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I watched this movie, Second Hand Lions with Michael Cain and Robert Duvall. It was a touching movie, one that I’d like to have in my collection someday. There was a scene that echoed my sentiments toward certain aspects of the LDS Church. Embodied in this very short clip, where Duvall gives his speech to a young man about what’s important in life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duu0bCkSlUo I hope you like it….
I love that movie, SD! It’s in our collection and we watch it regularly 
What do you think that means when he says, “it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, these are the things worth believing in?” [paraphrased] He’s focusing on the outcomes of our thoughts on our moods,our behavior, and the quality of our life. He implies that the outcome is more important than the truthfulness of the thought/belief that got us there. On this note, I attended a speech by a woman who was from Africa. Abused, had three kids by the time she was 15, came to America, got a PhD, and was on Oprah.
She alluded to the hardships of life and the way she had been treated at different times and then said “I MUST believe in human nature — otherwise, I become cynical”.
My mission president had a phrase “We HAVE to be happy”. He implied that being unhappy was not a viable choice.
Bottom line is that our moods flow from our thoughts and beliefs. And how we feel inside, our peace, and our behavior is more important than the truthfulness of what we believe.
Half the things we tell ourselves are lies or speculations anyway, each day.
Hmmm… So, Santa Claus and Unicorns result in happy thoughts. I should believe in them?
Apparently, particularly if there is evidence around they may exist, and the evidence is not conclusive one way or the other, providing choice in interpretation. SilentDawning wrote:My mission president had a phrase “We HAVE to be happy”. He implied that being unhappy was not a viable choice.
It seems to me that mission presidents are often chosen based on their ability to motivate and generate enthusiasm, not necessarily on a consistent, workable outlook on life. I have to disagree with your mission president’s philosophy, which seems a bit shallow. Personally, I think it would be more useful to learn to accept what is, and that sometimes this means accepting that we aren’t happy from time to time.
doug wrote:Personally, I think it would be more useful to learn to accept what is, and that sometimes this means accepting that we aren’t happy from time to time.
Well said, doug. If we build expectations that you can just choose to be happy, and if you’re not happy, you’re not doing something right…it builds inner conflicts with reality. Reality is, sometimes we’re not.
But, I will say, there are lots of studies that confirm people with a positive outlook rate happier on the scales.
I think the “some things are just good to believe” works on some levels, not on others. Like the stages of faith, some people don’t need to deeply focus on caring if it is truth or not, they just focus on the outcomes and the acceptance from groups. Often this is impacted by age and ability to reason.
Others cannot accept something known to not be true (I fall more into this camp). If there were good outcomes to something, we should understand what is leading to those good outcomes, not just go against what we know to be false because it works out in the end…but find the true reasons behind the good, and accept what is false.
As SD said, some things are not clearly known to be true or not, on those matters, I think we have a choice to believe them or not. Perhaps there is more in this category than we sometimes think.
Quote:As SD said, some things are not clearly known to be true or not, on those matters, I think we have a choice to believe them or not.
That’s the way I’ve chosen to view a whole lot of things.
Quote:Perhaps there is more in this category than we sometimes think.
Yup.
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