A Season

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." Thus begins Ecclesiastes chapter 3.

I realized I wanted to take the time to really look at what is in this chapter, and what might be notably absent. So, here it goes. From Eccl 3:2-8:

A time to be born,	and a time to die;
a time to plant,	and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill,	and a time to heal;
a time to break down,	and a time to build up;
A time to weep,	and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn,	and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones,	and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace,	and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get,	and a time to lose;
a time to keep,	and a time to cast away;
A time to rend,	and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence,	and a time to speak;
A time to love,	and a time to hate;
a time of war,	and a time of peace.

Well, I think I'll just leave this post at that and refer to it later.

Sounding Brass and a Tinkling Cymbal

Paul says: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." (1 Cor 13:3)

This might be best summed up by the famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt: "No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care."

I'd like to explore my understanding of this verse a bit. To do so, I would like to explore how it relates to sales.

Sales
I have been in sales all my life. So have you. I didn't know it; in fact, I would have denied it fiercely at times, but it is true!

When I was a child, I was constantly selling my parents on letting me go play with my friends. I was constantly selling my friends on what I wanted to play. And every night, every single night, with persistence and without discouragement, I would try to sell my parents on letting me eat something after or as they were putting me to bed. It never worked, but somehow I never got discouraged either! I just kept right on selling!

Today, my biggest and most important sales job of life is being a Dad! I am constantly selling! I am selling my children on desired behavior. I am selling my children on ideas of all sorts! I am selling my wife on things I think would be good for them! I am constantly selling.

Case in point: while writing this I told my daughter it was time to sit on the potty. She said, in an attempt at monotone: "No, I can't. I am a robot." I responded in monotone: "Robot, it is time for you to sit on the potty." She said "okay," and went and sat on the potty. Sales!

I also sell at my job. I program a web application. I have no leadership role in the company I work for, but I am constantly selling. I am selling other developers on what I think is good design; I am selling other team members and managers on what I think is good software development process; I am selling product managers on how I think something in the product could be improved.

In short, any time we wish to exert influence, we sell. Facebook is perhaps the largest sales engine in the world! It's all about people spreading ideas and influence. This is sales.

In the last year, I have become actively engaged in professional sales. I know, I know, I said my job was programming. But in the last couple years, I have found an idea that is much more meaningful for me to sell.

When I began, I claimed no sales experience. That's pretty ridiculous in light everything I stated above, but I didn't understand that at the time. It took me a year of learning and growing before my first sale closed, that is, before someone bought into the idea I was sharing sufficiently to pay money to live it.

Since then, I have closed numerous sales, and I have learned a number of things along the way. Here's where I begin getting back to that verse in Corinthians. Hopefully by the end of this, it will all tie in nicely.

Successful sales is all about two things in my view: belief and reverence.

Belief
Successful sales requires belief. Belief in yourself and belief in what you are offering.

Belief in Yourself
I have never been a professional motivational/inspirational speaker, but in my experience of listening to them, it seems they have one core objective: to inspire one's belief in self. If you have no belief that you can do something, you will never have the faith to do it! Faith, or action, can be based only on belief.

I recently read that "23 million dollars a year is spent in one zip code in Southside of Chicago on lottery tickets. People are spending more money on luck than on their own potential." I agree with this writer's assessment. To me it is sad evidence that these people believe more in luck than in themselves. Indeed, our world is in great need of self-belief.

It is my belief that the best way to develop this self belief is through growing closer to God combined with doing things outside our comfort zone, i.e. exercising faith. More could be said on this, but I don't want to go on too big of a tangent here. Suffice it to say that not everyone with a high sense of self-belief has a strong relationship with God, but I believe that a meaningful relationship with God will gestate a firm foundation of self-belief.

Belief in Your Offering
Whether you are a parent selling your child on going to the potty, a missionary selling an atheist on your religion, or a peddler selling goods door to door, a key component is believing that what you are offering will bless the people to whom you are selling.

This is pretty easy when you're a potty-training parent! As an adult you have personal experience in knowing that it's a great thing to be potty trained! That may sound silly in this context, but having personal experience with what you are selling is key. It's awfully hard to sell something you don't believe in enough to have for yourself.

If you are a missionary, having a personal testimony is crucial. Personal experiences where your belief and religion have blessed your life are indispensable. These provide you with continuing motivation and purpose, and also are valuable to others as you share those experiences in ways that can connect with them.

