Careful vs Casual by Jarek Wall August 11, 2019

Good afternoon everyone! Since I’m pretty new, I ought to introduce myself. My name is Jarek Wall, I’ve lived in these ward boundaries most of my life, I recently finished a local service mission, and I’m excited to get to talk to you all today. 

In our lives, we have two main goals, spiritually speaking. These goals are to return to our heavenly father, and to be happy. Everything that we do eventually should be leading us toward achieving these goals, so it’s important that we try to do things right. In everything we do we have a choice on how we go about doing it. We can be casual, and hope everything turns out well, or we can act carefully, and do our best to ensure that we’re on a path to happiness. This is what I’d like to discuss today, the importance of being careful rather than casual.

So what exactly does it mean to be careful or to be casual? From a dictionary’s point of view, careful means “making sure of avoiding potential danger, mishap, or harm; or being cautious”, and casual means “relaxed and unconcerned”. To be careful means actively avoiding danger; it means doing our best to be ready for any situation that comes up. Being casual on the other hand means being passive, letting the world act on us and hoping that everything turns out okay. Since being casual is so passive, it doesn’t require as much effort, so it can seem very attractive, but as we’ll see, it’s not the best way to do things. 

When I first thought about the importance of being careful rather than casual, my mind first went to competition. In any competition, the goal is simple: beat the opposition. Everything boils down to this one goal. In chess, it means capturing the opponent’s king, in football (or any sport really) it means ending with the highest score, and in a battle it means defeating the enemy. All of these are simple goals, but the pathways to achieving them are often far from simple. Their success relies on making good decisions, following rules, and avoiding mistakes. In other words, success relies on being careful. 

So, how does being careful or casual affect those examples? In chess, it's important to think about every single turn. When playing carefully, it’s vital to focus on every detail in the game. Every time a piece is moved, a careful player asks themselves “Will moving this piece bring me closer to winning?”, “Will moving it have consequences for my other pieces?”, “what ways will my enemy attack me?”, and many more questions each time it’s their turn. This is why chess takes so long. The casual chess player doesn’t ask as many questions. When I play chess, I generally play very casually and only think about if my move takes out an enemy piece. This generally leads to me falling into traps I should see, and suffering the natural consequences of bad decision making. It also means I lose. I have good intentions, and I want to win, but I don’t play carefully enough to win. 

In football (American, normal, or any sport for that matter), it is also vital to make every decision carefully. In American football, thought is put into every aspect of the game. Every down, the quarter-back decides on what play the team is going to run. This involves deciding how the blockers are going to block, whether they want to run or throw the ball, where the receivers will be, and what they’re backup plan is. Before they can run any play however, they practice. Practice engrains each play into the mind of each player, so when the time of the actual game comes, they know what they are doing and can more easily avoid mistakes. Care is also taken to make sure the players are the best they can be. Exercise and practice keeps a team healthy and ready to overcome any obstacle that comes in their way. On the other hand, when football is approached casually, much less care is put into it. When playing casually, teams are groups of friends who are just together to have a good time. They may have a few plays, and they may be healthy, but when put against a team that has practiced and prepared for even a short time, a casual group of players will have a very difficult time winning. 

In battle, it is absolutely vital to be careful. Whether the battle is a duel to the death, a war between major countries, or a simple game between friends, every decision needs to be careful and calculated. One person who understood this well was Captain Moroni. When he was the leader of the Nephite army, he made sure that every city he was defending was ready and safe before battles even began. In terms of numbers, the Nephite army was significantly smaller than the armies of the Lamanites. Captain Moroni knew this, and instead of casually waiting for the enemy to come attack him, he actively and carefully set up fortifications. He dug trenches and built walls around the different cities. He knew where the lamanites would attack first, fortified that, then guessed that they’d be scared and attack another city, which he fortified even stronger. Moroni prepared his people by giving them armor, and preparing their homes and families for attacks that he knew was coming. He didn’t sit by passively, but took an active and careful approach to the protection of his people.

Of course, in our lives, what do we need to be careful about? Sure it’s nice to win games, and hopefully we don’t have to join a war, so why do we need to be careful, instead of swimming casually through the waves of life? Where we need to be careful is in the way we keep our covenants and live our lives. Life’s main purpose is to be happy and return to our Father in Heaven, and the way we go about doing that is by keeping our covenants. Every decision we make takes us one step closer or further from God, so is it better to walk blindly and casually, or is it better to walk with our eyes on the goal carefully picking out our steps to avoid the stumbling blocks in our way. Personally, I don’t like to trip.

