The word idiot gets thrown around a lot. Often its directed at ourselves as much as others because we constantly fall short of this code of standard that we’ve set for ourselves as humans, that has progressed over millions of years. Im talking about stuff we know we should do, things we know are best for us. How about the difference between right and wrong?That’s a big one. There are so many things that can happen within a day that make us ask “Why did I do that, I’m such an idiot” There is so much stuff out there that we know is best for us but somehow we don’t do it cause the alternative is easier. We don’t like to wait for things do we? We always want to go for the quick fix even though we know when we get something we’ve waited and worked for, then it is always more rewarding. No, I’m not talking about serious issues such as abstinence or stealing! HA! I’m thinking about way simpler stuff like having the discipline to do things that are better for you in the long run. Here’s an example.
I’m not a morning person right, but the thing is I want to be. I could get up earlier in the morning and go for a run or something like that. Maybe get a little fitter. But when I wake up all I want to do is go back to sleep….. so I do cause that’s me nursing my immediate desire, rather than seeing the benefits of what getting up and getting a little fitter would do in the long run. I’d feel fresher throughout the day rather than being a tired mess! So OPTION A, I keep going to bed late and feel rubbish through the day and all I’d get for it was the small pleasure of the lie in, or OPTION B, I go to bed that little bit earlier, get up, get fit, and feel better in myself and throughout my day. Seems like a pretty easy choice. But it comes back to this one word. Discipline. The fact that ultimately that one aggravating, pain in the butt, word, is in the end of the day all for something better than what we have without it. This is just one small example though like I said.
Most likely though we know all this stuff.We know right from wrong and, on some level, what is best for is, yet we can all EPICALLY fail sometimes. Why is it though? Is it something woven into our DNA? Or is it something to do with today’s culture? Are we a product of our world around us? Our quick paced, fast food, now now now, must have society? It all speaks of a world where everything should be as easy as possible. Is it something humans have always dealt with? As time has gone on have we got worse at teaching ourselves discipline for the sake of bettering ourselves? Have we blurred the lines between what’s right and wrong? How we should or shouldn’t act?
Talking of the right and wrong, if there is one thing I hate, then It’s bullying.Yet having said that, It’s amazing how much stuff we can say or think that often defies the things we think to be right or wrong. It’s pretty easy to make a remark about someone that you think is just a joke but that deep down you know that if the shoe was on the other foot and the joke was made against you, you wouldn’t like it. We’ve probably all done stuff like this before, myself included. But why? I suppose it’s often to fit in, or maybe it’s to make ourselves look better by making someone else look small. Now im not trying to make it out that every negative thing said against someone is bad. There is a line between banter and bullying but I think what people forget is that the line needs to move depending on who’s involved. Not everyone is as thick skinned as some are. It’s hard to live up to the standards that we know are right but I guess the basic rule is to treat others the way you want to be treated. Easier said than done though in real life and we’ll never be perfect!
One more surge of admission before I go!Remember when I was mentioning about why it is easier to cop out and do the simple stuff than work hard to get the rewards? Well there are different answers for this depending on the person but I’ve come to notice some of my reasons. Have you ever been in an environment where you’ve been surrounded by very talented and successful people? Well this can be a great thing! It can be a breeding ground for experience and motivation. But on the other end of the line it can also, if you let it, make you wonder how you’ll ever be as good at what you do as those you admire. That’s often slowed me down, so as someone who’s been through that I feel im allowed to say that this is a LOSER attitude. No one ever got better at things by having the attitude that there’s only a point in doing something if you’re going to be instantaneously amazing. I for one know I need to write more music, maybe more of this stuff, learn more about the instruments I play etc! Life is a journey and if I may be so bold, I think we’re gonna get out of it as much as we put in. Being an idiot never got anyone anywhere. ;)
I best get to it.
I know this is all a bit rushed and more than a bit random, but hopefully something will make sense!
