In Defense of Singles

 

           Earlier this week, I read a very well written blog post outlining the challenges of being single beyond our ideal time frames. She noted that the wait can be especially exasperating when you belong to a religious organization that places such a heavy emphasis on marriage and family. Since I belong to the same religion as that blogger, I will add my thoughts to hers. 

           I agree with the blogger that our religion is very family oriented. Much of the discussion and lessons at church revolve around improving your marriage and raising your children. The default assumption is that the congregation is made up entirely of families or those who aspire to raise a family someday. As such, we are encouraged to get married and have children with quotes like this:

Honorable, happy, and successful marriage is surely the principal goal of every normal person. Marriage is perhaps the most vital of all the decisions and has the most far-reaching effects, for it has to do not only with immediate happiness, but also with eternal joys...Marriage can be more an exultant ecstasy than the human mind can conceive. This is within the reach of every couple, every person. (Spencer W. Kimball)

         That quote touches on what is often emphasized in the church, which is that: 1) getting married should be a top priority, 2) it is the biggest decision we can make, and 3) that we won't reach the same level of happiness without it. From these principles, many young single adults feel significant pressure to marry as soon as possible AND to make the right decision. I should note that the church doesn't have an official stance about the timing of marriage, as its a matter of personal discretion. However, there is a long standing tradition of marrying young compared to the rest of the country (2 years younger on average) and there is a significant amount of social pressure to make it happen. You can see by the disposition of the previously mentioned blogger at the age of 26 that she is taking the matter very seriously. 

         A side effect of the emphasis on the importance of the decision is that it can create some trepidation about taking the "leap of faith" to the altar. I know of at least a few singles who hold firm to the philosophy of awaiting a "slam dunk" person to come along to make the marriage decision easier. When only imperfect candidates step up to the plate, these high standard singles just turn them away one by one hoping that someone better comes along. This may be a flawed approach, but it is their right to hold out.  
        I should point out that both the decision on the timing of getting married and the person you marry are deeply personal and subject only to your own stewardship. Nobody can get inspiration on your behalf about who to marry and nobody else will live with 100% of the consequences of your decision. That's why it's always a good idea to take advice received from others with a grain of salt. We are all on individual journeys in this lifetime and are entitled to make our own decisions.

          Marriage is also not a unilateral endeavor. Despite our best efforts to market ourselves, date regularly and make a solid presentation of our desirable attributes, we must find a person who we want to marry and who wants to marry us. We don't live in an era that allows us to hit our chosen mate over the head and drag them to the marital altar as shown in the cartoon below. That might have been acceptable in the Fred Flintstone era, but not today.

           This is an important point for both men and women. Men can propose to as many women as they want, but without an affirmative answer they will not get married. Likewise, women will not get married without a proposal from a guy they would not object to. We are at the mercy of someone else's agency.

           The point of mentioning this isn't to conclude that all singles are completely blameless for their marital status, because in many cases they deserve some of the blame. Nevertheless, at least a portion of the marriage decision is completely out of a single's control. Singles can obviously maximize whatever is in their control to increase their odds of marriage opportunities coming their way, but it isn't our job or within our stewardship to judge what a single is or isn't doing to help his or her own cause.

