Why we do what we do...

Why do we do what we do? We wake up, go to jobs, volunteer, work out, engage in relationships, but what drives us to act? Oftentimes life moves at a pace where it is easy to get sucked into a vortex of un-reflective, uncalculated, unfulfilling and undesired actions. There are a lot of seemingly predetermined paths which we end up on, and if we aren’t careful we end up far down a road which we never hoped for, only to be rattled awake by the fact that we are miserable and ineffective at everything we touch.

In any crime scene investigation, criminal drama, or detective movie one key element to solving the big mystery or getting a hold of a suspect and reaching a conviction is finding a motive. Forensically a motive attaches an action to a purpose, and links behavior to the underlying reasons of why a person decides or decided to do something. Motives are a powerful indicator for identifying a rationale, belief, or state of mind that generates action. Motives unlock the driving forces behind what we do, and can tell us much about the way we act and what we pursue.

Many of us perform periodic assessments of our actions, we carefully scrutinize our budgets, review business performance, assess our diets, look at our schedules, set goals and review our success rate at completing our targets; but what drives it all? Monitoring action is one thing, but scrutinizing action without considering the motive is an incomplete set of data which only provides limited insight in to the way we are living. It is not until we question the driving psychological and spiritual forces that spur us to action that we can have a complete and telling picture of whether or not our performance is on track.

Similar to a detective, we must regularly and without bias engage in a line of questioning whereby we seek out our motives. The line of question shifts from “what did I do?” to “why did I do what I did?” or “why am I doing what I am doing?” The shift from what to why, does not provide a hall pass us from scrutinizing our action, it simply changes the focus of our self reflection to probe deeper into our action to seek a deeper truth about how we’re performing. Most of our goals and pursuits are not inherently bad; however a bad motive can pervert even the noblest of undertakings. If we are financial diligent only out of an obsession of wealth, our financially conservative behavior is in vain. If we are careful to watch our diets and fitness plans only predicated upon insecurities about our image or an unhealthy preoccupation with physical appearance then we’ve taken a perfectly healthy action and allowed it to create an unhealthy foothold in our lives. Knowing the reasons why we do what we do, is an important barometer for understanding the condition of our hearts and minds, not just the performance of our hands. I think what we find is that the actions that are attached to good/healthy/pure motives are the things we do the best, and the things we enjoy doing the most.

I’m in the process of trying to become more disciplined in not simply questioning how I’m performing, but why I’m trying to perform at all. As I have started to look at the driving motivation for a lot of things in my life I have been forced to rebalance my life portfolio to protect myself from myself. There are numerous things that have historically appeared (from the outside) to be great pursuits, however, over time I’ve realized that many, if not all of my undertakings have been corrupted by my sinful nature. I have found that it is easy to allow an irrational pattern of thought to permeate a broad spectrum of behaviors, it is frighteningly simple to maintain the appearance of pure motive while truly living captive to pure psychosis.

We may haphazardly be better than average people, we may even end up being good people by popular opinion, but what is goodness devoid of motive or purpose. If you throw away a half eaten meal that feeds a bum, is your action different than someone who prepares food and goes out seeking to feed the hungry? We mustn’t coincidentally be and do good, we must live lives founded on intention. Living, loving, doing, going, being with purpose, and purpose is what our motives define. So as we move along in our pursuits, maybe it is time that we start taking some contemplative pause to ask “why?”. Is the way we act in relationships being motivated by fear or love? Is the way we perform being motivated out of a desire for acknowledgement and acceptance or by a spirit of reverence for our responsibilities and gifts? Are our desires founded on holiness, or are we simply masking the rottenness of our sin by doing and saying the right things, and trying to be the right kind of people for all the wrong reasons?

The beauty of it all is that as always, even the most tainted of hearts can become vessels for the work of God. Scripture is full of stories of the transformative power of Christ, not only in terms of what we do, but also, why we do. God has a vested interest in our hopes, dreams and desires, and it’s for good reason, our motives and motivation almost assuredly lead to action. If we truly desire changed lives, we have to start with changed hearts. If we truly want to be better people, spiritually, in work place, in homes, in relationships, in every arena, we must be people of purpose and intention, founded on and driven by love, seeking the glory of God not men, motivated, purposeful, effective.

Why do I write?,
CP
http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com

Critics & Creators

Disclaimer: this is a mixed bag of thoughts in regards to criticism I’ve been kicking around over the past weeks…probably a bit disorganized, but on my mind/heart nevertheless.

