Im retired. I invented dice when I was a kid. How about you?

 

Energy is always required to provide lift over opposing forces. These same laws apply in our personal lives. Whenever an undertaking is begun, both the energy and the will to endure are essential. The winner of a five-kilometer race is declared at the end of five kilometers, not at one or two. If you board a bus to Boston, you don’t get off at Burlington. If you want to gain an education, you don’t drop out along the way—just as you don’t pay to dine at an elegant restaurant only to walk away after sampling the salad.

Whatever your work may be, endure at the beginning, endure through opposing forces along the way, and endure to the end. Any job must be completed before you can enjoy the result for which you are working.

Retirement planning is like life insurance. It should be viewed as nothing more than a hedge against the absolute worst-case scenario: in this case, becoming physically incapable of working and needing a reservoir of capitol to survive.

Retirement as a goal or final redemption is flawed for at least three solid reasons:

a. It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a non starter-nothing can justify that sacrifice.

b. Most people will never be able to retire and maintain even a hotdogs-for-dinner standard of living. Even one million is chump change in a world where traditional retirement could span 30 years and inflation lowers your purchasing power 2-4% per year. The math doesn't work. The golden years become the lower-middle-class revisited. That's a bittersweet ending.

c.If the math does work, it means that you are one ambitious, hardworking machine. If that's the case, guess what? One week into retirement, you'll be so damn bored you'll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes. You'll probably opt to look for a new job or start another company. Kinda defeats the purpose of waiting, doesn't it?

If you don't have a resume, what do you have?

How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch?
Or a reputation that precedes you?
Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?

Some say, "well, that's fine, but I don't have those."

Yeah, that's my point. If you don't have those, why do you think you are remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular? It sounds to me like if you don't have those, you've been brainwashed into acting like you're sort of ordinary.

Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for... those jobs don't get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever.

From the Lord’s condemnation of Job’s visitors, we learn much about how to comfort those suffering crises of faith. We learn that it does not help to have all the “right” answers if we do not speak the truth in love. (See Eph. 4:5.) With good cause Job complains to Eliphaz: “To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend.” (Job 6:14.)

We also learn that we risk divine displeasure when we cease to comfort and start to accuse. The Prophet Joseph Smith warned that those who see suffering come upon others must “judge not.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 162–63.)

From the failure of Job’s comforters, we further learn that the only abiding comfort must come from the Comforter. Job doesn’t need a carefully argued treatise solving the philosophical problem of evil. He needs a renewed witness that God has not forsaken him.

The book of Job is a profoundly provocative and rewarding book. It refuses to provide us with ready-made answers about why any of us, individually, suffers. It acknowledges how inexplicably cruel life can be. At the same time, it points to a way of enduring adversity. As Samuel Terrien observes, the Book of Job offers “not a speculative answer … but a way of consecrated living.” (“Introduction and Exegesis to Job,” Interpreter’s Bible, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1954, 3:902.)

In a world that seems not wholly intelligible, there is reassurance in knowing where to find solutions to problems of faith. We should welcome a book of scripture that throws us back—just as Job was thrown back—upon the necessity of seeking understanding through personal revelation from a living, and loving, God.

Sometimes, even having the right answers isn’t enough. Thus, Job’s fourth and final comforter, Elihu, utters speeches echoing sentiments that later issue from the whirlwind. Yet young Elihu’s words have no impact on Job. Evidently who speaks matters as much as, if not more, than what is said. Apart from what the Lord says, the fact that he speaks to Job at all fulfills Job’s deepest need—to be reassured that God has not forsaken him.

To our human witness as comforters, testifying of the ultimate goodness of God, must be added the witness of the Spirit that the Lord keeps company with the afflicted—that he loves us still, even now, in our desperation. Only the Lord can confirm his continuing love, through the voice of the only unfailing comforter—His Comforter.

Also at issue is Job’s relationship with his dogmatic comforters. While Job could have—and should have—received true comfort from his friends (see Mosiah 18:9), what he received instead was glib explanations about why they think he suffers. Job rejects their pious counsel that he accept his calamities as punishment for sin. To accept their heartless pieties, Job would have to confess that he feels deserving of his afflictions—which he does not, and should not, feel. Instead, he stoutly maintains that, weighed on the scales of justice, his suffering is disproportionate to any sin that could be laid to his charge. (See Job 31:4–40.)

Repeatedly, he cries out for an encounter with the Lord. He doesn’t want theology, he wants theophany. Job begs God to come into the dock so that he might prove his own innocence. (See Job 16:21; Job 23:3–4; Job 31:35.) Job vows to entrust his life into the hands of God, who prefers honesty to hypocrisy: “Let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will. …

“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.

“He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before him.” (Job 13:13, 15–16.)

We sense Job’s powerful integrity and genuine depth of feeling for the Lord—qualities seemingly absent from his coldly “correct” friends. Yet we also sense a measure of pride, even arrogance, that he, Job, a mere man, was prosecuting a case against the Almighty. No wonder Job stands condemned by the Lord in the final chapters of the book as one “that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge.” (Job 38:2.)

But while Job is condemned for attempting to instruct the Lord (see Job 40:2), he is also approved in the end. His comforters, by contrast, are only condemned. The Lord says: “My wrath is kindled against thee [Eliphaz], and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.” (Job 42:7.)

How has Job spoken the thing that is right? Perhaps it has been his speeches of repentance. Or perhaps it has been his refusal to pretend he understood what he didn’t understand; he has kept his integrity. He has steadfastly looked to the Lord for answers, pleading for revelation rather than accepting the pat human answers of his comforters.