Day 3559 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 26:12 NIV

For ‘twas never our eyes which were to be tasked with the discovering of where wisdom lay.

Nay, rather wisdom is beheld in only the eye of the Beginner, the Author, the purely divine Definer of what wisdom must be as it cannot be something so ordinary as to exist within the consist of a culture so often calamitous that we cannot any of us define neither one day from the prior nor the hope that the coming is to be then proven better. For as we’ve talked at length of late, fact is that we’ve all long since forsaken the ferocity needed to reach the better for which we’re better at finding excuses to debate.

Indeed, betterment is anymore a subject so subjective that it’s fallen upon each of us to determine for ourselves just how far we’re willing to go as determined by what all we’re willing to endure in the ways of pains as proven of all growth.

No, seems that to grow is anymore a show we’re unwilling to see simply for the sake of the fees and parking. Rather we’re more than happy to just find a tv show that portrays another’s growth across days spread amongst a calendar’s seasons as opposed to embracing that we’re so out of shape spiritually that we’re far from even being seasoned at life anymore as we just can’t quite remember the last time we had hope. For reality always comes along to tell this tale of how we were running a good race and yet managed to cut in on ourselves in what’s but a hit-and-run leaving both predator and prey staring back at us from every mirror we happen to see.

And I say this because, again, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to assume in all our arrogance that we can somehow see everything. We’re so infatuation with our sense of sight that we’ve lost our minds as told in this now visible display of an increasing inability to think. We’d rather see. Again, we’d rather watch. We’ll pop some corn and grab a coke and sit upon our stagnation flipping stations until we find something that we can feel that asks us not to face the failures that bring all feeling to life in life.

We’ve not lived that kind of life for some time it seems, more than a season or two as counted by the binges we welcome as burdens we’re more than happy to embrace. Yes, we live mostly only vicariously through 30-minute scripts and songs that sing stories that we have absolutely no ability to relate to. All because we can, you know, having arrived at this pinnacular point in which we’re apparently so perfect that we’ve no further to go in our own growth.

No, we can just kick our feet up and watch the rest of the world struggle to reach our most shining example.

Or perhaps glaring. It’s kind of hard to differentiate between the two sometimes. Either way, seems that in us something shines that we like the looks of, so much so that we’re now all but terrified of tarnishing our contentment with this audacious hint at a furthered betterment.

Such is the outlook of those wise within only their eyes. It’s a way of life akin to a retirement from such. Sort of backwards belief in that we perceive a certain deception that’s yet so darn delightful that we disdain to disagree that we might be more than we’ve come to see. Indeed, we’ve each reached this place before, probably a few times if we were willing to recount. But, alas, as we discussed yesterday, the overall point of life as lived best, or in truth as ever possibly lived at all, is one done from within a heart of wisdom which counts our days.

Point being that the count never counted, only what mattered within it.

And yet, unfortunately, seems to us that not much matters anymore. I mean, granted, how could it? How could anything mean anything when we’ve realized that we’re everything, or at least know where to go to gather proof of our estimation of such self-evaluation. And yet, therein lies the lies within which anymore we abide.

It’s all self.

It’s all about us. It’s our perspectives, our perceptions, our preferences and opinions and these picture-perfect portraits they’ve painted that present us as proof of a life perfected. All because when left to see all of life in all its non-eternal entirety, all we’re able to see is that we’re kings among humanity. All because we’ve dreamed some dreams and not had to alter them too much in order to reach the goals in which they gloated a glory to a story we’re so great at writing that we can do no wronging. Of anything. Anyone. Not ever.

No problems to see here.

Except all those glaring from behind the scenes of this most senseless screen play we’re ruining by the hour. It’s as if we’ve convinced ourselves that we’re the best when it comes to improv, and thus we’ve determine that we’d best stick to such improvisation as opposed to simple improvement. Wise in our own eyes. And as with most days in which these posts tend to turn toward what is at least a degree of self-debasement, I again must confess that amongst the clowns I’m driving the car.

