0:00:00 - 0:00:00 So I find that the closer I come to God closer, he draws me. Um, the more fluidly I have recollections from my past this morning. Uh, seemingly randomly I was thinking about and reliving. There was a situation I think I was seven or eight. I was riding my bike and I don't remember how this happened, 0:00:00 - 0:00:51 but I've, I went over the handlebars hardcore and my face flew right into the pavement and, um, I cracked my, my front teeth pretty badly. Well, I didn't crack them but I mean, I hit them, they impacted quite severely into the, into the ground and I, I went home and I was just, I had all kinds of blood 0:00:51 - 0:01:17 coming out of my mouth and my teeth were loose, but thankfully nothing was permanently damaged. So I noticed that which just boggles my mind how every passing day I have an increasing awareness of my own strangeness and it's, it's an enigma how it escaped me for so long. Although II, I do think that 0:01:17 - 0:01:48 it helped that God helped me assume use, use all potential evidences of the differences um to persuade myself that I was less than everything I saw around me that was helpful. Um, but, but I can't explain, you know, other than the fact that I'm a, an insanely uh slow person, it must be how I couldn't 0:01:48 - 0:02:08 have noticed things sooner. But because as I watch my own Children, for example, at seven or eight, I cannot imagine them having this thought. But one of my first thoughts was, oh, cool. Well, my teeth are loose, my front teeth are loose, the top ones and they kind of have a gap between them. So if all 0:02:08 - 0:02:28 day I just push them together, then they'll heal that way and then I won't have a gap in my teeth. And you can see, I don't, I don't have a gap in my teeth. So it worked uh because they were my adult teeth, which I'm sure worried my mom quite a bit because we did not have the money for some kind of dentistry 0:02:27 - 0:02:57 on that to fix it. If, if it had been chipped and then I, I didn't need braces, it turns out. So, um so what the heck is the point of this? Um I thought this was an excellent analogy to illustrate aspects of using what's around us to propel us forward that we would otherwise miss. So, oh, now I'm remembering 0:02:57 - 0:03:20 that that this memory actually was triggered through the analogy which I hadn't thought of before. Um Because I was, I was thinking about a book that I had read that I found immensely useful at the time, but that I'd never recommend to anyone ever now. And I was thinking, isn't it interesting how there 0:03:20 - 0:03:42 seems to be? I can imagine in my head, a graph like, like if you google the supply and demand graph, you'll see this, that the lines that go like this and there's something special about where they overlap and with supply and demand, that's price discovery if I, if I'm remembering that correctly. Um 0:03:42 - 0:04:04 But as we go through life, we have these weird intersections too. Like when you get married, you think that you're searching for a being, I don't know why this is sign language for being in my mind, but you're searching for a being. But actually, what you're doing is I, if you're not thinking about it 0:04:04 - 0:04:25 at a really a much higher level, you're going to fall into the trap of just optimizing at the current time and place, this could mean much, much more than it might seem on the surface. The, let's see if I can just very quickly break this apart and zoom in a little bit uh like as a guy if I'm, if I were 0:04:25 - 0:04:51 searching as, as I was. Um it, it's, it's not the case that I'm looking for the person who's going to grow at the. So think of graphs. OK. Do I have anything I can, I only have one pen? All right. We're gonna do finger graphs ready So think uh here's your graph, right? And you got two lines going this 0:04:51 - 0:05:08 way. That's the ideal situation in a marriage. You could change the slope of these lines. It doesn't really matter. That gets really hard to see with this high tech animation. So you got the these lines right? So just simplify it and think that you have a line instead of a curve. But in reality, you 0:05:08 - 0:05:26 do have a curve. So this is ideal, you see how the lines don't touch and this is the man and this is the woman because women seek men better than them. And as long as you are better than them in every single way, they will remain happy, safe and secure in their own mind, they will, they will see their 0:05:26 - 0:05:57 situation as happy, safe and secure if you, if you remain the best man that she thinks she could find and you are better than her in every way. So no pressure. But um actually because people aren't wise, that's not what they look for. Um They, they look for this or this and that X is the ideal companion 0:05:56 - 0:06:24 , but it's really just the person that matches who you are right this second as far as you can see. And why is that disastrous? Because if the lines are crossing, they can't be parallel. That's why um and you're going to