What Shall It Profit a Man?

Well, life has been eventful to say the least. I kind of feel that since returning home from my mission, I have been tossed into a roaring tornado that has sporadically dumped me in a place which remains foreign to me. I'm just beginning to face the realization that I am not in Kansas anymore.
Change is certainly the stimuli to progress and evolution as a human being. It is difficult to embrace because it always foreign. It is uncomfortable because it is seldom expected. It is profitable because it is only by doing something new that we are able to become something newer, with an increased awareness of who we really are, and who we really have the power to become.
I have faced more challenges and obstacles in the past few weeks than perhaps in any other comparable period of my life. In such moments, it is very easy for the cynic within to flourish, and though I have at times been infected with the parasite of pessimism, I believe that I have learned in recent moments of contemplation that I ought to embrace that which surrounds me as a necessary means of growth and sustainance. It is in darkness that light shines most brilliantly. It is through glasses which yield an image which is blurred most close to us, that those things which lie further ahead are seen most clearly.
I have learned in recent moments of the reality of my dreams. Rather than letting go of them amidst constant difficulties and the turmoil of unforseeable chaos, I am holding to them more firmly than ever before. It is my love for others that gives me power to keep them and sustain them. No amount of money or worldly prestige can buy them or destroy them. "For what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world but lose his own soul?"