(This title brought to you by the Department of Hyperbolic Understatement.)

Many things to write about – new job opportunity, trip to Sweden/Germany, trip to Rio de Janeiro/Iguazu Falls/Buenos Aires/Colonia/Montevideo – but those will have to wait a minute at least. For one thing, I need to get pictures (my camera was broken during the Sweden trip and I forgot my battery charger for the South America trip); for another, I don’t have much time today.

But I wanted to share something. A friend of mine has started a weblog called “Dear Me,” wherein people write letters to their younger selves. All the letters are fantastic; one written yesterday is particularly so:

http://dearbabyme.blogspot.com/2010/11/ulysses.html

I rarely comment on these posts, but I felt impressed to share my thoughts on this one. Read on, if you will.

Beautiful post. In answer to the rhetorical questions about why we force ourselves to hurry, I think it’s simply because pain hurts. It hurts a lot. And so we (or I) just want it to stop, and we want to do the things we’ve always loved doing, and so instead of waiting it out we give ourselves the emotional equivalent of Percocet – something that takes the hurt away temporarily and causes some mild hallucinations in the meantime. 🙂 Then the Percocet wears off and we realize we’ve done some unwise things under its influence. It’s really hard to just recognize that it’s going to hurt for a while and not be impatient to start running on that injured leg. I have to remind myself of this all the time – and also that the only real way of healing is through the Savior. It’s difficult (for me) to try to rely on something invisible and intangible when so many distracting visible and tangible “solutions” seem to be available. I guess that’s where faith comes in… I just wish faith were easier to develop instantaneously.

Dunno why this feels important to share today, but it does. Maybe it’ll help someone.