The Lost Generation

There is an interesting phenomenon happening in the LDS Church at the moment. I write "at the moment" lightly, because this problem has been gestating for years. I'm sure the Church is aware of what is happening, but since there haven't been any concrete steps made to solve or alleviate the problem, I am assuming they haven't figured out what to do yet.

The problem is what to do with an entire group of men and women who have "aged-out" of their Young Single Adult wards. I call them the Lost Generation. Not only is this group delaying marriage or not getting married, they are having trouble with the Church culture and its norms, and often they are simply giving up.

I'm sorry I have no estimate for how large the Lost Generation is. I only know that it is getting larger every day. Since its inception, the Church has enjoyed a higher-than-average marriage rate. And compared to national averages, it still does. But as the world has increasingly delayed marriage or gotten rid of it altogether, the same has started to happen inside the Church. I have some theories on why this may be, which I'll get into later.

For years, the Church's solution has been to impose an age cap of 30 in YSA wards. When you turn 31, you either go back into a Family Ward, or, if you're lucky, you go into a Singles Ward comprising people of ages 31-45. For many, the 31st birthday looms like a dreaded apparition that slowly rises over your shattered prospects for happiness and normalcy. Luckily for those who live in Utah, transitioning into a Singles Ward isn't totally awful, since at the very least, you can be sure that everyone else there has gone through the same transition. "You aren't young anymore. Deal with your exile. Get married," this move seems to imply.

Labels matter. Not being labeled or included in the "young" crowd anymore can be hard. Or maybe not. I'll let you know if I get there. But I can imagine that many take it hard. I can't speak for the women, but I know that many of the men respond by going to their new Singles Ward, taking one look around, and then simply finding a new place to live where they can attend a YSA ward that won't force them out. If getting people married is the goal, dividing the singles arbitrarily at 31 won't work because the men are in denial and there are simply too many of them. I get that it would be weird having 45 year-olds and 18 year-olds going to the same ward. But since there are so many young thirty-somethings who are single, there needs to be a better place for them. As a person who is almost aging-out, I would feel just as uncomfortable attending a ward with people in their forties as I would going to a ward filled with teenagers. As I approach 31, the age range I am most comfortable with is a ten year range around mine, meaning 25-35.

Kicking people out of wards sends a weird message. And maybe that is on those of us who have to deal with it. Obviously we can choose how we react, but the culture needs to change. Being single in your thirties is a normal thing now. It used to be weird, but it isn't anymore. The Church can keep preaching about the importance of marriage constantly, but it isn't that these people don't understand marriage, it's that they simply haven't gotten married. A part of me still thinks that leaders believe that if we just understood marriage's importance well enough, that we would go out and get married. But that isn't it. We get it. Believe me, we do. The "just pick one" method of courtship and marriage is over. This is something that leadership hasn't quite understood yet. I have been told countless times just to "pick one and get it over with." President Kimball's words are repeated often:
"'Soul mates' are fiction and an illusion; and while every young man and young woman will seek with all diligence and prayerfulness to find a mate with whom life can be most compatible and beautiful, yet it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price."

But many who quote this leave out the next paragraph, which is one source of the modern difficulty with marriage: "There is a never-failing formula which will guarantee to every couple a happy and eternal marriage; but like all formulas, the principal ingredients must not be left out, reduced, or limited. The selection before courting and then the continued courting after the marriage process are equally important, but not more important than the marriage itself, the success of which depends upon the two individuals—not upon one, but upon two."

Getting the "two" to match up during the courting process has gotten infinitely harder over the last 20 years. Dating culture has seen a massive shift. Courting now involves an element of constant, instant communication with cell phones and the internet. And yet, leadership still looks back in fondness on the days when men wore suits and women wore dresses and you called each other on the rotary phone to go to the soda shop and a drive-in movie only to leave at the end of the night and not hear or see the person for another few days. Things were simpler back then, but being nostalgic for how things used to be, or pretending that that outmoded form of dating can still work is foolish.

There are now a myriad of ways to stay in contact with the opposite sex, and dating has become an intricate dance of communication and non-communication that would make adults' heads spin. Yes, dating has certainly changed. But so has the culture. Most of us have also grown up in an era with rates of divorce that are much different than they used to be. Everyone knows you've got basically a 50/50 chance nowadays. And that is terrifying. When salvation and livelihood are on the line, it sucks to be told to "just have faith" that it will all work out. Frankly, anyone who gets married nowadays should be congratulated on their bravery. As someone who took that chance and had it backfire, I can say that I would never tell anyone to "just pick someone." I know all too well what kind of emotional and spiritual fallout that kind of decision can have if it goes haywire.

