365 – Page 40 – Watch. Stand. Pray.

274 – What to Change, When to Change

When you first walk into a new situation, don’t rush to repair every flaw you find. There could be a very good reason things are done how they are. Even if things need to change, you wouldn’t know the deep reasons why or how at first glance, or second or fifth glance. It takes time to understand things older than we are.

And yet, when you have been in a situation for a good, long while and a newcomer shows up, don’t be quick to silence the complaints about your old ways. Old and new wine need old and new wine skins, respectively. But, humanity is greater than wine and its skin. As much as we can, it demonstrates our maturity and strength to embrace the new, no matter how old we get.

We show our potential when we embrace both long-standing traditions and the ongoing need to climb, grow, and improve. Tradition and invention form a crossroads of two-way streets. This crossroads hosts heavy traffic and the only things that always deserve to have things their way all the time are the four signs that read “STOP”.

Societies break down when older and younger generations are at odds. The greater burden falls on the generation that has lived more years with which anyone can seek wisdom; the more mature generation is whichever of the two that chooses to do the more mature thing first. While any conflict always rests its blame at the older and should-be more responsible leaders, any conflict between generations is a threat to an entire society. This, unfortunately describes most societies today.

There cannot be reconciliation between older and younger generations as long as we think that the only right age happens to be whatever age happens to be our own. Thriving requires that we embrace both the young ways and the old.

So, in your own working sphere, embrace both. You have room to improve, just like everyone else. Enjoy hearing, seeing, and tolerating complaints about your problems as much as you enjoy witnessing problems that you can’t yet fix. We can’t help any situation that we don’t already love. Wanting tomorrow doesn’t require hating yesterday. So, enjoy today.

275 – Do or Die

Our moments of greatest bravery come when we face the truth in front of us: that if we act, then we risk failure, but if we don’t act, then we guarantee failure. Immature human nature drives us to negotiate and argue with this truth, thinking to persuade the universe to change the options, telling ourselves, “Maybe if we don’t act, we will find some way to guarantee a lesser life, but life nonetheless.”

Heroes step out and take great risks, in the face of doubts and jeers, not for their own fame, but because someone else is in need. That other person depends on the hero coming through, but so does the hero depend on that other person being there. Both of them work as a kind of team and unless everyone goes all out, risks everything, and gives it their all, everything will fall apart.

You can only take risks as big as the difference you know you can make. You will make a bigger difference the more you value yourself and you will value yourself the more you know how much God values you. The more you recognize how much God values you, the more you can trust Him, the more you can trust that He will work out your circumstances.

Heroic choices can’t be made when safe outcomes are guaranteed. The hero determines to make everything work out for everyone else, whether or not things work out for the hero’s own safety. The hero doesn’t leap blindly, but only when he knows the task is within his skill. Heroes are chosen in the days of danger, but they are made over the long term, in the days of practice and preparation, gaining skill, and learning one’s own limits.

Esther’s story illustrates the heroin’s path: taking action to save others despite her own risk. A year of preparation to become queen, now she had a choice. Her people, Israel, faced extinction and she faced death if she brought a frivolous matter before the king. “If I die, I die,” she said, knowing that the words of her uncle were true—that God may have made her queen, “for such a time as this.”

276 – Leading as Directors

Letting children run wild does them no good. It never does anyone any good, no matter how old we get. Allowing someone to ignore the boundary lines and break important rules not only harms other people, it harms the person breaking those rules and crossing those boundaries.

The damage of being allowed to live without boundaries occurs on multiple levels. It “enables” bad behavior to continue by “sending the wrong message”. An athlete who can’t play within regulation lacks skill. Little, cute Johnny may seem adorable to the in-laws while he fumbles around with the soccer ball at 7 years old, but unless he focuses his efforts he’ll grow up to be inept rather than a starter athlete appreciated by his teammates and adored by the crowd.

Receiving direction feels constricting at first, but it eventually empowers, like the focused light of a laser or magnifying glass.

