Change in Pressure

To Be Constant

When I was growing up, my father had a barometer hanging on his bedroom wall. A barometer measures the changes in external air pressure, predicting weather changes, and it helped Dad know if it was a good day to fly his small aircraft.

I was always fascinated with this instrument. I have since wondered if we aren't sometimes like a barometer, and change with the pressures outside ourselves. I hear a lot of talk about 'peer pressure' as if it's a given. I never felt slave to it, choosing instead to follow an internal compass, but know that we are affected a great deal by the climate around us.

I like to think about those for whom the external pressure changed drastically, and yet they were constant: Adam, Abraham, Job, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Joseph Smith, Joseph F. Smith (“true blue, through and through”), and Sir Thomas More, to name a few.

Robert Bolt, in my favorite play A Man For All Seasons, describes the self as “an equivocal commodity.” His main character, Sir Thomas More, says: “We speak of being anchored to our principles. But if the weather turns nasty you up with an anchor, let it down where there’s less wind, and the fishing’s better. And ‘look,' we say, 'look, I’m anchored.'”

Sir Thomas More didn't move his anchor when the tides and winds changed, and was executed because of it when he refused to utter the words that would have saved his life but were contrary to his beliefs.

The moral climate of the world has changed a great deal in my lifetime. Sometimes it can change in a moment.

One virtue we seldom hear about any more is constancy, the quality of staying true to one's self and one's beliefs no matter the pressures outside.

I suspect it's a virtue the Lord values.



“We do not have to live, but we must be true to ourselves and God.”