outgrow her or she's going to outgrow you and at least one of you will be miserable 0:06:23 - 0:06:59 for the rest of your life. So, just breaking it down. Um So there's that anyway, so there's a, this, this magical meeting spot is not always a bad thing, but it, there is a whole lot about recognition of value that occurs. That's like that. And so, um, I was at a place in a time where I saw um, this 0:06:59 - 0:07:25 book, what was in this book was, was very useful for where I was as far as how it was perceived and interpreted in my head and heart. But I've moved past that thankfully as we all should, right? As we're going forward and looking back, I think, well, I, I could help someone in any of those subordinate 0:07:24 - 0:07:46 states from my past how I was before. As I've grown, I could help someone much better than that book could now because I've learned that and other things. And so I would never recommend that book. Um Plus I can't, this is a very, very, very important gospel idea of what I'm about to say. I cannot in 0:07:46 - 0:08:15 full sincerity, recommend that book knowing now about the many truths that I've outgrown that things I thought were true back then that I've outgrown. And so I could never recommend that book. However you're like, what does this have to do with falling off a bike? However, um I, I just forgot what it 0:08:15 - 0:08:36 had to. I it was literally right on my head. I'll get it hold on. Oh, yeah. No one, no one gets excited about falling off a bike. Right. But if it happens, you can't change the fact that it already did. You might be able to help someone else not do the same thing. And that's something we don't pay enough 0:08:36 - 0:09:03 attention to. It's really important. It's really important. But if it's already happened, the best you can do is extract any value, you can out of it, right? And then you can move on and you don't need that thing to be set up as this idol in your life that the rest of your life depends on staying there 0:09:02 - 0:09:27 , right? Or, or you're somehow enslaved to that forever. And it's so funny because when we think of putative truth or useful situations or, you know, jobs, relationships with people, places to live, it doesn't matter. We have so many perverse tendencies with this. For example, if something is good now 0:09:27 - 0:09:59 , it must be good forever. If something is what's best now, it must be the best forever. If I see value in something now, I could never see that value change or possibly see flaws later. Nope can't be right. So all of that on the one hand and those uh those false perceptions they always gravitate towards 0:09:59 - 0:10:24 and stick to like they're magnetic, the things that we really should let go of the things we really should move past, the things we really should be able to look at and say, well, that actually that's not the best. And here's why, meanwhile, somehow we practice the exact opposite tendencies with the 0:10:24 - 0:10:47 things we should feel that way about and the people we should feel that way about. So, so situations where it is still obviously the best, but then we feel like we have to nit pick it, there's nothing better and the benefits far outweigh the costs still. But boy, we just have to nit pick this so that 0:10:47 - 0:11:06 we can throw it away without feeling guilty. Whether it's a situation, a place, a person, it doesn't matter. Like you've got a nice job, it pays the bills, it does what it needs to do. There's nothing better that you know of, but you're gonna be miserable about it anyway. Why? Or a wife or a husband 0:11:06 - 0:11:28 or of the place you're living in. Uh, well, you can believe maybe something better is out there and still it's not the right time or place to go for it because whatever, there's certain costs in play right now, they exceed the benefits. That's the only rational reason you wouldn't do it. Right. And then 0:11:28 - 0:11:59 a third level of, of totally jacked up rationality is, um, when we know that, uh, something better does exist, it's ready to go and it has much better net benefit than whatever we're doing and we don't move to that. So we're just, we're just all jacked up, we're all jacked up. So, um, it turns out that 0:11:59 - 0:12:26 it's ridiculously important to disentangle all these ideas about value and priority and optimization and cost and benefit and the understanding cause and effect. And uh where do you turn for lessons on that today? I don't see that being talked about anywhere really. And, and certainly not in the amalgamation 0:12:25 - 0:12:45 of ideas to cover the breadth and depth of it and how intertwined it is with so many things. This is not something that most religious people would consider to be inside the envelope of religious ideas. And in my idea, uh my, my perspective, it's much closer to the foundations than most of what they 0:12:45 - 0:12:56 spend their time thinking and, and uh thinking about and practicing. Ok, it's time to shut off the faucet and get back to writing, take care.