Bjcorbin's Blog

1.      Misery not only loves company, it wants to settle down and have children too.  I’ve noticed that miserable people not only seek out other miserable people to bond with, but that they’ll often unconsciously sabotage anything that has the potential to pull them from their misery.  There are few emotions that are as debilitating and self sustaining as self pity; and generally the only way to remain free of such feelings is through a dogged determination not to live that way.  As long as we are willing to blame other people and circumstances for our condition, we will remain powerless to change it. 

2.      For everything there is a season and it’s important not to despise the season that you’re in.  If you live long enough, you notice that there is a sort of pattern that life follows and that things come and go in seasons.  While we have natural tendency to like some seasons better than others, I’ve found that every season comes with both challenges and blessings.  If we focus on the challenges of the season we’re in, we’ll often miss the blessings and spend our time pining away for the season to change.  Conversely, if we focus on the blessings of each season, it makes the challenges easier to endure and brings a sense of variety to the journey.

3.      A love that is unwilling to sacrifice isn’t love at all.  When we say that we love someone, we often just mean that we love how they make us feel or what they add to our lives.  While it is not wrong to appreciate what someone brings to our life, genuine love transcends merely getting my own needs met and places the needs of others in my priority.  I’ve noticed that most of the broken relationships that I’ve encountered included at least one person who felt justified by the fact that their needs weren’t being met.

4.      The truth really does set you free.  Early in my life, I developed a knack for telling stories, which is a nice way of saying that I was a compulsive liar.  Throughout my adolescence I told so many “stories”, that at times I lost track of what the truth was.  Consequently I walked around for years wrestling with a guilty conscience and a fear of being found out.  It seems that the longer I entertained feelings of guilt and fear, the more overwhelming they became.  In instances where the truth was uncovered, I discovered that my fear of the consequences was normally exaggerated compared to the reality of them.  Even when the consequences were significant, I found that there was a tremendous sense of relief whenever the truth came out.  After many years of walking through this cycle, I finally decided that even if the truth wasn’t always pretty, it was the best way to avoid fear and shame.

5.      No person or thing can “make you happy”.  People can support us, love us, inspire us and even enhance the quality of our life; but unless we determine within ourselves to find the joy, the beauty and the hope within our given circumstance, we will never be “happy”. The idea that it is someone else’s role to bring happiness into our life places tremendous pressure on our relationships, often causing them to fail (e.g. they just don’t make me happy anymore…).  Similarly, material things do not have the ability to bring satisfaction to our souls.  I’ve noticed that people who can be grateful for what they have today, will generally be that way regardless of what they have; and that people who crave something more, will normally continue to crave regardless of what they get.

6.      There are few jobs easier than being a Critic and few that are more taxing than being a Builder.  I’m ashamed to admit that there have been times in my life that I’ve been like the guy who sits in the back of the classroom, ridiculing the person teaching the class; playing the role of Critic, while someone sincerely tries to have a positive influence on the people around them.  While I might try to rationalize that their efforts were less than perfect or maybe even in vain, life has taught me how little that criticism helps anyone.  It takes a tremendous amount of effort and patience to bring unity where there has only been division, or to stir a group to battle when they’ve only known defeat or to restore a sense of hope to a place of desolation…  The Builder must make a concerted effort to create, while the Critic can bring destruction with little effort.  As a witness to and a participant in both of these processes, I’ve committed myself to spending the rest of my days being engaged in the building up and not the tearing down.

7.      The path of least resistance is rarely a road worth taking.  Often what causes something to be valuable is that it cannot be easily attained.  It follows then that the most valuable things in life normally require some perseverance to apprehend.  While everyone may sincerely want these kinds of things for their life (e.g. a healthy body, a strong marriage, a successful career…), few are willing to endure the process it takes to secure them.  Unfortunately we live in a culture that increasingly values convenience above quality, and in which many of our children have grown up with an expectation of the instant gratification of their desires. Many a parent has worked hard to ensure that their kids get a great education, so that these children won’t have to struggle like they did.  Unfortunately it is in the midst of the struggle that we tend to develop our character and work ethic; and without this development we are generally ill equipped to handle adversity.  I’ve found that you can teach someone with character and work ethic just about anything, but without those qualities, an education becomes of little value.  I’ve also come to believe that giving my children everything that I didn’t have when I grew up will likely handicap them for life.

8.      The answer to the age old question of whether man is basically good or basically evil is “Yes”.  After years of observation I’ve drawn the conclusion that there is both good and evil inherent in mankind.  Because man was created in the image of God, there is goodness inherent in man’s design (e.g. because God is love, men are created with the capacity to love…).  Unfortunately man also comes with a highly corruptible nature, which is generally propelled by selfishness and a host of insatiable appetites.  Despite the beauty within our design, we must first overcome our nature, if we are to tap into our true potential.  When we chose to live by our instincts, we become like a well built car, with a tank full of bad gas, never reaching the fulfillment of what we were designed for.

9.      It’s hard to be Clint Eastwood if you’re Mr. Rogers.  As I was growing up, my conception of what a man was came largely from my father, who was a fan of men like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.   Throughout my adolescence there were other icons (e.g. John Travolta – Saturday Night Fever, Rambo, Don Johnson – Miami Vice…) who seemed to collectively shape the culture’s conception of manhood and who I unconsciously graded myself against.  Since I was nothing like these men, I assumed that I just wasn’t much of a man and in subtle ways I let their image affect how I walked, talked, dressed…, but as I got older I began to notice that there weren’t many things less attractive than someone trying to be something that they’re not (e.g. a middle aged woman dressed like teenager; a suburban white kid acting as though he grew up in the ghetto; a man with a bad toupee, acting as though it is his natural hair…).  I eventually came to peace with the understanding that regardless of the fact that I bear little or no resemblance to the trendy cultural images of manhood, the best thing I could do was to be myself.  That catharsis has  allowed me to do things like wear the clothes that I feel comfortable in, to act silly in public just to make my kids laugh, to say “I love you too honey” to my wife when I hang up the phone in front of someone, to cry at sad movies…, all without feeling self conscious.  I highly recommend it.

10.  It’s not whether you win or lose, its how you play the game.  Experience teaches us that the road to victory is generally paved with some amount of defeat; and that how we respond to those defeats will generally determine whether or not we ever come to the place of victory.   While victory tends to be the goal of every player, I’ve found that what we remember is how they played the game.  It is not necessarily the player with the highest winning percentage that captures our imagination, it is the player who played unselfishly, or with integrity or who overcame the biggest odds…  Even for those who taste great victory, it is always in a moment that quickly passes into a lifetime of other moments.  At the moment we pass from this life, it won’t be that moment of glory that matters most; it will be how we lived all the other moments that defines us.