Guilty. Have you ever arrived at your dinner destination only to be greeted with the news that the wait time for a table is going to be 45-60 minutes? Standing there waiting on your table, the frustration you felt upon hearing the news of the wait begins to morph into a bit of anger and you start to wonder why you are having to wait so long when there are obviously empty tables available and you have noticed that some of the wait staff are just standing around anyway. You might say you moved into the stage of being "hangry". That frustration turned anger blinds us as the reality of the situation is that within a few minutes you will be waited on hand over foot, and the quantity of food presented to your table will surpass the palette of even the most hungry at your table. As a matter of fact, the quantity of food that will be left uneaten would be enough to feed another family of four. Yet, you and your party make your way to the register, flip out your debit card and sign off on the very meal that some in the car will be complaining about on the drive home. Guilty. Does that sound a little too familiar, or maybe I'm the only one that has experienced even parts of that scenario. If so, maybe another situation would "fit" better. You stand in front of a closet filled with shirts both long and short sleeved, pants, shorts, sweaters and vests, and the very words that come out of your mouth are I don't have a thing to wear today! Or what about the temperature in the room where you happen to be stationed. Too hot, too cold, we may be trapped in the Goldilocks syndrome of trying to find the room in the building that is "just right". As with most of my writings the list goes on and on of life examples that may fit your situation in life better. New car to replace the old one, less sunlight coming in my corner office window, the wait in line at the pharmacy, and on and on we go! Whatever your life status is right now, I'm going out on a limb a bit to gather this conclusion. If you are reading this post from your phone, laptop, or other electronic device, you actually have a pretty comfortable life. Your life conditions may feel uncomfortable at times, yet when you take the proper perspective of your life's current status, I believe you should be able to agree that you have it pretty good. Could life be better, different, or easier? Absolutely, yet the idea that I am conveying today isn't about the scale of how comfortable your life is on a scale of 1 to 10, but more about how you perceive your life whether it is a 9+ or a -1 on that same scale.
The key to perspective is found in the notion of what you put in is exactly what you will get out. If you dwell in the world of comparison then maybe you shouldn't be comparing your life to that of the "Jones' family", but instead maybe your life compared to the roughly 26% or 1 out of every 4 people in the world that do not have safe drinking water. Or possibly we could consider the plight of the 673 million people around the world who do not receive adequate nourishment each day when we push ourselves away from the uneaten, food laden table where we sit. I'll never forget the story my nephew/son Bogi shared with me after one of his journeys in the Air Force that caused him to look at life from a completely different perspective.
Bogi was stationed in Djibouti, located in the horn of Africa several years ago. There he witnessed destitute poverty, rampant drug abuse, and almost zero hope for a better tomorrow. He shared with me that in the doorways of buildings he entered, children were laying there much like a dog we would step over as it stretched out across the floor. The infrastructure did not provide opportunities for jobs, so limited access to income, certainly not wealth was the norm, and as I stated above the hopelessness was only punctuated by the utter dependence adults and children relied on found in the stimulant crop khat that grows there naturally. Much like other amphetamines khat is highly addictive and the people there walked around high as a means of coping with their life's station. The proper perspective aspect of this story is found in one of Bogi's return trips to the United States on a commercial airline. During the flight the cabin crew wheeled out a hot meal for passengers who were traveling a day's journey across continents. The person beside Bogi received their meal and before even tasting the food they were complaining about the quality and quantity of food they had just been handed while they sat on a jumbo 747, air conditioning flowing down on their head and body, situated in a padded seat, with access to water, tea, soft drinks, or coffee with a push of a button. That was a hard moment for a young airman transitioning back to the land of flowing milk and honey. I believe it is safe to say that was a moment of putting things into their proper perspective.
The Apostle Paul lived a life of luxury before his conversion from the persecutor of Christians to his lifetime service to the work of teaching and expanding Christianity. The conversion did not come without lifestyle changes, beaten, imprisoned, hunted, and abused Paul not only accepted his life's situation, he embraced the trials and adversity he experienced. "I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through Him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:11-13. To what extent are you and I willing to carry the cross of Jesus? What level of comfort, or probably better to ask what level of discomfort, are we willing to accept as possibly this is exactly where God has placed us at this moment in life and in this moment I will not only survive, but I will thrive?
Jesus warned His followers, which means He was warning us over 2000 years ago that we would face adverse conditions, and life would not always be easy. In John 16:33 Jesus shared, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." This message from Jesus tells us that life is not going to be full of that proverbial bowl of cherries, but instead there will be ups and downs, good and bad, and at times it may feel like it is all bad, but at the end of the day, Paul's proper perspective of "I have learned to be content in any and every situation" coupled with the assurance from the words of Jesus that we will overcome in Him, should give us a better attitude and an opportunity to illuminate this world with our own perspective on life. God's proper perspective!
Coach Carter
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