He said that growth is our natural state and we were born to grow, while comfort is a desire.

Immediately, I put his words in the context of the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Our entire existence is about growth. We grew in the spirit world prior to coming to this earth, we came to this earth so that we could continue to grow and we will hopefully have eternal growth after we move on from this mortal life.

We are literally, as Beck said, born to grow.

Ryan Comer, Standard-Examiner

We aren’t born to be comfortable, though that is what the natural man or woman in all of us desires.

For me personally, I recognize I’m usually not very satisfied when I’m comfortable.

Recently, I had a weeklong vacation planned. I had all these things in my mind that I wanted to do, things that I simply wasn’t able to do because of how busy my life normally is. Then, on the first day of my vacation, I got incredibly sick and proceeded to spend the entire week doing pretty much nothing.

Was it comfortable to have a week where I really didn’t have to do a whole lot or worry about a whole lot, even though it came because I was sick? Sure, I guess. But at the end of the week, I felt highly dissatisfied because I realized all that I wasn’t able to do that I really wanted, and frankly needed, to do.

The week came and it went, and it felt like I had accomplished nothing.

Several years ago, I was the high school sports reporter for the Standard-Examiner. My goal was to outperform every sports reporter in the state. I went to as many games as I could, regardless of how great the matchup was, and wrote as many feature stories as I could. Some of them may not have been the most compelling, but the point was to write as much as possible because as long as I was writing, I was being productive and helping the newspaper.

It wasn’t exactly comfortable because of the effort required, but I know that I grew as a writer and a journalist because of it.

One day, during a high school girls basketball tournament, I checked Twitter and noticed that the high school sports reporter at the Tacoma News Tribune near where I was born and raised in Washington state was posting highlight videos from basketball games he was covering. I thought to myself, “What an amazing idea. How many people are interested in these games but aren’t able to watch and won’t see any highlights? I can provide that with just my phone.”

Sky View was playing some team I can’t remember in the tournament and as I started posting video highlights from the game on my Twitter, I could see how well they were being received. One person reached out to thank me for allowing him to see them.

I don’t know if it was that tournament or one in another year, but Judge Memorial’s girls basketball team won a game on a thrilling play where a girl went from one end of the court to the other in about four seconds and scored on a layup as time expired to give her team the win. Judge Memorial was not in our coverage area, nor was the team that Judge Memorial was playing, but standing there near the hoop where this girl ultimately scored, I thought, “I should capture this on video just in case something crazy happens.” Something crazy did happen, I posted it on my Twitter and it blew up.

Instances like that were not a rarity. I captured the locker room celebration one time after Weber High’s football team won at Roy, and it blew up.

I don’t cite these examples to boast but to show that hard work resulted in growth. I could have said, “You know what? I already write a lot. I don’t need to capture highlights for videos. Nobody even asks for that kind of content, so who cares if I don’t give it to them?” But because I did, I saw the appreciation for it, and I feel that helped me grow into a more credible reporter. 

Choosing comfort would have been easy but not nearly as rewarding.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is all about growth as we strive to become the individuals a loving Heavenly Father wants us to become. Every one of us on earth demonstrated growth before we were born by choosing to follow Jesus Christ, and that is the reason we are all here. Our arrival here is evidence of growth, and our purpose here is more growth so that we can have eternal growth.

Choosing to grow is not easy. It requires sacrifice and faith. In the premortal life, it meant choosing Heavenly Father’s plan for us, which involved the Atonement of Jesus Christ, over Lucifer’s plan for us. We knew that Heavenly Father’s plan would require something of us, while Lucifer’s plan would not. Under Lucifer’s plan, all would have been saved no matter what. We rejected that, I assume because we all understood how dissatisfying that would be to receive something simply because we were entitled to it.

In mortality, we must continue to exercise faith and follow the commandments even if we don’t entirely understand or appreciate why, and no matter how difficult doing so may be. We’re given trials, some of which are truly of extreme difficulty, but that doesn’t absolve us of our need to demonstrate faith.

I imagine that after this life is over, there will still be growth required, just in different ways that can’t be understood right now. I hope that I can obtain the celestial kingdom so that growth and progress are never stopped.

Contact Standard-Examiner editor Ryan Comer at rcomer@standard.net.