Believe

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
-Buddha

Interesting.  I will agree with this one.  We should make our own decisions about what we believe.  And once we do, we should stick to them.  We need our own testimonies.  We are told to find out for ourselves.  And once we have one, we need to nurture it and care for it to help it grow.

Also, we also shouldn't assume that people haven't made their own decisions. 

There was a girl in school who seemed to love to go against everything "BYU normal."  She played devil's advocate for everything.  She spoke out all the time, making comments that would irk me to no end.  She was married, but would always talk about how she wouldn't take her husband's name because society expected her to.  She was so bugged that people in her wards would automatically call them "Brother and Sister So-and-so," and just assume she had taken her husband's name.  That's just how 'those people' are...right?   

This may seem silly, but I was really hurt by her words over a year and a half.  Though I was never brave enough to express my feelings to her, I really, really wanted to stand up to her and say that I did not take Alex's name because society made me.  I actually thought about it for a long time.  I didn't like the name DeBirk particularly.  I really liked Melinda Lockwood.  I am the last of the Lockwood line.  I'm a proud Lockwood!  How would I ever be a DeBirk? 

Alex never pressured me.  He never assumed I would change my name.  He did, however, sweetly tell me his feelings about his name, and what my taking his name would mean to him.  I softened.  I thought about it some more.  I made my own decision.  I became a DeBirk.  It didn't change the core of who I was, but it did bind me together with Alex.  In the end, I was happy to add his name to my own, his life to my life.

This is probably a silly example, but it did mean a lot to me.  I'm not a sheep.  I make my own decisions.  I decided to keep the honor code that I signed at BYU.  I agreed to do something, to live certain ways and wear certain things.  I agreed to do it, and I did.  Keeping my word doesn't mean that I don't have a brain of my own.  I think keeping your word is a pretty good thing.  (And if you don't want to live it, you don't have to go to BYU.)

Tangents again, sorry.  Being cooped up in California will do that do you, I guess.