All of us to some extent need to find a purpose or goal in existence. Everybody has to know where he or she is going. Every great person in history has set up guidelines and goals for one’s life! Agreed. There is certainly nothing wrong with goals. We all need them. However, too many people overstructure their lives for careers and achievement and end up feeling intensely guilty if they cannot build the structure according to plan. Or they feel envious and even resentful of others who make it. Some people spend their lives regretting the past and fearing the future; therefore, they are unable to experience joy in the present. As a result, many become mere victims of painful emotions that they do not handle and which trigger endless intellectualization and elaboration. They may spend an entire lifetime constructing sophistical intellectual systems to justify what is glaringly obvious as simple suppressed emotions. Possibly the worst problem of all is that they feel their lives, once structured, have a purpose and that thus, as individuals, they are justified in using up Earthspace and breathing Earthair. We maintain that this attitude is unfortunate. None of us can recall asking to be here, nor remember having anything to do with getting here. We have as much right to be here as anyone, and we do not have to contribute anything or produce anything or even be anything special in order to show good cause for our continued existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

Many adults express this goal-purpose orientation in empty arguments concerning restless students or others they loosely call hippies. A common statement from established, comfortable, hardworking middle-class adults is “What do they do to earn the right to demonstrate or even lie around? Who pays the taxes to support their wild terrorisms on campuses and in the streets? Who keeps the store while these kooks are ‘finding themselves’ through all kinds of extravagant orgies and ‘trips’? When are these creeps going to settle down, join the human race, and pick up their fair share of the load of responsibility for building and continuing our way of life?” We have no simple rebuttal to these arguments. However, we do have a basic commitment to the intrinsic worth of each human being, including those labeled “kooks,” “creeps,” “weirdoes,” and “trouble-makers.” “The Holy One shall execute judgment in righteousness,” reports Nephi 22.21. None of us has anything for another person as a way of paying back the debt of being here. However, once each individual is guaranteed the simple right to be here and is enabled by those who care about one to survive and grow and become what one potentially is, one will become, we believe, productive and contributing and caring and compassionate. One will feel the self-worth of each other person because one feels one’s own self-worth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

Our only purpose in life, if purpose is needed, is to be what we are, fully, vitally, in a context of other people having the same right. “If you nourish seed with great care, it will get root,” reports Alma 32.27. That means the virtues that we share and treasure will be reflected in our lives the more we practice them. The realization of the needs of others ought to produce, in sensitive people, the necessary checks and balances to make sure we do our thing without infringing on the important rights and needs of other thingdoers. In fact, in order to guarantee the satisfaction of our deepest needs, we must be concerned about the need-satisfaction of others. “The Lord has commanded that all people should have charity,” reports 2 Nephi 26.30. In short, we can state realistically but not pessimistically that our only deal goal is eternal life, and thus our big challenge is to live significantly, fully, meaningfully. If we pay attention to our feelings, we stay on the road to healthy, reflective thought. With informed thought, we can actually vary the intensity of our feelings, or shift from one feeling to another. For instance, by focusing on the long-term gains that we will accrue if we tolerate the frustration of finishing a tough assignment, we can shift from feeling anxious to feeling eager—a subtle but powerful difference that will affect our work. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

Failure to feel, on the other hand, leads either to unproductive circuitous thought (which produces further anxiety) or denial (and its companion, procrastination). A full life depends on a total realization of just how short and limited that life might be. With life’s ending in sight, the time still available becomes more valuable for meeting the challenge. The more time each of us spends searching for purpose in living, the less time we have for living itself. Life is given! It is not earned, not entrusted, not loaned or rented, just given. And we do not have to get bogged down in philosophical or theological arguments about who gave it. However, when someone out of a relationship of love gives one a gift, one does not need to day “thank you,” or return it, or give a gift in return. The idea is to take it, unwrap it, appreciate it, use it, and enjoy it. Existence and Being are gifts, with all the rights and privileges attached. Filling them with meaning and significance is up to the individual who receives them. Never give up—however deep the wounds of your soul, whatever their source, wherever or whenever they happened, and however short or long they persist, we are not meant to perish spiritually. We are meant to survive spiritually and blossom in our faith and trust in God. God stands ready to save us from the sorrows and pains of our wounded souls. The Savior is our Good Samaritan, sent to heal the brokenhearted. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

Let us regroup. What is the something we grow into? We are born as units: individual cases of Homo sapiens, solitary examples of people. We develop into something that has its potential in our human nature; human beings. We become persons. There are many ways of describing this. Some people speak of soul, while others talk about spirit. Some speak of personality, and others use the term character. We call it Selfhood. As human beings unfold, like flowers blossoming from nib to bud into full-blown flowerhood, they become conscious of who and what they are. The self is the for the awareness each of us has of our Being, potential and actual, latent and manifest. Reaching awareness is a complicated process, but each of us with or without help managers to come to some sense of who one is. Each self is different, and each is important. Although we use many copy-patterns (models, heroes, ideals, images) in the identity-formation process, there remains through it all a core which is uniquely our own. Enormous suffering gives us experience, and can help us develop. How can painful wounds be for our good? In the crucible of Earthly trials, patiently move forward, and the Savior’s healing power will bring us light, understanding, peace, and hope. We must pray with all our heart. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10

