To Exist is to Radiate

When I was working with the IRC last semester I got to meet a lot of refugees who used to be child soldiers.  I remember one afternoon I was picking one of the refugees up at his home in West Valley for an interview at Spaghetti Factory.  As he was changing into some nicer clothes, I got to sit and talk with his roommates, all of whom were my friends because I taught their computer class.  They asked if I would like milk or Tang, and I sat in their sparsely furnished living room and sipped my milk while we talked.  They told me about their wives, children, girlfriends and family who they had to leave at home in Eritrea, and how they hoped their families would get permission to live in the United States one day.  They told me about their phone calls home, which were seldom because they were so expensive, and how their children were growing up without a dad.  Then they told me about their new lives.  They showed me their new cell phones and talked about their struggles to find jobs.  I assured them that I would help them as much as I could.  I was embarrassed to be taking only one of them to an interview that day, because they all were so eager to work.  It was such an intimate setting, me alone with these four kind men in their apartment, and I felt so much love for them, so much eagerness to help them.  My heart ached for their pain.  I felt guilty that, after my shift was over, I would get to return home to my wonderful family, eat a filling meal, and then go shopping without financial worries as I swiped my credit card.

But these men still had so much hope and optimism, despite their past and current sorrows.  When they finally got jobs washing dishes at Spaghetti Factory, they came into IRC and told me with enthusiastic smiles.  We were so excited that we would shake hands, then talk, then shake hands again, and I would have hugged them if I had been allowed.  It was a wonderful moment; a triumph in spite of so many difficult circumstances.  It was an experience that I will never forget, and one that made the struggles in Africa so personal.  I got to know the people who the wars have affected.  And, in doing so, I was affected too.  These days, nothing big happens on this earth that doesn't concern us; and even if we aren't personally affected, it should concern us, because we are all Heavenly brothers and sisters, and we have a profound responsibility to help each other.

I know there is a lot of hype going around about the KONY 2012 campaign.  I recognize that the video tries to play off of people's emotions to get funding for Invisible Children.  And I know that the issue isn't as big as it once was.  But I think it's great that a lot of people who surf the web for the sake of catching up on "The Bachelor" or just to peruse the latest gossip about Kim Kardashian are made to think about real issues.  It's true that dealing with the LRA is a complicated issue, but the fact of the matter is that Joseph Kony is evil.  Even if all that the video achieves is making people more empathetic and aware of the conflicts going on in the world, I think it is a good thing.

There is one responsibility which no man can evade and that responsibility is personal influence. Man's unconscious influence, unconscious influence, the silent, subtle radiation of his personality. The effect of his words and acts. These are tremendous. Every moment of life he is changing to a degree the life of the whole world.

Every man has an atmosphere which is affecting every other. Man cannot escape for one moment from this radiation of his character. This constantly weakening of strengthening of others. He cannot evade the responsibility by saying it is an unconscious influence. He can select the qualities he would permit to be radiated. He can cultivate sweetness, calmness, trust, generosity, truth, justice, loyalty, nobility, and make them vitally active in his character. By these qualities he will constantly affect the world. This radiation to which I refer comes from what a person really is, not from what he pretends to be. Every man by his mere living is radiating sympathy, sorrow, or morbidness, cynicism, or happiness or hope, or any other hundred qualities. Life is a state of radiation and absorption. To exist is to radiate.

-President David O. McKay