Life and its tendancies

Ironically I sat down today with an idea in mind of what to write about and its funny how things tie in together on occasion. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m currently engaged to be married next year, but that it’s a long distance engagement. Anyone can also know that it sucks. A lot. As I’m writing this, I’m currently on a flight out of the Salt Lake City airport on route back home. This weekend was the end of my near month long journey around the country on various job hunts, visiting family, and just clearing my head in general. My final stop was to visit my fiancé out here, as she made a trip down from Idaho to visit me this weekend.
Relationships in general are very hard work and it only seems natural that distance makes it even harder. A greater responsibility of trust is placed on your shoulders in order to keep the relationship strong and unwavering. There are many temptations, if you allow them, that happen in long distance relationships but I’m not really writing about that. They can happen to anybody as the thought tends to wander when your significant other isn’t anywhere near you or wont before long amounts of time. That’s where secrets and problems can develop again if you let them, but again I’m not talking about that.
What makes it hard obviously while you are apart is communication or lack there of, physical contact, as well as visual contact. You can re-create the first and third there, but physical contact well, you can’t do anything about that. When I say that however I don’t necessarily mean of an intimate kind, but that is included. Anything from just touching their shoulder, holding their hand, or even a small hug. These things are a pretty important part of any relationship, but thankfully it’s not the most important part. My theory that has been tested and tried throughout the years and various relationships of many kinds is that communication and honesty is the key to making anything work. In long distance relationships the third ingredient: drive or desire. The more you want that relationship to work, the stronger your drive is, the harder you’ll try to keep it together. Lucky for us in this day and age we can communicate long distances with people in a way that is practically the same as being right there with them. You just have to use all the tools at your disposal to communicate and communicate often. Not just on important stuff, but the little things as well. Even just a small note saying hello through a text or a random I love you at some point goes a long way.
The single most difficult part in my opinion is that because you are far away you get lonely. Yes being able to text, chat, call, or video chat makes it like you are there but the sad fact is that you aren’t and life tends to be a little sour. Something that is useful is knowing of or having a date when you’ll be together again in the near or distant future and focusing your attention on it. You can make little in-between goals of dates and times of things to do in between them or even things that mark midway or partial way points to that time. In my case the real issue isn’t so much the countdown of when we’ll see each other again, it’s the countdown of when we’ll see each other again and not part again. Perhaps that’s the worst long distance relationship, being engaged. However as I wait for next April to roll around, with this past weekend, Christmas, and a possible and hopeful date in February to break up the time a little bit I go back to my first comment and that is that I’m on a plane flying from Salt Lake City. A flight roughly half full of missionaries.
It’s not uncommon to see missionaries for the LDS church when you’re either flying to or from Salt Lake. These gentlemen, and sometimes ladies, aren’t doing the weekend mission trip type deal or even the week long summer vacation to fix people’s homes or anything; they go for the long haul of two years. Two years away from their families, homes, friends, tv, music, and just about every convenience that fills our normal lives. They do this to avoid distractions from what they set out to do and to be able to better focus on the task at hand, untainted from the ever changing world around them. Its part focus, part running blind, but really who needs to keep up with pop culture or politics these days? Its honestly a waste of time, especially if you’re headed to another country like these gentlemen are. The funny thing is the major dejavu I’m having at the moment. I’m looking at myself seven long years ago as I sat in their position on my way to Mexico City. A frightened 19 year old with only two months intensive gospel and Spanish training only to be dumped off with other missionaries in a semi structured, semi have at it world of a missionary in a country that I’ve never been to before.
I’ve long since forgotten what its like to have that anxiety to be doing something I believe to be right, yet be quite afraid of the new feeling of it all, not to mention being separated from everyone I know and love for two long years. It was extremely hard to do and extremely difficult on a daily basis and you’d better believe that I kept quite the countdown of the day that I’d get to return. In that mindset of remembering what it’s like to have to wait to see those I love for two years, suddenly six months doesn’t seem so bad.