Petrified

I suppose my fixation with change has some root in fear--my fear that I will become wholly unchangeable and unresponsive to new challenges in life. I'm petrified of being petrified.

This fear is not completely unfounded. I'm a young man, but in some ways I feel very old. How long have I been wanting to be more healthy in my daily routine? For years I've set and re-set the goal to exercise more regularly, eat more healthily. But my eating and exercising (or lack thereof) habits die hard. For how many years have I determined every few weeks that I need to read my scriptures more regularly and study the gospel more carefully? My conviction is usually born during the sacrament and lost before I pull into the driveway three hours later.

Ben Franklin spent every week of his life focusing on some new virtue to master, from what I understand. And I'm a big fan of Ben's (notwithstanding the scandals). How could he possibly have been so good at really implementing changes in himself on a regular basis? Why am I so much like a rock?

O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe. (2Nephi 1:13)