There is a phenomena that occurs toward the end of the year that is just crap. This phenomena crushes children's dreams and melts confidence in young adult hood. It is responsible for institutionalizations and mental breakdowns but it only effects a small sampling of the population. I am one of them. This poor overlooked group I am speaking of is people with birthdays close to Christmas.
Am I being overly dramatic? Of course. Am I blowing something small and simple way out of proportion? Without a doubt. Am I making something out of nothing? Certainly not.
So what exactly am I talking about? I'm talking about the fact that if your birthday is within 1 or 2 weeks of Christmas people will give you 1 gift and say it is for both your birthday and Christmas. To an adult this seems like no big deal. But to a child this is huge.
As kids, we are still learning how the world works, and we are struggling for control. We are told what to do by our parents, teachers, older siblings, aunts, uncles, and who ever else is around. We have little control in very few areas of our life. One thing we do have control over is our stuff. The more stuff you have, the larger your span of control. When you effectively get half of the stuff other kids get your span of control is smaller than your peers'. This shows up in different ways and to different degrees, but what I want to focus on is a theory that I just came up with while sitting in my truck and thinking about this.
This accumulation of stuff enlarges our span of control or our "territory" if you will. It seems to me that this then translates in our heads as success in later years. As we grow up the bible tells us to put away childish things and we learn that control is not directly related to how much we have. We learn the value of quality over quantity. And we learn hopefully that we are not actually in control. But engrained in us is the comfort and desire of stuff. We still want stuff but we know it does not equal control. But we see that people that are doing well have a lot of stuff. Therefore stuff equals success. We all want to be successful but we have allowed our childish notions dictate the definition of a very profound concept.
So I think in my next few posts I want to discover what the bible says about success and how it applies not only to our lives as a whole, but in a few different areas of our lives as well. I'm thinking of four distinct categories, finance, work, family, and spiritual. What does success look like in those areas, what is reasonable to expect, where should attention be focused? If you have any ideas for categories let me know. Merry Christmahanaquanza.