The Negative Cultural Stigma

        What the aforementioned blogger mentioned in her post is that there seems to be a negative cultural stigma towards singles who remain single into their late twenties and beyond. I agree with her on this point. There is an obvious disconnect between some married individuals and the older singles. The issue seems to be that some married individuals can't seem to fathom why singles are staying single beyond ideal time frames and feel the need to get to the bottom of why someone is still single. I've overheard conversations to that effect and have even been cornered at church to further their investigation.
        I have several issues with this. The most important issue is that it isn't any of their business and there's zero value in painting the walls with speculation all day long to get to the bottom of it. Secondly, it always involves limited information leading to bad assumptions. The worst assumption is usually that there is something inherently wrong with the single to be passed over time and time again. Finally, the conclusions drawn almost always are inaccurate and need to be thrown out for lack of support.
       Everybody has a unique journey including me. My journey has consisted of moving over 40 times across eight different states and another country since age 18. I'm not implying that this is the primary reason why I have remained single, but that is a contributing factor among several others. Of course, my default answer is that I blame my status on Cotton Eye Joe;)
        It can't be assumed that every person has been marketed to a hilt throughout their dating careers with no takers. It must be acknowledged that there is wide disparity in the levels of opportunities each person has AND there is wide stratification of innate characteristics that makes them harder or easier to market. For example, a 5'4" guy will have different opportunities than a 6'4" guy. There are a myriad of factors that impact our journey. The bottom line is that there isn't a level playing field making it impossible to make assumptions. 

What’s the difference between a married person and a single person?    

           The answer may surprise you that being married or being single is merely a status. How that status came to be is usually complicated and may or may not relay a larger story about a specific individual. In fact, I can’t draw a single stereotype that would encompass either all married couples or all single people. As such, I refuse to make blanket statements about an entire group of people linked together merely by having the same status.
         There are a few people I've come across who have opined that married people are generally better looking, more socially skilled, have more life satisfaction, have less major life issues, and are less neurotic than their single counterparts. I'm sure that this opinion is held by a minority, but it should be emphasized as the previous blogger mentioned that God doesn't judge us merely based on our marital status. These generalizations can't even be proven accurate in reality. According to at least one study singles are the same across the board on average in physical attractiveness, social skills, life satisfaction, neuroticism, and in other areas to their married peers. It's going to be a challenge to paint any group with a broad brush and expect to be accurate. 
          Marital status really doesn't allow me to draw any conclusions about the caliber of person someone is. Getting married is easy if you lower the bar far enough or sell yourself based on false pretenses, so just being married means very little to me. My viewpoint is that there is a mix of good, average and bad prospects among both the married and single demographics. Both groups are pretty diverse, so you’ll find people with a variety of different issues.

Recommendations

        What singles actually need from parents and peers is moral support rather than persuasion that marriage is a better life trajectory. Most singles I know want to get married, but are not particularly interested in getting married merely for the sake of getting married. For that reason, giving them the "marriage is so much more blissful than being single" talk isn't particularly effective. There is a measure of happiness to being single that trumps being in a bad marriage every day of the week, so the smart singles are going to be patient and wait for "a" right person to come along.
      Similarly, putting time pressure to marry is usually short-sighted. Time constraints will probably lead to a bad outcome, so the biggest encouragement needed from peers and family is to just keep trying. Being an older single is tough when you have a history of broken relationships leaving you with emotional and psychological baggage all acquired through dating. Furthermore, the outlook gets bleaker as the years pass. Of course, singles know deep down that those that continue to try are much more likely to reach the altar eventually.

Conclusion
         Even if singles and marrieds are on very different life paths that makes it hard to relate to each other, we should keep in mind that life is hard no matter what path you are on. We should be working collaboratively towards our common objectives and trying to lift each other up instead of identifying each other's flaws. All of us are imperfect and in need of a support system regardless of our marital status.  

Triumphing over the Valleys of Life

          One of the things that makes life interesting is that we can't see the end from the beginning. In our youth, many of us fantasize about winning the lottery and living a blissful life of comfort and ease. While it would seem that a life devoid of work and toil would be in our best interest looking forward, many elderly people I've met are grateful for the adversity they faced and the work they accomplished in their lives because it ultimately became the catalyst for gaining character and maturity. 

