New Chapters

This past weekend, I took some time away to invest in myself, rejuvenate, detach, rethink, and process through a number of things that have happened in my life over the past months. Obviously I’ve taken an extended leave of absence from investing in my writing here online, so I thought that this would be an appropriate time to post a few thoughts that have been circling around my head. Being that it has been so long I need to lay a little ground work before I can get to the punch line in terms of what this all means for me and my life…and this specific investment of my time.

In September, right around the time I wrote my last post I had just finished completing an annual plan for myself. The process I went through was far more comprehensive than simply a list of goals or things I want to “get done” in my life, that was for sure a part of it, but more than that it was a plan. The “plan” addressed a number of key components of life, the investment of my time, the investment of my energy, the key sources of my satisfaction, key actions, key risks, and a few big picture items that should be my self-defined focus points for the next year. It’s interesting what a few months of distance can do for your perspective on yourself, especially when you have a clear cut document to trace back to. September me, had a few things right, namely my big picture focus, my self-identified risks, my key actions…however my approach to the rest of the plan was off the mark, and I realized this weekend that my efforts and desires have experienced a disconnect in the past year. This realization isn’t earth shattering, but it has provided a great deal of insight into the areas of my life which have been lacking effectiveness. In some areas my underlying motives were spot on, but the complementary actions were not well suited for the motive, in other areas the actions were right but the motive was mis-defined.

For example, in September I thought I really wanted to make an investment to get back into endurance racing, I had a list of actions and targets I wanted to accomplish, but this weekend I realized that I don’t really care so much about racing right now, what I care about is my well-being, and a huge part of my physical, mental, and spiritual well-being is not derived from racing, but derived from being disciplined and consistent about getting “me” time out on the open road. I need endurance therapy every week, it quiets my mind and heart, re-centers me, and blows off an adequate amount of my irrational steam and makes an otherwise wildly insatiable man, calm (relatively). My actions were right, I need to invest time in my fitness within certain boundaries, my motives were off, its because I enjoy it, and because it makes me a better me.

What has been revealing through this weekend of self reflection is that unless my motives and actions are aligned, I am much less effective…whether it be in my spiritual life, in relationships, or fitness…a disconnection of the why and what in our lives can be really frustrating. This revelation has given me the opportunity to rethink where I’m applying energy in my life and why.

Sparing you the detailed prognosis and subsequent change of plans, I’ve realized that I really needed this weekend to reset and refocus some things in my life. It’s amazing when you turn off the TV, unplug the laptop from the internet, how still life can become and how salient otherwise dulled factors in our lives can be. As I’ve sat here this morning watching the sunrise over the eastern sky in Tucson, I think I’ve finished shedding some necessary dead weight in my life. I probably don’t write about it here very often but I have some really petty and stupid coping mechanisms in my life that are faithless and fear based that need to be in check. This weekend I’ve been able to leave some garbage behind that has kept certain areas of my life and my heart from leaping forward the way I’ve been made to do. It’s strange, that as the things we often keep around in our lives to keep us comfortable are the very things that keep us from being fully alive. For me it was a series of thought patterns, actions, and people that I had been keeping around to make me feel comfortable…but what I realized is that I had traded comfort for being fully myself. Sometimes, things start to feel good where we are in life, and we get attached to ideas, actions, or people not because they are what’s best, but because they simply are…ie I gravitate towards what is convenient. And as scary as it can be to break free from that, the liberation and possibility that lies in the unknown far exceeds the monotony and predictability of comfort.

