Diploma, Money, Marriage, Bible

People don’t want to learn, they want paper that tells them they have learned.
People don’t want to live a life of value, they want paper that tells them they have value.
People don’t want to be in love, they want paper that tells them they are in love.
People don’t want to experience God, they want paper to tell them what God is.

I take it back.  It’s not that people don’t want these things.  Of course, who doesn’t want knowledge, money, love, and (for some) spirituality.  It’s that people tend to get caught up in the illusion of those things.  That somewhere along the line, they lose their way.

And it’s so easy to make that mistake.  It’s so easy to equate knowledge with a diploma, money with value, love with marriage, and God with the Bible.

Or maybe that’s just me projecting myself onto others.  Maybe there’s nothing wrong with living a life of paper.  Who am I to judge?

/ramblings

Sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Source: Link

Til Death Do Us Part & Divorce

Til Death Do Us Part

Everyone knows that part of the marriage vow– “Til death do us part.” It’s sweet, it’s sentimental, and it conveys that marriage is a commitment for life.  But consider this:

After 30 years of marriage, if you had a heart attack and died on the way to the divorce lawyer, everyone would’ve gone, “Oh wow, 30 years together… what a successful marriage!”  But 30 years and you actually divorce?  Oh no.  That’s a failed marriage.

It’s because we (society) define success in marriage as death.  It doesn’t matter how miserable you were, whether it was an abusive relationship or one of lifelong resentment and misery.  It doesn’t matter if it was fulfilling.  If somebody’s getting buried and you’re still married, success!

The silver lining of divorce

There’s always a stigma surrounding divorce.  But what people don’t realize is that divorce is a deliberate choice by one or both parties.  It’s an opt-out.

It’s not like it’s an unfortunate unforeseen accident that just happens to couples.  “Oh did you hear about poor Jim?  Yeah he was just out walking his dog and fell into a divorce!  What are the chances!”  Hahaha.

But there’s something about realizing that marriage is opt-in/opt-out.  With the possibility of divorce, it’s almost like you have to earn your partner’s presence in your life.  Nothing can be taken for granted.  It forces people to try to be happy with each other (omg) and good to each other.

You can’t take your partner for granted in a way that you could when it was one woman, one man, for life.

And in the wake of failed marriages, it allows for the ones that persevere– the ones that endure– to blossom.

Attitude

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.  Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.  It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.  It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.  It will make or break a company… a church… a home.  The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.  We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.  We cannot change the inevitable.  The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.  And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.

- Charles Swindoll

This quote comes from Christian pastor Charles Swindoll @ Insight for Living.  And at first glance, I thought that it’s about being happy regardless of what life throws our way.  But then I realized, it’s not true at all.  It’s too simple.  It’s not about suppressing suffering in the face of pain.  And it’s never as easy as snapping your fingers and changing how you feel about something.

I am not my emotions.  It’s important that I recognize my natural tendencies, my auto-pilot settings, my default behaviors as something that I have, and not something that I am.  It’s so easy to play the victim.  To indulge in feeling shitty and to succumb to self-destructive tendencies.  I have to take a step back, realize that my emotions do not control my actions, and that I have the freedom to choose how I frame and deal with these feelings.  And of course, I have to acknowledge that some ways of dealing with emotions are more constructive than others.

Attitude is not how you feel.  Attitude is 100% how you choose to react.