I do not have a perfect understanding of glory—but I have enough to cause me to cautiously seek it.

The would-be glory-seeker will come across several stumbling blocks—or at least I did.

Like the following:

 1. We can all sense glory and pride are related.  Therefore caution is in order.

 2. Intuitively:  I was surprised to find that I harbored a palpable dislike for those I knew from my own life who seemed to have a good measure of glory.  What to make of this?

 3. It seems somewhat…selfish…to explicitly pursue glory when all around me are others with real needs.  How do I justify this?  Is this something I can, in good conscience, pray for help with?

In order:

 1.Yep.  But read on

 2. On further reflection, the dislike had three stems:

   – envy

   – fear at the comparison between myself and others, where I came up inferior

   – genuine merited dislike, for status used as a weapon, or shown carelessly (sometimes specifically to inspire envy and fear!),

Re: the first two, the problem was obviously me.  With those who were actually disliked—the problem was the cruelty, pride, and callousness/ignorance, not the glory itself.

3.  “Can one righteously seek glory?”  This question probably deserves its own post, but I think simply thinking to ask it is a good 30-40% of the battle.  But here’s one start of a take:

One phrase that came to mind was “Men are that they might have joy.”  (2N 2:25) Joy carries a lot of weight in the scriptures, but we use it in secular life all the time: the joy of a pilot in flight, the joy of cooking, the joy of using a well-made tool, the joy of being really good at something, the joy of being out in nature—there is actually quite a lot of joy out there.

I have a particular brother that is a joy to be around.  He’s cheerful, warm, and has a knack for making everyone laugh.

I have a suspicion that there is a strong connection between joy and glory.