Choose Eternal Life

This entry is part of my general conference application series.

Choose Eternal Life, by Randall K. Bennett
Of the Seventy


I've been trying to play with randomness lately. I wanted to see what it looks like to allow certain variables to be randomly chosen, in a structured setting. This is my attempt at creating art by my conditions.

With formal training as an engineer, some may maintain that I'm too far on one side of some spectrum to appreciate or create art. They may be right, but here are two examples of these structured randomness art entries:



As you can tell, one deals with random distributions of dot sizes (black and white); the other keeps the circles the same size but changes colors randomly.

Where am I going with this? These things I'm trying to pass as art can be loosely seen as representations of life—my life in particular. Things happen that either are random or seem to be random (like the sizes and colors), but I choose how to arrange my life (the structured grid) and what I'll do with the results.

I know it's a stretch, but Elder Bennett's talk was so heavy on choices that I looked at my recent random fascination from another angle: from the constraints I set in place. Just like I can choose the parameters of my random "art," I can choose what I will do with seemingly random happenings in my life—as well as the predictable results, too!

Here is something applicable from what Elder Bennett taught:

In reality we have only two eternal choices, each with eternal consequences: choose to follow the Savior of the world and thus choose eternal life with our Heavenly Father or choose to follow the world and thus choose to separate ourselves from Heavenly Father eternally.

Whether or not you find beauty in my so-called random art, eternal life is beautiful.

And it's not random.

I choose eternal life.