          Let's check in with the unlikeliest of sources, former President Richard Nixon, to get his take:

“Greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you're really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”

           Who knew that Nixon had such wisdom? Let's face it, life is hard. We are forced to work and do things that we would rather avoid, but making sacrifices and putting our wants on the back burner is ultimately good for us. Similarly, dealing with adversity usually helps us in the long run more than it hurts us. In fact, no pain that we suffer and no trial that we experience is wasted. It builds up our character and makes us more charitable and assists in the development of empathy towards others who are suffering. Said another way, we can more easily relate to adversity and pain felt by others thereby making it more likely that we will be motivated to help them in their darkest hours of need. 

          Think of the story of Shelley Mann. At the age of six she was diagnosed with Polio, which was a horrific disease in the early and mid 20th century often ravaging the body leading to paralysis and even death of its victims. As the years went by, polio took a significant toll on Shelley both physically and psychologically. She gradually lost the power to move her fingers and toes, her arms and her legs. Her parents were getting desperate to try and fight the effects of the awful disease as she continued on a downhill slide towards paralysis. At age 10, they brought her to a hospital pool to try a different kind of therapy. At first, she could not even hold up her arms. In fact, she was three months behind every other polio victim trying the same therapy. When she finally lifted her arm out of the water with her own power, she cried for joy. Then her goal was to swim the width of the pool, then the length, then several lengths. She kept on trying, swimming, enduring, day after day after day, year after year until she became one of the greatest swimmers in history and ended up winning the gold medal for the butterfly stroke—one of the most difficult of all swimming strokes. Here's a picture of her on the medal stand in the center:

            In Shelley's case, it's unlikely that she would have had the passion for swimming without having contracted polio. I don't know how her life would have evolved without the adversity, but it definitely would not have been the same. Her accomplishments are that much more impressive considering the adversity she overcame to get there. It was no wonder that she cried on the medal stand after receiving her gold medal taking into account her journey from the deepest valley of being almost paralyzed to the highest mountaintop of becoming the world's best. Her experience of making it to top of the mountain was much more meaningful than the other athletes who never experienced the same valley of life that she experienced.

            In reality, every person on the planet will experience low points i.e. valleys of life. I should point out that some adversity we will face is entirely our fault, some adversity appears to be completely random, and some adversity is a combination of both. Even if you are 100% to blame for creating the adverse life conditions, there is no value in beating yourself up for it. You have to be forward looking to get back onto higher ground and overcome the adversity.  You will, of course, want to learn from your actions that lead to the adverse conditions, but it is better analyzed in the light of the rear view mirror. 

          I take the position that all the choices I make and their consequences are essential to my journey in life. I don't have time to wallow and feel bad about things that I can't change about the past. Aisha Tyson summed up the perfect mindset like this: “Your journey has molded you for your greater good, and it was exactly what it needed to be. Don’t think that you’ve lost time. It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now, and now is right on time.” 

            Here are some examples of some common types of adversity:

           

Getting laid off or fired

Wanting to get married and being unable to do so

Desiring to have children and being unable to do so

Having a difficult time making friends

Being in a bad marriage

Going through a divorce or breaking up from a serious relationship

Losing a friend or relative to death or over a quarrel

Getting seriously injured or contracting a disease or illness

Being humiliated in front of your peer group or in front of a random audience

Having your life's work negatively critiqued
Struggling financially

Feeling immense guilty for doing something against your conscience

            That certainly isn't a comprehensive list of types of adversity, but it is a list that probably we can all relate to on some level. To get back to a mountaintop, you must climb! Climbing is replacing what you lost or letting time heal your emotional, physical, and/or psychological scars or taking affirmative steps to overcome your issue. In certain circumstances, there is no remedy except to change your attitude in dealing with it. You don't always have control over what happens to you, but you do have control over how you react to what happens to you.

           I read a story this week about a young man who had his name published in his high school yearbook with the word "freak" next to his name. That could be some devastating adversity! At that age, you are trying to fit in and that's what he'll best be known for his remaining 3 years of high school. To his credit the boy had this to say in dealing with it: "I'm just going to act like it never happened. If anyone says something to me, I'm going to ignore it." The circumstance was beyond his control, but he has decided to not let it bother him. By doing so, he showed maturity beyond his years. His story isn't over, but let's hope he is strong enough psychologically to overcome this adversity.. 

