Living Intentionally Brings Positive Change
One month ago, if someone had asked me if I’d changed in the past year, I would have said no. I didn’t think I had definitively changed, but I was wrong. In the past month, several specific instances made me realize my answer must be the opposite, for I have changed entirely.
After careful consideration, I was able to identify the events in my life that caused me to change my whole perspective without even knowing it. It is important to recognize that change is not instantaneous, even if it happens because of an instant; and even dramatic change isn’t necessarily noticeable in its course. We are always growing and changing, so it is best to live intentionally and guide our growth according to the Truth.
If we choose to recognize Truth and react accordingly, we will gear our lives towards the good and the beautiful … toward our ultimate goal, communion with God. If we live intentionally, we do not let our ideals be shaped by accident. We choose how we want to live and who we want to be, with an awareness of the fact that we always have a choice. Every choice we make should aim to a higher purpose, to improving ourselves and pulling up others along with us. Our entire lives should be journeys of self-improvement motivated and guided by our love for God.
If we are unintentional, who we become is simply happenstance. Who wants to look back at their life and say, “I didn’t choose to be who I am, I’m only the result of what happened to me?” If we are unsatisfied with our lives because we didn’t choose anything, we still chose the passive lifestyle and mentality that led to it – and we are still accountable for ourselves. As Rush says in their song Freewill, “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice!”
Many of my peers enjoy referring to what is becoming the motto of the decade: “You do you.” It essentially mixes the philosophies of “Be yourself” and “It is what it is,” and it gives free rein to our relativistic culture. When an issue arises and we choose to justify any response with “You do you,” we give relativism full license. We turn our heads in pretended ignorance so we can avoid the necessary debate in which right and wrong exist, and we drift through life without acknowledging a higher purpose.
Today, it seems that many of us don’t know what our ideals are; or we believe we don’t have any specific approach to life because we let our ideals be passively formulated. If we fool ourselves into the mentality that having no specific goals and going with the flow is acceptable, it allows us to settle for a mediocrity that is far beneath us. There is so much better we can seek; so much better we can be. I challenge us all to examine our lives honestly and identify the ideals and philosophies with which we approach the world. Do we allow the Truth to mold our lives, or do we shy away from those realities which make us uncomfortable? How have we inevitably changed over time; what in our lives directed those changes?
Are we doing our best to strive for God’s goodness in our development through life, or are we too afraid of the demands of true Love?
Are we willing to radically transform our typically resistant approaches to change … or will we settle once again for those mediocre changes whose discomfort we can make comfortable, those changes which do not satisfy?
