My choices

I’m almost forty now. Throughout my life, I’ve mostly lived under the illusion that I’ve made choices, while I’ve really let life happen to me. Looking back at major decisions in my life, my motivations have almost never been what they have seemed. I’ve made decisions based on wishful thinking, an urge to make reality something that it’s not, wrongful labelings of people, events etcetera, fueled by a bunch of confused ides. 

Often, I’ve acted against my better judgment because I’ve been scared of doing what I somewhere have known to be right. 

I’ve often seen this in others, but been unable to see it in myself. Now, I still see it in others. I even see more of it. But I don’t judge anymore. At least not when I’m conscious of my thought processes. Because I know that I do the same things. 

The most common thing that I see in others, probably because I am not able to see their thought processes, is decisions following something like “I want this, so I’m going to have it without thinking of the consequences or what I’m committing to.”

The thing is, that in some strange way, my life has not turned into a total disaster. I’m not content with everything in it. But I’ve learned quite a lot and I can probably use my knowledge to make better decisions in the future.

Being okay with making mistakes

For most of my adult life, I’ve been swinging back and forth between hubris and feeling that I’m worthless. If I’ve made a mistake, I’ve more or less unconsciously assumed that I’m stupid. I’ve even, in spite of knowing that it isn’t so, unconsciously assumed that I’m the only person in the world that makes the kinds of mistakes that I make. It took a long time for me to notice this. But knowing it, I think that I can being to let go and accept that I’m not perfect. That I don’t have to be. That I’m not better than others and that I therefore have the same right as they have to make mistakes.

Those things that don't matter

We care about a lot of things that don’t matter. And we don’t give enough care to the things that do. This is at least true for me. 

Among these things that don’t matter, other people’s opinions stand out. If I understand it correctly, the most prevalent theory as to why we care so much what others think, is that in the distant past, when we were living in tribes, being disliked could very well mean death. 

But today, what other people think of us doesn’t matter. As a matter of fact, the world is full of countless examples, of when other people’s opinions prevent people from living the lives that they truly want.

Only who we actually are matters. Yet, we (at least I do) spend a lot of time and energy worrying about other people’s perceptions of us. Even total strangers’ perceptions of us. 

But we would be better off if we could free ourselves even from the opinions of those closest to us. Because if we, instead of worrying about other people’s opinions, focus on being good people, finding out what truly makes us happy and creating the lives that we want, we will in all likelihood be people that other people like. And if someone doesn’t like us even when we are being authentic, there are seven billion other people on the planet that we can hang out with.

Undeserved grace

What did I do to deserve the grace that I’ve received? Of course it’s not about actions. But all is not well on the inside either. My character isn’t what it ought to be. I can often be unloving and judgmental. I try not to be. But I am. I’m selfish and greedy. Not all of the time. I don’t consider myself a particularly good person. And yet, I catch myself bragging about virtues and accomplishments, even though they in truth are pretty meagre. 

The only things that I’ve really got going for me, is an honest willingness to change into the person God intended me to be. That, and a longing for being with God, that sometimes can move me to tears, but that often is drowned out by my ingratitude for what I have and resentment stemming from all the things that I perceive as being things that I lack, or from the things in my life that I don’t want. 

And yet, God has chosen to step into my life and make his presence known. Perhaps this is so not is spite of all my shortcomings, but because of them. Because, even though I’m still pretending to others that I’m someone that I’m not, I’ve stopped pretending to myself. I’m weak and sinful. I don’t want to be. But I am. And I can only keep striving for a perfection that I know that I will never reach. At least not in this life. 

The strange paradox in all of this, is that I'm okay just the way I am. And at the same time, I'm all but okay.

Writing things down to create more inner order

Part of the point of this blog, is to put the things that I’m struggling into words. And I hope to do it in a way that others can learn from as well. I’m not the first person to realise that when you put your problems, struggles and your inner life in general into words, everything becomes easier to manage. If we look inside ourselves for just a little while, we will, at least if we are like most people, find that it is rather messy. We have a lot of half-digested opinions and beliefs and ideas about how the world and other people work. We have a few poorly defined goals and aspirations. We have made assumptions and arbitrarily chosen to believe some people over others. And to top it all off, all of this is in there in the form of an incoherent mess of words, sounds and mental images, that not seldom contradict each other.

This mess, in all its brokenness, can be quite elaborate, while we ignore such very basic and simple things, such as how we breathe, that we can never stop thinking (if we are like most people) or how our thoughts actually seem to work.

Writing down stuff about our lives, preferably on a daily basis, helps us to put things into perspective. We become more aware of our state and what it entails on both a collective and a personal level. We become more aware of which issues we share with other people, and which issues are personal to ourselves. And what unique shape the shared issues take in our own lives. In short, writing things down help us to put our inner lives in order.

Right and wrong?

Is there such a thing as “right and wrong” in an ultimate sense? I don’t know. It seems as if there might be. And if there is, I’d rather try to be right than wrong, rather than to ignore the questions altogether. In an as humble and openminded way as possible, of course.

A flat tire

The other day I was late for work because of. Since I work for a staffing company, I fill out my own time. Of course I had to adjust for the 25 minutes that I was late, which I did. But before this obvious decision was made, a whole process happened inside my head. I thought: “Well, I’m ahead with my work assignments, so there was no harm being late. No one is going to check my time report or care anyway, as long as I’ve done my job. Besides, being late looks bad. And if anyone, against all odds, decides to check, I can just tell them that I made a mistake. Since it’s easy to just click ‘ok’ on the time report without adjusting anything, no one is going to believe otherwise. Especially since I’m a model employee.”

My thoughts were of course not as clear as they are now, when I put them into words. But this was basically the process that took place, before I overrode it with the principle of not being wilfully dishonest, that I try to follow to the best of my ability.

The interesting thing here, is that I was only partially conscious of my mental process. And had I not remembered the honesty-principle, I might have listened to the other voice. In this case, the chance was very little. But it could have happened. In a less clear case, maybe I would have not remembered my guideposts. Maybe I wouldn’t even have known what behaviour I let slip by my radar.