To Act or Be Acted Upon... That is the Question

This summer, working at the daycare, I had to deal with lots of tattling. Maybe some of it was legit, but it was hard to tell, especially when the issue at hand seemed life-altering to the little kid who's telling me about it. So to save myself the effort of sorting through he-said, she-said (though I started doing this on purpose to teach them a lesson as the summer went on), I focused on what they could do about the problem. Did they have to listen? Did they have to keep playing with that person? No. Did they think they were stupid, like John Bob said? No? Then John Bob must be wrong, so ignore him.

After I established this habit I found myself connecting it to Elder Bednar's talk from a previous conference about choosing to act instead of be choosing to be acted upon by others. His talk does not diminish the fact that people really say and do mean things, sometimes on purpose to be hurtful to us. He did, however, give us the responsibility to chose to view those actions.

Those kids will probably not remember that one moment when I told them to choose for themselves how to react, but that pattern of response has really taught me how to deal with those situations myself.

Falling

I was thinking about writing this post last night, and this morning I read my dad's post that was very similar to what I wanted to say. Thanks for the motivation, dad!

I recently downloaded this song from iTunes:


I thought it was all very lovely and romantic until I remembered an article dad had given me to read a long time ago. (I can't find the exact one, but here is a similar article.) Basically the idea was you don't "fall" in love, you choose to love each day. Although I still think the song is very beautiful, I think of one letter Kurt sent me:

(click to enlarge)

When I first read it I thought it was just one of those cute things he says. But really, now it makes me feel even more special and loved. He chose to love me. He's not a victim of chance or happenstance or infatuation or some love spell, he looked at all my faults and foibles and still chose to love me anyways. And for that, I will always be grateful!

P.S. Dad, I hope you enjoyed finally reading one of Kurt's letters, hahaha .=)