Open the Door

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Last night I was part of a discussion for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' new "Come Follow Me" program with my boyfriend and a few of our friends in our ward. (For those of you who are not members of the Church, a ward is similar to a school--it's a group of people who live within the same area. We also have stakes, which is like the school districts of our church. Just so we're all on the same page.) We were studying John 1 in the Bible, and in our discussion started talking about how we follow Jesus Christ and listen to the Spirit. We are all students at BYU, and we remarked how easy it can be sometimes to become casual with our religion when we're somewhere where the majority of the people we associate with have the same beliefs as us--which is something I had never really experienced before, having grown up somewhere that was predominantly Christian, but not predominantly LDS. As we discussed this, I realized how I viewed it could be explained through a kind of weird metaphor.
In the scriptures, we are often told "Ask and ye shall receive, knock, and it shall be opened unto you"in terms of receiving revelation and answers from Heavenly Father. However, we also learn that often we don't just have to knock--we have to have the doors of our minds and hearts open in order to actually understand revelation.
At school, I've had to learn the difference between leaving the door open with the doorstop in and actively holding the door open. We have to be waiting for the revelation, or at the very least in a place where you are actively open to guidance. As my boyfriend pointed out, when you leave a doorstop in, you are likely doing something else, and you are likely to miss anything that comes in.
I've been talking about this from a spiritual lens, because it's where I first started thinking about it, but I've begun to also think about that in terms of my whole life, especially as an actor and musician. You get used to, after a certain point, being in classes and lessons designed to help you be a better performer, and sometimes I, at least, start working less at the thing you love most because you are always around it. You become desensitized to your own passion, which I think is crazy, yet I am guilty of it.
So, not to be preachy or anything, but look for times when you can hold the door open (literally or figuratively) and actively try to find things to learn and experience in life. Without our passions, without our curiosity, we lose who we are. The things that we love give us our power, and we find more things to love (and more people to care for) by doing what we love and actively trying to learn more from it.
There is a whole world of knowledge and experiences and inspiration that we have yet to experience. We may only have a limited time here on Earth, but we should do the best we can to get the most out of it--otherwise, what's the point?

(Originally Published at allthebestjess.wixsite.com/website on January 23rd, 2019)

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