A few weeks ago I was out of town for some family business. While I was away, surrounded by family, I found us all asking similar things. What if. Sparked my a conversation I had with my father, and fuelled by a discussion I had with some of my cousins, I started asking completely different what if questions. What if I could do anything I set my mind to? What if money never stopped me from doing something? What if things could be different? The beauty it that they can be different, in fact as a given in life change guarantees things will be different. What if things could be better?
I came back home with this burning question embedded within my heart. What if, instead of fearing what could be, things changed for the better. Over the past few weeks since I've been back it is something I have been considering almost constantly. It has caused me to question so much. What if there was no need for me to do the things I do, would I do them anyway? When you don't need to show respect or clean up after yourself does that mean you shouldn't? And the answer struck me while I was brushing my teeth one morning.
I do the things I do,
not because they need to be done,
but because they are right.
It changed my outlook on a lot of things I did, and a lot of things I didn't do. If money were not an issue, if I was already successful, I had all I wanted, would I even get out of bed? I think that some of us would't. I think that some of us are so wrapped up in our own world that we fail to see the world out there, the world all around us. The things I desire are not things that are simply achieved and then put on a shelf. I do not want to get my trophy, have my life, and then build walls to the rest of the world. I want to experience and live life. Sure, there are things I'd like to achieve. For me a very important thing I want is a family of my own, one day to have my own wife and kids. Few things compare to that for me. But that is never just it, it's the process of living life (of learning and growing) that it precious.
Some dreams are so overwhelming
they cannot merely be achieved,
they must be continuously pursued.
While I was brushing my teeth I realised that I do what I do, not because it needs to be done, but because it is who I want to be. I want to be a man of God. I want to be a man of class, a man of manners. I want to be a father and a husband. I want help others. The man I want to be one day is not something I can achieve and then be done, it is something I will have to work at every waking moment.
There are two very big things that I have been letting hold me back for a while now, and I plan to change that. One New Year I heard a sermon that inspired me in an incredible way. The title was 'What If...'. What if this year was your best year yet? What if this year you did more than you could ever imagine. What if this year you conquered life? That is what I am looking at now, in two practical areas that I have held myself back in for far too long. For too long I have allowed money and pessimism restrict my life. It's far easier to say I don't have the money for that, or I couldn't do that, instead of making a way.
There is always a way,
if not in you then in God.
What if you took control of your own life?
What if you lived life to the full?
What if you wrote your own future?
It can be done.
Jem.
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