Crossing your 't's and dotting your 'i's

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve been in a rut. Not a deep enough rut that its any kind of a Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde personality change, but enough of a rut that I’ve noticed that I’m not as light hearted about everything as I usually am and would prefer to be.

“You say you can't sleep. Heart break? Bad Dreams?”
“There is one dream where in my dream, I'm Spider-Man. But I'm loosing my powers. I'm climbing a wall but I keep falling.”
“Oh. So you're Spider-Man...”
“In my dream... Actually, it's not even my dream, it's a friend of mine's dream.”
“Oh. Somebody else's dream. What about this friend? Why does he climb these walls? What does he think of himself?”
“That's the problem, he doesn't know what to think.”
“Kind of makes you mad not to know who you are? Your soul disappears, nothing is bad as uncertainty. Listen, maybe you're not supposed to be Spider-Man climbing those walls? That's why you keep falling. You'll always have a choice Peter.”
“…I have a choice.”

Well, last week I had an experience that snapped me out of it a little. I’ve always heard that the temple is a good place to go if you need help with something that you and others can’t help you with. So I went, and I was kind of feeling the same way about being at the temple as I’ve felt about a lot of things lately—very ho-hum.

“... Frankly, I think this place is a bit boring. I mean, it's all WHITE! Why doesn't this Superman guy put up some nice posters here... Maybe some bullfighting stuff, or a pool table...!”

In the temple ordinances are preformed—like baptism, and like baptism, all the ordinances have prescribed ways that they are to be preformed. I was mostly just going through the motions, but there’s no more inapt place for a Devil-may-care attitude, than in the temple. As I was going through the motions, I guess it was obvious to the assistant officiator, because he walked up behind me, and with out a word, he gently nudged me into a more correct position.

His gesture wasn’t big, but to me it was bold. All he did was move me about an inch, but to me it was his way of saying, “Son, this is important, so let’s do it right.” And that little lesson opened my eyes up to everything else that had been dragging me down. It was because I was getting lazy in how I did things.

Looking back on it, now I can see that at my appartment, I wasn’t making my bed as often, I didn’t take out the garbage as often. At work I didn’t put as much effort into being friendly to the people I worked with, I was just focused on getting the job done and nothing else. With people I talked to, I was more interested in how the conversation would end than in what the conversation was about.

There were so many of the little things that are determinedly Heath things, or the Heath way to do things. Old roommates of mine would tell you that Heath always folds and his clothes and he always clears his table, but even things like that were becoming optional instead of ingrained.

I guess what I learned was that the moment you stop caring, is the moment things stop mattering to you. What I mean by that is that if you pay attention to crossing your T’s, you’ll inherently check the word for spelling, but when you stop dotting your I’s, some how even the words without I’s in them start slipping past you loaded with misspellings.

"You know, brethren, that a very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm in the time of a storm, by being kept workways with the wind and the waves. Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power..."

So, now I’m paying more attention to the cleanliness of my apartment and the pleasantness with which I answer the phone at work, and I’m noticing that life seems more alive. When my attitude is ho-hum, the world around me seems to match suit. But when I stop cutting corners and start taking pride in doing the little things, those dull things in life suddenly appear vibrant.

"We know you are coming back, when life reentered our village."