Talking about stars...
"It's not a disgrace to not reach the stars, it is a disgrace to not have stars to reach for".
The statement above is loaded with assumptions and this leads to many possible interpretations for the statement.
There are three possible interpretations that I can think of.
First, one must not waste life by not doing anything with it, i.e. one should always make best use of one's life.
I'm okay with that.
Second, one must not be stagnant and not grow, i.e. one should always improve oneself.
I agree with that too.
Third, one must have goals, ambitions, and dreams, it is wrong otherwise.
With this, I wholeheartedly disagree.
Goals, ambitions, and dreams are motivators. When we say that it is disgraceful to not have them, we say that it is disgraceful to not be driven by them.
I beg to differ.
I know people who are very committed, dedicated, and extremely good in what they do. They have no explicit goals, ambitions or dreams to drive them. They have no need to be driven; they have no need to be motivated. They love what they do so much that they are not idling, and they continuously improve simply by doing what they do every day. They are loving people, they are very humble, they are content with what they do, they are not disgraceful in any way.
I think the subtle concept is the emphasis on being over doing.
These people I spoke of are very confident with who they are, what they do, and who they're doing it for. They'e found their thing. They have found their true identity. They seek no other - they've found their true joy. They are meek, they are gentle, and in a way, they are very Christ-like in nature. What they do is a natural outcome of who they are.
The topic of being over doing is a heavy one and I should not discuss that in detail here. But just to highlight the significance of this concept, I'd like to mention that there are many things that we often do to define ourselves. These attempts include conjuring up ambitions, dreams, goals, in order to fill the hole that the lack of true identity has left behind. Sometimes the religious pursuit of pseudo cultural values, pseudo belief systems, pseudo relationships, and pseudo communities fill that hole too, and all this pseudo-ness is the cause of much conflict and despair in our lives.
With pseudo (i.e. falsehood) I mean we do not really know the true value of having those cultural values, belief systems, relationships, or communities outside of our feeling that it is wrong to not have them. We feel that abandoning them is great wrong because we have tightly coupled our identities with these pseudo-stuff.
It is not easy to let go of all this pseudo-stuff especially when we've lived most of our lives relying on them to give us identity. We have incorrectly relied too much on points of references that are outside ourselves to tell us who we are where we would have been better of looking deep inside ourselves and to find that true identity. Often we even hide behind the pretense of defending these pseudo-stuff to justify our wrong actions, and we instinctively do so because these pseudo-stuff are tightly bound with the false identities that we have been so intimate with.
I believe the letting go of the pseudo-stuff is what Jesus meant in Luke 14:27 ("Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple"). We are called to sacrifice the pseudo relationships, cultural values, belief systems that are keeping us away from finding our true identities, that are keeping us from Christ-likeness. In a way, we are all in this together. Each of us are carrying our own unique cross, yet we are all called to be like Him by acknowleding who we are in all our brokenness and deficiencies, by sacrificing our egos, our false identities, in order to find our true identities - as children of God.
Jiwaku terbuka untukMu Tuhan
Slidiki nyatakan sgala perkara
Singkapkan semua yang terselubung
Supaya kulayak dihadapanMu Tuhan
The statement above is loaded with assumptions and this leads to many possible interpretations for the statement.
There are three possible interpretations that I can think of.
First, one must not waste life by not doing anything with it, i.e. one should always make best use of one's life.
I'm okay with that.
Second, one must not be stagnant and not grow, i.e. one should always improve oneself.
I agree with that too.
Third, one must have goals, ambitions, and dreams, it is wrong otherwise.
With this, I wholeheartedly disagree.
Goals, ambitions, and dreams are motivators. When we say that it is disgraceful to not have them, we say that it is disgraceful to not be driven by them.
I beg to differ.
I know people who are very committed, dedicated, and extremely good in what they do. They have no explicit goals, ambitions or dreams to drive them. They have no need to be driven; they have no need to be motivated. They love what they do so much that they are not idling, and they continuously improve simply by doing what they do every day. They are loving people, they are very humble, they are content with what they do, they are not disgraceful in any way.
I think the subtle concept is the emphasis on being over doing.
These people I spoke of are very confident with who they are, what they do, and who they're doing it for. They'e found their thing. They have found their true identity. They seek no other - they've found their true joy. They are meek, they are gentle, and in a way, they are very Christ-like in nature. What they do is a natural outcome of who they are.
The topic of being over doing is a heavy one and I should not discuss that in detail here. But just to highlight the significance of this concept, I'd like to mention that there are many things that we often do to define ourselves. These attempts include conjuring up ambitions, dreams, goals, in order to fill the hole that the lack of true identity has left behind. Sometimes the religious pursuit of pseudo cultural values, pseudo belief systems, pseudo relationships, and pseudo communities fill that hole too, and all this pseudo-ness is the cause of much conflict and despair in our lives.
With pseudo (i.e. falsehood) I mean we do not really know the true value of having those cultural values, belief systems, relationships, or communities outside of our feeling that it is wrong to not have them. We feel that abandoning them is great wrong because we have tightly coupled our identities with these pseudo-stuff.
It is not easy to let go of all this pseudo-stuff especially when we've lived most of our lives relying on them to give us identity. We have incorrectly relied too much on points of references that are outside ourselves to tell us who we are where we would have been better of looking deep inside ourselves and to find that true identity. Often we even hide behind the pretense of defending these pseudo-stuff to justify our wrong actions, and we instinctively do so because these pseudo-stuff are tightly bound with the false identities that we have been so intimate with.
I believe the letting go of the pseudo-stuff is what Jesus meant in Luke 14:27 ("Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple"). We are called to sacrifice the pseudo relationships, cultural values, belief systems that are keeping us away from finding our true identities, that are keeping us from Christ-likeness. In a way, we are all in this together. Each of us are carrying our own unique cross, yet we are all called to be like Him by acknowleding who we are in all our brokenness and deficiencies, by sacrificing our egos, our false identities, in order to find our true identities - as children of God.
Jiwaku terbuka untukMu Tuhan
Slidiki nyatakan sgala perkara
Singkapkan semua yang terselubung
Supaya kulayak dihadapanMu Tuhan
posted by JPG at
01:13
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