As Good as It Gets . . . ?

In the movie As Good as It Gets, there is a scene in which the main character, Melvin (Jack Nicholson), himself a sufferer of a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, walks past a support group who are in the middle of a session. Not only cursed with OCD but also someone with a mean streak, he asks them the question, "What if this is as good as it gets?"

Enjoying his little joke, he leaves the room as the members of the support group contemplate this question in a stunned silence. This moment is, of course, where the title of the film also comes from.

Do you ever find yourself contemplating the answer to the same question about matters in your own life: Is this really as good as it gets?

I find myself doing so on many a Sunday, as I feel it's certainly an appropriate day and time for self-introspection. Further, when you ponder upon this question, do you ever find yourself becoming frustrated, despondent, or flat-out heartbroken about the progress you seem to be making—or the lack thereof?

We all have things that we need to work on, be they bad habits to overcome, problems to solve, people who use or abuse, loneliness, or any number of other challenges that don't seem to go away, be they emotional, mental, physical, financial, etc. For many people, it's a combination of one or more of these things.

For the record, I believe that there are two types of people, as well as two ways of dealing with life's problems: There are those who "deal" with their problems by not dealing with them at all—ignoring or avoiding them altogether—aka the truly insane who keep trying the same thing and expecting different results. Then, there are those who confront and fight their problems—even when that fight seems like it may be a losing battle.

Whatever stage you are at in your particular battle(s), I believe that if you are among the latter of these two types of people—the one who is confronting and fighting the problem—then you are winning. That may sound like a cheesy line taken from the end of every "G.I. Joe" cartoon—you know, "knowing is half the battle" and all that—but I believe it to be true. Taking two steps forward and one step backward is still making progress.

On Facebook today, a  friend of mine posted something I originally heard in the October 1999 general conference and also which I have heard many times since. I certainly needed to re-read it again:

“Don’t give up, boy. Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it—30 years of it now, and still counting. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.”
 -Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Sometimes, all we can do is put one foot in front of the other and continue to walk down that road. If we even stop and take a moment to look around us when that road is muddy and the sky is dark and stormy, I think we will even discover that there are quite a number of good things around us already.