I believe in This I Believe.

Midway through this past week, I was feeling down. Not terribly depressed or anything, just somewhat disheartened and disappointed. Things I had hoped would happen didn't, and, as I previously blogged, BYU's men's basketball team lost to UNLV in a disheartening fashion. I was at work Thursday with this sour mood, hoping for time to speed up, trying to find something, anything to ease my disappointment. I was listening to NPR online, and I saw a link on my playlist to the latest installment of a series called This I Believe. The series asks people, just everyday, normal people, to put what they believe into 300 words or less. I'd heard a couple of these essays read on the air in the past few months, but lately, I hadn't been tuning in at the right time to hear the most recent essays. I clicked on the link to listen to seven-year-old Tarak McLain's list of thirty things he believes in. As I listened to Tarak's list of simple yet profound beliefs, I was moved by his innocence and goodness. "Out of the mouth of babes," right?

I felt a sort of emotional rebirth at that moment, nothing drastic or life-altering, mostly a peaceful cleansing of my disappointment and discouragement. My admittedly trivial concerns began to fade, and I realized there is too much goodness in this world to focus on the bad. Not that I should ignore the bad or deny its reality, but that my attitude towards it should change. Sure, some things didn't work out the way I wanted, but rather than let that bring me down I should use it as motivation to make things happen in the future.

Too often I let the ups and downs of day-to-day life distract me from my long term optimism that everything will work out well in the end. It's hard for me to keep everything in the proper perspective when the problems and difficulties of the present are so present. I struggle to see the development and growth of personal improvement because those changes occur slowly over time, not immediately or from one moment to the next. Yet, I feel that those changes are taking place, that I am in a good position with room for a lot of improvement. I am pleased with who I am and who I feel I'm becoming, and I need to cling to that self-acceptance in order to continue my personal growth.

And all this because of a child's simple and pure hearted declaration of his beliefs. After listening to Tarak, I found many more essays to listen to. I even went to Borders and purchased the book, This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women --- but only because I couldn't find the first book. Each essay I have since listened to or read has been full of important truths. Perhaps even more importantly, each essay has given me a glimpse into another human being's understanding. Writing what you believe in 300 words cannot be easy, and it forces you to get to the very core of your beliefs. There can be nothing extraneous in such a declaration; every word is an important part of that person's soul.

These essays have expanded my empathy and understanding. You can't help but feel your estimation of humanity being raised as you read or listen to these essays. These are normal people who struggle with normal issues, but they each have important insight into the human condition, as clarified through their personal experiences. Sometimes I think we allow all the terrible things going on in our world to distract us from the common humanity that can and should unite us all. We all struggle with grief and heartache; we all yearn to love and be loved, to serve one another; we all feel a need to connect to something greater than ourselves, be it God, our nation or community, or just our families.

These remarkable ordinary people share the things closest to their hearts, and they have found their way into my heart. I don't know any of these people. I recognize the names of some of the more prominent figures who choose to share, but they will likely all remain unknown to me --- and yet, in some profound sense, I do know them. They are the people I interact with on a daily basis. They are the people I silently pass in the grocery store, the people at work I have yet to meet, and they are each and every face I will see in my lifetime.

They are you, and they are me.

I encourage everyone to visit the This I Believe website and listen to the available essays --- they are well worth it. There is an online database with many, many more essays that I have yet to check out, but I'm sure that most of those essays are just as worthwhile. Kudos to NPR for providing this awesome service. I now feel a desire to write and submit an essay to This I Believe, but I'm not sure exactly what to write about. I've been giving this quite a lot of thought lately, and I hope to write something this week. I encourage everyone who reads this, especially those who blog, to take the challenge and write your own 300 word essay about what you believe. We bloggers could all post ours on our individual blogs, and I think it'd be an awesome way to get to know one another better. Just a thought.

Well, I've got a few more essays to read.