#2 Finish Strong?

The first thing I have been thinking about is how you finish a chapter of your life. Make no mistake, I do believe that doing your best to wrap things up on the best note possible. However, I have been toying with this question: what happens if you don’t? How much does it really change in the grand scheme of things? If things are getting rough and you have to make a bad break, what impact will that have? These thoughts and more have been on my mind lately. 

For the sake of the argument, let’s exaggerate this a little. Let’s suppose you were the best worker a boss could ask for. You were employee of the month every month for years and everyone looks to you as the golden standard. Then in a fit of rage, you clock out and never come back. Worse still, you leave a pile of half-finished work that still needs to be done, along with a desk that’s an absolute mess. What would you think of someone that finished this way? 

I mean, they might say you did something quite rude, but would that outweigh all the good that you have done? Would this ruin the reputation that you built for yourself over their time in the workplace? I’m inclined to say no. People might say it’s odd that you quit this way, but they wouldn’t completely forget the role you  played every day in their lives. I think legacy is about far more than how you spend your last chunk of time. 

How you will be remembered is about the most memorable parts about you. It’s about how you behaved every day, how you were known for behaving every day. How we are remembered is about so much more than how we finish up. It’s one of those times where we need to look at the big picture. If you weren’t a great employee during your working career, odds are your two-weeks notice won’t change things. 

With that being said, It’s a good question to ask: how will I be remembered? How do I want to be remembered? I wish I could say that I will be remembered as the hardest worker with the highest quality work, but sometimes even that feels like a lie. Honestly, if I can confidently say anything at all, it’s that anything that stems from me is corruptible. This place corrupted any friendships that took root, and put me in some tight spots, forcing me to make some tough calls. 

I’ll admit, some of the adventures I had here were of my own making. Though there are always many factors at play, I can honestly say I wish I handled a few things better. Or maybe I’m just being hard on myself, I can’t really tell. Even if I cut myself some slack, the fact remains that I could have been a little kinder and maybe a little less full of myself. But I think I needed to crash and burn to see how much of a mess I was. As the old saying goes, the first step towards recovery is admitting that you have a problem, and I didn’t realize how many problems I had become blind to over the years. 

I think that’s the theme of this chapter, is sin. It’s funny, growing up I didn’t have much of a practical understanding of the word. I could have spat textbook answers at you for days, showing you all the verses and explanations that made sense on paper. But there’s a world of difference between knowing something and living it. That difference became one of the big themes for this chapter. 

I don’t know exactly what changed in my head to really cultivate this change. I guess I just remember being in different settings and feeling like there was something missing. I felt like there were a set of “ought-to’s” that weren’t being met. It’s not to say people were any worse, most people treated me quite nicely, but something always felt odd, off, and missing. I wish I had bigger words to describe this, but that’s all it was. I knew there was a way life ought to be lived, and I wasn’t pursuing it. 

I’m not trying to say that I had an ideal household in mind. This isn’t my inner perfectionist talking. But I feel like something was given free reign that shouldn’t have. I saw a lot of selfishness, bitterness, pettiness and pride roaring in the unkept jungles of the world instead of being locked in the cages they belong in. I would hear people make excuses for choices that simply felt wrong to me. I met people whose decisions reflected hearts that were in far different places from my own. I guess I had to see the world for what it was outside of the church life for a bit. I guess I truly had to have a chapter of venturing out on my own.  

And that’s not to say that my motives were any better. When you surround yourself with more…”open-minded” people, their definition of “help” is justifying your actions with a shrug and a “you do you” mentality. They can be like gasoline that erupts a spark into a vicious bonfire, sending you hurtling towards your doom faster than you can keep up with. But sometimes that bonfire is exactly what’s needed so you can rip up some of the rotting pieces of your foundation. It’s sort of like trying to pull up the bottom block in a game of Jenga. It makes everything come toppling down. 

So, as I wrap up this chapter, my biggest takeaway is that everything that comes from me and my own selfish motives is corruptible. I am corruptible. I am in need of a stronger force for good if I’m to become anything truly holy. I wish I could believe that I will be remembered as this perfect child with a golden touch, but if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m just another human being.

I write this not as a sob story. No, it feels more like the exiting of the matrix. I knew something had to be escaped, but what it was, I could not see, could not feel, could not taste. I was blind, but now I see. Where I will go from here, I do not know. But I will focus on that later, because now is a time for reflecting. 

Until next time

May Peace be your Guide.