This is a very difficult thought that I am attempting to put down on paper and hopefully it will never be taken in the wrong way and cause hurt and/or resentment by those who may read it. Rather, as is my intention, it will create a better understanding of the eternal nature of life and each and every individual’s purpose and possibilities. The danger in expressing how I, or you, may have dealt with a difficult circumstance in life does not or may not properly cover how another may feel about it. However, I feel a need to attempt to do so anyway because of, what I refer to as our human gift of empathy or as some may feel, the curse of human empathy. It is not a universal gift because many have not exercised it and given it an opportunity to mature. It may or may not have been a gift at birth, or from God, but it only matures or becomes apparent in magnification when people are put in a position that cause it to move from deep in one’s spirit to their physical mind and heart. It became very much alive for me about thirty years ago when I was called to be the branch president of a local nursing home. I became so involved in the lives of the residents that I wanted to bless their lives with personal happiness. I, in some cases, became family to many of them. When they became sick or depressed and needed a blessing, it was seldom the family who came to bless them; it was the Branch Presidency.
In some cases their families will drop them off at the door and imply, ‘This person (mother, father, grandma, or grandfather) is no longer my problem, now they are yours.’ Do your job and take care of them.’ For a few, the family comes by to visit every week or so, at first, but after a while, the visits become more and more infrequent. Than they seldom if ever show up and the resident is essentially forgotten until Christmas or other major holidays. I hurt for them as it is my feeling, and knowledge, that family is the most important entity in life and all eternity. Their age and/ or illness should not negate that relationship.
In some cases empathy can become so well developed that a person sees the human race as family. They love people in general and want to know about them, they take joy in hearing of their life and family. Exceptions are those who have lost all empathy they may have had and have become so hardened that in some cases they find delight in behaving cruelly to both animals and humans with little or no remorse.
If everyone would hurt, even just a little when they see or hear of another fellow human in pain and suffering, what a good and kind world we would be living in.
With that said I would like to express what I believe to be true, even an eternal truth about how life plays out in the long run, the eternal run.
The scriptures tell us that each and every one of us are eternal in nature, we lived before this earth was created and we will live after we have experienced death on earth. We are eternal beings. I, at one time, tried to comprehend eternal, (no beginning and no end) but my earthly schedule prevented me; my watch, my calendar, my birthdays, the mortal death of my parents. Everything here seems to come to an end or we do before it does. Susan Ertz said that “Millions long for eternity who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” Eternity, and our relationship to it has to be by faith while we are here, just as well as our confidence in our Heavenly Father and what He promises. I can accept that and that gives me hope, hope in the eternal nature of man. As we are now, God once was? As God is now, we may become? Does that actually mean that at some point in the eons of time we too may be become as He is? Joseph Smith the latter day prophet said that is a true principle. We are His sons and daughters and if this earth is patterned after our pre-earth existence than sons become fathers, daughters become mothers there as well. As adult beings (spirits), spirit children of our heavenly parents and mortal children sealed to our earthly parents, and sealed for all eternity to our spouses, if all things are equal than in the eternal realm we will sire spirit children, as well. When covenants are made and kept, They are eternal, “for therein are the keys of the holy priesthood ordained, that you may receive honor and glory” (D&C 124:34), “which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever” (D&C 132:19).
Children who will one day want to experience an earth, as we did. When we listen carefully to our temple promises posterity and parental rights do not end here on earth but rather go on eternally. The key will be to believe that and live accordingly while we sojourn here. True marriage is an eternal covenant between a man and a woman, but there are no promises that children will bless our home while sojourning here. They have to understand and be glad that children will come in the eternities. That is a promise of eternal posterity from our Eternal Father. The key to the fulfillment of that promise is our faith in that promise. In the meantime, we have to be faithful and true to our spousal covenants.
We can develop empathy by adopting and/or loving animals, and by blessing other’s children with our kindnesses, and even adopt the elderly or handicapped as friends and to be their benefactors. Being a friend to the lonely, and elderly is very rewarding. God bless us to begin to understand that the here and now is a brief second of time in the ‘eternal’ nature of God’s great plan. We haven’t been taken out of the eternal plan and the on-going and eternal nature of God’s plan because of our mortality. That is the plan! To understand that, can be so comforting and reassuring to what we perceive to be our immortal nature. God bless us to catch the vision of eternity and our place in it, as God would so want.