We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)
Quoted by:
President Thomas S. Monson, BYU Devotional Be a Light to the World, November 1, 2011
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“God left the world unfinished; the pictures unpainted,
the songs unsung, and the problems unsolved,
that man might know the joys of creation.”
Thomas S. Monson, In Quest of the Abundant Life, March 1988.
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Unlike toy boats, we have been provided divine attributes to guide our journey. We enter mortality not to float with the moving currents of life but with the power to think, to reason, and to achieve.
Thomas S. Monson, The Race of Life, April 2012
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President Thomas S. Monson has used the following story in several of his talks. See for example: The Three Rs of Choice, October 2010.
Let us not find ourselves as indecisive as is Alice in Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. You will remember that she comes to a crossroads with two paths before her, each stretching onward but in opposite directions. She is confronted by the Cheshire cat, of whom Alice asks, “Which path shall I follow?”
The cat answers, “That depends where you want to go. If you do not know where you want to go, it doesn’t matter which path you take.”
Unlike Alice, we all know where we want to go, and it does matter which way we go, for by choosing our path, we choose our destination.