Category: Encountering New Experiences

To Be Influenced or Not.

It seems quite common for people to act as a collective when it suits their agenda and be divided when it does not. One of the global cultural phenomenon that had emerged over the years is the influencer culture. When I was younger there were international personalities that I liked and listened to but never really thought about unless I was consuming some aspect of their productivity. So I had my favourite singers, movie stars ect. However, outside of those roles I did not know nor did I care to get to know them more. I was fine just enjoying their talent for a limited time and living MY life for the duration of my existence.

Today I notice that there are many persons who are obsessed with those personalities they admire, which for me is a bit strange and also disturbing. The idea of an influencer has moved beyond the ubiquitous definition of someone who has the power to affect the buying power of consumers to, for many, someone who they see as their friend. Really an influencer is like a salesperson, there to sell you something not to be your friend. whether that thing is an actual product or a dream at the end of the day that is it.

Yet many choose to ignore this one unchangeable truth, and instead become so invested in the lives of these persons to the point where they ignore their own lives to preside over those they deem as being “like family”.

Sure there may be qualities in a person that you admire and they may motivate you in some way but the key here is that no matter what you do, you can never replicate them or their lives. The danger comes when persons ignore their reality to construct a possibility on someone else’s sand heap. The tide will always come in and tear it down. Many people rely on the voices of others to direct them and never the voice of the Almighty. They look at what others have achieved and think they can do it too, while being ill-equipped to do so.

On the other hand, one may say that positive influence should be separated from negative. While this is true, often times we do not realise that even when we aim to do what is “good” it is because we are influenced and not because it is a conviction that we have. What this suggests is that we want to please, or we want others to like us, so, we censor what we say and do to match the narrative we want others to have about us. When someone is influenced to do something “good” or “right” does it make being influenced a good or bad thing? Wherever we stand, we must be honest enough to acknowledge that being influenced is a way of life that has led to many unhappy persons, who seem stuck in slow motion, as they grapple with where their opinions begin versus those who have influenced them.

The Only Way is Up!

I am sure that at some point you may have felt the burden of your past. You are so burdened that your legs cannot carry the weight of that past and so you buckle under the pressure of it.

You may also feel the weight of real or imagined eyes that accuse and arrest you and say to you that you dare not move on. While it is important to learn the lessons that need learning from your past, one should never dwell there. One should never pitch a tent there or build a bed there, because they feel like giving up.

“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” (John 5:7)

There are many things that will try to hold us back. There was that great opportunity that we missed and can never get back. Or, there is this one person, or thing that will not leave us alone long enough for us to take the step we need to make the move that is required to step into the pool of opportunity waiting for us. There are so many things that have held us back, and we can’t seem to shake them. Maybe it is that we do not have to tools to overcome these obstacles by ourselves and we are still searching, hoping and praying from the right thing that will help us to do so.

“Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” (John 5:8)

The trick is to stop being your own worst enemy. So,before you get too far, from heeding the naysayers who punish you for the wrongs you may have done and the wrongs of everyone else they could not hold accountable, think whether this is the life you are meant to life. In life you can’t continuously keep looking down or you may miss the path you’re suppose to take and bypass the stops you are suppose to make. When we are given the chance to try again, we cannot stay in the same spot and hope for something or someone to tip us into the pool. Like the man at the poolside who had tried to get in for thirty-eight year, you have to get up, take that bed and walk. Now, life will not be smooth sailing and the experience and some of the baggage accumulated over the years will not magically disappear. But you cannot stay along the pool side if you have been given the opportunity to be healed. You cannot harbour years of doubt, fear or recrimination and hope to move forward. All those things that have kept you immobile have to be removed for you to move up.

and he took up his bed and walked (John 5:9)

At some point we have to decide if the fear of failing is stronger than our need to rise, to experience something truly wonderful and real. When we have been stuck for a long time, will we find the strength, given by The Almighty to finally walk into a future that we are meant to experience? Only you can answer that question and heed the command to get up and walk.

The Righteous Bully

It seems that there are too many people ready to lead a lynch mob from a place of misplaced self righteousness. In this place, often times hidden in the dark, away from full exposure, the” righteous” condemn those they disapprove of with the sharpest edge of their tongue or twittering fingers – whichever is most convenient. You know, it is so easy and so tempting to attack someone who has fallen from grace, because they did or said something “bad”. But, among that group of generous and ruthless judges are some truly sadistic characters.

Somewhere along the line the need to speak up for what is right and being vindictive blurs and they justify their hate by pointing a finger at their victim, “look, they deserve this because they have done and said some terrible things”. They become so invested in taking people down a peg or two, three, four or five, until there’s nothing left of them, until they are buried beneath the ground. These grand inquisitor, famous for their relentless pursuit of supposed offenders, never stop until those accused lie prostrate, or, dead at their feet.