Yes, I am as Paul perceived he was, the worst of the worst. For to me out here along this ride back to sanity in what often feels a paddy-wagon fit for fools alone, I feel myself fooling only myself should I ever insist my mind veer back to where I’ve long lived looking to love who I am a bit more than truth gives me any reason to. No, I look back across a life lived as if landmines and see only the still-smoldering smoke billowing from a billions moments in which I thought I was better than I am even now.

For I guess that life doesn’t actually turn out as we assumed back when we were young.

No, as kids we look around us and see all these giants who seem to have it all figured out, so much so that they can buy themselves candy without having to hold the tantrum card up the sleeve just in case a no is considered warranted by these wardens who don’t know the best we imagine. For to a kid, there’s always both room and reason for some sugar. It’s just those pesky adults that worry about such things cavities and dental insurance.

Yes, turns out that being a grown-up is more frustration than freedom. So much so that even candy loses its luster as we learn, often the hard way, that hope and health don’t mix sometimes.

Which is perhaps why it’s said here that there’s more hope for a fool than one who is wise within their own eyes. For a fool knows not and thus does not whereas the arrogant knows better but does less. And thus we see that such things as candy for which even grown-ups still hope, it’s a matter of health as it’s harder to lose weight when life’s weighing you down with deadlines and disappointments. And thus we learn to know better than to attempt our once-cherished childhood dreams of proving that we could in fact survive just fine on a diet of chocolate and donuts, preferably the former poured all over the latter.

For adults come to be wise in such examples whereas kids just see themselves as being wise enough to see no danger in such endless delight.

Which seems actually the point proven in perhaps one my simplest parables to date.

Indeed we as adults know that doing something which is somewhat harmless within cautious moderation for long enough only leaves us fatter, far too much for us to fly so high as those sugar-rushes that we once lived for that carried up high and away from worries over cavities or the coming crashes which often followed.

This is the gravity of growing up, it’s a lesson learned or lost within the limits of such limitations as responsibility and reason. Indeed, it’s actually quite impressive all the things we’ve learned, and even then just how much regression we never see still sometimes needed. No, we’re rather a force full-steam ahead into this hope of our knowing enough to know we need nothing further. For again, it’s the growth part, or more specifically the growing pains part.

They hurt, mostly our pride, which is actually the point in its entirety.

It’s a matter of our vanity. It’s this ability to convince ourselves of whatever we need to believe in order to perceive that we’re perfect. And we’ve made a right life out of it. For we’ve at times convinced ourselves of so many lies that we needed in the moment to buy so that we didn’t have to sell that second to doing what we didn’t want to have to do. Such as denying ourselves the buffets that our beltlines our sick of putting up with or opting to save money in order to afford what we needed as opposed to thinking we couldn’t possibly survive without a coffee every morning.

And yet, when one thinks themselves so right that they can do no wrong, it’s such lessons as those which humble that have basically no hope of ever helping. For it seems as though arrogance manages to always provide its very own irony in that, whilst listening to the pride by which all arrogance abides, we set off on this self-aggrandizing journey toward this idealistic expectation of our at some point proving ourselves everything we’ve chosen to believe of ourselves from what is an excessively if not artificially high opinion of ourselves.

And as we approach this mythical residence of this self-prescribed evidence of our self-perceived awesomeness, what we find is that along the way we’ve become incredibly certain that we need no help, none whatsoever, not even from ourselves. And yet in that, something done only so that we’ve never to share any glory from our story, we eventually slingshot right past reason and end up circling into a downward spiral in which we become so convinced that we need no help that we become helpless.

Leaving a fool more hope than us.

Because again, a fool knows not and thus can’t do anything about it. For we’re not held accountable for the counts we can’t consider due to lack of ability or understanding. It’s the lack of reason that really bites us in the backside. Because, thanks to some events which unfolded within both our ancestry and antiquity, we’ve all been born with a knowledge of the divide between wrong and right. And even though kids sometimes have a clear struggle with the difference, by the time we’re grown we’ve no excuse left.

