Consider the Source

Well let me first apologize for taking ten years between posts. Life has continued to be an amazing learning experience with new knowledge and wisdom coming from some of the most unlikely of sources. It has, however, prompted me to reexamine who and where I am taking my advice and example from. This is what I wanted to write about today.

It seems like in our culture we have many people we would call "idols". We even have a show called "American Idol" that rolls around the country looking for new ones. We have ads that tell us to "be like Mike" and we can buy the jersey of our favorite athletes. We read their books and learn their life stories because, for us, there is something about them that we want to be true about us as well.

There is something missing in this, however, because our focus becomes too intent on merely this habit or that trait to the exclusion of the entire person. We oftentimes devalue the position an idol might have in our lives by leaving the post open to a myriad variety of not-so-worthy candidates. Did he or she have to compensate in some areas to become a star in others? Perhaps a man is the best in his field but he is a horrible husband and father. Perhaps a woman attained an incredible amount of power and leadership and yet lacks compassion or humility.

Would we still want to follow most of our idols if we really knew the whole story about them? Or, perhaps, is ignorance bliss? My personal rule of thumb and my encouragement today is to look at the entire person when looking for someone to admire and idolize. What I don't mean is look for perfect people because, by my count, there only been one of them (and he's an automatic on my list of idols for that and many other reasons).

Let me explain in fuller detail how I advocate this criteria. I would say that it is, arguably, true that just about anybody can be the best at just about anything if you sacrifice everything else for it. This goes back to a previous article where I asked if what you devote yourself to is worthy of the sacrifice. But even a worthy devotion (we're not even going to talk about unworthy devotions here) is not license to neglect every other area of your life. No, I think that holding all of one's passions and priorities in balance, seeing that all of them are attended to, and excelling there is infinitely harder than just picking one thing to the exclusion of the rest.

I want to see athletes that are faithful to their wives and good fathers to their children. I want to see women that can lead companies with power and grace. I want to see ministers that take as much time keeping their own lives in order as they do everyone elses'. I want to excel in my own field but never to the exclusion of my wife or my God. Even if I never am somebody's idol, I want to live that kind of life. And I wish that kind of life on every person because that quality of character and depth of life has always been our destiny. We should stop reserving that life for the people we see on TV and claim it for ourselves today.

But that's just my opinion...