People have parties to celebrate the demise of the “guilty” and feel justified in their belief that because the guilty part has been vanquished, justice has been served. They choose to ignore the fact that many innocent souls have been consumed by their fanaticism and their thirst for blood. They ignore the fact that these “guilty ones”, have family and friends who suffer during and long after they have gotten their “just reward”.

It is so easy and enticing to slip into the role of the offended because people have become so quick to judge and find fault with real or imagined slights. Also, it is easy to see but not hear someone, to watch but not understand that the people we judge are simply, just people too. Maybe some didn’t mean to become a part of the mob, but like in a frenzied and hypnotizing ritual, they are swept along and become a tsunami that destroys everything in its path.

The righteous bully is a title that can belong to any of us. All it takes are words of recrimination and a desire to find guilty anyone who we deem unworthy to live grow and evolve. It is when we decide that everyone has to be a carbon copy of a undefined prototype, unrealistic but desired. At the end of the day therefore, is the danger that we can so quickly fall into the quicksand of righteous indignation.

However, we never realise that while we may sit on the bench, knock the gravel and preside over a trial today, tomorrow we may be the one standing trial, begging for mercy.

Our Own Trojan Horse

I have come to realise that if we allow ourselves, it is easy to see yourself as a victim, to believe so much in your sense of rightness that we invite Trojan horses into our lives that destroy us.

I am sure you have heard the expression “sitting on your high horse”, but today I want to talk about being tricked by a Trojan horse of our own making. Of course the phrase, “sitting on your high horse”, refers to being conceited. The think is that sometimes we can get so blinded by our own sense of being in the right that we move from sitting on the horse, but create little Trojan horses built solely with pride that kills.

Sometimes we get tangled in our own cleverness that we become like the people of Troy, fooled into believing that we have taken for ourselves a meaningless victories that becomes our undoing.

So, as told in Virgil’s famous epic poem, Aeneid, the Greeks tried to enter the city of Troy for ten long years to no avail. Finally, they decided to try something bold, they built a large wooden horse large enough to hold some soldiers which the Trojans were unaware of and pretended to sail away in defeat. Now, after they left the people of Troy thought they had won the war and so dragged that wooden monstrosity of a peace offering meant for their gods into their city to celebrate. After all, they had outsmarted those pesky Greeks. Of course it was all a trick and in the end the Trojans were defeated in a surprise attack and the Greeks really won the war.

Whether or not we know it, many of us think too highly of our own quick brain and self-righteous indignations when we feel we have been misrepresented or disrespected by someone. This causes us to invite negative thoughts that can undermine relationships and stifle our growth. Allowing the Trojan horse in can mean that our defenses are weak and we can no longer see anything we do as wrong but everyone else becomes an enemy that must be defeated. It is easy, I have come to realise, to believe in your own sense of justice and fairplay, eventually everything becomes black and white. When this happens, it is almost impossible for us to see flaws in our strategies, argument and positions and invite a spirit of ill will into our interactions with people we feel have slighted us. We are unable or unwilling to see the danger of having this outlook and never quite understand why we seem stuck where we are.

If we build our own Trojan horse then we become easily deceived from within and we are blinded to our faults and our vision becomes filled my an image of ourselves and our place in the world that is of our own creation, having no basis in reality. The enemy is not outside the enemy is within. There are no Greeks trying to breach our defenses. What we need to be careful of is that we may forget that in the grand scheme of things we cannot get to the big picture without noting the finer details. We cannot be deceived into thinking that we have it right and everyone else is a mess. We all are messes from time to time. Therefore, it is more important to work on those weak areas that can easily be penetrated, than to prematurely celebrate a victory before we have began the real war. The real war in seeing ourselves as we truly are, flaws and all, bad decisions and misjudgement and all and not be deceived by the lies we tell ourselves and others.

Well If I Can Do This Thing…

When you wait too long to make a move you lose all credibility. Now think about this as I find myself in the predicament of deciding whether or not inactivity is a sign that I may be a fraud or not. There are always people who have a problem with injustices of one kind or another taking place, either around them or to someone, known or unknown to them. There are always persons who belief they can do so much more and have so much more to offer, yet all they do is talk and dream. Persons complain about things they do not like but then are stuck and do nothing about it. One has to wonder if they really want to see things change or if they just want to have something to complain about.

Maybe, it is that we want to see a change but we feel powerless, so we dream, plot and plan, to no avail. How hard is it to do something instead of thinking about it? Well, in thinking much effort is not required and so potential dangers can be avoided, while, in doing there are any number of pitfalls lurking around every conceivable corner you can imagine. However, there is no satisfaction or reward in thinking forever when action is the only way that change will take place.

It is quite frustrating when nothing you want to see happen materialises. However maybe we need to ask ourselves how do we facilitate this outcome? Turning your back and hoping for the best is not going to stop a runaway train and neither is just being in the audience going to make the movie that much more enjoyable. If you want a good production for your own life, you have to ensure that you are one of, if not the producer that has the vision and is willing to work day and night to have something worth looking at.