Constriction and control is not an end in itself. Helen Keller was wild, unrestrained, and insufferable as a child, until a tutor was able to teach her the concept of meaning. She needed direction, but it had to be coupled with understanding. She had unusual obstacles that needed to be overcome first, but most of us don’t have the luxury of that excuse. Boundaries still must be enforced, usually without as much patience as an unusual “Keller” case requires.

Blowing the whistle when the ball goes OB helps the learning athlete understand gravity, how the world works, the flow of the wind, and what happens in the game. For rookies unable to stay in bounds, remove the lines from the court so the rookies don’t learn to ignore them. Parents of children who grow to be respected as adults will say to the five year old, “Oops, it went over the line. So, it’s my ball now. Tough luck.” That child will learn quickly to be awesome and other parents will never figure out why, but they will always be jealous. Good leaders kindly do the same with everyone, with everything, everywhere.

Learning to color inside the lines is about more than “neatness” and “organization”; it may not even hurt anyone; but staying within the lines proves skill.

277 – Grow or Be Hippietized

This is O’Sullivan’s Law: All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.

You must continue to grow—to be transformed from the inside out by Heavenly thinking via conversational prayer, daily Bible exposure, and justice in your routine lifestyle. If you don’t continue to grow, you will bonsai.

When one crab tries to escape, other “crabs in the pot” oppress him. When someone has good ideas, others feel intimidated and group attack with stinkin’ thinkin’ until that person stops growing and maintains a mediocre equilibrium with whatever group he runs with. Culture often opposes the nourishment we need.

Many Christians bonsai when they become dependent on religious buildings and systems for socializing and growth. The inescapable tendency toward group think of any group is one of many dangers, also present in regular, routine, recurring, liturgical, predictable structures of so-called “Christian fellowship”. Authentic Christian growth is organic, which, though characteristic of its kind, is also ordered by unpredictable chaos. No two leaves are or ever have been or ever will be identical, yet every leaf of a kind is known by its kind. Religious structures, by contrast, are small, rigid, and thereby stunt growth.

About the turn of the millennium, many Christians bored with bonsai “Churchianity” looked to find new ideas and inspiration anywhere they could. A kind of “Hippie” movement swept through Christian subculture, at which time many Christians abandoned their moral compasses because “morals” were the theme of mundane Churchianity. Everything decayed from there.

But, this problem was never limited to the Christian worldview. Growth nourished by the Creator is necessary for any creature who wants an organic, healthy, flourishing life. The same is true of business, family, and politics. For Conservatives in America, if they don’t review and ponder the theories, ideas, principles, and philosophies that keep a country from spiraling into “bread, circuses, and entertainment”—as befell Rome—they eventually start thinking that charitable giving is the source of revenue and their nation suffocates by way of bankruptcy.

If we don’t evaluate and treasure the basic procedures that propel us into continuing who we are, we enter “manager-theoretician” mode, and then collapse, whether economically, personally, politically, or morally.

1 Samuel 2:26, Psalm 92:12-14, Luke 17:5, Colossians 1:9-10, Hebrews 6:1, 2 Peter 3:18

278 – Healthy Habits

Do not try to effect change on the grand scale by working on the grand scale. The macro affects the micro and the micro affects the macro. Think of the grand, big picture.

Imagine God-sized possibilities. Dream big. Yet work at the cellular level.

Microbes are powerful, both good and bad. Train yourself to develop healthy habits. Every day, every moment, tweak your habits. Then, most of your growth will happen without your knowing, just as problems you were unaware of will leave through the back door without so much as a goodbye.

The only way to start a healthy habit is to start! Healthy habits don’t start themselves.

Journaling is good, but it’s not easy to start. An aspiring writer once told me that he didn’t write often because his English wasn’t that great. I responded: It is not that you don’t write because your English is bad; your English is bad because you don’t write.

Likewise, good and bad habits break each other like a vicious cycle. Many preachers say: Sin will keep you from the Bible and the Bible will keep you from sin.

Choose your habits, don’t let them choose you.

Habits aren’t merely spun up like top; it’s more like stopping the top from spinning. You already have your routine because we humans are creatures of habit. To start a new habit takes a mild act of violence, in so many words.

There are many good habits. Some must be custom-made, others you mimic from others.

