As The New York Times reported, “Participants recalled the exercise in self-analysis as both eerie and impressive, saying that it seemed as if Mr. Romney were talking about someone other than himself.”
Mitt Romney believed that his defeat rested in his hands: he had appeared out of touch, cold, mechanical. He blamed no one but himself for the outcome.
Empowered by his firm conviction that he was the master of his fate, Mr. Romney launched his second Hindenburg campaign in 2012. But similar mistakes, as we all know, produced similar results. Mr. Romney, it seems, was not made for the Oval Office.
Mormons—including Mitt and myself—grow up believing that we should “act for ourselves and not be acted upon” (The Book of Mormon). We learn that we have moral agency and are responsible for the quality our own lives.
But, as Mr. Romney’s case demonstrates, many factors beyond our individual control influence the consequences of our actions, no matter how carefully planned. The circumstances of Mitt’s birth made his campaign possible, but they also doomed his chances of actually winning.
In his own blog, Dr. John Glavin has emphasized that, in life, “It Shoots,” not us. He has previously discussed the consequences of believing that a beautiful life should come to us as an entitlement of our humanhood. But often, Carroll Fellows fall victim to the opposite vice: an over-confidence in our ability to achieve our own dreams.
I felt that over-confidence on my mission. I burst out of customs at Tullamarine Airport swinging Bibles from both hands, ready to baptize the Pope, should he ever find his way Down Under. I had worked three times as hard as my associates at the Missionary Training Center, and I expected a triple blessing.
But my first several months of missionary were drought, not bounty. I knocked thousands of doors and harassed hundreds of Chinese students, but no one accepted my message. Like Mitt, I wrote lists: what I did well, what could I do better, and then I acted on those lists. Nothing changed.
I had forgotten—or perhaps had never learned—that, in missionary work as in life, I was but one tiny thread in a much larger tapestry of interweaving people and forces. As a missionary, I had virtually no control over the outcome: I could only decide whether or not to do my own best.
The world’s greatest people have learned that we only overcome the world, as it were, when we content ourselves in choosing to do the best with the circumstances dealt us.
Written by Thomas Christiansen (SFS '15)
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