Because we can see it now. We can read it now. We can, thanks to those math classes we seriously thought we’d never use, now we can count. We know what a push up is. We know how to drive, and for some reason the state gave us the license which proves it. We can buy our own groceries, cook our own meals, pay our own bills, enjoy our own thrills. And yet, the difference still is. It’s defined that just because we can doesn’t mean we should, nor that we don’t really want to doesn’t give us the right not to.

It’s all a matter of responsibility, and this is a problem when placed upon those without the humility to admit that we get things wrong and thus need some help.

For you cannot learn what you can’t confess a learning experience. You can’t grow what you won’t allow to show. You will never improve whatever you think doesn’t need it. This is just basic. And, again, it’s so common in fact that we can all see it. We all know someone who is capable of so much, and yet watching them do so much less is just as heartbreaking as it gets.

And I say we all know someone like this because we live with them. And I don’t mean family. Don’t mean friends. I’m not talking about the weird guy who lives down the hall. I don’t mean roommates or best mates. It’s us. We’re all capable of so much more than we’re doing or assuming. And yet the hard part is that we often don’t feel the heartbreak. Because we’ve become convinced that less is more means that we’re justified in doing less and just calling it plenty.

It isn’t.

It never was really. No, that’s just one of those lies we’ve had to buy to keep us from having to try anything we don’t want to. Like changing. Confessing. Admitting. Retracing. Reconsidering and accepting. Getting up and walking to help counter our cravings. We don’t want to endure any of those things as they just don’t match this story we’re telling. And so rather than looking like we’ve been lying to the world, we settle for just lying to ourselves. And we do this every time we seek to excuse something, avoid something, deny something, hide something.

Because we know we can do better, it’s just that we’re used to listening to our eyes that tell us we just can’t see how.

It’s that whole elective perspective that we’ve selected. We choose, as if everything’s a choice. We say whatever we want to hear as if it’s our voice that speaks always the truth. We listen and we lose, we buy and refuse to admit we shouldn’t have because we didn’t have any need to do so. And I’m talking about these lies that we anymore love to live by. They tell us that we are it, the best there is, the shining example of the pinnacle of all human potential.

And that’s why there’s no hope for any who are wise in their own eyes. For how can anyone improve when they don’t believe they can?

I heard this thing a long time ago, imagine most everyone has, but I think it rather fitting as we close this attempt. Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right. It’s all about what we convince ourselves. It’s all a matter of our perspective. If we think we can, then we’ll find a way, keep trying until we prove we’re right. But on the other hand, if we think we can’t, we’ll avoid trying anything that might even accidentally say otherwise.

Because we think that life is only about us being right. It’s not. It’s about us getting better. And as Scripture says, who hopes in what they already have? And thus if we think we’ve already achieved all there is to achieve, already learned all there is to know, already done all we ever wanted to do, see all we’ve hoped to see, become all we imagined we could be, what more is there to fight for?

There is more hope for a fool than for those who think they already have all they need or are all they need to be. Because there’s no reason to keep trying when you think you’ve crossed the finish line.

And this is a problem because this new day proves that ain’t none of us finished yet.

How much hope is left in your life, in your eyes, in your heart? What keeps you going, or have you tried to get any further lately? I know that all of us can and thus should continue to grow, body, mind, spirit, truth. All of us can learn things, lose things, leave things and move on to better scenes. But if we think that we’re where the grass is already green, we’ll never seek those better pastures. We’ll just pass away right where we are, thinking all the way that there was nothing to reach for, fight for, hope for that was worth the effort of humility as asked of hope.

For hope asks that we just believe in something more. But to those who are wise in their own eyes and thus think they’ve got life so figured out that they need nothing else, want nothing else, those same will never know anything else. So be careful just how much you think you have figured.

Because while it sucks realizing you’re wrong, it’ll suck much worse when you realize it without any time left to do anything about it. That’s why we have His patience my friends, a gift proven new every morning. Don’t spend this day thinking you’ve arrived.

Where’s the hope in that?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold