How Should We Share Our Talents?

As children of our Father in Heaven, we all have gifts and talents, given purposefully to each of us to help others come unto Christ (D&C 46:11-12). Because of this purpose, we have been commanded to share these talents so that we may glorify God (Matthew 5:16). But how do we know when and how to share them? We certainly don't want to misuse them, but we also don't want to be like the servant who hid his talent and had it taken away from him (Matthew 25:24-28). Based on my understanding of the scriptures, when it comes to sharing our talents, here are some questions we should ask ourselves:

1. Am I using my talent to build the Lord's Kingdom? - This requirement does not mean that you should only use your talent in religious contexts. To me it means to live your life in ways that encourage others to want to know more about the Gospel which you represent. Here in the Boston Singles Wards is a sister missionary who has an amazing singing voice. Before coming to Boston, she was a member of Gladys Knight's band and had been Gladys Knight's assistant choir director for years. Because the beauty and strength of her testimony resonate through her vocal chords, she can and has built the Kingdom of God in powerful ways that extend beyond her missionary service. Anyone who hears her sing can't help but be touched by the Spirit, thus persuading them get to know her as a person. This alone provides her with opportunities to share the Gospel, whether on the mission or on tour.

2. Does using my talent enrich my life, or does it cause disruption? - As difficult as it can be to follow the promptings of the Spirit, the Lord will not prompt us to use our talents in ways that disrupt our daily lives. In the seminary video that portrays the First Vision, we see the Prophet Joseph working in the field when he finally realizes how to best heed the counsel of James to seek wisdom from God. Note that Joseph did not immediately drop to his knees and start praying, randomly leaving his chores unfinished. Instead, he carefully designated a particular time and place to visit later on (JSH 1:14). This would enable him to approach the Lord in the right mindset--free from the distractions of the world. I believe this played an important role in preparing Joseph for the magnificent and life-changing experience that would ensue. And so it is with sharing our talents. While we may feel prompted at a given time, we need not assume that we must drop everything and neglect other things that are also good in the Lord's sight. Inspiration often comes when it does so that we may prepare ourselves for when the time does come to act. The Lord will always prepare us beforehand to accomplish the commandments He has given us (1 Nephi 3:7).

3. Does using my talent allow me to keep the Commandments? - I first started writing this post on a Sunday morning, and I truly felt inspired to address this topic. But I eventually had to stop and get ready for Church, remembering that no matter how inspired I may have felt, the Lord would not require me to break the Sabbath. We must remember that the Spirit can only dwell within us when we are striving to keep the Commandments. Rather than prevent us from keeping God's Commandments, the sharing of our talents should help us and others keep them.

4. Does using my talent promote love or incite confrontation? - When acting on spiritual promptings, we should always remember that the Gospel is not one of aggression or contention. True principles are not to be enforced, but defended. In the Book of Alma, Captain Moroni was a gifted soldier, but he did not wage war on the Lamanites in an effort to enforce true Gospel principles on them. Instead, he armed the Nephites in defense of their land and freedom after the Lamanites had waged war on them (Alma 44:1-2, 54:13). While we are certainly commanded to teach and share truth with those who have yet to come unto Christ, we should abide by the fruits of the Spirit when doing so (Gal. 5:22).

The gifts and talents our Father gives us are infinite, without which we could not fulfill His Plan and help others come unto Christ. I am grateful for the gifts with which He has blessed me, as well as the gifts He has blessed others with that have benefited me and strengthened my testimony. I know that if we strive to keep the Commandments and remain sensitive to the Spirit, we need not worry about missing those opportunities to share our talents in ways that are pleasing unto Him.

My Post to the Ordain Women Movement

With all of the pills of wisdom I have shared as of late, I'm sure you're dying to know my thoughts on the Mormon Feminist Movement. I'll get to my complete thoughts eventually, but today I just want to share something I wrote a few months ago regarding the closely-related Ordain Women Movement. I wrote it on the Ordain Women Facebook page, and it received some positive feedback. To put it into context, this page features people from both sides of the issue sharing their thoughts on whether women should receive the Priesthood. After observing some of the more reactive and un-Christlike posts from both sides, I put my wannabe conflict mediation skills to work and wrote what I hoped would be taken as a humble and sincere approach to a very sensitive issue. I have edited out the names as well as the introduction--since I just provided one here.

