Green Oasis

It has been a month since I swore off Mormon-themed blogs for a month, so I guess I can go back if I want. I don’t want.

It has been a positive change in my life for at least two reasons. The first is that I have a lot more time to do other, more important things. I avoided reading at least 367 blog posts. I’m positive that I would have enjoyed many of those posts. Still, I enjoyed the free time that I had instead of reading them. A lot of my blog-reading is pure procrastination. Avoiding reading these blogs gave me less opportunity to put off things I would like to do. (It’s ironic that I would put off things I would like to do, n’est-ce pas?)

The second reason is that I’ve found greater peace of mind. The less often I’m reminded of how annoying and dangerous Mormonism is, the more I’m able to change things that are more within my control. Being constantly outraged wears me down over time like water torture. It threatens to make me see Mormons and other religious folk as flat, two-dimensional characters in a farce. That’s far from the truth. I owe my first loyalty to the truth.

So I’ll be releasing a select one or two blogs from quarantine, but I am hereby reclaiming a little more of my time and head-space from Mormonism.

Madonna’s Love Profusion just popped up on my playlist. I discovered that the balance between despair for knowing the truth clearly without illusion and the soft, loving gratitude to life portrayed in this song reflects a part of my unnamed mind state.

Some of my recent posts have been rather angry and bitter. This isn’t an apology because I feel justified in my anger, but I recognize that it’s not healthy to center my life around that anger. It was disturbing my peace.

I compare my bitterness and anger to the birthing pangs required to bring a new person into the world. To confuse the metaphor, it’s like when you’re a teenager and you start asserting your individuality as separate from your parents. This individuation sometimes manifests itself as anger, but this anger is part of the natural order of things. It helps us to create our individuality by breaking with the old. The same with leaving Mormonism.

Some of those of us who leave Mormonism go through an angry period that helps us leave Mormonism behind. Some of the bitterness that you saw on my blog recently was only temporary. On the other hand, I foresee many parts of Mormonism angering me for a very long time. Maybe I will see Mormonism with a more temperate attitude in the future, but to refuse to be angry about the bad things in Mormonism would only delay my maturation as a post-Mormon person.

I just hope that I don’t get obsessed and intoxicated with my anger. I hope that Mormonism (the bad parts of it anyway) can play an increasingly insignificant part in my life.

I’ve decided to work through the Simple Living Manifesto, a list of 72 ideas to help simplify. I began with step one: make a list of my top 4-5 important things. I reflexively began to rattle off: family, work, school, and so on but stopped myself. Are those really the most important things in my life, or are those means to an end? I paused and tried again.

Throughout the day, I pondered on what my most important things are. I finally came up with this list:

• Life—the survival and propagation life
• Knowledge—learning the truth
• Peace—contentment and satisfaction
• Compassion—suffering with others and working to alleviate the unnecessary pains of life
• Love—to love and be loved

I value these things. I can’t justify why, but I don’t feel any need do so. I just want them. Perhaps I value those things just because I’m human.

On to the next steps: evaluate my commitments and my time. Everything I do should support those goals.