This distinguished-looking fellow on the left is one John Calvin and let me tell you something… I’m never going to invite him to a party at my house for 2 very important reasons. First, he’s dead. That truly puts a damper on any real chance of an invite to Chez Kuzia outside of some kind of freaky-deaky seance… and this guy doesn’t play that game. The second reason is despite his importance as a historical figure in the Protestant Revolution, a major tenet of his philosophy was that of predestination. So, in other words… your deeds and actions in this world really don’t mean squat because whether you will end up in Heaven or Hell was determined before you were even born. Yikes.
So it’s not that I don’t invite people with differing views over to have a cold beer and watch a game. Au contraire. But a philosophy built around the notion that your actions in this world are for naught? That’s not how to liven up an intimate gathering of friends, you know? The guy was the original Buzz Killington (you know… the OTHER distinguished gentleman depicted in this blog).
In my wacky view of the world, there are meaningful choices to be made at almost any point in your life. You can really choose any moment to change things up. Sure, the change can be hard as hell to pull off… but it’s still there as an option to embrace if you make that decision… and not the LeBron James kind of “Decision” where you get to go on TV and wallow around in your own self-involvement. Yuck.
I know that, for myself, change is never that easy of a thing, depending on what the contemplated change may be. Obviously the bigger the change, the deeper the level of hemming and hawing on my part. Even in the midst of all of that, I still find a tremendous amount of comfort and, dare I say, hope in the fact that choice and free will are always within my reach.
Take today, for instance. I decided enough was enough and finally got my lazy-no-blogging-keister in gear and got this post up. It became a matter of just making the decision to stop putting off blogging, stop accepting what (in the moment) can seem like perfectly fine excuses not to do it and just do it.
The funny thing is that my decision stems mostly from being generally fed up… a condition that find is perhaps one of the best catalysts of change. You just need to hit that point of “Oh for the love of God… I can’t take it any more. Let’s get cracking.” That’s where I found myself as I returned from my work trip last week to Oregon, which went very well from a work perspective, but which was completely dismal from a sasquatch-spotting perspective. I mean seriously… I was there Tuesday through Friday. Not even a glimpse out of the corner of my eye? Anyhoo, the reflection time during the travel gave me some impetus to get this blog back up and going.
Plus… you have to admit… it’s pretty awesome to juxtapose John Calvin and Buzz Killington together… and to use the word “juxtapose”. +1 for me.