There may also be a demographics problem that is exacerbating the issue. There was an article printed in Time magazine that examined Mormonism's marriage issue by chalking it up to demographics problems in the Church. "According to the ARIS study, there are now 150 Mormon women for every 100 Mormon men in the state of Utah—a 50 percent oversupply of women." And according to the article, this causes men to wait to find "the next best thing." This delays marriage longer and longer until we end up with the current situation of more unmarried 30-somethings. I could see this as a big contributing factor. I know many great guys who waited a very long time to get married. But I don't see this as a bad thing. If that is how long it took them, then who is to say they did it the wrong way? Different, yes. Wrong? Not necessarily. (http://time.com/dateonomics/)

Another contributing factor may be what I like to call the Disney Paradox. If men's reason for delaying marriage is to find the perfect woman, then many women expect to ride off into the sunset Happily Ever After once they do get married. This of course never happens, they become disillusioned, get divorced, and end up getting thrown back into the dating pool, sometimes years later and sometimes with children in tow. This also increases the number of singles and delays marriage because men are often reluctant to date these women if they already have a large pool of women to choose from. Both occurrences feed into one another and create a cycle where marrying gets harder and gets put off for longer.

Next is the outright rejection of Church social norms. Whereas the term "Menace to Society" was once regarded with nervous chuckles, it is now derided as coercive. Our generation is fed up with being told how to live our lives outside of the gospel. We are educated, and more of us than ever are returned missionaries. It is easier for us to detect what is doctrine and what is culture. We are in the midst of creating a new culture. This desire to create a new culture has created a divide. On one side are those who are more orthodox in their beliefs, and on the other is a growing number who believe the Church needs to get with the times and adapt to the changing world. In response, the Church has tried to become more transparent by publishing its essays on controversial topics, but many feel that it is too late and they have lost confidence because they had to go to other sources to find out about issues in the Church's past that it is uncomfortable with. What does this have to do with marriage? Well not a whole lot, other than there are more issues than ever when examining a potential partner's value systems during courtship. 30 years ago, the only question was: Is he/she LDS? Whereas now you may have to find out what that person actually believes within the Church. This is absolutely unprecedented. And it makes it that much harder to get married.

I don't know exactly how I feel about all of this. Maybe I should be more worried than I am. But honestly, since I'm divorced, I feel like so much of it is out of my hands, that as long as I am trying to be the best person I can be, things will work out. If that approach takes a little longer, so be it. Hopefully this time around it really will be "for Time and all Eternity." I do know one thing. Pretending we are living in the 50s isn't doing the Lost Generation any favors. If the Church wants to fix this, level with us, tell it to us straight, and give us better options in our ward divisions for dating people we actually want to date. Waiting until 31 to sift the singles makes it feel like a punishment. An earlier division would help it feel normal and remove the stigma that exists. And who knows? It might actually help us find the right people. Because at the end of the day, that is what is most important.

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Sunday Post - An Excerpt From An Old Talk

 God’s help doesn't always come right away or in the way that we want. Sometimes it doesn't come after we have simply “taken no thought but to ask” for His power and miracles. In fact, most of the time, it's the opposite. A counselor in a previous bishopric of mine actually said to me that because this is often the case, that our God is a “fourth-watch God.” But what does this mean? When the counselor said this he was actually referencing the story in Matthew 14:

22 ¶And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. 23 And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone. 24 But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. 25 And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.

Here Jesus gives the command to His disciples to cross to the other side of the sea while He retires to pray. And He prays and lets the disciples struggle until the fourth watch. The Romans broke the night into four, three-hour blocks and called each one a watch. The fourth watch is the time from about 3am until dawn. 

In other words, it is the last watch, the darkest time of night. Jesus surely knew of the coming storm. And the disciples surely felt prepared. After all, the sea was their workplace. They had been in storms before. And so they rowed, and rowed, and rowed—though the wind howled in their faces. After the first few hours, muscles screaming, they must have felt discouraged. But Jesus had commanded and so they obeyed. It wasn’t until they had literally rowed all night into a storm that Jesus came. With hands blistered, soaked with freezing water, most likely delirious, they peered across the waves:

26 And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. 27 But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.

The reassurance that we can take from this scripture is that even though God may wait until what seems like the last moment to reveal His hand, once He does appear, He is mighty to save.

32 And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased. 33 Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God.