          Marvin Ashton summarized the correct mindset this way:

What we do with what happens to us is more important than what happens to us…The direction in which we are moving is more important than place or situation. We may have stumbled or been grievously hurt, but we have not fallen if we are willing to get back up.

         I don't believe in "random" adversity nor do I see adversity as a punishment from above. In contrast, it is a teaching tool to allow you to become a better person. It often isn't known until years later why the adversity was useful to you, but sometimes your biggest trials end up becoming the greatest events that could have happened to you. When you reach the next phase of life and can look back at your darkest time, you may find that it lead you to a better suited opportunity that you would not have obtained had the adversity not knocked you off the path you were on.
          For an example of not knowing that adversity is sometimes a blessing in disguise meet Stacey Kramer who explains the positives of having a brain tumor:

           Nobody on the planet wants a brain tumor. However, Stacey recognized that her adversity helped her gain a new perspective and grow an appreciation for when life is going smoothly. Although you don't know what lies ahead in your own life, you will undoubtedly have some peaks and valleys. Just remember that if you end up on in a deep and dark valley, it will make your inevitable moment on the highest mountaintop in your life that much sweeter. You will be able to look down into the valley and appreciate the beauty of the journey you just took to get there, so hold on and endure through your valley of life.

Six Keys to Working Smart

        When we transition into new endeavors in our lives, our instincts may be to dive right into the work without going through a preparatory period to become competent at the task. This headstrong approach works with some things where you can learn efficiency through trial and error, but with most things it may be prudent to first learn the "how to" before diving in. Here’s a story to illustrate this point from Stephen Covey’s book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

         

There’s a guy who stumbled into a lumberjack in the mountains. The man stops to observe the lumberjack, watching him feverishly sawing at this very large tree. He noticed that the lumberjack was working up a sweat, sawing and sawing, yet going nowhere. The bystander noticed that the saw the lumberjack was using was about as sharp as a butter knife. So, he says to the lumberjack, “Excuse me Mr. Lumberjack, but I couldn’t help noticing how hard you are working on that tree, but going nowhere.” The lumberjack replies with sweat dripping off of his brow, “Yes…I know. This tree seems to be giving me some trouble.” The bystander replies and says, “But Mr. Lumberjack, your saw is so dull that it couldn’t possibly cut through anything.” “I know”, says the lumberjack, “but I am too busy sawing to take time to sharpen my saw.”

        Mr. Lumberjack can exert the most effort of any lumberjack in the world, but he’ll never be great at his job unless he works smarter. In fact, his maximum effort along with a smart strategy could allow him to move up the rankings from one of the worst lumberjacks in the world to one of the best. Similarly, we may be shortchanging our ability to become great by utilizing ineffective strategies to accomplish our goals.

         When I was a senior in high school, I made it a goal to break the school record in the mile. In order to accomplish this, I decided that I was going to work harder than any other runner in our program’s history starting as soon as the cross country season concluded. Since there is more than a three month gap in between the end of the cross country season and when the track season began, the results from my chosen training program would probably determine how my senior season would go.

          I designed my training program without consulting any coaches or doing any research on the topic. I thought that my work ethic and having a training plan would be enough to make me the best in school history. Looking back at the approach, it amounted to a very poor strategy for a lot of reasons.

         My plan was to run 40 miles per week at a pace between 5:30-8:00 minutes per mile. Even though my training plan required a lot of effort and would send me out into the frigid Minnesota winter on a regular basis, it was extremely flawed. The first flaw was that the school record was 4:20 and none of my training runs had me running close to that fast even at shorter distances. I essentially ran a lot of "junk" miles. If you want to run really fast you have to train your muscles, heart, and lungs to acclimate your body to that pace. By running 1:10-3:00 per mile slower than my goal time with 100% of my training, my work strategy could accurately be deemed “working dumb.”  I was nowhere near prepared to run even a 4:49 mile by the time the season started that I had run a year earlier with limited winter training.