Spiritually, we are at war, and we’re fighting one of the most cunning adversaries of all time. Just like how we have a simple goal of returning to God, Satan has the simple goal of stopping us from returning to God. Every action he makes is calculated to see us make mistakes, to get us to break our covenants, and to disobey commandments. Faced with this challenge, people are presented two options: people can casually live their lives and hope they avoid the pitfalls of the devil, or they can carefully prepare for anything that will get thrown at them. In a real battle, one way to be prepared was to wear armour. Armour helped protect the vital body parts, and let people avoid dying as quickly. In our battle with satan, we can also wear armour, the armour of God. We can wear the breastplate of righteousness by trying to be obedient, the helmet of salvation when we focus on remembering Jesus Christ, the shield of faith when we act with faith and trust in God, and the sword of spirit, or the word of God, which will help us drive away the wicked ways of the world. We can choose to go through life naked, hoping we make good choices, or we can grow the armour of God every day. Simply reading the scriptures, praying daily, choosing to come to church, and striving to believe in the Gospel will help us carefully protect ourselves from the devil.

Part of being careful is having a plan. Each of us knows the commandments, and we all know where we individually fall short. Many people have a vice, or certain sin they always slip back into. One of the great parts of the Atonement of Jesus Christ is that we can be forgiven of these sins, even if we keep making them, but we have to truly wish to stop doing them. When we repent, we can go through life like before, hoping we don’t repeat our mistakes, and this is the easy and natural thing to do. However, this casual approach doesn’t help us learn or grow, and when the opportunity to sin comes up again, it’s easy to rationalize, excuse, or simply forget that it shouldn’t be done. Instead of casually hoping to get through life without sinning, it’s helpful to have a plan. Think about what weaknesses you have. Think about what causes them to happen. And think about what you are going to do before they happen. Compulsive liars can plan to retract lies they tell as soon as they realize they’ve lied. People recovering from addictions can recognize the places where their vices are available and actively avoid them. Hateful people can try to think of a nice thing to say about somebody before they say anything. With a plan in place, and faith that God will help out, anything can be prepared for and overcome. 

In my life, I’m still working on choosing to be more careful. Not doing a lot of work is very appealing to me. I procrastinate, and am pretty good at finding the bare minimum amount of effort needed to accomplish something. However, I’ve seen in my life that this is not the best way to live, and I’m trying to be more careful. I’ve seen the effects that being careful has on one’s life. I’d like to share a couple experiences that have helped me remember why it’s important to be careful rather than casual.

In general I’m a pretty okay student. I got mostly A’s in high school, and generally went through my classes without having to invest a lot into them. My last year of spanish however reminded me that I can’t live my life casually through everything. I took four years of spanish, and when I started my last one, I went into the class with a very lax attitude. I’d gotten fine grades each other year, and felt I had a very good grip on the language (I don’t, I speak passable Spanish, but not great). For the first few weeks I put in my normal amount of effort, which is very little. I did some homework, and wrote what I thought were fine essays, but by the end of a couple months my grade was a very low C. Now, C’s are not a bad grade by any means, but I knew that I could personally do better. I knew that I wasn’t pushing myself to do my best, so it was upsetting. For the rest of the semester, I actually put effort into my work. I did all of my homework, and I reviewed my essays before turning them in. I was careful to do my best work. And eventually my grade ended as a B. The next semester, I carried over my careful attitudes, and ended the semester with an A. I’ve gotten a few A’s in my life, but the A in that Spanish class means a lot more to me. It took more effort out of me, and it gives me more satisfaction. 

Another place where I’ve learned about the importance of being careful rather than casual is scripture study. As a rule, I try to read my scriptures every day, at least one chapter. It’s not much but it works for me. This is easiest when I have a routine: waking up every morning at a certain time so I can read works, or having an alarm to remember to read helps. However, it’s important for me to remember that it’s more than just a routine, but that it’s a life changing activity. When I don’t read my scriptures regularly, I see a difference in my life. I’m a little less positive, a little more tempted, quicker to say mean things, and overall a bit less happy. None of these are hugh changes, but they affect me enough where I enjoy not having them. I want to read my scriptures daily so I don’t have to deal with those. When I think about reading as simply a routine however, it’s easy to not follow it. When I think about reading as simply something I do every day, just because I’ve done it every day for the past while, it’s very easy for me to find excuses not to read. A casual attitude leads to me putting less importance on reading, which makes it easier to not read. A careful attitude, with me remembering that I like to live my life as happy as possible, makes it harder for me to miss a day, because I feel I’ll be missing out on some of the joys of life.

In our lives, we need to strive to make every decision carefully. Each decision we make takes us either closer to God, or farther from God, and when we aren’t acting carefully, we don’t always watch where our feet take us. I know that acting casually is easy to do, but I also know that when we are careful in our decisions, God will bless us and help us in whatever we’re trying to accomplish.