I don't pretend to know everything the Lord has in store for us in the future, and I don't interpret this morning's [General Conference] session as a direct condemnation of this movement like some of the people on this thread. I find that interpretation presumptuous, judgmental, and prideful. Some people have essentially dusted their feet at this site, which is a serious thing. Nobody at Conference came right out and said that women will never get the priesthood. We did hear the importance of following the Prophet, while Sister Dalton marveled at the value of women and the implications of recognizing them as daughters of God. Some may have interpreted these as rebuttals of the Ordain Women movement, but I would think that such a rebuttal would have been more blatant. In contrast, I feel like those talks were an indirect expression of the sentiment I would like to express right now. And I hope it will be taken in the right spirit, as I don't mean to offend with my words, neither do I mean to imply anything beyond what I actually say.

Women are severely undervalued and under-appreciated in proportion to their role in our Heavenly Father's Plan--not just in the Church but in the world. That is obvious. I will acknowledge, however, that there is a particularly tragic sentiment within the Church's imperfect membership that places women in a subservient role. The presumption has been that the priesthood trumps all feelings and opinions in the family unit, and that the wife is to obey her husband by virtue of his position as patriarch. That attitude, however, should have been eradicated once Section 121 of the Doctrine & Covenants had been revealed, if not sooner. Yes, the Lord uses a patriarchal order to give His Church structure, as He is not a God of chaos and disorder. Why did He choose the man to be the head of the family? We don't know. We really don't. But He never meant for the husband to dominate the wife. We believe in a Heavenly Mother, and I believe that Heavenly Father holds Her in such high regard that the reason He rarely talks about Her is not because She's not important, but because He has seen the way we've denigrated women for thousands of years, and He refuses to let us do that to Her.

That may sound condescending, but that is not my intention. It certainly doesn't answer the question as to why women don't have the priesthood. I hope you sisters believe, however, that while some may see the priesthood as a symbol of superiority, there are plenty of us men in the Church who don't approach the priesthood with that attitude. My mother raised me to respect women and appreciate them for everything they do for us both temporally and spiritually. I don't see you as less than me because I hold the priesthood, and I certainly don't expect my future wife to blindly submit to my authority because I hold the priesthood. I see it as a responsibility and as a symbol of the Lord's mercy. While we use the wording "All worthy adult males are eligible to receive the priesthood," we truly aren't worthy of it--anymore than we are worthy of the rest of God's Grace. The priesthood is one way of serving. Again, I don't know why only men have the priesthood. But the ways in which women serve are just as eternally valuable as any priesthood responsibility. I'm not talking about women being able to give birth, as I find that typical response insulting. There are so many other things that make the woman invaluable to God's Plan.

I believe that is why Sister Dalton said what she said. And I believe the importance of following the Prophet was stressed today because no matter what we may want or petition for, in the end it is the Prophet who will reveal the Lord's will for us. Yes, he will take our concerns seriously, but he will always defer to the Lord's will, not ours.

That being said, it is doctrinally sound to question the teachings of the Church. That is how the Church was restored in the first place. There is nothing wrong with questioning--so long as we're doing it with a humble heart and a desire for understanding. Just as the Prophet Moroni encourages us to pray about the Book of Mormon with faith and real intent, we must do so in matters like these. Now I don't pretend to know the hearts of all those who support the Ordain Women movement. But anytime we question something about the Lord's doctrine, we must ask ourselves whether we are doing it in a spirit of faith and real intent. Do we seek to gain a greater understanding and enlightenment, or do we seek to get what we have already decided is right? Do we seek the Lord's will or do we seek our own will? Most importantly, even if we don't get what we are hoping for, will we continue to sustain the Brethren as the Lord's Prophets and Apostles?

