Nancy's Musings

In Sunday School today we learned about Abinadi (prounounced in my head as the Germans say it, AH-bin-AH-dee), and his return to the city (don't ask me which city, the reading starts in Mosiah 12, and that information came earlier) to face King Noah and the wicked priests. For Mormons, this is pretty standard fare. In a pattern that existed since the early books of the Old Testament, prophets have been standing up and getting shot at, so I imagine Christians of all sorts recognize the pattern. But Noah's priests have some interesting rhetoric. So Abinadi calls the people to repentance, smite-style.  2. Thus saith the Lord, it shall come to pass that this generation, because of their iniquities, shall be brought into  bondage , and shall be smitten on the  cheek ; yea, and shall be driven by men, and shall be slain; and the vultures of the air, and the dogs, yea, and the wild beasts, shall devour their  flesh . So of course they're mad, and tell Noah. They thr...

I am wondering if a bit more humility would give me a bit more confidence. There are lots of kinds of confidence, and if they come from the wrong place, they are actually arrogance in a creepy mustache. I don't want a mustache. But I also don't want to get walked on. "Knowing who we are" is the key to both humility and confidence, but "who we are" is really, really complicated - like, we're lots of things, and how are we to know what bit of ourselves is relevant in any particular situation? We are divine offspring. We are fallen, and imperfect, and consistently short-sighted. We are tired, broken versions of the cheerful, perfect little children we used to be. We are growing into our inheritance. We possess agency in vast amounts. We must surrender our will. We are physical beings, full of exciting passions and drives. We are finite beings functioning in a maze of eternal and temporal laws with persistent consequences. If you need confidence, remem...

By raise of hands: has anybody heard the sentence, "It doesn't hurt to ask"? Has someone ever said it to you? Did you slap them? I think slapping might be my new strategy, which would prevent the person who said it from following up with the equally fallacious, "The worst they could say is, "no." It always hurts to ask. Firstly, asking for anything requires vulnerability. It means being explicit about a power that someone has over you, whether what you are asking for is information, a new stapler, a day off, or whether they'll marry you. That act of expressing need is dangerous, and if you're anxious you feel acutely aware that a vindictive or malicious person could use that vulnerability to totally screw you over, if they feel like it. Or take advantage of you, if there's profit in it for them. Or make you look foolish for not having/knowing the thing already. Asking for something is a kind of commitment in itself. It means admit...

One of my dearest friends shared her feelings with me recently, and without her permission, I'm going to shamelessly comment on her ideas. She talked about reaching a point in her endless strivings to "do it all" where she started asking herself "do I really want to do this? Why am I doing this?" I think these are really great self-interrogation questions. The first question - "Do I really want to do this?" - offers us an opportunity to understand how our situation and our actions make us feel. It's related to questions like, "am I enjoying this?" or "Does this frighten me?" (in the case of my anxiety-brain), or "How will I feel if I fail/succeed?" The second question - "Why am I doing this?" - interrogates our motivations. By middle age, we have acquired several layers of external necessity: we have to adult. We pay bills. We support dependents. We maintain romantic and social relationships. We know...

This week I have had to face some difficult truths about myself. Here's a problem with this conversation - there have been people in my life who are unkind, judgmental, and manipulative, and whenever I try to process difficult things about myself, I hear them in my head laughing at me, gloating, and being smug. It makes me angry. But being honest about myself to myself is still the right thing to do, so I'm going to do it anyway, and I'm going to try to ignore those cruel voices. I have made significant mistakes. I don't know what they all are, and I'm not sure I could process them all if I did know. I'm not sure that everyone who accuses me is correct, but I don't think I could defend myself against the accusations anyway, so they might as well be. Even if I'm not guilty of everything I'm accused of, I know that I am guilty of some things. And I know that the accusations are enough to have permanent consequences in my professional life, even...

Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day! I have never failed at anything as badly as I did teaching. Never fear: I still learned something. I learned NEVER to try to be a teacher again. All your students are safe from me. Whew! Did you know that Hitler was an ENFP? This makes complete sense to many of my former students. Maybe I'm rewriting my narrative, but I think I learned obedience from ballet lessons. In ballet, success is based on your ability to quickly memorize and follow verbal directions, and to look exactly like the other students - to imitate their angles and motions, and to keep perfectly timed. You have to be completely absorbed in the present - your mind cannot wander. Doing as I was told taught me to work. I even learned how to enjoy a challenge. This is the key: ENFPs don't normally do anything they don't enjoy. Not for any kind of reward. The only quality necessary to succeed at school up through your bachelor's degree is the ability to unde...