At the moment I work in shipping for an industrial supply company. It's been a blessing in many ways, but it's also taken its toll. The job is physically demanding. I average 15,000-30,000 steps a day, and spend a lot of time in trailers loading heavy boxes. I've been doing this for three and a half years, and I am starting to feel it. Recently, the company has taken the initiative to help us focus on working smarter in order to help reduce the wear and tear on our bodies. This initiative involves training on how to do the tasks of the job correctly to avoid strain leading to injury. During the training session I had last week, the coach was talking about the importance of lifting properly (back straight, head up, elbows in, knees bent, the posture that we've all been told to use). After describing and demonstrating this position he said something that I've been thinking about since then. Toddlers are incapable of lifting incorrectly.
I thought about that, and I realized it's true. I've watched my daughters pick things up off the ground, and every time they do it with perfect form. They lift in the way that the body was designed to lift, because it is the way the body naturally functions. When we are young we naturally do things correctly, it is as we age that we learn to cheat and take short cuts. We think something is easier, but it ends up doing a lot of damage.
As I've been thinking about it, I keep realizing how kids have it right. This goes beyond proper lifting form. Kids are infinitely creative and they are active with unending energy. It is as we age that we begin to just go with the flow and end up exhausted. Kids are honest. For my youngest daughter's first birthday I made these all natural, sugar free, whole wheat and banana cupcakes, they were even more disgusting than they sound. Typically with things like this, adults eat as much as they must in order to be polite and smile. My three year old took a bite and said, "This is bad" before throwing her cupcake. We learn to deceive and call it politeness by sparing feelings.
As we grow we learn to lie and deceive, cheat and steal, take short cuts and be lazy. We learn to do what is easy and ignore the costs. I can continue to lift improperly, and eventually I'll bend over to pick up a pen and slip a disk. That's what happens with the easy way.
As I've thought about this, the words of Yoda kept coming to my mind. In 1980 Luke Skywalker was training under the famed Grand Master on the swamp world of Dagobah. During an exercise where Luke was stacking rocks with the force, his X-wing star fighter sinks deeper into the swamp where it had crashed on his arrival. He looks at it and speaks in frustrated hopelessness, "Oh no, we'll never get it out now." Yoda responds in his unique speech, "So certain are you, always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?" Luke replies, "Master moving stones around is one thing, this is totally different." Then Yoda gives him this, "No! No different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned."
We have a perception of how things work and what is best, but sometimes that perception ends up doing damage and keeping us from something even better. We need to unlearn what we have learned, and begin to look at the world again through the eyes of a child. Luke sees the ship as too big, and his feeble and faithless attempt only accomplishes the final submersion of his fighter. Yoda who sees it as just another object, and knows what the Force can do, raises it out the swamp easier than Luke was raising stones (and if you haven't seen the movie and I spoiled it for you, I'm not sorry, the movie is 37 years old and held by many to be the best film of the saga).
In my last post I shared this verse from Romans 12.2, "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." The idea of transforming renewal points to unlearning. Jesus Himself spoke of this, challenging His audience to be transformed on a deeper level. During the Sermon on the Mount, He said three times, "You have heard that it was said... but I say to you..." (Matthew 5.27-28, 38-39, 43-44). He is working to transform the way people function on the level of their thoughts so that they can begin to live as God intended.
In Matthew 18.2-4 Jesus responds to a question about greatness in the Kingdom, "And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, 'Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.'" A child is the example held up by Christ.
Children do things right because they do things naturally. It is natural to be honest, deceit is learned. It is natural to be active, laziness is learned. It is natural to be loving, hate is learned. It is natural to trust, doubt is learned. It is natural to do what is right, doing what is easy is learned. We must unlearn what we have learned.
TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!
No comments:
Post a Comment