If the answer to that last question is yes, then forget about those who condemn you for this. The talks to which they refer weren't directed at you.

Live and Let Live: What We Can Learn from Joseph of Egypt About Truly Keeping the Faith

With the recent decisions concerning DOMA and Prop 8, many people who share similar ideologies with me have expressed horror at what this world is coming to. People are criticizing our leaders and lamenting the fact that our country keeps getting worse and worse, and the animosity between sides is greater than ever. And yes, I believe the world is going downhill. Wars and calamities are happening all around us, good is being taken for evil, and the love of man is waxing cold. The Second Coming is fast approaching. In no way do I deny that.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the idea that when our brothers and sisters make poor choices, it then becomes our duty to send them on guilt trips for bringing this world one step closer to destruction. In my 32+ years as a Latter-Day Saint, not once have I come across a scripture in any of the Standard Works that instructs us to protest against a person's choices AFTER he/she has made them. I recently mentioned this sentiment on my Facebook page, and someone said that I still need to do all I can to show that I'm against immoral practices, otherwise I cannot expect to not be held accountable. I wish I had corrected him more fully. Instead of qualifying his statement, I should have just said that his statement was blatantly false. Because it is.

I think a lot of us get this strange idea in our heads that sincerely believing in something and never backing down means throwing rocks at the neighborhood bully's head as he walks away after pounding you. Many God-fearing people think that defending their faith means spending their time and energy denouncing the Godlessness that has befallen this world and shunning those who are products of it. If that were true, Joseph of the Old Testament would have spent every minute of every day in captivity trying to escape the house of Potiphar, after which he would have fled the heathen land of Egypt in search of the Promised Land.

But he did not. Instead he endured, using the gifts that God had given him to thrive within his own realm, never losing faith and never sinning against God. Despite being a slave who had to do everything his masters told him to do, he somehow found a way to remain true to his covenants. That eventually landed him in prison, but even then, he managed to keep God's Commandments. Even as a prisoner, he was free. As Ben Kingsley said as Potiphar in the 1995 movie Joseph, "As long as he has his God, he is free." That sentiment is supported in the book of Genesis: "And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian" (Gen. 39:2).

Next to keeping his covenants despite his situation, I think the best part about Joseph's story is that his obedience to God's Commandments allowed him and those around him to thrive. He spent several years as a slave and then as a prisoner before even getting an audience with Pharaoh, and yet he still moved up the ranks, always earning the trust of his captors and using the power of God to help them (See Gen. 39:3-4, 20-23). That of course is what eventually put him in a position to interpret Pharoah's dream, which earned him the opportunity to use God's gifts on a much grander scale to benefit God's children.

If you're familiar with that much of the story, you likely also know that all of this enabled Joseph to not just save Egypt, but to save his family! His family, who had made the same covenants with God and had been promised the same blessings as he, benefited from Joseph's unwavering faith and endurance that had not been stained by bitterness and resentment towards those who despitefully used him. He had not cursed the land of Egypt, but rather had helped them prosper, which in turn helped his family prosper.

So what do we do in these hard times? I'm not going to lie and say I'm okay with what's going on around us. I am disappointed by what is happening to this world's moral compass, and often I do get discouraged that more and more people are forgetting God. But we must be careful not to lose our heads by making up strict "standards of righteousness" that nobody can follow without betraying human decency. That sounds like an oxymoron because it is. I truly believe that when we are told to be in the world but not of the world, it is meant that we should allow ourselves to live among those who do not believe the way we do, keeping our own covenants and yet allowing them to exercise the free agency with which God has blessed them. The trick there is to keep ALL of our covenants, which includes sacrificing ourselves unto God by serving Him and His children, as well as being careful not to conform to the world, but to let the Power of God transform them by showing through our example what is acceptable before God (See Romans 12:1-2).

So just lead by example, everyone. Share the Gospel, serve others, and teach the truth when given the opportunity--and there are many opportunities out there. Show compassion for those who have been stained by the poor choices of others as well as their own, and look to that as an opportunity to bring them unto the Gospel as well. Do not fall into the trap of mocking and scorning those who are not holding to the rod, or even gnashing your teeth at evil. Those reactions are specifically reserved for those who have not remained true and faithful. Do not fool yourself into believing that remaining true and faithful means doing it right back.

