking. Now this never escalated to the point where I wanted to end my life or hurt myself physically in any way. However, there were other ways where I did hurt myself emotionally. With being bullied, comes a huge amount of stress. And being the young kid that I was, I was dealing with stress poorly in terrible ways. I started to want to separate myself and be alone. This even included my family. Maybe this was some kind of phase every teenager goes through whether it be a rebel part or another, but I firmly believe that the main trigger was bullying and self-definition. 

It came to a part where...I did start hating myself for a bit. Why was I like this? Why did I like the certain things that was I was getting made fun of? What was the true definition of normal? And was I as far away from that definition as possible as a person? I felt as if everyone had some wrong thing to point out at me. To quote one of my favorite shows named "Say 'I Love You', "No one likes others pointing out their weakness."

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I recently saw a movie called 聲の形 (pronounced Koe No Katachi) or in English, A Silent Voice. I was introduced to it through a church mission friend on Facebook. I read the manga/comic and really liked it and later found out a movie was coming out for it. It is my favorite slice-of-life movie to date. To put in short summary from Wikipedia, "The story revolves around Shoya Ishida, a former delinquent who bullied Shoko Nishimiya, his deaf girl classmate, alongside his friends back when he was in elementary school. When Nishimiya transferred, all of his friends and teachers turned against him, making him isolated well into high school to the point that he decides that there is no point in having friends. Having no plans for the future, Ishida even contemplates on committing suicide until he suddenly reunites with Nishimiya, who is still lonely due to her shyness. Realizing that both are suffering due to his past sins, Ishida sets out on a path of redemption by trying to reconnect Nishimiya with their old classmates that Nishimiya never had the chance to befriend back then.

To me, I was a combination between the two main characters in this story, Shoko Nishimiya and Shoya Ishida. Both go through such a hard time of people telling them that they are worthless, that they did things wrong. It even comes to the point where Shoya Ishida blocks out everyone and in his eyes, doesn't see peoples faces. Shoko Nishimiya even apologizes to people constantly for even being alive or in the peoples lives and hates herself for it. This was the sort of thing I found myself relating to. How did they fix these feelings? Well, a lot of factors came into play, but one main one stood out to me: They relied on each other plus friends and family to continue finding a reason to continue and live! 

This is how I remember getting out of the situation I was in. I did change schools, though I did have some good friends in that school as well. But the main thing was perhaps the group of friends I had in my church group where we gave constant support to each other. I also realized my family's love for me and very much appreciated it. I had great leaders in my Scouts program and church that help gather up my self-love again. Instead of blocking people out or just listening to the negative explanations of people pointing our flaws in my life, I started to listen to people more and see if there was any way I could correct the current flaws they pointed out. Instead of completely relying on myself for comfort. I found others, and I constantly found God again and again to help me improve myself. This does not mean I liked who I was. It means I loved who I was, current am, and who I can become.

Let me explain my last sentence in the last paragraph: I loved who I was meaning the great things I was that I didn't realize back then. Did I make mistakes? Ya, of course. But because of those mistakes and overcoming them or constantly becoming better to resist those bad things, I can be who I am today and become even better tomorrow.

As I look through people online who have been bullied and shared their story, one constant question that pretty much sticks out to me is, "Would've you like to change your life back then so that you would've handled things better?" To that I would answer: 

No.

I love who I am because of the actions and trials I went through. I love who I am now because I know how to overcome those obstacles if and when they come up again. Could there have been a better way to deal with them? Sure, but thinking on that constantly will not change a thing. Thinking about the now and to improve is the way I live my life now.  

I am still fully against bullying. I think it has a severe self-destructing effect on others than people realize. It can even lead to the cause of confused identification. People can sometimes lose the confidence in their-selves. But even if we get bullied, or even when we do bully others and feel completely bad about it, it is not the end of the world! We can overcome anything with help others. We may not stop bullying altogether, but we can sure stop and reverse the effects of it. 

I Hate My Weaknesses, but...

Weaknesses just suck. It is tough to see yourself each time become subject to your weaknesses over and over again. When you think that you have came over your weaknesses, it is still there and it is a bother. It hurts your self confidence and sometimes your self worth when you fail to yeild to your weaknesses. So if these are the effects of weaknesses, why are they necessary?

Well, why do we have weaknesses in the first place? Wouldn't it just be easier if we were strong in all things so that we won't have to go through heartache, depression, or other hard feelings? Well, yes you would be right. Life would be easier. But what is a easy life worth if you don't know the various different feelings to endure and to learn about? If we all had no weaknesses in our lifes, where would be the experience you would gain in trying to overcome that weakness.

I will tell you now that, for some reason, I absolutely love the feeling of doing something very challenging or hard and completing it. It helps me realize I can do hard things. Let me give you an example that happened pretty recently: I work at a warehouse job and it isn't too hard. It is mainly packaging foods and all that. One day, in the middle of my shift I got super weak. It wasn't mainly a throwing up feeling, it was just that my body felt weak and tired. It wasn't a regular tired old feeling you feel when you don't get enough sleep or that "2 o'clock" feeling people have. I could have easily just said, "Hey, I am really tired and I think I am sick so I want to go home." But I really wanted to earn the money. I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to push onward. I went throughout the rest of the work shift feeling super sore and tired, but I finished the shift. Even though I felt like I was going to faint or just purely sleep, I felt great! I felt good that I pushed through to the end.

Now you may say that I shouldn't have pushed my body that way and it wouldn't be good for it. But that isn't the point I wanted to say. Do we feel sometimes the same way about our weaknesses? Do we think, "You know what, let's just take the easy way out and give into temptation or give into our weaknesses and not make them strong."? Even though it may seem easy at first, the feeling afterword just sucks! You feel like you can't do anything. You feel like you are back at square one and that you can never get passed that step.

These are usually the thoughts that I think of when I keep coming back to my weaknesses. It is terrible. But it isn't good to dwell on these thoughts forever. What I do is I look on how much I improved from last time. Like, "Look how much money I saved this time instead of spending it all." or "Look how much I have ignored or not gotten into this temptation." I learn this tatic thanks to one of Al Fox's posts about overcoming trials.

When we look at the scripture in Enos about our weaknesses become strengths, what do we think usually? I remember that I thought that if I simply asked the Lord about turning my weakness into a strength, it would turn into one that instant or sometime that day. Sometimes we fail to remember that things happen in the Lord's time. Your weaknesses will become strengths or stronger throughout, but it will never happen in just an instant. We need to get up and fall multiple times to show that we mean it and to learn how to continually fight against your weakness.

So why do we have weaknesses? To learn. To learn to be humble. To learn to continue fighting. To learn to trust. To learn to be patient. And probably most importantly, to learn more about ourselves and God. We learn more about the potential that we can do as we strive to improve our weaknesses. This life isn't just about doing, it's about becoming.

When I was finishing my mission, I felt amazing. Not just because of the many experiences I had. Not just because of the many people I had meant. But because I had finished it. There many, MANY times on my mission that I wanted to quit and give into going home. I kept telling myself I would feel a lot better if I was just home moving onto my life. But that feeling of accomplishing your entire mission is one of the best feelings you can have so far throughout your life. Accomplishing something that was hard in your life is awesome. I hate weaknesses, but I love strengthening my weaknesses.