Searching for Feelings

As close as Shakespeare was to being able to put feelings into words, as one savage might have claimed, Mozart may have been closer. A picture might say a thousand words but music can speak eternity to the soul. “Please dear Father, what are these feelings?” was a call from Julie as she was struggling for an answer to her prayer. The Fantasticks, Saturday’s Warrior, Wicked – What marvelous pieces of art! Todd, Jimmy, Elphaba – All through their “suffering” found a way to express their feelings through music. Lady A in one of their recent hits sang: “I’d rather hurt than feel nothing at all.” I thought I believed that because pain is the easiest feeling to express and it’s the easiest to indulge in. Someone once told me that the only way to grow is through suffering. Since then I have learned that similarly to a muscle that you have to tear to make it grow, you might step outside of your comfort zone to help yourself grow. However if you tear that muscle in half it will not grow back stronger – if you have to suffer you might hurt yourself so bad you won’t make it back. Pain is a dangerous road to travel. For as long as I have know each of those 3 musicals before mentioned I have quoted out loud and to myself more than could be counted, especially Todd and Jimmy. What an unexpected pair. Of course it has been 10 years since I saw the play and probably 15 years since I saw the movie but that moment when Jimmy and Todd are both sitting in the park lost and confused. It is such a shame they cut “Voices” out of the movie. But when Todd starts asking all those questions to Jimmy who had been taught those answers in Sunday school all his life and he realizes he knows the truth. Arrggh!!! It makes it all the more frustrating when I look at myself trying to play both roles, now that is messed up. “Run over here, Run over there… what do I find? Nothing!” Nothing! And back to “I’d rather hurt than feel nothing at all.” And here I am about to turn 31, a senior NCO in the United States Army with a team that either wants to kill some bad guys or peacefully make a difference to a shattered country and I'm wondering: “Who am I? Where am I going? Here I sit, all alone, not knowing why... I’m so discouraged… How it hurts to be a no one. How I wish that I were someone... I’m such a failure. Heaven help me up above… Doubts and fears keep coming faster. Boy I’m headed for disaster that’s for sure.” Last night I was reading in Alma 26 when Ammon’s boasting of how if they had not gone down to the Lamanites then thousands would have never know of the gospel and then after being rebuked by his brother, Aaron, Ammon admits that he knows he is nothing. But then came the part I had never noticed before in verses 17-20 when he recalls their sinful youth and asks: “Why did [God] not consign us to an awful destruction… and doom us to eternal despair?” Because He knew that one day they would change and change the world for the better in doing so. That is the hope, I guess. So there it is: My struggle for meaning in feelings. When I get in these moods I just have to get them out somehow. Normally they stay very private but this time it looks they just might get published. So thanks to anyone who read and even more of a wow if you understood even the slightest bit of what I said.