Unmasking Reality and seeing Things as they Really are

Everything we see is not necessarily as it may immediately seem.

But we're pretty lucky, aren't we? As members of the Church, we have the resources to see things "as they really are" and thus the responsibility to help others. It's like we're going spelunking and we are the member of the group with the super heavy-duty flashlight. That flashlight is the Holy Ghost. That flashlight is things like Elder Bednar's talk, that we can refer back to every time our caves get a bit darker than we might like.

Can I just put something out there? I like my body, a lot. I love my blond, attention-getting hair, I like my chiseled calves from years of running, I like my dark blue eyes and I like my relatively strong forearms. I like being alive, I like where this body has taken me and the wonderful people I've gotten to meet while my spirit inhabits this frame. God has given each of us a tremendous gift, of which Satan is very jealous. He thinks that if he can't have a body, we shouldn't be able to either. So he wants nothing more than to see us waste these precious gifts away, to watch them disintegrate into nothing. We can't let him do that. These gifts are far Too worthwhile to throw away.

Elder Bednar mentions that sometimes we waste our bodies by seeking adrenaline rushes and for some reason the first thing that came to mind was motorcycles. The next was cage-diving with Great Whites. I can't help but wonder...are these activities inherently wrong? Should I amend my bucket list to get up and personal with sharks in Gaansbai? Just a thought...

I was just reading through the talk again, seeing as to where I would continue this blog post when I realized that instead of summarizing section-by-section, it might be better to just take a stab at the purpose/theme of this talk: that our world is full of distractions, some of which can be used for righteous purposes such as designing temples, indexing, and sharing the gospel, but others than simply take away from the truly beautiful aspects of our mortal experience. We, particularly as the rising generation, have a responsibility to, despite any and all technological entertainment advances, never lose track of what is truly important in life, namely our family/friends, education, self-betterment, service, and especially the gospel. So lets keep raising the bar, lets keep getting better, and lets never stop seeing things as they really, truly are.