The Meat Market

Recently, I chatted with an old friend whom I hadn't seen in some time. As part of our conversation, and in the middle of catching up with each other's lives, I mentioned that I have been participating in an over-30 singles' group for the past couple of years as one of the activities that has helped keep me busy since I had last seen her in our singles ward.

"I don't really like going to those things," was her response. "They're such meat markets!"

Statistically, my friend is not alone in her stance against going to these so-called "meat markets." I recently found out from one of the advisors at one of these aforementioned group activities that there are estimated to be more than 30,000 people in our age group in Davis County alone. Though that number includes inactive members, as well as, presumably, single parents with children who prevent them from participating and people who don't even know that our group exists, it nevertheless still amounts to literally thousands of other people out there somewhere.

In my time with this group, I haven't even met 1,000 new people, let alone 30,000. The number is more like a couple of hundred at most. Of that number, there are between 60 and 70 who, on average, attend our weekly institute classes.

I am certainly no math whiz, but I figure that it all amounts to about .2 percent, or one in 500, of the people who could conceivably belong to this group who actually attend on a regular basis.That's some pretty slim pickings. It's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy in that the majority, like my friend, view it as a meat market, too, and therefore decide it is not worth their time or effort. It may be a meat market, but that's where you have to go if you want meat in your diet.

Not coincidentally, my friend also mentioned that she hadn't been on many dates lately and had found it hard to meet new people with her busy schedule.

Conclusions:

1) I am still no math whiz.

2) However you look at things, you have to go where the meat is if meat is what you want. Though the meat market is not as well stocked as it could be, some vegetarians appear to be starving.

With all of this talk of meat, I am suddenly hungry for a McRib.

Sports Rivalries and the Rameumptom

Once again, folks, it's time for Holy Week.

Or, to describe it more accurately, it's the time of the year when even 50- and 60-year-old men act like bratty teenagers and get into "my dad can beat up your dad" chest-thumping shouting matches with each other over something as trivial as a sporting event.

For those who don't live in Utah or who are not familiar with the phrase, the term Holy Week refers to the seven days leading up to the annual BYU vs. University of Utah football game, which culminates in (usually) a grueling and hard-fought grudge match that leaves the winning team with a great sense of pride and bragging rights and an "in-your-face" smugness and the losing team with a sense of embarrassment and shame that lingers for the next 365 or 366 days. Or longer.

It's all really very silly. It tends to turn otherwise sensible, decent, and good people into raving lunatics and jerks. It can ruin friendships. The rules of good sportsmanship are completely forgotten. And the silliest thing about it all, at least as far as I see it, is that neither team's fans have any control whatsoever over the outcome of the game.

The sore winner's bragging can basically be summed up this way: "The team that I root for beat the team that you root for, and even though neither you nor I have any impact on the result of the game, my association with said winning team makes me, as a result, better than you. It's even better if my team beats yours in a humiliating fashion. In order for me to be happy, we win, and you lose."

The sore loser, meanwhile, finds excuses for his or her team's loss ("it was the referees' fault" or "we had an inexperienced quarterback this year," for example) and berates or makes vulgar gestures toward the other team's fans. He/she will never, ever utter the words: "The better team won today. We will do better next year."

It's most definitely a guy thing, but, over the years, I have seen more than a few females get in on the hype, too. And, of course, it happens on both sides—both those who bleed blue and those who bleed red.

Holy Week reminds me of Chapter 31 in the Book of Alma, in which Alma, Aaron, Ammon, and a few others head out on a mission to Antionum to reclaim the apostate Zoramites and find them praying on top of something called the Rameumptom, which is translated as "the holy stand" (Alma 31:21).

Alma discovers the Zoramites praying: "We believe thou has elected us to be thy holy children . . . and thou hast elected us that we shall be saved, whilst all around us are elected to be cast by thy wrath down to hell; for the which holiness, O God, we thank thee; and we also thank thee that thou hast elected us, that we may not be led away after the foolish traditions of our brethren" (Alma 31:16-17).

Fortunately, the gospel is not "win-lose" but "win-win." We are exalted only by humbling ourselves and by helping those around us to be better, just as we try to improve ourselves day by day. In the words of U2 and Bono: "If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel."