Mormon Singles Wards: Why We Deserve to Be Treated Like Children

A few months ago, I read the blog post The Infantilisation of Young Single Adults. In a nutshell, this discusses why the author feels Mormon singles are being stunted emotionally by the social opportunities offered them in their respective wards. Many of the things described in this post reminded me of my own singles ward experiences. I have been to singles activities where we played Duck-Duck-Goose (hadn't played that since second grade), crab-soccer (why is it never regular soccer?), and four men on a couch (it's actually pretty fun when you're feeling silly; otherwise it's best reserved for high school kids). But I didn't realize these were common throughout the Church.

While reading the post, I clicked a link to the Activities section of the Church Handbook, and I wondered if the approach of Church Auxiliary leaders towards single members has something to do with this issue. Seriously, based on Church guidelines, my 26 year-old cousin, who was barely a deacon when I left for my mission, is now qualified to chaperone me at Church dances simply because he has already found that special someone with whom to spend eternity. That just isn't right. And some of the other policies and practices by their very existence suggest a mistrust of our judgment. In Boston, our campouts are planned quite extensively, and while we're certainly not required to participate in the service activity, relays, or ward skit, what exactly is the motive behind scheduling all three throughout an entire Saturday?

To articulate the connection here, I should profess my belief in the self-fulfilling prophecy. If you keep believing someone will behave a certain way, they eventually will. In this context, if you keep treating someone like a child, they'll start acting like a child--hence the juvenile activities. But while such policies regarding Mormon singles activities may in fact be patronizing us as well as stunting us emotionally, I'm not sure how many of us are in a position to suggest that we deserve better. Do we really?

For starters, people are cliquish. Whether it's age, looks, clothing, or wealth, when we notice differences, we become just like Dr Seuss's Sneetches. Mormons are no different, throwing invite-only parties where the coolness factor is an issue, repeatedly passing the ball or frisbee to the more athletic types at activities even when the less athletic type are clearly open, and subtly walking away from conversation circles when someone we don't care for has just joined the circle.

Next, we don't know how to interact with the opposite sex, thus suggesting why we're still single in the first place. I currently attend the mid-singles ward in Boston, and while I know several people in that ward who simply haven't found the right one, there are others who make it painfully obvious why it's taking them so long to get married. From blowing each other off for dates instead of just saying we're not interested, to awkwardly avoiding each other following a date, to simply ignoring each other in non-dating social contexts unless we are romantically interested, we act like children around each other.

While I'm at it, I might as well throw in the communication deficit. We don't know how to be straightforward with each other, making promises we know we can't keep and then avoiding one-on-one situations with them while hoping they'll practice some decorum by not bringing it up in public settings. If by chance they do get us alone, we make excuses for why we haven't followed through. And then there are those of us who actually get upset with each other for not detecting these signals. Heaven forbid we should give each other the benefit of the doubt by assuming that our excuses really are sincere.

So what does all of this have to do with the nature of our singles activities? At face value, nothing at all. It would be kind of strange to punish flakiness by planning a blanket fort FHE, but does the full tithe payer deserve the blessings upon which it is predicated if he doesn't keep the Sabbath Day holy? Whatever our Auxiliary leaders' motives are for regulating our activities the way they do, we should ask ourselves whether we truly deserve the trust and reliance we are asking for based on other, seemingly unrelated behavior.

You want to play regular soccer at the next FHE? Are you willing to teach some of the finer points to those who have less experience with the game--as opposed to taking advantage of said inexperience when they end up on the other team? I'm pretty sure that's one reason we play crab soccer instead--because nobody is good at crab soccer. You want to do a hiking activity up in the mountains instead of building forts at the church? Will you do your part to make sure everybody that wants to go--not just those people you click with--has a way of getting there? And if you really want to avoid those dreaded speed-dating activities, maybe you should try dating on your own--you know, the kind that you arrange in person or over the phone (not group hangouts that you arrange via text), during which you act genuinely interested in getting to know the other person, and after which you are able to interact without worrying that the other person wants to marry you.

