Progress, you strange and fickle thing.
I think I've mentioned before how I'm frustrated with having to learn the same lessons over again. This is better than never learning them, but isn't the first choice, were the matter a choice. Let's take my diet for example. For a while I had a decent diet, eating wheat bread rather than white, getting grilled instead of fried chicken, getting salads and the like. Somewhere along the road, that regressed back to my previous diet of Hardee's and frozen pizza. I'm not sure when it happened, but it did and that's little frustrating. Part of it may have been convenience, since salads are more work to eat than a burger. Perhaps it was due to cost since eating healthy is expensive. Whatever the reason, I regressed and I'm now going to try and at least somewhat get back on that since I'm working out with some frequency now.
It's the same with reading my Bible and praying. For a while, I did both frequently, but somewhere along the line, I began to do these things less. I think a lot of it is due to my trying to use my emotions to propel me to do things. Emotions die down, then so does whatever they're fueling.
Our society is all about convenience and rarely about quality. Things that are of lesser quality are easier and cheaper to produce. Without going all ranty about society and apathy, I'll simply voice my distaste for the problem of American convenience with this: The easy, cheap way is rarely a good way and I hate that I've been indoctrinated into not only settling for, but desiring the convenient way. This thought process is pervasive into every aspect of life. It's much easier to watch T.V. than to actually read a book and think. It's easier to think about someone than to actually talk to them. Simply settling, that is stagnation, and stagnation is no bueno.
The thing with this mindset is that after a while, we begin to regress as a society. We lose people skills when given the choice of communicating exclusively through Facebook. We lose comprehension skills when all we read is online magazine articles. This is too deep a topic to really properly get into when it's nearing midnight and I have work at five in the morning, and again, I don't want to get preachy if only because I'm terribly guilty of all this myself.
In conclusion? Crap, I don't know. I guess trying to power through doing the hard, better stuff while not riding emotion is all we can try to do. There's a scripture on going from glory to glory in the Bible somewhere, I've never been 100% on the context or intended meaning, but I do know that simply because of age, we gain experience, then knowledge, then wisdom. All it takes to achieve those things is a genuine concern for progress. It's awfully frustrating, trying to have the world figured out at 20 years old, though. I'm not totally bought into the idea that I know everything, rather I'm aware that I don't, but I'm trying to anyway.
Love,
Colton
P.S. Here's a quote from a song that's semi-relevant to the topic. I'm a big copy-cat since Haylee posted lyrics in her last blog, too.
Salvation just an emotion like the one you're riding now.
The foundation was never there.
Turn on burn not the most peaceful thing, but truth is out of my hands.
Love is never easy.
Not too attractive for the weak.
-Maylene and the Sons of Disaster
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