IT is often
said that when one is very orderly and focused
on things, he most likely will fail to consider other
things that may
be more important. He becomes a rigid, one-track-minded
person.
Of course,
there is some truth to that observation,
especially when the persons concerned precisely are too
orderly and
too focused that they become compulsively controlling of
things and
therefore end up blind to other considerations that may
objectively be
more important than what they are handling at the moment.
Sad to say, we
have many cases like this nowadays. This
may be due to the increasing complexity and complications
of our life
and the growing clutter not only of material things but
also and
especially of moral issues and concerns. As a
consequence, many people
react in that way as their means to cope with the
situation.
But if order
and focus are lived properly, they actually
favor flexibility and creativity, and they can lead one
to be more
broad-minded, more objective and more able to tackle what
is truly
important to us. And the proper way to develop and live
order and
focus is to inspire them with love for God and others.
Without that
love and with us simply relying on our own
idea of what is good and advantageous to us, our way of
developing and
living order and focus would be greatly limited. And
that’s because
our own ideas of these virtues would only be self-serving
and would
simply depend on our own powers. We would be easy prey to
the
mysterious twists and turns of our life.
A self-serving
motive and a self-empowerment can only do
so much. They cannot go the distance. Their
objectivity is hampered
by a heavily subjective approach to the challenges in
life. They
practically cannot overcome and go beyond what their
current
conditionings and circumstances give them. They are like
being fenced
in.
But when the
sense of order and focus is motivated by love
of God and others, and empowered by God’s grace, then it
can be
developed and lived calmly and with greater sensitivity
to the
objective reality of things in their proper hierarchy as
willed by God
who knows everything and sets the ultimate standard of
things.
We should try
our best to live always in the presence of
God that would also bring about the presence of everybody
else. That’s
because if our presence of God and love for him is real,
then we would
also have a vivid sense of the presence of the others and
an abiding
love for them.
It would be
good and helpful that in developing this
proper sense of order and focus, we bring things first
into our prayer
so we can see them more clearly under the light of God’s
will, and not
just under our own interests and purposes. In that way,
we can easily
establish the priorities proper to each of the things
that come our
way.
There will be a
good sense of purpose and direction, and
any unexpected thing or surprise that can come our way
can be handled
better without getting confused or lost.
Besides, with
this good sense of order and focus and a
good sense of purpose and direction, we can easily
discover and
discern other possibilities that are relevant to our
plans.
A
well-thought-out daily strategy attracts more relevant
ideas. The promptings of the Holy Spirit are more easily
discerned. We
become more discriminating of things, and we would know
what to get
and give attention to and what to ignore and discard.
In other words,
we would become more prudent, our power to
judge things and events properly gets sharpened, and our
ability to be
flexible, adaptive to the demands of the moment as well
as creative is
facilitated.