And, of course, if you are selling wares, you best be a product of the product yourself. Can you make some sales without it? Yes, certainly. But believe in it enough yourself to be a card-carrying member, a product of the product, and you will be ever-so-much more effective.

Reverence
I am going to guess that when you read the word reverence above, you either weren't really paying attention, or you thought something like: "say what? Reverence? What the..."

So often we associate reverence with folding our arms and being quiet in church or during a prayer, but this is not at all what the word means. Reverence means love and respect.

Love
Here we come back to Paul's comment: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." (1 Cor 13:3)

You can know everything about your offering, you can know everything about your prospect, and you can know everything about how to articulate, but if you don't love the prospect for who they are independent of their decision, you're just making noise. The world has enough distracting noise; it is not a scarce resource. Please don't feel that you need to create more of it!

Sure, your noise might sound a little less annoying that another's, and as such you may attract some people to it, but could you imagine following someone who doesn't really care about you? How long would you stick around? You will have a hard time being a leader of people you don't care about, and you won't be able to maintain it long term.

Even more, without charity, the purpose and meaning of your efforts to produce this noise will be hollow. Like it or not, making a positive impact on the world requires relationships. In other words, successful sales requires relationships.

If you want to potty-train your child, do you want it mostly because you're sick of changing diapers? Could you consider talking to your child to assess why s/he might want to do it, and what concerns s/he might have about it? This is showing respect and love, this is reverencing your child.

Respect
Love fosters respect. My favorite definition of respect comes from Webster's 1828 dictionary: "to esteem as possessed of real worth." (source)

Some may say "but what if someone doesn't deserve my respect?! I can love them, but that doesn't mean I have to respect them!"

I would ask, is this person human? May this person have hopes and dreams, trials and difficulties, and joys and sorrows of which you are unaware? Is this person a child of the High King, the True and Living God? If you love them, then will you not esteem them as possessed of real worth? "Remember the worth of [a soul] is great in the sight of God." (D&C 18:10)

If we wish to have an influence on the world, however, it is not enough to simply respect other people: we must also respect their choices.

Do we esteem agency as a gift of real worth? I believe agency is one of the greatest gifts given to mankind. Though let me modify the question just slightly: do we esteem the agency of others as a gift of real worth? It is my natural imperfections that lead me to say I often do and I often don't.

I can make as powerful an invitation as I am able to persuade my daughter to choose to sit on the potty, but in the end, it's her choice! Yes, I could (and admittedly have) pick her up and put her on the potty and hold her there, but if done without her permission, I am not respecting her agency.

Does this mean I let her do whatever she wants all the time? Well, in a way yes and in a way no. Since I have a stewardship over my daughter, I am able to place consequences to encourage the behavior I believe will best serve her.

Let's consider another situation. As a missionary, I may share the most heartfelt, vulnerable, touching testimony of which I am capable. The Spirit may be felt in abundance. My heart may be filled with love for the individual with whom I am conversing. Feeling all this, I invite the him/her to come to church with us.

So what happens? Well let's say the individual is closed off. Through a course of life experiences that we may never know, s/he has chosen to be completely unwilling to open up. The person stands up, thanks me for my time, and asks me not to return. As I begin to ask some questions, hoping to understand him/her and see where this is coming from, s/he refuses to answer other than to invite me to leave.

What now? Am I upset? Am I frustrated? Am I hurt? These things largely depend on my respect for his/her agency. I may make the greatest, most inspiring invitation of which I am capable. I may ask all the right questions. I may do everything "right," but when it comes down to it, do I honor another's choice?

To sum this up, approaching someone with an agenda, an attempt to control, is disrespectful. Approaching someone with an intention, an invitation, is respectful. Detaching my personal self-worth and emotional well being from their response is a sign that I respect their choice.

Conclusion
Negotiations, sales, bargaining, it all seeks the same end: coming to an agreement. However, agreements are not the greatest benefit of successful sales. The greatest benefit of successful sales is meaningful relationships.

It's awfully hard to create meaningful relationships if you don't care about people or if you disrespect them. Charity respects others and their choices. We may not agree with another's choices, but we honor them and detach ourselves from them emotionally. This way of being, one based in respectful charity, will actually foster more agreements than less.

Again, as Paul wrote: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." (1 Cor 13:3)

Corinthians and Moroni on Charity

I wanted to do a comparison of 1 Corinthians 13 and Moroni 7 and their respective comments about charity. I'm not really commenting on this right now, mostly because it was a good bit of work to set up the table in blogger! But it's here for my reference later.

