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Today's
Meditation:
I've
known people who will accept anything from anybody--they
allow people to treat them poorly, they allow people to
use them and abuse them, they allow people basically to
walk all over them. When they look for work, they
always accept the first thing that comes along, without
any thought of trying to find something better that pays
well or that provides a more appropriate fit to their
skills and abilities. As a matter of fact, I'm like
this in some ways--sometimes I feel lucky to get whatever
I receive, and because I feel lucky, I take what I can
get.
I've learned over the years, though, that this isn't a
very good way to go through life. Life offers us all
sorts of wonderful things, including relationships,
experiences, learning, growing, changing--even material
things, though I'm pretty sure that Maugham wasn't talking
nearly as much about the latter as he was about other
things. I know, for example, that when I expect very
good work from my students, I get very good work from
them. When I won't accept their mediocre work, they
do give me better work, and that benefits them, too.
He's not saying that we should buy the most expensive cars
or clothes or foods. On the other hand, we shouldn't
settle for the cheapest stuff out there, either--the stuff
that's of such poor quality that we wouldn't be able to
wear it or wouldn't be able to eat it. Much of what
comes to us in life is a reflection of what we feel we
deserve, be that the ways that other people treat us, the
clothes that we can afford, or the homes that we live
in. If we truly feel that we don't deserve a nice
home, and thus can't afford to live in one, guess
what? Chances are that we'll live in a hovel.
Notice that he doesn't make the claim that we'll always
get the best. That would be unrealistic, of
course. But he is right--when we do expect great
things in life, we do start to get great things. The
key is in teaching ourselves how to expect the best, and
beginning to believe that we actually do deserve the
best-- because as amazing children of God, as exceptional
human beings who are doing our best in all we do, we most
certainly do deserve the best. The best has a hard
time reaching us, though, when we expect the worst.
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