Well, it's been almost a week since the last post. Trying to figure out how to code an RS-232 communications module in Java burns up time very quickly. But the feeling of accomplishment at the end of it does feel very good!
While talking with a close friend a few days back, some questions were raised during the course of the conversation that gave both of us quite a bit to think about. Thinking over the possibility that he had become extremely critical of anything and everything (including other people), he questioned whether he in turn followed the high standards that that he held other people to. He also mentioned that there were many other such questions that he was terrified to ask himself. I noted that this held true for me too. His next sentence, in his own words was: "Living a delusion seems far easier, wouldn't you agree?"
That's a comment we often make when confronted with life's tough questions, isn't it? I think most of us would agree that among the hardest and most frightening of these questions are those regarding our own individual natures - the truth of who we really are. They also happen to be those which we are most reluctant to face. It is indeed a sobering prospect to be confronted with the pronouncement of Christ, when He states that we shall be judged with the same metric that we use to judge others (Matthew 7:2). The book of Proverbs notes that it is the composition of what is contained in the human spirit that determines what flows out of the life and individual that it powers (Proverbs 4:23).
Connecting these two statements, does it not then make sense to examine our fundamental paradigms of our nature, the 'lens' through which we see the world, if we really want to change who we are? Living a delusion and running away from the reality of the situation only makes the pain of the gap more intense. The Law of the Harvest - 'as a man sows, so shall he reap', inevitably comes true. I have come to believe that it is experiencing and dealing with the painful, hard questions and events of life that truly change us from the inside out; we are forced to confront ourselves and what we truly are. Only when we have looked in the mirror, and seen ourselves with all the whitewash stripped away, can we see the gap between what we are and what we must become. And that results in the drive to change.
I don't mean to say that I am able to bravely ask those questions of myself. Just like my friend and those reading this, there are sobering questions that similarly terrify me. But I also know that if I don't ask those questions of myself, I won't change and I will remain mediocre. And that prospect is even more terrifying. As I noted to myself seven years ago: "Victory is purchased at a cost...what price are you willing to pay?" So at all costs, we have to work up the courage to ask those tough questions of ourselves, eh?
Anyway, I think that's enough for now. Have a good weekend!
While talking with a close friend a few days back, some questions were raised during the course of the conversation that gave both of us quite a bit to think about. Thinking over the possibility that he had become extremely critical of anything and everything (including other people), he questioned whether he in turn followed the high standards that that he held other people to. He also mentioned that there were many other such questions that he was terrified to ask himself. I noted that this held true for me too. His next sentence, in his own words was: "Living a delusion seems far easier, wouldn't you agree?"
That's a comment we often make when confronted with life's tough questions, isn't it? I think most of us would agree that among the hardest and most frightening of these questions are those regarding our own individual natures - the truth of who we really are. They also happen to be those which we are most reluctant to face. It is indeed a sobering prospect to be confronted with the pronouncement of Christ, when He states that we shall be judged with the same metric that we use to judge others (Matthew 7:2). The book of Proverbs notes that it is the composition of what is contained in the human spirit that determines what flows out of the life and individual that it powers (Proverbs 4:23).
Connecting these two statements, does it not then make sense to examine our fundamental paradigms of our nature, the 'lens' through which we see the world, if we really want to change who we are? Living a delusion and running away from the reality of the situation only makes the pain of the gap more intense. The Law of the Harvest - 'as a man sows, so shall he reap', inevitably comes true. I have come to believe that it is experiencing and dealing with the painful, hard questions and events of life that truly change us from the inside out; we are forced to confront ourselves and what we truly are. Only when we have looked in the mirror, and seen ourselves with all the whitewash stripped away, can we see the gap between what we are and what we must become. And that results in the drive to change.
I don't mean to say that I am able to bravely ask those questions of myself. Just like my friend and those reading this, there are sobering questions that similarly terrify me. But I also know that if I don't ask those questions of myself, I won't change and I will remain mediocre. And that prospect is even more terrifying. As I noted to myself seven years ago: "Victory is purchased at a cost...what price are you willing to pay?" So at all costs, we have to work up the courage to ask those tough questions of ourselves, eh?
Anyway, I think that's enough for now. Have a good weekend!
The Wisom Seeker
