"Dare Mighty Things" By now everybody knows that was was an encrypted code in the parachute that lowered Perseverance to Mars. Reading the full Teddy's quote really hit me hard. Wouldn't he be surprised to know his words were on Mars!


"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt 1899


Mormonism succumbed to an ill fate for me just before my testimony died a sudden death. The day I saw Mormonism for the slow, mundane, spiritual lobotomy, soul sucking parasite that paralyzes the soul, that it is:


BYU was so long ago, and I don’t remember the chronological order of everything, but the last time I went to church, I was uncharacteristically late but still characteristically, hypnotically following the normal Sunday routine: I got up, got ready, drove to the white-brick church building of my student ward, and very quietly entered the back doors of the chapel just as the bishop at the pulpit said, “I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t stand before you this day and bear unto you my solemn testimony that...” and suddenly, as he went on, the words turned to some kind of mush, and just as suddenly, hearing that phrase again was like reading the phone book—over and over. How many times can you listen to that before you realize it is the Mormon equivalent of every banality, every conceit known to man. They dress this “testimony” of theirs up with the word remiss and then bask in their self-supposed sophistication. and, worse, this rarely used word they were so proud of, remiss, would invariably herald the voice change—the unleashing of the testimony voice: the unbearably sweet, treacly sincere “aren’t I in touch with the spirit” testimony voice coming out of grown men and women.

I took a long, sweeping look around the meeting hall and had no choice but to leave. A force far greater than the word remiss would have been required to keep me there that day. I can’t even really describe the state of mind. I just Could. Not. Be. There. Anymore. And, I could not explain to myself why—even if I had had at my disposal in that moment a team of psychologists led by Dr. Joyce brothers herself. I was just blank.


The service had started. As I stood there like an animal that had been darted and lost all use of physical functions except for the eyes, I surveyed everything in view as if I were seeing it for the first time—the wooden pews, the Navajo white cinderblock walls with the oak-stained wooden beams, the all-purpose blue carpet, the white-shirted and dark-tied bishop and his counselors on the podium, and some anemic, potted yellow chrysanthemum next to the microphone. The bishop had just finished his remarks as the organist began, and the chorister was poised, right hand in the air like Queen Elizabeth executing her regal wave, to lead the singing of the Joseph Smith–worshipping hymn that was just being announced: “Praise to the Man.”


As the prelude to the song began, my eyes glazed over as if they were confusing their purpose with the duties already assigned to my ears. Like snow on a malfunctioning television, I had never felt so much nothing in my life. This disconnect wasn’t to do with the struggle being gay. I didn’t feel unworthy to be there, and I didn’t feel negativity toward the people there, nor disgust, nor revulsion, nor deception. I just felt nothing. Nothing. In this temporary mental paralysis, I walked out the door and never went back. I did not know why. I do think it was the beginning of thinking for myself, my subconscious mind having had enough of being told what to do, shoved into the gray.

That day my mind cleared itself, hit the reset button. That I know now, although I did not know it at the time. Driving away, I do remember feeling a very low-key but uncommon relief—a very simple peace.

That was 47 years ago. I have dared many things since. Teddy knew his stuff.

Bravo! That was awesome!

Love your Teddy Roosevelt quote. Now taped to my fridge.

“Like snow on a malfunctioning television...”

Nothingness is enraging, isn’t it ?

Mormonism is somewhere between blank TV snow and canned laughter.

Canned laughter. Yes. Canned everything, really.

I actually find myself searching for those moments of clarity since they are so few and far between. It's that "aha" feeling that makes things clear and allows me to silence that inner voice that's so distracting. And I've found that I don't feel the need to look back, I know I made the right choice.

Great post, thanks!

Thanks, D&D. I've never been to an LDS meeting of any sort, but your description is so evocative that I feel I know exactly what it was like. Ugh, the brain fog - or like having your skull bound and deformed as many peoples did in bygone times! I'm so glad you escaped.

Tom, it was like stepping into a straitjacket. And you thought you were being so fashionable.

I could comment on the banality of Mormon meetings, but I doubt I could add anything better than what D&D already said. I can throw in a bit about Theodore Roosevelt. The TR quote is a theme he is justly famous for.

Probably his most famous speech is now popularly known as "The Man in the Arena" speech. I looked it up to grab a quote from it, and found out that it was delivered at the Sorbonne, so a little shout out to Soft Machine! :)

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/63389/roosevelts-man-arena

From the article:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

The speech was a wild success. According to Morris—who calls it “one of [Roosevelt’s] greatest rhetorical triumphs”—“Citizenship in a Republic” ran in the Journal des Debats as a Sunday supplement, got sent to the teachers of France by Le Temps, was printed by Librairie Hachette on Japanese vellum, was turned into a pocket book that sold 5000 copies in five days, and was translated across Europe. Roosevelt, Morris writes, “was surprised at its success, admitting to Henry Cabot Lodge that the reaction of the French was ‘a little difficult for me to understand.’”

Thank you BOJ. I am saving that quote and the story on Roosevelt's speech I did not know. Too good.