I can't say whether that will persuade our Auxiliary leaders to treat us differently, while the policy on chaperoning activities may be more of an attempt to help us avoid temptation during such a tenuous stage in our lives. I do know, however, that if we want a leg to stand on when asking to be treated like adults--no matter the context--we need to start acting like adults.

The Swimsuit Video: Why It Doesn't Solve the Problem

Today I watched the swimsuit video that has gone viral over the past couple of weeks. During this ten-minute presentation, actress and designer Jessica Rey promotes her line of modest swimwear by discussing the evolution of the swimsuit, while she also touches on a study done at Princeton on the effects of less clothing on people's thought processes. Specifically, the study showed that women in bikinis cause men to objectify them and develop attitudes of hostility and superiority towards them. For the record but not to digress, there were flaws in this study, as observed in a friend's blog post titled Whosoever Looketh On A Woman. But besides that, Rey is basically positioning her swimsuits as a way for women to allow men to control their thoughts while looking at them.

Interestingly enough, the tagline for Rey's swimsuits is, "Who says it has to be itsy bitsy?" I find the selling point and tagline incompatible with each other. The tagline accurately establishes Rey's pursuit of female empowerment as her reason for giving women a more modest option. I admire this pursuit, as we live in a society that constantly tells women less is more and that everything about them is only secondary to their appearance, especially when it comes to pleasing men. The tagline suggests we shouldn't worry about how others think we should dress. The selling point, however, contradicts that sentiment by implying that women should dress more modestly so as to control what men think of them. So Rey is replacing one method of pleasing men with another. While the two methods are opposite, the objective is the same, and it's a very dangerous objective that we have been trying heavily to eradicate in the recent years.

My friend's blog post rejects the idea of modifying your attire for the sake of other people's self-control (or lack thereof), in favor of wearing what makes you feel comfortable and not allowing the judgements of others to override your own free will. In this post, my friend makes the following statement:

Though it is indeed objectifying to teach a woman that her value lies in wearing fewer clothes and showing off her body so as to turn on the boys around her, it is also objectifying to teach a woman that her value lies in wearing more clothes and covering up her body so as to keep the thoughts of the boys around her pure.

Most of the 240 commenters agreed with this sentiment, but a good portion of them found my friend's approach to be selfish and immature. They saw it as a perpetuation of the "me first" attitude where we should be able to do what we want regardless of how it affects other people. It's as if they stopped reading once they had read the phrase "Wear what you want" and dissected that. The rest of that same sentence urges women to act, dress, and live in a way that makes them happy and allows them to do good in the world, not to live for others. How could anyone argue with that?

Don't get me wrong, I am in favor of modesty and chastity. But I am also in favor of determining for yourself what is modest and chaste. Some guidelines are black and white, of course, but all too often, we make up our own guidelines and try to enforce them on others. Some of the commenters who criticized my friend's post reminded her that while we all have the freedom to make our own choices, those choices have consequences. They said that if you make poor choices, you can't expect someone not to judge you. Yes, that is true, but 1)We should be allowed to accept the consequences of our actions, and 2)There is a difference between judging someone for their choices and persecuting them for those choices as well as trying to force them to change.

When I meet a woman, I do have the right to judge her. I have the right to judge whether she is the type of person I would want to date and eventually marry. I have the right to judge her intelligence and outer beauty. I even have the right to judge her attire as a measure of her moral standards and values in comparison to my own. But once I'm done judging this woman as a potentially positive or negative influence on my life, I have no more rights. I certainly don't have the right to treat her as an object because I have chosen not to control the impure thoughts that have entered into my mind. With that in mind, the only reason this woman should want to dress according to my judgements would be because one of her purposes in life is to please Matt Andersen. After all, our actions in life should be geared towards our own purpose, not someone else's. If you want to please men by wearing a bikini or help them control their thoughts by not wearing a bikini, go ahead. But don't let others tell you that either one of those should be your purpose.

