For of those new to this blog, especially those from the MCOMM
class, I say welcome. I’m Aaron Wilson.
For the last two years, I’ve been spending my
time in the urban jungles of sunny Thailand, giving my heart and soul to the
cause of helping the wonderful Thai people as an authorized representative of
Jesus Christ. That experience has defined me in new ways that I never imagined.
I tried very hard as a missionary to really throw myself into the missionary
work and forget the world I left behind. I won’t make any claims to being a
consecrated, great, or even a good missionary, but I do feel that I succeeded
in forgetting a lot of the world that I left behind. How do I know that?
Because coming home has left me feeling like a whale in the middle of the
Sahara—lost, floundering, and utterly confused.
I’m trying not to wax too poetical
here, but for two years I spent every waking moment trying to hone a skill-set
and a mind-set developed around the missionary’s purpose. And in a flash, most
of the direct applications of the skills that I’d learned went obsolete. The
ability to drive boldly in Thailand will only get me a ticket here. The ability
to walk up to complete strangers and invite them to repent and be baptized is
next to useless at BYU, which is perhaps the most LDS-saturated environment on
the planet outside of the Conference Center. Suddenly another skill set is
being demanded of me—the ability to read and write in English. I’m expected to
have small-talk conversations, when all of my impulses tell me to start
searching for people’s needs and try to find ways to help them repent. Apparently
I also lost the ability to read a text, memorize the key meanings in it, and
then regurgitate it on demand in a test settings. That one was shown rather
painfully on the few quizzes I’ve taken.
Now I don’t say these things in an
effort to earn sympathy. I fully know that there are millions of others who
have walked this path of post-mission adjustment, and that I don’t have a
corner on the market. And I will not for a minute stand for anyone even
thinking that I feel bad about my decision to make a mission, just because the
end of it was hard: I had the greatest time of my life and learned so many
valuable things in Thailand. I wouldn’t trade that mission for the world. But I
explain this background simply to frame a context with which I can explain what
I learned this week, and how I’m going to apply it.
My lesson can perhaps be best
illustrated from the feelings I had as I sat down after getting systematically
demolished on the BYU tennis courts this past week. I love tennis, and I’ve
played competitively for a number of years. That night, however, all of my
practice and skills seemed useless when my brother steamrolled me for an easy
6-0 victory for him. The frustrating part for me was that I had played the best
tennis since I got home. It had felt like everything was clicking for me. I was
hitting the ball hard and fast, and my accuracy was good, but yet somehow I had
won pitifully few points and had looked like the middle school practice squad
in comparison to my opponent. I was never even in serious contention for the
match, not even for a second. The easiest way of saying it would be to say that
my best simply was not good enough to compete.
And so I sat down afterwards, and at
that moment I was faced with a decision. I was in a sour mood after taking such
a beat-down. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. The voice inside my brain was
telling me that this wasn’t worth it, that it was time to walk off the court
and go do something less painful. I knew at that moment that I’d have to go
back to the basics and start re-learning tennis skills that I had once mastered
long ago. The thought of that painful process made me bitter, for I thought I
was cheated. Hadn’t my rustiness on the court come because I was doing
something better? Should not all of my hard work before my mission and on my
mission combined to allow me some free-pass on going through the growing pains
all over again? And at that moment, the idea of just giving up and walking away
from the court seemed mighty enticing. Why come back? I’m not being forced to
play tennis. It’s not fun, so why not stop?
That thought of quitting has not
been companionless in my mind for several weeks. The thing that I’m learning
about the rebuilding process is that it isn’t easy. In my mind, I had assumed
that previous success in tennis, school, or any field would give me a short-cut
in rebuilding my new life. The fact is that a house burned down still requires
the same amount of labor to build it the second time as the first time did.
As I reflect on that moment on the tennis
court, I am reminded of President Uchtdorf’s words: “Our destiny is not
determined by the number of times we stumble but by the number of times we rise
up, dust ourselves off, and move forward.” The truth is that it will take more
effort, discipline, and practice than I was expecting in order to get my tennis
game back, just as it will require the same effort, discipline, and practice to
succeed again in school, social settings, and whatever else that I’m lacking.
But rather than get frustrated that my progress seems slow, or that I seem to
be under-achieving in compared to what I used to be able to do, I’m choosing to
take the positive viewpoint. I’ve succeeded once before; why I can’t I do
again? I choose to build on the hope that comes from realizing that I’ve walked
this road once before and conquered it, and so I am determined to do it again.
Now this isn’t just a post for all
the returned missionaries in the audience. But for everyone reading, we all
have our different times when we feel that we underperform, that we fail to
reach up to our personal expectations. When that moment comes, look not to the ‘failures’
of life, but instead choose to see everything as a chance to get better. Life
is longer than we think, and eternity lasts forever, so there will always be
another chance. It is never too late to be better. Don’t give up, because tomorrow
will be better. As a wise friend once told me “the only way to fail is to stop
trying”. So keep your eyes on a brighter tomorrow and keep hope that things
will get better!
For my part, I decided in that insightful moment to keep
playing for another 40 minutes, in which I continued to get trashed by my
competition, but I know that in so doing I’m now just a little better at tennis
than I would have been had I quit. I walk away from this experience more
resolved to never quit in all of my re-adjustment activities, and to work
harder than ever before, because I know that quitting makes my weaknesses part
of my future, and only continuing to strive harder makes them my past.
