Long race
Yesterday I met up w/ Steve Choi and he was just telling me about all these lesson’s he’s learned from his years here on campus. While he was talking, I was making a mental checklist and I was like – yup, learned that, yup – went through that, etc. Then I was like, wait. Have I really learned all this? Here’s Steve – with years and years of experience beyond my few years here and I have the audacity to say I’ve learned the same things. Yeah, I might have learned it in my head – but he has the heart, the experience behind it. Me – it’s the tip of the iceberg. I was repulsed at my own arrogance and really tried to learn and soak in what he was saying.
Then I met up with one of my small group members from last year to work on my paper “Detecting someone else’s heart motive”. I thought I was getting better at this but yeah . . . 3 and a half hours later, barely had an idea. It might have been my questions or my imperfect view of the heart motives. Still have a long way to go in understanding people.
Then I get home and my roommate talks to me about my CFC living post. He critiqued my tone and approach to the subject. I came across as preachy and arrogant (there’s a trend here). I was more accusing than I was persuasive. He also mentioned there might be other issues at hand than just the desire for comfort and how I narrowly approach the subject. I was thinking about it and my rants are an over-flow of my (evil) heart. It’s me dumping my thoughts so 1) it will reflect how I think (which also reflects how I counsel myself) and 2) issues that are of concern to me. That is why I mostly dealt w/ comfort as oppose to some other issue like money. To me, cost of living isn’t really a big factor, it’s more of how nice the apartment I will be living in. The issue here is the purpose of my rants/posts/whatever I put here. If it’s just for me or to voice what I’m thinking/feeling – a brain dump, then I think it’s ok. If it’s to convince my reader to agree with my point – then I’m missing the mark. After talking with my roommate, I realized I need to think and approach issues on a broader scale than just how they affect me.
Yesterday, I realized I still have a long ways to go.