If we manage to but hold on until the last moment, God will work miracles in our lives. And not just any miracles. These experienced fisherman had never seen such a thing as the wind suddenly ceasing, and it was so powerful that they proclaimed Jesus’ divinity without hesitation. These are big miracles. They are testimony building ones. But they come at a price. They come when you are about to give up.

Most of my personal troubles with God operating in the fourth watch come when I compare myself to others. I notice when other people’s troubles seem to be fixed before my own. I see miracles or read of them or hear about them and I wonder, “Why aren’t my prayers being answered? Where is my miracle? When is it my turn to be rescued?”

And then a few weeks ago I read the passage in Luke 8 where the woman with the issue of blood is healed when she touches Jesus’ robe. And suddenly I could see the scene in my mind’s eye. I could see what it must have looked like to an outsider, perhaps with their own troubles and tribulations. It would have been easy to think that this was an immediate miracle. Indeed, a miracle that seemed to be almost taken by force and not in patient waiting like is expected.

But how long did it truly take this woman to be healed? And what was the price? To a bystander, the answers to those questions were: three seconds and an outstretched hand. But Luke, our physician-apostle, knows better. He must have inquired about her condition after the miracle because out of all the Gospel authors he is the only one who writes these details:

43 ¶And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, 44 Came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched.

So how long did the miracle actually take? And what was the real cost? Sometimes miracles take twelve years and all of your earthly wealth. But the miracles do come. This was the fourth-watch God in action.

 Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s said in a legendary BYU devotional speech entitled “The Inconvenient Messiah:”

“And as you labor to know him, and to know that he knows you; as you invest your time—and your convenience—in quiet, unassuming service, you will indeed find that 'he shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up' (Matthew 4:6). It may not come quickly. It probably won’t come quickly, but there is purpose in the time it takes. Cherish your spiritual burdens because God will converse with you through them and will use you to do his work if you carry them well.”

“So if your prayers don’t always seem answered, take heart. One greater than you ... cried, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27:46). If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived.”

“It is not easy to go without—without physical gratifications or spiritual assurances or material possessions—but sometimes we must since there is no guarantee of convenience written into our Christian covenant. We must work hard and do right, as Abraham Lincoln said, and sometimes our chance will come. And when we’ve tried, really tried, and waited for what seemed never to be ours, then ‘the angels came and ministered unto him.’ For that ministration in your life I pray.”

Please don’t doubt whilst waiting for miracles. Jesus may wait to come until the fourth watch of the night. But He does come.

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Fake Outrage

I hate fake outrage. In our social media society, there seems to be new drama every week. Whether it's Dadbod, Deflategate, or the latest "normalizebreastfeeding" hashtag. I hate all of these things with varying degrees of fiery passion.

But it's not because these things shouldn't be talked about. My dislike of these things is not a value judgment. What I really hate is the fake outrage that accompanies each "trending topic." Each issue like the ones mentioned above seems to occupy the public psyche for progressively shorter timespans. It's almost as if the more drama there is, the faster each issue fades from the public eye.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We live in an amazing time. We live in the age of technology and information. We have more access and exposure to our world than any of the previous generations that have called this planet home. And yet this information age comes with a price. Our ability to process and digest this information has not increased. So instead we pretend to process, and we feign digestion. Why? We don't have any more time than our grandparents did. There are thousands more voices vying for our attention, but the same 24-hour day in which to address them all. We literally can't give our full attention to the things demanding it. So we pick and choose as many as we can, but fully invest in none.

Because of this, maybe our "Share This" widgets on social media should really read: "Share This & Forget."

One way this fleeting attention manifests itself is through the aforementioned fake outrage. We encounter information that should genuinely concern us, but rather than latching onto it and doing something about it, we become suddenly aware that this is the third time today that we have felt this way. And we also remember that we didn't do anything after feeling this way the first two times. So we resolve to act. Thus, fake outrage is born. We take to our preferred method of social media and we share and comment and argue and consider our job done and guilt banished. That is, until we wake up tomorrow. Nothing is accomplished other than a temporary relief of guilt for not actually doing anything.

We are all exposed to several different strata of drama in social media.

1. Close family and friends
2. Community
3. National 

Fake outrage can be a response to any issue at each or all of these drama strata. Maybe your cousin recently decided not vaccinate her kids. Outrage! Maybe your friends are all blogging about modesty because of some dork's stupid note to a girl on campus. Outrage! Maybe some celebrity said something controversial about a subjective moral principle. Outrage! 

