If you build it . . . sometimes no one comes, and that is okay.

In the movie Field of Dreams, the farmer is cryptically told, "If you build it, he will come." The farmer builds his baseball field in the middle of the corn fields, and then everyone who is supposed to comes. The film ends with a trail of cars winding their ways through the country roads to see the baseball field.

Today the fact that the film's iconic statement is often wrong sticks out to me. Now, nothing has happened: my life is actually going pretty well, and, once I survive end of the semester grading, things are working out as they should. But I realized that effort--even noble effort--doesn't always bring about the desired results: papers aren't accepted, you don't become best friends (or even good friends), thesis committees fall apart, fruit trees fail to provide the promised fruit, youth activities flounder, the boy doesn't propose, your son still doesn't understand math.

When these kinds of moments weigh on me, I tend to think back to a General Conference talk from 2004 by Elder Dennis Simmons. In it, he talks of the moments where things don't go according to our faith--when we face a fiery furnace or a den of lions or the sacrificial altar; when we are murdered for standing up against liars speaking ill of our faith. But I think that sometimes we tend to think of those "but if not" moments, only in terms of our spiritual lives, but the principle should apply to things outside of our faith as well because those are the things that keep us going.

So despite the failed thesis, the single apple harvested, and the tear-filled math lesson, we keep going, hoping that maybe this time they will come, "but if not" you'll keep trekking anyway.