An Epiphany… Somewhat
Over the weekend, while I was installing Windows 7, I had quite a bit of time to sit back & think. During that thinking, I think I had a bit of an epiphany, or something like that. It’s probably more along the lines of a personal revelation than anything else, especially given the fact that it’s a pretty obvious fact to most people.
What is that revelation? Simply put, you should use what’s going to work for you without worrying about the thoughts & opinions of others. If there’s something out there that works for you, then by all means you should use it, regardless of what people may think. For example, I still like & drink Kool-Aid at the age of 27, and I could care less what some of my friends may think. It’s a personal preference, it works for me, I like it, so I’m going to continue drinking it. Or a better example may be my use of the Microsoft Zune over the infinitely popular iPod from Apple. The Zune may not have the same cool factor, but for me it’s more functional and gives me a better experience than I would have if I owned an iPod.
Along those same lines, you shouldn’t try to make something be what it’s not designed to be. Of course, there will be people out there that think you should, for whatever reason; but I don’t think that you should. A Honda Civic isn’t designed to tow & haul stuff like a Ford F-150, so why would you even attempt to make the Civic perform the functions of the F-150? Instead of trying to make the Civic perform like the F-150, why not just use the F-150 and be done with it? That’s how I feel about some things. Some things are designed with a particular audience in mind, and it should be allowed to function in that capacity. We shouldn’t try to force it to be something that it’s not; instead, we should embrace it for what it is & use it for what it was designed for. At the same time, if you know that you’re going to do a lot of towing, skip the Honda Civic altogether and just use the F-150 because you know it’s going to be able to perform the way you need it to.
That’s the realization I came to this weekend. There’s been some stuff that I’ve been trying to push and use in a way that it wasn’t designed for. The problem with that is that I have the proper tools sitting right next to me; so, instead of forcing my screwdriver to be a drill, I just need to grab my power drill and use it to help me accomplish the job quickly & efficiently, especially when I know that it’s a better tool & I like it better anyway.
It’s aways a cool and freeing thing when you can just put aside the thoughts and opinions of others, and just live. I think its in that that Jesus really had life on his keychain – and not the other way around. Its hard to have that perspective, but also, its needed if we are going to stay mentally, physically, and/or spiritually healthy in this day and age. I commend ya bro for standing tall.
Hey LaRosa, I just read this (about 6 weeks late) — I had to laugh at your car example, because right after I got married I moved my wife up to Pittsburgh pulling an 8 foot U-Haul behind her little Honda Civic. It would *definitely* have been easier with an F-150.
It was early January, and I remember going up some steep, icy hill in Ohio with the pedal to the metal, and the car was slowing down from trying to pull all that weight. Kind of funny in retrospect, but I definitely wouldn’t want to repeat the experience!