I have enough faith in humanity that most of us know which of our choices set reasonable vs. unreasonable expectations for the reactions of others. But we can't base every decision on what others might think, especially when those thoughts are often not uncontrollable. People just choose not to control them. If we continuously choose our behavior based on what others think, we eventually stop living. That is what I got out of my friend's blog post.

Why Glee Missed the Boat This Week

So I watch Glee. There, I said it. I wasn't sure how to segues into that guilty pleasure of mine, but I felt it necessary to finally bring this semi-addiction out of the closet for the same reason a lot of long-term addictions are brought to light: I think I'm ready to quit.

I don't know, maybe that's just a knee-jerk reaction to this week's episode, but even if I end up forgiving Ryan Murphy and the show's other writers for this mishap, it will always in my mind be a mishap.

If you haven't watched Glee and have somehow dodged the commercials and show promotions for the past four years, it's your high school glee club's answer to Friday Night Lights, only these kids are anything but popular or cheered on by their community. The drama, however, tends to be just as intense and omnipresent, if not more so.

Now that you're all caught up (seriously, the narrator at the beginning of each episode couldn't have done it better), let me tell you what happened this week: Right at the beginning, the school has a power outage, rendering all electric guitars and pianos useless. Since the show must go on, Mr. Schuester (Mr. Schu for short) decides to have the kids perform acoustic songs that week. The objective is for each student to strip down their feelings and let them all out. I'll skip Sam Evans' charming performance of "That Loving Feeling" and go straight to Ryder's performance of "Everybody Hurts." I love REM, I love that song, and I loved Ryker's rendition (though it wasn't entirely acoustic, but what acoustic song is these days?). What I didn't love was the reaction he received from some of his classmates upon sharing his experience with being molested at the age of 11 by his teenage babysitter. Seriously, Sam and Artie's high-five praises and virtual reverence for this achievement of every adolescent male's fantasy was way out line.

Admittedly, this show often uses satire. But in my mind, for satire to be successfully executed, at least two of the following three elements must be present: 1) Believability, 2) Extremism, and 3) Contrast.

Now obviously, believability is essential in any genre of the performing arts. The piece's plot and characters must develop themselves in such a way that their audience buys anything and everything they sell. This is especially critical with satire, which often involves insensitive dialog and behavior that, if not believed to be part of the offending character's nature, could fall on the writers as a tasteless attempt at humor.

This episode did not lack believability. Sam and Artie are teenagers, and their character development has been more than consistent with such a reaction. But what about the element of extremism? For behavior and attitudes to be recognized as satire, they must be extreme in comparison to what we the audience experience on a regular basis. Sam and Artie's reaction wasn't extreme in comparison to the typical attitude present among adolescent males, a population that makes up a substantial portion of this show's audience. Not only that, but many adolescents do not have a fully developed capacity to recognize satire or the attempts thereof. I certainly didn't.

Combine those two factors, and Mr. Schu's immediate yet weak attempt to address the problem is taken by your average teenage male as nothing more than a prudish reaction from an older, out-of-touch generation that doesn't understand how the world works anymore. I can also see Katie's subsequent attempt to reach out to Ryder being perceived as another manipulation tactic from an evil Quinn Fabray protege. I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be the case, as I'm not fully convinced she has changed. The only way this problem could have been remedied--if at all--would have been for Mr. Schu to incorporate the element of contrast by revisiting the issue and emphasizing to the kids--especially the guys--that rape is never okay, regardless of the victim and/or offender's gender. But he never did. And the public service announcement at the end of the episode, though wise, didn't do much to erase the attitude the scene may have inadvertently perpetuated.

We need to keep in mind that the double standard that exists between genders begins with our thought process and the extent to which society rebuts it. Our society is out of control in the way we treat each other and ourselves. And it all starts with the way we think. Just like many girls grow up learning to base their self-esteem on the praise they receive for their outer beauty, boys are often taught that "making it" with an older woman is an envious achievement, of which you should never be ashamed. If errant thoughts like these don't get corrected immediately--let alone overtly enough--those thoughts soon turn into the person's schema of the world.