When I started this project, “The Open Book” I wanted a platform to share me with you. It was never intended to be Panoff expository on the way to live and other spiritual matters, though I confess maybe it became that in some ways. As I’ve taken a break, and some time to asses a few critical aspects of my life, I added one risk to my list of pitfalls to avoid, and that is spreading myself to thin. I have a lot of things that pull my attention span around each day, and I’ve realized that I’ve indulged too many of those thoughts, I’ve realized I’ve spread myself thin. This tendency is honestly fear driven, and I think the reality is that for me I allow myself to make little investments in a lot of areas because its less risky. Its far easier for me say I could hypothetically qualify for the Ironman in Hawaii, become an award winning writer, be a master composer, cure cancer, learn to fly, and learn to speak Mandarin Chinese…IF I only had the time and applied the energy…the hard choice that I am making is to say, “here we go, come hell or high water I am going to pursue this with my whole heart, and if I fail…at least I know it wasn’t for lack of effort”

God made me with a really big heart and really big dreams, for those of you who know me well you know this to be true. So for now, for me, I’m making some choices to leave a lot of comfort behind and truly pursue some big things for me. And for the time being that means I’m going to reapply my efforts in writing to a new medium…yes I’ll still be writing, just differently, in different ways, with a renewed and rejuvenated purpose. My intent, to live a life that is an open book, is very much the same, and for that reason I wanted to write what will be my last post for a while (yeah I may dabble here and there).

I can’t express enough how enriched I have been through this process, a man left to his own thoughts will surely go mad, so whether or not anyone still reads here, I guess this is not farewell, but see you later, and maybe this one was for me to have closure and to take a definitive step in new direction, or maybe take a step in the same direction with a new purpose. Thank you for letting me share a portion of my life with you all…there is so much more to come…just in new ways.

Get out there and live,
CP
chrispanoff.blogspot.com

Punctuality

It’s a little ironic that I’m writing what I’m about to write from an airplane that is now 2 hours delayed. Being that I am a prisoner of the tarmac, I guess it couldn’t be more appropriate that I put my time to use.

Over the past weeks I have undertaken a few new personal initiatives that have yielded some great visibility into areas of my life and heart that simply needed tending to. As I started weeding the garden of my heart, I realized that I needed to rethink some little things in big ways…and it turned out those little things have had big impacts on my personal effectiveness and satisfaction almost immediately.

While the regimen and focus of my personal changes are irrelevant, I’ve realized and been reminded yet again of God’s timing, how perfect it is, and how while HIS time always feels too late or too early, its always right on time.

I am realizing more and more at each turn in my life, that many of the things that I view as not being “punctual” are often for my own good, and protection. I, being impatient and often foolish, ask the questions “why now God?” and “why not now God?” way too often, I guess that’s pretty symptomatic of the fact that I might need to work on trusting God in certain ways more, but its progressive…I’m still learning, and each day all the more. When I look back at some of the things that have been early/late in my life, their timing has yielded some of the greatest blessings and examples of God’s protective hand for me.

There are some things in my life past and present, that I’m realizing God has withheld for my benefit, most likely because there are probably a lot of “blessings” that if I had them now, I’d probably ruin them or ruin myself and do so in a hurry. In the same way there are some challenges or delays in my life that have opened my eyes and hearts to great blessings that I would have never been in a position to receive if I would have been on my own timing.

As I look at my life critically, it’s not God’s watch that needs to be reset to my time, its my time that needs to be set to God’s watch…in fact, I probably just need not wear a watch when it comes to tracking the timing of his cosmic wonders. Part of God’s perfect nature is his being on time each day, each morning, each night, and every moment of every day, is right on time. I’m learning to take a step back and look at my moments, not my days/months/years and ask “What do you have for me right now God?, in this moment right here?”…there is much more at our finger tips than we perceive, and we can miss it if we’re looking too far ahead or behind.

I understand that we are God’s children, but sometimes, I’m much more the kid screaming in the back seat than I am the kid enjoying a day with my heavenly father in the park…I’m working on it lately and am reaffirmed at my vast need for grace.

My whole timeline has been dialed way back, and one might think that focusing on and living in a smaller unit of time is constraining it couldn’t be more contrary, it is infinitely liberating and it makes us really effective at what we do. I mean right now, in the course of writing this post, I’ve just been delayed yet again, I’ll be a few hours late for MY time and MY agenda but I’m also getting to watch the sunset out the airplane window and being reminded of the fact that God is on time each day, he’s working great miracles for each of us each day, and while it’s hard to have a clear picture where we’re going, and when we’ll get there we must remember we are right on time…God’s time that is.