         The other flaw in my training plan was that I would run hard as many days in a row as I possibly could. My reasoning was that it would make me the hardest worker and therefore the fastest runner. Little did I realize that my body needed time to recover from difficult workouts. In fact, muscles in general need time to repair themselves and get stronger. If you work them out before they recover, you break down the muscles more and they actually get weaker and become more susceptible to injury. Rest in between the hard workouts is nearly as important as the workout itself.

         As you could have predicted by now, my senior season started out as an epic failure. As 2/3 of the season went on, I still had not exceeded my junior year times in any event. Fortunately, I had a father who was very concerned about my regression and ended up calling a college track coach to get some tips. Sherald James, who ended up being my future coach at BYU, told him that I should run only 6X400 meter interval sessions (with 60 seconds in between to recover) the rest of the season with 48 hours of rest in between each session. I also decided to switch events to the 800 meters to increase my probability of success.

         I carefully followed Coach James’ advice. It worked even better than any of us had an envisioned. According to my high school coach, it was the greatest three week improvement he had ever witnessed. I took 12 seconds off my 800 meter time and broke into the top 20 in school history in the event. Although I didn't accomplish my initial goal, it certainly provided me a silver lining. It is still my belief that if I had not implemented the new strategy offered up by Coach James and made drastic improvement in the final 3 weeks of my HS career, I never would have tried running in college. That was a powerful lesson for me about the power of working smart.

         Bill Bowerman who is one of the greatest track coaches of all time summarized my flawed thinking as follows:  “The idea that the harder you work, the better you're going to be is just garbage. The greatest improvement is made by the man or woman who works most intelligently.”

        As most people are trying hard to improve in different areas of their lives other than running there are certain common principles to working smart. You can have the greatest intentions in the world to work harder than everybody else, but it isn’t enough in most instances. You need to combine your stellar work ethic with a strategy that maximizes output and improvement.
       This advice could apply in skill development in the business world, developing your talents, or just tinkering with your hobbies. Here are six keys to working smart:

1)      Emulate the work habits of others who are better than you  – If there is someone in your field a cut above you, seek them out for advice. If the information that separates them from everybody else in making them successful is revealed on the internet, take those insights and implement them into your strategy to improve. The very elite people in most industries have biographies or "how to" books with secrets to their success
2)      Use your peak hours – My work product is better and I am more efficient at peak times of the day. If I am trying to accomplish the same thing during the time of day I am winding down, it may take me much longer and will probably be worse overall than if I had done it during my most productive hours of the day. The author of Four Hour Work Week had this insight: “By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It's the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.”
3)      Be consistent in maintaining your skills – One of the biggest challenges of being a full time worker in your career job is that it's difficult to make other goals you are trying to accomplish a priority. Nonetheless, you need to give consistent priority efforts to stay sharp and continue to improve. As you spend enough time towards a specific goal, it takes less time to maintain what you have than to build skills that you haven't acquired yet.
4)      Keep up with innovations in your field – There are a lot of really smart people in the world that likely are trying to improve in the same field as you. Some of them may even come up with ideas that really improve your efficiency. There is no reason to revert to outdated and less effective principles if better ones are available to you. The best people in their fields are tracking innovations, so should you.

5)      Mix things up to stay fresh psychologically – If you are working on your goals regularly, try and plan ways to psychologically mix things up every day. In my college running program, I knew which days I would be doing intervals, long distance, hills, easy days, etc. All of those workouts helped me in different ways and helped me stay fresh psychologically. You will burn out if you aren't mentally stimulated by the activity, so mix it up so that you can keep doing it for years and years.
6)      Keep in mind the law of diminishing returns – If you work too long and hard on one activity, your mind and body will eventually wear out. Know when to quit and come back fresh another day when you can make more efficient use of your time.

