[M]y righteous one will live by faith.
My soul takes no pleasure in anyone who shrinks back.’
But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.
Hebrews10:38
I've been thinking a lot about taking risks lately. Risk taking is not something I do naturally. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm passive...Okay, I am generally passive. I just don't take risks because I want to make the right decisions, the right choices. So mostly I err on the side of caution and take no risks.
I'm tired of living like that. I don't want to go so far as to say I want to live on the edge with a cliffhanger of a life, but doing the safe thing, being agreeable, ignoring the things that were important to me and trying to please the people around me has really done nothing for me besides get me treated like a doormat, humiliated and tossed aside like so much garbage. I am way tired of that sort of thing. I think it has got to be possible to be a decent human being and, at the same time, not be a doormat, right?
The problem with that for me is that I have this lovely imagination. I can see the possibilities, like looking at an endless reflection of mirrors, and I get paralyzed. Too much information just adds to the quantum uncertainty of my life. So I do nothing (or I do something really random) and, in turn, get less than what I would have gotten if I'd just done something.
Ignoring the possibilities is always an option. After all, that is just quantum mechanics.
Now if that proton would just move the heck out of my way...
I'm learning that I have to walk forward despite the possibilities I see. Nothing will happen otherwise. As long as I keep from sin and continue to be obedient to what I know the Lord has told me to do, I can only continue to move forward. Nothing else really matters in the long run.
Someone told me that learning to focus on the right things will also help me deal with the multiple possibilities. When I am off focusing on dumb stuff--the random useless protons in my life--I don't make good decisions because I am making a decision based on information that has nothing to do with what I actually need or want. Did that make sense? Getting my goals in hand and knowing what I have to do from day to day has really changed what I focus on. Even when things aren't looking like I think they should look.
So...focusing on what I do actually want is the key. Otherwise I'm just going to end up seeing too much and I'll become paralyzed again. All the information I gather should be useful, not just clogging up my brain for some cosmic Jeopardy game in the future.
So I say "OUT! OUT DAMNED PROTON!" (Hat tip to The Bard) and onward to principles of greater certainty!
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