Look before you leap. I don't have to think before I say it. It's a thought pattern. I don't know where it came from or when it began. It is. In the book Virus of the Mind, it's called a meme.
It's a sensible meme. I wouldn't want to jump off the sidewalk into a bed of sand spurs or red ants with my bare feet. I use those examples because I did that many times as a child until, painfully, I learned the consequences well enough that they settled into my long term memory. Maybe that's when someone said to me, "Look before you leap." The words made sense, so I bought them "hook, line, and sinker."
That's my issue with memes. We, I know I'm not alone in this, accept them without question, incorporate them into our lives, and use them indiscriminately "'til death do us part." We have the capability to be the smartest of animals, but from past studies of the ospreys outside my window at work or the song birds in the back yard, I believe we've been "sold a line of goods" with the "look before you leap" phrase. When I lock into a meme and use it like my favorite blanket, I sometimes find myself executing Einstein's definition of insanity.
I'm not, on the yin side of that yang, saying never "look before you leap," but I believe, like anything else, the thought should be held under a microscope of wisdom and courage. I observed ospreys learning to fly from an incredibly high perch. If those bobbing little heads had spent too much time studying the scenery below and less time soaring, fluttering and flapping their wings like church fans in August, they would have stayed in the nest.
Somewhere in all of this conversation a word has not been mentioned that is applicable: faith.
Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong.
Let all that you do be done in love.
1 Corinthians 16:13
1 comment:
Step out in Faith is were the leap comes in to the equation. Great thoughts you presented this morning. But I must get off the computer and do some mundane house work. see you soon.
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