Today, I thought about a few things that have been weighing heavily on my mind but shouldn't be. While pondering and trying to listen to God, two movie lines came to mind by way of answer to my quandary:
Always in motion is the future.
--Yoda (Empire Strikes Back)
You're future hasn't been written yet. Noone's has, so
make it a good one. -- Doc Brown (Back to the Future III)
Tuesday I came to work to discover that someone has complained about me straight to the Dean. This particular person is probably insatiable- one of those people who can find something wrong wherever she goes. What bothered me most is that with me on the putative layoff list, if the Dean decides to defer to her critique of me, the dean may not defend me when it comes to decide with whom to dispense.
Today I had a political argument with an adjunct professor. Afterwards I realized that if I continued to do this, I would alienate myself among the rest of the faculty and find myself bereft of champions if ever I stood in need of advocacy.
Last Thursday, one of my students told me that I shouldn't be dating at all because my ex wife left me with some major problems. She, like so many other of my acquaintences, fears that I am fixated on a particular type of woman to date, a type which will only end in disappointment.
The fact of the matter is that nobody knows what will be. I could sit here and worry tonight about some amorphic future eventuality or I could do what I decided to do and take the advice of the Almighty. He told me to do two particular and specific things tonight, and I'm going to do them, no matter what the end result may be or how other people feel about it. I've done tons of things since my mission because I felt like I should, regardless of the outcome. Don't get me wrong; I fully expected certain outcomes, but sometimes it's not about the outcome at all. It's about having made the attempt.
If we only do things because we "know" they will be useful to us, nobody would do much of anything. Everything carries with it a risk, even dying and taxes. Too many people delude themselves into the "sure bet" only to find out they evaluated it wrong and it's neither sure nor a good bet. I told my students last week that we do not know all ends and we cannot see all variables and we cannot measure all data. The human mind cannot conceive every eventuality; we try to do the best we can with what we have.
The salient point is that most people make decisions based on expected or desired outcomes. I make decisions to do things that are right. Do what is right; let the consequence follow.
Seeing as I seek to serve God and please him, it stands to reason that I would act in such a way that would fulfill that valuation. In order to please Him, I must seek His will. That being the case, I make prayerfully deliberate decisions and seek His endorsement. I do not do that because I expect it to bring me unending bliss; I do it because He commanded/suggested that I so do. His ways and thoughts are higher than my own. I trust Him even if I don’t understand.
As such, although I thank you all for your trust and concern, I solicit your prayers and faith that what I do will be what is best, not because of what I want to happen but because of what ought to happen as a result. You might say I follow the philosophy of the stoics who said that they prefer what is, because they choose to believe that what comes to pass is the will of God and therefore it is what is desirable. Maybe it sounds strange of me to be grateful for how Kim wrecked my psyche, but I am today where I am because of her in part, and I’m better of in general today than ever before in my adult life.
My future will be perfect. Not everything that happens from here on out will be what I want to happen, but I know that sometimes what I wanted would have turned out to be an abject disaster. God knows best. In God I trust. In the end, what should be will be when the time is right, and that will be just fine by me. God has never let me down, even if he sometimes forces me to wait longer than I want for what I know I deserve.
Seeing as I seek to serve God and please him, it stands to reason that I would act in such a way that would fulfill that valuation. In order to please Him, I must seek His will. That being the case, I make prayerfully deliberate decisions and seek His endorsement. I do not do that because I expect it to bring me unending bliss; I do it because He commanded/suggested that I so do. His ways and thoughts are higher than my own. I trust Him even if I don’t understand.
As such, although I thank you all for your trust and concern, I solicit your prayers and faith that what I do will be what is best, not because of what I want to happen but because of what ought to happen as a result. You might say I follow the philosophy of the stoics who said that they prefer what is, because they choose to believe that what comes to pass is the will of God and therefore it is what is desirable. Maybe it sounds strange of me to be grateful for how Kim wrecked my psyche, but I am today where I am because of her in part, and I’m better of in general today than ever before in my adult life.
My future will be perfect. Not everything that happens from here on out will be what I want to happen, but I know that sometimes what I wanted would have turned out to be an abject disaster. God knows best. In God I trust. In the end, what should be will be when the time is right, and that will be just fine by me. God has never let me down, even if he sometimes forces me to wait longer than I want for what I know I deserve.
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