Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Is Effort a Myth

I've finally decided to take some advice. :) I've been reading Seth Godin's blogs every day for about a month. I want to do whatever I can to get his thoughts out to a wider audience. Although he writes primarily about marketing, his thoughts center on some of the most central parts of the human experience. I.E., read this latest blog from today. Is Effort a Myth

Do we really believe that this is true? That effort = success. For most of my life I've gotten by. I skated through school, I'm fairly athletic, I can do pretty good at just about anything and somehow have bought into the lie that I can have the kind of success that I desire just because somehow I'm entitled to it.

WOW - did you catch that. Entitlement - now there's a big bad word. This sense of entitlement runs really really deep. There's a stream here in Oregon called the Metolius. Those of us from the south aren't used to seeing this kind of thing, but if you visit it, it's a "river" that runs all year round and stays at about the same temp and same flow all the time. What's interesting, to me at least, is that it where it comes out of the earth at (the Head of the Metolius) it's a river. It's crazy, this river just appears out of seemingly nowhere. Here's where I'm going with this, somehow, in the geologic processes under the ground, way deep, there is this undercurrent building, and it builds and builds until it finds it's way out and then bam, you have a river.

I think that's how this entitlement thing works. You don't see it, you don't feel it, you don't even know it's there, although, I do believe God, through the Holy Spirit points it out if we are listening, and then we are amazed when it all of a sudden shows up in our behaviors, our lives, our words, our actions...

We're entitled to nothing. We're called to serve. We were bought with a price. I am not my own. I want these kinds of things to become more and more real to me.

Do I believe that effort = success? Yes. I do believe that we get out what we put in. That we can't expect life to just give us a blank check. Maybe we get to see people on TV that somehow "skate" but like Seth says, if you cut off all the fringe folks like that, the rest of us, all of the normal people :) don't get to skate.

I guess I'm not sure exactly what I'm saying here except that I feel very passionate about this. Oh that my effort would have meaning for something great and that the River Entitlement would turn into the River of Life. That would be cool huh?

1 comment:

Anna Taylor said...

This blog is very revealing about many of us. It is poignant and I will take it to heart.