One thing I do like about this is that, it seems every row is worthy of it's own significant discussion!

1 Corinthians 13:1-8,13	Moroni 7:44-47
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains,
and have not charity, I am nothing.	for if [a man] have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
Charity suffereth long,	And charity suffereth long,
and is kind;	and is kind,
charity envieth not;	and envieth not,
charity vaunteth not itself,
is not puffed up,	and is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly,
seeketh not her own,	seeketh not her own,
is not easily provoked,	is not easily provoked,
thinketh no evil;	thinketh no evil,
Rejoiceth not in iniquity,	and rejoiceth not in iniquity
but rejoiceth in the truth;	but rejoiceth in the truth,
Beareth all things,	beareth all things,
believeth all things,	believeth all things,
hopeth all things,	hopeth all things,
endureth all things.	endureth all things.
	Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing,
Charity never faileth:	for charity never faileth.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;	Wherefore, cleave unto charity,
but the greatest of these is charity.	which is the greatest of all,
	for all things must fail—But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever

 

Charity Never Faileth

In First Corinthians and in Moroni, we read similar verses about charity. Comparing them is interesting, but that will be for another post. I am interested, however, in something both of them say, particularly the phrase "charity never faileth."

This is the slogan for the Relief Society organization, the oldest and largest women's organization in the world: Charity Never Faileth.

So I would ask... charity never fails... at what?

My initial understanding is and has always been that not failing means it never goes away; it endures forever. In Paul's words: "Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." (1 Cor 13:8) Despite many things that eventually will be done away, charity will never be done away. Charity endures forever.

Now that said, I do not think that this is necessarily the only meaning of the phrase charity never faileth.

This chapter begins with Paul explaining the importance of charity in our individual lives.

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

"And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

"And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." (1 Cor 13:1-3)

After reading these verses, I feel that Paul has impressed rather indelibly that we don't want to ignore our development of charity. While there's a lot to talk about in these verses, I would consider only a small bit. Paul says that without charity, what I say means nothing, "I am nothing" and other seemingly noble acts "profiteth me nothing."

Really? The gift of prophecy? Understanding all mysteries? Having all knowledge? Having faith to move mountains? And I am nothing?! Giving all my material things to the poor profits me nothing?! Why?! Why does a lack of charity make all of these things essentially worthless to me?

I think the reason might be that charity never faileth.

"But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.

"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure." (Moroni 7:47-48 emphasis added)

Could it be that charity -- true, pure, undefiled charity -- never faileth to bring a man (or woman, of course) back to the kingdom of God? Could it be that this love will lead us to be like Him? That our way of being toward all men will be as is our Lord and Savior's and that as such, our hearts will desire righteousness, goodness, and kindness? And if our hearts desire these things, will it not bring us to the actions, words, and thoughts that lead us unto Christ?

Charity never faileth. Yes, it endures forever, but this is not all. Charity saves us. It is the charity of Christ that brings us the offering of His Atonement, and it is His gift of charity which He "bestow[s] upon all who are true followers of [Him]" which never fails to lead us back to Him.

John said "We love [Christ], because [Christ] first loved us." (John 4:19) And I would say that I love my brother because Christ first loved me, for "he who loveth God love his brother also," (John 4:21) otherwise "he is a liar." (John 4:20)

Opposition and Agency

Not long ago I made a comment on Facebook about opposition in all things. A friend of mine took issue with my comment and gave me some intriguing feedback. This spurred me on a journey to better understand what opposition in all things really means and how it is related to agency.

Agency is a beautiful thing. It's profoundly simple, it's meaningful, it's pure, and yet it's our greatest fear and we all have it no matter what.

Before this life we lived with God as spirits. (Note, you may have a different set of religious beliefs than me, so if I state a doctrine like this and you disagree with it, pass it over. I'm not here to convince you of my religious beliefs, I am only using some of them as a backdrop for my understanding of the principles at hand.) There was a war in heaven during that time (Rev. 12:3-9) in which we were able to choose to fight on God's side or Satan's side. Actually, it says "a third part," which means maybe another choice was to sit on the sidelines, I'm not sure. At any rate, we had agency there. 

Point: agency extends beyond just this mortal sphere.

But how did we have agency? What enabled the choice? "The Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other." (2 Ne. 2:16) Could there have been any choice to make in Heaven if there was only God to choose from? Quite simply, there could not, and a third part chose to follow Satan.

Point: for our agency to take on any semblance of meaning, there had to be options -- there had to be a choice!

