When you realize who you really are, you will be sorry that you didn’t try harder.

This first happened long ago as I sought to learn physics and mathematics in my college years. I felt overwhelmed. It seemed to me that the other students could work the problems and master the material more quickly than I could. During examinations, I’ve had experiences that I think you’ve had. I would start with the first question. When I couldn’t see how to answer it, I would think, “well, I’ll go on to the next question.” I still remember the feeling of fear, really terror when I got to the last question and realized that I didn’t know how to do and answer any of them.

As time wore on, my discouragement led me to feel that it was useless to study. I began to play a little more basketball or I forgot what I did. I begin to think of quitting, and doing something easier.

It was on a night during that time of discouragement when I received the help that made all the difference for me. I can remember it as if it had just happened. Help came as a voice, an actual voice in my mind. It was not my voice. It was a soft and loving voice—but firm. The words voiced were these: “When you realize who you really are, you will be sorry that you didn’t try harder.”

I didn’t know then all that those words meant. I probably don’t know yet. But I knew then what to do. I went to work. I felt that I must have more ability to learn than I could see in myself. That knowledge kept me hard at work through my college years, in graduate school, and then as a teacher when it seemed still that everyone was smarter than I was, that they could do things I couldn’t do.

I began to try to understand that message of encouragement. By pondering and working during the years that followed, I came to realize who I really was. I was a spirit child of God. I had inherent in me the potential to learn what He knows. Because of the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ and my faith in Him, my sins could be washed away—first in the waters of baptism and then through continuing repentance. Thus, I could receive the gift of the Holy Ghost as a companion. And I came to know that by the power of the Holy Ghost, we may know the truth of all things.

Now, I know you’re smiling, you may reasonably ask, “Well, once you knew who you who really were and had the Holy Ghost as your companion, could you solve every physics problem and resolve every mathematical puzzle?”

An the true answer is, “Of course not.” But with the help of the Holy Ghost, I did learn how to learn things that were beyond my natural ability. I can remember in fact, reading in a physics text. I was gonna bring it here today to show you, I was puzzling over a set of equations. By the way, it was in thermodynamics, and it was by Sr. James Jeans, that doesn’t mean anything to you but that little book – I wish I should’ve brought here to show it to you. Because I remember, I read those equations, I could even show you in the book the equations, and they didn’t make any sense to me. But then, a feeling came into my heart. I knew that they were true, with exactly the same feeling that comes to me when I read passages in the Book of Mormon.

That didn’t make all physics clear to me. But it confirmed two things that have forever helped me try harder to learn. First, the Lord knows all truth—in physics and in everything else I needed to learn. Second, if I live worthy of the Holy Ghost, I can learn true things beyond my human ability. That gave me the confidence to keep trying harder even when the learning was difficult.




Learning Who You Really Are, Henry B. Eyring, Ensign College, November 2018