Wednesday, December 30, 2009

100 Years to Live...(Read Time: 3 min.)

In a hundred years, how many things will you get right? Alot.
In a hundred years, how many things will you get wrong? Alot.

No one can predict the twists and turns of life. How often people live in the past out of some neurotic guilt that requires punishment over and over and over again. If you've got this one life to live and if you've been human and have made mistakes, your greatest lesson comes not in learning how to get it "right" but in being able to triumph after you've gotten it wrong.

I hear people's stories and every time someone tells me what they've gone through, I'm reminded of one powerful quote from Plato:

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

I'm reminded of that when people tell me about their pain, their struggles, and their tragedies. I'm also reminded that life is much more than our pain and grief. It's bigger than our struggles. I was raised in the church and I live with a strong faith in God but there's one thing I think so many people get wrong about the evolution of life.

Whether it's being born again or going to the military or going through tough times, there's this idea that the best way to grow and change comes in being broken down by life... and then miraculously built back up again.

I don't believe that. I believe that we were not built to be broken. I firmly believe that the choices we make make us and, alot of the time, we make crappy choices. Our pain springs from these choices and then we rationalize the pain by saying that this is life's way of teaching us our lessons.

If you're a parent, you know that's not true. For any parent, we'd rather see our children learn through love and compassion a thousand times over before they learn through pain and heartache. No parent wants their child to learn about life the "hard" way. If that's true and we're human, how can we possibly assert that God created our experiences so that we live through tough times to be broken into pieces so we can be formed back again? No, that can't be.

We were not built to be broken... and now I'm writing a book about it.

Stay tuned...

Share this site with others