Author: Andy Uyboco

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Jump and You Will Find Out

Jump and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.
-Ray Bradbury

When a major opportunity comes along, typically one with high gain but high risk, we do a lot of thinking. We fret, worry and fear the worst outcome. Sometimes, we over-analyze and over-think, what motivational speakers like to call ‘paralysis by analysis’. And the opportunity blows by while we are still busy analyzing.

Sometimes, we just have to get into the flow of the moment before the moment is gone. There should still be some thinking and risk-assessment but it should be followed by swift, decisive action. And the effort has to be sustained with commitment and dedication.

The call to jump is not a license for recklessness. Rather, it is a testament of deep courage and trust for oneself and for life. It is not for the faint-hearted, but for those with inner fortitude and desire to be the best they can be at whoever they are and whatever they do.

“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections

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Comfort and Adventure

Drizzt by Gaderel Guitarist

An Excerpt from The Orc King by R.A. Salvatore:

That is the line we all straddle, between comfort and adventure. There are those who find satisfaction, even fulfillment, in the former, and there are those who are forever seeking. It is my guess, and can only be my guess, that the fears of the former are rooted in fear of the greatest mystery of all, death.

It is no accident that those who construct the thickest walls are most often rooted firmly, immovably, in their faith. The here and now is as it is, and the better way will be found in the afterlife. That proposition is central to the core beliefs that guide the faithful, with, for many, the added caveat that the afterlife will only fulfill its promise if the here and now remains in strict accord with the guiding principles of the chosen deity.

I count myself among the other group, the seekers…It is not just boredom that propels my steps along paths unknown, but a firm belief that the guiding principle of life must be a search not for what is, but for what could be.

To look at injustice or oppression, at poverty or slavery, and shrug helplessly, or worse to twist a god’s “word” to justify such states, is anathema to the ideal, and to me, the ideal is achieved only when the ideal is sought…So we dare to seek. So we dare to change…

For it is in the seeking, in that continual desire to improve ourselves and to improve the world around us, that we walk the road of enlightenment…that we tried to lift ourselves and our world…to the image of the ideal.

– Drizzt Do’Urden

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Offending God

Is there really anything we can do to offend God?

Photo by JvL
Photo by JvL

Once, there was a devout man who saw a filthy, unkempt beggar just outside his house. He had pity on this beggar and invited him inside for a meal.

Before the meal, the man bowed his head to say a prayer of thanks. He had hardly gotten a few words out when the beggar suddenly started cursing God. He told the man, “If you want to feed me, just feed me, but I don’t want to hear you talking about God. God can go to hell for all I care.”

The host was visibly surprised and furious, “Don’t you know that if not for the love of God, I would not have invited you into my home? How dare you insult my God! Get out of my house at once.” And he shooed the beggar away.

God came to the devout man in a dream later that night and said, “That beggar has been cursing my name and spreading vicious lies about me for 18 years. Yet, all through this time, I have put up with him, fed him, kept him alive, and loved him. Could you not put up with him for a single meal?”

When we burn with righteous anger at other people seemingly offending God, is it really God who is offended? Or us?