Apr 20
9
Compared to What?
Perception and Perspective
The current and ongoing crisis has been compared to many different events throughout known history and those comparisons can either help or hinder our individual growth and mental, physical, financial and spiritual health.
This, obviously, depends upon how the crisis may be affecting each of us individually and, therefore, whether any particular comparison helps or hinders, depends on individual perspective and perception.
It’s being said and often repeated that we’re all together in it and that this crisis is a great equalizer.
From one point of view the foregoing may be true, but from the point of view of somebody who has lost a loved one and attributes it to Covid-19 or someone whose business may have been irretrievably lost, due to the crisis, even though, as yet, they’re not sure if the loss is temporary or permanent; and compare that with someone who sees nothing but massive opportunities that are going to be the end result …and it is doubtful that either end of that particular spectrum will see the other end as “equal.”
All in all, while historical comparisons can be very interesting and provide perspective, but in the final analysis, comparisons and analogies are always flawed.
Let’s switch to something that we can control …each of us, personally and individually:
Things seem complicated only because we are all different …and uniquely so, yet we are continually comparing ourselves to others and wanting to be like them, sometimes to our own detriment, but sometimes contributing to our own growth and progress.
It is here that each individual must find her or his own path without worrying about someone who is being divinely led down a completely different path. One of my favorite quotes: “What’s that to you? You come and follow me!” (To which I’ve declared an unequivocal YES)!
I’m gonna go out on a limb and offer a meaningful challenge to those willing to ask the ONE within and/or beyond, if the challenge is for them:
If you want to compare yourself with someone why not make it someone about whom it has been written that he came to be an example for who and what you can be and who was quoted as saying, “Everything you seen me do and every word you’ve heard me speak, you can do and say, if you believe enough.”
My favorite quote is, “Why do you call me good? Only one is good, God.” But religion has made him not only an icon of good, but refers to him as “the only perfect man” …a direct contradiction to what he said.
Better than quotes and rather than saying he’s alive, but denying it in all sorts of practical ways, why not ask him to live his life in you until you finally hear him say, “You’re no longer my servant, but my friend.
Of course, there’s this ancient passage that ought to give us all pause …“The secret of the age is Christ in you.”
How does that compare?
bc