For one, wake up at the same time every day, even if you don’t need to. You’ll never need to set an alarm. Plus, your body wants to rise with the sun, even if you go right back to sleep.

Morning is a great “God time”.

There are many good habits you can and must invent and copy; reading daily is one; reading Bible is a must.

The most important habit is “God time”. Walk with God daily. Love Him. Hear Him. Know Him.

The results in your life and your quality of life are the summation of your habits, not your past. Develop healthy habits and good results will follow as merely habitual.

Genesis 5:22-24; 6:9, Leviticus 26:12, Deuteronomy 5:33, Psalm 127:1, 1 Thessalonians 5:17

279 – Lifestyle Plagiarism

Be original. Never repeat what has already been said as if it is your own, new idea.

People are unique. God made us that way. Insanity, however, bears consistent, predictable, and recognizable patterns. Healthy humans can never be fully understood; when we become all too easy to predict, somewhere we have gone mad.

When the books already written and debates already exhausted become our own repeating words, round and round again, life begins to deteriorate. Look at the Christian and Atheist having a “conversation”, each spouting ideas long published by more educated men than they. Their argument never ends and neither is satisfied. It would be better for either to say, “Books have already been written to satisfy these queries. What original ideas can we bring, if any?” Eventually, both will develop deep inner questions since neither one defends his own ideas.

Once an idea has been said, move one. Once an answer has been given, don’t ask the question afterward. When others ask you questions you already answered, say so rather than repeating yourself—rather than plagiarizing yourself. Know when all room for new ideas and new work has been filled, then end discussion so everyone can go about their separate ways, moving on to what good things they might begin next.

People who think their inner and outer struggles are unique easily become depressed. Everyone would do well to recognize a boilerplate thought life. The easiest way to recognize boilerplate publishing is to write frequently and with originality. If your life is not original, you will chase other unoriginality, trying to conform yourself to “be like others” in order to be liked by others. Living such a mimicking so-called “lifestyle” makes no one happy nor escapes life’s vicious cycles.

Study mental illnesses as often as you study history. Watch for repetition because failure and insanity are the most skilled at unoriginality. The leader who convinces his society to conform is himself insane and his society adopts culture-wide insanity by so conforming. Never trust a teacher whose pupils repeat the same answers. Never entertain inquisitive minds who ask answered questions. Quit once your work is finished, lest you over-stay your keep and repeat failure.

280 – Leading as Dominators of Space

Every space must have a governing dominator. This is a law of physics, firstly in gravity. The larger, denser mass will be the primary directing force within its range.

Of course all mass generates its own gravitational force, the smaller masses making impacts of their own. The moon changes Earth’s tides while Earth dictates the moon’s course around the sun. The greater forces are dominant. The moon is not greater than Earth, but it is greater than Earth’s oceans and thus makes it’s lesser—but nonetheless important—presence known on Earth.

We all make a difference, even in absence. When the loudest dominator doesn’t speak it creates loud silence. Absentee parents wreak passive destruction in their children’s lives. One of the handful of hard, vital lessons of life we each must learn is that everyone can and is dominated by something else in some way. Another lesson is that, while all factory workers are replaceable, no family member can ever be replaced. We only learn these vital life lessons through experience. Shareholders and employees of Apple learned the lessons of dominance and replacement twice.

If you don’t dominate your own space, in magnitude of your own capacity and strength, then you do injustice to the universe. Earth’s oceans need the moon as do the people of Earth need the tides to flow. Remember the riddle of the 500 pound gorilla: Where does he sit? Anywhere he wants.

Keep your space in order, your greaters in check, and your lessers in line. Don’t let your space dominate you.

The big, harry monster of the hill does whatever he wants whenever he wants. He generally doesn’t concern himself with matters of smaller critters inhabiting and roaming about. But, if squirrels quarrel and make a ruckus, he’ll have a thing or to to say about it. Thus the hairy monster’s prerogatives keep the peace of local squirreldom. If he abuses the squirrels, they will either flee and give him no company or they will gang up on him because squirrels have their own prerogatives too.

Never disrespect others in your space. Respect yourself as everyone else. Never oppress, but always dominate your own space at your own level.