A Balance of Focus

Today, I was talking to someone about some life advice she had read. The basic gist of the advice seemed to be that we should figure out how much pain we're willing to suffer for the sake of our goals and only pursue goals for which we are willing to suffer. The person I was talking to had some different ideas about good life advice. Specifically, she said that we should focus on our goals and use our desire to reach our goals help us muscle through the pain that is necessary to achieve them.

In my opinion, there's some truth to both of them. If you want to climb a mountain, but there are rocks and trees and bushes between the mountain and you, you shouldn't be so concerned with the rock and trees and bushes that you lose sight of the mountain and veer off course, but at the same time, you shouldn't focus so hard on the mountain that you ignore, and run into, the rocks and trees and bushes between you. There has to be a balance of focus. We shouldn't get so caught up in the drudgery of our daily tasks that we lose sight of our ultimate goal, and we shouldn't get so caught up in the dream of our ultimate goal that we neglect the daily tasks that'll get us there.

While the advice she had heard had some merit, the person I was talking to had the better advice. Instead of focusing on the necessary, painful work we have to do or neglecting the work in favor of dreaming of our goal, we should use our goal and our desire to achieve it to motivate us to take on the work we have to do to accomplish our goal.

The goal must not be forgotten, and the work must not be neglected. We need to balance our focus between both.

Two (Or More) Wolves

I assume we've all heard the idea about having two wolves inside of us, one good, one evil, both fighting for control. The winner in this conflict, according to the parable is "the one you feed," but as I've thought about this idea, I've come to the conclusion that it applies to far more than just two "wolves." 

I believe that we can, theoretically, feed or starve any part of our inner selves. We can feed or starve habits, attitudes, and personality traits that, by themselves, are neither good nor evil or that can be good in moderation but would be evil in deficiency or excess. For example, we can make ourselves more or less loyal as a general trait, and whether that loyalty is part of the good wolf or the evil wolf depends largely on who or what we're loyal to and what that loyalty drives us to do.

Each human being has a myriad of habits, attitudes, and traits, and each of them can be fed or starved individually by focusing on them specifically. While our individual life choices and trajectory can be simplified into the categories of good and evil, it can also be far more complex than that. We can work toward specific, personalized goals, rather than a general desire to be more good and less evil.

For the sake of the conceptualizing parable, it seems reasonable to focus on two individual wolves, but it may be slightly more accurate to say that there are whole packs of wolves inside of us, and we can decide, individually, which wolves we starve or feed.

The Great Outdoors

Today, I had a picnic with my family, and it was great. The food and the company were both wonderful. But the thing I loved most about the picnic was that it got me to spend a great deal of time outside.

I don't normally spend much time outside. I sunburn easily, and thanks to the digital age (and the pandemic) taking my classes and my tutoring work both online, I hardly need to go outside at all, even for commuting. And sure, I take the dog for walks occasionally, and I still go to church and to my D&D games, but other than that, I typically stay indoors.

Except today. And today was the perfect day for it. Sure, the wind was a bit much part of the time, but the wind died down, temperature stayed cool, and there was plenty of shade. There were lots of trees, and I got to take a moment to listen to the breeze pass through the leaves and to just breathe. It was great.

And that wouldn't have happened if I spent the whole time on my phone or if I was just passing through the outside world because I had somewhere else to be.

I'm glad that I got to spend several refreshing hours outside today, and the food and family were great, too.

"...And Those Who Prepared It"

When we pray to ask God to bless food, we often also ask Him to bless those who prepared the food. However, there is one main exception to this traditional practice. We don't usually as God to bless those who prepared the food when "those who prepared the food" are ourselves. Case in point, when I ask God to bless my breakfast, I always ask God to bless whomever prepared my breakfast, unless that person is me.

I wonder why that is. We don't generally have any trouble asking for blessings for ourselves under other circumstances, and we have no trouble at all asking God to bless other food-preparers. I suppose it could be a form of humility, not insisting on being blessed for our efforts, but there are ways to humbly request the sorts of blessings that such service normally affords those who perform it. When people attend service projects, the person offering the invocation or benediction generally prays for all of the participants to be blessed, including themselves. And when multiple people work together to prepare a meal, the person who prays over the meal generally asks God to bless all those who prepared it, even if they were one of them. We have no trouble asking for blessings for ourselves in personal prayers, and we have no trouble asking God to bless us as part of a group, but we don't normally ask God to bless us individually when we are praying on behalf of a group, even when we would request such a blessing on a different individual, had they been the sole preparer of the meal.

I would guess that we feel a social faux pas in requesting blessings for ourselves while speaking on behalf of others. I can mostly understand that. But at the same time, if we would have asked God to bless those who prepared the food if they weren't us, why would we hesitate to ask God to bless "those who prepared the food" when that's us? I don't see that as selfishness, but as consistency and perhaps as an acknowledgement that something good has been done (by us). Humility doesn't, or shouldn't, require us to disregard the facts or sweep ourselves under the rug.