        We sometimes learn the hard way that working smart is as important if not more important than working hard. You will benefit greatly from putting some thought into your efficiency and devising ways to increase your long-term endurance into keeping at it. As you know from my first ever post, it's just a matter of time before you surpass everybody else who have already given up.

Rolling in the Deep

          What do Adele and Mitt Romney have in common? Adele sang a very popular song called “Rolling in the Deep” about her ex-boyfriend. Earlier this week, Mitt Romney gave a commencement speech to a college in Virginia wherein he told the graduates to “launch out into the deep” as encouragement to embrace every dimension of living that challenges you, educates you, and elevates you. Although their intentions were vastly different in using similar nautical metaphors, there are principles to be learned from both. 

          Rolling in the deep is an old way of saying that there is a ship sailing and being tossed back and forth in a very deep and dark ocean. It’s very likely that Adele imagined her ex-boyfriend in the depths of his despair feeling completely lost, alone, and at the mercy of the elements beyond his control. His boat could have looked something like this in her mind:

          That certainly doesn’t sound like a place you want to launch yourself into as Mitt Romney advocates, except there is another side to rolling in the deep that Adele didn’t cover in her song. In the big picture, it’s in the deep waters where the greatest growth, maturity, and wisdom are to be found. When you get into a valley of life i.e. when you are in the midst of some serious life altering adversity you eventually come out of it stronger and with a more mature view of the big picture. After spending some time in the deep waters, you may start to understand that the things that you stressed out over in the shallow waters were just a minor blip not worth thinking about.    

          Despite Adele’s refutations otherwise, if her ex-boyfriend is rolling in the deep over ending the relationship it may have a positive long-term effect on him. Maybe in the depths of his despair, he’ll recognize that he messed up and be wiser in his relationship patterns in the future. More than likely, however, his position of being in deep despair is likely exaggerated for the sake of the song.
          Launching yourself out into the deep is the intentional and purposeful going into the deep waters for the sake of self improvement and rewards unseen. This metaphor actually comes from the Bible. The fishermen were instructed by the Master to go into the deep waters after having spent hours upon hours in the shallow end catching no fish. When they went into the deep waters, their nets over flowed with fish.

 

          Several superheroes ended up in deep waters that assisted in their skill development. Batman launched himself into the deep waters by landing himself in a Bhutanese prison to hone his fighting skills. His reward unseen was meeting Henri Ducard who offered him additional training. Both Ironman (being held captive in a cave) and Green Arrow (being held captive on an island) ended up being launched into the deep against their wills, but it ended up being the turning point in their lives in coming back to civilization with a better life perspective and elite skills.   

          Metaphorically speaking, most people spend the majority of their lives in the shallow end of the sea, because it’s the path of least resistance and where things are less likely to go awry. There will be a time in both your personal life and career where you will probably be within your comfort zone on a regular basis. You get into a routine where life is comfortable wherein months and sometimes years go by with very little personal growth. Time spent in comfort and ease doesn't build you into a better person even if you are making progress towards retirement or other goals. 

         As a lifelong single, it’s easy to foster selfishness. Since you have no stewardship outside of yourself, you can devote the majority of your thoughts to fulfilling your own desires. Unfortunately, it’s very likely that your legacy will be that of a selfish person if that continues for a lifetime.  

         There is, of course, another path of sacrifice, doing things for others, and living for a purpose greater than yourself. To really launch yourself into the deep and get rewards unseen, you may have to throw away all biases, preconceived notions, and labels about yourself and jump into unchartered territory. There are some things that you can’t fully prepare yourself for no matter how hard you try. 

