This last weekend, my wife wanted to make a storage compartment for the babies room. She wanted to put something in it that was a odd size, and we figured it would be something we would need to make ourselves. So we wrote down all the dimensions and went down to the hardware store and decided to buy a table saw, some wood, hinges and paint and headed to the cash register with about three hundred dollars worth of goods, to build a storage box for a object that was worth about fifty dollars. Some where inside we had justified that this was the only way to handle the situation we were dealing with. Why do we do things like this? I ask, as this is not the only time I have taken something minor and tried to fix it with a overly elaborate task. When my wife and I left the religion, we thought everything we did needed to be some elaborate thought out production. We wanted to celebrate the holiday's, so we sent expensive cards out to everyone we knew to kind of say "look we are normal people now." To which, they thought "oh that's nice." Then we decided, we wanted to do some other new freedom and we went about doing this and that in a way that was always more effort then we really needed. Can you relate? Have you had times in your exit from the religion, that you have just way over done something to make a point to no one? Where you have gone out and bought ten times the amount of Christmas decorations that a normal person buys. Where you have made it a point to tell everyone "I am no longer a Witness, just thought you should know." In all, did you find that as you finished up in these things, that you set there for a minute thinking, "you know this really should be a lot more simple." I think everyone does that on at least one point or two ... or maybe even three or four things. I think it is a form of that mental yell we hear inside that says "I am free and I want the world to know it." Does it really accomplish that though? Yes it does, but much like my little project I was getting ready to do. There is often a cheaper and more simple way, if we just keep or eyes open and keep our wits about us. Why do I say that? Well as I was rolling one table saw, a electric sander, several sheets of wood, paint and some hinges to the register. I looked down at this mid aisle display of $5.99 plastic cases. I thought, "I wonder?" and pulled out my tape measure and sure enough "a perfect fit!" Same goes in life, sometimes when we think something needs to be said or done. We just seem to think of the larger more complex way faster, then when we think of the simpler way things could have been done. It's natural, and it's human. Yet if we actually stop for a minute and think about it, we might do like my wife and I and save yourself a lot of time and money. If you weigh all of your options and not go for the elaborate solution to all of your goals and problems. So now we mail out the Wal Mart Christmas cards we bought in a group package, and placed the babies item in our $5.99 plastic container, we think for a minute "Boy, that sure was a lot simpler ... yet it accomplished the same thing!" My thought Dragon
Edited by - kenpodragon on 11 November 2002 0:53:56