Life is a series of success and failures, hellos and goodbyes, high and lows, peaks and valleys, births and deaths; the fully actualizing self experiences them all and deals with them effectively. It is more than coping or battling life. Self-actualization often means knowing when to ride with and fully experience those many life encounters that are difficult and painful. We do this with the joys and pleasures; why not also wit the rest of our life? Remember, repentance is powerful spiritual medicine. Keep the commandments and be worthy of the Comforter, remembering that the Savior promised, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” In a sense, the self is like a tool kit that contains the necessary tools (and often weapons) to work effectively with life. In another sense, the self is like a makeup kit in which we carry the materials for wearing the many faces or aspects of our being. In the course of living, even within the same hour of any day, we exhibit many aspects of ourselves. The soul is a simple substance and therefore indestructible. The soul might nevertheless lose its consciousness, but the divine wisdom and goodness of God would not allow this to happen. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

Looking backward, remembering that we proved our worthiness in our premortal state, we know that we are valiant children of God, and with his help, we can triumph in the battles of this fallen World. We have done it before, and can do it again. Rather than spend good time, paper, and energy discussing what might be considered a good life, a well-adjusted life, or a full life, one must look forward. Our troubles and sorrows are very real, but they will not last forever. Our dark nights will pass. Disappointments come to visit on occasion, but are never allowed to stay. We are troubled, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. We may be exhausted, but must never give up. Is not one of the most central problems of modern Western humans that some experience themselves as without significance as an individual? Let us focus on that aspect of our image of ourselves which is our doubt whether we can act and one’s half-aware conviction that even if we did act it would do no good. This is part of our lives. It is why we are here. We are here to have a body and to be tried and tested. Some of those tests are physical. Some are spiritual, and our trials here have been both physical and spiritual. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

We have not given up, and that is something to be proud of. Increasing our faith in God will bring us added strength and greater hope. For us, the righteous, the Healer of our souls, in his time and his way, will heal all our wounds. No injustice, no persecution, no trial, no sadness, no heartache, no suffering, no wound—however deep, however wide, however painful—will be excluded from the comfort, peace, and lasting hope of God, whose open arms will welcome us back into his presence. A human being, with all the potential and actualized abilities we have, who still can feel that we do not matter, it is impossible to know all that informs our minds and hearts or even to fully understand the context for the trials and choices we face. Humans, the master of the World, able to doubt that what we are and does is significant. Self-doubt which reflects the tremendous technological power that surges up every moment about us to dwarf overwhelmingly our own puny efforts. Humans, seeing themselves, for all their created and expressed potency, as impotent is more than a Frankenstein’s monster turning on and destroying their creator. In that act, the monster was admitting Frankenstein’s power and demonstrating that the only way to go round that power was to kill the man having it. The act of self-doubting is more pernicious. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

 The monster creations and programs of human beings have become so powerful that, mindless as they are, they can afford to sweep one aside as being too unimportant to waste energy on killing him. That is the stimulus, the challenge, the treat to the very existence of human beings and human beings that leads us to explore the dilemma. We propose, with the help of thoughtful and insightful people from many different times and backgrounds, to present the problem and explore its dimension. We hope to show that Human’s Ultimate Concern is more than what in that past has been listed as seeking happiness, enlightenment, wisdom, control, power, salvation, adjustment, or even identity. The concern of each of us is to find some way of getting alive, staying alive, and fulfilling that aliveness, and making it (and ourselves) count in the scheme of things. “Fear not, for behold, it is God that has shown unto you this marvelous thing, in the which is shown unto you that you cannot lay your hands on us to slay us,” reports Helaman 5.26. Perseverance means more than endurance—more than simply holding on until the end. Entrust yourself to God’s hands. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10

The Romans had a sign in their shops that read “Caveat Emptor.” “Let the buyer beware” is an antique cryptic phrase demonstrating an ancient concern that people should only purchase if they are aware of the possible consequences. Some of the difficulties to be encountered in absorbing this set of ideas are set out here for us to peruse, carefully, thoughtfully. We may, for instance, find that in looking into this dilemma it will defeat us, or at least knock us down emotionally. It is very difficult to confront the problems of life. If we are interested in finding ourselves, becoming who we actually are, in discovering not only our identity, but what worth that identity has, we may be in for hard work. So, buyer beware! We may be in for frustration, self-pity, self-hatred, and defeat.  However, we may also attain a rich and rewarding life and come to value the person that we really are “because you kept my command to persevere,” reports Revelation 3.10. Even though we cannot see God right now and cannot understand what he is doing, we know him. We can minister grace through compassionate language when the cultivated gift of the Holy Ghost pierces our hearts with empathy for the feelings and context of others. It enables us to transform hazardous situations into holy places. God looks down on our hears and cares what we are thinking. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10