Right on time,
CP
http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com/

The Greatest Gift I Gave Me

In 2006 I started a tradition, I believe the standard is that it takes 3 years to be a true tradition, so this year I guess it’s official. I decided that for my birthday I would benchmark/chronicle my life by writing myself a letter each year. When I started I had no idea what I was doing, or what it may yield, but at the time I was at a place where I saw fit to create a beacon to get back to that time in my life. Believe me I know this sounds like a novelty that a teacher would force upon a student as a cute literary and inspirational exercise…and I guess that’s not too far off. I have made a commitment to read them only around my birthday or the weeks leading up to it to prepare my thoughts, and then to put them away for the rest of the year…it has been a great gift from past tense me each year.

As I recall 2006, the year I wrote the first letter, it was a really hard year for me. By no means did anything catastrophic happen, and in no way were the challenges I faced earth shattering or insurmountable, it was just a difficult time for me. For whatever reason or reasons it was like I couldn’t get the ground beneath my feet, I had a general imbalance about me that was terribly frustrating. Every time I thought I had gotten through the worst of it, something new would emerge…it felt very much like the year of no respite. Yet despite all that, each year I read a letter from someone who found immense joy and peace despite those things.

I guess despite all my uncertainty, all the challenges and all the discomfort I did remember a few things that were inalienable that let joy prevail in my life. As I go back and read these letters, it’s amazing to reflect on where I’ve been. I don’t know how it worked out so well, but some of the tidbits I wrote in that first letter have been profound in keeping my heart and soul healthy and rooted in purpose, and on the right track. It’s sometimes easy to so caught up in where we are, what we’re doing, and where we think we’re going it’s easy to forget where we’ve been and how far we’ve come. Below are a few of the reminders over the past few years which I have left myself to remember where I’ve been…for what it’s worth here are a few themes that have shown up in my letters that have been encouraging for each of the past years.

1. A reminder of who I am – this seems trivial, but I am about as ADD as they come, and often times I get so wound up, distracted, and move so fast that sometimes its I forget who I am in my heart of hearts.
   
2. A reminder that God made me, God chose me to be his, that he loves me, and that I’m a steward of his work. I love the infinite “specialness” that is God’s creation work…I need to remind myself that God made me on purpose, to love doing specific things, to love people in specific ways, and most importantly to love him. This to me is no small deal, and can revolutionize the way you look at every moment of your life…if you let it.
3. A reminder to hold on to nothing, one of my best friends taught me 3 important words, “Let it go”. I believe that there is only so much room in our hearts, if we choose to hold on to too much of the hurt, the heartache, and the pain of this life, undoubtedly we will be embittered and callous patrons of this life. If we let that stuff go and melt away, we make room for love, joy, and peace that only God provides.
4. A reminder to keep “doing”…one of my biggest self identified risks is the risk of not doing anything. I need to be gently spurred to keep being outbound with my life, to make something of every minute of every day, I know this seems like stuff you’d read on a graduation card, but it’s worth repeating, it’s worth pursuing, and it’s worth living out each day
5. Finally, I remind myself to love people in my life freely and recklessly, this may be the single most important thing that past tense me has done for present tense me. It is really hard, to really love. When we open our hearts it makes room to get hurt, be let down, be disappointed…past tense me knew that, and saw firit to encourage present tense me to love anyways. It is a scary conviction to have, but I really believe that if we want to do anything with ourselves, it has to begin and end with love.
   

These letters have been a huge blessing in my life, and have been a great source of reflection each year, and while it feels like the distant past, it’s quite familiar. I know that I’m prone to wander, and while this is the case, each year I get a reminder of where home is.
I always seem to be on airplanes when I write these things…but that is probably circumstantial versus intentional, and oddly this week I’m flying to New York, which just so happens to be where I was flying from when I wrote my first letter. Sometimes life affords us beautiful poetic symmetry…

I’m not sure what I’ll write this year but I hope my letter makes it to future me, and I hope future me is encouraged by whatever it is… I’m thankful to have friends and a family who love me and make my life truly special.

