Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Two Silly Fears

I finished my social studies term on Friday, slept 14 hours on Saturday(!), and am enjoying the start of subbing.  It also means that I finally have some time to read again and I am currently working on Picking Flowers on Dusty Roads by Oddny Gumaer from Partners Relief & Development (www.partnersworld.ca).  I really appreciate her honesty and her perspective of the world (specially as the organization works in Burma).  Here is a portion from "What Piece of Lego is an Ion?":

"A while ago our team at Partners had a staff team-building day.  Don't ask me why, but we decided to talk about what we were afraid of.  As we sat in a circle talking about fears of lizards, divorce, and flying, I thought about my fears.  I realized that I was afraid of so many things that it would take very long to list them all.  Besides that, I didn't think it would be very constructive for the rest of the team to hear about all the ridiculous phobias I have.  What struck me, however, was that all my fears could be narrowed down to two categories:  fear of failing and fear of losing control.  After I thought about it for a while, I decided that is probably why most of us do (or don't do) the things we do. . .People do all kinds of crazy things that actually hurt others or that hurt themselves; it stops them from living their dreams and from loving another person; it puts people on their butts instead of on a mission to rescue the princess, the prince, the dog, or whatever.  All because of two silly fears:  fear of losing control and fear of failing." (p. 183)

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ESSE QUAM VIDERI - to be, rather than to appear
"Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God."
~Robert W. Pierce