What if instead of beginning with doubt and fear we thought, ‘”well if I can do this thing, even once, I can do a little more”. Each of us has to decide what that thing is that will enable us to move from righteous indignation, anger, game changing ideas, dreaming of change to solution, and realisation of a dream or those innovative ideas bubbling under the surface. We have to believe that we have the power of The Almighty to make things happen, while having the faith to know they will.

Time is a Finite Resource…

I started this year taking everything for granted. Not realising how precarious life truly is. When I looked out at the year I felt I was to begin a journey I could clearly map out. All I had to do if I wanted to reach my predetermined destination, was to have a plan and be disciplined about it. However, as we all know by now, some of the best laid plans can get completely wiped out.

Feeling that this was the time to set certain things into motion, I was ready to take a leap of faith. Then my body reminded me that somethings were beyond my control. You can eat all the vegetables in sight and do all the exercises we can find, but our health can still fail us. Things can grow and flourish in both your mind and body that can bring harm to you. You can even be as close to perfect as any man can come and still fail miserably. The truth i,s nothing is guaranteed except your time is running out. While many of us feel young enough to scuff at this or avoid thinking about it, it still happens.

However, time is still a resource. I have learned not to focus on what I want to do tomorrow and where I want to be. I have learned to appreciate the time right now and love what I can see. There is no magic potion that you can conjure in your head, that will get you all you require from the future to make the present the best.

You want to move on but you are waiting for the right time that never comes, because there never will be a perfect time. I am sure that there are many persons who waited until this year to start making moves, but had to abort because of the roadblocks ahead. “Time is precious”, is what we often hear, but we do not know how precious until the sand in the glass is right in counting down too fast for your liking.

Maybe it is that time in general is infinite but for each of us it is not. By the fact that you have ancestors and history, we know that one day we will comfortably reside in both. Even when we are asked to stand still, time does not wait for us. Instead, it waves at us and all we can do is pray that we will be allowed to move again, before time gets too far ahead of our intentions.

So, while time moves merrily along, oblivious to our doubts and setbacks, we are left to wrestle with its consequences. We have to come to terms with the knowledge that the time we have to work with, may not be up to us. It means that we have to decide what we will do to ensure we have exponential returns on the time we are afforded.

Not That Kind of Rich.

I am sure that some of us at least at some point in our lifetime have had this dream to make it big, to be a success and get rich. We may have dreamed of the day when wealth acquired would get us anywhere and everywhere we wanted to be. We could see it then, all the freedom wealth would afford us, all that was before us. “The sky is the limit”, “nothing can stop us now”, we though once we had a chance all we had to do was work hard! So we did, we worked hard day and night, but the change was slow in coming. But, we did not give up because, well, because after all the formula was to never stop, “grinding”, the saying was, “heights of great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept were toiling upwards through the night”. And you really thought you could make it.

So, you toil and toil and toil and toil. Then only to realise that nothing happened. Instead of owning your own jet, to soar you are squashed and bogged down among others who aimed but missed their mark.

You slowly but surely realise that you have not been working to make your dream come through, but someone else’s. You have not been working to make yourself rich but someone else. All that time you spent “grinding”, all your efforts toiling, have only served to remind you that the barrel you try to come out of has no end and no beginning, it just is. So, you hear of a new scheme, the scheme goes if you spend more, you will attract more money to you, and only end up broke. You see, the scheme had no safeguards against limited income, against the pre-existing condition of your poverty. you search out so many schemes, but none of them last because their first and only aim was to extract and store in their own reserve of wealth.

Everyone cannot be rich but you are raised to believe this. So you start many ventures that lead nowhere and projects that never take off the ground. You spend so much time chasing wealth while it seems to run from you. The difference lies in the fact that you cannot see this truth, your vision is clouded by all the scales of lies you refuse to remove.

I have wondered why it seems that at the top there is only a few who benefit from the efforts of many, why only a few make decision that everyone else follows. You will never be rich because it has always been that way and because many do not see this. You could be the most financially responsible person ever, but you will still have those limited dollars swirling in your pocket, eventually reduced to coins and then air, until the next paycheck. After all you have responsibilities.

If we stopped following the “blueprint” for being rich, what are we left with? If we stopped chasing that next dollar, what would we have to chase, to “grind” for and toil for?

Can you be happy knowing that you will never be rich, knowing that any concept of material wealth you acquire will be limite? With knowing that it will never be enough to get you to the first branch of the tree, much less the sky you aim for?

If you think that chasing wealth will ensure you get it, then consider, how many actually do. It is tough to get into that 1% exclusive club, the ones who make things happen but never do those things – well not anymore. It would be easier for you to be rich in other ways than material wealth. Many really do not know what it takes to be rich, and maybe you would not like it. To be rich you may have to be okay with the fact that many around you will suffer to keep you at the top. When how high you go depends on how many people you stand on, without regret.

You decide, what kind of riches you want to have.

Understanding Bible Verses – Philippians 4:19- God Will Supply All ...