Bear & Squirrel: The Moral Of The Story
Anyway, I wasn't trying to be obscure, I just wanted to make my point in a more entertaining way. Allow me to explain the moral of that story...
Why does the bear take this hike every day? 'Cause his poppa bear did.
That's just like so many of us, and especially we as Christians. We do church on Sundays, in buildings, with programs, with pews, etc. Not for any good reason, it's just because we always have. None of that stuff is in the Bible. We can apply this observation equally to the way that we behave with our families or the way that we act at work.
Why is the bear alone? 'Cause he's big and scary.
Well, that may be the original reason. Since that time, though, the bear has become comfortable in his loneliness. He does know that he is lonely, since he misses the squirrel's company later. That's like a lot of people I know. Even if we acknowledge that we have very few or no close friends, we learn to become satisfied with it. We chalk it up to some aspect of our personality or say that it's just a fact of life.
And what's more, we start to defend this position. We start to rationalize it and we pretend that we're happy by ourselves. We avoid inviting friends in and we turn down chances to develop new friendships. After all, if we cannot convince ourselves that we're fine then we would be entirely too sad. And the only people that break out of these solo hikes in life are those that realize how desperately they want some of those vital friendships.
Why does the squirrel pester the bear? 'Cause that's what friends do.
We all need a friend like that. We need somebody that can get past our defenses, that can make us think, that can challenge us to change and grow. It's like I wrote about in this post last month, we need different friends that can each bring something into our lives. They each have a vital role for us and it's virtually impossible to do some of those things on our own.
The rest of the story was just for fun. I thought it was funny to have the little squirrel bop the bear in the nose. The picture of a dizzy squirrel on the bear's head also amused me. As for the end of the story, it was intentionally left incomplete. How many of us are like that bear? How many of us are stuck with out pointless habits, and how many of us live alone like that? It's up to us to decide to shake up our lives and develop those crucial relationships.
*I just added site tracking statistics this past week for my blog. My thanks to Ashleigh for pointing me to a good one, statcounter.com. I've used these kinds of things before but most of them are not very useful unless you pay for the service. This one seems to have all kinds of great detail, though.
2 comments:
See...I told you this stat counter was good...Although now you get to see that there are some (lots in my case) who read your blog daily that just don't comment...
I meant to post this yesterday, but I never got the chance. Incidentally, this post just further legitimizes the point I'll try and make here.
I am one of those people who has just gotten used to being alone, I've never had more than 3 people in my life that I really consider "friends" at any given point in my life. My experiences have taught me that most people are just nice for the sake of being nice to the girl in the wheelchair. That's not friendship. These situations have happened so often that I'm now extremely wary of who I call a "friend". I guess I'm just tired of investing more than I get back. I've had to learn to be okay with being alone.
I also see a lot of my family in the bear. They've always just been content to "do what they've always done". Not me. That's never been me. I think that might be part of the reason that God decided to put me in this chair...I need to show them, and others, that change, although scary at first is a good thing...More than that, it's necessary for any kind of substantial growth in life.
That may not have been anywhere close to the point of the story, or the points you made, but that's what I got out of it...
P.S. The vision of the dizzy squiirel made me laugh out loud.
For whatever it's worth, there's a reason I don't always comment, even when I find a post to be particularly meaningful: if I replied, I'd spend half my day responding to posts, and the meantime, I want to live life. I read your blog every day. Some days I re-read posts when you haven't posted in a while. But I don't always reply, even when I have thoughts about it, because I don't always feel compelled to share. Sometimes, I just want to listen. But I also have to remember there's a life outside my computer screen. There's a reflection in my screen I don't always want to see -- and you know what I mean by that.
In fact, I just spent about an hour writing a response to an email. An hour! And my wife's having contractions right now, so I'm pumping caffeine in me because this baby will likely be born in the next 48 hours, but I'm waiting for that magic time when she says "they're five minutes apart".
But in response to this post, it's funny how things in life tie together. I'm reading a book called "It's not my fault" by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. One area in particular, where Cloud is talking to a patient, the patient is basically hiding behind excuses, absolving herself of responsibility for her actions, and Cloud responds with "[Ok] your excuse is real. Now, given that, what are you going to do about it?"
I'm a bear. I weigh 260 pounds, have facial hair, I sometimes shave my head, my voice can be loud, and I scare little children that aren't my own. I freaked out some guy once that cut me off, who I beeped at, and who then jumped out of his truck and came at me yelling... until I got out of my car, then he apologized and got back in his own and took off. Deep down I liked it. I liked being a bear. I liked scaring off the little twerp that tried to blame me for getting in his on personal blind spot. How dare I! Yet, I'm still a bear. But I find that it's not necessary for me to be a bear pestered by a squirrel until I eventually develop the happy-skittering nature of a squirrel, but rather that I'm content to be the best darn bear I can ever be.
Now, given that, what am I going to do about it?
I'm going to be a bear, cuz that's what I am. But I'd like to be a bear that makes a point to walk a long ways every day just to be pestered by a squirrel. I can live where I'm comfortable, even do the same routines every day, but what matters is not trying to change my nature as a bear, but rather whether I'm willing to let squirrels be part of a bear's life, and still just be a bear--that plays with squirrels.
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