The Most Important Thing in this Life

I once heard in General Conference that the most important things we will take from this life are our relationships with others. I don't remember where that quote is from exactly, but this has come to my attention time and time again over the last few weeks, and I wanted to expand on that a bit. 

The most important things in this life are our relationships with others. 

This has struck me again and again, is it really going to matter how much I worked or how successful I was. Will it even matter whether I finished all the levels of Candy Crush Saga? Not really, in fact, maybe not at all. What does matter are the people that we meet, live with, work with, play with, and choose to be around. 

Also apparently, to be Batman. When I was Googling my topic to see what else was out there, I typed "The most important thing in this life...." and Google completed it with "...is to be Batman." Gotta love the interwebs. 

Treasure your relationships, not your possessions. -Anthony J. D'Angelo

Why do you think so many movies and stories have been written with love in them? It's because relationships are the most interesting thing in the world, and love relationships top them all. Most of the relationships that involve love are given to us from birth, those are the ones of family. These are givens, at least hopefully they are, in a perfect world they would be. The second ones are those of platonic love, the people you choose to love that are your friends. Now these are interesting, but not as interesting as the relationships involving romantic love. These are relationships that begin in a myriad of ways and have just as many ways to end, but they have more of a spark, a fire, drama and intrigue than all other relationships. They are begun sometimes quite suddenly, and ended even more abruptly at times. 

In the end, love is all that matters. 

Why is this though? Why would someone take the time to pen the quote, In the end, all that matters is love. I think that's because it's true, I can't see clearly sometimes through the fog of life, but the one thing that stands out is how we treat others, our relationships with them, and the love we cherish and develop will be the one thing that stands the test of time, from this life to the next. 

The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.  -Blaise Pascal

The heart does have its reasons, and if we tried to explain what makes us connect with other people, we would never get to the end of it. Love and our ability to connect with others and form relationships with them are what makes us human, what sets us apart on this world. 

As I go forward I want to work on connecting with more people, take the time to work on my relationships with others, and be the type of friend that I want to have. I'm still looking for that one special relationship, but I have a feeling it'll come when I'm not looking so hard. It's hard to admit to myself that I care so much about people, because often it feels like they don't care back, and I worry that this is the case with a lot of others.

I'm on the compassionate service committee in my ward, and as I've been reaching out to try and help girls, the amount of people who think they are alone and that no one cares is staggering. These are girls that have tried to make friends but feel that they still have no one, girls that feel shut out from the already existing friendships in the ward. I wish we could see, in color, how people feel, because I think we'd be shocked at how many people feel the same way that we do. The relationships we develop are so important, and if you take the plunge and reach out to someone else, you never know how that may affect them in the long run.

Just, take the time to work on your relationships. You never know which ones you will come to treasure, to need, and to cherish.