It's okay to love your team and to want them to do well and win. I grew up in a sports-loving family, along with sports-loving parents and four sports-loving brothers who played basketball, football, soccer, softball, and about every other team sport (and a sister who came around when she met her sports-loving husband), and I've known no other way of life. I love it when my teams win and feel bad with them when they lose.

It's also possible to be an enthusiastic sports fan without climbing up on the Rameumptom—in other words, without being a jerk about it.

The Condescension of Friends

As a follow-up to my last post, which was on the topic of bullies, today I'd like to address another form of bullying: condescension.

For those who may not be familiar with the term, condescension means, for lack of a better sentence or a simple definition: "I'm better than you, I'm smarter than you, and, doggone it, I'll go out of my way to point that out to you as often as I can, you moron."

Those who are condescending to you may not necessarily be smarter than you are, but they act like it regardless of that fact. Not surprisingly, when I conducted a Google search for images relating to the topic of condescension, several photos of President Barack Hussein Obama came up. I'm not kidding.

To back up their vast array of knowledge, the condescending trot out their college diplomas and say, "Look at this, stupid!"; they quote from a scholarly book no one has ever heard of except for them and their best friends, who happen to run MENSA; they reference a random class they once took a decade ago and were so immediately skilled at that the professor was fired, and they stepped up and began to teach; or they may even resort to name dropping about the famous folks or celebrities they pal around with.

The motto of the condescending person may as well be, as Dave Barry once wrote: "Everybody has their opinion, and yours is wrong."

Most people who fit the above description of the condescending person are not people whom I would want to be nor am I friends with. Naturally, these people should be avoided like the plague.

It's a much more subtle thing, however, when condescension appears in the form of your own circle of friends. These aren't people who necessarily maintain a friendship with you because of how well you get along or how much time you spend together currently but are nonetheless affiliated because you went to school or worked with them, or you lived in the same neighborhood growing up, or you both happened to be members of a memorable college or institute class, or the like. Past shared experiences of one kind or another bond you as "friends" even though they may do less-than-friendly things to you in the present, such as point out in front of a group what an idiot you are; write things on your Facebook wall that may attempt to be funny, pithy, or clever but come across only as rude and insensitive; single out the flaws in your creative efforts while giving little (or, in many cases, zero) positive feedback or encouragement; and on and on.

To be fair to people who fall into this category, I don't think they mean to do it, or at least they don't recognize exactly what the effects of their behavior are. To paraphrase Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense: "I see condescending people. Walking around like regular people. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're condescending."
Now, I'm not saying that it isn't good to be smart, to have a good education, to read a lot of books, or anything like that. What I am saying is that it is more important to be charitable than to be smart, because it is possible to be both - but charity is the greatest. Condescending people tend to mix up the order of these two qualities, putting being smart above being charitable.

For an example to illustrate this point, I think back to when I was called to be deacon's quorum president in my ward at age 13. I was set apart to this position but was not given any sort of training as to what a deacon's quorum president should do or how he ought to act. At that vulnerable young age, I stood up to conduct my first deacon's quorum meeting and made some announcements before sitting down in my chair. One of the counselors in the bishopric, who was sitting in on the meeting, then proceeded to lecture me - in front of the entire quorum - about what I had just done wrong and how a deacon's quorum president should act and pointed out multiple things I should have done differently, all to my great embarrassment.

This man wasn't wrong in the sense that I could have done a better job or that I had not presented myself well, but to do it in front of the entire quorum, to me, was not only condescending but very hurtful and wrong. It was the kind of thing that makes some people drop out of church attendance and go inactive.

In the Book of Mormon, Jacob spoke of those who “when they are learned they think they are wise . . . wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not." He also added: “But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God (2 Nephi 9:28-29)."

I got over my little episode as deacon's quorum president. I hope that the counselor in the bishopric did, too. I've since met many people and had friends come and go, and I've known many humble people, as well as a few who, like the aforementioned well-intentioned but poorly executing counselor in the bishopric, were also condescending and who are now people I largely try to avoid. I'm always most impressed by those who really are far more educated than me and have every right to be condescending but who don't act like it, whatever office or position they may hold. Instead, they choose to be humble and are down-to-Earth enough to speak to me as an equal and on my level.