You Know I'm Bad...

There's been a lot of hullabaloo given over to people who aren't necessarily great people - but who happen to have a skill, a talent. I guess I don't just get bowled over like that.

(side note: Maybe it's also because I don't want to boxed into one thing... like I am only good at one thing and that's it... my entire life is defined by that one thing...and if I don't have that one thing I become invisible... or I don't know who I am. I don't believe in the pursuit of that one thing to define me - I want to be just me...who happens to do a bunch of stuff but doesn't need any of it to be me.)

I've been thinking about excuses and choices. I think people like to make excuses for the choices they don't, or do take. I think people like to feel like they have no control. Because if you don't have control over your own decisions - nothing ever is your fault. I imagine life is much easier because you never have to dig deep to find out what you're truly made of. Challenges mold us, shape us and allow us to demonstrate whether we are made of something worthwhile - or something porous and weak.

I believe we have a choice, in every circumstance, background, situation, you name it - you, your conscious self has a choice. It is up to us to make that choice. And sometimes the act of not making the right choice, defaults us to the wrong choice.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity.

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the [opposing] army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means--the only complete realist.

I don't know about you - but I'd much rather fight against bad choices, people, ideas, regimes, etc... than lay down and take it.