Tag: quotes

Change, God, Life Lessons

My Feeble Attempt

I like quotes.  Mostly because they do what I never can.  They  take a thought, an idea, an emotion and turn it into a sentence or two.  It usually takes me more like a paragraph or two.  Sometimes I browse the web for quotes when its a rainy day out like today and nothing is really pressing on my shoulders right now and I need some new ideas to fill my brain with.  The one above is a good example of your typical internet quote.  It is decently nice.  It is also decently egotistical.  I browsed a bit down the comments about this one and one read:  “Don’t you ever forget, You Are Perfect!” 

That’s a really nice thought.  A really nice thought that’s really false.  You aren’t perfect.  I’m not perfect.  We never will be.  I don’t even have a good proportion of doing things right to messing up.  In fact, I’d estimate that I mess up 8.48 times for every one time that I actually do something right.  But that’s just a rough guess.

I’m okay with that.  I want to do better in every area of my life but there is something to be said for imperfection.  It makes us vulnerable.  It tears down some of judgment walls if we would just realize that everyone is just as broken as we are and we are just a group of fallen people feebly trying to hold each other up while resting in the incredible grace of the God who created and saved us.

It also makes the small perfections in life even more beautiful.  The innocence of children is even more precious, the sincere smile from a stranger even more encouraging.

We are wonderfully made and known by name by an incredible God, yes.  Perfect we are not.

About Me, Writing

“If Time is of the Essence Then it is the Essence of Time that Ought to Direct our Stumbling Steps”

Before my trusty thumb drive, I used to email myself assignments and essays from school so I could work on them at home. I have some friends who, when they e-mail themselves, they attach a little note so they feel like they are getting email from their past selves. I used to do this, but honestly, I got tired of cyber-talking to myself. I do that enough in real life. I couldn’t bear to send a sad little blank email though. Instead, I started making up quotes and giving them fake authors. They were always delightfully ambiguous. The type of quotes that would be plastered on the wall in a high school English room. The type that people would read, shake their heads thoughtfully, comment on its profoundness, then walk away without any lasting impact made because they mean absolutely nothing.

“The road to success isn’t complete without a few flares along the way”  Charles Willson

“The feeling of pain never comes into the station alone–this is what makes it so unbearable.  Its friends are some of my worst enemies”  George Oversteen

I wondered what it would take to have a quote credited to you. To say something so worthwhile that it ends up plastered all over google when people search for quotes for their essays and speeches. Then I realized, no one will ever quote you unless you have some sort of credentials. For a quote to be truly powerful, then your name has to be powerful first.

This striked me as rather sad. It doesn’t matter so much how beautiful or meaningful the quote is. If the wrong person says the right thing, it means nothing. If the right person says anything, it means everything. Judging the quality of what someone has to say based on who they are instead of what they have to say seems unfair at best. I like to write meaningless quotes with meaningless people attached. Yet if I actually had something of value to say, it wouldn’t matter. My fake quotes would probably be taken more seriously, as long as I used a fake name that looked legitimate.