Wednesday’s thoughs
Sunday, October 14th is “Children’s Sabbath”. In reflecting on the nature of success and failure and thinking about what we want our children to understand I have come up with three things I want our children and adults to understand about life and how to live.
There is a time in life for striving. It’s the time when we learn how to compete. It’s a time when we discover the spirit within us; the spunk within us. We test our limits. We push ourselves forward with confidence.
There is a time in life for thriving. The striving is over, and we have discovered our soul. We come to a time when we are at home with ourselves and are at peace with the person we have become.
There is a time in life for arriving. The striving and thriving lead to a stage in life when we ar comfortable with our limits. We have been inspired by the spirit in us, and we have found peace with the soul that is the essence of ourselves, and we arrive at the sense of the eternal that is at the foundation of life itself.
Personally, I understand the first two stages better than I understand the last stage. I think the sense of arriving is something that may take the remainder of our lives to accomplish. Getting in touch with the eternal is a life-long effort.
I would like our children to understand this. I would like to understand it better myself.
What do you think? Write me at charlesschuster@fcfumc.net (Note sometimes the email address doesn’t come through. If you click on the space you will capture my email address). If you are willing to have others read your responses click on the ‘comments’ box below.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Charles
This is similar to a theme I’ve been reading in a climbing blog. One of the posters noticed an age related trend with respect to the respondants approach to risk management. Those that were younger had a go-for-broke, push-the-envelope attitude whereas some of the more seasoned climbers, especially those who might have family obligations would be more cognizant of their limitations and were content to work within those limits. It seemed very similar to your thoughts around striving and thriving.
What went unsaid in the climbers blog was the arriving stage. This is the stage where the activity no longer becomes about either pushing or defining limits. It’s when you’re out there because it’s what you love doing. The activity is no longer defined by level of difficulty or level of risk but that by just being there, by being part of that moment, you’re part of something greater. You realize there’s no answer to why you climb. It’s purely and simply what you do because that is who you are.
Monday’s question was around success and failure, and I would say that success would be measured not by what you have, but by what you’ve done with what you have. Arriving might then be when doing right with what you have is not done through altruism or to generate self satisfaction, but because that is who you’ve become.