Instructions/Directions: Given for the Benefit of All

Being a college kid, one of my staple meals is Mac n Cheese. My cupboard always has 3 or 4 boxes. It's such a simple thing to make! Why would you need directions? Add water. Heat until soft. Add butter, milk, and the cheese-y powder. You know what? Why follow the directions? If I only add butter all of the cheese-y powder all gets mixed in. The only reason there is milk is to make sure that all of the powder is dissolved, right? The butter and moisture of the noodles takes care of that. I'm not going add milk anymore. They only say to add 1/4 cup of milk anyways. That's not enough to really do anything anyways. ... several weeks later: I've got a lot of milk, I can spare 1/4 cup for my mac n cheese. Lo and behold! It tastes significantly better! Man! Those mac 'n cheese companies knew what they were talking about when they said to add milk! Why didn't I listen to them before?
Obviously I'd have been better off if I had just regularly added milk to my mac n cheese. It's not that hard of a thing to do, but I thought I knew better than the directions. I was wrong. As it turns out, people give us directions or instructions for a  purpose, and this purpose is beneficial quite often.
     By no means am I the poster-child for following directions, but I'm going to try and be better at it now. Instructions and directions are given from one group to another to advise them on how to do something whether it be how to build a bookcase, make mac n cheese, or how to treat others. Trying to help others is the idea behind giving instructions.
     Sometimes we are given directions and we aren't told why it is important to follow them, but sometimes we don't need everything explained to us. Sometimes we just need to put our faith and trust in those that are giving us the directions and believe that they know better than we know why it is good to follow the instructions.
     We can't know and understand everything(yet), and maybe we never can. There are those who know more than we know, and there are those that know less than we know. As you receive instructions, ask yourself these questions:
-What do I hope to gain by following these directions or stand to lose by not following them?
-Who gave these instructions? Are they knowledgeable enough to give these instructions? What is their purpose in giving these instructions?
-Were these instructions given to help me or to hurt me?
A lot of the time, the answers to these questions will be positive and point to following the instructions.
     In the end, no one can force you to do anything. It is up to each individual to decide whether or not to do this or that. I hope all choose to follow those instructions that will benefit themselves as well as those around them, and I invite those of you reading this to follow those directions that are most beneficial: be smart, be wise and remember your divine heritage.

Be the Best You you can be

It's been a few months since my last post, and for this I apologize to whomever read these and found something in the words. To be honest, I wasn't sure when or if I was going to continue writing these posts, but my attention returned to this blog when a friend, Miss Staniforth, mentioned how much she liked my blog posts. This made me re-evaluate what I was doing.
Funny thing about life: You can never be sure which or how many eyes are watching you, but you can almost always be certain there are eyes on you even if it doesn't feel like it. This is what I realized when Miss Staniforth made her comment.
What are you supposed to do with all of these people watching you? How do you act? Should you say what you say? By no means should you let what others do or say control your actions, but I find that life is best lived when you are being the best you can possibly be. I know that the best me is a me that is helping others, so I will keep writing this blog for others who may use these words as they see fit for their own benefit.
There are so many different things I could quote that talk about us being the best us we can be, or in other words-being an example. There are only about 1 bajillion different scriptures that share the importance of "being an example of the believers"(1 Timothy 4:12) because we are a "city set upon a hill that cannot be hid"(Matthew 5:14-16). Why would we want to be an example? For the very reason that made me write this post: People are watching. It is not only your life that gets better when you are being the best you can be, but the lives of all those around you also improve. Whether it be those youth that look up to you and hope to someday be like you because you are the coolest person alive, those roommates and classmates who look at you because you are there and can be looked at, or those older than you who hope to see you grow and become something more-Someone is always watching.
Many who watch you, watch you because they care. Know this and go forward with a smile because it will make your day and the day for those watching that much more bright.