Keeping the Main Things, the Main Things
Francis Chan is an author and speaker who often approaches subjects with a “prophetic” style voice. One of my favorite quotes from him is, “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” That is sage advice.
I have also heard the idea put this way. You can work hard your entire life to get to the top of the heap, only to find it’s a dung heap.
We are all “successful” at a few unimportant things. For instance, I’m a certified professional pizza eater, but that is probably not a certificate I’d like to place on my wall to impress others.
If you examined your life presently, could you identify accomplishments you have attained, things you’ve spent hours, sometimes years developing, but in the grand scheme of your life, those proficiencies do not mean much? At the same time, you might identify talents you have developed that give you deep pleasure and pride.
Our world is filled with opportunities to waste our most valuable assets, time, and relationships. In recent months, I’ve conducted scientific experiments at restaurants. I sit at a table near a corner where I can view most of the patrons and then survey the room. Do you know what I see? I’ll bet some of you can guess. The entire room is filled with people whose heads are bowed as if in prayer, but not much divine communication is happening. In fact, there is next to no human or divine interaction taking place. People are looking at their phones.
I confess I am guilty. It is so easy to become addicted to screens so much that we curtail the most crucial benefit of life, which is human interaction. Many of us are highly proficient at gathering a constant flow of sports, pop culture, headlines, special interest, gossip, and everything the internet offers our inquiring minds. We are bonified experts because we spend so much time learning this craft.
Yet, we are not so good at conversing with the person across the table. Hmmm. Just for fun, I challenge you to try my experiment. There are some countries where it is considered rude to use your phone in a restaurant. Maybe they are on to something. I am trying to follow their lead because live, flesh, and blood conversation is vital to me.
Cell phone usage is critical to most of our lives, so we must be proficient at it. Yet, like most things, a good thing overdone becomes a bad thing.
That is just one example of spending massive amounts of time to get good at things that do not deserve that much attention. I’ve sat across the desk from many couples struggling to stay together because one or both parties spent far more time and energy developing their career than growing their marriage. They are outstanding doctors, lawyers, real estate developers, engineers, etc., but terrible at marriage. This begs the questions: which is more important, career or marriage? Career or parenting?
My daughter and son-in-law are both professionals and very good at what they do. They could easily spend all their time on their careers. However, they possess one highly significant pursuit – parenting three children. When they are on their deathbed, do you think they would be more disappointed in a semi-successful career or a not-so-good job of parenting? I have been at the side of numerous people about to die, and I can tell you the answer. But I would leave the answer up to you.
When all is said and done, what would you like to claim you have become an expert in life? We are answering that question by how we use our time each day. We live the story of what is most important to us.
It behooves us all to do regular priority assessments. At what, are we becoming experts? Do those proficiencies represent what we value most in life?
Author Joshua Medcalf says of himself, “I don’t want to get to the end of my life only to realize that my ladder has been on the wrong building the whole time.”
Just some food for thought.
Live Inspired!
Don Mark
