Many years ago, as a primary president, I decided that having more than one earring in each ear did not present the appropriate image, so I removed the extra. I was okay with my decision, and didn't think anymore of it until about 15 years later. Then President Hinckley stood up in general conference and told the sisters of the church that one set of modest earrings was sufficient, and anything more would be unseemly. Not in so many words, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now. The point is, I'd made a decision based on principles that made sense to me, as an adult, only to be told by another adult years later that in order to look the part of a faithful latter day saint, I needed to conform to a particular dress code layed out for me by an authority figure speaking for God. It made me feel very much like a child. And I felt the need to rebel. Silly, I know, but I put my extra earring back in. And then, to really drive the point home, I got another earring up in the cartilege of the same ear. A painful way to express my individuality! I knew very well at the time that it was equivalent to a toddler stamping her feet and saying, "You're not the boss of me!" But I felt compelled to make this statement and let the world know that, as an adult, I make the decisions regarding what holes I will have in my own head, not the naked emperor, (a story for another day). Anyway, this additional hole started out tender and sore, and stayed that way for the next 5 months. I couldn't even sleep on that side without adjusting the pillow to accomodate my stupidity! But, by dang, I was expressing myself, and the earring stayed! Until a couple of days ago, when I realized that I was essentially cutting off my nose to spite my face. I realized that, while I acknowledge my need to express myself in this particular way at that particular time, I no longer needed the earring as an expression of my rebellion. Because I'm not rebelling. I'll try to explain.
Throughout these past couple of years, what I've really been trying to do is get to know who I am, rather like Julia Robert's character in Runaway Bride. Did she like her eggs sunny-side up, or in an egg-white omelet? Would she rather honeymoon in the Himalayas, or walk down a beach at sunset? As for me, do I want to spend a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon in a pew in church, or hiking Limber Pines trail with 2 of my best friends? That's an easy one! Much harder is trying to undo 40+ years of conditioning to get to the root of my relationship with deity. Do I want a relationship with God? Who is God anyway? And am I willing to let someone else define that for me? Very hard questions to answer, and I have a ways to go before coming to any definitive conclusions.
I have concluded, however, that what I thought was an essential aspect of my personality was really just a way to push back at the confines of the religion I've been immersed in my whole life. At my core, I do not have a rebellious personality. Now that I've accepted that I'm not interested in formal religious worship, there is nothing to rebel against. I can accept limitations being placed on my behavior, such as laws concerning public actions or dress codes at work and such. But a person with self-proclaimed authority over my moral, ethical, and religious behavior, not to mention my internal spiritual health, places me in an adult-child relationship with them, hence the desire to rebel. Let all of that go, and voila! I'm an adult, with the ability (perhaps God-given?) to figure out what makes sense to me, and how I want to interact with my world and the people in it. And I could let go of the painful expression of my maturity in the form of a stupid earring! I took it out. I don't need it anymore, and I feel peaceful, serene, and very adult.
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