A few weeks back I got back to my hotel room and came across an interesting documentary that Jamie Kennedy put together on critics and hecklers. Regardless of your opinion of Jamie Kennedy and his work, he had a few profound points through his movie. Kennedy conducted a series of interviews with artists and critics to address the dynamics and impact that criticism can have on people, and the reason we feel the need to criticize. In a clear state of depression/defeatism as a result of the amount of abuse he had personally received over his work, it became clear that many artists held the same viewpoint that critics and being criticized can and often does becomes cripplingly destructive. Kennedy’s main point was that when we become critics we often fail to consider that we are in fact criticizing the creator as well as the creation…by irresponsibly taking on the role of critic, and recklessly doling out criticism we threaten not only the people, places, and things we criticize, but our ability to enjoy them.

Our culture and the internet has produced thousands of mediums for us to criticize and deconstruct most every facet of our daily lives. Restaurants, movies, music, art, actors, celebrities all have their online slaughterhouses where anyone with access to the world wide web, and the time and inclination can go pick to pieces anyone and anything they wish…and best of all, for those who are unable to find a specific forum to communicate all the world’s shortcomings, there is blogging to provide us with limitless possibilities of who/what we can deface.

I personally struggle greatly with being a critic. While I am a situational optimist, I can sometimes be a perfectionist (not proudly)… perfectionism amidst imperfection paves the way to a critical worldview (both in how we look at ourselves and how we look at everything else). I am very keen on my own shortcomings, and I often use self criticism to try to become a better person and better at the things I do. However, the process of being self critical often can slowly creep its way into the way we look at others and the world around us. Criticism in its very nature is deconstructive, it takes the whole and breaks it into pieces to figure out what works and what doesn’t…the problem is that most of the time criticism simply stops at the deconstruction and leaves the world fragmented and broken.

While criticism is deconstructive, creation in its nature is constructive. Creation and creativity takes pieces and puts them together, it puts color on a blank canvas, it breathes life where there was none. Critic and the creator are typically contrary in nature.

I am confident that when Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel he most certainly made one or two wayward brush strokes, yet like the great master painter he was, he worked even the unintentional slips of the wrist into his master design. The “mistakes” are certainly there…it is our choice whether we’ll focus our energy on enjoying the creation, or peering through the critic’s lens to try to find some miniscule flaw.

When we become critics, we attempt to take power from the creator and the process of creation and make it our own. Criticism is a power play; it is about trying to make something ours which is not. And when we enter the power struggle we end depreciating the value of other’s and ourselves.

It is interesting to me that God during creation played the role of both critic and creator, he spoke life into being, and deemed it good. He put it all together, looked at it carefully and said “This is good stuff!”, and he had the exclusive right to do so. Sin entered the world via a critic who did not have the authority to provide any commentary on creation, in the garden, the serpent was not enamored by the vastness and perfection of God’s work, rather, he fixated on a singular shortcoming, the fact that there were a few trees whose fruit was off limits. The power play worked, criticism took focus off the things that were significant and real to that which was insignificant and valueless…in doing so we ended up with less not more, a cheaper broken reality, a reality distracted from the glory of creation. (Luckily the creator didn’t stop creating and in our brokenness and deadness he breathed life a second time through the birth, death and resurrection of his son…the ultimate work of the final authority.)

So what are we to do in a world so rich in critical feedback, in a society that demands perfection, in a culture where “good enough” is never in fact “good enough”, how are we to respond in the face of the of this world’s cynicism? We mustn’t be so naïve to think the we are impervious to the critic’s snare, for criticism is virally contagious and a miserable affliction…just think if NOTHING were ever good enough to enjoy, how miserable EVERYTHING must be, this is the critics plight.

The reality is that we are only susceptible to the extent we believe that the critic does in fact hold some power to make a determination of our worth…the further detached we are from the creator, the more we will be detached from the source of our value, and the more subjected and beaten down we will become.

It’s amazing what can happen to the way you see the world when we depart from criticism and move to affirmation. We learn to love new friend’s, we learn to love old friends in better ways. Instead of dwelling on the ever so small things that divide us we can focus on the large things that unite us, the world is opened before us, and it is good. We embrace and emphasize the fact that we are imperfect, that we need grace. Most importantly, we keep the power and our definition of worth with the one to whom it belongs, the creator of all things.

We’ve got a choice on how we let this world effect us, and it’s a hard line to draw. To be honest I don’t know how it’s all supposed to play out, I just realize that there are a lot of folks out there who try to steal our joy, to break us down, all for the purpose of making themselves feel more elevated and empowered. Our best weapon is love, our best defense is confidence in Christ, our hope is that we do not live for the approval of men…I’m trying my best these days to be in the camp of creative affirmation, the more I try the more good I find to affirm and enjoy around me.

Making lemonade,
CP
http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com/