I didn’t have a very inspiring week. Actually, it was pretty uneventful, but a tough one. I learned-again- that even though the doctors know everything about my cancer, I know my actual body better than they do, and I should trust my own instincts when their advice and my own body are giving me different messages. I’m working to find balance in that world.

Talk about balance…Jeremy and his chicken have figured out the balancing act, and I’m going to let him tell you about it. Jeremy said I could borrow this part from his email from a few weeks ago. He is on a Service Mission, which means I get to see my missionary every day. Part of his mission is to serve at home, and amongst other things, he takes care of our chickens, which he does beautifully (he’s a Chicken Tender). I thought it might be great for you to get to know him, and enjoy his wisdom like I get to. What he says about service missions is true about most of life. See if you can find more meaning in your life, (albeit a long string of the same things day after day), through his wisdom.

“Service missions are incredibly boring. I can feel you all misunderstanding me when I say that, but let me explain. Every time I write one of these emails, I end up struggling to come up with things to say. I don’t have cool experiences with sharing the gospel, I don’t have any pictures to share of beautiful locations I visited on my P-day, I don’t even have any funny anecdotes about getting cussed out by some anti-Mormon dude in the streets.

Every week, I report the same things. “I went to the Salvation Army. I went to the temple. I formatted more sheet music. I had meetings.” Every once in a while, I have a cool experience, or something that stood out to me, but other than those tiny variations, my life is not entertaining to read about. Yet, when I really think about it, I don’t care. I love what I’m doing. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

All the small things that bring me joy are priceless to me. Getting a moment of quiet revelation and comfort in the temple. Looking at a PDF of some clarinet music and seeing that I did a good job formatting this one random measure. Folding up octavo boxes to store away sheet music. Heck, just driving around to places. These have been some of the most enjoyable and fulfilling experiences of my life, and they’re BORING AS ANYTHING. Why is that?

I think it’s because 90% of life is made of those tiny moments of joy that build into a good life. 10% are those larger moments that we have so few of. Literature has trained us to think about those 10% of things, those big, remarkable things, but in reality, for every big thing in your life, you’ll likely have a hundred smaller things that you never even realized.

Literature has trained us to dwell on those big things, because those are what stories are made of. It would be easy (as easy as authorship is, I understand) to write a 600 page novel about saving the world, but it would be insanely hard to make a 600 page book about folding laundry day after day. And yet, how many of us are saving the world? How many of us are folding laundry?

It can be tempting to think that because life can be boring, we have to be bored. I’m here to tell you that this simply isn’t true. Life, more often than not, IS boring. But being bored is the result of us looking for satisfaction in that 10% of life that’s more interesting. So, all of that nonsensical philosophical rant is to say: Service missions are boring, but I am not bored.

But even the life well lived consists of 90 % of cumulative moments of small pleasures, and 10 percent the big things to write home about.”