I want to be fatter
"Do what you can where you are with what you have." Theodore Roosevelt
I've been challenged recently about being fat. Or, more precicely, about not being fat enough. Now before any of you make comments that will embarass us both, let me expand a little. F.A.T - faithful, available and teachable (my apologies - I don't know who said this originally, the acronym is not mine), and I know I need to be fatter. Teddy said that we can do what we can, where we are with what we have. When I see a problem, I want to fix it, but my ability to act depends, according to Teddy, on three things. What can I do? Where am I? What have I got that could help? So often in my thinking the bottleneck is that I don't have enough, when perhaps I could be more effective by looking at other aspects of my f.a.t.ness. Like, what is my position? Am I positioned so as to be available to help when the need arises, or am I boxed in by my plans and so busy that I forget why I'm here in the first place. Is busyness getting in the way of business?
Secondly, maybe I need to reasses what I do have and how it could be used. Faithfulness in the small tasks with the few resouces that I have already been entrusted with is key, before I can possibly do bigger with more. I need to think more about 'my' meaning relationship, instead of 'my' meaning possession. The things I call 'mine' are mine only in that I have a relationship to them - my house is the house I live in, not something belonging to me. Perhaps, then, my time is the time that I live in, and not a thing belonging exclusively to me by right.
And lastly, I need to be ready to be taught, and to expand what I can do. There needs to be a relationship between learning and application, but it is a balance, not a tension. It's not good to have a lot of one at the expense of the other - but it's better to have lots of them both rather than less of either. Balance, not tension. Don't take from one to give to the other, just get lots more of both. (cont...)
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 04/07/2006.
- flyingkiwi's site
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