This Is Mortality

"Don't you ever feel that way?," my roommate asked me the other day, "Like, you're tired and stressed and sweaty and something goes wrong, and it's just like, this is mortality."

My roommate Elizabeth says all sorts of pithy, interesting things like that, all the time.  It's so instructive and fun to live with her.

Anyway.  She's right.  This Is Mortality.

We are made from the dust of the earth.  Our bodies tire, our minds become weary, our hearts hurt sometimes.  We get sick and we get better and we mess things up and we say stupid things to people we love and we cry and we feel lost and we get excited about small things and big things and we love each other and we try to improve and we laugh and we get bored and we forget things and we smell bad sometimes and we have to eat and sleep like all the time.  We are mortal.

And there are great things about being mortal.  Like how this week it finally got pretty cold.  It's amazing to me how it gets colder and you feel it -- your body all the way through can tell it's cold  and reacts and tenses up and you think, "It's cold!!"  Isn't it cool to feel that?

Or how sleeping actually rejuvenates you.  Isn't it incredible that you can "power down" for like 8 hours and emerge with greater clarity and energy and renewed motivation?  (Usually.)

Or wind.  You know how when it's really windy and you can feel it literally pushing against you?  Mortality is bizarre but it's also really awesome.

Having other mortals around is such a comfort, too.  I'm constantly struck with the quiet greatness of the people who surround me.  I mean, they are just themselves, but they are so exquisite.  Humans are just amazing creations.

Because, I mean, where I'm really going with this is the fact that, yes, we are mortal, but there is that within us which is ETERNAL.

"We are made of the stuff of eternity.  We are eternal beings, children of the Almighty God." (Uchtdorf)  It is no wonder that we feel like "strangers and pilgrims on earth" (See Hebrews 11) sometimes.  Mortality is awesome but it's not the final destination.  Remembering that makes it all the better for its fleeting, poignant glory.

Anyway.  These thoughts are not eloquent, organized, or even really finished, but I need to go read my Physical Science textbook.  This is mortality, after all.