Left Behind by Life

Life never passes anyone by—it begs us to run along with it—to be alive. But to truly live is to accept happiness and sadness, pain and joy, peace and fear and every other positive and negative that can fit into the experiences that make any person a living creature. To embrace life is to embrace an arm-full of all things that pertain to living—the good and the bad. For me, I wish my arms were only bigger and stronger to hug two arms-full worth of life. For others though, the small constant wound of not feeling and being those things is more tolerable than the stronger pains of gaining big and losing big. For some it’s better to never gain anything that can be lost than it is to lose what has been gained. Don’t force life to leave you behind—embrace it. After all, only the things worth dying for are the things worth living for.

Made to Fellowship

It’s easy to misplace the positive emphasis and influence that community, fellowship, and camaraderie should have on life behind the busy struggles for success.  It is so easy to get caught up in the up-hill battle for wealth or station or fame. But, the social strengths of the human mind is one of its greatest and most powerfully designed systems that facilitates in what is only recently scientifically understood as nearly an  integration of thoughts and emotions on levels of accurate attunement never before fathomed. It is undeniable that we are designed for communication of thought and emotion more so than any other creature. Through recently made available ways of analyzing brain regions during cognition within social settings, now more than ever, it’s clear—humans are social.

But the new understanding of the brain is a hollow, faceless fact that needs context and application to serve a purpose. There innumerable perspectives from which to think about the impact of having socially designed brains, but looking at it from a biblical vantage-point I believe is the most important place to look.

In a reading of The Word, it is not unclear that God’s direction and purpose always has been for people to be need and be needed by each other. It should not come to a surprise at all to discover that humans are designed to work in social settings. Very little of God’s Word is written directly to an individual. Most all of the scripture is geared to guiding and directing a body or group of people to work together in a harmony of love, will, and purpose in serving their creator. Only in a few instances did God ever direct individual people to do something, and in those cases the direction was usually given to a king or leader to direct a group of people. Think, David, Mosses. In cases like Abraham, God was thinking to the future of His People through Abraham and Sarah.

It would be easy to infer from just this observation that people are designed with the intention of working together. However, God did  not leave it up to us to infer His will in us relying on each other. No, many times has God revealed His will for us to fellowship with one another in His written Word.

--more to follow  

Greatness Thrust Upon Them?

Sometimes I get caught up in the idea that greatness is rooted in singular achievements, but lately I’ve been reconsidering that thought. To be great at anything is never an accident and it never happens all at once. Even in cases where all of a sudden someone is catapulted into the spotlight of success, a closer appraisal of their past always shows a field of preparation fully cultivated and prepared for the time of harvest, which is what is so easy to mistake for greatness. Greatness is actually the thousands of concerted, directed, thought out, and disciplined steps under a single-minded determination. Greatness never falls from the sky. The saying, "Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them" by William Shakespeare, says that we can have greatness thrust upon us, as though not by anything we do ourselves.

As great as that quote is, it is not true. Even those who by chance are thrown into a set of circumstances which calls on them to become great can fail to be great. An opportunity to be great is nothing more than a big opportunity to fail unless the person called upon for greatness is able to measure up to the standard placed upon them. In other words, greatness will not be thrust upon anyone without crushing them unless they have already become acclimatized to the mental and physical stress of greatness. They must  have already planted greatness in themselves and completed the effort of cultivating it.

Think of musicians, it is not over night that virtuosity is learned; it takes an estimated ten-thousand hours. To build the world’s largest building is mostly the exact same procedure as it is to build a much smaller building, just more steps and preparation. Artists learn to paint for years and years before painting masterpieces.

So to be great means to, in a way, have tunnel-vision, to look and focus on one thing far away, and to take as many thousands of small steps as it takes to reach the goal. Greatness, then, is an endurance walk. It’s rarely a sprint or a run or a jump. It is one foot in front of the other over and over for as long as it takes. It sounds like long drudgery, but to see greatness from this perspective puts it within the reach of everyone. Everyone has the ability to take small deliberate steps towards greatness. Everyone can become truly great at what they want to.

What do you want to be great at? Start walking. You can.

Poetry of Night

A full, peaceful cool air of calm rests heavy under the motionless gaze of darkness. Stars watch on from above with bright eyes. Crickets gossip amongst each other secret songs from the shelter of thick, green blades of grass bowed down under their loads of heavy dew. The smell of fresh-cut hey drifts along slowly and sweetly. Fireflies spark excitedly in the darkness. A heavy calm rests everywhere. Even the moving and living life of night seems to understand the essence of the moment, that seizing the day can mean calmly enjoying the poetry that dances in the heart of the mundane whir of evening crickets, to the rustling hum of wind in leaves, to the feel of cool wet grass on bare-feet. Seizing the day  sometimes means being content for a few deep breaths.

Dealing With Fear

It's always more satisfying to step on fears than it is to step around them.
Also, it's the only way to ever get beyond the little fears and become strong enough to face important fears, and maybe get beyond fears all together and really fight for real things rather than just conquering under-estimates of God and ourselves. So, maybe fear is just failing to perceive the presence and power of God and instead trust in worldly lies.

Truth Taken for Granted

Sometimes the potency of a truth becomes dilute and lacks importance due to repetition, and the punch the meaning carries never reaches the body of the thoughts and delivers the blow of realization that should shake mind and conscience to take action. We say the world needs love, and then they hate. We say take action, just do it, and then are lazy. Let’s seize the day—tomorrow. It seems like the more we know something is important the less we perceive that the quality that makes something important is fact that urgency of action is required. Knowing something is important means knowing that the world, something, or most importantly someone needs help—a help that can be given. But our minds become calloused to the convicting truths that should speak to us and motivate us to take immediate action.