Again, the problem isn't that we shouldn't have the right to talk about these things. That is a consequence of living in the society that we do, and it is part of the freedoms we enjoy. I just can't stand when things aren't followed by action. If you were truly outraged, you wouldn't have a "share & forget" mentality. You would do something. 

A quote that is often attributed to Socrates is "To be is to do." With this in mind, it seems that the ones most guilty of fake outrage are nothing more than armchair crusaders, searching for the next thing that they can share on facebook with a witty quip or two, hoping that someone will disagree so they can argue it out and stave off the guilt a little longer. 

So please, next time, spare me your fake outrage and stop the pointless "trending."

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What I Learned From The Best Of The Best

  [100th Post!]

So awhile ago I watched the top 100 movies of all time. When I say awhile ago, I mean, like, a year and a half ago. It hurts a little to write that. And when I say the top 100, I mean, like, the top 120... or so.

I had just graduated college and I was stuck. I didn't know it right away, mind you. But I was.

I had spent five years periodically slogging through and/or relishing the best the world had to offer in literature, art, history, philosophy, and religion. I honestly didn't know what to do next. Despite being lost, I did however have one advantage that I realized not many people have: lots and lots of free time. I was still part-time at Costco (read:depressingly so).

So, in true BYU fashion, I said to myself "What the flip?! Might as well." So I did a quick surf of the net and found that every "Top 100" list I found was slightly different. I quickly got over my annoyance and decided to make my own using the two I found most appealing: AFI's Top 100 and IMDb's Top 250.

Both lists contained movies I had already seen before, so I didn't bother re-watching those, save a few that I hadn't seen in quite some time (my brother and sisters will recall the JAWS incident that had kept me away for so long). And luckily, there were very few that I wasn't able to find in one form or another. So combining a collection from both lists, I still ended up watching over 100 new (to me) movies.

Sorry if this next part reads a little bit like a Buzzfeed article, but it is a list after all. And it's a long one, so because of your short attention spans, you've forced my hand.

Without further ado, I give you what I learned from my experience:

1. Prejudice
I had a prejudice toward black and white films that I didn't know about. I began, I'm embarrassed to admit, with more recent movies. They were ones I had at least heard of, or had exciting covers. I know, I know, I 'm supposed to sound all cultured and high and mighty and say I went straight for Italian Neorealism, but a guy's got to start his education somewhere. And even the smartest kids start out reading Dr.Seuss.

From these more recent movies, I learned how much I've been missing out on pop culture references that I was supposedly "in" on. Take DeNiro for example. Everybody knows the line. It's everywhere. And while I knew it was a famous DeNiro line, I had no idea where it actually came from. Now I do. Now, I'm "in" on the reference for real. And I have to say, it feels gratifying.

2. Older Than Your Grandma 
As I progressed further back into the annals of film history, I suddenly couldn't avoid them anymore. I would have to start watching some black and white ones and some color films with old-fashioned looking covers. Try to tell me that these don't look at least a little boring:

I know, right?

Much to my chagrin, my prejudices were obliterated in the best way possible. As chance would have it, one of the first "old" movies I watched was A Place in the Sun. Call me a sucker for young Elizabeth Taylor. I sat down on a Friday night by myself like some elderly cat lady with a blanket over my lap. 120 minutes later I was yelling at the screen, practically in tears over what has to be one of the most insane endings to a movie in all of history. I immediately wanted to watch it again, that is, after I could somehow manage to pull my foot out of my proverbial mouth.

Despite my amazing first experience, I still found myself wondering if perhaps that movie was simply a fluke. "It was great, but these others are probably snooze fests." And yet I was wrong. Over and over and over again. I can't tell you how wrong I was. Each movie that I watched seemed to poke me right in the eye and rub in the error of my ways.

3. The Moment(s)
It's safe to say that as time progressed, I began being less dumbfounded at each new discovery, and I started to appreciate these films more. And after thinking about what I was witnessing with skills I had honed to razor-precision during my tenure at BYU, I did something I never thought I'd do in the "real world." I analyzed.

*gasps from the crowd*

Something I noticed right away in my analysis, and probably the most obvious, was that older movies have an entirely different pace than more recent films. This change can be most accurately demonstrated in another of my Highly Technical and Polished Graphs (TM):

Here the (y) axis is the viewer's excitement level and the (x) axis is the length of the film. The graph on the left represents our new, more modern conception of how movies should be. The graph on the right represents the average plot escalation for older films. All of this data is based on extensive research with a standard deviation of .33 (repeating of course).