We can honestly, truthfully acknowledge when we do something good, and we can acknowledge that God typically blesses those who do good. When we prepare food, for ourselves or for others, I personally see no convincing reason why we shouldn't ask God to bless us.

A Wise Use of Resources

For my Business class, I recently wrote about how businesses that want to help others are best off donating money to the charities that help others, rather than trying to help others directly. My argument was that the businesses don't always know the best ways to help people, since they focus on improving their product or service and maintaining decent profits. Non-profit organizations, meanwhile, focus on helping others. Non-profits don't always have enough resources, and for-profits don't always have the right ideas, but together, they can do great things.

Most of us have good intentions, but we don't always know what's best. That's why we should listen to people who are wiser than we are, who understand the situation better than we do, and consider following their advice. We may have all the resources we need to do the right thing, but that won't help us much while we're still struggling to figure out what the right thing to do is. If we listen to the right people, we can put our time, energy, and other resources to better use than we could if we wasted time and energy trying to figure it out on our own. It's better to listen to the people who have devoted their lives to figuring this out and who seem to know a lot better than we do.

Morality vs Illegality

When I'm not completely swamped with homework and other responsibilities, I like to run a D&D game for myself, wherein I play the role of both the DM and the only player. I've been told that this is called "writing a book," and I disagree. Actually writing a book requires more planning and revision, and fewer dice. I let the dice and my own whims decide how the stories play out, and I make it up as I go, writing only as much as is needed to keep the story moving forward. And at the moment, the story is moving in a pretty interesting direction.

The main character of this story is Mialee (Mia for short, but it's pronounced like Maya). Mia is a princess, and she's currently trying to track down someone who was kidnapped by dark mages. Dark magic is illegal in this setting, but other forms of magic are not, so the mages can maintain the appearance of legality so long as they're careful with where and how they practice their dark magic. Apparently, these particular dark mages have been especially careful, as the dice rolled in their favor several times in a row, and it was determined that, while we suspect them of the kidnapping (and they are, in fact, the perpetrators), there's not enough evidence to convict them, and they are legally untouchable.

Yet, a person has been kidnapped, and they need saving. Mia knows who did it, she knows where the captive is being kept, and, whether her actions are legal or not, she's going to do something about it.

Frankly, I'm not sure whether or not I condone this behavior. On the one hand, I'm far more aligned with Good than I am with Lawfulness. People should always do what's right, and people should usually obey the law. On the other hand, if those who are supposed to enforce the law don't obey the law themselves, then we have a serious problem. Law enforcement should operate within their legal bounds, even if that means letting the bad guys get away. But then again, that would open the door to more people being victimized. In this current case, it would mean letting a kidnapping victim remain a captive until they can be liberated legally, however long that'll take. Mia knows that what she's doing is illegal, and she's prepared to face the consequences, but she also believes that what she's doing is right, and I think, at least in this case, I agree with her.

Moral questions can get very difficult when the laws of morality and the laws of the land disagree. Sometimes, the right choice is obvious, like when the law of the land requires you to do something especially evil. In such cases, it becomes morally evil to obey the law. But there are also difficult cases, where it's not as clear whether the right choice is to do good or to obey the law.

If you could help someone, but you would have to break the law to do it, would you? Would it matter how much good you could do? Would it matter how serious of a crime it would be? Mia is willing to trespass (both literally and against the law) to save someone who has been kidnapped. Would you or I be willing to do the same? Should we be? In such a situation, what is the right thing to do?

Building on the Past

Today, I got a chance to reflect on how written language has helped civilization grow. We all have a certain amount of knowledge. By writing our knowledge down, we can share it with each other and record it for future generations. That's what our ancestors did. Because they shared their knowledge and wisdom with us, we don't have to start from scratch. Instead, we can build on what they gave us and advance human knowledge and wisdom even further. Because of the knowledge that our generations discovers, future generations will have an even stronger starting point, and the knowledge they gain will go on to benefit their children.And as long as we all keep writing and keep reading, that process will repeat itself, with humanity developing more knowledge and wisdom with each passing generation, ad infinitum, until the end of time. In fact, it may be possible that humanity itself will learn, line upon line, until the perfect day.

Perhaps I'm being optimistic. Perhaps humanity will regress of die out eventually. And, of course, it's possible for wisdom to be ignored and forgotten and for knowledge to be lost. But still, I have hope for the future. The pattern of building on the knowledge and wisdom of the past has held true for untold generations, and here we are now. With luck and diligence, we can build on the past to leave an even better starting point for those who will follow us in the future.

Our lives have been blessed by the knowledge and wisdom our ancestors left for us. My hope is that our children will be blessed by the knowledge and wisdom we leave for them.