"For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so. . .righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad." (2 Ne. 2:11) "And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things." (2 Ne 2:13)

So there were opposing options first, which granted us agency. But that's not the beginning of it either! We don't know much here, but it seems we had choice even prior to that. "And the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first." It sounds as though any of us could have made the choice to volunteer ourselves.

Satan had the choice to do so at any rate. It seems he chose to create another plan and present it, "saying--Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor. But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me--Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever." (Moses 4:1-2)  And so there were options - to volunteer or not volunteer; to choose God's plan or present another of our own.

Point: inasmuch as there is agency, there is opposition in all things; inasmuch as agency is an eternal principle, opposition in all things is an eternal principle.

But wait, if opposition in all things is eternal, does this mean we have to continually face difficulty through the eternities? Isn't the promise of heaven that we can rest from such?! I do not believe eternal difficulties await us, and I hope to illustrate why both may coincide by the end of this post.

We live in a world today that is full of opposing choices. No matter what situation we are in, we are at choice at least to some degree. Victor Frankl said "Everything can be taken from man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." (Man's Search for Meaning)

Men and environment may conspire to limit, alter, or remove our options of choice, be it through abuse, disaster, injury, death, misunderstanding, illness, etc. These trials, as we call them, are our circumstances. For every such circumstance and experience there is also an opposite possibility: love, comfortable weather, miraculous protection, birth, understanding, health, etc. We generally call these circumstances blessings, I think because we like them.

Now here's what intrigues me about this whole thing. I do not see anything that says we have to experience one side to partake of the other. I don't believe that this is what opposition in all things means.

For example, do we have to experience a tornado to experience a sunny day? No. Do we have to experience illness to experience health? Of course not. Now, we do rightly have to experience birth before we can experience death, that's part of life's process. That said, we do not have to experience a painful death of a loved one to thus be able to experience the joy of a child's birth.

Point: opposition in all things is not about experience, it's about choice.

It seems to me that 2 Nephi 2:23 supports this. It reads (emphasis added) "wherefore [Adam and Eve] would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin." These verb choices intrigue me.

Christ "went about doing good" (Acts 10:38) and yet He never sinned. Did He know sin? Of course! He saw it all around Him! And beyond that, Satan tempted Him! (Matthew 4:3-10) Jesus was given the chance to "[be] enticed by the one or the other," and He chose righteousness.

Point: opposition in all things explains that there are different circumstances we may experience, but it does not imply that we must experience opposing circumstances.

This all leads me to an intriguing question: Do you think Christ ever labelled any of His life experiences as bad? There were evil men conspiring against Him continually, there were many who claimed to be His friends who turned away from Him, and on and on. From my perspective, it seems He had many trying experiences... but did anything bad happen to Him? (Please note that I am distinguishing bad from evil.) Perhaps the most evil act in all of mankind was His cruciferous (is that the right word?) martyrdom, but it seems to me that Christ did not look upon it as a bad experience for himself. Undesirable, unpleasant, horrible, painful, excruciating, rooted in evil, vile, unjust... yes! All of those and more! And yet it was a necessary part of His work and our salvation.

Christ's eternal life is the ultimate example of the principle that problems manifest solutions that work to our advantage. Or in the words of God Himself, "know thou, my son, that all these things shall give the experience, and shall be for thy good. The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?" (D&C 122:7,8)

Point: our experiences work for our gain. They may be heartrendingly painful or rejoice-fully blissful, but believing that all our experiences are for our good gives strength and perspective to not just endure, but endure well our trials.

I recently heard this amusing anecdote: "we call them trials because they're hard -- there's a reason we don't call it a happy!" I laughed, and then I started thinking about it. After some thought and research, I have come to believe that the two are not mutually exclusive.

Using Google, it seems the etymology of trial comes from triet or to try, i.e. the act or process of testing. Tests do not have happiness abolition as a requirement. I have taken some very fun tests! Indeed, in sports, a test that is your equal or slightly better is the most enjoyable to engage!

President Thomas S. Monson said "To live greatly, we must develop the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and triumph with humility."

Point: Happiness and trials are not mutually exclusive; we can find and maintain happiness even in the midst of them.

In all this, I do not desire to make light of anyone's pain. I don't doubt the difficulty encountered nor the effort and courage mustered to face trials of enormous proportions. Healing can take time. Healing can also take effort. Yet healing does not exclude joy, happiness, or optimism, rather it encourages them from what may be tender and shallow soil.

