Life is busy, and moving by at a rapid pace. In a way, it’s good, because it means I’m getting through some stretches of hard work right now, which is hopefully my final Fall semester of graduate school. There are all kinds of projects and other work to do, which means that it’s easy to neglect other things. In that way, life moving so quickly can be bad, or at least challenging. There are all kinds of voices everywhere calling for attention, and I learned last week that I need to widen my focus away from my studies.<\/p>\n
Last Wednesday, I was in the middle of working on a big programming project. I’m a decent programmer, but I was a little rusty. I spent all day staring at a few pages of code, and I was tearing my hair out over the smallest things. I called a classmate to figure out what I was doing wrong, and when it was time to go home, I was exhausted, but still worried about my program. He suggested that I take a little walk or find some way to think about some other stuff for a bit, which I finally did. When I got home I took a little break and played with our daughter. A few hours later, I went back to look at my program, and something just clicked that hadn’t before. I realized that our own abilities are magnified when we take little breaks and just keep working hard at something.<\/p>\n
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I can do in case we’re at the beginnings of some sort of global depression. I don’t have the power to personally stabilize the stock markets, but I do have some power to stabilize my own life. In fact, the reminder that Helaman related to his sons in the Book of Mormon applies to all of us:<\/p>\n
And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the a<\/sup>rock<\/a> of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your b<\/sup>foundation<\/a>; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty c<\/sup>storm<\/a> shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.<\/p>\n
–Helaman 5:12<\/em><\/a>, The Book of Mormon<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n