Living in the middle

Back in July, my home teachers and President Dieter F. Uchtdorf's message in the Ensign prompted me to say something almost deep and profound. Since that doesn't happen very often ("deep and profound" is not my modus operandi, to say the least…) I still remember exactly what I said:

"Humans were made to live in the middle."

In his Ensign message, President Uchtdorf tells about redoing the headstone on his parents' grave, saying, "When I looked at the birth dates and death dates on the headstone connected by the usual insignificant little dash, this small symbol of a lifespan suddenly filled my mind and heart with an abundance of rich memories. Each of these treasured memories reflects a moment in the middle of my parents' lives and in the middle of my life. Whatever our age, whatever our location, when things occur in our lives, we are always in the middle. What's more, we will forever be in the middle."

I graduated from college back in April 2010. I walked straight into a job, and I've been working ever since. But it didn't take long (maybe a day or two) to realize that being single, not dating, and only working for 8 hours per day is draining. I had reached the end of my goals and I was out of the middle.

I didn't like it.

If you think about it, you spend your whole life building up to certain events. You go through kindergarten to get to 1^st grade. You go through elementary and junior high to get to high school. You get through high school to go to college, and you get through college to get a job. Every day between those events is filled with certain actions—homework, extracurricular activities, etc.—designed to help you reach your end goal.

That transition from college student to college graduate threw me off a little because I wasn't really ready for it. I hadn't thought about reaching the end of a goal because I was too busy living in the middle. I like the middle. I'm comfortable in the middle. Frankly, that's where I feel like we all belong.

I have a friend who makes fun of me for constantly being in the middle of projects. He's right. I recently finished making spoon puppets for my mom's Scout camp, and within three days of delivering the puppets, I came up with a fabulous idea for next year's Festival of Trees. That means Mom and I will have something to work on from here until next November. Done with projects? Never!!!

"We're knights of the round table. We dance when e're we're able..." 

I don't jump into projects because I'm an overachiever or because I feel like I need to compensate for something. I do it because it puts me back in the middle. Right now I'm in the middle of figuring out Shannen's birthday present (this famous published author Shannen), editing a book, inching toward getting a book published, and sewing another Tardis blanket and a set of Doctor/Rose dolls. These are small middles—little projects that help fill my time—but they're not the big middles I spent 23 years living in.

Luckily, though, I ran back into the middle—the BIG middle; a REAL middle—a few weeks ago by starting grad school. So far this new middle has consisted of a teacher asking if I'm a right-winger, another teacher telling me I HAD to talk in class even if I had nothing useful to say, and every single one of my teachers distributing outrageously confusing syllabi. That's okay. At least I'm back in the middle.

Forrest Gump and I have a disagreement about life—he thinks it's all about chocolate, but I'm more inclined to believe life is more like a staircase in an optical illusion. We move from one goal to the next, but most of our time is spent in the middle. Once we reach our goal, be it graduation, a new job, or marriage, I think we're instinctively wired to start looking for our next middle. You know that old saying, "Idle hands are the Devil's workshop"? I'm just going to assume that whoever first said that totally agrees with me. Life gets complicated when we're not living in the middle, usually because we're bored or unhappy.

So my life's mission is to stick to the middle—to keep inventing new goals and climbing toward them. Once those goals are achieved (three or four semesters to go, *sigh*) it's time to start finding new ones. (I'd sure like that PhD one day…)

All that living in the middle may sound depressing at times ("WHAT?! You mean I NEVER get to finish climbing?!) but it's not. Living in the middle is a happy thing.

As President Uchtdorf said, "Being in the middle means that the game is never over, hope is never lost, defeat is never final. For no matter where we are or what our circumstances, an eternity of beginnings and an eternity of endings stretch out before us. We are always in the middle."

If I were bold enough to add just a little to that statement, I'd say this:

"Or if you're not… you should be."