         What are some examples of launching yourself into the deep? 1) getting married, 2) having kids, 3) moving to a foreign country, 4) starting in a new career industry wherein you have little relevant experience, or 5) going into a rigorous field of study. There are probably numerous other things you can do wherein you will need to meet challenges that seem above what you are capable. Doing things that seem impossible at first can be a great stimulation to try harder. You will need to rise to the challenge or go back into shallow waters. The people that rise to the challenge end up with the greatest rewards and personal growth. 

         The two ventures that have challenged me the most in my life were 1) moving to Germany for two years to serve a volunteer church mission and 2) attending and graduating from law school. In moving to a foreign land, I had to pick up a new language, overcome the culture shock of moving from Minnesota to the outskirts of Berlin (along with moves to other cities: Schwerin, Magdeburg, Hellersdorf, and Eberswalde), and overcome shyness. I estimated that I talked to over 10,000 people during the two years there. I stretched myself in ways that I never would have if I had chosen not to go. Most importantly, my confidence to do other things later in life increased. We'll discuss the challenges of law school in a future post. By embarking and finishing these two ventures, I am not afraid of big challenges. Although I prepared for each of those experiences a little bit, it wasn’t until I jumped into the deep waters that the real growth happened. Here's a picture of one of the cities I stayed in:

 

        Marriage is another life event that you can't adequately prepare for. Our generation is scared of marriage for a variety of reasons, but the main one is that it's a clear launch into the deep waters of life. Many marriages fail. It’s a scary proposition that there is a chance that you’ll be emotionally invested 100% into your marriage and it will fail no matter how many precautions you take. There is nothing that adequately prepares you for the challenges of marriage. On the other hand, being happily married trumps being single by a wide a wide margin…so I hear. (I've never been married) 

         I was on a plane ride earlier this week and struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. It was clear to me that he is successful in his career, had great capacity to do many different things, and someone who is clearly a deep thinker. As we talked about politics, the state of the economy, and other issues he noted to me that he can’t justify bringing a kid into this world with so many uncertainties even though he has a girlfriend who wants to get married. I must admit that I don't understand his mindset at all even though I agreed with his concerns about the uncertainty of the future. Having grown up in a family of eight children, I can’t imagine what would have been if my parents were too scared to have children. I’m sure there were times when my parents didn’t know how they would support so many kids, but they had faith and moved forward into deep waters. Now that we are adults, they must have a sense of fulfillment.  

        My favorite comedian, Jim Gaffigan, explains what it’s like to have four kids. After having three kids, he says it feels like you’re drowning and then someone throws you a baby…Jim was, of course, exaggerating but there is a kernel of truth to his statement. Having kids is way over many parents’ heads, but they somehow manage and find great fulfillment. 

        If you do something so grandiose in challenging your capacity that you struggle to keep your ship afloat as the waves comes crashing against it, you will get stronger for the next storm. Every storm that you survive prepares you psychologically for the next one. You may need this strength later in life when a big storm comes along that really tests your mettle. 

        The principle of being tested and getting stronger isn’t limited to life altering circumstances. Your honesty and character may get tested in smaller ways preparing you for the test of your life that challenges the principles you live by. There was a guy that found $120K in the trash last year. He was poor and yet he turned the money in. I imagine that he had passed several smaller tests of honesty and character before being confronted with a deep water decision. You don't build character overnight. It's one small decision at a time even in the shallow waters.
        Even if you are hanging out in the shallow waters, there's still a possibility that you'll get launched into the deep waters without you doing it yourself. There is adversity that can hit in seemingly random ways such as having major health issues or losing loved ones to death or having financial problems. You may end up rolling in the deep completely unprepared and without warning. It will be hard psychologically, but you will survive and it will shape you as a person.

        The strength that you get through rolling in the deep will likely be a source of strength for others who are weak and trying to keep their ships afloat. You’ll be wiser, stronger, and more mature making you a person with a better big picture radar than most others. Launching yourself into the deep and rolling for a while makes for the most interesting and strongest people I know. It's not a bad place if you value personal development.