Glad to have made it so far,
CP
http://Chrispanoff.blogspot.com

Oh the Humanity!

It’s amazing to me to think that this post marks approximately 1 year of blogging. While my time spent writing has been sporadic, and clearly all over the map in terms of content, I selfishly couldn’t be more pleased with what this process has yielded in me personally. It may be selfish, but time and time again, I am reaffirmed in the benefit of putting myself out there, imperfections, insecurities and all. It seems that every day I am reminded that life is not about what we harvest, it is about the seeds we sew…and in this life we may never see the fruits of our work, but that fact is not an excuse, but rather an exercise in humility, diligence, and patience.

Over the past few weeks, I have been all over the place, I’ve had some high highs and some low lows, and despite it all I’ve somehow ended up in a place where I receive the all too familiar reminder of that life is not easy by any stretch for anyone, but it is good.


Last weekend I was with my family in Colorado and I had the awesome opportunity of heading out on a bike ride up a mountain pass. I left Estes Park, Colorado (altitude 7,000 ft) and headed up into the hills for the next 2+ hours to arrive just shy of 12,000ft, literally all uphill. All morning long it was slow steady progress, as I grinded away over the dozens of switchbacks, each pedal stroke a reminder of the shape I used to be in. Each tier of the ascent was like a new layer of the world was peeled back, and as I looked out along the mountains that sat on the horizon the World around me expanded..truly spectacular. With each meandering turn the air slowly thinned, my pulse quickened, yet despite my increasing strain I was reminded that in life (and in the mountains), that in order to have mountain top moments, we must first climb out of the valley…and sometimes those climbs are long and painful....the above picture is from half way up the mountain.


When I fail to venture out into the unknown spaces of this life, and sit quiet and content in the face of this life’s challenges, I know I miss out on the fullness and richness of life that is out there. It is as if we as people despite our deepest hunger, will not eat an apple because at its center, awaits a core. This life has thousands of things that are hard about it, and we can choose to make the fact that life is hard the centerpiece of the story or a sub plot. Whether it be uncertainty, fear, or discomfort that keep us from heading up the slopes of this life, we must press on…as Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell…keep going.”… The sad part about my morning ride was that I almost traded the view and the satisfaction the hard climb brought for a quiet painless morning on the couch.


So even despite the fact that life feels a lot like a long infinite uphill climb, we must climb on. There are a lot of things that I know I must do that scare me to death, there are a lot of questions whose gaping uncertainty paralyzes me, and I am sure that despite my best efforts to climb, I will certainly stumble and end up in the valley over and over, however, I’m committing to dust myself off, pick up my head, push toward the summit. Yeah life deal’s some hard blows sometimes, but that’s life…me must learn to carry on.


In it all there is a balance to be had between the ferocity with which we live and the love that we give. We mustn’t let our desire to surge onward be done at the expense of the other travelers with us on this rocky road called life. In the end we must learn to live like the lion, and love like the lamb. Living life with a furious indifference to it, loving wildly, fearlessly, and with reckless abandon for those we love, but never compromising compassion, tenderness, or sincerity.


Christ’s ministry was founded on the principle of radical love; and loving as Christ loves requires us to recklessly love and pursue Christ’s people (aka All people). We are not afforded the luxury of choosing who loves us, but rather, we are afforded the luxury and given the invitation of loving, period, hard stop.


In the end, there is much to be done in this life, and while I do yearn to change the world and impact thousands and millions of lives…I realize that in order to change millions of lives, I must do so one at a time, with simple and small change. Being kind, loving others, making people smile, helping them laugh, loving in real ways…loving.


I don’t know who reads these posts, nor am I concerned. I just know this is part of putting my life to work and doing what it takes to climb some of the steep slopes. I hope you realized that a year ago, when I started the “Open Book Project”, it was not without fear or hesitation, and even to this day it is not without reluctance that I open my heart to the world to see the humanity in me, but it is the people around me who inspire me to keep climbing, keep loving, keep going, press on towards Christ…it is those who climb with me who keep me climbing.