Also, to say there is no sadness in trial is folly. Tears of sorrow are common and even welcome. I believe crying is a God-given gift to express feeling and console the soul. However, it is worth noting that sadness is not the opposite of happiness! A sense of sorrow and joy can co-exist such as when we feel the loss of a loved one who passes while also feeling the joy that s/he is rejoicing with loved ones beyond, or when a mother sees off her missionary son and feels sad to see him go, yet is overjoyed with his righteous choice. This is what mixed emotions is all about. (Mosiah 25:8-11) The opposite of happiness, then, is misery (2 Nephi 2:13). Thanks to Christ, even in the darkness of immense trial, we can learn to embrace sorrow, happiness, and other emotions while putting away the depressant misery.

Were it not for Christ, I believe misery would be unavoidable. It is only through Him that happiness, joy, hope, and peace are afforded, through Him that this "milk and honey" are available to us "without money and without price." (2 Ne. 26:25)

Point: Happiness and sadness are emotional blessings and not mutually exclusive. We can experience both simultaneously and, when in the midst of trial, we can seek these over misery. Overcoming misery requires Christ and through Him we may have peace.

Conclusion
Finally, I love the following quote by Haruki Murakami:
"And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."

Opposition in all things is not referring to our circumstances but to our choices and their consequences. There are options to choose from by which we may be enticed and these options have their differing consequences. Those consequences lead to opposing circumstances, and thus opposition in all things has a relationship with circumstance, but only consequentially.

No matter our circumstance, whether our circumstances be difficult or delightful, we are at choice and we can find happiness. If we choose to view all experiences as for our good, we will have no use for the "this is a horrible experience" victim mentality. We may recognize a circumstance as horrible, yet we find no value in focusing on that. We may feel sorrow, but we can dismiss misery through Christ. What opposition in all things represents is that in a given moment, we are at choice, and our choice will determine who we become.

A Principle of Human Nature

We humans are funny. That is to say, human nature is rather illogical. That is to say, common sense is not common.

One principle of human nature is, I think, this: We want guarantees, and if we don't get one, we manufacture one.

The folly in this is that when our manufactured guarantee is not met, when reality meets our manufactured reality, our manufactured reality shatters. Human nature reacts to this with all sorts of negative feelings.

It kind of goes back to that whole agency and fear thing. We create a script for someone, they don't follow it because they have agency, and we get all worked up.

We might do better to not manufacture scripts for people. Manufacturing a guarantee to be held in the responsibility of another is having an agenda for another. It is an attempt to control another. It is an attempt to remove that agency which we so deeply fear.

Agency, Our Greatest Fear

Agency is a beautiful thing. It's profoundly simple, it's meaningful, it's pure, it's what allows us to discover and be ourselves, full of expression and love, and yet it's our greatest fear and we all have it no matter what.

Why would I say agency is our greatest fear? It seems surprising because the principle of agency is ever lauded and never or at least very rarely disparaged.

I am not disparaging agency either. If anything, I am admitting the frailties of human nature. Here's what I mean.

Would you be scared if you woke up to sounds of an intruder in your home? Would you feel fear if someone threatened you or your family? Have you ever felt the horrific fear of an abuser? Have you ever felt the fear of your agency being taken from you?

Getting a little lighter than such heavy subjects, Are you ever afraid of what someone might think of you? Do you feel fear when discussing the economy or politics? Have you ever been afraid you won't have enough money?

Have you felt the fear of failure? Have you felt the fear of success? Have you ever felt afraid that your not good enough?

In fact, is there any fear you have ever experienced that wasn't somehow close-knit with agency, be it your own or of others?

Have you ever felt the fear of your agency being taken from you, either by others or by yourself?

This is me just musing on the thought, doing a bit of a brain dump. I admit vast room for error, but share it as my initial impression that all our fears have existence due to the agency of mankind.

So am I against agency? Do I wish it would just go away? Heavens no!! Emphatically not!!

The triumphs of life are found in overcoming! Fear is overcome by love; they are opposites much like darkness and light. Fear is real just as love is real; they both exist and must exist as opposition in all things requires. Sometimes overcoming deeply ingrained fears with love takes some time. I believe that's okay. Our path and direction are more important than our location, or in other words, our heart is more important than our habits. When we let God change our hearts we are enabled, with no little effort, to thence change our habits.

Agency is a beautiful thing. It's profoundly simple, it's meaningful, it's pure, it's what allows us to discover and be ourselves, full of expression and love, and yet it's our greatest fear and we all have it no matter what.

It is truly God's gift to man.