Did you ever show up to class the day of a test feeling unprepared? The minute you entered the classroom your palms began to sweat; you just knew the test was not going to go well. You sat in your seat all fidgety, just dreading the next hour. Then all of the sudden the bell rings and the teacher proclaims, "Okay, class, this will be an open book exam."The heavenly choir bursts forth in your head, "Hal-le-lu-ja!" Maybe not a modern-day miracle but certainly an indescribable feeling of relief. The idea of an open-book exam breathed new life into you. Close your eyes and try to remember the relief. It felt as though the weight of the world just lifted...
Well, you can have that same feeling today about life. In this age of information where specialized websites and Wikipedia are just a few mouse clicks away, where every church has a liberal stock of bibles to give away, where you can buy a book in a matter of seconds on your ipad or kindle, the answers can all be yours! It's really just that simple.
The problem for many of us is that the answers are rarely (if ever) on TV or in a bar or in the driver's seat of the newest BMW. These are the comfortable places where we often look and hope to discover the answers or, in many cases, dream of being discovered.
Go back again to the open-book test in 10th-grade Biology or whatever it was. It really wasn't all that easy. You still had to make the effort to go through the book and find the answers. It took time and, if you hadn't read the chapters, it was tough to get the information quickly enought to finish. The entire class still didn't get an A. The reality is that even when you took an open-book test you had to be diligent to make the grade.
So, too, with life. The answers are all there and they are simpler than ever to find, whether on the subject of personal finance, relationships, diet, exercise, meditation - you name it, there are endless sources by which to educate ourselves. Can you muster the discipline to diligently search for the answers and put them into practice?
I'd like to leave you with a summation which can easily double as a meditation:
As with so many things in life, the answer is simple but not easy...
This is good and insigtful with optimism. I was taking a very intense yoga class last night with an instructor for the first time. I opened up my body physically and mentally and pushed my limits. During a pose that we had to breath into and stretch deeper he made a comment that made me smile. The comment was very true to the moment and made me realized that it is very true in every day life.
ReplyDeleteDo you know what he said?
"This is simple, but not easy"