What if, whenever we saw a stranger we viewed them with no preconceptions. No guesses at what there character looks like. Cause I think, probably by a human instinct we’ve developed somewhere along the line, when we see someone new, we try to put them into a box. But why? Is there some part of us that needs to know what’s going on? A lot of people don’t like the unknown. Like we’re automatically suspicious of what we don’t know, or who we don’t know. Think about the way a relationship grows. Can you imagine if you met the new guy at work and you started asking him really personal questions or baring your heart and soul to him? That would be a little awkward right? And in most cases that doesn’t happen. You usually size each other up for a while, make sure there not a little crazy. I think as humans, we’re defensive creatures. And i think this gets truer as we get older. It takes longer to trust someone. Maybe its because we see more of the mess that there is in life and it makes us skeptical…slower to trust. And I think its fair enough to take time to trust people. Its wise to guard your heart. But i think within this idea of sizing people up before getting to know them, there can be weeds that start to grow. Cause like I said before when we see people often we try and box them. But the danger is, in doing this we can make assumptions about people that 99% of the time we never end up meeting. And that’s what iv been thinking about lately. We are so divided.
A typical simple example is thinking about a group of school kids, most of who are all smartly dressed in there brand new uniforms…all but the one kid stood in the corner with the over large obviously second hand shirt. The old scuffed shoes with the sole peeling away. The scruffy hair. The one who’s obviously come from a poor background. And even at that age when you’d think those things would matter the least, that kid is the one left out. For something that is basically no fault of his. Thing is this isn’t something you grow out of. It can continue all your life if you let it. And I think its a constant battle to change your mindset. People are constantly divided by differences that most of the time are meaningless, there shallow and when you compare them to the likeness, they pale into insignificance. And it goes on. There’s your social status, your income, who your friends are, and what we place huge importance on is what people wear! The world often seems to be divided by this. It can be our identity. I mean think about all the names we have for people that are identified by clothes. Chav, goth, emo, ned. What we wear can define how people see us and who we are associated with. People think that a lifestyle is directly readable by the appearance of a person. And a lot of the time you can tell a lot about a person by what the wear but we can get it so wrong if that’s how we choose to think about what a persons like on the inside. Get a group together of all the demographics. Young, old, emo, goth, rich, poor, skinny, overweight…and strip away all the clothes and stereotypes and mix them up. Then divide them into groups according to how they get on with each other when they don’t have the stereotypes to get in the way. I think we’d find that the ‘emos’ had things in common with the 'rich’ kids and the 'chav’ got on with the 'goth’.
When we start to see past a persons exterior we start to see them as God sees us. And we then start to see more of his attributes in others that we miss by making assumptions about people we’re not willing to get to know. When Jesus was on earth he didn’t spend his whole life surrounded by the 'holier than thous’. No, he hung around with the people no one else wanted to. He never wrote them off. He got to know the inside of these people rather than the lie there exterior gave off. I don’t think different was a word much used in Jesus’ vocabulary. He didn’t see different categories. He just saw people.
We were doing a music event at a church last night and after it we were stood by the door when these three kids walked by. And one of them stood out. He had long hair all down his back, black biker boots, black jeans, a heavy metal band t-shirt and a big leather jacket. Now not long ago I would have thought, “oh man this guy’s probably a bit of the map!”. The sorta guy who’s wrecked on drugs all the time, but….he wasn’t. He wasn’t depressive, he was a lot of fun. We had a blast with him and his friends that night as we hung out for a few hours. In the end of the day we were just a bunch of kids having a good time. It didn’t matter that we looked different or came from different backgrounds.
Our differences are a good thing, not something to divide us.
