Wiselad.com

I am the Buffet Man.  Alone I travel, alone I live, and alone I eat.  Strangers I greet, but do not meet.

Go to the table with the single seat.  Survey the stations with the choicest meat.

I am the Buffet Man.  Single-minded, double-handed, grab a plate.   Take the line with the shortest wait.

Speed up the time with a quicker gait.  Take what’s good and leave what I hate.

I am the Buffet Man. Supremely focused at the task at hand.  Devouring my food according to plan.

Meticulous, like building castles in the sand.  While my belly tests the strength of my waistband.

I am the Buffet Man.  Plate one, plate two, plate three.  Looking around the room it’s plain to see.

There are other men here just like me.  Is it buffet men we’re striving to be?

I have not written in a while, so I wanted to touch base to try to get in the habit of writing more.  I’ve just spent some time looking at some different career options and I’m feeling encouraged that there is light at the end of the tunnel of the job that I’m at.  I don’t believe that the project that I’m on is a good fit for me and I’m leaning towards the idea of trying something altogether different from consulting.  I’m looking most heavily at different areas within real estate, but would also like to check out Frank Russell as an option in finance. 

 The challenge for me in the mean time is to deal with work in a way that is pleasing to God.  I need to be able to handle my responsibilities well until God releases me from here.  But when the time comes, I need the courage to make the call to leave a nice paying job for something that could be much more risky.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here.  My hope is that I would post on wiselad.com regularly about what I am learning in life and that this might help others.  I believe that God has gifted me with teaching ability, and so as I learn to navigate this world with wisdom, I hope to be able to share my lesson’s learned so that others can perhaps avoid some pitfalls.

 So right now I am struggling with what to write down.  It seems as if everytime I think about trying to come up with something to put on this blog my brain freezes and I can’t think of anything.  So I’ve just decided to myself that I will just post whatever is on my mind.  The quality may not be great, but at least I’ll get in the habit of writing every day.  So we’ll see how it goes.  No more excuses.

 Today, work was a little painful.  In one of my meetings, I didn’t take control to the degree that I needed to and so my boss took it away from me.  That was frustrating because I felt as if I wasn’t good enough at running meetings.  I hate feeling inadequate!  And so I thought about how I should be taking this.  Should I be angry with my boss?  Probably not.  He had a point wanting to get some control over the meeting.  I think it was hurtful because it was a blow to my pride.  I like to think that I can handle all situations all the time, but unfortunately that’s just not the case.  It’s humbling to realize that I frequently make mistakes, even when I am giving my best effort.  Throughout my life, I’ve generally attributed by failures to not giving my best effort.  And usually that’s been the case.  However, I think God is showing me that I can even fail when I do give my best effort, and that I have to learn how to deal with failure.  I need to learn how to bounce back and retain my confidence, because God is still with me, even in the midst of apparent failure.  Tommorrow, I will be running that same meeting again.  I am confident that I will maintain control and keep to schedule.

I don’t go shopping for clothes that often, perhaps 2-3 times per year. I hadn’t been in a while so about a month ago I decided to head to the local shopping district. I was actually excited at the prospect of getting some new jeans and maybe some sweaters for the fall/winter. I first headed over to Nordstrom Rack where I spent well over an hour looking for jeans. Now I went looking for jeans because I didn’t really have very many nice pairs of jeans left in the closet. However as I began to shop, I discovered that I “needed” other things like blazers, ties, maybe a suit, even t-shirts for next summer. I found myself lost in the myriad of choices of things that I suddenly now realized that I needed. How could I have endured so long without such glaring needs?

I spent the next week and a half going to several stores in order to round out the “starting rotation” for my closet. But aside from my initial excitement it was far from enjoyable. Then I began to reflect on what I thought I needed. I found that it was very peculiar that I set out to fulfill some particular needs but as I began shopping other “needs” arose. And the question that I asked myself is what are truly needs? What are simply “nice-to-haves”? In the west we live in a culture where we are told that we need many things in order to give us happiness and satisfaction. Television, internet, magazines, billboards, and a host of other media tell us that we need this pill, or that food, or that job, or that gadget, or this service in order to finally transition from the brown grass to the green grass. If only I had that leather blazer, then I’d be set…

But then it occurred to me that our very definition of needs are screwed up. A need is something that arises out of necessity from our circumstance or situation. So for example, If I walk out outside naked in the cold my body will start to shiver giving rise to the awareness that I need some clothes. That is a real need. Or also, if I attend my friends wedding dressed in shorts and flip-flops and his family and friends stare at me in disgust, the need for dressier attire arises out of my socio-cultural circumstances. However, if I drive to the mall to pick up a pair of jeans, and see a blazer that I like, and need to come up with a reason to wear it, that is a want! How messed up have we become when we buy the marketer’s lie that we must shop to figure out what our needs are! Needs, by definition, should naturally arise. They should be apparent. Otherwise it’s not a need, just a want or a nice-to-have.

Imagine, how much time and anxiety would be save if we lived lives with a solid understanding of needs versus wants? What if we stopped wasting time trying to conjure up our needs and just allow life to dictate that naturally? What if we lived a life where we could be satisfied with what we truly need, and feel blessed when we get to have some of our nice-to-haves? The problem is that we’ve come to see nice-to-haves as needs, and in the land of endless opportunities and choice, many of us are just sadly miserable and confused.