“Your Garden of Possibilities,” For the Strength of Youth, July 2023.
Your Garden of Possibilities
You are what you grow.
Illustrations by Katie Dockrill
Scripture parables and growing plants go together like chocolate and peanut butter. (Or jam and toast, if you prefer. Or perhaps wind and kites, or beaches and sandcastles?)
You’ve got the parable of the sower (see Luke 8), the allegory of the tame and wild olive trees (see Jacob 5), and the analogy of faith growing like a seedling (see Alma 32). There’s the parable of the mustard seed (see Matthew 13), the seed growing secretly (see Mark 4), and the laborers in the vineyard (see Matthew 20). There are lots of them.
Of course, there’s always room for one more plant parable, right? Let’s compare growing a garden to growing three key strategies for how you consume media.
Strategy 1: Choose Intentionally
In a real garden, even if you wanted to grow only tomatoes, there are more varieties than you could possibly hope to grow in your lifetime. And, of course, you could grow any of thousands of other vegetables, berries, fruit trees, or flowers. The possibilities are nearly endless.
Yet even that number of options doesn’t come close to the number of choices you face with media. Long gone are the days your grandparents told you about when they had to twist a television knob or radio dial to find one of a limited number of available channels. Now you have nearly limitless options in television, podcasts, social media, internet streaming, and more—an absolute feast of possibilities.
President Dallin H. Oaks, First Counselor in the First Presidency, has taught: “It is good to view wholesome entertainment or to obtain interesting information. But not everything of that sort is worth the portion of our life we give to obtain it. Some things are better, and others are best.”1
Just as you’d have to choose what to plant in the ground, your media strategies start with making deliberate choices about where to spend your time. Don’t accidentally let hours drift by on random media. Your time is precious! Use it on the best options.
Strategy 2: Water What You Want to Grow
It’s hard to imagine anybody choosing to care for a patch of poison oak or stinging nettle. The world is full of weeds that can harm us, just as there are many types of harmful media. Pornography is one of those weeds, yet it’s not the only one.
To keep weeds out of a garden, two general approaches are helpful. The first is what we tend to think of most frequently: pull the weeds out of the ground. With pornography or other negative media, the equivalent would be to put in safeguards so that you stop seeing or using those media.
But there’s a second, less talked-about solution that can and should be used alongside pulling weeds: water and nurture the good plants. In a garden, if you put energy into the good plants that you want to grow, they can crowd out and displace the undesirable plants over time. Pesky weeds begin to struggle for water and sunlight as they’re overpowered by the desirable plants you’re nurturing.
The same holds true with bad media habits. As you examine your media choices, seek out good media options—uplifting music, quality podcasts, encouraging videos—that can help crowd out the undesirable ones.
If you need any hints on how to choose those good media options, President Oaks reminds us that “we have to forego some good things in order to choose others that are better or best because they develop faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and strengthen our families.”2
Strategy 3: Sink Roots Deep before the Heat Arrives
Some seasons in life seem to sail along without much effort on your part. During such times you might feel like everything is going your way, with no major struggles or problems. For plants, a time such as this would be springtime.
Plants use these ideal times wisely. Rather than take it easy, they sink roots deep into the soil so they’re protected when the scorching summer sun arrives.
With your own media strategies, consider a similar approach. Aim to develop good media habits (especially spiritually uplifting media habits such as scripture study) long before times of stress or trial arrive. Then, when those times do arrive, your good habits will help you survive.
President Henry B. Eyring, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, put it this way: “What we will need in our day of testing is a spiritual preparation.”3 One part of such a spiritual preparation could be to improve your media habits so that you have the Spirit with you to draw on when times get tough.
Adding these few strategies to your media choices might take a little extra effort, especially at first, but your harvest will be worth it!