Thank you for giving me the opportunity to open the book of my life to you all. Thank you for being a part of my life. Thank you for loving me. Yet, it is my fervent hope that you might not see me in all these things, but rather that I would be merely a reflection of the light of God.

A year later, in a vastly different place, yet a place that seems quite familiar…planting seeds where I can.
CP
http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com/

Humility & The City of Broad Shoulders

In the past few weeks I’ve had the ability to visit one of my favorite cities in the world, Chicago, on two separate occasions Ever since I was a child growing up outside of Chicago I loved the commotion and vibrance of the city streets, the infinite sights, sounds, smells, faces, and activities captivate me to this day. As I walk around in Chicago I feel a part of something bigger than myself, it is simply impossible to believe that my personal affairs are really that big of a deal amidst such a big place. No one is concerned about my job title, my salary, or my car…in the midst of the masses I simply become the guy standing wide-eyed staring out the train window who just so happens to be in your way to get off at the next stop. While in some ways crowds and masses of people (big cities) may reduce our self perceived individuality, they undoubtedly reinforce our undeniable humanity; we are all people living life together.

When I wander the city streets, I never feel like I become less of myself, or less of a person, I always feel like more of me than I do when left alone. When I’m around people, I’m humbled, I’m forced to live life on the ground level where there is no distinction or social stratification, there is simply life. There is no medium to gain political traction, there is no ladder to climb, there is just humanity. Despite our most grandiose views of our own importance, its amazing of how quickly the significance of self fades to nothing amidst the masses.

I don’t for a minute want to come across as if I am downplaying the importance of the individual, as I feel I have reiterated before, I am overwhelmed at the importance and attentiveness of God’s love for us and the value he places on us as individuals (see: People Shaped Spaces ), what I am saying is that it’s important to not let your individual specialness eclipse the fact that others have an equally significant specialness. As with everything so much of life is about balance, the balance between the value of self without becoming self absorbed and also the balance of acknowledging the importance of others without becoming self deprecating…neither compromising who we are for the sake of others, nor compromising the importance of others for the sake of ourselves.


GK Chesterton wrote that the “…it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must make himself small. Even haughty visions, the tall cities, the toppling pinnacles are creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upward above the loneliest star are creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them, giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible, without humility, to enjoy anything - -even pride.”

Humility expands the way we look at the world and the way we look at each other, it opens our eyes to the bigness and the realness of the world around us. When we are arrogant, we become giants in our own minds, bigger than the mountains, the towers, and the world itself. We reduce the world around us to mere morsels, we live life aloft and high perches, seldom doing anything of charity or purpose. We become stagnant except for when our pity for the lowly world around us has reached a state of such disrepair that our arrogance (not love) motivates us to act, and for those of you who have ever been helped out of pity or pride instead of charity or love you know all too well how distinct a difference love-motivated action makes, and how ineffective pride-motivated action is.

By becoming a smaller part of our own realities our eyes are opened to the world and the possibilities of what it could be. If you consider life mathematically the equation would look something like this:

Me + Everything Else in the world = Reality (aka Life, aka Your World View)

Since Reality (aka Life) is in fact constant, this means that the more of Self (Me) that I have, the less room for everything else there is. Like a buffet, you can eat whatever you like from the vast selection, however if you fill up only on shrimp cocktail, you’ll have a vastly different experience than you might if you were to sample the selection of all the flavors. No matter what you chose you may end up full, but the quality of your experience will probably be vastly impacted by the choices you make.

Humility makes room for more by becoming less. The best part is by being less selfish, we don’t become less of ourselves. The less of me I have, the more room for Christ I have made, and he is willing to fill the space no matter how big I make it.

By understanding our true place in this life we are able to embrace the bigness of the world around us. By understanding we are small in the grand scheme of things we open our eyes and our hearts to a big world. Through embracing humility, the expanses of life are opened to us and our ability to enjoy and soak in all that this beautiful life has to offer expand all the more.

Taking a smaller role in my own world view,
CP
http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com/

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/