P.s I hope to make a video on this subject sometime soon. Any feedback welcome. =)
Goodbye. Always the hardest word to say, but not In the way you might think. I dunno maybe its just another one of those cultural things but through my passive research I’ve noticed that when a conversation reaches its climax and that time comes to wrap up all that’s been said with the ‘G’ word, we just can’t bring ourselves to say it. Well I say ourselves but I suspect this is more an adult problem. I recently observed a conversation that demonstrated this lack of the 'G’ word. These two fellows were pretty much done talking but instead of ending the conversation I noticed what happened was as they finish the main body of what they have to say, they start to step backwards from each other while continuing the conversation. Its almost like watching that thing the cowboys do when they walk away from each other with their guns only they’re facing each other. And the idea is when the two members of this conversation are far enough away that they would have to start shouting in order to keep the conversation alive, they finally bid each other farewell with the use of the 'G’ word. Now it takes some practice to master this walking backwards while talking technique (shorter title needed) which is why its more used by the adult generation. Conversation with us younger ones is however, a whole different ball game. Two confident-ish people can handle the end of a conversation efficiently and swiftly but if your having a conversation with someone who’s a little bit shy then…oh dear. Things won’t end well, we haven’t mastered that long worded adult technique yet! So imagine the end of this chat where you (being the confident one) have squeezed every drop of life to try and keep this conversation alive in order to avoid the inevitable awkward silence which, had only we used the gradual walking away trick, could have been so easily avoided. But no…there you are, stuck in the moment and you can’t get out of it Bono would say. What’s the moral? Either learn to say goodbye confidently or master the walk and talk thing! Simple really…
So here’s a little video with me ‘talking’ about some of the plans for the little video idea I’ve been working on. Thing Is I’m good with funny…that I can do, but when I have to be serious In front of a camera, things don’t go so smoothly, so try to ignore my looking and sounding dreadfully awkward. The video camera seems to kinda taunt you as you try to find the words. I could have blindfolded myself, but that would have looked weird…so anyway, It Is what It Is, so listen, and leave your feedback!
A few weeks ago i started playing with the idea of grabbing a video camera and getting out there and starting a small project about what it means to be alive and what It Is we’re here to do. Deep, huh? Well I don’t know If you’ve heard of a project called ‘THE I HEART REVOLUTION’ Joel Houston and the guys at Hillsong have been involved In, but the story basically goes like this. Through touring In many different continents throughout the world, Joel and the guys at United have seen how diverse our cultures can be and the poverty that so much of our world has to live In. Since the start of the project they’ve filmed a dvd highlighting some of the experiences they’ve encountered on there travels and have done there best to show us the need there Is In the world for Justice, Love, and a helping hand. Basically they are trying to open our eyes and keep them open so that we can do something about It. I’m yet to see the film but I’ve heard how spectacular It Is. So this Is the main inspiration for this project I’m hoping to do…
“The mirror doesn’t always reflect what it is we want to see in ourselves, it doesn’t reflect what I want to see in myself, yet there must be a breaking point each of us finds that shakes us from our indifference and opens our eyes to the fact that we can do something about it. I’m learning that the 5 minutes of compassion we have during the news that ends when the tv goes off isn’t going to do the trick.”
When I started thinking about what I would say In the video I kept thinking to myself how I wanted It to be real. I didn’t want to have me blabbering on about how everyone needed to get of their backsides and do something when I myself was doing nothing. The paragraph above Is, I guess my confession, cause right now I’m not part of any charity and I’m that guy who can as easily forget about the injustice out there as much as the next guy. But that’s why I want to make this video, so that if nothing else, It shakes me from my own apathy and causes me to put my money where my mouth Is.
The short film isn’t all going to be about the subject of Injustice although that Is the blood in the veins that’s fueling It. I want to take a camera into the place where I live and interview people In the street and ask them what they think of words like 'Church’ and what they believe In, and why they believe In It. Hopefully I want to show people, especially those In the Church, what It Is we as Christians are called to do, and what It Is that those on the outside truly believe we are meant to be doing.
I really believe more and more that we need to be of help to those unseen people who desperately need our help but have no voice to ask for It. I also believe that we need to help those In our communities just as much, however I think I had put emphasis on the latter, maybe to make 'helping others’ a more achievable task when I knew how much harder It would be to reach those people so far away. In the end though, a person Is a person, no one’s life more valuable that another, whether they’re in Africa or on our street corner. Everyone deserves Love and Justice.