I don't really know if I have thoughts as to one being better than the other. They're just different. The new way robs them of a powerful climax since the whole thing is exciting. Whereas the old way takes a lot longer to get going, but once things start to escalate, it is insane how exciting they get. The other difference is that newer movies are filled with pointless fluff in the denouement, whereas in old movies, you are getting little bits and pieces of information until the very moment the screen goes dark.

4. Moral of the Story
Not only do these movies eradicate the stereotypes that I had constructed, they transcend them. I thought black and white movies would somehow be morally simple. I assumed that old-fashioned people couldn't handle dark moral complexity like more modern audiences. What I realized is that I've had it the other way around this whole time and didn't know it. WE are the ones who can't handle or don't appreciate moral complexity in cinema. (Luckily, this problem isn't as apparent in TV.) But just try to think of a truly morally complex character in recent cinema. You probably can't.

Something they understood "back in the day" is that we love stories about people who are essentially bad, but somewhere along the line they make a good choice or two. Ya know, kinda like us. Kinda like real people. But no, today we are content with our Supermans and Will Turners and Katnisses. Or on the other side of the spectrum, our Corleones, Vincent Vegas, and Tyler Durdens. Don't get me wrong, I like all of these characters. But if On The Waterfront were released today, people would complain about how unlikable the main character is. And he is an unlikable character. He is a crappy guy that makes a good decision or two. And despite his shortcomings, I'll be damned if you aren't rooting for him by the end.

5. The Pain Sets In
Despite my newly opened mind, there were still some movies on the list that I thoroughly disliked. One that comes to my mind immediately is Raging Bull. I know it's a Scorsese film, but I honestly couldn't stand it. I get that it's supposed to be the way that it is, I know it was on purpose, but it just wasn't for me. The main character has no redeeming qualities and you come away from the film feeling depressed and angry--in a bad way. I've come away from other movies feeling something similar, but I loved how depressed and angry I was. After Raging Bull, I just wanted to forget it.

There were also a few musicals that I had to fast forward through large portions of. Not because they aren't classics,  but again, not for me. I'm looking at you An American in Paris. I have a hard time with movies that sacrifice story in favor of 18 minute dance numbers. But still, I watched all the musicals despite my misgivings. And to be fair, I also fast-forwarded through the twenty minute wandering through the desert scene in Lawrence of Arabia.

6. For Teh Lulz
This is a small thing, and closely related to #2, but I find it astounding that we think the same things are funny as people thought were funny 100 years ago. Charlie Chaplin is incredible. I was laughing deep belly laughs at both Modern Times and City Lights. And don't forget Some Like It Hot. Fantastic! Brings a smile to my face just thinking about it.

7. Heey LADIES!
Which brings me to my final lesson. Romance. Man, what happened? We used to know how to add romance to movies! At some point we conflated sex with romance. Despite non-existent sex scenes in older movies, there was still passion and desire. Hollywood has forgotten that sex is incidental to romance. Call me naive, but I don't think people go to romantic comedies to see if there will be a sex scene. They go to see the falling in love part, not the sweaty, fleeting consequence.

A good example is The Best Years of Our Lives. In addition to being an excellent post-war film, it is also wonderfully romantic. And who can forget Annie Hall? I think I related a little too well to little Alvy Singer. I don't know if that was supposed to happen, but it did.

On a related note, they don't quite make them like they used to. I don't know what it is, maybe something about how the romance was presented, but I think as a man you can't help but fall in love with the leading ladies.

From left to right: Lauren Bacall, Anne Baxter, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Russell, and of course Audrey

Veronica Lake, Anne Baxter, and no one could leave out Grace Kelly

So a quick recommendation, besides watching any of the movies mentioned above (honestly, you can't go wrong), I would immediately recommend watching All About Eve. It's one of my favorite movies now. And after watching you'll also understand why Anne Baxter appears twice in the photos above.

You made it to the end, congratulations. Feel free to ask me any questions about my experience in the comments. I'm no expert, but I'll do my best to answer.

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Something I've Noticed

Acceptance came slowly.
Hard won, all teeth and nails.
With deep, shaking breaths that couldn't
catch enough air
          to fill the vacuum inside...

Acceptance started on the closet floor, in a pile.
Shifted in the ether--
Suddenly sometimes a monolith
that stood hard against my doubt
         only to vanish with unbidden memories...

Acceptance is capricious.
Like a cheap justification
Uttered thoughtlessly on a midnight drive;
Half-remembered half-truths
          lost amid the hedging...

Acceptance is here,
But wavers still sometimes.
In that moment between dreams
It must will itself to life
          like so many other resolutions.

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