With all that in mind, this double standard cannot be "satired" away by merely echoing it. That's way too subtle. It needs to be imitated in such a manner that places it in a position of contempt. Perhaps not all satire needs to be addressed to that extent, but because it addresses just a small piece of a several thousand-year-old epidemic of gender inequality and stereotypes, this one did.

Like I said, I'm sure I'll eventually forgive Glee for this epic fail. But for now, I'm pretty sure we're fighting.

Communication: I Love It More Than I Love the Guitar

Over the past two weeks, I have simultaneously had the time of my life and been put through the ringer. I've had some experiences that I don't understand, while I've had other experiences that were surprisingly pleasant. Tonight was one such experience, wherein I participated in a dinner group with a few people in my ward--the mid-singles ward that I'm just getting used to after about a year. While I didn't expect it to go horribly, it was in fact at a vegan restaurant, while I have also been skeptical as to whether most people in the CRW--particularly the girls--take me seriously. But it went well, and the food was pretty good. One thing we did to get to know each other better was go around the table telling what we're passionate about. When it came to be my turn, I found myself sharing something that I hadn't realized before, but which has probably been my subconscious passion for years: communication.

Why? Why is it such a big deal to me? Yes I'm a writer, and effective communication is my job, but I've also realized that some of my most difficult experiences in life have been a result of bad communication. For example, tonight I tried calling a girl with whom I previously had a relationship, while we had currently been trying to rectify things. But the fact is that I broke up with her the first time because or her unwillingness to communicate, and things didn't change the second time around. And thus tonight's phone call. Unsurprisingly, she didn't answer, so I left a message saying that I was tired of being treated this way. I said the ball was in her court and that if she wanted to talk about it she should call me; otherwise I was just going to forget about it.

I can give you more examples of me being frustrated by bad communication, such as most of the Facebook threads leading up to the election. Actually, nearly all of my remaining examples come from heated Facebook debates where at least one side is so adamant in its position that they will even use fallacious and sometimes unethical strategies to silence the other side. But that's not how you make things work. That's not how you solve life's problems.

I'll tell you how to solve life's problems: Talk. It's not that hard. Don't yell, don't complain, don't point fingers, and don't shut down when you feel unsure about how to respond when things aren't going your way. The women really do have it right in this respect, which I realize is probably why most of my friends are female. Talking it out is often ridiculed as a waster of time that could be spent solving the world's problems with action. But action only works if people can agree on what that action should be. And you can't agree on anything unless you talk.

I know this is small in comparison to the world's problems, but I have a great example of what good communication can do. I have a really good friend who likes to talk things out--so much so that when I first knew her, I would have told you that she was the most socially anxious person I had ever met. It wasn't until recently that I realized the only difference between her and most other people we knew was her willingness to express herself--her fears and desires, her values, even her paranoia.

Over time, this friend's consistent and uncommon openness has charmed itself into my life and the lives of many others, simply because her honesty about how she views the world on a regular basis only makes the rest of us feel normal for feeling the way we do. She's not mean about it, and she's not overbearing. She just talks. And because she's willing to communicate, her own anxiety has improved drastically, as she has seen how favorably people respond to her. It has been a great example to me. It's probably why I finally stood up for myself tonight without getting nasty. Maybe it will help my ex in her future relationships, or maybe it will help me approach conflict in my future relationships with more confidence and self-respect.

I don't know how to end this, and you may be hoping that I'll connect it to bigger problems like politics or the world's moral decay. I really could, but I don't want to open another can of worms. I will say that most of us have so much bottled up inside that's making us angry because we don't feel like we can express it in a manner that the rest of the world will find acceptable. That is what is killing us. But if we can tune out the rage-filled reactions of those whose opinions really don't matter in the grand scheme of things--or at least accept that most of them are just as scared, disillusioned, and wishful for a better world as we are--then I think we will find a host of people who sincerely want to understand us better as well as be understood better. The only way to find out is to talk.