Only when we are fully taking the advice of truths do we have the right to dismiss them, but then we would not want to dismiss them because their value would be clear and respected. There is a large gap that separates our hearts from our minds, and until the truths have soaked into our heats, we will not move when we ought to. Repetition will not build a bridge between our heats and our minds, only by understanding that only an understanding is not enough to move us can we hope to have our hearts push us forward into the arms of progress.

Consistency Counts

Consistency counts.

So much is said for the rare occasion where people are inconsistent in a way that steps in the right direction. There are few events more heavily praised than the person who turns their life around from going in reverse-good to simply doing what is good. And, yes, rightfully so. Shedding the grey cloths of a live lived for the wrong reasons is celebration worthy, but what off those who are consistently good.

Being steadfast in upright walk is seldom celebrated. It’s as though as long as you are doing what you are supposed to, then there is no reason to celebrate. Doing the right thing is only celebrated when doing the right thing was chosen after doing the wrong thing. For those who are consistently good, people seem to forget that they still make the decision each day to do right; the recognition is swept under the rug that the converts stand on.

I think that people who are good descent people their entire lives need more praise than they get. There is much to be said about those who are steadfast in their faith and walk in that faith day-in and day-out year after year. That is a rare and difficult accomplishment that deserves as much celebration as the shifting to right-walk. It’s all well and good when an alcoholic reprobate gives up the bottle and gets a job after all those years of milking family and taxpayer, but is that better than the person who for the same fifty years did the right things? No, it’s not. It is much more difficult to live an entire life right than it is to switch at the end, and I think more to be praised.

So, maybe next time you see someone living a disciplined life with discernment, maybe give them a little praise. They were probably not just born as amazing people, they probably worked to become what they are.
Don’t you think they deserve a little praise for that? Don’t you think that they earn it? 

The Real, Real World

I sometimes catch myself using the expression, "the real world" as though when things are going good or something is not as difficult as it normally is, that it is therefore not the "real world." But, I was just thinking, that maybe the "real world" is actually the opposite of what people always think that it is. Maybe the real world is the moments of life that are too sweet and perfect to be real and everything else is not the "real world," at least not in the way that it was supposed to be. Life is not and was never supposed to be difficult and painful. No, real life is when you are really living life and life is perfect, that is real-life as it was intended to be. Everything else is a moment lost to thoughtlessness where the true big-picture view of the "real world" is obscured by nearsighted overemphasis of small problems. My view of the "real world" is that the world has been overcome and a time of restoration is on the conveyor belt towards us right now. The real world is a world freed from pain and war and hurt--and anchored firm and securely to the hope. Just a before bed thought after a great day.

Hold Your Chin Up, Smile

Looking around where I work at the faces of the average customer, enjoying life is not the norm for people. I wonder why? Why are we so unhappy? What about being human means being unhappy? Thinking about the possible reasons, there is really no good excuse. Here in America, known to be one of the most abundantly affluent nations in history, American society is still saturated with discontent, discord, and depression. Surely Happiness has nothing to do with wealth. I’ve seen rich people who are chronically unhappy and I’ve seen poor people with faces that beam and radiate out a joyful expression. Wealth does not produce happiness, at least not wealth as defined in purely a monetary sense.

Could it be workplaces? No, where you work has nothing to do with how happy you are. I work at a place where people both are happy and unhappy. They work at the same place and do nearly the same job as everyone else, yet unhappiness is still pervasive enough to persuade the majority of people to hate their job. But the place I work does  not convince everyone that they are unhappy, clearly being unhappy has nothing to do with being happy if people with the same job differentiate into two groups that are either happy and enjoy life or to another larger group that is unhappy with life.

What of family? Again, and resoundingly so, the answer is no.

Health? No!

The list goes on and on. No matter what, there is always an excuse to be unhappy. There is always enough plaintiveness in life to become a point of contention with living to the extent of making you unhappy. But if everyone has a reason to be unhappy why then is everyone not unhappy?

At last the real question has been asked! The answer is so simple most people will not understand it or believe that it is true. The answer is this: you enjoy life to the extent that you choose to. There is an abundance of anything that you want to look at in both categories of positive and negative. In other words, you are responsible for your smile, not anything or anyone else. You decide what to think about. You decide whether to be happy or sad. The thoughts that run through your head are yours and come from your decisions to be happy or unhappy.

You could argue say that it’s not genuine happiness, and that’s true at first. But once you just by habit think of the positive and joyful sides of life instead of making yourself do it, then you are truly happy. Break the habit of self-assigned sorrow, look up and keep your chin up until that’s your new posture, then you will be happy most all the time. I did it, and you can too. It will take a little bit of work, but you can be happy.

So what do you think? Have you ever done this? Is there another secret to happiness other than the one I just prescribed?

Joy Has Awaken

I’m in love with living this life
I’ve defeated the inside strife

Found me a peace of harmony
Enjoying the mental clarity

Seeing things clearly like I did
I won't close even one eye lid

Life is a song I can dance to
I'm so glad that my joy came true

Wherever I go, joy goes with
Happiness is not an old myth

All my Joy has reawaken
The grey cloud has been forsaken