Out of Sync

"Your focus determines your reality." --Qui-Gon Jinn

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." --Jesus

We human beings are fascinating creatures.

We have opposable thumbs.

We have harnessed fire.

We can think.

We have souls.

It's pretty darn amazing when you think about.

You see, I think sometimes of how much good each of us is capable of, how much just one person can accomplish in their life. It is truly inspiring.

And then I think about how so many of us never end up doing anything at all.

And I guess there are a lot of reasons for that. A lot of things that come up and prevent us from fulfilling our potential. From moving beyond where we are to where we should--or could--be.

Being a student for about 20 years now has taught me a lot of things. A lot of interesting things and, mostly, a lot of useless things. I've made friends and lost friends. Gone to some schools and left for others. I've been on the move for some time and to be honest, I've never really settled down.

I'm a little tired of this wandering...but I guess one useful thing that this pilgrimlike existence has taught me is how easy it is to get caught up in worlds so much smaller than the one we were meant for. How this limits our horizons and draws the shades on a much larger vision.

Church politics displacing the cause of Christ. A failed exam seeming like the end of the world. The vagaries of desire and romance leading to a loss of all perspective. Workplace intrigue becoming the thing that keeps us awake at night and drives our waking passions.

How can these things really become our worlds? How can they so consume us that we see nothing else? I don't know. But they do. Letting this happen in the short term is bad enough...but when the boundless dreams of youth are exchanged for an existence that is life in no other sense but the biological? That's tragic.

Ya, all the trade-offs (at least the ones we're aware of) seem important at the time. But are they really? Do these things that seem affect us so deeply really mean much at the end of the day? At the end of our lives? If we're completely honest, are they the things that are really important to us?

I hope not. I know they're not. Yet we let them be. We let our focus shift from the right to the easy. From where we always hoped and prayed it would be to somewhere....else.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how my perspectives and focus have been wrong in the past...and how much that has cost me.

So it is. The worlds we create and live in our minds, while coming to us so easily, are often damaging...and in the end are nothing like the world God has out there for us.